#household: ardor

[sometownie]

Whitewave Ardor household V part 2 of 2: Happy? family

Toini and Valdemar host a little party to celebrate their wedding anniversary and the launching of Toini's clothing line. Unfortunately (to some) Valdemar hasn't been too careful with his endeavours, and her most recent lover Aada catches him making out in the bathroom with Lemon Farwood. Fortunately (to Valdemar) Aada forgives very quickly and the two are back to old habits very quickly.

Titus has also caught their father red-handed now twice: First with Aada, and later with Lemon. At least they aren't aware of Babette yet... Titus is quickly losing relationship points with their dad, while Valdemar's wife Toini is completely unaware of everything that's going on. For now.

At the end of the round, Viola grows up to a child!

[ddarker-dreams]

Be Still My Bleeding Heart.

Yan Zhongli x God Reader.

[The First Contract index]

Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, power imbalance o'clock. Word count: 2k.

“I’ve heard you’ve been frequenting the Stone Gate.”

Zhongli’s way of speaking is best compared to a geode. Seemingly insignificant upon initial viewing, but once cracked open, you’ll find yourself enthralled by the contents within. There’s so much to dissect and digest. You’ve become fluent in his language throughout the centuries. It wasn’t always a necessary skill. He matured with each passing millennia, his mannerisms aging like a fine wine, though they became no easier to swallow.

Gone were the days of him using brute force to tackle his way through every challenge waiting before him. He’s patient with enough cunning to match.

You almost miss how simple it once was to get a read on your husband. It requires a great deal more effort now, a resource you’d prefer to expend anywhere else than on him.

“I have,” you don’t see the point in lying. “Do you take issue with the fact?”

“That remains to be seen.”

You’d sigh, but even that feels like you’d be giving him too much. You keep your lips pursed to rectify this. He could be so obstinate about the most trivial details. That element of himself has remained consistent since time immemorial. All you wanted was to take a pleasant stroll through Yuehai Pavilion before returning to your usual activities, yet it seems that’s asking for too much.

Zhongli was waiting when you ascended the steps, his hands folded behind his back, warm amber eyes rivaling the sunset in its intensity. They softened for a mere instant, whatever non-issue you were inevitably about to get reprimanded over temporarily slipping his mind. Sickeningly sweet affection poured forth like vaults of honey, suffocating you in thick layers. You weighed the merits of turning around and venturing elsewhere, then remembered this fabled ‘elsewhere’ doesn’t exist.

He might be testing mortal life, but that doesn’t make Liyue any less of his domain than it was when the Yakshas were greater in number and the adepti gathered for banquets at the Guili Assembly. He could follow you anywhere, you can’t control that. You can, however, control how bad of a mood he’ll be in when he finds you.

Presently, Zhongli places an unwelcome hand on your shoulder, the gesture that was meant to comfort you worse than the spears chaining Osial down to an abyssal depth.

“I hope this isn’t a consequence of us living amongst the people of the Harbor.”

In the same way you are attuned to him, Zhongli is an uncontested expert in all things concerning you. His fervor is born from ardor whereas yours stems from a place of self-preservation. There is no side of you he hasn’t seen, no angle he hasn’t committed to memory with the zeal of a religious fanatic. His seemingly infinite reservoir of knowledge frightens you. There are times when you wonder if he knows you better than you know yourself.

This is further evidence of the possibility.

“… What do you mean by that?”

Zhongli raises an eyebrow. “My heart, please, don’t play dense. We both know you’re anything but. Something’s been troubling you ever since we’ve taken up residence here. I knew it wouldn’t be an easy adjustment, but if this is proving too detrimental for your wellbeing, I’ll have to take appropriate measures.”

You place your hands on the railing in front of you, leaning forward ever so slightly. The wind catches in your hair, carrying the familiar scent of the ocean and dinner being cooked by households awaiting the return of their loved ones. The day draws to a close. You hear laughter, the sound of children playing; two boys struggling to keep up with a little girl who goads them on. This lively scene cannot be found atop Mt. Hulao or any other secluded area you’d be held prisoner in if he thinks it best.

“You take on everyone’s burdens,” Zhongli disregards the view in favor of examining your side profile. You know which one he finds more picturesque. “I adore and fear that trait of yours. I knew there’d be no avoiding it, as it’s embedded in your nature, but I didn’t anticipate you getting this attached.”

“You’re exaggerating the severity of things.”

“Am I?” There’s a slight challenge in his voice you can’t bring yourself to match. “I heard you requested Xiao’s assistance in finding a little girl’s lost doll. An expedition that took multiple days of our Conqueror of Demons’ time.”

“Children are Liyue’s future — I’m doing my part to ensure their happiness.”

“Last week, I found you lecturing a gentleman who voiced dislike of Xinyan’s music. It took you an hour for you to notice my presence. Another hour to let him leave.”

“It was a civil discussion, not a lecture. I left room for him to interject if he had anything worthwhile to say. It isn’t my fault he became tongue-tied when his brutish behavior was confronted.”

“You recently asked me to reshape a mountain range so that Qiqi would have easier passage on her herb-collecting journeys.”

“Are you not the one who once promised me you’d ‘shift the sun’s placement in the sky’ if I ever found it unsatisfactory?”

Zhongli coughs into his gloved hand to hide his embarrassment. “I… was young then. My prose reflects that.”

“2,500 hardly qualifies as young, old man.”

“It does for beings like us. Now,” he seems eager to move on from the subject, “The examples I listed are the mildest. You’re spreading yourself thin, concerning yourself with matters beyond your control. I’ve seen what it did to you in the past. As your husband, I must ensure that doesn’t happen again.”

There’s something else at play here, yet you’ll leave that detail to be uncovered later.

“If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re criticizing me for caring about the people who you spent centuries shedding blood — yours and others — over.”

You don’t bother hiding the bitterness on your tongue. He’s worse than a thorn in your side, he’s a knife, jabbed in so deep that pulling it out is no longer an option. You have to live with the blade’s intrusion and adjust accordingly to the pain. It’s obvious to you that he’s been stewing on this for a while, the trips to the Stone Gate must’ve been the final nail in the coffin. You’ll both argue circles around each other until the heart of the issue is addressed.

The specifics of the contract you signed many, many years ago stipulate you may not leave Liyue’s borders unless a particular list of requirements is met. It isn’t like Zhongli is actively looking to punish you — he said so many times himself — which is why he becomes extra stifling when he thinks you’re pushing your limits. Or his limits, to be precise. The God of Contracts takes these matters very seriously.

Eventually finding you can’t take the silence any longer, you come right out and say it. “It’s true that I can get a bit too… involved when it comes to helping mortals. I see the solution right in front of me and wish those involved could see it too. That’s why I was seeking out a fellow god who is better at handling these situations with the appropriate nuance.”

His face gives away nothing when he speaks. The same cannot be said for the low timbre his voice takes on.

“And what god other than myself might my dearest spouse be seeking the audience of?”

“Barbatos,” you reply without hesitation. Something cold runs through the air between you. “He’s lived amongst mortals for so long. I might have some issues with his carefree temperament, but he knows how to guide others in that human form of his. Perhaps ‘guide’ isn’t the right word. He offers just enough for them to reach the solutions themselves. I want to learn from him.”

In a split second, his diamond-shaped pupils thin into slits, reminiscent of his draconic form. It’s gone in the time it takes you to blink. He sighs, his gaze finally breaking off from you. You feel his hand settle on the small of your back in what can only be described as a possessive gesture. Zhongli rarely touched you in public for the sake of social decency. This revelation must’ve been enough for him to discard the propriety he associates himself with in the current era.

You can tell he’s thinking and you let him. While he chews on the truth, your eyelashes flutter shut, blocking out the sensory stimuli you normally adore. Memories come and go like the ocean’s waves brushing up against the shoreline of your beloved Yaoguang Shoal. Had things gone differently, you’re confident you would’ve learned the lessons you’re currently seeking out on your own. The centuries you were forced to spend separated from mortals, incapable of answering their many desperate prayers, built an intimidating wall.

You’d either need to scale it or tear it down in its entirety — you’re not going to let your husband add to its height.

“He’s a whimsical spirit, so our paths never managed to cross,” you look up at the stony countenance of Zhongli, who weighs your every word on an internal scale. Judgment could be in your future dependingly. “I’ll stop making my trips there. You have my word.”

“You can continue to do so as long as I am present,” his earrings catch the dimming sunray’s when he turns his head in your direction. “I’m not the unreasonable man you try to make me out to be, [First]. Let this be proof of that.”

No, he’s probably worse. Hiding his domineering tendencies beneath a thin veneer of amicability. You keep the thought to yourself. You’ve already pushed him far today by admitting what you did. Limits were meant to be teased, not breached. No one knows this like you do.

“I accept the terms of this contract.”

Seemingly content with this, he nods, his hand detaching from you while he does so. The vortex of tension surrounding you dissipates in an instant. You could relax your posture, but you don’t, a frown working its way onto your face. Encountering Venti by chance really would’ve been ideal, even if it was a long shot. Understanding the hearts of others was one thing, granting them the same vision is another.

“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” Zhongli muses. It’s a tactic he loves utilizing. Giving vague statements or suggestions so you have no choice but to ask for him to elaborate. An intelligent tactic from a conniving god.

You take the bait, uncaring of how his hook will sink into your flesh.

“Hm?”

“Taking on everyone’s burdens,” he clarifies. “Whatever should I do with you?”

You make a face. He really could do anything he wanted to you — the gap in your divine power is that sizable. It’s by his mercy and self-proclaimed “love” alone that he puts up with your near-constant ambivalence. Not wanting to linger on this uncomfortable topic, you turn on your heels, preparing to descend the steps and return to Liyue Harbor’s heart. If you’re fortunate, maybe he’ll get distracted and start a conversation on architecture or preferably anything else.

This turned out to be a stroll you wish you didn’t take.

“Treat me to dinner, preferably. I made a balm for some burns Xiangling recently sustained. I’ll give it to her while we’re in the area.”

It doesn’t take much effort for him to catch up to you with those absurdly long legs of his.

“Ah. Well, it’s a date then.”

Zhongli observes with silent amusement how you scrunch your nose up yet don’t voice your dissent. You flutter around from person to person, inquiring after so and so’s health, or if a sibling safely made it to Inazuma, dutifully recording the knowledge for later use. Your husband knows how you dislike your association with The God of Love title the mortals mistakenly assigned to you many moons ago — still, he can’t help but find it fitting.

How could he not notice that you overflow with love for anyone who isn’t him?

[the-last-tsar]

""My dream is some day to marry Alix H. I have loved her a long while and still deeper and stronger since 1889 when she spent six weeks in St. Petersburg. For a long time, I resisted my feeling that my dearest dream will come true."

When Nicholas made this entry in his diary in 1892, he had not yet established his temporary little household with Kschessinska. He was discouraged about the prospects of his interest in Princess Alix. Russian society did not share Nicholas's rapture for this German girl with red-gold hair. Mix had made a bad impression during her visits to her sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth in the Russian capital. Badly dressed, clumsy, an awkward dancer, atrocious French accent, a schoolgirl blush, too shy, too nervous, too arrogant—these were some of the unkind things St. Petersburg said about Alix of Hesse. Society sniped openly at Princess Mix, safe in the knowledge that Tsar Alexander III and Empress Marie, both vigorously anti-German, had no intention of permitting a match with the Tsarevich. Although Princess Alix was his godchild, it was generally known that Alexander III was angling for a bigger catch for his son, someone like Princess Helene, the tall, dark-haired daughter of the Pretender to the throne of France, the Comte de Paris. Although a republic, France was Russia's ally, and Alexander III suspected that a link between the Romanov dynasty and the deposed House of Bourbon would strengthen the alliance in the hearts of the French people. But the approach to Helene did not please Nicholas. "Mama made a few allusions to Helene, daughter of the Comte de Paris," he wrote in his diary. "I myself want to go in one direction and it is evident that Mama wants me to choose the other one." Helene also resisted. She was not at all willing to give up her Roman Catholicism for the Orthodox faith required of a future Russian empress. Frustrated, the Tsar next sent emissaries to Princess Margaret of Prussia. Nicholas flatly declared that he would rather become a monk than marry the plain and bony Margaret. Margaret spared him, however, by announcing that she, too, was unwilling to abandon Protestantism for Orthodoxy. Through it all, Nicholas nurtured his hope that someday he would marry Alix. Before leaving for the Far East, he wrote in his diary, "Oh, Lord, how I want to go to llinskoe [Ella's country house, where Alix was visiting] … otherwise if I do not see her now, I shall have to wait a whole year and that will be hard." His parents continued to discourage his ardor. Alix, they said, would never change her religion in order to marry him. Nicholas asked permission only to see her and propose. If Alix were denied him, he stated, he would never marry. As long as he was well, Alexander III ignored his son's demands. In the winter of 1894, however, the Tsar caught influenza and began having trouble with his kidneys. As his vitality began to ebb alarmingly, Alexander began to consider how Russia would manage without him. Nothing could be done immediately about the Tsarevich's lack of experience, but Alexander III decided that he could at least provide his heir with the stabilizing effect of marriage. As Princess Alix was the only girl whom Nicholas would even remotely consider, Alexander III and Marie reluctantly agreed that he should be allowed to propose. For Nicholas, it was a great personal victory. For the first time in his life he had overcome every obstacle, pushed aside all objections, defeated his overpowering father and had his way."

Nicholas and Alexandra | Robert K. Massie.

[welcometoassistantclub]

MORE NICOLAS

NICOLAS DE CARTIER

He was born on June 13, 20XX to a young couple. At the time of his birth, his mother was 17 years old and, unable to cope with the responsibility, the young couple gave the child to the care of his parents on the father's side. So little Nicolas grew up with his grandparents all his life, surrounded by warmth and care. The old people considered him their own son and doted on him.

Since early childhood, the boy reluctantly helped around the house, he often avoided household chores by running out for a walk. The only thing he was happy to help with was delivering Grandma's cookies. On one of these trips, he met his first best friend, a little unsociable girl named Skyler.

In his spare time, Nicolas often annoyed the girl by taking her on his adventures outside, which she was not very happy about. Due to the noisy and restless nature of the guy, the two often got into trouble.

So one day the guys were caught shoplifting. Nicolas often stole sweets from a familiar store near his home, several times he was even caught and reprimanded, but the boy continued to steal. The last time he was there with Skye, the boy tried to steal a pack of cookies, but they were caught and forbidden to go to this store. Nicolas considers this a wonderful experience and continues to steal small things up to the present time, but more carefully

At school, Nicolas was a very sociable child, he communicated with all his classmates and even the guys outside the class, not only with the younger ones but also with the older ones. The guy was never interested in studying, which is why he passed the work in threes and sometimes even skipped classes.

In order to calm the child's ardor a little, it was decided to give him dancing. Nicolas was happy to attend classes and studied with interest right up to high school

At that time, Nicolas met three other guys who became close friends with him. Gene and Chucky joined the group after a small altercation in the slot machine room, and Mertin joined a little later because he was chatting with Jean

Despite his seniority, the boy continues to be the most childish in the group. He is often not taken seriously, he jokes a lot and no one has ever been able to see boy really sad. The boy does not think about the future but prefers to live one day enjoying his youth!

[sobeautifullyobsessed]

some Khan headcanons

based on my Khanbatch fics

Khan is actually the title given to him by the scientists who created the Augments--for by the age of nine, he had proven himself superior to all his brothers & sisters in all the ways they prized the most. The title signified his destiny to lead them.

Augments dreamed as easily as lesser men, but—courtesy of their superior minds—their dreams were far more vivid and literal than the fuzzy, symbolic dreams of ordinary homo sapiens.  And blessed as they were with nearly picture perfect memories, Augments dreams seldom evaporated like mist upon awakening.

Khan had recognized long ago his predilection for women of a softer sort; Augmented women—brilliant and beautiful as their biology dictated–were the worthiest of consorts, but they lacked a softness, a feminine vulnerability, which he had always found appealing, as far back as the first time he experienced the stirrings of sexual desire.  Females of his kind could be as selfishly cunning as he was himself; cold and calculating, which made them perfect compatriots in battle and in governing—but in intimacy, he had found that they usually lacked the willingness to let him fully lead; to give themselves over to the act completely and surrender to his will.  With such women, there was mutual satisfaction, but no marrying of spirit, no sacrifice of self to please their partner more than to achieve pleasure of their own. Oh, they would meet his passion with equal heat and ardor, but the tenderness that he kept well hidden—and which he longed to receive as much as to give, in the depths of his secret heart—they would spurn as pure weakness.  Only in the beds of ordinary, impractical, flawed– yet beautifully human–women, did he find the satisfaction of connection at a deeper level than the physical.  On this matter, though, he had always kept his own counsel, letting his brothers believe he preferred such simple women as mere playthings, just temporary conduits for pleasure. 

The fragrance of jasmine & honey held the power to break through Khan's usual vanguard of stoicism to open the floodgates of his most secret and bittersweet memories...

This was the scent he would forever associate with the last time in his life he was truly free of care–before he was forced to fulfill the destiny designed for him by scores of others.  None of whom had ever grasped the simple fact that inside his superhuman body—and despite his formidable brilliance and cunning—dwelled the very human doubts, vulnerabilities, and confusing jumble of hormones and adolescent emotions, of an average fifteen year old boy. 

Khan had been schooled in the act of pleasure and procreation, as befitted his station, first by grown women of his own kind, and then by lesser females—all sterilized, to prevent conception of a hybrid—to slake the tidal force, the powerful hunger, of his burgeoning adolescent lusts.  His mistake—his crime—was to feel a tenderness for a creature as far below him as a street mongrel was to a Himalayan wolf.  That tenderness had burned like a flame in his chest, shocking him and rivaling that biological imperative that all teenage boys experience.  No one had been wise enough to warn him that such feelings only led to pain.  

He’d been fifteen the first time he fell in love with a seventeen year old girl, who was well outside of the strictures laid down upon his kind.  His seed was not to be wasted in breeding with inferior stock.  But that one—his dear little Inaaya—had spirit and beauty worthy of a prince.  Had love in her heart enough to fill an ocean.  Love enough to see past the monster which many believed the genetically engineered to be. His little Inaaya, gentle as a lamb in service of his household, but fierce as his own flame in the lovemaking they had shared. Unashamed she had been, unabashed, to moan confessions of her love for him, each time he had taken her. That was a secret he had buried deep; deeper each year he had moved away from those callow days, onto the destiny he’d been taught awaited him. She had loved him unselfishly, and ever seemed a well of giving, always aiming to please him, guilelessly believing their trysts were part of some ridiculous, romantic fairy tale.  

When she had eventually ripened, Khan had felt an irrepressible, youthful pride in that physical manifestation of his virility. Inayaa’s abiding love for him was enough to make her bravely bear the child that inevitably took her life.  He’d been forced to watch the labor, to learn the lesson well; to strengthen him, toughen him; to teach him not to make that same mistake again.  The doctors could have taken the child by Cesarean, but had not, allowing instead for his dear, sweet flower to be torn fatally inside—howling in pain as she brought the boy forth—and then falling silent as her lifeblood gushed from her shredded womb in the poor baby’s wake.  He had wanted to hold the mewling thing in the aftermath, to feel its strong, steady heartbeat, a living remnant of their passionate affair, but they had whisked the child away even before Inaaya’s body had grown cool. Not as punishment, but simply as another lesson.  When he finally set his eyes upon the boy again, Joachim was an adolescent himself, a total stranger to his sire—and Khan himself the leader he’d been groomed to be, with no time for such attachments, as he fought the wars that mankind razed against his people.

Even in his youth, Khan had never believed in the old religion which many of his contemporaries had chosen to embrace.  Of symmetry and the circle of life; of death and return and rebirth.  Losing Inaaya in so cruel a manner had cured him of even the faintest belief that there was any sense or order to the universe, especially that which might have been set in place by a benevolent power beyond the visible world.  And he was a man of science and reason after all--leaving no place in his life for the comfort of such a philosophy and faith that dominated the culture he came from.

But Khan eventually encounters a woman so like his Inaaya in such vital ways (see A Khan By Any Other Name), that he finds himself reconsidering those ancient myths. That Inaaya had been lost to him hundreds of years ago--it was madness to believe that a woman born centuries after him could be Inaaya returned. And yet he wished with all his heart that it could be so.

Anyone interested in reading my WIPs A Khan By Any Other Name and Man of Passion, Force of Nature, can find them on AO3 under the author name BeautifullyObsessed.

[fellow-weary-traveler]

Intendant of the Building Morals and Dogma - Chapter VIII

Part II A Masonic Lodge should resemble a bee-hive, in which all the members work together with ardor for the common good. Masonry is not made for cold souls and narrow minds, that do not comprehend its lofty mission and sublime apostolate. Here the anathema against lukewarm souls applies. To comfort misfortune, to popularize knowledge, to teach whatever is true and pure in religion and philosophy, to accustom men to respect order and the proprieties of life, to point out the way to genuine happiness, to prepare for that fortunate period, when all the factions of the Human Family, united by the bonds of Toleration and Fraternity, shall be but one household,–these are labors that may well excite zeal and even enthusiasm.

[hyperallergic]

The collection of natural materials has, to some extent, always been a part of human — and even proto-human — culture, but the practice of natural specimen collecting reached a particular zenith in the 16th and 17th centuries, fueled by natural philosophy and the assembly of Wunderkammers by elite households. Though ardor over theory-of-the-world specimen collecting had died down somewhat by the 1800s, herbariums remained an area of interest to many people.

A new book examines the history of natural specimen collecting, presenting heavily illustrated page after page of collections through history. 

[officialleehadan]

Lover's Festival

Trading Secrets

+++

“River Sprite.”

The household had mostly settled into the new normal of having Saber and his retinue staying at the dutchy. It was almost the end of winter, but they had gotten a late snow that very thoroughly closed all but the biggest roads down and turned even those into a soupy mess of mud and slush. Saber, of course, had taken one look at the frankly terrible weather, and extended his stay until the roads were better.

Knowing what she did about the roads, the weather, and Saber’s own motivations, Aliea rather suspected that he planned it intentionally just to have an excuse to stay longer.

She couldn’t say that she was unhappy about it. She had missed him, and while they still had to be very careful when they met up, it was a joy to be able to see each other every day nonetheless.

It was also a joy to share a bed more often than not, but Aliea was keeping that to herself. A few people either knew or had figured her out, but none of them were willing to reveal her without a good reason.

Saber was as cautious as the rest of them, wary of revealing his fondness for her to his courtiers who might try to use her against him, and unwilling to put the fledgling rebellion in jeopardy. Both were true dangers, and were more than enough to make sure they never failed to watch themselves. Aliea had already come close, too close, to disaster when her grandmother caught her returning from Saber’s rooms one morning.

So if Saber was using his nickname for her, it was because he was certain it was safe to do so.

Small wonder. Aliea had removed herself to one of the small workrooms that the maids preferred, with a whole pile of mending to keep herself busy. It was one of the few places in the castle that she could get some solitude, and that was a rare treasure. The mending was less exciting, but Aliea had been a maid longer than she had been a queen, and she didn’t like having her hands empty. The mending would have to be done by someone, and she might as well be that someone.

She hadn’t locked the door, but when Saber slipped in, he bolted it behind himself. Upon seeing him, Aliea immediately set her mending aside and went to stood, but he waved her back down into the comfortable window seat. Before she could decide what to do, he slid onto the padded bench behind her and sighed when she leaned back against his chest.

“Being noble is a test of my patience,” he said after they sat long enough for Aliea to pick up her mending again. She was almost done with it, and there was no reason to fill their comfortable silence with chatter until they had something to say. “There are several ladies here who are pursuing me like a cornered hare. It is not my preferred pastime.”

“Did you inspire their ardor in any particular way?” Aliea asked, much amused as she didn’t doubt his love for her, or his distaste for the ladies in his retinue on this occasion. “You’re usually able to keep them from chasing you about.”

“It’s the Lover’s Festival,” Saber grumbled and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He told her back in the mountain cabin that he liked to watch as she did the mending. It was a task he vaguely knew happened, but had never actually seen until his brief stay with her. The festival he had named was a Court event, although the common folk sometimes celebrated it in their own ways. It was a time for showing admiration for ones’ lover. No few babies were born nine moons after the Festival. “I have never showed any preference for any particular lady, but they all hope that each year I will suddenly come to my senses and fall in love with them on the spot.”

“Love doesn’t generally work like that,” Aliea noted and tied off her thread so she could toss the mended shirt into the pile of laundry. The fine steel needle went carefully into the needle case on her chatelaine. Good needles were expensive, and she only had a few. “Although I suppose I can’t cast many stones, given how we met, and what happened after.”

“It’s no fault of mine that I heard a river sprite singing in the forest and lost my heart on the spot,” Saber joked as his mood lightened in the peace and quiet of their little sanctuary. “But I do have something to ask you, here with just the two of us.”

“Alright,” Aliea said curiously. Her mending finished, she turned in his arms so she could lay her head on his chest. “What’s on your mind?”

“You will be queen when this rebellion succeeds, and my father is dead,” he said slowly. Aliea got the impression that he was selecting each word carefully. “But I know you’ve read enough history to know that the years after that will be… trying. It will be impossible to kill everyone who has ever been loyal to the king. I… have a way to bring them to your cause peacefully once you sit the throne.”

Aliea thought she might know what he was coming at, but she wanted to hear him say it. “I’m listening.”

He hesitated, and kissed the top of her head again before tangling their fingers together as he abandoned all of his polished artistry all at once.

“Will you marry me, River Sprite?” he asked softly in he quiet of the empty workroom and the thin winter sun. “Not just for the good of the kingdom, but because I love you, and I want little more than to spend our lives together?”

“It’s going to be so complicated,” Aliea whispered, although her breath was coming short and tears were in her eyes. “There’s going to be fighting, and political problems, and probably a lot of people trying to kill me. Are you sure? It won’t be peaceful, maybe for years.”

“My life has never been peaceful, but with you, it has been happy,” Saber promised her hopefully. Despite his nerves, and the way his heart pounded under her ear, he held her gently. “Wedded or no, you have my heart and everything that comes attached, but I hope that you would be my wife as well as my queen.”

“My uncle will be furious,” Aliea said, but her mind was made up already. Had been made up ever since she spoke to her grandmother. She, at least, would approve. She would understand. “But if I am to give my life to the service of this kingdom, if I am to be queen, I will have no one but you by my side. Yes, Saber. I will marry you, and damn anyone who disapproves.”

+++

Trading Secrets:

Raise a Hand

River Sprite

Up the Cliffside

In the Mountains (Subscriber Only!)

Over a Long Night

Swamp Water Tea (Subscriber Only!)

A Breath of Rebellion

Whispers of War

Helpless No More (Subscriber Only!)

Lessons for a Lady  (Subscriber Only!)

Silks and Secrets

A Discussion of Family  (Subscriber Only!)

Cousins by Candlelight (Subscriber Only!)

Suspicions Raised

Words of Warning

Summoned to Crown

Echo Blade (Subscriber Only!)

Carriage Secrets

Fine Threads

Trusted Shared

Meeting Gazes (Subscriber Only!)

Getting Lost (Subscriber Only!)

Lady's Approval (Subscriber Only!)

In the Garden (Subscriber Only!)

Under Branches

Dramatic Library Moments

Lover's Festival (New!)

+++

MASTERLIST

[hey-michael-young-history]

Honest Conversations

When Hanzo arrived home, he was relieved though not surprised that his Omega was asleep.

His neck had been bothering him all day and his immediate concern was that Kuai Liang needed him. But that's why they had cellular phones now - Kuai Liang had taught him how to use them and they promised to call if either needed anything.

He leaned down and examined his Omega, stretched out on the futon, his arm dangling off the edge with one of Hanzo’s undershirts over his face. From the way it smelled, it was the undershirt he had worn yesterday.

Hanzo chuckled and lifted the shirt so that he could see Kuai Liang’s face. The peace gracing his already beautiful features only made him look more handsome. He was impossible not to touch.

“Mmm,” he purred as Hanzo began touching his face.

“Shhh.” He was catching up on decades of sleep and Hanzo would not be the one who interrupted him.

By the pheromones filling the room, Kuai Liang was doing more than resting. He was feral and that thought of it being triggered by Hanzo’s dirty shirt amused him.

“What have you been doing to yourself in my absence?” He teased.

“Laundry,” Kuai Liang murmured.

“My treasure, we have a service that takes care of our housekeeping tasks.” His clan had always taken care of these things for him. Kuai Liang remained home because he was recovering, not because Hanzo expected him to complete household tasks.

“Take care of my Alpha,” Kuai Liang mumbled.

“Who is your Alpha, Kuai Liang?”

“Grandmaster Hasashi,” he answered.

To that, Hanzo had no response. Somehow, Kuai Liang knew exactly how to rouse him, even when he wasn’t conscious.

“Grandmaster Hasashi,” he said again.

The warmth of the Fire Gardens had never affected him so Hanzo was certain that this sudden ardor he was experiencing now… was coming from his Omega saying that particular title.

How many times had Kuai Liang called him this, in total sincerity? Did this happen then? Why was this turning him on now?

Kuai Liang purred louder, jarring Hanzo out of his thoughts. The hand over his stomach twitched and Hanzo suddenly became aware of the pheromones he was releasing. Only Kuai Liang had taken control from him like this. His pheromones had always been unusually intense, since the day he presented. He had to cultivate a certain level of control, to avoid affecting the people around him. He maintained that control until his wife and child were stolen from him.

And now, Kuai Liang was the only one who unraveled him like this.

“I want to ask you some questions,” Hanzo requested with a low rumble. He knelt before the futon and stroked the sleeping man’s hair.

“No.”

“Are you certain?” Hanzo increased his petting to gentle raking.

“Ahhh…” Kuai Liang shuddered and leaned forward. “Mmm… no.”

“No?”

“Ask.”

“Good, good.” He ran his fingers along Kuai Liang’s ears, watching his body tremble. “I love you.”

He smiled at that. “You are the first to say it.”

“Say what?”

“I love you.”

Hanzo managed to catch his sigh before it escaped. He had lived decades without ever being told that he was loved. “I do not deserve you.”

“I love you.”

“As do I,” Hanzo agreed, resting his forehead against Kuai Liang’s. “Does it frighten you? To have your brother around?”

“He…” Kuai Liang turned. “My brother. Deserves to live.”

“What do you deserve?”

“Chocolate.”

Hanzo laughed. “I will retrieve some for you later.”

“So good.”

“Yes, you are such a good Omega. Do you enjoy being an Omega?”

“No. But with you…” He sighed.

It had to be difficult, that the only thing that soothed him during heat had been turned into a weapon. A chore. A denial.

“You have desired me for most of your life,” Hanzo stated.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Kuai Liang’s smile faltered.

[grandhotelabyss]

Interesting essay above in Compact on "Austen's Darkness," and points for making the argument with reference to Emma rather than Mansfield Park. I wrote once about Emma myself, but I found the darkness darker still in Sense and Sensibility (David Mitchell's favorite Austen novel, apparently, since I've been on a Mitchell kick.) Ironically, the single most Compact thing I ever wrote—I wrote it two years before Compact was founded, in the midst of the lockdown but before the riot—is my essay on Sense and Sensibility. Here is the gravamen, perhaps a bit too apocalyptic, though understandably so given the circumstances of its composition:

For [Tony] Tanner, Austen commends this social arrangement by a rather punitive immuring of Marianne’s passion within the ideological architecture of the novel (“one might think that something is being vengefully stamped out”), but he praises Austen nevertheless for encoding into her fiction with an almost Freudian insight all that organized society quells and subdues. Later writers would take up the hint, for aesthetic and political purposes the reverse of Austen’s. Austen herself will develop the use of focalized narration begun in Sense and Sensibility into the free indirect discourse that makes Emma a formal paradigm of the modern novel. A century after Austen, free indirect discourse—the third-person narrator’s adoption of the inner language of the characters—will overspill the banks of reasoned storytelling to become less the proverbial streams than the spates and torrents of consciousness we find in Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and other modernists. Marianne’s revenge on her deviser is to undermine from within the narrative method meant to secure the authority of Elinor’s perspective. The passionate individual in despite all of reason commandeers the novel, and the novel’s 20th-century abandonment of the marriage plot is a concomitant of its modernist commitment to desire, this in tandem with a middle class reproduced less and less solely in the domestic sphere. By the time Toni Morrison rewrites Sense and Sensibility as Sula in 1973, neither reader nor writer doubts that the eponymous anarchic “sister” Sula is in the right, and the socially reasonable one (named Nel, a plausible diminutive of Elinor) the victim of a respectable death-in-life that has throttled all love and ardor. Today we have replaced Austen’s socio-sexual contract—rationally feeling man provides rationally feeling woman a household, in return for which she proffers the intimate superintendence that legitimizes middle-class power—with the one foretold by Woolf and codified by Morrison on the utterly sympathetic behalf of social elements Austen haughtily ignores (the queer, the colonized, the marginalized). Yet just as Austen didn’t intend for her innovation in the form of the novel—free indirect discourse—to aid the triumph of an individualism she otherwise feared, so Woolf and Morrison might hesitate before the world their own innovations have helped to materialize. Now desiring individuals, liberated from the heterosexual bourgeois household and almost from gender itself, atomized in metropolitan space, form temporary contracts in a gamified and pornified virtual marketplace that funds (where it is not funded by credit) the means of social reproduction in the academic diaspora of broader “online.” This is the state of middle-class woman now (and “middle-class woman” is more a class category than a gender one: if you’re reading this—or, indeed, writing it—the term applies to you). Marianne Dashwood (or Lily Briscoe or Sula Peace) has triumphed: today, she issues defenses of desire on podcasts and Patreon and posts pictures of her swollen ankle and putrid tonsils for the fetishists among her OnlyFans subscribers. If Elinor still functions as her conscience, she does so in the administrative bureaus of the corporation and university—human resources, diversity and equity—where her job is to intercept and interdict threats to the untrammeled unfolding of Marianne’s consciousness. This metamorphosis has undoubtedly liberated the individual from the stifling convention of bourgeois domesticity, but is the place where it has installed her now, where she must sell soul and body by algorithm just to stay alive, any less a prison?

[sometownie]

Whitewave Ardor household V Part 1 of 2: Happy Family

Welcome back to the Ardors, where Titus starts off the round by growin up to a teen! Their best friend is Carmen Puhto, and the besties have gotten into a habit of sneaking out at night together.

Toini is basically a stay-at-home mother. As a professional party guest she only works weekend evenings, so she has lots of time to kill when the kids are in school. So like a perfect (rich) housewife should, she has been focusing on getting better at sewing and building her own clothing brand! Thanks to a hefty bonus her husband brings home she buys a community lot and starts a little clothing store.

Valdemar has been very busy in the romance scene recently, but now he also has to focus on work. He finally gets the last skill points he needs, and reaches the top of the criminal career track!

[luxdea]

zelda's titles

royal titles in hyrule go as far back as the beginning of the monarchy. earlier, in a few cases. they're fairly simple. every member of the royal family is given the surname hyrule, but the daughters are considered part of the houses of their fathers to distinguish them from other zeldas in their line.

so, zelda's full royal title is: her royal highness, princess zelda hyrule of house bosphoramus.

unlike many other monarchies, a princess' house would not change after getting married. in other monarchies, the non-royal would take the royal name & that would be the end of it, but that doesn't quite work when all of your princesses have the same name. this system makes it much easier to trace lineages & helps to avoid the confusion.

but, this isn't zelda's only title.

as the eldest woman in the royal household ( which she became at six, let's not forget ), zelda is also considered the high priestess of hylia. & with that comes a new, fancy priestess title. &a priestess name.

the idea of priestess names & titles are relatively new in the grand scheme of the zelda timeline. they were put into a more detailed practice after the calamity of 10,000 years before botw. the title is a steady thing, passed down from zelda to zelda with the only difference being if the zelda was presently princess or queen.

zelda's priestess title is: her grace zelda hyrule. steward of nayru. ardor of farore. will of din. kindred of hylia & princess of the kingdom of hyrule.

the priestess names is where things get...fun.

regnal years have been in use for 10,000 years when it comes to the hylian royal family, with a focus on the zelda's. which, immediately, posed a problem. how do you conduct regnal years without going through a ridiculous amount of numbers when your queens all have the same names? that is where the priestess names come in.

the priestess names are traditionally given by mothers at or shortly after the birth of their daughter. keeping with the tradition of the wings on the kingdom's crest, they are usually named after birds in some way shape or form.

there are so many options that very few names have been repeated up to the time of botw, which proves that it's a near perfect solution.

zelda's priestess name is lady calliope, named after the calliope hummingbird.

as pretty as it is, it was an unusual choice. in the past, the names had been chosen from stronger birds. larger, more majestic, & birds considered 'pure.' egrets, swans, doves, condors, kestrels...but hummingbirds were quite rare & calliope had never been used at all, making zelda the first.

the use of the name & her full priestess title is quite rare, usually saved for special occasions. & while the regnal year was known, it was still rarely used, as the solar dating system was a much easier way to communicate throughout the other races. out of everyone, the sheikah, who followed the goddess, used it more than anyone, & they kept a good record even through the age of burning fields.

when the calamity is defeated, the year is 111 calliope.

[cruger2984]

THE DESCRIPTION OF SAINT CECILIA The Patron of Musicians, Sacred Music, Choirs and Hymns Feast Day: November 22

"Arise, soldiers of Christ, throw away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light."

Cecilia was born of a patrician family in Rome in about 200-230 AD. She wore a coarse horsehair garment beneath her clothes of rank, fasted, and vowed herself to God. Despite her vow of virginity, she was forced by her parents to marry a nobleman named Valerian. During the wedding, Cecilia sat apart singing to God in her heart, and for that, she was later declared the saint of musicians.

When the time came for her marriage to be consummated, she told Valerian, these words: 'I have an angel of God watching over me. If you touch me in the way of marriage, he will be angry, and you will suffer. But if you respect my maidenhood, he will love you as he loves me.'

When Valerian asked to see the angel, Cecilia replied that he could see the angel if he would go to the third milestone on the Via Appia and be baptized by Pope Urban I. After following Cecilia's advice, he saw the angel standing beside her, crowning her with a chaplet of roses and lilies. 

The angel told to Valerian: 'I have a crown of flowers for each of you. They have been sent from paradise as a sign of the life you are both to lead. If you are faithful to God, He will reward you with the everlasting perfumes of heaven.'

She also converted the brother of her husband, Tiburtius.

From that time the two young men dedicated themselves to good works. Because of their ardor in burying the bodies of martyred Christians, both Valerian and Tiburtius were arrested. The prefect Almachius told them that if they would sacrifice to the gods, they could go free. They refused, and Valerian rejoiced when he was handed over to be scourged. The prefect wanted to give them another chance, but his assessor warned him that they would simply use the interim to give away their possessions so that they couldn't be confiscated. They were beheaded in Pagus Triopius, four miles from Rome. With them was an officer named Maximus, who had declared himself a Christian after witnessing their fortitude. Cecilia buried the three and then decided to turn her home into a place of worship. Her religion was discovered, and she was asked to refute her faith. She converted those who were sent to convince her to sacrifice to the gods.

Shortly afterwards, Cecilia was arrested.

In court, Almachius debated with her for some time. She was sentenced to be suffocated to death in the bathroom of her house. The furnace was fed seven times its normal amount of fuel, but the steam and heat failed to stifle her. A soldier sent to behead her struck at her neck three times, and she was left dying on the floor. She lingered for three days, during which time the Christians thronged to her side, and she formally made over her house to Urban and committed her household to his care. It was the year 222-235 AD in Sicily.

Cecilia was buried next to the papal crypt in the catacombs of Saint Callixtus. In 817, Pope Saint Paschal I discovered her grave in 817, which had been concealed from the Lombard invader Aistulf in 756, and translated her body to beneath the main altar of what was later called the titulus Sanctae Caeciliae, which translates as 'the church founded by a lady named Cecilia.'

During the renovation of the church in 1599, Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati, the nephew of Pope Gregory XIV, opened her tomb and found her holy remains incorrupt. Even the green and gold of her rich robe had not been injured by time. Thousands had the privilege of seeing her in her coffin, and many have been blessed by miracles.

[bestsellingproperties]

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[gmqazi19739]

105-year-old earns master's degree from Stanford

Virginia Hislop has spent a lifetime attempting to extend entry to schooling, and now, at 105 years, she seems to have accomplished her education. On Sunday, Hislop celebrated Stanford College's convention of a grasp of artwork's diploma in schooling — 83 years after having left campus simply shy of the diploma. Her son-in-law had contacted the establishment and found a closing thesis, her unfulfilled obligation, was not required. “I’ve been doing this work for years and it’s good to be acknowledged with this diploma,” Hislop advised Stanford for a story about her nearly lifelong journey to a stage on campus, the place a diploma in a Cardinal-red cowl was positioned in her hand.

Virginia Hislop receives her diploma.NBC Bay Space In 1941, on the eve of the US direct involvement in World Struggle II, and as her fiance was getting ready to be known to serve, Hislop skipped out on the thesis. Her Stanford days, beginning in 1936, have been nonetheless fruitful, and she earned an undergraduate schooling diploma earlier than shifting on to postgraduate research. She needed to go to legislation college, Hislop has stated, however, her father would not pay for it, so she opted for the briefer time required for instructing. Hislop had accomplished coursework for a grasp and wanted solely to show within the closing model of her thesis, she has stated. As an alternative, she advised NBC Bay Space, she skipped the city and had a honeymoon in Oklahoma close to her husband's Military summit at Fort Sill. "Not my thought of a spot for a honeymoon," she advised the station, "however I had no selection within the matter." At the time, such a sacrifice — buying and selling her profession for marriage and a future household — was seen as an approach to assist the conflict effort. It was a sacrifice for America. She had grown up in Los Angeles, however after the conflict, the California lady discovered herself with husband George in Yakima, Washington, the place George took half within the household enterprise of ranching. They raised two youngsters, which put Hislop's deal with an ardor stoked throughout her days in Palo Alto: schooling. "I didn’t return to instructing, however, I feel I put my instructing certificates to good use serving in committees and on boards and attempting to enhance the academic alternatives each probability I acquired," she advised the Yakima Herald-Republic in 2018. She opposed center college curricula that required residence economics but not superior English for her daughter, so she ran for the Yakima College District Board of Administrators and gained, by the publication. Hislop additionally efficiently lobbied for impartial neighborhood school districts in Washington state at a time when Yakima's two-year school was beneath the in any other case Okay-12 district.

Virginia Hislop prepares to obtain her diploma.NBC Bay Space She was finally recruited to lift funds for what would change into Heritage College, a women-founded, women-led establishment about 20 miles south of Yakima. She launched the college's annual Bounty of the Valley Scholarship Dinner, which by 2018 had raised practically $6 million to assist college students attending the establishment. Hislop is listed by the college as a board member emerita. At Pacific Northwest College, a medical and well-being sciences college in Yakima, a scholarship, the Virginia Hislop Emergency Fund, bares her title. Her curiosity in broad entry to schooling could have been impressed by an aunt who was the principal of a public college in West Los Angeles' Sawtelle Japantown neighborhood when Hislop grew up in L.A. Sawtelle is a space initially anchored by a housing and care facility for disabled veterans of the Civil Struggle, nevertheless, it developed right into a neighborhood populated by Japanese Individuals and Latinos.

Virginia Hislop's Grasp of Arts in Training diploma.NBC Bay Space Hislop stated she was moved by her aunt’s expertise in seeing schooling change lives on L.A.’s Westside, by the Yakima Herald-Republic. “Aunt Nora would inform us about among the Hispanic college students in her college and the way they have been doing and the distinction that schooling made for them,” she advised the publication. “It appeared to me that without schooling, your future was restricted and with schooling it was limitless.” Her new diploma is punctuation for a life spent advocating for public schooling for the lots. On Sunday, Daniel Schwartz, dean of Stanford’s Graduate College of Training, handed Hislop her grasp’s diploma with a broad smile, describing her as “a fierce advocate for fairness and the chance to be taught." Source link Read the full article

[h-earthwindfire]

DOMESTIC

domus "house," from PIE dom-o- "house," from root dem- "house, household.", “hus” I (Germanic)

lithodomous (adj.)"dwelling in rocks,”

[[belong]], [[tame]], [[subdue]], [[pet]], [[family]], [[sedentary]], [[alien]], [[foreign]], [[industrial]]

Derrida, Signature

It must thus now be on [[intimate]] terms with what is not [[force]], with its opposite, with the “without force,” a domestic and paradoxically necessary commerce being established between them.

Calasso, Ardor

But not anywhere. To touch it on a point of the invisible line that joins the dhavaniya fire and the gdrhapatya fire. This is the line of the fires. The gdrhapatya, “domestic,” [[hearth]] is circular, sited to the west. There the [[fire]] is lit. There burn the embers with which the other fires will be lit. Not far away, to the east, on any type of ground, freshly swept with paldsa branches (Butea ^ondosa, Flame of the Forest, but it should also be thought of as brahman), a square hearth is built, called dhavaniya.

Foucault, Discipline and Punish

But it was also different from the domestic [[supervision]] of the [[master]] present beside his workers and apprentices; for it was carried out by clerks, supervisors and foremen.

Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence Let your [[table]] be a good domestic spread, with no lack of wine and [[plenty]] of bread.

Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books 1988 The [[olive]], meanwhile, is said to have eternal life, while the box tree is also considered one of the most durable. (…) The opposite applies to any timber that has a sweet sap and is easily inflammable, except the domestic and [[wild]] olive.

Williams, Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567 White stones are more obedient than dark ones; transparent ones better than opaque. The more they resemble salt, the more unmanageable they are. Granular stone, such as sand, is rough. If black spots come out of it, it cannot be [[tamed]]. Angular granular stone is more solid than rounded. The less it is veined, the more whole it is, and it lasts longer when its colour is pure and clear. The best is that whose veining is similar to stone.

[[power]]