#his card has made my ascend fifty times

[chibi-celesti]

Not me causally making marital parallels between my Yume and Malleus after seeing his NY card yesterday.

Picture reference for my Myume's outfit:

[twilekchiss]

Part 1: Thrawn

In this series, I am using Tarot as a tool to analyze Thrawn and other Chiss characters from Thrawn: Ascendancy. For the uninitiated, Tarot is traditionally a deck of 78 cards, consisting of twenty-two Major Arcana and fifty-six Minor Arcana (or pip cards). Famously, Tarot is often used in cartomancy, or the use of cards in fortune-telling. However, Tarot is rooted in card games developed in 15th Century Italy, and is still used that way today; beyond that, it can be used as a tool for self-exploration. The cards are read via the heavy symbolism in the card art, drawing from occult traditions (depending on the deck in question).

I am basing my analysis off of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is usually the deck you see in movies and TV shows. I have assigned every major character I could think of to a Major Arcana card (two of them have two!); this analysis is not including the Minor Arcana.

Today, we discuss Thrawn as The Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man

Let’s look at the art. (I know, I know. Art analysis. How very Thrawn of me.)

A person is suspended from a cross made of living wood. His clothes are a blue tunic and red tights, a slim brown belt and beige slippers. He hangs by his right ankle, while his other leg is folded, crossed behind his right one. His arms are likewise folded, hands unseen behind his back. Around his head is a golden halo. The card itself is labeled as number twelve.

As you see, I have bolded a few points in the description above. These I believe are the key symbols behind this card. Let’s go through them one by one.

Suspended - The main feature, as it were, of the Hanged Man is that he is hanging. More than that, he hangs upside down, giving him a completely different view than the viewer. He is not struggling, but seemingly at peace with this, indicating his consent.

A Cross - Crosses, obviously, are highly associated with the crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity, but also the practice of Roman crucifixion in general, both criminals, and in Christian mythology, saints.

Living Wood - The cross being made of living wood brings to mind the myth of Odin hanging himself from Yggdrasil, the World Tree that connected the Nine Realms. Not only that, but throughout Tarot living wood indicates growth and change (and life in general).

Blue and Red Clothing - Blue symbolizes wisdom, freedom, intuition, and serenity, as well as sometimes loyalty and reliability. Red is the color of blood, of life, of passion, but also danger, sacrifice, and courage. Note that for the card, red is on top and blue is on bottom, but if the Hanged Man was not hanging upside down, they would be reversed.

Hanging by right ankle / Left leg folded and crossed - The right foot is bound, the thing that he is suspended by. But not the left foot. That is curled, but choice, behind the right. Right and left are often associated with *right* and *wrong* – mostly due to archaic thoughts of right handedness vs left handedness. Consider the positions of the legs – the right being at the forefront, and perfectly straight. The left behind, crooked and angled away, leading a different path than the right leg. When a person stands, legs are parallel, ending at the feet both firmly on the ground. Here, the legs end in different places, the right pointing towards the heavens, the left points away from the heavens.

Hands unseen - Are his hands bound, or does he keep them there of his own free will? We cannot tell. Regardless, they are still and idle, the ability to *do* taken away by circumstance or by choice.

Golden Halo - A crown or disc of light, a halo is used to represent holiness on religious figures, but also kings and heroes. Aside from holiness, it can also mean glory and enlightenment.

Number Twelve - This is the twelfth card in the Fool’s Journey, after Justice but before Death. It is the time between, rather a liminal card, where one surrenders to the end that Justice has brought. 

Thrawn is The Hanged Man

So how does this apply to Thrawn? 

I think it's most evident in Lesser Evil. Of course, one thinks of the ending of Lesser Evil, most especially Chapter Twenty-Eight, and Thrawn’s purposeful sacrifice of exile for his actions at Sunrise (and to some extent, through the whole Ascendancy trilogy and arguably the events of Outbound Flight). The exile was willing; he did not fight it, but saw the tactical implications of it. He surrendered to it (point #8), and through that surrender, he found a new way. Through his exile and subsequent service to the Empire, he found a new perspective (point #1). He found freedom, as he was no longer bound to the No Preemptive Strikes law of the Ascendancy. He was labeled a criminal, but also hailed as a hero by others (point #2). Like Odin on the World Tree, he hung himself to gain further knowledge and wisdom (point #3)

This exile, thus surrendering to the Justice of the Syndicure that lead to the Death of his career in the Ascendancy, was all by his consent (point #9) to Ba'kif's idea of it. 

The epilogue, narrated by Thrawn (the only time his POV turns up during the Ascendancy trilogy, even if it's a rehashing of the Prologue of Thrawn 2017), he has this line: "Among these aspirations is the desire that there will be a straight path to those goals." Just as Thrawn muses on paths, the Hanged Man depicts two via the position of his legs, the legs themselves a symbol of movement (point #5). You could ascribe the Straight leg pointing towards the heavens as doing what the Syndicure ruled, and thus Thrawn turned away from that, going along a crooked path instead, his fate sealed through martyrdom.

There's also the fact that Thrawn used a fake surrender to Jixus to ensnare him into a trap (point #6).

But even as we see The Hanged Man in Senior Captain Thrawn's Last Stand, there are other symbols that apply to Thrawn. His incredible patience (a type of surrender), for example, with those willing to learn and grow (like the Living Wood of the cross, point #3). The way he guides Thalias and Samakro to find the answers on their own, giving them information but passively allowing them to form their own conclusions instead of telling them the answer. There's his desire to learn and collect data to find enlightenment (points #4 and #7). Thrawn is more than happy to go with the flow of things to gain insight into his opponents, instead of stubbornly battering it head on, most especially if he can learn from it.

Next up: Samakro as The Emperor

[shih-coulda-had-it]

193 for... maybe nanahiko? Really just do whatever ship you feel like :D

193. "Are you crazy? The kid is upstairs!" | VestigesTorino [Yes. OT8. The orgies are fantastic, and Torino is Holder bait, 8th and 9th exempt.] | WC: 2,222 of an OFA!VampireCoven!AU except op has taken liberties with worldbuilding.

TW: Blood-drinking. Outrageous flirting. Mildly spicy!

//

“Vampires,” Sorahiko echoes blankly.

He looks from left to right, trying to spot the differences between himself and the six adult men and one adult woman sitting at this round table. Most atypical appearances can be attributed to the strange and wondrous natures of Quirks, so Sorahiko could excuse the fourteen red eyes (every iris the identical shade) as a matter of Quirk heritage. However, none of the Shigarakis resemble the other.

They still might be pulling his leg.

The leader of the household (presumably) leans his elbows on the table and steeples his fingers. “Torino-san,” he says in a gentle voice, “we greatly appreciate your timely rescue of our youngest. And believe me when I say I would have preferred you stay ignorant of my coven’s true nature.”

“But the boy wants to be a professional hero,” one of the men interrupts. His arms are crossed, and his hair sticks up in rakish angles. An X-shaped scar has been carved over the bridge of his nose, just missing the eyes.

He sounds dismissive of the kid’s dream.

Fair. When Sorahiko had stepped onto the moonlit scene, the kid was frantically scrabbling at a thick-skinned villain’s hand, trying to save his bag from being rummaged. The villain had planted a knee in the kid’s stomach in an attempt to menace him into silence.

Sorahiko pounced on the villain, called in the location to pick up the too-heavy bastard, and escorted the boy home. He fielded questions about heroics and U.A. High for half an hour before they finally reached the Shigaraki compound.

And now he is here, trapped in a gigantic dining room, being told about vampires.

“We agreed to let him try,” says the singular woman sharply.

“If you three hadn’t filled his head about saving the world,” a man with a spiky ponytail shoots back, “then we wouldn’t have this problem. And you too, Yoichi.”

“Nevertheless,” the leader says. His red eyes gleam in the low light, and Sorahiko feels his skin prickling at the attention.

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Ah, who hasn’t heard of the toughest teacher of U.A.?” another man asks, sly and teasing. His voice is soft like the leader’s, but perceptibly younger. His coloring is similar to the woman’s, but he’s lean where she’s muscular. “Yoichi believes we should give you a head’s up. Toshinori is a good child, but even he will slip from time to time, and that will draw undue attention to himself.”

Sorahiko considers these seven faces. Slowly, he says, “You think he’ll be accepted into U.A.”

“Three of us are active pro-heroes, and we’ve been training him when we can,” the woman informs him. “I’d say he’s got a headstart compared to all of your first years.”

“My students have always been terrible. That’s what schooling is for.”

She flashes a smile at him, toothy and amused; his throat works through a sudden dry spell. Belatedly, Sorahiko realizes that every adult in this kitchen is eyeing him with intense interest. Even the ones that haven’t spoken yet.

Yoichi speaks again. “He’s smart, and he’ll be strong. U.A. will accept him. I ask you for your discretion and help, Gran Torino.”

He could refuse, but Sorahiko assumes they’ll simply kill him. Being blackmailed is a low possibility; Sorahiko doesn’t have much to be blackmailed about. And pro-heroes disappear all the time. No one really knows why. Principal Shi might demand an investigation on Gran Torino’s behalf (and possibly at the behest of Recovery Girl, who grudgingly acknowledges Torino’s efforts to raise the survival rate of U.A.’s graduates), but otherwise…

Still. Vampires. Another subset of humanity, among the Quirked and Quirkless. It’s weird enough to be true.

“Is this a verbal agreement?” Sorahiko asks.

A bark of laughter from the square-jawed man in the leather jacket, who leans forward and grins like a shark at Sorahiko. The light glints off the yellow lenses of his goggles, and the play of light and shadow highlights the muscle definition of the man’s shirtless chest. In a rich, low voice, he says, “We’ve got something better. A contract.”

“Using what?” Sorahiko bites back. “Paper and ink?”

“Skin and teeth, teach’.”

“Daigoro’s correct,” says Yoichi mildly, snatching Sorahiko’s attention away. “Torino-san, allow me to introduce my coven. I am Shigaraki Yoichi, second of my line. In the order of which my coven grew: Kenzo, Sanjuro, Hikage, Daigoro, En, Nana, and you’ve met our Toshinori.” As he speaks, he points to each person in turn.

He wonders when the kid got folded into this group. The kid’s affection for his home had been sincere, and he greeted the adults (well, Hikage had only come out of the forested grounds at Daigoro’s call) with merry cheer.

Is Toshinori even a vampire? U.A. conducts its business in the daytime.

Sorahiko nods in acknowledgement and doesn’t offer his full name in return. Instead, he says, “If I accept this contract, will you tell me whatever I want to know? About anything I ask?”

“Even vampires aren’t omniscient,” Yoichi answers.

Rolling his eyes, Sorahiko clarifies, “If the kid’s going to develop vampirism over the course of high school, then I need to know things. Like whether or not he’ll go feral over spilled blood. Or if sunlight’s going to be an issue.”

Yoichi’s smile is kind, and surprisingly not patronizing. “What we can tell, we will. The contract will have a mutual hold on us all.”

“What could break it?”

“A different coven, not that you should seek one out,” says Nana. “Trust us, we’re as nice as you get in the supernatural world.”

Sorahiko does not have many options. He hates the idea of agreeing to this without a safety net or a contingency plan. How can this woman ask him to trust them immediately? He’d have to be a gullible idiot, or a fool in lust, or...

He exhales. Sighing in resignation, Sorahiko tips his head to Yoichi and says, wry, “I accept the contract. Don’t kill me if your kid comes crying home about how mean I am.”

Yoichi shrugs, casual as anything. “Toshinori’s quite brave for his age, and stubborn, too. You’ll have your hands full training him.” He then stands from his chair; in measured, unhesitating steps, Yoichi approaches where Sorahiko sits at the opposite side of the round table. What he orders, Sorahiko complies with. “Take your cape off, Torino-san. Your gloves as well.”

“You may have to unzip the top half of your suit,” advises Hikage. “You won’t want the signatures to overlap.”

“Signatures,” Sorahiko repeats, pausing.

One glove’s already off. The flight suit’s sleeves extend up to his wrists, and they don’t have a lot of give. Similarly, the collar is skin-tight and provides ample coverage.

Daigoro playfully snaps his teeth at Sorahiko, once, twice. He says, “Paper and ink, skin and teeth. You forget already?”

The man barely flinches at the snarl directed his way. Seven pairs of eyes are honing in on the exposed flesh; Sorahiko shoves his self-conscious thoughts away. He focuses on the sheer outrage of being asked to strip by strangers, hissing, “Are you crazy? The kid is upstairs!”

“I’ll make sure he stays in his room,” Nana volunteers. She winks at Sorahiko. “We’ll be quick, Torino-san. You just have to keep quiet.”

“You—!”

She slips from her chair and darts off, exiting the dining room and ascending the stairs, floating off the floor. Sorahiko glares after her but snaps to attention as Yoichi stops by his chair, hip resting against the table, red eyes expectant.

Grudgingly, Sorahiko works off the second glove. As he does, Yoichi continues to lecture.

“The signatures can be made in two ways. A lighter bite will result in less pain, but will fade sooner. And I’d like for this arrangement to stand for several years, Torino-san. A lighter bite necessitates more renewals. Possibly, seven bites every two weeks.”

“And a stronger bite?”

“Seven every month.”

He scowls at the thought. The only silver lining he can see is that his suit will cover the marks, which will save him from his colleagues’ gossiping tongues. “Monthly, then. Are you drinking my blood? I don’t think I’ve got enough to cover seven appetites.”

Yoichi offers him a gentle smile. “A mouthful will suffice.”

Sorahiko works his jaw, and then he reaches backwards for the hidden zipper. It’s incongruously loud in the dining room; Sorahiko feels his face burning as he hurriedly rips his arms free of the sausage casing sleeves, letting the slackening front of the suit crumple to his lap. He hears an appreciative whistle.

“Daigoro, he can give you a run for your money,” Sanjuro jokes.

“He’s softer,” Daigoro deems, and Sorahiko bristles. “Must be the suit, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he snaps. “And proper hydration, asshole.”

“I’m not complaining!”

“At ease,” says Yoichi, calm, and that’s when Nana makes her reappearance. She swings back into the dining room, expression confident and content, until she spies Sorahiko’s half-naked appearance.

“Are we going in order?” she questions Yoichi, even as her eyes are trained on Sorahiko’s.

“That’s how it works, Nana,” Kenzo answers for their leader. “How’s Toshinori?”

“Watching his martial arts dramas. We’re good for like, fifty minutes.”

“You said you’ll be quick,” Sorahiko rasps, and his hands are clenching into fists, anticipatory and anxious. This is all so incredibly weird. “You all need more than five minutes to bite me?”

Yoichi laughs. It’s a bright sound, attractive and human and not at all like something that should be coming out of a self-proclaimed bloodsucker. When Yoichi moves, pushing off the table, Sorahiko nervelessly allows himself to be pinned to the back of his chair. One hand cards through his hair and lightly tugs; the other hand settles at his shoulder and presses it down.

His throat is exposed. Though Yoichi bends close, Sorahiko knows it isn’t the jugular he’s aiming for.

“Torino-san will need a moment to recuperate,” Yoichi whispers, and Sorahiko shivers, swallows past the apprehension, and spends half a second regretting his decision to let this happen. Yoichi adds, “We will not harm you, and you will not harm us. Your help, in exchange for ours. Let it be so.”

Teeth sink into the join of Sorahiko’s neck and shoulder, sharp and surprisingly hot. Sorahiko chokes out a garbled sound and jerks in his seat, until Yoichi’s bite goes deeper, deeper, and then Sorahiko gasps. Adrenaline bursts to life in his system; his Quirk sputters a reflexive Jet through his boots, but Yoichi’s slender frame hides an unseen strength.

He holds Sorahiko down.

He draws blood from the wound. Sorahiko barely feels the drain, fixated he is on the pressure exerted against him. Every single one of them is going to have the capacity to do this. If Yoichi, whose frame is most similar to En’s, can keep Sorahiko from bolting—Sorahiko arches his back, an involuntary moan escaping him.

It feels good. It feels really, really good.

Yoichi hums against his skin, pleased as punch, and his teeth retract. Sorahiko feels the tongue lap over the mark, heavy with spit. As Yoichi rears back, Yoichi rolls his neck lazily, licking his lips like a cat full from its meal.

“The saliva is a coagulant,” he explains idly, watching Sorahiko slump back against the chair, lungs still stuttering. A faint sweat has broken across his forehead, and Sorahiko distantly suspects that he’s going to need all the time he can get before the kid grows bored of his dramas.

“Oh, he already looks wrecked,” En observes. His awed tone elicits a laugh and encouraging clap to his shoulder from Daigoro, the latter of which requires En to brace against.

“You think he’ll last seven bites?”

“To be fair,” Hikage says, “that is a common erogenous zone. We’ll focus on less stimulating areas.”

Sorahiko, somewhat nettled at the implication that he won’t last (and what the hell does that mean? That he’ll back out? Start begging for mercy?) all seven signatures, musters his strength and shoves himself upright. He scoffs exaggeratedly, masking a shaky exhale with it. He challenges the coven, “Do your fucking worst.”

Yoichi blinks. Behind him, Kenzo is leaving his seat and stalking towards Sorahiko’s, red eyes gleaming. Before Kenzo can dive at Sorahiko and probably tear an artery out, Yoichi holds him back with one placating hand.

“Do not,” Yoichi warns. “We’re not trying to induce a thrall, do you all hear me?”

“Yoichi,” says Sanjuro, “if the man gets off, he gets off.”

A sigh leaves Yoichi. “Be that as it may. Please try not to leave him resentful for the months ahead.” He pats Kenzo’s collarbone; Kenzo catches the thin-boned hand and raises it to his lips.

“Understood, Yoichi,” Kenzo murmurs into the knuckles. He lets go, and Yoichi moves aside, now more fond than exasperated. A safety net, maybe.

In any case, Sorahiko gazes up at number two, who studies him back.

“The shoulder?” suggests Sorahiko, half-heartedly offering the right one up to sacrifice.

Kenzo inclines his head. “Just above the bicep will work,” and he goes on to prove his point, keeping Sorahiko locked in position, unable to do anything but wriggle and fail to contain strangled moans.

This is going to be a long hour.

[tarajenkins]

Given what you've said of Vauthry, about how we're never given any chance to even try and redeem him, help him become a better person, I'd like to ask: how would you go about "saving" him? When he transforms into that Lucifer/Archangel Michael-looking guy, he seems permanently lost, but how would you write out a redemption narrative for him?

I love this ask, I hate the answer I have to give. But it’s gonna be a long response anyway, because context and because you already know I don’t know when to shut up about characters, lmao. 

SO I HOPE YOU LOVE HEARING ME RAMBLE UNDER THIS CUT (but I won’t blame you if you don’t)

I don’t think the in-game narrative allows Vauthry any chance at redemption in the current time, even if he had the agency to take it.  I don’t think we ever saw what he actually could have been. I think what we saw in Shadowbringers was the Lightwarden he’d been carrying finally “awakening”, as Innocence’s Triple Triad card put it. Or, as the X-Files put it in their eighth ep: “We are not who we are”.  

Even if that Lightwarden could be driven out of him (I know an “Aethertech” who would do anything to make that possible cough), I don’t know if he’d regain clarity he may never have had to start.  I’d love to think that he did, a long time ago. The Minstreling Wanderer tells us he can’t say whether or not Vauthry was a monster as a child, when you unlock Crown Of The Immaculate EX.

I believe the Lightwarden’s influence was driving a lot of his brutal acts of “justice”, because that is kinda their whole thing.  As for the man inside the monster?  I have a hunch he was desperate to not be seen as unnatural, and was trying to make sense out of what was happening to him in a way that would not make him a hybrid abomination. Because if he wasn’t a God, if he wasn’t this divine thing he was told he was – then what was he? The way he worded it, “this is why I was born…as man and Sin Eater both…” – it makes me feel he had, at some point in his life, at least once, ASKED why he was born as he was. That he had perceived it was wrong. He needed it to be right. And that was just fuel to the corruption fire.

The talk of godhood actually seemed to be a recent phenomenon, as no other NPC mentions a thing about it – they refer to him as “Lord Vauthry”, and speak of him in mortal terms, apart from his miraculous ability to keep the Sin Eaters at bay. He freely boasted of being a God to the Crystal Exarch, yet we’re to believe he didn’t say a word to his own people, all this time? Or that no one, in turn, would mention to us “Yyyyeah, about this guy….” Mayor Punchable Face may have told him he was a God, but it doesn’t sound like Vauthry bought into it enough to spread the good word for at least twenty years. 

Also consider he called his transformation into Innocence a “trial”. Why would a god need to be tested? And by whom?

By the time we see him in-game, it seemed he was in a rapid decline of sanity, or at least the ability to keep up appearances, and whatever was left of him was fervently clinging to the only purpose he was ever apparently given – which is exactly what that Lightwarden (and Emet-Selch) would want. 

 He was really cynical about the rest of humanity. Given his father, I can see where he’d get that from. Not that daddy told him people suck, it’s that Vauthry probably learned that by his father’s example. Maybe by the rest of Eulmore, too, but I got the impression he was kept seriously isolated from society before his inauguration. He seems to prefer being alone – he only leaves that room when he moves the Sin Eaters against Lakeland. He gives no indication he knows how to socialize, period. You either come to him, or you don’t see him. (He may be keenly aware humes don’t typically reach at least fifteen feet tall. Seriously, look at Cruelty’s size compared to player characters, now look how Cruelty makes a comfy couch for him.)

Cynical, and yet, he wanted to see the people of Eulmore’s “dreams fulfilled, their wishes granted”. Just so long as he was the one responsible, and he was the one recognized for it. He needed their acceptance. 

ANYHOO.  On to stuff I still have zero idea what to make of. 

I should preface the rest of this infodump with the fact I found the Eulmore arc to be the weakest of the expansion, between Vauthry and Ran'jit. Most of the MSQ was given nuance. Eulmore was given a Saturday Morning Cartoon sledge. A -lot- of questions, with no answers, unless Squeenix decides to be generous in a fifty-buck lore book later. (something I hated Warcraft for. I should not have to pony up for a book to understand the main story quest chain in a game.) So, here are some of the questions I’ve got:

- FOOL! THAT WILL NEVER WORK!

They don’t really explain why Emet-Selch thought corrupting an infant was a good plan, as the Sin Eaters seemed guaranteed a win on The First, if only by outlasting the survivors of the Flood. Impatience, maybe? Why not give it to the mayor? That dickpickle would’ve said yes. Maybe we’ll get more answers with the Eden raid. IT’D BE NICE *COUGH*

- The meol thing.  

It’s using Sin Eater’s non-existant flesh to make a bread, and through that bit of Sin Eater, Vauthry could control whoever ate it.  The fanbase loves the “soylent green is people” angle, but it’s done pretty haphazardly, when you think about it like that? Sin Eaters have no lasting corporeal body. They are Light, mixed with a bit of the lingering essence of whatever they originally were – and what they originally were did not have to be humanoid. They dissolve into sparklies in the air upon death – and arguably, they would not have to die to contribute sparklies to somehow mix into food. Forgiven Cruelty lost a whole wing to Thancred when Thancred first took Ryne from Eulmore, and it seemed to have grown back just fine by the time we see Cruelty again. Killing Sin Eaters also would be entirely counterproductive to a nation that devoted themselves to NOT killing them. Also – we are shown the Afflicted, people who are falling to corruption from a SIn Eater attack they’d survived. How is it people who eat meol don’t become corrupted themselves?

Where did the idea for meol  even begin? Vauthry’s father was ousted by the people as mayor before Emet-Selch said hey there, friend, you have a punchable face, let’s make a deal – and Vauthry only took control of Eulmore 20 years ago. He looks a LOT older than 20, or even 40. So his father must’ve rode his child’s coattails before then.  Did Mayor Punchable Face think that was a wise countermeasure against future insurrection? In any case, Vauthry did not exert that control until the WoL and allies were coming to kill the Lightwarden of Kholusia (him), so it did not seem to be a priority of his. Alphinaud confirmed the people were of a free mind until they were made to fight the WoL and allies. (and dialogue stressed it was very noticeable when someone was not of a free mind.) Squeenix: *throws meol into purse* I have to go plotholes came up

- The “Perverted Paradise”.  (I at least giggle every time Alphinaud says this.)

Vauthry is presented as the pinnacle of vice, yet the game does not really show this well – in some cases, not at all.

Gluttony: He isn’t shown to indulge in drink, let alone overindulge. Apart from the meol scene at the end, which was related to controlling the Eater-corrupted citizenry, not gluttony, he was not shown to have so much as a snack. There’s food in his chamber, all of it untouched. But! In the Shadowbringers trailer, Squeenix thought the best example to showcase Eulmore’s decadence was – three thicc'qotes. Having pleasant conversation ‘round a table. Eating fresh fruit.

Not the creepy-ass old patron who thinks that  since his pretty servant can’t sing anymore, she should be “Ascended” as a kindness, although it was implied she could have recovered her health, just not her voice. Not the guy who tossed his servant from a balcony because reasons and wanted us to bring him back. Not even the noblewoman trying to have her servant killed because her lecherous husband put designs on the poor girl.

Three thicc'qotes. Having pleasant conversation ‘round a table. Eating fresh fruit.

We get it, Square, we’re supposed to see he’s fat and think that is bad. Moving on.

Lust: He doesn’t visit the adult nightclub downstairs (the adult nightclub that is shown practically empty and behind closed doors, the lewdness of it all – I clutch my pearls.) He doesn’t  creep on your player character like Magnai did in Stormblood – he doesn’t creep on anyone. He doesn’t want you to be his steed. No interest is shown in the Sin Eaters apart from them fighting for him, as much as some people in the fanbase theorize he is fucking them. (They probably think that Spirited Away is about the sex industry and My Neighbor Totoro is about dead girls, too.) This game is pretty blatant when they intend that sort of thing, see: Yotsuyu, Sastasha, any number of things in Ishgard or Ul'dah. I’ve found nothing here, except the German translation for “Consort Of Sin: Forgiven Obscenity” is “Purified Fornication: Playmate Of The Redeemer”. Since this is not implied in any other translation, I put my trust in Koji Fox and the fact Obscenity’s job seems to be Official Nose Petter to Forgiven Cruelty.

Greed: I am not going to hold his rings and his robes against him, as Urianger has just as much bling (more, actually), The wealthy are made to give up ALL their fortune to be permitted to stay in Eulmore – but that wealth is then used to provide everything for free to those who live there, and the free citizenry are apparently given funds for private use to boot. If they intended to show that Vauthry was using all that for hookers and blow for himself, it did not convey well.

Wrath: If one has broken the rules of the city (or has thrown shade that takes him a full two minutes to catch), Vauthry definitely has this in spades, with a temper tantrum a lot like Philia’s Fierce Beating attack.  But again, the writers don’t really show the extent of the wrath they are trying to tell . Because if you don’t break the rules? Nothing happens, apparently. Trouble seems to have to be brought forward to him, he doesn’t go looking for it.  It didn’t feel any different to me than the Grand Companies, yet this is the one that finally makes Alphinaud do the *GAAAAASP*.

The populace does not seem afraid of Vauthry. In fact, they feel free to pop ‘round to have a word if they think something needs doing. Chai-Nuzz did not seem distressed by his wife’s suggestion she would have a word with Vauthry to soothe the “hard feelings” stirred up in the quest “Emergent Splendor”.  

Pride: He has great pride in his ability to keep the SIn eaters under control, but doesn’t really display any vanity in himself. No portraits, statues, etc. When Alphinaud interfered with Kai-Shirr’s punishment, Alphinaud was told he’d be permitted to stay in the city if he made a painting – not a portrait of Vauthry, but of the city itself.

Sloth: We get it, Square, he’s fat and he sits down, moving the FUCK on.  No actually, hold up, to be honest? As tired and :| as he looked all the time, he struck me as depressed. What guy in Paradise looks that haggard?

NOW moving on.

Envy: If my theory holds, probably plenty of unresolved envy for folks who are not “half Sin Eater”. Otherwise, I can’t think of an example here.

- “Ascension” (Sure thing, Jan)

This is only made reference to in the Weeping Warbler quest chain. “As all know, the sin eaters exist to devour the sinful. But also do they serve to gather the souls of the innocent, and shepherd them unto celestial paradise.”

Sin eaters ate a meal that represents the sins of a household you fool oh wait this is The First

The thing I don’t get here is - why are there obviously limitations on who can be ascended, and when? If the idea is strictly to feed the Sin Eaters, or make meol, or just be an asshole, why is this the only time we hear of it?

It’s like if there are no more mortals, Vauthry wouldn’t have that reassurance he is doing good anymore. Either that, or since he’s never worked in retail, he doesn’t know how to push features.

But I’m betting on the former.

- LASTLY: the hypocrisy of the writer’s narrative (and the fanbase).

Tesleen was our first and horrifying sample of what Sin Eater corruption can do to a human. No matter how strong her will may have been, she was just lost to it. She scratches madly at her face when she uses one of her attacks in Holminster Switch, as though trying to stop herself, or punish herself. But she can’t help it. And we know this.

Titania was a tragedy, had to be stopped. But, a TRAGEDY. Whatever was left of the benevolent ruler was corrupted. There was never a moment where our heroes went “dis binch just evil, they gotta go down”. ( I had many choice words for Titania when I wiped enough times to them, but no actual game dialogue really says it. )

We, the Warrior Of Light, came this close to becoming a Warden ourselves. Somehow it was stalled (convenience!), but there was never a question corruption = bad and out of our control.

Vauthry, on the other hand, is treated as though he is in full control of his faculties, although the corruption before birth makes that questionable at best and he pretty clearly is not? Even as he did that Exorcist neck-twist, no one was like “oh fuck, the Sin Eaters got to another one, damn that poor man”.  (Which would seem a logical conclusion to me, I hate we have like zero real say in our characters’ reactions) Not even a “ahaha okay no seriously what the fuck is going on guys”. Nope. Their reaction was “EVIL”.  Trying to help somehow was never on the table. Watching him die slowly at our feet was.

We saw the Echo of the real circumstance of his birth. It had to come from the Sin Eater that corrupted him, because he wasn’t out of the womb to see that scene play out. Or Emet-Selch. Either way, we saw it, yet at no time afterward do we try to bring the truth out. We just let everyone believe he was evil by choice, and not another casualty of this mess.

And remember earlier, how I said Alphinaud confirmed the free citizenry were not under Vauthry’s control until the fight? Remember the noblewoman whose husband went after their bonded servant, and so she tried to get the girl murdered?

Yeah, we catch up to that noblewoman who tried to murder her servant. She feels really bad about that now.  And what is an option we get to tell her ex-bonded servant when she wonders how she could possibly trust the woman who tried to kill her?

“Vauthry’s society brought out the worst in people…”

Fffffffuck you Square lmao

TL;DR:

In private RP land? In private RP land, where we can back the fuck up in the timeline at will? You are damn skippy that Lightwarden got purged before it took complete hold. (an Aethertech did it with SCIENCE.) And Vauthry is cynical and scarred and bitter and broken and betrayed, but he’s not evil. If anything, he’s actually pretty relatably human. And he’s actually pretty damn glad his father’s shitty legacy is over.

[parabelled]

 tagged by @anathenma WOO GIRL <3

rules: tag 10 followers you want to get to know better

name: Lauren

gender: Female

star sign: Virgo Sun || Leo Moon || Leo Ascendent, which basically means I have the usually quiet reserved personality of an analytical, organised virgo on the fact of things, am usually the goofy, chill friend amongst my friends, and don’t like to take anyone’s shit, but if I am disrespected, I’m a sensitive six foot flower and withdraw from the world until I can get over it. xD I don’t like conflict.

height: 183cm/6 feet 

age: 27 (YIKES XD)

wallpaper on my phone: (I had to check XD) A calendar of May 2020 stylistically arranged around ribbons

house: Slytherin

ever crush on a teacher: Both my parents and my uncle are teachers and consequently I knew every teacher in my school as actual human people and not ‘crushes’ growing up. So no. XD

coolest halloween costume: I went as the Starbucks logo one year when I was eight, a gigantic Lady Luck die one year with a top hat covered in poker chips and cards. I had some good ones I made: I was creative as fuck when I was 9-11 especially, and I had to be, because I was already around 5′7 and people assumed I was just some weirdo dressing up to get candy (Hearing ‘AREN’T YOU A LITTLE OLD TO BE TRICK OR TREATING’ at eleven CRUSHED me XD)

Favorite 90s tv show: 

Okay. So there’s one’s I watched actually as a child of the 90s, and ones that were just always ON in the 90s that I ended up watching. It’s debatable whether these are actually good NOW. XD

That being said, the background ones were Saved By the Bell (ZACH MORRIS IS TRAAAAassssh~~), Boy Meets World, Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond.

As a kid, I loved the Aladdin Animated Series, The Hercules Animated Series, CHIP AND DALE RESCUE RANGERS (Which didn’t really hold up sadly but still has the best theme song of all time, fight me), and Timon and Pumbaa.

One I rarely caught but really liked was All That, The Wonder Years, Sabrina the Teenage Witch- occasionally Fresh Prince.

Out of all of these, I still have a super fond spot for Saved By the Bell, especially with the ‘Zach Morris is Trash’ series on Youtube (Seriously, go watch it. It’s fucking hilarious and basically breaks down how much of a serial killer in the making Zach Morris is XD). The clothing is ridiculous and no one really dressed like that in the early 90s outside of commercials and TV (unfortunately). Maybe one shoddy item out of the bunch. Meanwhile Saved by the Bell is like LETS PUT IT ALL ON. XD It was terrible once they got to college, but it was stupid and fun and made me feel ‘cool’ watching it because I was like three and being like, “YEAH, IT’S BRIGHT AND THESE PEOPLE ARE COOL AND I CAN FOLLOW THE PLOT. I’M MATURE.” XD It’s literally still the only one of these I actively watch now in the form of Zach Morris is Trash, so I’ll go with it. xD

Last kiss: Never had a consensual kiss. Make of that what you will. xD

Have you ever been stood up: Nope.

Favourite pair of shoes: 

I have terrible plantar fasciitis from sports, so I’m a shoe snob, and have to have properly fitting/constructed shoes. It depends on what I’m doing in them, really. I got a pair of trail running shoes for trail running during COVID, but they’re not the most aesthetically pleasing. I’d say the best mixture between comfort and style are either a good ol’pair of black ankle boots with a slight heel (so I can be 6′2 and intimidate people with my height muhahahaha), or more practically on a day to day basis, I have a pair of Reeboks that are 90s-styled with pastel pink and blue triangles on the side. They’re pretty dope. xD

have you ever been to vegas: No, but my parents have. Basically, they said you tire of shopping after two days, and then you’re just stuck inside hotels and shopping malls there. If you’re not a gambler, drinker, or have a ton of money to splash out on stage shows, I don’t think it’s particularly worth going.

favorite fruit: Mango or raspberry, but they’re super-expensive in the land of Maple Syrup so I usually don’t get them any other way other than frozen in smoothies.

Favourite book:

 I could never choose a favourite book. It’s literally like choosing between children. It’s my microcosmic version of Sophie’s Choice. xD Tasteless joke aside, it’d honestly depend on the occasion. There’s a huge difference between entertainment reading, literary exploits, and educating yourself through books as a whole. 

My ‘plane’ book (which I’m terrible at flying, so that was a joke), as in, an easy, fun, instantly rereadable read to read on the plane when I used to have super long fifteen hour flights to Australia, was always Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather,’ because I also had a huge crush on Michael Corleone. 

But it’s also not the ‘best’ book and literally spends an inordinate and honestly disturbing amount of time on the fact that this poor woman in the story (which thankfully in the film, it gets cut down), but the bridesmaid Sonny Corleone has sex with, and how you see his wife indicating his ‘size’?

THAT’S LITERALLY AN ENTIRE SUBPLOT OF THIS BROAD’S STORY I SHIT YOU NOT BECAUSE NOTHING IS ‘BIG’ ENOUGH FOR HER AFTER HIM AND THEN YOU FIND OUT SHE HAS A MEDICAL CONDITION AND GOOD FOR HER SHE’S ABLE TO FIND LOVE AGAIN BUT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK MARIO PUZO XD IT WAS A LOT OKAY.

(Footnote: I also suffered through his horrific sequels because I love Michael Corleone and will take him in any form he comes in, even horrifically written Sicilian backhill exploits that were never told to us in the original book and were clearly just written because Puzo needed another pay check but I digress.)

Horrific subplots aside, I really enjoy The Godfather for its sheer pulpiness. The book is essentially what Andrew Lloyd Weber is to musicals. xD (Yes, I come with musical theatre burns. Fight me.)

In terms of a piece of literature that I think is amazingly well done? Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Stupidest thing you ever done: 

Um, maybe when I was at Cambridge I tried to dye my roots to match the rest of my ‘blonde’ hair at the time, and it turned out bright orange? And because it’s Cambridge, they had this super-strict attendance policy, so I was literally trying not to hyperventilate because it was running close to class (which was across campus) and I was trying to find some way to remedy my hair without it falling out/ someone asking about it. So, I grabbed a toque-cap-thing despite it being literally one of the hottest summer on record in the UK (It was like 35 degrees, it was MENTAL), and had to sprint to class all the way on the other side of campus from my college dodging dodgy tourist groups blocking the sidewalk while I went. Then when I sat down inside, I had to be weirdly rude and wear my hat inside the lecture hall even though the professor was looking at me (it was a specialised program in German Literature) like, “Are you going to take that shit off?” xD THEN I tried to dye it back to brown, and it literally looked like mud mixed with a runny egg had exploded on the top of my head; it was AWFUL. XD So FINALLY I did my research and found a salon, but by THAT point I had done 250 pounds worth of damage to my hair (WHICH IS LIKE 400 DOLLARS CANADIAN AT THE TIME), and I almost had a heart attack and thanked my lucky stars that I had money put away so I could give my parents the ‘parent price’ when they asked why they hadn’t seen me on FaceTime or Skype for like, three weeks, and I replaced my face with a photo of John Cleese from Fawlty Towers, which they tease me about to this day. xD

The other dumbest thing I ever said was when I was so desperate for friends in grade six when I moved to a new school (and because being American was ‘cool’ at the time, apparently), I told everyone I was a dual citizen because my mother LITERALLY GAVE BIRTH TO ME ON THE BORDER CROSSING WHAT. XD And bless this poor bespectacled girl named Mara (who was actually a little class friend of mine), who just said timidly in the back, “That’s not how citizenship works.” xD It basically came out of attempting to be cool and failing, but I’m still SO embarrassed about THAT one that I’d never admit it to ANYONE besides shouting it out into the Tumblr black hole. xD I’m still embarrassed to THIS DAY.

All time favorite shows: 

 I’ll go for the original run of The Twilight Zone, which has some schmaltzy episodes (I’m really not a fan of any of the episodes entirely dedicated to the Space Race or the weird cowboy fanaticism of the fifties/ sixties, or anything that’s overtly like “ALIENS DID IT SO THERE”), but I LOVE their psychological horror episodes or Dystopian episodes. It’s when Rod Serling’s writing and narrative voice is the strongest and most prophetic, and the twists are usually the best. Other shows have tries to imitate it, or reboot it, but I really think the original, due to Rod Serling’s unmatchable voice, in every sense of the word. There’s lists of some of the greatest episodes, but I remember LOVING the episode ‘A Stop at Willoughby.’ The twist literally made me clap my hands in horror and delight, it was amazing. xD

Other than that? Off the top of my head, Mad Men and Band of Brothers, even though I haven’t rewatched either in ages.

last movie you saw in theaters: 

Oh God, before all THIS hit? Probably Rise of Skywalker. I get agoraphobic and itchy if a movie theatre is too busy, and we only have really pokey sort of ones nearby that you’re guaranteed to see someone you went to high school with (terrible), so now that I can properly drive I go out to the big redneck theatre out in the boonies. I miss living in Montreal though, because when you live in a big city like that downtown (and can actually afford to live there), you could see blockbuster movies at like ten in the morning. xD Which would be AMAZING because I’d go to see any of the early Avengers/Marvel movies when they opened, the day of opening, and it was literally me, one old man who fell asleep halfway through and sat near the back, and maybe an elderly couple on a morning date to the movies. xD I get really annoyed with obnoxious movie-goers, and I’m really picky about just being completely absorbed in the movie, so I tend not to go unless I’m guaranteed that space. 

tagging: Anyone who wishes to tag me back so I can learn about them <3

[alexconkleton]

Memories & Inspirations of Templarism: Lisieux

One of the finest representations of the crucifix that I’ve seen resides in the cathedral at Lisieux in France.

It towers high, shaped and detailed to replica real wood. The most interesting feature is the snake twined around the vertical. Throughout Christianity the symbol of a snake has represented temptation and evil but it’s pre-Christian symbolism has been hidden and is the most relevant in its representation of rebirth and new life, through how the snake sheds its skin. This powerful symbology correlates to the rebirth of Jesus, as he shed his Earthly, humanoid body and ascended into spiritual form.

When exploring spirituality and faith you must be prepared to research patterns and symbols of mystic that most would not consider. At Lisieux there is an intriguing mysticism to the storytelling of the life of Saint Theresa who founded the mission.

In the story below I was interested in the statement that they required a trinity of poses and that of all the possible witnesses it is that of the gardener who is referenced. This is significant in that when Jesus is reported as having appeared to Mary in the garden of his burial, Mary mistook him for the gardener. Was her comment intended for his ears because it was only a murmur but he heard the words and it could be understood as a a comment directed at him, encouraging him to take her spirit through death.

There is also the comment of Therese’s naming being sounding a though she is a child of Jesus, a theme of a number of the stories recounted throughout the church. It was on 10 January 1889 when Saint Therese was given the habit that she received the formal name of Thérèse of the Child Jesus. 

It is this that intrigued me to look further and exploring this suggestion further finds some other interesting contributions such as Saint Therese being popularly known as "The Little Flower of Jesus" and she is regarded as one of the most popular saints in the history of the church.

Saint Therese is regarded as a highly influential model of sanctity for many catholics. Together with Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Thérèse is one of the most popular Roman Catholic saints since apostolic times. Pope Saint Pius X called her "the greatest saint of modern times".

Saint Therese’s parents remain the first and only married couple to be canonized.

Louis Martin, Thérèse’s father gave pet names to his children and Therese was his petite reine, little queen, to whom all treasures belonged. 

It was Christmas Eve of 1886 that Thérèse her "complete conversion." Years later she stated that on that night she overcame the pressures she had faced since the death of her mother and said that "God worked a little miracle to make me grow up in an instant ... On that blessed night … Jesus, who saw fit to make Himself a child out of love for me, saw fit to have me come forth from the swaddling clothes and imperfections of childhood"

After her death Therese’s body was exhumed in September 1910 and the remains placed in a lead coffin and transferred to another tomb.

Saint Therese was recognised as a Doctor of the Church, a title given by the Catholic Church to saints whom they recognize as having made significant contribution to theology or doctrine through their research study, or writing. This title is an English interpretation of the original Latin title in which Doctor means Teacher, a title be which Jesus was commonly known.

Other Doctor’s of the Church include Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090 – 20 August 1153), a French abbot and a major leader in the reform of Benedictine monasticism that caused the formation of the Cistercian order. In the year 1128, Bernard attended the Council of Troyes and created the Rule of the Knights Templar, which soon became the ideal of Christian nobility.

In 1895 Saint Theresa composed the poem "My Heaven down here", was this in reference to Theresa having knowledge of heaven and how it could be transposed on Earth? In the poem Therese expresses the notion that by the divine union of love, the soul takes on the semblance of Christ. By contemplating the sufferings associated with the Holy Face of Jesus, she felt she could become closer to Christ. She wrote the words "Make me resemble you, Jesus!" on a small card and attached a stamp with an image of the Holy Face. She pinned the prayer in a small container over her heart.

On her death-bed Saint Therese said, "I only love simplicity. I have a horror of pretence", was this perhaps a reference to her own pretence of her own relationship with Jesus?

Pope Benedict XV dispensed with the usual fifty-year delay required between death and beatification and on 14th August 1921, he promulgated the decree on the heroic virtues of Thérèse declaring her "Venerable". She was beatified on 29th April 1923. Therese was canonized on 17th May 1925 by Pope Pius XI, only 28 years after her death. 

It is interesting that Thérèse was declared a saint five years and a day after Joan of Arc. As yet the reason for the exactness for this timing is not clear.

However, the 1925 celebration for Thérèse "far outshone" that for the legendary heroine of France. Pope Pius XI revived the old custom of covering St. Peter's with torches and tallow lamps. According to one account, "Ropes, lamps and tallows were pulled from the dusty storerooms where they had been packed away for 55 years. A few old workmen who remembered how it was done the last time, in 1870, directed 300 men for two weeks as they climbed about fastening lamps to St. Peter's dome." The New York Times ran a front-page story about the occasion titled, "All Rome Admires St. Peter's Aglow for a New Saint". 

According to the Times, over 60,000 people, estimated to be the largest crowd inside St. Peter's Basilica since the coronation of Pope Saint Pius X, 22 years before, witnessed the canonization ceremonies. In the evening, 500,000 pilgrims pressed into the lit square.

She rapidly became one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century. Her feast day was added to the General Roman Calendar in for celebration on October 3rd. In 1969, 42 years later, Pope Paul VI moved it to October 1st, the day after her dies natalis (birthday to heaven).

In 1944 Pope Pius XII decreed her a co-patron of France with Saint Joan of Arc. The principal patron of France is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

By the Apostolic Letter Divini Amoris Scientia (The Science of Divine Love) of 19th October 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II declared her the thirty-third Doctor of the Church, the youngest person, and one of only four women so named, the others being Teresa of Ávila (Saint Teresa of Jesus), Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena.

This small group of women becomes of great interest to focus the research on Saint Theresa’s peer group to further explore the understanding of the importance and relevance of her being made a Doctor of the Church and associated with them.

Teresa of Avila is a particularly interesting individual with whom to start. Teresa is also known as Saint Teresa of Jesus who lived 28th March 1515 – 4th October 1582 was known as a prominent Spainish mystic; mysticism being in strong association with pre-Christian faiths.

Her paternal grandfather, Juan Sánchez de Toledo, was a marrano (a Jewish man who was forcibly converted to Christianity). When Teresa's father was a child, Juan was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith, but he was able to convince them otherwise and re-assume a Christian identity. A Jewish family legacy brings Teresa’s lineage closer to a possible connection with the blood line of Jesus.

When her mother died, Teresa found comfort in a deep devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother, perhaps a natural calling.

Teresa’s connection to an older religious faith manifested in her widening learning of spiritualism. As the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin became clear to her, she says she came to understand the awful terror of sin and the inherent nature of original sin. She also became conscious of her own natural impotence in confronting sin and the necessity of absolute subjection to God.

Around 1556, various friends suggested that her newfound knowledge was diabolical, not divine. This knowledge could have been an indicator of Teresa’s learning of a secret or hidden knowledge shared through her lineage, through the relationship of her blood line. 

She began to inflict various tortures and mortifications of the flesh upon herself. But her confessor, the Jesuit Saint Francis Borgia, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter's Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Jesus Christ presented himself to her in bodily form, though invisible. These visions lasted almost uninterrupted for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an ineffable spiritual and bodily pain:

“I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it...”

This vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini's most famous works, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa at Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. 

By Alvesgaspar - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43527951

This iconic work of art which was used as an inspiration for Robert Langdon investigation of the path to Illumination in Angels and Demons. As in the movie is this a hidden message that directs your attention to the truth of a connection of the illuminati to Teresa and her pre-Christian heritage, which carries the power of knowledge that could threaten to bring down the mysticism and power of the church.

Another of the earlier female Doctors of the Church was Hildegard of Bingen 1098 – 17 September 1179 a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath.

Saint Hildegard wrote Liber Divinorum Operum "Universal Man" about 400 years before the image and interpretation of the mystery of man was immortalised in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

This was Saint Hildegard's last and grandest visionary work had its genesis in one of the few times she experienced something like an ecstatic loss of consciousness. As she described it in an autobiographical passage included in her Vita, sometime in about 1163, she received "an extraordinary mystical vision" in which was revealed the "sprinkling drops of sweet rain" that John the Evangelist experienced when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word..." (John 1:1). Hildegard perceived that this Word was the key to the "Work of God", of which humankind is the pinnacle. 

The Book of Divine Works, therefore, became in many ways an extended explication of the Prologue to John's Gospel.The ten visions of this work's three parts are cosmic in scale, to illustrate various ways of understanding the relationship between God and his creation. Often, that relationship is established by grand allegorical female figures representing Divine Love (Caritas) or Wisdom (Sapientia). The true, overwhelming influence and power of femininity is divine in many aspects.

The first vision opens the work with a salvo of poetic and visionary images, swirling about to characterize God's dynamic activity within the scope of his work within the history of salvation. 

The remaining three visions of the first part introduce the famous image of a human being standing astride the spheres that make up the universe, and detail the intricate relationships between the human as microcosm and the universe as macrocosm. This culminates in the final chapter of Part One, Vision Four with Hildegard's commentary on the Prologue to John's Gospel (John 1:1-14), a direct rumination on the meaning of "In the beginning was the Word..." The single vision that comprises the whole of Part Two stretches that rumination back to the opening of Genesis, and forms an extended commentary on the seven days of the creation of the world told in Genesis 1-2:3. This commentary interprets each day of creation in three ways: literal or cosmological; allegorical or ecclesiological (i.e. related to the Church's history); and moral or tropological (i.e. related to the soul's growth in virtue).

Finally, the five visions of the third part take up again the building imagery of Scivias to describe the course of salvation history. The final vision (3.5) contains Hildegard's longest and most detailed prophetic program of the life of the Church from her own days of "womanish weakness" through to the coming and ultimate downfall of the Antichrist.

This incredible work of vision and divine inspiration could be some of the greatest wisdom ever bestowed upon humanity. Imagine for a moment if just one of these visions were real and a true message from God through Hildegard. This and her other works of vision interpretation reveal the meaning behind creation, our relationship to divinity and the universe pre-Bible scripture. 

Saint Hildegard’s inspired knowledge and wisdom are clearly expressed through her medicinal and scientific writings, though thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, they are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery's library, a library no doubt of great wealth in ancient, pre-Christian knowledge. As she gained practical skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, she combined physical treatment of physical diseases with holistic methods centered on "spiritual healing." She became well known for her healing powers involving practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones. She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans. In addition to her hands-on experience, she also gained medical knowledge, including elements of her humoral theory, from traditional Latin texts.

Hildegard cataloged both her theory and practice in two works. The first, Physica, containg nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals. The second, Causae et Curae, is an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases.

In the first part of Causae et Curae there is the context of the creation of the cosmos and then humanity as its summit, and the constant interplay of the human person as microcosm both physically and spiritually with the macrocosm of the universe informs all of Hildegard's approach. Her hallmark is to emphasize the vital connection between the "green" health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. Viriditas, or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person. Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Rather, Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.

Thus, the nearly three hundred chapters of the second book of Causae et Curae "explore the etiology, or causes, of disease as well as human sexuality, psychology, and physiology." In this section, she give specific instructions for bleeding based on various factors, including gender, the phase of the moon (bleeding is best done when moon is waning), the place of disease (use veins near diseased organ of body part) or prevention (big veins in arms), and how much blood to take (described in imprecise measurements, like "the amount that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp").

In the third and fourth sections, Hildegard describes treatments for malignant and minor problems and diseases according to the humoral theory, again including information on animal health. 

The fifth section is about diagnosis and prognosis, which includes instructions to check the patient's blood, pulse, urine and stool. Finally, the sixth section documents a lunar horoscope to provide an additional means of prognosis for both disease and other medical conditions, such as conception and the outcome of pregnancy. For example, she indicates that a waxing moon is good for human conception and is also good for sowing seeds for plants (sowing seeds is the plant equivalent of conception). Elsewhere, Hildegard is even said to have stressed the value of boiling drinking water in an attempt to prevent infection.

As Hildegard elaborates the medical and scientific relationship between the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the universe, she often focuses on interrelated patterns of four: "the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), the four seasons, the four humors, the four zones of the earth, and the four major winds."

Although she inherited the basic framework of humoral theory from ancient medicine, Hildegard's conception of the hierarchical inter-balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) was unique, based on their correspondence to "superior" and "inferior" elements, blood and phlegm corresponding to the "celestial" elements of fire and air, and the two biles corresponding to the "terrestrial" elements of water and earth. Hildegard understood the disease-causing imbalance of these humors to result from the improper dominance of the subordinate humors. This disharmony reflects that introduced by Adam and Eve in the Fall, which for Hildegard marked the indelible entrance of disease and humoral imbalance into humankind. As she writes in Causae et Curae c. 42:

“It happens that certain men suffer diverse illnesses. This comes from the phlegm which is superabundant within them. For if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the flegmata within his body, from which many evils proceed, but his flesh would have been whole and without dark humor [livor]. However, because he consented to evil and relinquished good, he was made into a likeness of the earth, which produces good and useful herbs, as well as bad and useless ones, and which has in itself both good and evil moistures. From tasting evil, the blood of the sons of Adam was turned into the poison of semen, out of which the sons of man are begotten. And therefore their flesh is ulcerated and permeable [to disease]. These sores and openings create a certain storm and smoky moisture in men, from which the flegmata arise and coagulate, which then introduce diverse infirmities to the human body. All this arose from the first evil, which man began at the start, because if Adam had remained in paradise, he would have had the sweetest health, and the best dwelling-place, just as the strongest balsam emits the best odor; but on the contrary, man now has within himself poison and phlegm and diverse illnesses.”

Saint Hildegard is the first recorded female Doctor of the Church, a record of spiritually inspired, women who are revered, even officially by the church, for their expansion and exploration of spiritualism, even though this challenged doctrine and sanctioned Christian belief or was this acceptance how the church continued its millenia of the assimilation of the truth of the bloodline of Jesus and the truth of the nature of the divine symbiotic relationship and harmony between all life.

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

A Visit to Pam (Post 97) 7-15-15

Natalie still gets the giggles whenever she thinks about the incident. Let me explain.  Because I usually have to be out of the house so early in the morning for work, I am pretty meticulous about preparing my clothes for the next day before I jump into bed.  Saturday night was no exception.  We were staying overnight in a Maryland hotel and didn’t have to be at my in-law’s house until 10:30 Sunday morning to join the caravan to Mass, but I still had my two little piles of folded garments ready to go, when I received the auto-voice reveille from the Best Western BWI front desk.

 That morning, for some reason, my socks were giving me trouble. After my workout, one of them seemed to be playing hide and seek with me, as I moved the second pile into position in the bathroom for my after shower adornment.  After shuffling through my stack of garments for the third time, I finally retraced my steps back to my suitcase and found the sock about half way back up my back trail.  Without further incident, I took my shower with my now recovered pair of socks at the ready atop my belt and shoes.  Clothed but unshod, I woke Stephen and Natalie and began raking together our belongings into neat piles ready to be stuffed back into the appropriate piece of luggage for the haul to the checkout transaction.  Worried about the schedule, I chivied my two roommates out the door, with orders to wait for me at breakfast while I began the full final cram of the pack up.

With everything in the bags, I went to recover the final essentials of my outfit in eager anticipation of my own turn in the buffet line. To me extreme aggravation, I discovered that now both my socks had left their perch on my shoe and belt pile and eloped to parts unknown.  I checked under everything in the room and began to seriously consider unzipping one or two of the soft luggage pieces into which I had power stuffed everything from my rake up.  I figured the dirty clothes bag was the more likely candidate and was busy size up the operation. Would some kind of head gear be advisable to protect me from the likely concussive force that would surely be unleashed like the boxing glove on a spring that knocks Wylie Coyote in the face at least once in each episode of The Roadrunner? Instead, choosing the cowards path, I just donned my shoes without socks.  Not very stylish, but I supposed that I might pretend they were sandals for the two hours until Mass was completed and I was able to switch into shorts and a tee-shirt at Pam’s parents’ house for the drive back to Ohio,

About then Natalie and Stephen marched back into our room, saying that all the seating was full downstairs and that the line was too long anyway.  Irritated by their lack of commitment to the concept of free breakfast, I prepared to invoke the ancient Donnelly tradition to rally my family back to the abandoned buffet.   I implored both of them to perform an immediate about face.  Then a non sequitur idea struck me full in the forehead.  

I ordered Stephen to pull up one pant leg.  I discovered that he was wearing a pair of socks that was suspiciously of the white variety.  I had purposely packed him only black socks for the trip.  The only pair of white socks available would have had to have come off my prepared pile.  I had caught the felon with the goods on his person, quite literally.

Now came the difficulty of solving the equation that would result in my having a shovel-ready Styrofoam plate of eggs and sausage in front of me with the least possible expenditure of time and hassle. Rather than go through the trouble of swapping, I told Stephen to retrieve and surrender the pair of clean black socks I had packed for his use this Sunday morning.  He procured and prepared to deliver the required merchandise, but then noticed that I was in the process of removing my shoes.  In obvious consternation, he looked at my with an expression that was a Fro-Yo mix of confusion and offense.  His very visage asked, “Why would anyone use someone else’s socks?”

As I stood idly contemplating a suitably painful end for the life of my oldest my son, I must have had a silly look on my face because Natalie erupted in a giggling fit that relieved the tension of the moment.   For the rest of the day she breathlessly described the scene for each new audience while repeatedly interrupting herself with impromptu peals of laughter.  Because she had no idea what led up to the great sock standoff, her story left everyone who heard it very confused as to what the little girl thought was so outrageously  funny.  

Other than the sock theft, we had a good visit.  It was the first time that I have been back to Maryland since Pam’s funeral.  Abby, Nick and Natalie made a short visit in June, but, for the most part, we have been very busy getting our life restarted here in Ohio.  Work has mostly devoured my time since Stephen and I arrived.  Nicholas and Abby have both been busy as well. Nicholas was working for some family friends that sell and distribute fireworks, kind of a dream job for him. Abby started a chemistry class with a full lab during the short summer session at a local community college within days of her arrival.  She is also occupied with some office assignments at my sister-in-law’s dentistry practice.  Summer vacation has been a Barbie-fest for Natalie as she has a willing best friend with similar interests living right across the street.  Stephen and I also made our trip to Gettysburg last week. Summer is flying by.

So it took a while for me to meander back to Maryland where my marriage and family life began long ago under a bridge of swords and a shower of rice.  My in-laws still live in the same house where I visited each weekend during my trips back from Rhode Island as Pam and I were completing our wedding preparations.  The basement at 5110 Kramme Avenue in Baltimore became like an apartment to me over those several months.  The Zauggs have made many improvements to the house in the quarter century since I was courting their daughter, but the basement is mostly used for storage now.  They had a flood in their cellar several years ago and had to remove the carpeting.  The odd mix of old and new in the basement mesmerized me for a good while on one of my forays downstairs to use the less popular of the two household bathrooms.

I stood there in the dark downstairs for several minutes while staring at the position on the back side of the staircase where a desk used to sit on which Pam and I used to assembly 1000 piece puzzles when we weren’t arguing about whether a cream or white color was more suitable for invitations. The desk wasn’t there anymore.  I was disappointed.  I wanted to the place as it was at the very second when Pam discovered the case with an engagement ring on the floor under the desk.  Slyly I had asked her to pick up a non-existent puzzle piece that I didn’t really think I had dropped by her foot.  She was delighted with the simple diamond and band and said yes to my proposal.  I expected she would; Pam had dropped plenty of hints that our relationship had reached ring-time.  

It was sad to be in the dark basement staring at the place where missing furniture had once sat.  Things change and joy passes. After a while I ascended the stairs again having not found the wardrobe back into Narnia for which my subconscious had scanned my former living area. As I climbed I waved a silent goodbye to an old friend, the dated green couch that had accommodated me each weekend for those eight happy months an impossible tunnel ride back twenty-six years into the past.

That odd spiritually amputated feeling seems to be my lot in life, most of the time, since losing my bride to cancer two and a half years ago.  Now back in Ohio, I drive around the streets of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood with vague feelings of unrest, half recognizing houses to which I think I used to deliver newspapers on wintry mornings for customers long since moved.  Mostly my memories are vague unscratchable itches.  Houses have been painted, trees have grown, businesses have changed hands, buildings have been erected, and eighth grade classmates are receiving AARP cards in the mail. The venues of my youth no longer match the photographs that I find in the albums that my mother keeps in the sea chest coffee table in her living room.

I think that the scattered condition of my memories is a natural process which has been accentuated by the fact that our family has moved around way too much.  The effect of all the moving coupled with Pam’s death is that the figurative pieces of my love for her has been scattered about the country with as if shot from a pneumatic stadium tee-shirt mortar.  For instance, Nicholas and Abby drove miles out of the way to swing by our former house in Fort Wayne, Indiana on their way back across America.  I would never have done that, as the closed front door would have been needlessly anguishing like a diabetic peering in to the window of an ice cream parlor or an old man returning to the scene of his engagement.

An admission: on my weekly drive to Mass I do travel mildly out of my way to pass by the house in which I resided from age five until my matriculation to USNA.  There is always a part of me that wants to stop, knock on the door and ask to search the premises for the missing pieces of myself.  I know that I wouldn’t find them no matter how long I looked.  I also know that I would never knock on the door, because all I would find would be a house of other people’s stuff, while if I choose to just ride on by, my memory can remain vague but whole like a cheap snow globe of my childhood.

My life has become a little like one of the partially finished puzzles that Pam and I used to work assembling to pass our time while we waited to begin our life together in earnest.  I think it is the same for everyone; some people may have done a better job of keeping track of their pieces, but by the time you reach fifty there will certainly be some permanently missing ones.  Natalie’s puzzle was thoroughly scrambled at the age of seven and her pieces have been tossed about throughout the last three years. I expect that she will be eventually assemble a gloriously beautiful landscape as she progresses through adulthood towards the later period of her life when the pieces of her life begin to slide off the edge of the table for her again,

Certainly, we are not the only family that has suffered loss. As I drive my meandering path through the neighborhood where I grew up, I sometimes think about the other families that lived in this or that faculty house and when they departed for retirement or different schools over the nearly five decades of my father’s tenure at Western Reserve Academy. Two former faculty members died over Father’s Day weekend.  Another faculty wife suffered a massive stroke in the last couple of weeks.  She is unlikely to recover.  I’m sure that many of the men and women with whom I grew up with also feel like their life’s pieces are begin removed and lost.

For me, my expectation is that I won’t be able to reassemble a complete and coherent life in this world.  When I sat at the little desk with Pam, I was in the process of building my life.  As I type from the guest room of my father’s house, I understand that time will slowly erode what I had thought I had put together so firmly.  While I am no longer hope for  wholeness on Earth, I do hold a guarantee that the pieces I am now missing will be restored in the many rooms of My Father’s house in the world to come. I’m not sure what that really means at this point.  Will the little puzzle desk be present in the basement of my apartment in the new Jerusalem? I have no inkling, no expectation of knowing, and really I just trust in Jesus’ promise that I will be whole again.  So I move forward to the best of my ability, assembling a new corner of the mosaic of my new life as the trailing edges of my old life seems to fall away into eternity.

[pedroscurls]

Title: My Not-So Little Girl

Character(s): Negan and Casey (daughter) Prompt: Driving Lesson Summary: Negan gives his daughter, Casey, advice on how to drive and it gets out of hand. Word Count: 3,612 Warning: This is also a bit AU -- especially since Negan doesn’t have any children. Author’s Note: Thank you to @flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash​​ for doing this writing challenge! It was very much out of my comfort zone (especially with the prompt I chose lol), but I enjoyed writing it nonetheless! Besides, I love a domestic Negan. I also got a bit distracted with this prompt and wrote more than I planned and also took a different route than I expected. Regardless, I hope you all enjoy! :)

@negans-network

(GIF Source: @kendaspntwd)

PRE-APOCALYPSE

“Dad, I finished the hours I needed with my driving instructor. Can you please bring me out for a drive? I can show you how ready I am for the test!” Casey begged, sitting at the table with her father. He was looking over a few sheets of paper before he removed his glasses, setting it down onto the stack.

“I’m not saying that you aren’t ready, Casey, but I’m busy right now, okay?”

“That’s what you fucking said last time,” she mumbled.

“Hey! Watch your mouth. We talked about this shit already.”

“Says the one who curses every chance he gets. Fine, dad. Whatever,” Casey said, standing from her seat. She ascended the stairs, walking down the hall into her room and slamming the door shut behind her.

Lucille giggled from the kitchen, stirring the sauce she was making for their weekly dinner of spaghetti.

Negan narrowed his eyes, standing from the table to walk over to her. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed along her neck.

“What’s so fucking funny?” He mumbled, his hands tightly wrapped around her frame.

“You’re getting angry at our daughter for using that type of language, yet here you are… Doing the same exact thing.”

“I can’t fucking help it. It’s in my genetic code. I came out of the womb crying out a string of curse words,” Negan joked.

Lucille laughed, turning around to face him. Her hand rested on his stubbly cheek, brushing against his cheekbone lightly. Negan smiled to himself, staring into her eyes.

“You’re funny and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is actually true.”

“Ha ha.”

“Listen, why don’t you take her out? She’ll just pout and glare at you all throughout dinner, Negan. Let her drive around the neighborhood, maybe to the main streets. In fact, let her drive you to the grocery store. We need more milk,” Lucille said.

Negan narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t want to though…”

“And why not, Negan? You know you’re the only one whose opinion matters to her. Casey looks up to you,” she dropped her hand to his chest, running her thumb along the fabric of his white t-shirt.

“Fine. Fucking fine,” he huffed, pulling away. “I expect dinner to be ready when we come back.”

“Don’t go bossing me around. Go and apologize to our daughter and take her out for a drive,” she quipped.

Negan smirked, “I always loved to see the fucking fire in your eyes.”

He ascended the stairs and with the help of his long legs, he was at the second floor with just a few steps. He walked to Casey’s door and sighed, quietly knocking on the door.

“Casey, honey? Let’s go for that drive. Show me what the fuck you got,” he smiled.

“Go away,” she mumbled.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be like that. I’m opening the door, okay? So, don’t go throwing fucking shit at me or I will be forced to retaliate with tickles and kisses and I know how much you teenage girls hate being babied,” he teased.

Slowly, Negan opened the door and noticed her lying on her bed with her back facing him. He sighed and walked to the sit at the edge of her bed, running his hand along her back soothingly.

“Are you going to talk to me?” Negan asked.

“No. Go away.”

“Kiddo, come on. I’m sorry, okay? Let’s go. We’ve also got to get some milk, so I was thinking you can fucking show off your driving skills and bring us to the grocery store.”

Casey turned to face him, biting her lower lip. She looked like an exact replica of Negan.

Her hair was dark, and so were her eyes. Casey also had dimples like her father and he already had to shoo away some potential boy threats that had come by to ask for Casey.

Deep down, the reason why he didn’t want to take her was because he knew she was growing up and he wasn’t ready to admit it to himself. When he looked at her, he saw his little girl who was running around the house causing a ruckus.

Now, she was a teenager who was about to get her license. It was surreal. Did sixteen years really pass by that quickly?

“Are you being serious?” She asked, shaking him out of his thoughts.

“Yes, I’m being fucking serious. Now, if you don’t hurry up and meet me downstairs in five minutes, I’m going to leave without you.”

Before Negan could leave, Casey wrapped her arms around him tightly and kissed his cheek with a big grin that displayed her dimples.

“Thank you, daddy! I won’t disappoint you, I promise.”

Negan’s eyes softened and he looked down at her, kissing her forehead.

“Oh, sweetheart, you can never disappoint me. Now, hurry up.”

Casey grinned, laughing quietly and walking to her closet to grab a sweater and her sneakers. Negan left her room, pulling his leather jacket on before he smelled the aroma of Lucille’s cooking waft throughout their home.

He walked to the kitchen and smiled to himself. “It smells fucking delicious in here.”

“Did you manage to apologize?” She asked.

“As a matter of fact, I did. We’re heading to the store in five minutes.”

Lucille smiled, walking over to him to peck his lips.

“Get some ice cream too,” she said.

“You got it, doll. We’ll be back soon.” Negan smiled, seeing his daughter walk into the kitchen to grab a piece of garlic bread that her mother had made.

“Ah ah! Not before dinner, Casey,” Lucille said.

Casey widened her eyes, swallowing the small piece of bread. “Sorry! It looked really good, mom.”

“Let’s go get the milk before your mother throws a fucking fit,” Negan teased, kissing Lucille’s cheek.

Casey giggled, hugging her mother and walking out of the house to the car that was parked in the driveway. Negan followed, shutting the door and locking it behind him. He tossed the keys at Casey and watched her catch it without a problem.

Negan climbed into the passenger seat and watched his little girl climb into the driver’s side. He noticed her adjusting her seat before she finally felt comfortable. She started the car and smiled to herself, buckling her seatbelt. She glanced over at Negan and arched a brow.

“What?” He asked.

“Your seatbelt, dad.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. See, you’re already doing fucking great, pumpkin.”

Casey smiled. She waited until Negan was securely fastened to the seat before she put the car in reverse and checked over her shoulders and both side mirrors to make sure she was clear. Slowly, she released the brake and backed away from the driveway and onto the main road.

Negan watched her carefully, making sure she was checking her mirrors and abiding by the speed limit.

They made it to the grocery store in ten minutes. Her parking needed some work, but she was “still in the lines” like she said.

“So, pick out two tubs of ice cream and then meet me at the aisle with the milk.” Negan said, kissing the back of her head and walking down the aisle to where the milk was placed.

Casey bit her lower lip, looking through the different flavors before she heard someone call her name. It was a friend from school.

“Hey, Casey,” he smiled.

“Oh, hey, Derek,” she smiled shyly.

“You need help with figuring out some flavors?”

“Yes. I’m always in such a stump when my dad tells me to pick two. I mean, how can you just pick two?” Casey giggled. She even had Negan’s charm.

“Right? You either go big or go home,” Derek teased.

“You still haven’t helped me decide on two flavors,” Casey said with a sweet smile.

“Sorry. I’m distracted. You’ve got a really pretty smile,” he blushed.

“Well, you’ve got pretty eyes.”

Negan turned around and began walking to the frozen section, seeing his daughter talking to some boy. He felt anger fuel bubbling within him before he called her name, “Casey!”

She flinched, glancing over her shoulder to see the look of anger in his eyes.

“That’s my dad. You better get going, Derek. I’ll see you tomorrow at school…”

Derek cleared his throat, nodding before he began walking away from Casey.

Negan looked down at her, watching the boy practically run away. He opened the fridge and grabbed the usual flavors that they always bought before leading her to the front to pay for their items.

“That wasn’t fair, dad…” Casey said, crossing her arms over her shoulder.

“I don’t fucking care if it wasn’t. You’re my little girl,” he said, sliding his card through the machine. He nodded his thanks to the cashier before grabbing their bags and leading Casey out of the store.

“I’m not a little girl anymore, dad! I’m sixteen now!”

“Casey, let’s not fucking talk about this right now, okay?”

She sighed, climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the car. Casey waited for him to load the groceries into the car before he, too, climbed in and buckled his seatbelt.

Casey made sure she was clear before backing out of the parking spot.

Throughout the ride back home, Casey felt the tension between herself and her father. They had the same temper and that almost always meant it was a bad thing.

“You’re going over the speed limit. Slow the fuck down,” Negan said, glancing over at her.

“I’m going forty-five in a fifty mile per hour area, dad!”

“I don’t care! You’re going too fast.”

Casey sighed, slowing down to his liking. She dropped her hand to her lap, keeping one hand on the steering wheel.

“Both hands on the fucking wheel, Casey.”

“Dad…”

“You wanted a few pointers, right? Well, I’m fucking giving you advice.”

Casey sighed, deciding to bite her tongue. She didn’t want to anger him right now. When at home, she would make sure to piss him off.

“Always look over your shoulders,” he said.

“I am!”

Negan shook his head, watching the light turn yellow and Casey came to an abrupt halt which caused him to jerk forward.

“You need to fucking brake more smoothly than that. If you drive the way you’re driving now, you’re never going to get your damn license.”

Casey glanced over at him, tears brimming her eyes. She remained quiet throughout the remainder of the ride back home. Parking in the driveway, she climbed out and slammed the door shut.

“Hey, don’t go slamming doors because I’m telling you the fucking truth.”

“You aren’t! You’re just angry! You’re just pissed off because some guy was talking to me!”

Negan followed her inside their home, slamming the door shut and placing the milk and ice cream into the fridge. He watched Casey walk away before he called her name.

“Casey Mae, you get back down here right fucking now!”

“I hate you!” She yelled, slamming her door shut loudly and blasting the music loudly through her tiny room. Casey locked the door and climbed into her bed, crying into her pillow.

Lucille sighed, looking at Negan. She gently removed his leather jacket and ran a hand up his chest.

“What happened?”

“I caught her talking to a boy at the grocery store and I lost my shit. I said something I didn’t mean…” Negan admitted.

“What did you say?”

“I said if she drove like the way she was doing then she would never get her license…”

“Negan…” Lucille sighed.

“I know. I fucking know, okay? She’s a good driver, Lucille. But fuck, does she have to grow up?”

“Is that what this is about? Was that why you’ve been avoiding this?” She asked.

He nodded slowly.

“You’re a good father, you know? Don’t forget that, but Negan… You’ve got to let our little girl grow up.”

“I’m not fucking ready to let her grow up, Lucille…”

“Well believe it or not, Negan, it’s going to happen either way. So, please… Just talk to her before dinner. I don’t want her glaring at you while we’re eating.”

“She won’t want to talk to me,” he said.

“You can convince her. Deep down, she’s a daddy’s girl. She’s got a soft spot for you.”

“Okay, fine. And when we’re done eating, leave the dishes. You go fucking relax and I’ll take care of it,” Negan said, leaning down to kiss her forehead.

Negan knocked on her door, turning the handle to find it locked. He sighed and knocked once more.

“Casey, princess, open the door, please.”

“Go away!” She yelled.

“I will open this fucking door regardless. I’m letting you be the mature one here and open it for me,” he replied.

Casey sighed heavily, standing from her bed to unlock the door. She opened it and walked back to her bed.

“Case…”

“What? You’re sorry? Yeah. Let me guess. Mom convinced you that you were in the wrong and now you’re here to fix it.”

“Damn it, Casey. You’re my little girl. I don’t fucking want you growing up!” He yelled, causing her to flinch from the abrupt loudness.

“Dad…”

“And I’m sorry. I crossed a fucking line. You’re a great driver, Casey. I just – You’re my little munchkin. In two years, you’ll be leaving your mother and I to go to fucking college then you’ll come back for Christmas with a boyfriend and then before you know it, you’re going to fucking tell me you’re going to get married and you’re pregnant and –”

“Whoa, dad. Hold on…” Casey said, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you, you know that, right? Besides, I don’t think I can leave you and mom. There are plenty of good colleges here. As for getting married and pregnant, well, that I can’t say for sure,” she teased.

Negan narrowed her eyes. Casey giggled.

“I’m kidding, dad. You’re jumping the gun just a bit. We still have to get through my driver’s test.”

“I just – Seeing that boy talk to you and to see his eyes look you over like you were some sort of fucking piece of meat… I got mad and I’m sorry,” he said, kissing the crown of her head.

Casey nodded, leaning up to kiss his cheek.

“I didn’t mean what I said… I don’t hate you, dad. I love you.”

“I know you do, sweetheart. Now, let’s go and get some fucking food.”

POST-APOCALYPSE

It had been a year and a half since the outbreak. Negan was running the Sanctuary smoothly; he created a system that worked and it gave him hope that he could restore the world after it ended.

He had lost Lucille due to her battle of cancer, but Negan was glad to still have his little girl with him. He had to spend every night with her because of the nightmares that plagued the both of their minds.

Negan couldn’t imagine growing up in a world like this. Casey hadn’t even hit eighteen yet and all her plans for going to college and getting a good job was thrown out the window and she was stripped of countless opportunities.

Now, her main priority was to stay alive and to make sure her father was safe too.

While out on a run, Negan had gotten shot by a stranger that tried to take their findings. Casey quickly “shut that shit down” (as he said it) and used Lucille to bash the man’s brain in.

He always had to have a long talk with her whenever she had to kill someone. She was a strong young girl. She didn’t even bat an eye at the killing. It was as if Casey grown accustomed to this new world.

“Dad… Dad, are you okay?!” She asked, bringing him to the truck.

Negan climbed in the passenger seat and watched her climb into the driver’s side. She placed Lucille on the dashboard and started the truck, buckling her seatbelt.

It seemed too familiar. It reminded him of the day where Lucille asked for milk and ice cream and Casey wanted to show off her driving skills. It brought tears to his eyes at the thought of his wife and the old world.

He missed it so much.

He missed her so much, despite what he put her through.

“I’m okay, buttercup. I got shot in the shoulder. I’ll be okay,” Negan said.

“Okay, well then, um, can you put your seatbelt on? I can’t go anywhere unless I know you’re buckled in.”

“We’re in the fucking apocalypse, killing the dead, and you’re worried about me not wearing my seatbelt?”

Casey narrowed her eyes, “Do you want to be in pain or do you want me to bring us back to the Sanctuary so Dr. Carson can patch you up, dad?”

“You are so fucking like me that it’s a bit scary,” he chuckled. Negan put his seatbelt on with a grunt and felt the truck begin to move.

Casey smiled to herself. It reminded her of the day when Negan finally agreed to take a drive with her.

“Why the fuck are you smiling?” Negan asked.

“Just remembering when you first experienced my driving, dad.”

“Well, no rules apply here, so press on that fucking gas and bring us home, kiddo.”

Casey smiled, reaching over to rest a hand on his own.

“Love you, dad.”

“I love you too, pumpkin.”

Later that night, Negan looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. Being the leader of a big community had its perks, but it also had its downfalls. Though, he tried not to think of the bad things about being in charge.

Negan adjusted the sling on his opposite shoulder, walking out of his room and down the hall to Casey’s. When he opened the door, he noticed her staring up at the ceiling.

“Dad?” She called out.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.

“You didn’t wake me up. Did Dr. Carson take care of your gunshot?”

Negan nodded, lifting the sling slightly to reveal to her that he was all patched up.

“Can you lie with me until I fall asleep, dad?”

“Of course, honey. Scooch your pooch and give your dad some room.”

Casey laughed quietly, scooting over to give him some room. He removed his sling and set it aside before Casey rested her head against his good shoulder.

Negan’s arm wrapped around her tightly, shutting his eyes.

Moments like this – where he was holding her until she fell asleep – reminded him of when she was little. Casey would curl up on his lap and Negan’s strong arms would remind her that she was safe from all the bad dreams. Being in her father’s arms made her feel safe.

“Dad?” She whispered.

“Hm?”

“Do you still think about the old world?”

Negan sighed, “I do, yes. I think about our old home, the hammock in our backyard. I think about my ping-pong table. I think about the lost photo albums we had. I think about a lot of things, honey.”

“You know, I’m still sorry for what I said that day, dad. I couldn’t believe I said I hated you…” Casey replied, burying her face against him.

“I know you’re sorry, Casey. Sometimes we say things when we’re fucking angry. It happens. You get that shit from me.”

“And many other things apparently,” she added.

Negan chuckled. His mind drifted to Lucille and he sighed, tears leaking at the corner of his eyes.

“I also think about your mother…”

“Mom told me, you know… How you cheated on her and she was angry that you chose her when she was sick, when she was d – dying… I wanted to hate you, but I couldn’t. You always had a reason for doing things…” Casey admitted.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I wish I never did the shit that I did to your mother, to you. If I hadn’t let my temptation –”

“Dad, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that mom died…” She whispered, her voice cracking.

Negan looked down at her, wiping his eyes absently before he leaned down to kiss her forehead.

“I see more of her in you than I ever did before, Casey. I wish she could see how much you’ve grown into a mature, beautiful young lady. And here I was, fucking afraid to see you grow up,” he smiled sadly.

“I wish she was here to see what you’ve created, dad. She would have been so proud of the both of us.”

Negan caught a fallen tear and wiped it away, kissing his daughter’s cheek.

“Enough of this crying, let’s get some sleep,” he said, sniffling quietly.

“Wait, before I forget… Can you teach me how to shoot a gun tomorrow, dad?”

“If it ends the way it did when I took you out for driving, then no.”

“Hey… That was your fault. You got angry for no reason,” Casey quipped.

“Okay, fuck. You make a good fucking point. I’ll teach you how to shoot a gun tomorrow.”

Casey grinned and kissed his cheek. Afterwards, she settled back against his side and shut her eyes.

Negan caught sight of his wedding ring and Lucille’s in a chain around her neck. He smiled, kissing the crown of her head.

“I love you, Casey…”

“I love you too, daddy. Thanks for still being here,” she whispered, her voice beginning to fade.

“I’m so proud of you… My not-so little girl,” he smiled.

Casey giggled sleepily, her cheek resting against his chest.

“Good night, dad.”

“Good night, honey.”

[rebeccaheyman]

reading + listening 08.10.20

When I say that my book consumption this week swung from the best 2020 has to offer so far to the absolute worst, I am not exaggerating in the least. Another wild ride from start to finish...

Love is a Rogue (Lenora Bell), ebook, ARC. Full review on NetGalley. LOVE IS A ROGUE was my first Lenora Bell book -- but clocking in at a solid B, it won't be my last. Beatrice is an able-enough heroine, distinguished by her love for etymology, books, and the etymological dictionary she's planning to write once she achieves full spinster status. All she needs to do is fail one more season with the ton to circumvent her mother's plan's to make an advantageous marriage. Ford, our dashing hero, enters the scene as a carpenter whose role overseeing the renovation of the duke's estate brings him into Beatrice's path. They collide with flirtatious results, and the fun continues when Beatrice hires Ford to renovate a bookshop she just-so-happens to have inherited from a dead aunt. Unbeknownst to Beatrice, the property brings Ford's past directly in-line with her present, and they unite to overcome the challenges posed by society, their personal demons, and Ford's dastardly grandfather. 

For me, Beatrice's status as the duke's sister undermined the urgency of her final season in society; she doesn't have to marry to save the family fortune or escape a cruel family situation, and in fact, Beatrice quickly decides to play along and appease her mother, all the while knowing she'll reject any proposals and retire to the country in due course. So the stakes are not especially high from a cultural perspective, which deflated the conflict somewhat. Likewise, Ford's inner demons don't hold the same power over him that might seriously impact his actions; he's set to return to the Royal Navy any day now, but decides with zero fanfare that actually no, he'll decline another tour and stay land-locked, tyvm. How realistic would it have been to back out of military service? I can't say -- but it seems like this would have been a serviceable point of separation for Ford and Beatrice, that would have prolonged the third act and provided valuable tension. Because it's the third act that keeps LOVE IS A ROGUE from ascending higher in my estimation. 

The Midnight Bargain (C.L. Polk), ebook, ARC. Full four-star review on NetGalley.

I unequivocally adored THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN, the first I've read from author C.L. Polk. It's a little tricky to categorize this standalone fantasy romance, which takes place in a decidedly other world, but still calls on the culture of Regency-era England -- so to call it "historical" is misleading, but readers who enjoy historical romance will surely find the cultural mores in THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN both familiar and compelling. Beatrice Clayborn is in town for her last Bargaining season -- a time for male sorcerers to find powerful wives whose magic will serve them once the marriage is sealed. Because in this world, women aren't allowed magic and marriage simultaneously; the danger of a spirit taking over an unborn child is too great, so women are collared, literally and figuratively, to keep this atrocity from happening. Beatrice has plans to study magic in secret and become a full-fledged Mage, which would render her ineligible for marriage and destroy her family's social and economic standing, but secure her rights to her own power and body for the rest of her life. All she needs are the secrets hidden in one particular grimoire -- that's stolen right from her hands by the Lavan siblings. Powerful, and with ambitions and secrets of their own, the Ianthe and Ysbeta and Ianthe complicate Beatrice's plans by drawing her into their lives; Ysbeta as accomplice, confidante and friend, and Ianthe as all those things plus potential lover and love.

Polk's writing is fluid and charming, with careful attention to detail. Her evocative world-building and subtle magic system is never forgotten, but it also never overwhelms the distinctly human motivations that move our characters through time and space. THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN was compulsively readable, full of lovely language and delightfully unassuming turns of phrase. Beatrice is intrepid and brave; Ysbeta is fierce and loyal; Ianthe is the profoundly romantic, feminist hero we all need. A delight from the first page to the last, THE MIDNIGHT BARGAIN is a tightly-woven, beautifully-rendered fantasy romance that will make you a C.L. Polk fan if you aren't one already.

Midnight Sun (Stephanie Meyer). eBook + aBook. Perhaps like me, you thought a little nostalgia and escapism would revive the dregs of this terrible, pandemic summer. Maybe you thought a throwback to simpler times -- the year 2005 to be exact -- would make you feel young and carefree again. Bella and Edward’s angsty bullshit would be fun to revisit, and maybe Edward’s POV would reveal something interesting about a story we might not all have loved, but definitely loved to hate. Well, 2020 is here to set you straight again: this year absolutely blows, and no amount of sparkly vampires can save it. I can say with perfect clarity that MIDNIGHT SUN is the worst novel I (or anyone) will read this year. The degree to which MIDNIGHT SUN fails as a novel is so extreme, it’s actually hard to qualify which aspect of the book is worst: the writing, the narrative development, the unadulterated laziness of retelling a story from a POV that adds literally nothing to our understanding of that first narrative. Fail, fail, fail. In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

The writing is as bad as you think it’s going to be. I don’t know what Stephanie Meyer has been doing for the past 15 years, but it’s not working on her craft. Purple prose takes on newly virulent shades in this trash heap of lazy language. 

While I understand that the story itself was restricted by an established plot, there was an opportunity to leave behind some of the language that simply hasn’t aged well. “...[M]y own personal brand of heroine” was cringe-inducing the first time, and no effort was made to allay a scene that is frankly embarrassing to read. Perhaps worst of all, though, is that language on the same plane of egregiousness is introduced to the narrative with no precedent from the original text. Bella’s claim that she’s “so clumsy that I’m almost disabled” (245) doesn’t feel like something that should have passed muster in 2020. Did no one flag this for blatant insensitivity? Yeesh.

The original TWILIGHT was just shy of 500 pages. MIDNIGHT SUN is 675 pages. Six! Hundred! Seventy! Five! How does a story that was overlong at 500 pages stretch almost 200 MORE pages, you ask? Easy, when you commit to narrating every scene in painstakingly slow detail. The infamous baseball game you remember? It takes nearly fifty pages for it to unfold in Edward’s slow, tedious narration. At one point, when Ed & Co. are trying to throw James off Bella’s scent, Edward starts articulating individual footsteps. It’s... stunning, how god-awful boring this book is. 

Dear Reader, you know -- have always known -- that Edward is an obsessive sociopath with stalker tendencies and a serious control problem. Your conscious mind has elected to allay your concerns about the health of Bella and Edward’s relationship because it’s fun to watch two kids being dramatic and self-centered, yearning for each other with the kind of intensity that only comes with the blinders of young love. Dear Reader, you will STRUGGLE to maintain this elan for toxicity if you read MIDNIGHT SUN. Edward’s murder-fantasies, which extend to all the kids in Bella’s science class and later, to the school secretary too busy salivating over a child to recognize how unhinged he is, are difficult to stomach. The constant litany of “it hurts but I like it” is incredibly off-putting and, again, boring as dry toast. 

I can’t keep going. It was just so, so bad. It wasn’t fun or nostalgic or even funny. Just pathetic. I know this was a cash-cow slam-dunk for Meyer and her publisher, which is all the proof we’ll ever need that money is the root of all evil. Rarely have I ever felt this way but here it is: I wish this book didn’t exist. Don’t buy it. 

The Poet X (Elizabeth Acevedo), eBook. I admit, I started THE POET X months and months ago, and had 50 pages to finish that I just didn’t get to until this week. I was floundering after M*dnight S*n, and knew the only remedy short of bona fide brain bleach would be an infusion of thoughtful, beautiful, elegant language. Finishing this novel-in-verse started the process of reviving my faith in the written word. Acevedo never trades pathos for angst, and allows Xiomara’s complex emotions and experiences to shine with subtlety and heart. THE POET X occupies that top-tier of novels-in-verse that, for me, has since been limited to BLOOD WATER PAINT (Joy McCullough).

These Ghosts are Family (Maisy Card), aBook narrated by Karl O’Brian Williams. I love a multi-generational narrative, especially when a well-earned comp to one of my favorite novels, HOMEGOING (Gyasi), indicates a globe-spanning, culturally complex, deeply human story that hinges around one decision that ripples through time and space. When Abel Paisley assumes his dead friend’s identity, the consequences of his choice reverberate through the family he left behind in Jamaica and the one(s) he forms in New York. With Abel’s life fast coming to an end, his desire for closure brings the truth of his deception to light, and that decision, too, has far-reaching consequences. This is a beautiful debut from Card, and the narration from Williams is exemplary. If you read and adored ALL ADULTS HERE (Emma Straub), dive into THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY for an even more poignant family portrait that still capitalizes on a strongly-braided narrative and multiple POVs.

Migrations (Charlotte McConaghy), eBook. If M*dnight S*n is the worst book 2020 has to offer (and it is!), MIGRATIONS is undeniably the finest. I’m calling it right here: This is the best book you’ll read this year, full stop. As of this writing, on Monday morning, I’ve already gifted MIGRATIONS twice -- and I only started reading it on Saturday night. That’s how quickly it drew me in and wove itself around my heart. 

Franny Lynch is on a mission to follow the last of the world’s Arctic terns on their epic annual migration. For all that she’s following the birds, Franny is also running from her past, and speeding toward her own planned end. In a narrative that moves through time as fluidly as a dorsal fin cutting through the water, McConaghy slips in and out of the present to multiple eras of the past -- each as compelling as the next. How Franny came to be on her mission is a story of love and passion and wandering and heartbreak, and how a girl who has always belonged to the sea manages to make her way through the world on land. Like STATION ELEVEN (Emily St John Mandel), MIGRATIONS paints into being a future that is eerily possible and terrifyingly probable, but never sacrifices the propulsive character study at the center of the work in favor of grand-standing about issues. And the language... oh my soul, the language. I was spoiled for choice when it comes to excerpts, but here’s one that slayed me in Act III:

“And I am done with the universe between us. It is so perilous, this love, but he’s right, and I will have no cowardice in my life, not anymore, and I will be no small thing, and I will have no small life, and so I find his mouth with mine and we are awake at last, returned to a land long abandoned, the land of each other’s bodies.” (275)

Give yourself the gift of this novel, and then give the gift of this novel to someone you care about. Then find me on Twitter so we can talk endlessly about how wonderful it is.

Okay, on the docket this week:

The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix Harrow)

Sweet Sorrow (David Nicholls)

The Garden of Small Beginnings (Abbi Waxman)

Perfect Little World (Kevin Wilson)

The Vanishing Half (Brit Bennett)

[nyeusigrube-haven]

All Just Glass 2005 Rough Draft: Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“The healer was stalling us and you know it,” Zachary said.

“Yeah.” Adianna shuddered at the vampiric aura lingering in the room. Alone, it wasn’t strong enough to bother her, but knowing that it was Sarah made it horrific. “But we would never be able to prove it.”

How had things gotten so bad, so quickly?

They never should have moved from the city. Sarah had been happy there. Dominique hadn’t exactly approved of her friends then, either, but the riffraff hunters Sarah sometimes hooked up with were worlds better than vampires.

Adianna had given Sarah to them. She had turned her back and let that leach take Sarah’s blood, and give her his. She had lost control, she had panicked, and she had let them kill her sister.

“She’s gone now,” Zachary said, as he briefly searched the room, “and it doesn’t look like she was here more than a few hours. She didn’t leave anything.”

Adia nodded, trying to keep her expression as cold and emotionless as her cousin’s.

“I doubt she would have stayed nearby, but I’m going to check the rest of the rooms just in case,” Zachary volunteered. “Why don’t you look around downstairs and see if anyone knows anything?”

His voice was calm, but there was a glint in Zachary’s eye that said he was enjoying this turnaround. Any other time, Adia would have enjoyed the chance to ransack SingleEarth just as much. A few weeks ago, Sarah would have loved the chance.

That final fact was what dimmed the joy this time.

The healer had distress naked on her gaze as Adia entered the main foyer again, this time without Zachary. After hesitating for a moment, looking at Adia as if trying to decide who was the greater threat, Caryn Smoke bypassed Adia to take the stairs, probably hoping to forestall Zachary if he got aggressive with any of SingleEarth’s tenants.

Wrong choice. The thought popped into Adia’s head as Caryn disappeared up the stairway, and someone else appeared at the door.

Nissa Ravena: dark hair, fair skin, black eyes, a pretty face, and the older sister of twin murderers. One of Kaleo’s many fledglings, she was about one hundred and fifty years old.

She was also remarkably naïve. The expression that crossed her face as she saw Adia purposefully crossing the room was not fear, but compassion. She made no attempt to run, though she could have, easily. Instead she stepped further into the room and let Adia come to her.

“You’re Sarah’s sister, right?” Nissa asked. They had only met once- though “met” might be too strong a word, since the moment had mostly involved Adia dragging Sarah away from this girl and her brother, Christopher. “Adianna?”

Nissa didn’t even begin to look nervous until Adia caught her arm and pulled her aside, and even then she went with it. Despite the shivery feeling that always came from being so near the undead, Adia kept a hand on Nissa’s wrist, using just enough of her power that she knew the vampire wouldn’t be able to disappear until this conversation was over.

“Where’s Sarah?”

“Safe,” Nissa answered. “She made it through the change and her first night all right.”

That wasn’t what Adia had wanted to hear, or even more than she already knew- or wanted to think about.

“She didn’t kill anyone,” Nissa added, which meant that Adia wasn’t hiding her distress very well. Nissa was trying to console her.

She was only making things harder.

“Where can I find her?”

“She’s-” Adia knew the exact moment that Nissa reevaluated what was going on, and realized that Adia’s questions weren’t exactly based on concern. Horrified, the vampire asked, “Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?”

At the same time, Nissa tried to pull her arm back, and realized that Adia wasn’t about to let her go.

“Nissa, I know she was your friend,” Adia said. “I know Nikolas and Kristopher are your brothers. I-” She broke off her calm words, shook her head, and instead of the manipulative lie she had been planning on, spoke the absolute truth. “Personally, I blame you for what has happened to Sarah.”

Nissa tried to jerk her arm back again, and cringed when she felt a moment of Adia’s power. She snapped, “Have you ever occurred to you that maybe it’s your family’s fault? You’re the ones who drove her away over a friendship.”

“And you’re the one who connected her to a serial killer,” Adia replied. She was on the verge of losing her temper, which wasn’t good, and so she forced herself to take a deep breath and continue with what she had been saying. “Personally, I blame you and apparently you blame me- but this isn’t personal any more. Do you understand that if you don’t tell me what you know, I am not only allowed but obligated to kill you?”

“Not here,” Nissa argued, though her voice had gone softer, a little less sure. “I’m a member of SingleEarth. Your own laws say you’re not allowed to hurt me here.”

“Normally, that would be true,” Adia agreed. “But your brothers have killed not one but two Vida witches.”

“Sarah isn’t dead!” Nissa protested. “Now let go of me.”

“She’s dead by our standards, and no.” Out of the corner of her eye, Adia saw Zachary come back into the main room. “You really want to tell me what you know before my cousin gets over here. He won’t be as gentle as I will, or as forgiving.”

“This is forgiving?”

“You could be dead,” Adia pointed out. “Nissa, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Zachary had noticed them and was crossing the room.

Adia noticed the other vampire only in the instant that he swung at her, a punch that would have connected with her jaw if her senses weren’t already so sharpened by stress. She dodged, letting go of Nissa’s wrist in the process.

The girl was smart enough to disappear instantly, at which point the vampire who had attacked Nissa jumped back, raising his hands above his head as Zachary ran the last few yards to join them.

“I can tell you what you need to know,” the stranger said quickly, before either hunter could retaliate.

“Strange way of offering information,” Zachary said.

The vampire slowly lowered his hands. “If I had spoken to you in front of Nissa, she would have instantly run to her brothers to warn them.”

“Why are you talking to us?” Adia asked.

“I don’t like Nikolas, and even if I did, he can take care of himself. Nissa can’t. Her brothers made their own choices. She shouldn’t be the one to pay for them.”

“What do you know?”

“Nikolas is hosting a bash tomorrow night.” He turned over one of the small white cards, marked only with an address, that was traditionally the only invitation to such a gathering. “It isn’t at his primary home, so it will do no good for you to go early looking for him, but he’ll be there for the party. Kristopher probably will, too.”

“And Sarah?”

“I don't know what she’ll do,” he answered. “She strikes me as the loyal sort, though. If you go after Nikolas and Kristopher, I bet she’ll show.”

The loyal sort. Adia wasn’t certain whether the words were meant to be a dig, or not.

“You’d really kill your own sister?” the vampire asked.

Adia was saved having to answer as Zachary looped an arm around the vampire, pressed a palm over his throat, and with a quick slice of power knocked him out. Someone in the main SingleEarth building cried out when they saw him collapse.

Zachary worked swiftly, using a skill that neither Adia nor Sarah had ever mastered as well as he wrapped the vampire’s power in his own.

Caryn was at their side instantly.

“What did he do?” the healer demanded.

“He’ll be fine,” Zachary assured her, though it obviously galled him to have to say it. “He’ll sleep for a few days and wake up hungry- but I imagine you have enough bleeders on hand to deal with it. I didn’t want him warning anyone.”

He handed the vampire over to Caryn, who staggered under the unexpected deadweight. Someone else came to her side to help her.

“Let’s get out of here,” Zachary said.

Adia nodded.

Zachary appeared fine until they reached the parking lot, at which point he tossed Adia his keys and collapsed into the passengers’ seat, massaging his temples. “Would have been easier to kill him,” he grumbled, as she started the car.

“SingleEarth wouldn’t have thanked you for it.”

“And someone there would have been offended enough to go to the leeches and warn them, I’m sure.”

Adia had personally been more worried about at what point the many vampires who belonged to SingleEarth would start fighting back. Most of them were weak and unskilled, but there were always a few so-called reformed killers who knew how to fight.

“Will you be okay?”

“Fine.” His voice was sharp. “I just burned a lot of power. I’ll want to chop my head off with an ax for a couple hours, but it will pass.”

He leaned back in the bucket seat as Adia drove them both back to Dominique’s. After greeting their line’s matriarch with perfect poise, as if he didn’t have a migraine trying to split his skull open, he respectfully asked to be excused for a few hours.

Adia explained what they had learned at SingleEarth and turned the invitation over to Dominique before she too asked to be excused.

“Go,” Dominique said. “I will start making plans for tomorrow night.”

“Thank you.”

She ascended the stairs and crossed the hall to her room in even, controlled steps. It wasn’t until she had closed her bedroom door behind herself that she started shaking.

Adianna Vida was on the verge of breakdown. Complete emotional meltdown. She knew it; everyone knew it, from Dominique and Zachary probably to Nissa and the nameless vampire who had given them the invitation.

Are you looking for her because she’s your sister, or because she’s your prey?

She took a deep breath. Control. Control.

Dear goddess.

She pulled a brush through her hair as if to avenge a wrong committed against her.

You’d really kill your own sister?

Sarah wasn’t her sister any more. She was just one of them, now. One of them, and it was Adia’s fault. She’d had a chance to do the right thing. She could have killed Kristopher and let Sarah die honorably. She should have.

Panic, fear, loss. What kind of excuses were they?

She would never get out of her head the image of Sarah lying there with the blush of blood on her lips.

Track her down, Dominique had ordered. I don’t care how long it takes. Track her down, and when you find her, put a knife in her heart.

And she would, because she had received the order, and to defy it could get her disowned. Adianna and Zachary were the last pureblooded witches in their line. That line could not be allowed to die. It was as simple as that.

[inloveandwords]

Lately, I’ve been adding the books I want to read to my Amazon Wishlist instead of my Goodreads TBR. This is mostly because I can see right away if it is available on Audible Escape or Kindle Unlimited, which is nice.

Anytime I’m shopping for books, I just refer to that list more often than my Goodreads TBR (and my shelves there anyway).

I want to rethink how I use my Goodreads TBR, but for now, I’ll just focus on decluttering it.

It works like this

Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.

Order on ascending date added.

Take the first 5 or 10 books (I’m doing 20 because I have way too many on my list)

Read the synopsis of the books

Decide: keep it or should it go?

  The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

CLICK FOR SYNOPSIS

Luke is the perfect boyfriend: handsome, kind, fun. He and Emaline have been together all through high school in Colby, the beach town where they both grew up. But now, in the summer before college, Emaline wonders if perfect is good enough.

Enter Theo, a super-ambitious outsider, a New Yorker assisting on a documentary film about a reclusive local artist. Theo’s sophisticated, exciting, and, best of all, he thinks Emaline is much too smart for Colby.

Emaline’s mostly-absentee father, too, thinks Emaline should have a bigger life, and he’s convinced that an Ivy League education is the only route to realizing her potential. Emaline is attracted to the bright future that Theo and her father promise. But she also clings to the deep roots of her loving mother, stepfather, and sisters. Can she ignore the pull of the happily familiar world of Colby?

Emaline wants the moon and more, but how can she balance where she comes from with where she’s going?

Sarah Dessen’s devoted fans will welcome this story of romance, yearning, and, finally, empowerment. It could only happen in the summer.

Date added to TBR: 12/29/16 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I’m planning to read all of Sarah Dessen’s backlist.

  Gardenia by Kelsey Sutton

CLICK FOR SYNOPSIS

Seventeen-year-old Ivy Erickson has one month, twenty-seven days, four hours, fifty-nine minutes, and two seconds to live.

Ever since she was a child, Ivy has been able to see countdown clocks over everyone’s heads indicating how long before they will die. She can’t do anything about anyone else’s, nor can she do anything about her own, which will hit the zero hour before she even graduates high school.

A life cut short is tragic, but Ivy does her best to make the most of it. She struggles emotionally with her deep love for on-again, off-again boyfriend Myers Patripski. She struggles financially, working outside of school to help her mom and her sister. And she struggles to cope with the murder of her best friend, another life she couldn’t save. Vanessa Donovan was killed in the woods, and everyone in town believes Ivy had something to do with it.

Then more girls start disappearing. Ivy tries to put her own life in order as she pieces together the truth of who ended Vanessa’s. To save lives and for her own sanity.

The clock is always ticking. And Ivy’s only hope is to expose the truth before it runs out completely.

Date added to TBR: 12/30/16 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I actually can’t believe I haven’t read this one yet. I love Kelsey Sutton!

  Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls, and Everything in Between by Lauren Graham

CLICK FOR SYNOPSIS

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.

Date added to TBR: 12/31/16 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I love Gilmore Girls and Lauren Graham!

  The Throne of Glass Coloring Book (Throne of Glass) by Sarah J. Maas

CLICK FOR SYNOPSIS

Enter the world of Throne of Glass

Experience the vivid imagery of Sarah J. Maas’s expansive world in her breathtaking New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass saga. Celaena on the rooftops of Rifthold, Chaol in the gardens of the glass castle, Manon riding her wyvern through the Crossing, and many other favorite moments, characters, and objects from the vibrantly detailed realm of Throne of Glass come to life. With stunning original black-and-white drawings, The Throne of Glass Coloring Book is a must-have companion for any reader looking to be swept up in the adventure of a lifetime.

Date added to TBR: 12/31/16 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I have the Court of Thorns and Roses version of this, I just need this one, now.

  Off Sides (Off #1) by Sawyer Bennett

CLICK FOR SYNOPSIS

“I’m not sure what possessed me to do it. Maybe it was the impossible expectations I faced, maybe it was my own self-loathing. But I just knew I needed something different to happen. I needed someone… something… to derail me from my current path. Otherwise, I would become lost… a hollowed out shell of a man. So I did it. I approached her, then I pursued her, then I made her mine. And my life was saved…”

Ryan Burnham is the privileged son of a U.S. Congressman and captain of his university’s hockey team. While he is on the verge of fulfilling his dreams to play in the NHL, his parents want him on a different course. One he is expected to accept for the sake of his family’s public image.

Forced her to abandon her music career after the heart breaking death of her parents, Danny Cross exists on the opposite side of the tracks from Ryan. She is struggling to make her own way, working two jobs, attending college part time and volunteering in a homeless shelter. She is on a mission to build her own success.

With a chance meeting, their vastly different worlds collide, causing each to evaluate whether they are truly on the correct path to self-fulfillment and happiness. Can their relationship survive? Particularly when others are against them every step of the way. A lot can happen in just ten short days…

Date added to TBR: 1/4/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I have this on audio and started it, but never finished. I think if the timing is right, I’ll enjoy it.

  Of Beast and Beauty by Stacey Jay

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In the beginning was the darkness, and in the darkness was a girl, and in the girl was a secret…

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

Date added to TBR: 1/11/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I love Beauty and the Beast retellings!

  A Shadow Bright and Burning (Kingdom on Fire #1) by Jessica Cluess

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I am Henrietta Howel. The first female sorcerer. The prophesied one. Or am I?

Henrietta Howel can burst into flames. When she is brought to London to train with Her Majesty’s sorcerers, she meets her fellow sorcerer trainees, young men eager to test her powers and her heart. One will challenge her. One will fight for her. One will betray her. As Henrietta discovers the secrets hiding behind the glamour of sorcerer life, she begins to doubt that she’s the true prophesied one. With battle looming, how much will she risk to save the city–and the one she loves?

Date added to TBR: 1/11/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This one is on my bookshelf.

  The Lonely Ones by Kelsey Sutton

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When your only friend is your own endless imagination, how do you escape your mind and connect to the world around you?

With parents too busy to pay her attention, an older brother and sister who would rather spend their time with friends, and peers who oscillate between picking on her and simply ignoring her, it’s no wonder that Fain spends most of her time in a world of her own making. During the day, Fain takes solace in crafting her own fantastical adventures in writing, but in the darkness of night, these adventures come to life as Fain lives and breathes alongside a legion of imaginary creatures. Whether floating through space or under the sea, climbing mountains or traipsing through forests, Fain becomes queen beyond – and in spite of – the walls of her bedroom.

In time, Fain begins to see possibilities and friendships emerge in her day-to-day reality. . . yet when she is let down by the one relationship she thought she could trust, Fain must decide: remain queen of the imaginary creatures, or risk the pain that comes with opening herself up to the fragile connections that exist only in the real world?

Told in breathless and visual verse, THE LONELY ONES takes readers through the intricate inner workings of a girl who struggles to navigate isolation and finds friendship where she least expects it.

Date added to TBR: 1/12/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: Again, I love this author and want to read everything she writes.

  Radiance (Wraith Kings #1) by Grace Draven

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THE PRINCE OF NO VALUE

Brishen Khaskem, prince of the Kai, has lived content as the nonessential spare heir to a throne secured many times over. A trade and political alliance between the human kingdom of Gaur and the Kai kingdom of Bast-Haradis requires that he marry a Gauri woman to seal the treaty. Always a dutiful son, Brishen agrees to the marriage and discovers his bride is as ugly as he expected and more beautiful than he could have imagined.

THE NOBLEWOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE

Ildiko, niece of the Gauri king, has always known her only worth to the royal family lay in a strategic marriage. Resigned to her fate, she is horrified to learn that her intended groom isn’t just a foreign aristocrat but the younger prince of a people neither familiar nor human. Bound to her new husband, Ildiko will leave behind all she’s known to embrace a man shrouded in darkness but with a soul forged by light.

Two people brought together by the trappings of duty and politics will discover they are destined for each other, even as the powers of a hostile kingdom scheme to tear them apart.

Date added to TBR: 1/12/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This book has such high ratings, and I vaguely remember really wanting to read it!

  Passenger (Passenger #1) by Alexandra Bracken

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Passage, n. i. A brief section of music composed of a series of notes and flourishes. ii. A journey by water; a voyage. iii. The transition from one place to another, across space and time.

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them—whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are playing, treacherous forces threaten to separate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home… forever.

Date added to TBR: 1/12/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: I am determined to read this.

  Friend Me (Mates, Dates #1-3) by Cathy Hopkins

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Lucy, Izzy, and Nesta are sassy, sparkling…and utterly smitten.

In Mates, Dates, and Inflatable Bras, Lucy is at a turning point. She doesn’t feel like she fits in with her friends Izzie and Nesta. Then Lucy sees the most wonderful boy, and things start to change — in all areas of her life.

Izzie is smitten with Mark in Mates, Dates, and Cosmic Kisses. When Izzie cancels plans just so she’s available if Mark should call, Lucy and Nesta know they need to intervene. But how can they help when Izzie is convinced that she and Mark are destined to be together?

Nesta meets a boy of her own in Mates, Dates, and Designer Divas. Simon is rich and his lifestyle is totally glamorous. So is his friend Cressida. But competing for Simon’s affections could cost Nesta more than she anticipated.

Date added to TBR: 1/12/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This is on my bookshelf

  The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

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HOW DO YOU KNOW WHO TO TRUST WHEN YOU CAN’T EVEN TRUST YOURSELF?

I look at my hands. One of them says FLORA BE BRAVE. Flora has anterograde amnesia. She can’t remember anything day-to-day: the joke her friend made, the instructions her parents gave her, how old she is. Then she kisses someone she shouldn’t, and the next day she remembers it. It’s the first time she’s remembered anything since she was ten. But the boy is gone. She thinks he’s moved to the Arctic. Will following him be the key to unlocking her memory? Who can she trust?

Date added to TBR: 1/12/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This is on my bookshelf

  The Book of Luke by Jenny O’Connell

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Emily Abbott has always been considered the Girl Most Likely to Be Nice — but lately being nice hasn’t done her any good. Her parents have decided to move the family from Chicago back to their hometown of Boston in the middle of Emily’s senior year. Only Emily’s first real boyfriend, Sean, is in Chicago, and so is her shot at class valedictorian and early admission to the Ivy League. What’s a nice girl to do? Then Sean dumps Emily on moving day and her father announces he’s staying behind in Chicago “to tie up loose ends,” and Emily decides that what a nice girl needs to do is to stop being nice.

She reconnects with her best friends in Boston, Josie and Lucy, only to discover that they too have been on the receiving end of some glaring Guy Don’ts. So when the girls have to come up with something to put in the senior class time capsule, they know exactly what to do. They’ll create a not-so-nice reference guide for future generations of guys — an instruction book that teaches them the right way to treat girls.

But when her friends draft Emily to test out their tips on Luke Preston — the hottest, most popular guy in school, who just broke up with Josie by email — Emily soon finds that Luke is the trickiest of test subjects . . . and that even a nice girl like Emily has a few things to learn about love.

Date added to TBR: 1/16/17 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Not super interested in this one anymore.

  The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Fire and Thorns #1) by Rae Carson

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Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness. Elisa is the chosen one.

But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can’t see how she ever will.

Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.

And he’s not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people’s savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.

Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.

Most of the chosen do.

Date added to TBR: 1/16/17 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Eh.

  Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1) by Lexa Hillyer

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A kingdom burns. A princess sleeps. This is no fairy tale.

It all started with the burning of the spindles.

No.

It all started with a curse…

Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king’s headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.

And then everything changes, with a single drop of Aurora’s blood—and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken.

As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.

Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls; and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape��or the reason for her to stay.

Date added to TBR: 1/20/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This one is on my bookshelf.

  Rise (Rock Solid #1) by Karina Bliss

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Rise – The redemption story of a rock star going straight(er) through the love of a good(ish) woman.

Acclaimed literary biographer Elizabeth Winston writes about long-dead heroes. So bad-boy rock icon Zander Freedman couldn’t possibly tempt her to write his memoir. Except the man is a mass of fascinating contradictions–manipulative, honest, gifted, charismatic and morally ambiguous. In short, everything she seeks in a biography subject. When in her life will she get another chance to work with a living legend? But saying yes to one temptation soon leads to another. Suddenly she’s having heated fantasies about her subject, fantasies this blue-eyed devil is only too willing to stoke. She thought self-control was in her DNA; after all, she grew up a minister’s daughter. She thought wrong.

Rock star Zander Freedman has been an outlier–many would say an outcast–for most of his life. But there’s no disaster he can’t overcome, from the breakup of his band to the inevitable damage to his reputation. His Resurrection Tour is shaping up to be his greatest triumph–if his golden voice holds out. Contracting a respected biographer is simply about creating more buzz. Elizabeth’s integrity is the key to consolidating his legacy as one of rock’s greats. All the damn woman has to do is write down what he tells her. Not force him to think. Or encourage the good guy struggling to get out. And certainly not make him fall in love for the first time in his life. Turns out he is scared of something: being known.

Date added to TBR: 1/22/17 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Nah.

  Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino

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When a bestselling debut novel from mysterious author J.Colby becomes the literary event of the year, Emiline reads it reluctantly. As an adjunct writing instructor at UC San Diego with her own stalled literary career and a bumpy long-term relationship, Emiline isn’t thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments of a young and gifted writer.

Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.

That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby” must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending.

The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,” but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?

Date added to TBR: 1/22/17 Keep or Ditch? Ditch Comments: Nah.

  Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) by Kendare Blake

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When kingdom come, there will be one.

In every generation on the island of Fennbirn, a set of triplets is born—three queens, all equal heirs to the crown and each possessor of a coveted magic. Mirabella is a fierce elemental, able to spark hungry flames or vicious storms at the snap of her fingers. Katharine is a poisoner, one who can ingest the deadliest poisons without so much as a stomachache. Arsinoe, a naturalist, is said to have the ability to bloom the reddest rose and control the fiercest of lions.

But becoming the Queen Crowned isn’t solely a matter of royal birth. Each sister has to fight for it. And it’s not just a game of win or lose…it’s life or death. The night the sisters turn sixteen, the battle begins.

The last queen standing gets the crown.

Date added to TBR: 1/22/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This is on my bookshelf.

  Song of the Current (Song of the Current #1) by Sarah Tolcser

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Caroline Oresteia is destined for the river. For generations, her family has been called by the river god, who has guided their wherries on countless voyages throughout the Riverlands. At seventeen, Caro has spent years listening to the water, ready to meet her fate. But the river god hasn’t spoken her name yet—and if he hasn’t by now, there’s a chance he never will.

Caro decides to take her future into her own hands when her father is arrested for refusing to transport a mysterious crate. By agreeing to deliver it in exchange for his release, Caro finds herself caught in a web of politics and lies, with dangerous pirates after the cargo—an arrogant courier with a secret—and without the river god to help her. With so much at stake, Caro must choose between the life she always wanted and the one she never could have imagined for herself.

From debut author Sarah Tolcser comes an immersive and romantic fantasy set along the waterways of a magical world with a headstrong heroine determined to make her mark.

Date added to TBR: 1/22/17 Keep or Ditch? Keep Comments: This is on my bookshelf.

  Decluttering my TBR #2 Lately, I've been adding the books I want to read to my Amazon Wishlist instead of my Goodreads TBR.

[ecotone99]

[HR] The Haunting of Thorn River

Thorn River was not a river at all, but a small town hidden behind a ring of snowcapped mountains. The place lent credence to one of August Maynard’s favourite sayings—the map ain’t the land—for Thorn River could not be found on any map.

Following Kipinnaw’s instruction, August rode into Thorn River at high noon. It was out of character for a town made up mostly of prospectors to disappear without their gold, but Chief Kipinnaw insisted it was here for the taking.

The mountains and the river for which the town was named should have moistened the air, but every breath the old gunslinger took was bone dry. The dull wind baked his eyes to splinters and bit his throat when he swallowed.

He removed a waterskin from the inside of his shirt and took a long drink, but no amount of water could stop the sun from kindling his old scar—a faded burgundy band around his neck, evidence of a failed hanging from a lifetime ago. He pushed the memory away. Dark thoughts could prove as fatal as any noose in the shadow of Thorn River.

Sky, the horse, cantered across the flat stone road which divided the town. August kept his hat down and his eyes sharp.

He rode past a dry goods store and a telegraph office on the left, and a post office and saloon on the right. Not a peep from any of them, but when his back was to the buildings, he could feel someone staring.

A crow cawed from the roof of the saloon, startling him. The cry echoed off of the surrounding mountain range and transformed the crow’s lone cry into a hundred. The scavenger stretched its wings and disappeared into the sky.

Sounds like a murder, August thought, chuckling. Appropriate.

Something moved within the post office. August’s drew his pistol quick as lightning, but when he turned, the window was empty.

It has already begun, he thought. ‘Get in, get the money, get out before dark’. That’s what Kipinnaw said, and ole chief may’ve been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a liar.

Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark.

“If there’s someone in there, you’d better come on out,” August called, shattering the silence. “I won’t hurt you. But if you don’t…well, I don’t give warning shots and I don’t take well to being startled.”

His words echoed a thousand times off of the looming mountains before silence washed back over the town. Nothing stirred.

I am alone, he thought. A fresh gale of wind rolled into town. Somewhere, a rusty chime tittered at him. The town, or whatever walked here, was laughing.

“Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark,” August muttered.

He put a hand to his forehead and squinted at the sun. He usually told the time by holding his hand sidelong against the horizon and counting fingers until he reached the sun. The mountains, which seemed to strangle Thorn River from every side, made measuring the technique impossible. He would have to use the position of the sun and the length of shadows to make a best guess.

He judged the time to be an hour past noon, but that couldn’t be right. Surely, he’d arrived in Thorn River only minutes ago.

August looked back along the road, tracing his steps, noting each building he’d gone by. He couldn’t help but notice the way the black empty windows seemed to be watching him, or the howling wind, and how strange it was for mountain air to be so hot and dry. Perhaps the flat road was magnifying the dry heat.

All at once, he felt tired. His eyelids crept down, and before he could do anything about it, August was dreaming of family. His wife, his twin daughters, their old home, his bedroom. Dice and cards and the roulette wheel crept into his mind, and why shouldn't they? They consumed his waking thoughts, it was unfair to expect them to stay out of his dreams.

August’s eyes snapped open. His pulse rocketed.

How long had he been sitting here? He gave the horse a light tap with his spurs and she snapped forward. She had been close to sleep as well.

Close nothing, he thought. You were out cold.

In the bowels of Thorn River, something giggled.

The town was slowing him up. Making him retrace his steps, making him waste time. Making him—

“MOVE!” he shouted at himself, and the harsh echo banged in his ears again and again like rolling thunder. It was almost maddening.

Sky whinnied, frightened.

“Alright steady girl, steady. Keep going.”

Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark.

According to Kipinnaw, Thorn River had four streets. The longest, the main road he was on now, and three smaller roads which crossed through it. Kipinnaw said the gold was in a long forgotten bank, but claimed to not remember which of the four streets the bank was on.

“I swear I do not remember,” Kipinnaw said in halting English. “Thorn River is a bad place. I saw… terrors… that I cannot remember. It made me forget things.”

“What made you forget?” August asked.

Kipinnaw looked up at him, brow furrowed in confusion.

“The town.”

At the time, August reckoned a man would say nearly anything when his hands and ankles were bound and his life was on the line, but going back over Kipinnaw’s last words, he wondered if that was true.

It made me forget things.

Could a town do that? A haunted one?

Ghost, or no ghost, something had made the people of Thorn River disappear. Better than one hundred and fifty townsfolk had called this place home, and they’d all vanished in a single night. Then, as if by some collective agreement that the town should be forgotten, it had disappeared off every map.

Some folks said a wolf pack was responsible for the mass exodus. This version of the story claimed that a pack of wolves stole up while Thorn River slept, and then screaming, one by one, into the surrounding spruce forest.

Some folks believed the Wendigo had taken them. That some minister or priest had on purpose or accidentally summoned the old injun monster, and it had pulled the whole town into the land of nightmares while they slept.

Some folks said the devil himself came from the mountains and drew Thorn River into hell.

Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark.

August found the bank on the third street.

“You wait here girl.” he told Sky, tying her to a post so she wouldn’t wander off.

Sky neighed in the affirmative.

After a deep breath, August ascended the wooden steps to the front entrance of Thorn River Savings and Loans. The old wood porch creaked and whined under his boots.

There was a sign hanging from a nail on the front door. August had taught himself to read as a boy, and though the words came, they did not come quickly or easily.

​

Closed.

Hours: 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday

Be out before dark.

​

“Just a coincidence,” he said, knowing it was not. He gripped the brass door knob. Ice cold.

The bank had two front windows, one on either side of the entrance, and blinds were pulled across both of them. The blinds ran horizontal, and there were thin gaps between them where light could trickle through. August happened to look to his left, just as he pushed the door open.

Someone was watching him.

The instant August noticed, the eyes withdrew into the dark. The blinds trembled slightly from the disturbance.

A shrill scream came from within the Savings and Loans building, right behind the door. It startled August so badly that he lost his balance and fell. His knees twinged angrily as he climbed to his feet.

If spiders could scream, they would sound like that, he thought.

Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark.

He coughed and spat out a glob of bloody saliva. There was one tooth in the swill. It occurred to August that the hot air of Thorn River might be poisonous, and he would not be surprised in the least if that were true.

He checked the sky again. It was past three o’clock.

“Impossible,” he breathed.

There was a choice to make, and now was the time to make it. He was sure, with no proof at all but his own intuition, that if he cut now without taking anything, whatever haunted Thorn River would let him go. It would take his memories of the afternoon the way it had taken Kipinnaw’s, but August was more than happy to get rid of those.

What ended up driving him inside of Thorn River Savings and Loans was a simple calculation of risk. If he did not steal the money, the loan sharks would cut off his fingers and would keep taking off parts of him until he paid the money back or died.

There was also the possibility that the spirit of Thorn River was just his imagination. He was never one for getting carried away, but Kipinnaw had spooked him. Yessir, the old injun had scared him good and proper, that’s all it was.

August put his hand on the door knob, turned it, and noticed the sign hanging there had changed.

​

Come on in.

​

He opened the door. When he saw what was inside he nearly wept.

Towers of gold dollars stretched from floor to ceiling. The place was so crowded with gold that there was hardly enough room to walk. He stuffed an armful into the burlap sack he’d brought with him, setting off dozens of glittering avalanches. He dragged the stuffed bag outside, tied it to Sky’s saddle, then grabbed the rest of his bags and went back in for more gold.

August half expected the pile of coins to have vanished, and for a green-eyed demon to be waiting in its place, but the gold was just as he’d left it.

He hopped over the teller’s counter at the back of the room after spotting papers for common shares and dividend slips. Shares for the Clear River Company, Robb-Daniel, King George Flour, and a dozen others. August didn’t recognize most of the company names, but he knew that he could get more than fifty dollars for each share of Robb-Daniel, and there were at least fifteen of those.

“Farewell ghost,” he called when he was done. He departed Thorn River as the sun started to dip behind the mountains, dying the town a pale pink. “You have my thanks!”

August rode all night.

He was worried about being taken by thieves on the road. Eight overstuffed sacks of coins and share slips bulged from Sky’s saddle, and it would behoove even the most nervous of banditos to investigate such a haul.

But the old gunslinger made it home, unmolested, by sun-up the next morning. After showing the gold to Cordelia and his twin daughters, Daisy and Abigale, they held a glorious morning celebration. The party paused briefly, when August rode into Carson City to pay his debtors, but continued in earnest upon his return.

The following years saw the downward trajectory of the Maynard family take an abrupt turn towards the clouds. August became the second largest shareholder in the Clear River Company, and whisked his family off to a penthouse suite in the burgeoning city of New York. Daisy, who had seemed all but destined to wed an abusive, forty-year old cattle farmer by the name of Beau Hicks, attended Harvard and married a lawyer shortly after her graduation. Abigale wrote poetry, and was invited to London to dine with the Queen. She stayed in England teaching Poetry at a private school, and she wrote her parents often.

August retired from the Clear River Company a multi-millionaire, and lived out the last chapter of his life in an old Victorian mansion. When he caught the Silent Cough, he was 85. Mrs. Maynard and the hired help took care of him as best they could, but his wife wept often when she thought he was asleep. Between fits of painless coughing, he reminded her how strongly he loved her, and that if it was his time, he would go to the kingdom of God thankful for the blessings of his life.

Then came the end. When it was clear he was on his way out, the attending nurse fetched the Maynard family to August’s bedside. It was not long after supper, while the evening faded into night. Cordelia Maynard, who had tried her very best to be strong for her family, sobbed uncontrollably. Daisy and Abigale, knowing their father was not long for the world, had come home to spend one last week with him. They were at his side now, weeping silently so as to not upset their mother more than necessary. All things considered, August had to admit the timing of his passing was perfect. He was surrounded by love.

“Goodbye my family,” August said, closing his tired, tear-stung eyes. “How I love you.”

“Goodbye dad,” the girls said together.

“Goodbye sweetheart,” said Cordelia.

“Goodbye August,” said Kipinnaw. “It’s nearly dark.”

August’s heart clenched. He opened his eyes.

He was standing at the entrance to Thorn River Savings and Loans.

​

Still Open

​

“No,” he said through a younger man’s voice he barely recognized. “No, it can’t be.”

Behind him, a horse whinnied. He spun, and there she was, brown as chocolate.

Sky, he remembered, his mind whirling. And this is… and I am…

It all came flooding back: where he was, why he was here, and who he was. Not the retired executive of a company, the name of which he was already starting to forget, but a tired gunslinger, drowning in debt.

Get in, get the gold, and get out before dark, he thought, and it took a second to remember what that phrase meant, and why it was so important.

“Oh god,” he said, turning westward. The sun was low, an orange eye hovering over a mountain, ready to plunge itself into the tip.

A high, thin laugh floated through the empty streets of Thorn River.

He remembered, and as he remembered, his was painfully aware of another life being forgotten.

With his old life slipping away like smoke through his fingers, he opened the door and stepped into darkness.

In another life, or a dream, the office had been well lit and stuffed with prospectors’ gold. August was standing in the same room as the one half-remembered, but there was hardly any light here, and not one coin.

The windows along the side had been haphazardly boarded, leaving the office in almost total darkness. The only light came from thin lines of the afternoon squeezing between blinds.

It was bone-chillingly cold inside, and August’s breath fanned out in quick tufts of vapor. His heartbeat thundered in his eardrums.

As he stepped into the middle of the office, the front door slammed behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.

August spun on his heels, drawing his revolver, but the door was gone. He was staring at a blank wooden wall. The windows were gone too, and with nowhere to peek through, the dying yellow light of the afternoon had vanished with them.

He fired the pistol. His ears rang and the smell of gun smoke filled his nostrils. The bullet bored a black circle into the wood, but did not break through to the other side.

He was about to fire again when a small voice rose from the darkness.

“The light,” it whispered, “go to the light.”

What light? he thought, and in reply, a pale green glow emerged crept out slowly from over the teller’s counter. The source was farther back, in a room beyond sight.

“Who’s there?” August called, his smoking gun wavering. “Show yourself.”

The horrible thin laugh came again, but this time it didn’t die out. It went on and on, growing louder until the gunslinger had to holster his weapon so he could clamp his hands to his ears.

“Let me out of here!” he screamed. “I’ll go! I’m sorry, I won’t take anything. I just want to leave!”

The laughter became outrageous, whooping and hollering.

“Go to the light,” the girl repeated, somehow audible over the laughter.

“I’m going!” August shouted. “Alright? I’m going.”

He leapt over the counter, and the moment his boots touched down on the other side, the laughter stopped. Thorn River was silent, watching. Behind him, the doors and windows had reappeared on the wall. A trickle of light was coming in through the gaps in the windows, and a small round bullet hole in the entrance. August strode to the closest window and peeled off the board. The pink and red of early evening flooded in, and he saw the sun hanging in the sky, half gone behind one of the cliffs. It was at least 7 o’clock.

Whenever I start wondering where the time has gone, he realized. It slips away even faster than before.

He could still get out before dark, but he had to move fast.

If he were to jump back over the counter and try to leave now, August knew the laughing creature would come back. The spirit dwelling here was playing games with him, and if he didn’t cooperate, it would punish him. He strode quickly into the depths of Thorn River Savings and Loans, following the pale light through a cramped hallway, past a stretch of doors, and into the back room.

Kipinnaw was waiting for him.

The green light was coming from his eyes.

“Chief Kipinnaw,” said August.

“Gunslinger,” the chief moaned. His face was drawn, skeletal, and his skin was several shades paler than it had been in life. The chief tilted his head sideways, revealing a dark hole above his ear where the bullet had entered.

“Is that what this is about?” August asked. “You knew I was coming here, so you came to haunt me? It wasn’t personal. You know that.”

The Chief shook his head.

“Then what? Spit it out?” August stammered, trying not to sound afraid but shivering anyways.

Kipinnaw’s ghost held out an old tin box. “For you.”

August came forward cautiously. There was a small note attached to the lid.

One per customer.

“Take it,” Kipinnaw groaned, but when August looked up from the note, it was not the chief holding the old tin box anymore.

It was Cordelia, his wife. Cordelia in death. Her fingers were missing and she was holding the box between two flat palms. Her hair was parchment white, and strips of skin hung off her face in tatters. Her new emerald eyes burned in anger.

“They’ll cut my fingers off,” she hissed. “Take one. If you don’t, they’ll cut your fingers off and then mine and then your daughters’. You just had to play your cards. Play cards and throw dice! You lost the house! Will you bet me next? Whore me off when you can’t roll double sixes? You couldn’t get much for me, but your daughters—”

August snatched the box away before Cordelia could continue. She became silent, but did not disappear. The thing disguised as his wife watched, and waited.

There were a dozen slots inside. Four had been emptied, (one presumably by Kipinnaw, though August had no idea where the Chief had hidden his treasure) but a single golden coin occupied the other eight.

August lifted one of the coins delicately from its groove and examined it. It was thick and heavy, and when he pulled the coin higher he realized it was not gold at all, but a shining gold tinged diamond.

The etchings claimed the “coin” was minted in 1795. On one side was the Queen but she was not etched or carved into the crystal. Instead, the bends within and on the outside of the diamond seemed to trace her features, and when August tilted the coin her face turned with him. On the other side of the coin was a range of mountains, and two words running along the rim, repeated over and over: Get Out.

August shoved the coin into his pocket and ran, leaving the decomposing creature behind him. The demon of Thorn River was no longer in the shape of his wife, it was a dead Daisy. The decaying face of his daughter smiled up at him before he fled, and was still smiling when he took a last glance over his shoulder.

The horse was gone. The sun had nearly disappeared.

August ran on foot. Breathing hard, he took off across the stone street, back through Thorn River the way he had come. His shadow dragged behind him, willing him to stay and visit just a bit longer.

You’ve never seen nightlife like this, said a voice in his head that did not belong to him.

August screamed and kept running.

There was a headless girl waving at him from the window of the saloon, and something horrible that looked like a mix between a lobster and a fungus was oozing from the post office door onto the street.

August observed these things from the corner of his eye and kept running. These were distractions, or tests, or real monsters, but as long as got out before dark, he would be safe.

“Out before dark,” he chanted. The lobster thing screeched behind him but he ignored it.

“Out before dark, out before dark.”

Each breath was tearing his lungs a little more, and his head was forced down.

He was no longer running over flat rock; the street had turned to human bones. Skulls and femurs exploded under his boots, almost tripping him up, but he kept his balance and ran.

Sky neighed, and before he could think, he was staring into the window of the telegraph office. The horse was there, but she was not alone.

Good horsey. Good horsey.

Something enormous had her wrapped up in dripping tentacles. Whatever had her was so large that it barely fit in the building. The walls were jutting out slightly, and dark blood was dripping between the cracks. Sky gave one last holler and disappeared underneath wet ink-black skin that left a trail of slime on the window.

Good horsey. Good horsey.

Something grabbed August’s ankle. He yelped, tore himself free, and ran out of Thorn River.

The coin danced in his pocket.

Behind him, the sun went out.

August ran until his legs gave out. He fell and when nothing grabbed him, he opened his eyes.

Thorn River watched from every window. If there were monsters or Wendigos or devils lurking there, they were hiding. The roads were once again flat stone.

From where he had fallen in the grass, August could see Thorn River Savings and Loans standing in the darkness. There was a lantern flickering inside, and a silhouette with glowing green eyes was standing in the window.

The figure was waving for him to come back.

August turned and ran. A high thin laugh echoing in his ears.

submitted by /u/More_Pop [link] [comments] via Blogger https://ift.tt/2HPhI5Y

[olenhinchcliffe-blog]

20 House From Cards Easter Eggs.

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[outofnecessity]

A Circle of Temporaries Piece 3 : Indicator

Read Piece 1 and Piece 2 first!

“You promised to let me go!” Her voice echoes from the cage. She’s close to the ground, on her hands and knees, the damp cold cave is no easy environment to acclimate to.

“You’ve proved to be rather disappointing and when three people manage to agree on something so easily, it’s wrong to question it.”  Khusp rubs his jaw.  The Custodian has to lift his head to do so because the filter of his gas mask hangs low. Jae can see a sliver of skin where the mask and his robes meet.  Khusp finds all this talk aggravating.  If they had let him he would have tossed her into the Rift right after Vike.  Though, Khusp wouldn’t have allowed the transient to speak at all.

The other two Custodians watch as he intimidates their prisoner.  The latest to speak of the Breaking.  They’ve run her ragged.  Her nails are broken and her hair is disheveled.  She’s been digging and running her hands through her hair.  She’s not sure if her stress level is higher when they are seated at the table or not.  And when they leave she wonders where they go to, who else they must be harassing. She’s maybe a day away from begging for the Rift.

If she can make it another day, that is.

Khusp walks back to his companions.  She can’t hear what they are saying but she knows that it can’t be good.  They are letting the one that doesn’t like talking, do all the talking.  Her mind wanders back to the day she was taken by these un-men.  The Dreamfilter aren’t considered men where she comes from. They are called Boilers.

That day at the Rift when that transient sprang up on the edge of it was the first time she heard mention of The Breaking and immediately it woke something inside of her.  She knows he fell backwards into the Rift but she doesn’t remember seeing it.

It was a waking premonition, that’s what the Boilers told her but she isn’t so sure.  There’s a feeling down in her stomach not unlike the feeling just before vomiting.  Something is going to happen.  Something that involves her.  Something painful.

The moment after that transient fell, Jae leaned to her mother, who was so delighted by the showcase, she didn’t hear what Jae had to say.  But the Boiler called Saven did.

“I know what he’s talking about.  The Breaking. He said it and I saw it.  All of this was just gone, it faded and something new came.  Are you listening?”

Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.  Saven told her that he was listening and wanted to hear more.  Because those that dream of the Breaking are special.  A rare occurrence.  He told her she was important.

He said this as Key Rixen died.  And while everyone else was chanting the new guy’s name she was led away by three Boilers. Khusp, Saven and Paeli.

Paeli is the least terrible of her captors.  He says he sent for someone to watch over her mother and Jae wants to believe him but she’s wiser than that.  She can tell them apart by the way they walk.  She’s always been considered to be quick.  In her neighborhood, the Boilers call it Downward Iris, she would be called on to play point.  People would always warn her mother that she was destined to become a transient but her mother always brushed them off.

“My Jae is too loyal for that burl.”

Transients travel around the entirety of the City because they are disloyal, fleeting and worst of all prone to violence.  The Pointers of Downward are the opposite.  There are transients in every quadrant of the City but they are more prominent in the Upside, the northern half.  Downward is considered less because the Pointers are people of preservation and camouflage.  Their efforts are not so pronounced.  The touch of a transient can be felt and seen long after they’ve moved on to their next task of their current 360.  The transients are vain, vile creatures that are both regarded and feared.  They are mere steps below Custodians.  Pointers keep Downward a quiet place.  It only looks like a slum yard.  Their well-hidden center is a hub of Downward, its secret capital: Indicator.  Pointers, unlike transients, are not born into the title.  It must be earned and the test that Indicator holds is one only the honestly perceptive can conquer.  Jae has yet to ascend the stairs to the trial.  She thinks maybe she shouldn’t have stalled.

She knows if she was capable of being a transient then her captors wouldn’t have been able to do what they did at the Rift that day.

“That day,” she thinks. “The day I saw the future.”

*****

She said I’d know it when I see it but how?  I don’t recognize the City.  Everything appears different.  Reshaped.  So how am I supposed to find whatever it is she left for me in a place that’s been altered like this?  Vike wanders into the street and looks to the sky.  Somehow you made it out.  Did I ensure that or was I just a bump along the path to your better beginning?

The City holds no answers. He knows that Albastrün is the one that holds all the cards.  The fractured, broken buildings have taken on a new light.  He can almost see the outline of their former selves.  In their honor, and memory he hopes to challenge the sky the way they once did.  He knows he’s capable of more than just stationary being.  Although many times he know he avoids that.  Vike’s spent most of his life moving and moving fast. Something inside is urging him to slow down and take it all in.  Something inside is telling him that one day it’ll all be gone.  And maybe soon.

He turns back, looking to the gap that leads to the Edge and he wonders if he should return and see what else can be seen there.  What other possible futures can he witness and mentally prepare himself for?  That’d be rushing, says the scratchy feeling in his bones.

Suddenly, the way is gone. This is how it must have felt after the star-ship crashed.  Paths people used to walk every day were destroyed by that failure.  I was just there and now I can’t ever travel that way again.  I always hoped there was more than this City and I always felt like it was possible.  Now that I know and have seen a glimpse of the something more, everything here is stale. More so than anything has ever been.

He peers down either side of the street carefully, trying to get his bearings.  He knows that left will take him to the Dreamfilter church. He knows he cannot return there, not yet.  Not without the item she left for him.  He knows that Rainer is surely keeping everyone occupied, anyway.  A pinprick of a thought enters his mind—Terig.  She’s hurt and he abandoned her but it’s also not that simple.  And if he came to her proclaiming to be her savior, he knows she’d kick his ass.  She can take care of herself.  She has so far.

“Rainer.”  He scoffs.  “First the Breaking and now this Windcept thing.  This is getting more and more involved.  Maybe I should have taken the Moth’s original offer.  But where would this world be if I had?”  Vike turns to his right and nods at the street like it’s greeting him.  He steps off of the curb onto the street made of sand and gravel.  Every step he takes he understands and mourns the height of this City, his City.  The gravel beneath his feet is made of the buildings that once stood and questioned the sky.  The buildings of the City failed where the star-ship—with his help—finally succeeded.

Life stands in opposition of the sky and the truths it hides.  Amnee and the first wave of Dreamers learned the truth of what the sky hides.  He knows, he can feel it in his bones, that he too can learn this truth.  He must.

A chill runs down his spine. He is reminded of what the Edge showed him, that dark place, a cavern maybe?  The place where three voices met or will meet to decide to murder a Dreamer.

“How can I save a person when I don’t know where they are?  Amnee, are you watching me now?  I think I need a push, some sort of vote of confidence.”

A scraping sound interrupts. He looks to his feet to see a star being drawn in the street by an invisible hand.  Constellations are pathways, bringing singular stars together.

*****

The solitary man on the rim of the Rift flashed away and suddenly there were people all the way around the ledge.  Jae heard screaming and something snarling.  She heard someone yell.  Do it now! Then they all jumped.  All of them.  Must be fifty of them.  There one instant and gone the next.  Gone into the Rift, to boil forevermore.

Someone near her says, “This must be it.  This is the Breaking.  The end of everything.”

Jae looks up.  The sky is cracking.  It’s dark and terrible.  It’s cracking like the City did before the Boilers came.  They say that out of the cracks of the destroyed City came the Boilers to banish anyone who looked to the sky fondly.  Dreams corrupt.  The stories are passed around like warnings.  Dreams blow up lives and then you’re sent, pushed, thrown into the Rift to boil.  Because no one can live with dreams and there is no cure.  Her whole life she’s wondered about dreams and dream culture. The idea of dreams doesn’t elude Jae anymore.

She is a Dreamer.

She saw the end.  The Boilers came.  They are still here.  They aren’t done with her but she’s done with them.  If the sky can change so can she.  If her mind can open and receive messages from the future then she can thwart these three men who are ashamed of their humanity.  Jae knows that she’s stronger just by embracing the truth of her being.  It was his example.  Her mother would surely lose it if Jae ever told her that she found strength in how the transient on the rim of the Rift stood up to the Boilers.  He said they are liars and she knows that to be true. These three don’t know anything. Shouldn’t they know what the Breaking is?  Why hold her captive and ask the question over and over?  She’s considered spinning them an elaborate tale but it sounds too exhausting to her.  Jae knows she needs to keep her strength up.

One of the Boilers snaps his weapon against the wooden bars that keep her locked in the corner of their meeting place.  It’s a dank cavern of a room.  Jae finds it difficult to reconcile that this is the Boiler main resting place.  It looks to her like it served some other purpose. Could it predate the Boilers? She’s never heard any story of what Iris was like before the Boilers.

“If you’re dreaming again you better let us know.”  Paeli says. He’s trying too hard.  Jae worries that the others will realize what he’s been doing.

“Paeli!  Get away from it.  Something from the River is floating in.”  Khusp turns his head to glare at her.  She thinks he’s glaring.  It’s impossible to tell behind those sinister masks.

Saven lifts his head and arms.  In a flash, he crashes down on the table.  His hands send a thud echoing through the cavern.  Jae can hear him breathing heavier and heavier.  Until he speaks.

“One of them is dead. One of the guardians of the Edge. They didn’t punish Auger, they… changed him.”

“Changed him?”  Paeli asks.

“The Rains and the River. They were corrupted by dreams, Auger was corrupted by Iris.”

“What else did the River show you?”

“It’s what we feared. Everything is different.  Do you remember when Rixen brought us here, only the three of us?”

“Yes, we were the first. Hammpin and Bolt followed us not long after.”

“He told us, explained the threat that will always exist as long as Iris survives.  Amet and Peer were an opportunity to have an early warning system but it failed.  We saw Rixen die and she saw a new version of the Breaking.  The Interloper who murdered our true Key is the least of our worries now.  They turned Auger into a beast called the Crane and he’s coming for us.  But worse than that is the one called Vike.  He lives.  And he is in direct contact with the Dreamer Homeworld.”

Her captors are silent. Jae imagines their eyes bulging out from their sockets.  Pulsing fear is what the silence feels like to her.  But she’s not afraid.  This is the opportunity she needs.  Soon their fear will transform into chaotic preparations and while they are clambering around she will be able to fully loosen the bars closest to the wall.

The bars will come loose and she will quickly and as quietly as possible shuffle under the table in the center of the room.  From there she will wait for the right moment to bolt out the cavern’s opening.  The tunnel will take her to safety.

The Breaking will not break her.

 *****

After a few minutes of cautious strolling, he passes another star on the road.  This one’s folded over the curb. It looks tired, worn out from its life of patiently waiting for the right passerby to pass by.  Vike laughs.  Passing by.  That’s really all I think I’m doing?  I changed this place.  This whole world is different because of me.

“But what about all those that died as a result?”  He says aloud.  “Would they still be alive if I died in the Rift?  Is Amnee watching me now?  How is she able to do that?”

The streets are riddled with holes where the Rains destroyed what was there.  He looks to the buildings that ebb and flow along the path he walks. They are beaten.  The faces of this City have been kicked in.

“Transient!”  An unseen man yells.

Suddenly he is swarmed by a mass of people.

A woman with a side of her face absent stands opposite him.  A fresh wound from the look of it, untreated too.  She spits in his face.

“Yer Rains claimed ma face.” The old woman barks.

Two large men grab him. The woman steps in close to the transient, a look of total disgust slathers the air between them.  No one present is able to tell just who is more disgusted.

“I laid down after watching ma daughter haul off by them Boilers and ma face slopped down right into a pool of that shit. Ya see the last time yer big idears looked to the sky, ma house was a casualty.  Then when ya jump on the Rift and speak of burl you don’t understand, you woke somethin’ in my daughter and they came.  Three of them snagged her from me while you was dancin’ and leapin’ and stirrin’ up violence like your kind does.  ‘cept you lived.  And what about her?  They surely beat the dream outta her and then ya went and made everybody dream.  That gone bring up lot more Boilers.  New awful Boilers.

“Did we ask yer help? When’s the last time anyone here in Downward asked any of yer burl-turning transients for help, huh?”

He considers, for a moment, to wiggle his way out of this.  It would be easy to take these two down and distract the rest.  Then a new face steps into his view.  A man with blood on his clothes.  Along his collar bone there’s a curious stain formation.  Vike swears it’s a star.

She is watching.

“I honestly do not recall. My mind has been tampered with, severely.  There’s no reason for you to trust me but I think we want the same thing.”

The woman stares him up and down.  “If this is more burl then you best believe we do you worse than this face.”  She rears her scarred face back, letting him only see the scarred side.

“I know that three Custodians of the Dreamfilter, you call them Boilers, are holding a girl.  She’s a Dreamer.  If I don’t get there something else will.  Problem is I don’t know exactly where they are.  I know it’s a cave or a dwelling underground somewhere maybe nearby.

“Worried they gon’ git her dead?”  She drawls.

He thinks of telling her that he’s worried about this Dreamer and wants to save her but he’s uncertain.  Who is he to say he can save anyone?  “Is there a dream circling and knocking and tormenting your mind?  We all dream now and I’m sorry I didn’t think before acting. I didn’t think it would hurt people the way it has.  If you’ve had a dream I’d like to hear about it because I think I’m supposed to help. At the very least I want to try.  After all, it is my fault.”  Vike looks down at his palms.  “These hands… are far from clean but they are good for more than just violence.  I’m not simply a transient.  Not anymore.”

It’s a gamble.  He knows it as soon as the words formed in his mind.  He looks out over the small crowd that has surrounded him.  I put this hopeless look, this dark cloud over them.  The least I can do is try to brush it away.

The woman steps toward the transient.  “Sincerity don’t come easy for you.  I can see an emptiness in your eyes.  I say, a deal kin be made here.  My dream is yours if you tell me of the longin’ I see in yer tired face.”

This is it.  Whatever I say here decides everything.  I wonder if he had a moment like this.  My predecessor.  He inhales, “You have yourself a deal.  For as long as I can remember—“

“Here?  Yer gone do this here?”  She looks out across the faces of the people that fill the street.

“Yes.  I think that the people standing in front of me want to at least understand the choice I made.  We all dream now but I’ve always had a dream.  A surreal empty experience of a dream that haunts every step I take. But it has also shown me a truth that I don’t think many understand.  I’m sure more do now but for as long as I can remember the longing you see is the longing to leave here.”

A breeze of silence tickles the hair along his arms.  The crowd is captivated.

“It’s why I went into the Rift.  I wanted answers to my dreams but mostly I wanted out of here.  I know other worlds exist and I’ve seen all of this one.  At least I thought I had.  The Rift changed me.  And then I changed this city.  It was through the longing for something new that I made this place feel new.  I didn’t realize what I was doing until I saw his face.  Albastrün. After he confirmed that everyone dreams.

“You’ve found me on this road because I am after something that will help me coax the answers I seek out of him.  A weapon unlike any other.”

“A weapon?”

“Someone has left a trail of stars for me to follow.”  He points to the bloody man’s collar bone.

“Well shit, I ain’t got to tell you no thing because you already know it.”

“What?”

“Last night I dreamed of a blossoming constellation.”  She takes the words slowly, unsure of her ability to get them out right.  “I helped guide the stream of light through each point. Each star.  And there was a voice.  It was terrible and loud but somehow kind.  It said: He will know.  He will know. Over and over it said it.  And then you came and knew of a girl in danger. My Jae.”

“Did the voice say anything else?”

“Bloomcrook.  It said the stars lead to Bloomcrook.”

Jae. It’s an unassuming name and yet there’s something about it. I know names don’t always give away the full story but I think they offer a hint.  I wonder what people think about when they hear my name or think it. More puzzling is Bloomcrook.  What could that mean?

“Hey ma, I think you broke the ‘ient.”  One of the men, a large fella with a child’s face, holding Vike attempts to shorten Transient but it comes out more like idiot.

“You’ve seen where the stars end?”  Vike asks the older woman.

“It’s burl.  I walked out to the spot this mornin’ and no thing.” She looks him up and down.  “I don’t trust you.  Rather I know I shouldn’t trust you.  Transient’s ain’t trustworthy unless they hauling slabs for ya. But you… there’s something.  I don’t know.”  She pauses again.  “Boys let ‘em go.  He ain’t gone try no thing when we all here.  He ain’t dumb.”

“Ma I think he’s real dumb.” The scruffy man-child releases Vike but only physically.  His eyes and focus remain squared on the Transient.

“Look,” Vike squares up with the man-child.  “I’m not ignorant to the reputation of transients.  It’s possible I’ve wronged you personally.  I can’t be sure because of my old Quad’s rules.  Graole always had me take a large dose of Reopolymemic.  And typically it wasn’t cut with anything. Do you know anyone that would take straight ‘memic a couple times a week?  My brain is fucked but it’s starting to come back.  Albastrün and I changed the Rains so in turn the properties of the Cariteon are different.  I don’t think it will erase what the ‘memic has done because that would be to erase me. And people can’t be erased by changing the weather.”  He can see her glaring at him and he does his best to not let it trip him up.  “I know I can’t erase or smudge the way you see me but I hope you’ll let me add to what you know and think about me.  And by all means, keep me in line.”  He finishes with a smile.

The man-child scoffs and turns away.

“You listen to him, boy. I think this one has the power to keep the City alive or… let it suffer and die.  This Albastrün fella is no Rixen and he don’t seem like the pardonin’ type.  It’s all or no thing.”

Vike looks over the crowd of fifty or so faces.  There’s no way I could destroy this world all by myself.  Let alone save it.  I can’t even find one person by myself.

The old woman stands beside him and raises her arms to the sky, addressing the crowd.  “We welcome this man, we do not ignore what he is or was but as long as honesty guides we are open to overlookin’ the burlish that comes with transients.  He claims he ain’t no transient no more but we know ain’t no things work like that. You are what you are.  Change is a river that dried up many years ago.”

“Aye Matria.”  The crowd bellows.

More people join the crowd. The street can no longer hold the crowd. It’s spilling out around Matria and Vike.  Their eyes are pleading, eagerly awaiting some speech I don’t know that I have.

He clears his throat. Matria takes a step backwards, giving him more space, more presence.  He locks his eyes on what he sees as the horizon, his mind drifting to the River and Amet.

“I’ve spent the past day or so trudging and drowning in unanswered questions.  Questions that are hooks, pulling me along.  I stand here realizing that you deserve answers as well. I gave you dreams and I know first-hand that they aren’t always pleasant dreams.  I apologize for that.  I stand here ready to hear what you have to say.  Are there things you want?  I’m sure some of you have questions.”

The crowd murmurs.  He watches as many exchange odd looks of confusion before they all return their eyes back to him.

“The Breaking.  Can you stop the Breaking?”  Someone from the back of the crowd hollers.  A handful respond, voicing their support.

“We don’t want to watch the City crumble into pieces.”  Another yells and the crowd erupts in agreement.

Vike swallows.

“Well… the Breaking is it then.”

Someone calls out from the crowd, “do you know how to stop it?”

Matria leans close and whispers in his ear.  “My Jae dreamed of the Breaking.”

His surprise beams out over the crowd and they are silent, in anticipation of his reply.  “No, but I’ve just learned who does.  The problem is I know I don’t have a lot of time and I’m supposed to be heading to another place.”  He pauses, scratching his chin and hoping no one sees through him.

“I need your help.” He tries to fight the urge to hang his head low.

Matria closes the gap between them, he knows she’s trying to comfort him but why?

“My Jae dreamed of that Breaking and them Boilers took her.  I know some of you saw something and didn’t speak up before, you was protectin’ me.  But it ain’t gon’ be me gon’ after her.  I’m sending him.”

Vike doesn’t mind the way she says it.  He thinks death might be what waits for him.  If a circle is broken then it’s just a line.  A straight line.

She continues, wincing often, he realizes it’s probably because of the wound.  Her words are increasingly sloppy and contrived, she’s pleading now.  Her face drops into her hands and she’s startled by the missing flesh.  Her phantom face.

He rests a hand on her shoulder.  “Thank you all for listening and voicing your opinions.  I’ll be around if anyone wants to share what they know or what they’ve seen in private.  We all need to share our dreams with one another.  That’s what being human is.  We are all here together and I want that to last.  So go on your way and find someone to share with.  I will do everything I can to ensure the City outlasts us.”

The crowd begins chanting, “Outlast.”  A break in the sea of people opens for Vike, Matria, and her two bodyguards to pass through. He assists her through the crowd. His lips against her ear, “is there a place we can wait?”  He’s hoping for a reprieve, any sort of reprieve.

Matria nods and lets her eyes drift out towards the horizon, telling Vike to take her forward.

After a few moments of silence pass, she manages to collect herself from her honest and very emotional time before the crowd.  She looks up at him, he’s still holding her, helping her along.  A smile breaks across her face, she winces through it.  “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“What day is that?”

“The day a transient leads us to paradise.”

“I didn’t say anything about paradise.  I don’t think I could begin to even understand the idea.”  He looks out across the ocean of faces.  Faces that look to him like he holds the key to everything, the key to their happiness and livelihood.

“Exactly.”  Matria says, rubbing her hands together to hide how they are shaking from the speech and the thoughts of her daughter dying.

“What are you talking about?”

“Your sincerity be improving.”

“And what does that have to do with paradise?”  He hears one of the men behind them make a sound.  Vike can’t be sure if it’s aimed at him or just the word but it doesn’t seem like a sound of approval.

“Paradise is sincere. There’s much to say and much burl about paradise but everyone agrees paradise is sincere.”

“Is that what you’re trying to do here?  Craft paradise?”

“Paradise ain’t crafted. Whoever told you that is the master of burl-turning.  All I’ve ever wanted was to live.  That’s what I’m doing.  You have something else in mind.  Maybe you don’t even know it.  I’ve seen a lot here in this City and I’ve seen most of its history first-hand.  I can’t compare you to anyone.  Then again I never met your predecessor so I wouldn’t know if he was like you.  Or if yer like him.”

“The Moth?  You know that’s what…”

“Don’t you go thinking little ol’ Matria is blinked by burl.  East can’t be East without West.  Same goes with North and South.  If there’s a new Key then there’s a new Moth and that’s you, boy.”

“I’m not that different from anyone else.  I’ve just seen a lot.  I’ve been all around.”

“Yer using yer past as a crutch.  We gone have to kick that if yer gone find the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Pain drives.  Some felt it and use it.  Or others kin try do everythin’ they can to not cause any pain ya see that be still driven by pain.  You ain’t a different kind of person but you aren’t the same either.  Something’s driving you.”

“What is it?”

“Sincerity.  It drives you but you think you aren’t capable of it. And you ain’t gotta believe in ol’ Matria, we gone show you how Downward finds its Pointers.”  Matria stops and looks up at the building in front of them. It’s nestled in between two old apartment buildings that have fallen on either side of it, forming a sort of arrow toward the sky.  “Welcome to Indicator.”

“How you find the Pointers?  You mean like a test?”

She holds her hand up to silence him.

He peers over his shoulder at the man-child and the man with the star stain.  If he’s still here then I guess I’m still on the right track.  If not then I’ve strayed too far to turn back.

Indicator is a rare sight. It’s a building seemingly untouched by the original flight of the star-ship.  It is shorter than the apartment buildings on either side.  Were they knocked onto it on purpose?    Vike soaks in the sight of the building.

The door into Indicator is crushed, caved in, like something or someone bashed into it.  Still it’s a sturdy looking brown double door.  Matria pushes gingerly through.  He has heard stories of flowers blossoming but he’s never seen one, yet he imagines it’s much like this.

The inside of Indicator is centered on a staircase that begins maybe ten feet from the door, it flies upward and swoops to the left, then turns in on itself before culminating directly above its beginning.  It is a sweeping S shape, inhabited by many smiling faces that are all now focused on Matria.  Silence follows her.  It’s a respectful gesture that Vike isn’t used to.  Transients only answer to those willing to pay and the ones paying are often cowering at the feet of transients.  It’s not unlike the intimidation of a Custodian.  There are some that worship and kiss the ground transients walk along.  Mostly because they’ve witnessed the terrible side of the con men of Up Iris.

From the high ceiling of the main hall of Indicator, streamers of color flutter in the breeze that the group has let in.  It’s like the river of the Edge converges here in a joyful waterfall.  There are colors that he only knows because of his time at the Edge.  He wonders if maybe there’s another place that connects to the River.  Again he tries to dig out memories of his last 360 but he only manages to get shards.  He relates to the buildings of Iris.  His greatest fear is he will be just like them: unable to repair, forced to stand forever broken.

To the right of the staircase is a collection of tables, it’s like an ancient restaurant.  Food is being served as well as drinks.  Matria nods to her bodyguards and they close the door. Each one of the large men take a single door and each of them struggle to get their door closed.  Vike shoots Matria a puzzling glance and she just smiles. The two men head for the one free table off in the back corner of the massive hall.

He remembers walking into the main area of the Moth’s underground city, the Rift Caves.  This is similar.  He’s starting to see the differences.  The variety in the city he thought he knew so well.  Transients are only skin-deep.

Matria leads him up the stairs.  She stops only to whisper to a small man a few steps up.  Vike presumes it’s about the message they sent out to the surrounding inhabitants of Indicator.  She’s confident someone knows something and just hasn’t spoken up yet.  He doesn’t share the same confidence.  And he feels like he knows quite a bit about confidence.

The men and women that linger on the staircase all smile as they pass.  He can see it’s not just an effort in politeness.  They are impressed by him.

At the top, there are three doors and another five or so at other points around the balcony that looks down on the main hall.  Matria looks sidelong at Vike.

“Three doors.”

He steps to her side. “And I can only choose one?”

“I never said transients were dumb.”  She raises her eyebrows in a quick blinking fashion.  “Which one do ya favor?”

Vike swallows.

The leftmost door appears to be hanging by a thread.  It’s not straight but he cannot see in to the cracks left by the crooked appearance.  If it’s crooked then wouldn’t light or something beam through?  Maybe it doesn’t lead anywhere?

The center door looks worn. He takes a step forward, squinting at a design near the knob.  Blood.  That’s a fucking bloody hand print.

The final option is a sturdy door.  It looks heavy, imposing like it’s keeping something in.  Or it’s keeping me out.  Maybe it’s meant to dissuade the person in my position from choosing it.  What is the purpose of this?

Matria is standing still like a statue.  It’s like she’s been turned off.  Her body exists but her person has vanished. She’s not going to help me decide.

No one else is looking his way.  The building is full of people but he’s alone.  Indicator.  An indication of life before.  And a test that indicates… what?  Each door has an indicator of what may or may lie beyond it.  But are they truthful or just based on my own perceptions of those things?

He paces starting from the right-most choice to the left.  Spinning on his left heel at the completion of each pass.  The problem is choice.  I chose to stay when I could have got on that star-ship but is that accurate?  Could I have left?

He stops at the first door, the one that remains on its hinges but it’s crooked and the door frame offers no hints as to what’s behind.  That’s the problem here.  If it actually lead anywhere I’d be able to see something through the spaces where the door doesn’t line up with the frame. It can’t be this one.  It’s not a door.

So two doors.  And one that looks like a door, maybe it was a door to somewhere at some point in time. The center door looks like someone used it to escape from something or someone.  Is it a quick exit?  I can see it the other way.  Someone came through it to escape from something and then pushed the door closed, leaving then smudging the hand print.  But wouldn’t they use both of their hands to keep it closed?  Were they carrying something?  Or maybe they only have one hand?

The door itself is worn.  It’s been used a lot.  Maybe something was kept inside?  No, it can’t be.  The first one is definitely a trick but all of them?  No way.  He shakes his head.

“It’s all a trick.”

Matria whips her head toward him.  “What did you say?”

“The first door only looks like a door.  There’s nothing beyond it so it can’t be a door.  That wasn’t too difficult to conclude.  I almost saw it immediately.  But the other two… now that’s pretty clever.”

“Explain.”  Matria is at his side now and everyone is once again focused on him.

“When I first looked at the second door, I immediately thought of someone escaping something or someone.  A narrow escape through the door, panicked hands miss the door knob and leave the stain. But once I really dug in I realized something.  It can go both ways.  Both of these doors, can be perceived two ways.  Either it keeps something in or something out, which is sort of the basic function of any door.  But these doors are paradoxical.  It’s a trick.

“If I were to open the center door, the one with the blood on it then I’d come face to face with the third door.  And if I were to go through the third door I’d end up at the second one.  I’m not sure it would work here.  I get the feeling it’s just an illustration of the paradox but it’s still a paradox.  The doors exist at opposite ends of a room.  They don’t exist next to each other like they appear here.  This choice is not a choice at all.  It’s an illusion because to choose one is to inevitably choose both.”

A look of approval glistens across her face and quickly she forces it away.  She sighs.  “Curiosity is what drove me because I didn’t believe…”   Matria looks back at the staircase and the people that are now entirely focused on her.  She knows they are waiting for that surge, the electrifying feeling to overtake them like the charged air at a Rifting.  She doesn’t have it.  Her daughter needs her and she’s playing some other girl’s game.

“What didn’t you believe?”

“Her.  I didn’t believe the voice or her plan.”

“What plan?”

“The whole thing was planned, boy.  Every moment from here back to the street.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The voice in my dream spoke to us.  Did ya really think the star stain was by accident?”

“So she did all of this?” Vike steps backward.  Not out of fear but an old reflex to steer away from the truth.

“Like ya say, dreams are powerful.  You threw us a few curveballs but that girl must really know ya.  Come, yer proven to be more than a transient.  I think yer earned some favor.”

“Favor?”

“I apologize for doubtin’ ya.  I was the one turnin’ the burl, not you.”

Vike leans toward her. His eyes ask the question before he can speak the words.

“She ain’t exactly missin’.  She ain’t here but I know where she at.”

“You know where Jae is?! But…”

“Had to be sure.  I told the voice I had to and she said it’d be all right.  She promised you would prove it all.”

“This whole time you’ve known where she is and we’ve been playing around??  What the hell is wrong with you?”

Matria smacks him.

“Boy, remember where you are.  This is my house.  My city. There was no thing we could do.  I ain’t sure there is any thing you can do.”

“But you said you were sending me.  You told your people that.”

“Because of the voice. She gotta know more than ol’ Matria. I kin trust in that.  But when she said I had to put my trust in a transient… I needed proof.  And my Jae is a Pointer. I know it.  I know she kin care for herself.  She ain’t been proven but I know she a Pointer.”

“Why haven’t you gone after her?”

Matria laughs.  It’s a large, deep sound like something is making its way out of her stomach and up her throat.  “I couldn’t face yer Rains and ya think I kin hold my own ‘gainst three Boilers?”  Her laughing continues.

He shakes his head. His eyes drift toward the crowd along the stairs.  They aren’t paying any attention to Matria or him.  But he knows if he were to make some move against her that they’d strike. They are watching, stealthily.

They aren’t impressed that he “solved” the doors.  They were probably hoping I’d get it wrong.

Matria finally collects herself and nods toward the stairs.  They make their way down the stairs, and over to the table where her bodyguards are sitting.  Not one person looks toward Vike but he feels like he’s being stared upon.  A cold shoulder stare.

The man-child greets Vike. “Hey glad you got it.  I didn’t wanna have to kill ya.”  He slides a glass across to him.

“Ain’t no time for that, Spinner.  Tell him what he needs to know to get to the cave.”

The man-child finishes his drink and clears his throat.  “When the star-ship took off, the first time, my parents…  There’s a spot I go not far from here that reminds me of them.  I’ve had to shift the rocks a few times but it’s mostly untouched since that day.  A lot of things around these parts are untouched since that day.  And when you was causing a ruckus at the Rift, I was off in my little spot.

“I had seen Boilers around there before but only one or two at a time.  When I heard Jae was lead off by 3 of ‘em I figured they must be over there. If Ma says so I’ll show you to it. I followed the three of them and it’s not exactly a cave.  It’s more like a crypt.  Secrets are buried there.”

“The Dreamfilter Crypt. It has a nice ring to it.”

“Ain’t nothing nice ‘bout them Boilers.”  Matria butts in.

“Ah but you haven’t met the ones I have.  Terig is actually pretty surprising.”

She ignores him. “Spinner you show ‘em to the crypt and get my daughter back.  And Vike, you take what she knows and make good on your promises.  Somebody’s always watchin’.”

 Spinner leads the transient away from Indicator.  No one follows.  Not a single person looks twice at them.

Silence walks with them. This is how it must feel to be escorted to your death.  Vike’s hand remains steady on the cross emblem upon his hip.  He spins it there, keeping his hand occupied.  Letting his mind go quiet.  He knows this walk is a perfect opportunity to rest as best he can. There’s no telling what may wait for them at the crypt.

He doesn’t look for hidden stars as they walk because he understands their meaning now.  He asked for help and got it.  It wasn’t what he thought he wanted or needed but Amnee surely sees more than he can.

His mind begins to run in autopilot.  It is moving but his person has gone away.  Drifted into a dream…

A smell floats into Vike’s nostrils.  It’s familiar but he can’t place it, the word escapes him.  Until, suddenly it’s there: grass.  Freshly cut grass.  He inhales deeply.

“This is the park.  I… remember this.”  He’s startled by the revelation even though he’s been thinking and saying his mind has been getting better.  He isn’t sure he believed it until just now.

The sun sparkles.  He can feel it along the back of his neck. A wafting new scent invades his nostrils.  His mind brings the word forward, automatically: sunscreen.

“Okay!  Done!”  A small peppy voice erupts.  “Come onnnnnn!  You promised to push me.”

He follows the sound of the small girlish voice to a structure of piping.  Swing-set, his mind provides.  A girl sits on one of the three swings.  She untangles one of her pigtails from the chain of the swing.

“Come on daddy! Please?”

The word hits like a ton of bricks.  Daddy. His heart flutters like it is a bird trying to escape a cage and he realizes that that is pretty accurate.  I don’t just want to get out.  I want to fly.

He approaches her and gently pushes her back.  She calls for more.  He obliges and watches her lift higher and higher, cackling laughter the whole way. A smile breaks across his face.  I’m soaring.

She turns around to face him.

He gasps.  “Amnee.”

“I’m sorry for invading your old fantasy, Just Vike.  I wanted to talk to you and tell you that I’m so proud of you.  And I didn’t want to overwhelm you or Spinner.  He didn’t like when I spoke to him before.”

Vike stumbles backward.

“Didn’t you want to talk to me?”  She asks as she bounces off the swing.  “This is a fantasy.  A different kind of dream, one you haven’t experienced in a long time.  Can you remember the last time, Just Vike?”

“It was before. Before she…”

“I know it’s hard and that’s why I arranged Indicator for you.  I wanted you to see yourself how I see you.  I dreamt of you before you came, before Glarm and I met you.  I dreamt of a man that would take me to another place. I dreamt of a man that could mean as much to me as my father should.  Isn’t that strange?  We are the surrogate each of us needs.”

“Mine must be true too.”

“Your dream?  Yeah it’s important and you can’t hide from it forever.”

“Hide?  I’m not hiding from it.”

“But you definitely are. You’re exhausted but you refuse to sleep because when you sleep you fall and fall and the questions strangle you. When you do finally sleep, I hope you’re able to get to the bottom of your dream.”

“How do you know so much? All that stuff with Indicator, that was a big plan and I’m not sure that it worked.”

Vike blinks and the swing-set is gone.  He’s standing, hunched over with his right hand under the seat of another odd shape of piping.  Bicycle, his mind supplies.  He can hear himself asking the young girl on the seat if she’s sure, if she’s ready. She insists she is.  He can trace the source of his beaming smile from his throat to his heart and outward to her.  This is what stars must feel like when someone decides they fit together in a constellation.  Aligned in flight.

He lets go.  Her feet wobble on the pedals for a moment and the bicycle teeters.  He cringes. Her feet steady.  She’s soaring across the pavement.  Her head flies back in a cheer.  “Daddy, do you see?  I’m doing it! I’m really doing it!”

A tiny tear escapes his eye as he agrees with her.  It skitters along his cheek, reflecting the golden sunlight.  He doesn’t dare wipe it away.  Nothing can wipe away this confirmation.  He cherishes the feeling it represents.

The bicycle turns toward him and the face of the girl is once again Amnee’s.

“I told you the sky was important.  Thank you for giving me my first glimpse of it.”

“Why am I seeing this?”

“Your brain is healing itself.  It takes time because of all the Reopolymemic you’ve been exposed to but it is working. You’re getting better.  Do you feel more like yourself?”

“I feel like I’m just now getting to know myself.  I understand now why I became a transient.”

“You do?”  She sounds surprised.

“Between that and the ‘memic, I was medicating myself.  The crippling loss of… her.  It should have killed me.  If this is an old fantasy like you say then I must have wanted to be a father more than anything else.  I’m almost afraid to remember more.”

“I wish I could shield you from it but you’re going to have to remember.  It’s important.”

“What are you preparing me for?  What aren’t you telling me?  Is it possible to save Jae?”

“I don’t know the future, Just Vike.  I only know what I can see.  And I’m doing my best to guide you to your goal.  I can’t wait to see you again.”

“What about your mom?”

“Huh?  Where did that come from?”

“Sometimes it sounds like you think you don’t have anyone.  Where is your mother?  Is she okay?”

“I hear she’s doing better but I can’t.  I refuse to. You need me more than she does.”

“No, Amnee.  That’s your mother.  You need to go see her.”

A hush falls over them.

“Amnee, I’m glad you’re able to guide me along this journey.  But you can’t neglect your mother, she needs you too.”

“I’m supposed to help you, Just Vike.  It was part of my dream.”

“You have a responsibility to your family.”

“Okay okay.  I’ll go.  I promise.  But you have to get to Bloomcrook before someone else finds it.”

“First, the crypt then Bloomcrook.”

“Be careful, Just Vike.”

“Thank you Amnee. Talk to you once I get it.”

She livens up. “Okay!  Bye!”

He watches as the young girl rolls over in her bed, the covers up tight against her chin.  The fluttering of his insides returns and he closes his eyes, soaking in every bit of the feeling.

A slippery fleshy sound stirs his mind awake.  He opens his eyes to find they have travelled a decent amount of distance in his odd sort of absence.

The sweat catches and sloshes in Spinner’s hands as he rubs them together.  He looks at Vike, hoping he isn’t paying attention but he knows transients see more than most people.  “My palms… they really sweat when I’m nervous.”

“What is there to be nervous about, Spinner?”  He’s hiding something, I can taste it.  Maybe it’s just the sweat but… no.  It’s something else.

“I… uh… lied.  Yeah, I lied to you before.”

“About why you wanted to come along?”

“The whole thing.  The Separation took my parents not the star-ship.” He stops.  The transient places a hand on his shoulder.  Spinner inhales.  “I’ve never told anyone this before.”

“I understand you don’t like me and you probably don’t trust me but we’re here and trust is a process that has to start somewhere.  Anything we talk about will stay between us.  Hell we could be marching to our deaths.”

He laughs.  “I don’t think so.  We’re going to live because my father will look over us.”

“How can you know that?” Vike asks, knowing that there is at least one person looking over them.

“When I dream, I dream of his voice.  I’m lucky that I got to hear it at all before they found out.  I guess I owe those other ones that turned for that.  The original Custodians.”

“Spinner, you don’t have to carry anything all on your own.  To share your dreams is to give birth to a piece of yourself.  It gives it wings.  It’s not about unloading, it’s about evening out the weight.  And being connected.  Or else it’s all for nothing and you’ll fly around in circles, never reaching your goals or the heights you look up to.”  The words leave his lips and he realizes he’s also talking to himself. Maybe solely for himself.  That’s the problem here.  Dreaming isn’t where this place has gone wrong.  It’s there’s nothing to look up to.  Nothing reaches for the sky, it’s immeasurably distant.  Iris is trapped at this one height and so these new Dreamers can’t see beyond that because they don’t realize it’s possible.  That possibility left.

“My father was part of the Separation.  He was one of the Dreamfilter, before they were called that.  And before they wore those masks.  I remember the day they came for him.  I don’t know how since I was so young.  I always considered it a dream.”

“Why did they come for him?”

“My mother was a Dreamer.” Spinner’s eyes drift away and along the horizon.  “The Dreamfilter were too busy dealing with the other two that were exiled, that’s how I am alive.  My father was able to sneak away and watch over my mother in secret.”

“You must have been really young when they came.  How can you remember?”

“It’s the screams.  I remember how the room felt, the sounds and the thickness of it all.  It branded me.  The tragedy of losing both parents in one moment.”

“How do you live with it?”

“What?  What kind of question is that?”

“I’m sorry, I just.” Vike pauses, wishing he could take it back.  “I can sort of relate.  Until a few moments ago, I was sort of asleep.  I dreamt of an old fantasy that I used to have, used to know and wish for.  I know it sounds crazy but the effects of my life as a true blue transient are passing.  I’m.”  He stops and laughs.  “I’m breaking free of that cocoon.  I guess the title is fitting, I’ve made it my own.  The Moth.”

“I’m not sure I’m getting it.  You can’t just decide you aren’t a transient anymore.  Doesn’t matter what happens inside Indicator.”

“Who says?  All these rules that the City has aren’t pillars or laws that hold anything up.  It was all made up.  And I have my own ideas on how things should be.”  His blood is pumping.  He’s excited and optimistic.  Rejuvenated.

“I don’t know Vike.  I mean thank you for pushing me to open up. I haven’t really felt like a person in a long time, I know most see me as a big kid but preserving that is important, I think.”

“Because your parents?”

Spinner nods.  “You are interesting.  The more you speak, the more I see you don’t really fit my idea of transient but that’s not up to me.”

“Why not?”

“I’m nobody.”

“That’s not true. You’re the child of a Dreamer and a Boiler.  You’re proof that the rules can be broken.”

“I never—” Spinner puts his pointer finger to his lip.  He crouches down and Vike follows suit.  He can tell that Spinner sees something but isn’t sure what.  Then he sees it.

Blood.

A fresh spray of blood and a scrap of black fabric.  Spinner mouths: Boiler.

They find cover by a dilapidated pavilion.  The roof of the thing has collapsed into a wall about six feet high at its peak.  If need be, they can run around it either way. Vike knows better than to get them backed into a corner.  Although to get to Jae they are going to do just that.

Spinner points across the street to a hole.  Then he nods.

One building collapsed into another, creating a sort of twisted tunnel.  His eyes widen.  There’s a sound coming from across the street.  A sound coming from that hole.  A sound he’s heard before.

Snarling.

  To be continued in…

PIECE 4: Bloomcrook – Coming April 2017

 Downloadable PDFs available @ https://edwardkane.me

[thefabulousfulcrum]

WHY THE LEFT-WING NEEDS A GUN CULTURE

via DiversityOfTactics

Posted on January 21, 2017 by Lorenzo Raymond

 “We become depressed when we look around and see 1100 white supremacist militia groups, and some of our names at the top [of their kill lists]! You say ‘Oh my god, they got 1100 right-wing militia groups—how many left-wing ones we got?’  ‘Well, we’re working on our journal…’  I got nothing against journals, but it’s lopsided!’” 

– Cornell West, Left Forum 2014 keynote address

“When you are attacked by a rabid dog you don’t run or throw away the walking stick you have in your hand.” 

– Gloria Richardson, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organizer, Cambridge, Maryland, July, 1964 ¹

 We live in a historical moment where everything seems upside down. A proto-fascist seemingly despised by the political establishment has ridden into the White House. That same establishment is now squirmingly trying to accommodate itself to that which it formerly despised. Social media—once thought of as the domain of lefty social justice warriors—turned out to be the far-right’s pathway to power. And while the reactionary candidate praised “the common man,” the liberal candidate gave secret speeches to Wall Street.

Now is the time to reconsider long-held preconceptions, as they embody precisely the thinking which led us to this point—this point where hate crimes against minorities are growing, and economic and ecological hopes are rapidly shrinking. At a juncture where liberals’ wholesale denunciation of “violence” and “gun culture” are revealed to have done nothing to reduce either one, the Left needs to disentangle the issue of oppressive force from that of necessary self-defense against oppressive force.

Brutality against minorities is escalating in the aftermath of the election, and we can only imagine what level it will reach as the Trump administration entrenches itself. Reports of attacks are too numerous to recount here, but the recent murders of a famous Black athlete (Joe McKnight) a young Black musician (Will Sims) and a 15-year old Black boy (James Means) are the most notable manifestations of the racist terror which is growing across the country. As the federal exoneration of George Zimmerman demonstrates, a state crackdown on such murders has never been in the cards, and will be even more remote under the Trump regime.

Reports from the BBC and other major news outlets show that gun ownership in the Black community has begun to grow in recent years. A Pew survey shows at least 54 percent of African-Americans have a favorable view of firearms, up from just 29 percent in 2012. The last poll was taken in 2014—in the years since then, a Southern Christian Leadership Council official has publicly called for armed self-defense, and Black Twitter, in the face of the Charleston massacre, has trended the hashtag #WeWillShootBack—so today the figures are likely higher.

Is the growing black gun movement succumbing to blind emotion and sowing the seeds of destruction? A look at progressive African-American history would suggest not. Although many sectors of the Left prefer to ignore it, there is now a small bookcase of academic studies with names like This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. The importance of these studies is far from academic, however. They redefine our understanding of the most important American social movement of the past fifty years.

One of the first arenas of that struggle was the campaign to expose lynching in Mississippi, specifically the 1954 murder of Emmett Till. The key organizer of that campaign, TRM Howard, not only carried guns for his own protection, but made sure that there were armed guards at all times around campaign spokespeople like Mamie Till. After the rise of Martin Luther King, nonviolence became the image of civil rights, but this nominally pacifist movement never renounced its right to bear arms. When the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to the Deep South to organize, they encountered a vigorous Black gun culture among those who were prepared to campaign for equality. Fannie Lou Hamer, legendary founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), told one interviewer that, “I keep a shotgun in every corner of my bedroom and the first cracker even look like he wants to throw some dynamite on my porch won’t write his mama again.” Prior to the MFDP’s work, voter suppression of African-Americans was the rule in Mississippi, but after its ascendance in the late 1960s, Blacks had full ballot access and the Klan was in retreat. The Mississippi movement represents the most effective organizing of the post-war Left; Their policy on armed self-defense can teach us a great deal, particularly as the whole country begins to feel more and more like the Jim Crow South.

But aren’t guns inherently oppressive, reactionary and patriarchal? This idea has found currency in the years since the end of the civil rights movement, but the years since the civil rights movement haven’t been especially good for the Left. From Jimmy Carter to Obama—not to mention from Reagan to Trump—the US has steadily slid to the Right in all but the most superficial ways. In place of working-class activists like Fannie Lou Hamer, we’re now led by pseudo-working-class celebrities like Michael Moore, who cemented the gun control consensus with his sensationalized documentary Bowling for Columbine. Just as Moore denounces the Democratic Party in three year cycles but always comes back to them at election time, his film admitted that there are more important factors contributing to violence than guns, but finally dumped the whole problem at the feet of the NRA. It is revealing that the very same Hollywood establishment that gave Moore an Oscar for Bowling for Columbine proceeded to boo him at the ceremony for opposing the Iraq War. For them, gun control has nothing to do with genuine peace, but everything to do with an orderly and centralized capitalist empire.

It’s inevitable that liberals’ perception of guns is formed hegemonically through the mainstream news media, despite the Left’s claim to be skeptical of it. While such outlets often tell us that guns kill 33,000 people per year in the US, we’re seldom reminded that alcohol kills over 80,000, and prescription drugs kill a devastating 120,000 each year. This may have something to do with the fact that pharmaceutical companies give corporate media over $5 billion per year in advertising, alcohol companies spend $2 billion on the same, and gun manufacturers comparatively nothing. The conventional liberal wisdom is that gun advocates make up for this in lobbying dollars, but shockingly, prescription opioid manufacturers alone spend eight times more courting politicians than the NRA does. Perhaps the gun lobby would like to spend more, but as The New York Times once acknowledged, “guns are a relatively small business in the United States.”

Some liberals sincerely believe that gun control will bring us closer to a humane society, of course, but there’s little in the history of gun regulation anywhere in the world to support that theory. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats often hold up Australia’s compulsory gun buyback as a model, but decades after the confiscations, Australian society is not any kinder: The country maintains a level of economic inequality comparable to the US, and has a growing prison population. As in the US, a disproportionate number of these prisoners are immigrants and ethnic minorities. Recently video leaked out of Australian guards torturing a 14 year-old Aboriginal boy. Contrary to prominent liberals’ implications, an anti-gun culture like Australia’s just doesn’t inspire much in the way of anti-racist, anti-nationalist, or anti-capitalist culture and policy. Likewise there is no evidence that gun culture precludes a progressive society—the pioneering open-carry state of Vermont has elected Bernie Sanders to the US congress for twenty years. The autonomist Kurds of Northern Syria, “the most revolutionary women’s rights movement in the world,” according to The Independent, are explicitly armed.

The Left’s gag reflex at the Second Amendment is a Pavlovian one, conditioned by mainstream liberals’ association of gun rights with conservatism. But the unilateral disarmament of the American Left is a recent development. Eugene Debs, reputed to be the hero of Bernie Sanders, responded to the 1914 Ludlow Massacre by urging labor activists to acquire “enough Gatling and machine guns to match the equipment of Rockefeller’s private army of assassins…The constitution of the United States guarantees to you the right to bear arms, as it does to every other citizen…” Howard Zinn wrote that “Thousands of dollars were sent for arms and ammunition,” to the Colorado miners from union halls across the country. The post-World War I era collapsed the labor movement across the board, but when it roared back in the early 1930s, it was ushered in by armed miners in campaigns like the Harlan County War (Urban unions hired mobsters to do armed defense against strikebreakers in this period, most likely because gun control laws prevented them from doing it themselves). It was this militant labor resistance that created the New Deal.

FOREWARNED BUT NOT FOREARMED

At the climax of the razor-close presidential contest of 2000, the Florida Election Commission ordered a hand recount of Miami-Dade County to decide between George W. Bush and Al Gore. As the election workers attempted to begin their task, a mob of Bush supporters stormed into theoffices and physically shut down the recount. This episode was dubbed “The Brooks Brothers Riot” because it involved a straight-laced group later revealed to be Republican Congressional staffers. The recount was never restarted, and we wouldn’t learn until after W.’s inauguration that Gore had actually won the decisive state of Florida. As Rachel Maddow once acknowledged, “The single most important piece of the history of the Brooks Brothers Riot is that it worked.” Participants weren’t prosecuted, and some of them later listed the mob action on resumes to conservative institutions.

We can expect many more Brooks Brothers Riots in the coming years. The Florida episode was organized by thuggish GOP operative Roger Stone, who is now one of Donald Trump’s confidantes and campaigners. But it’s unlikely that Trump’s mobs will be as button-down as the Bush brigade, and it’s also unlikely that they’ll be unarmed. An atmosphere of gun-toting far-right intimidation hung over the Republican National Convention and even Election Day itself in 2016.  In the lead-up to the RNC, Roger Stone rallied supporters of the real estate mogul to provoke personal “confrontation” with anti-Trump delegates. During the convention, armed proto-fascist protesters stalked the streets. As the November election approached, Trump made veiled threats of assassination in the event that he lost, while his supporters, including Kentucky governor Matt Bevin, were more explicit, directly calling for bloodshed if Clinton won. These credible threats of armed rebellion may well have been a factor in low voter turnout and the final decision of the Electoral College.

Meanwhile, the audacity of right-wing militias continues to grow. The Bundy family’s movement has now marched through multiple states undermining hard-won environmental protections. They’ve faced relatively little resistance from government, with Ammon and Ryan Bundy’s charges for taking over a federal building at gunpoint ending in acquittal. The New York Times writes that this outcome “puts a target on the backs” of conservation workers. We can expect lots of targets on people’s backs in the coming years: The level of neofascist impunity is now at a point where Jon Ritzheimer, the most openly racist player in the Bundy circle, is withdrawing his guilty plea for armed extortion in spite of the immense amount of evidence against him. With Jeff Sessions set to be confirmed as Attorney General,  why should white power terrorists have anything to fear from the government? As Masha Gennsen famously wrote of a Trump presidency, “Institutions will not save you.”

If leftists believe they are accomplishing anything by personally boycotting guns, it’s not working either politically or culturally. Whether pacifists like it or not, bearing arms is a US citizenship right—and has been a citizenship right for most of our history. If conservatives have successfully claimed this privilege, then it makes no sense for the Left to disarm itself and unilaterally renounce the Second Amendment. The Right won’t follow their example, but will instead briskly proceed to consolidate their monopoly on non-state force. There are ample signs that progressives are coming to understand this. The Liberal Gun Club, a national organization with nine chapters, reports a surge in membership since the election; a more radical local group, the Phoenix John Brown Gun Club, has a long track record of promoting armed defense against white supremacists in Arizona.

While left-wing self-defense won’t make the country any more dangerous, it is likely the only hope of making it safer. The genie of violent neofascism is out of the bottle. It’s an outgrowth of the shrinking of old economic horizons, which in turn is partly a result of now-irreversible climate change. The years of living dangerously are here to stay. The only question is will those of us who value an egalitarian internationalist community survive them. This doesn’t mean that leftists ought to shoot at common racists, much less at authorities, merely because of political differences. The majority of activity should continue to be nonviolent direct action. But as social movement analyst Francis Fox Piven has noted, guns can “be used strategically, and often defensively to permit the disruptive action, the withdrawal of cooperation, to continue” in the face of right-wing vigilantism.² This is how the Black freedom movement of the Deep South faced open white supremacy the last time. Contrary to the warnings of mainstream liberalism, historian Robin DG Kelley found that “armed self-defense actually saved lives, reduced terrorist attacks on African-American communities, and laid the foundation for unparalleled community solidarity.“

The Left is correct to denounce the right-wing’s fetishization of brute force, but we are getting nowhere mirroring it with an equally crude fetishization of vulnerability. We can no longer dream that the Electoral College, or a CIA coup, or a safety pin, is going to save us in the age of brutal white power reaction. We must recognize that dissidents and oppressed people are on their own for the next four years—and possibly longer—and must take defense and security into their own hands. When racists and fascists declare “open season,” we will not allow innocent people to be the prey. We must vow to protect each other by any means necessary.

 Kwame Ture and Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Simon and Schuster, 2003), pg 339-340

“Local activists in the South armed themselves to defend the nonviolent disruptions of the civil rights movement,” Piven notes in her next sentence. Francis Fox Piven, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), pg. 25

[wearenorthernlights]

Writing Prompt 003 // Aunt Edna

Your wealthy Aunt Edna has died and left you all of her money. At first you’re excited, as you’ve been living paycheck-to-paycheck your whole life, and this newfound money offers you endless possibilities. But, in her will, Aunt Edna left one big catch - and if you don’t do it, all of the money is to...

Aunt Edna, god bless her, was a bit of a mystery. In a family dominated by skint people, those who use their wallets to store moths, she was stupendously wealthy. She would flit briefly in and out of our lives. My Auntie June was swift to say it was to rub our noses in it, rich coming from a woman who took any chance to turn her nose up at anyone and everyone she deemed to be below her. June would only find her nose bent out of shape when Edna swooped in.

There were copious rumours about the source of her wealth. Indeed, her husband was very well off, but rumours suggested she had secured a hefty payout from a co-conspirator in an affair, a man who had a lot to lose should their affair shift from the private to the public realm. Others said she was a master gambler, a horse whispered of sorts, making fortunes in the grandstands at racetracks decked out in her finery, sipping gin and tonics all the while.

Her death was just as rumour laden, but she did die on a yacht with no one else aboard, only being found when her husband had not seen her for two days and had no inkling of her whereabouts. Such a death is only invites rumours. The will that so many waited for with greed and glee bestowed a hefty sum of money upon me. I don’t know what action I did to deserve such charity in her death. The sum was so vast I could not believe it was just a ‘portion’ of what she was worth. 

The days of working in a call centre were over for me. No more frightful spells of poverty as my pittance of a wage ran out a week before the next instalment was due. The money came with just one caveat, it could not be used to buy love, and a guardian was tasked with haunting me to ensure that was the case. He had the power to revoke Edna’s charity, by interpretation of Edna’s wishes.

Threats had been made when I had, drunkenly, offered to take a woman on a holiday in a night club. Henry had tapped my shoulder, and shook his head. I tried to reason it was not about love, but lust. This argument did not hold water, by the time I admitted defeat, and turned to begin round two with the girl she was gone. Henry had pulled me up on a fairly regular basis. When I showed off my Ferrari car keys a little too much in front of a table of women in a bar, or when I flashed too many notes in a shop when buying my new suit. I always argued against these objections of his. He explained it to me like this; ‘If you begin from the view point that love at first sight does not exist, then you’re breaking the rule. In forming a foundation or interest via money, should you both fall in love, it was ignited by money.’

I’d all but given up on trying to find love. It was too much of a minefield in itself, never mind having to traipse through barbed wire to get there. I also wasn’t going to return to my old life, answering the stupidest questions from the most superior sounding of people. I would die a wealthy bachelor. I had managed to secure the lust aspect. When buying drinks for women I would produce just one fifty pound note. This was acceptable for Henry, but I bought so many rounds that this steady stream of fifties would heighten the interest of some. Drunken fumbles are not love though. 

I was in the process of getting myself drunk, Henry as ever, was at my side with his out of fashion three piece suit and hat on his knee, saying little or nothing. ‘You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.’ said this girl who appeared before me. ‘I’m not, I can’t buy love, but I’m too stupid to figure out a way around his constant rules.’ The girl looked at Henry with disapproving, gorgeous green eyes. ‘Why are you making him walk the tight rope of love and money, he’ll only ever see the pitfalls, not the right roads.’ ‘Aunt Edna’s wishes.’ This answer only furrowed her brow further as she slipped in beside me. ‘I’ll help you figure a way around it.’ We sat there and colluded to bring Henry down, loud enough so we could hear each other over the music, and Henry could hear too. We plotted our clandestine ploy, drank ourselves into a stupor, arguing over who was up next for the round as we lost track. Danced, or rather trod on each other toes, to the sound of the music. ‘I’m out of money,’ I said. Patting my wallet, I had only planned on drinking myself. ‘Me too, I left my card in my bag.’ The bag which her friend had grudgingly agreed to take home as Sophie and I decided the wee hours of the night were needed to finalise our plan. ‘I could give you money, when I get home, but it’s quite a walk...’ ‘I like to walk.’ And we did, walked by our drunken colleagues, pinched chips from happy drunks, as our poverty prevented us from procuring our own. The streets around us were soon deserted, but not quiet, as we spoke, laughed and sang our way home.

We began the final leg of our journey, the steps leading to my front door, but only two sets of feet ascended. I turned to see Henry at the bottom, raising his hat in a salute. ‘Take care, Stephen, I don’t think I need enforce Edna’s wishes anymore. Have a good evening.’ Henry walked off, whistling the cheeriest tune i’d ever heard. ‘He thinks we’re in loooove,’ said Sophie. ‘He’s usually right.’ ‘Yeah? I think he might be too.’

// Written in 29 minutes //