#i am the last of that green and warm hued world

[iamlisteningto]

 M. Geddes Gengras’s I Am The Last Of That Green And Warm Hued World

[writermai05]

Arsonist's Lullabye

Prologue: All you have is your fire

Summary: Zuko’s bad day gets a bit better after an encounter with an unfamiliar face. 

Pairing: zuko x fem! reader (Live Action or Animated) 

A/N: I am delusional, and when I had the idea for a zuko x reader modern AU where he works in Iroh’s boba tea shop, I had to follow through with said idea. Let’s see if this goes anywhere, and feel free to leave comments or suggestions on how the fic could play out maybe :) 

Word Count: 773

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to Avatar: The Last Airbender, I am merely a nerd who hyperfixates a lot.  This is a modern AU that takes place in the avatar world. Bending still exists. Zuko and the gaang are in college in this series !!

TW!: Physical abuse, burns, Ozai in general, Zuko’s backstory is so sad. 

Zuko knew it was going to be a long day as soon as he opened the shop at 12pm. 

Within the first two hours, he had run out of tapioca pearls, dropped a container filled with matcha on the floor (which by the way, was a pain in the ass to clean up,) and slipped on the floors he had just mopped. Perhaps he was just born unlucky. Perhaps, most people in life didn’t have to struggle the way that he was, the way that he always had. It wasn’t all bad. He was lucky enough to be here, working in his uncle’s tea shop in the Earth Kingdom, rather than in his father’s company back in the Fire Nation. 

The Jasmine Dragon was beloved by many. People from all over the city came to have some of the shops' amazing teas and pastries. It wasn’t too busy, having only three people come in today.  perhaps because school at the University of Ba Sing Se hadn’t quite started up yet, outside of the students who had moved in early. The shop was particularly chilly today, but the atmosphere managed to maintain the same warm and cozy feeling, with the dim atmospheric lighting and the sage and emerald hued furniture. Zuko had a second to just relax in the stillness. 

 He appreciated these quiet moments the most.  The moments where he could stop worrying about the shop, and overthinking the worst things he had ever done in his life. Such as when he lashed out at his uncle, multiple times, or about the people he had bullied in high school. He was almost able to forget it all. Forget the fact that his younger sister, Azula, was still stuck in a house with his abusive father, or even forget the feeling of his father’s hand, burning the flesh of his face, leaving a scar in its wake, as well as a near complete blindness in his left eye. His demons may be restless, but boy did Zuko keep them on a tight leash. 

Zuko’s reverie was broken by the sound of the door’s bell chime. He immediately snapped out of his thoughts, waiting patiently for his assistance to be needed. 

“Um, excuse me,” 

A girl, who seemed to be around his age, was standing right in front of him. She wore a navy blue dress with a pale blue lining and detailing around the edges. A belt of the same color was around her waist, with a brown leather cord connecting a bag onto her hip. Her black jacket was cropped to about rib length, with brown leather cords fastening it closed, as well as matching black pants and brown boots. 

“This is my first time here…Is there anything that you’d recommend?” She asked politely. 

There was something about the way her kind eyes twinkled in the orange lighting that made Zuko fluster. He cleared his throat before opening his mouth to talk. 

“Well, Lychee juice is a customer favorite. But personally, my Uncle Iroh’s jasmine green tea is the best in Ba Sing Se.” 

“The best in Ba sing Se?” She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

“The best.” he nodded. 

“I’ll take it.” She said, reaching to the tote bag slung over her shoulder. Zuko interrupted her actions with the wave of his hand. 

Zuko shook his head. “Don’t worry, It’s on me.” he said, as he began punching numbers, into the register. 

“Oh no! I can’t let you do that-” She protested. 

He shrugged, a blush beginning to warm his cheeks.  “For a first time customer.” 

“Thank you so much…” She trailed off, waiting for him to tell her his name.

“Zuko.”

“Zuko. I’ll be sure to come by again. And I fully intend on paying that time.” She said with a playful glare. 

The boy smiled slightly.

“Your tea will be ready shortly.” 

Zuko had Iroh bring the tea over to the girl. He wasn’t confident in his ability to steadily bring the tray of hot tea without causing more burns to cover his body. The older man made sure to give the girl a complimentary fruit tart to enjoy, but not before looking at his nephew with a teasing glint in his eyes. Zuko groaned. 

“Not a word, uncle.” He said as he walked through the staff doors into the shops’ kitchen. 

After about 20 minutes had passed, Iroh came into the kitchen, clutching what looked like a napkin and some paper Yuan bills. 

“Zuko! The girl left this on her table after she left!”

Zuko carefully took the napkin from his uncle’s hand, reading the message. 

“Thanks for the tea! - y/n.” 

[dailyexo]

[NEWS] Chen - 221116 Teen Vogue: “EXO’s Chen Opens Up About His Long-Awaited Homecoming With Album ‘Last Scene’”

"“A lot of things changed, and my thoughts changed during my recent hiatus,” he tells Teen Vogue.

Kim Jongdae, best known initially to fans as Chen, a member of the record-breaking group K-pop EXO, shared a promotional image for his third solo album of a mostly bare room replicated nine times. Shot through a sheer-curtained window, each photo is bathed in a different rich color – purple, blue, orange, green, and in the center, a muted gray. In each one he plants himself in a new position as if surveying the room from different angles, swathed in warm-hued light. He sits on a windowsill, stares through to the outside, and leans against a counter looking straight into the camera. The effect feels like an old-fashioned slide projector scanning through some kind of homecoming, illuminating the memories of a static environment with an ever-shifting perspective.

The idea of homecoming feels fitting for Chen. “A lot of things changed, and my thoughts changed during my recent hiatus,” he tells Teen Vogue over a video call from Seoul. The hiatus he refers to is the mandatory military service that is required for almost all men under the age of 28 in South Korea. After enlisting back in 2020, he was discharged in April of this year.

This new album is ironically called Last Scene, despite it being his re-entry into the world of making music, and its release acts as a sort of bookend to this break. His last solo album, Dear My Dear, and EXO album, Obsession, were both released in 2019. There’s a calm ease that radiates from Chen as he muses on approaching his comfortable creative bedfellow with a renewed frame of mind. “I was able to look back on who I am and reflect on what I am feeling,” he says. “There were a lot of questions that I asked myself throughout this process. It was a time for me to discover more about myself, and I spent time contemplating what I needed to be able to express my stories and ideas.”

The result is a compact but full six-track album, led by its titular song which is an orchestral, epic ballad about heartbreak. Fans will likely feel a soothing sense of familiarity with his genre of choice, as it’s one that has defined his solo output and led to him being dubbed the “Ballad King.”

Time feels omnipresent in conversation with Chen, in both the answers he gives and the space he lingers to take pause in his reflections. Each sentence feels completely intentional, like he doesn’t want to let a single important word go unsaid or clumsily expressed. In a field as fast-moving as K-pop, taking time is a luxury. It’s a concept that sits firmly at the center of the industry. Albums are numbered, birthdays marked with commemorative merch drops, group anniversaries dutifully celebrated like festivals, and metaphorical timers run down, for men at least, to the moment they choose to enlist. Chen’s military service overlapped with a landmark date in his career, EXO’s tenth anniversary.

Chen found fame in 2012 when EXO debuted as an all-singing, all-dancing, all-superpowered group (their concept literally involved each member taking on a particular power to be associated with). Like the lightning that a fresh-faced 19-year-old Chen adopted as a force, they sliced blindingly through the scene to become one of the most successful groups in history, amassing millions of fans worldwide and an enormously dedicated following that’s still anomalous in modern pop music. At the inception of that decade, Chen bowled over new fans with a juxtaposition of unassuming, boyish looks and a velvety, cavernous vocal prowess that lent itself not only to the 15 albums that he’s been a part of with EXO (to date) but to subunit EXO-CBX (alongside bandmates Baekhyun and Xiumin), countless K-Drama OSTs, and the now-three solo albums to his name. As anyone evolving through the ages of 20 to 30 can attest, it’s a period of time chronicled by immeasurable growth and some rather momentous personal life changes.

“With the spotlight comes the responsibility to keep working on myself, and to do my best in every given opportunity. I think these areas have been the biggest areas of change for me: a growing sense of responsibility, and to continuously strive to be a better version of myself, especially on stage,” Chen reflects, once again musing on the nearly packaged decennium of his fame. “When I look back at the past ten years, it still seems like a dream to me. Who else could have experienced what I’ve experienced, and go through what I’ve been through? There are times, even now, when it’s hard for me to grasp onto the fact that I have experienced these things, and that I am a person in the spotlight.”

He’s been fondly reminiscing a lot recently, maybe as a result of being able to celebrate milestones not usually afforded to his contemporaries. He thinks about the early days of EXO and the memories built with its members. The mention of his eight friends elicits a visible warmth that radiates through the screen. The value he places on them is inarguable, especially their support around the release of this long-awaited comeback. “I can’t fully express it in words, but each member gave me a lot of encouragement. They were a great source of strength for me,” he says. “I can still remember how each member treated me like nothing was happening, as though everything was just the same. I get overwhelmed thinking about it.”

There’s clearly an unbreakable bond between the group, something forged in the unique whirlwind they found themselves in 2013 when their album, XOXO, and its lead single “Growl,” became the first K-pop album in over a decade to sell a million copies. It’s impossible to overstate the stratospheric success Chen experienced alongside the rest of EXO, and this concept-appropriate lightning-in-a-bottle moment has filled his thoughts of late. “A memory that suddenly comes into mind is, and I don’t know why, but it’s when we first released our Growl album. It’s the album that played the biggest role in making EXO who we are today, and I had a lot of fun.” He adds that sometimes videos of performances of the song, which are cringingly early 2010’s in their styling, will pop up on his YouTube feed but he’s too embarrassed to click. “I get very shocked watching myself.”

Chen gives the impression of a traveler making stops on a journey through his own past, which is what homecomings often feel like. Like we’re watching an old movie with characters we vaguely remember. The memories we cherish aren’t always the ones we thought we’d hold dear, and moments of insignificance sometimes metastasise into the building blocks of who we become later down the line. “I want to tell my younger self to learn to enjoy each moment a bit more,” Chen says. “I was very young back then, and compared to my age and experience, I received so much love and popularity. I wasn’t able to receive this love and appreciation as wholeheartedly as I hoped. There were times when I blamed myself for this. I look back and wonder now, only if I knew how to enjoy it a bit more. I might have been able to attempt and achieve more things. There’s a sense of regret that remains in me.” Revisiting familiar haunts also makes us confront the reality that our perception of spaces entirely changes depending on where we visit them in our lives. For Chen, the industry and fans may be the same, but he is different.

He’s channeled that new perspective into this album which, alongside the titular ballad, ventures into fresh solo territory like leaning into the R&B and pop that litters EXO’s discography. Those genres are sprinkled into the fourth track on the album, a relatable, and self-penned, ode to unrequited love called “I Don’t Even Mind” which he says took two hours to write.

“It was supposed to be a sketch, so I was a little suspicious when the team told me a couple of days later that these were the final lyrics that were chosen for the song. I said, ‘Are you sure? Is this right?,’” he says, laughing. The art of songwriting isn’t something that necessarily comes naturally to him, but it’s something he notes that allows him to express his interiority in new ways. “I think I get my inspiration from my day-to-day life. It might be a word that clings to me from a conversation with someone, or I also like to write songs based on my personal experiences. In the past, I used my imagination to write songs, but with ‘I Don’t Even Mind,’ I wanted to capture myself, just as I am.”

Another crucial distinction from previous releases was the power of learning to share the load. In interviews around his last album, he mentioned being so stressed he found it hard to sleep. “With the first and second solo albums, I had a lot of ambition and desire. I was quite stubborn about what I wanted to do, and I expressed this quite clearly during our meetings,” he says. “I decided to let go of my stubbornness and listen to the voices around me.” Looking outward and accepting help from others also helped him focus on his true motivations through the reeds. “You know I love music, but I don’t think it’s possible to do it by myself. I know it’s a very cliché answer, but my fans are my biggest motivation. The reason why I could do my music until now is because I have people who love me and support me, and because there is someone that is listening to my voice.” And as for being able to get some shut-eye? “I slept well.”

After any homecoming comes a period of bedding in. The newly familiar becomes comfortable again and focus shifts to where we point that solace next. Within the gilded trappings of stasis grows possibility and the chance for further success with the safety net of security. “As time goes on, I want to be more authentic and be open to express myself fully,” Chen says, hopeful for the opportunities yet to come. “I hope to be someone who is approachable and relatable to my fans, not just in my solo activities, but also in my group activities.”

Once again, talk turns back to EXO, a homecoming within his homecoming. “To be back on stage as a group, to sing together — I missed being together with the group the most,” he says. “It’s already been 10 years for [EXO] as a group, and I can’t wait to see who we will become in the years to come.” For Chen, the future hopefully looks a lot like what he’s known before, just saturated with new lights and colors. And that’s everything he could hope for."

Credit: Teen Vogue.

[ebaeschnbliah]

For some time Frodo and Sam managed to keep up with the others; but Aragorn was leading them at a great pace, and after a while they lagged behind. They had eaten nothing since the early morning. Sam's cut was burning like fire, and his head felt light. In spite of the shining sun the wind seemed chill after the warm darkness of Moria. He shivered. 

Frodo felt every step more painful and he gasped for breath ...

At last Legolas turned, and seeing them now far behind, he spoke to Aragorn. The others halted, and Aragorn ran back, calling to Boromir to come with him.

'I am sorry, Frodo! ' he cried, full of concern. `So much has happened this day and we have such need of haste, that I have forgotten that you were hurt; and Sam too. You should have spoken. We have done nothing to ease you, as we ought, though all the orcs of Moria were after us. Come now! A little further on there is a place where we can rest for a little. There I will do what I can for you. Come, Boromir! We will carry them.'

Soon afterwards they came upon another stream that ran down from the west, and joined its bubbling water with the hurrying Silverlode. Together they plunged over a fall of green-hued stone, and foamed down into a dell. About it stood fir-trees, short and bent, and its sides were steep and clothed with harts-tongue and shrubs of whortle-berry. At the bottom there was a level space through which the stream flowed noisily over shining pebbles. Here they rested. It was now nearly three hours after noon, and they had come only a few miles from the Gates. Already the sun was westering.

While Gimli and the two younger hobbits kindled a fire of brush- and fir-wood, and drew water, Aragorn tended Sam and Frodo. Sam's wound was not deep, but it looked ugly, and Aragorn's face was grave as he examined it. After a moment he looked up with relief.

'Good luck, Sam! ' he said. 'Many have received worse than this in payment for the slaying of their first orc. The cut is not poisoned, as the wounds of orc-blades too often are. It should heal well when I have tended it. Bathe it when Gimli has heated water.'

He opened his pouch and drew out some withered leaves. `They are dry and some of their virtue has one, he said, but here I have still some of the leaves of athelas that I gathered near Weathertop. Crush one in the water, and wash the wound clean, and I will bind it. Now it is your turn. Frodo! '

'I am all right,' said Frodo, reluctant to have his garments touched. `All I needed was some food and a little rest.'

`No! ' said Aragorn. `We must have a look and see what the hammer and the anvil have done to you. I still marvel that you are alive at all.' Gently he stripped off Frodo's old jacket and worn tunic, and gave a gasp of wonder. Then he laughed. The silver corslet shimmered before his eyes like the light upon a rippling sea. Carefully he took it off and held it up, and the gems on it glittered like stars. and the sound of the shaken rings was like the tinkle of rain in a pool.

`Look, my friends!' he called. `Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.'

`And all the arrows of all the hunters in the world would be in vain,' said Gimli, gazing at the mail in wonder. `It is a mithril-coat. Mithril! I have never seen or heard tell of one so fair. Is this the coat that Gandalf spoke of? Then he undervalued it. But it was well given! '

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Lothlórien

[darkarfs]

Opeth - Sorceress

Stars of the Lid - Music For Nitrous Oxide

Forma - Physicalist

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - SAVED!

Suffocation - Hymns From the Apocrypha

The Sound That Ends Creation - Unicorn Laser Bubblegum City

Mary Lattimore - Goodbye, Hotel Arkada

Hiroshi Yoshimura - SURROUND

M. Geddes Gengras - I Am the Last of That Green and Warm-Hued World

M. Geddes Gengras - TEST LEADS

The Reticent - On the Eve of a Goodbye

Mark McGuire - A Pocket Full of Rain

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Bing & Ruth - No Home of the Mind

Chihei Hatakeyama - Minima Moralia

Bibio - Phantom Brickworks Another very fruitful week. :)

[sevsnapeposts]

Snapetober Day 1: Autumn.

hi everyone! today finally starts the snapetober, are you excited? i sure am. so i decided to write for it, but will eventually (once october is done) do art for every day. today we start with a recollection of memories throughout the years from Prue's POV. you can read it over in ao3 if you'd like, and also if you'd be kind enough, go give me some kudos over there. thanks, hope you enjoy~.

Day 1 - Autumn.

---

1993.

Prue was on the Hogwarts Express, heading to London, where she would meet the Malfoys to spend the holidays with them. Usually her mood would be pessimistic and she would find herself terrified to imagine what was going to get into her room on any of those nights, but honestly, the girl couldn't think of anything other than her Potions professor.

If she closed her eyes, she couldn't help but sigh, remembering each second intensely, her heart racing as she imagined his face shocked at her, at the actions she had taken. Her pulse reached its peak when she recalled everything she saw then, as if time had stopped to give her the opportunity to perfectly memorize the details, even the smallest of them: Black hair surrounding the pale face, agitated by the staggering and the autumn air that little by little became more wintry with the passing of the days; confused, puzzled, and a tinge of scared,black eyes, unsure what the hell was going on, and also (and Prue blushed just thinking about it) expectant, hopeful; pale skin gently reddened at certain points, such as the cheekbones and the tip of the nose, due to the cold and, she dared to suspect, due to her, to her closeness to him; and finally, the area where her attention had focused the most: His lips, thin and pale, slightly parted, perhaps because they were ready to say "what the bloody hell is wrong with you, Pennyworth?"sentence that was never heard.

The girl had wondered many times, over the last few weeks, what it would be like to feel those lips on hers. Were they as cold as the words that his owner spoke with them? Or would they be warm and kind like his hands that day that he accompanied her in her solitude?

She smiled widely, for the second time in her life, thinking that she finally knew the answers to her questions.

1994.

If there was one thing she never thought could happen to her, it was having a boyfriend. She knew she was complicated and difficult, and she wouldn't have been surprised to spend the rest of her life not romantically intimate with anyone… But it had happened, much to her surprise.

And, even to her greatest surprise, something happened that had seemed even more unlikely: she was the one who ended the relationship. He didn’t throw her away, he didn’t abandon her as practically everyone else, he didn’t leave her. Even when the relationship ended, he didn’t do any of that, because he was still with her, as her friend, perfectly understanding that one does not rule in love.

It happens that she wasn’t able to bear someone else's heart, not when she knew that hers was beating strongly for that man with eyes as dark as his robes. Prue understood now, sitting under one of the huge trees that marked the beginning of the Forbidden Forest, surrounded by brown and orange and yellow and green leaves, that it wasn’t that she would never find someone for her, but rather, that she didn’t want someone other than him.

1995.

Prue was hating badly that year. Not even the cookie-scented breeze provided any consolation for how gross it was to have that damn pink toad (ruining her favorite color, by the way) shutting down basically everything good at Hogwarts.

What did serve as comfort, however, was the fact that Severus sympathized with her at her annoyance for that woman. One day, she had even managed to make him laugh — Severus bloody Snape, laughing openly in front of her. Prue had never seen anything so cute, something that could completely melt her cold heart. Her powerful memory perfectly captured that moment, treasuring it alongside the memory of two years ago. Those were things that she would never forget, things that would forever be in her heart, and things that were reproduced in her imagination while the pink toad taught her.

1996.

The echo of the rain traveled all the way down from the surface of the Dark Lake, the air up there being so wild that it dragged a lot of the fallen leaves and twigs into the water, making everyone thankful to be inside the castle, warm from the fire in the chimneys, eating pumpkin and butter biscuits.

Prue wasn't eating any biscuits however, but she didn’t mind. From the huge window she could clearly see how the Lake was disturbed by the storm, even though she was several feet below the surface. Beside her lay her teacher, fast asleep and more than likely exhausted. She took advantage of that moment to admire his features, so relaxed and soft, doing justice to the kind of person he was, to the feelings that were in him, and in her, and between them. She wanted to touch him, and caress him, and wander over his skin again, every part of his skin, with her lips.

Her memory was prodigious, and she knew every part of him.

But her body wasn't, and she was determined to tattoo her skin with his.

1997.

It wasn't going to be easy, she knew, even though they'd only been in school for a couple of months. Voldemort wasn't there, personally, but all the bloody putrefaction in him was. It was flooding London, and Diagon Alley, and Hogsmeade, and Hogwarts, and Severus. He looked worse every day, as if his own death was drawing closer and closer, and Prue knew it was a very likely possibility.

Not only was he at risk. Less, true, but she was also in danger, Voldemort's gaze was on her, very interested in her performance and with a clear desire to recruit her. She was powerful, young, gifted in Dark Arts and from a pure-blood family: Everything Voldemort valued.

And Prue was terrified, even though her expression was as blank as ever. For her to a lesser extent, for him mainly, and for whatever was in store for the Magical World.

But she would be strong, for the same reasons that terrified her, and one way or another, she would see Severus laugh again.

1998.

It had been several months since things were finally over, as far as Prue was concerned. The school year had started a bit late, but Hogwarts had finally reopened its doors to students. Minerva McGonagall was the headmistress, and Severus went back to the Potions, and she went back to him.

It was the first Saturday of the year. Severus was sitting next to her, both hiding in one of Hogwarts' secret gardens, where no one could find them except, perhaps, McGonagall, but the woman liked Severus (and Prue) enough to not interrupt their intimate time together.

‘Intimate’ as in holding hands, her head resting on his shoulder, whilst silently watching the sky, as so many years ago they had done. In the center of the garden was a tree, with leaves that were turning more and more yellow and orange. INot a single one had fallen yet, and Prue, for some reason, really wanted to witness the event.

The young girl, almost a woman now, turned her piercing green eyes from it to her companion. He was looking back at her now, black eyes with a different glow, one that brought life to his entire face and made her heart race like a restless child in summer. Without saying anything, because there was no need, the young woman approached him, closing her eyes, soon feeling the soft contact of his lips for the first time in a long time.

When Prue pulled away from Severus, out of the corner of her eye she noticed movement, and she turned just in time to see an orange and red-hued leaf hit the ground after gliding gently in the wind. She smiled like she only did when she was with him. Before giving him time to ask, because she knew that he had noticed her smile and felt the joy that basically radiated from her, the young woman spoke:

"I would like to spend the rest of my autumns with you”.

Severus didn't reply, but his smile said more than enough.

[the-blind-assassin-12]

June Prompt #2- Carpe Diem

A POINT OF NO RETURN FLASHBACK 

A/N: Shh. It’s still June. Couldn’t leave past Clara and Ezra in the past, so here is another flashback from those three happy years on the farm before everything fell apart. This is closer to the three year mark in the PoNR timeline. I loosely based the stream behind Clara’s farm on the photo below- it’s one I took a few years back at Enfield Falls in NY. (The darker parts right under the small waterfalls are the deeper pools) 

Request: “skinny dipping” from @cannedsoupsucks​ 

WC: 1.6k

Warning: oh just a little hint of zesty times. can’t really skinny dip without those. 

Seasons turned quickly on Kamrea. 

The Thulian harvest spanned only three weeks before the rains came, soaking the land and raising the water level in the streams. After the month-long deluge, there was a blip in the weather patterns lasting anywhere from a few days to a week or two when the combination of the planet’s position and the clarity of a sky scrubbed clean of clouds made for breathtaking views. During that indeterminate window, the Vernal Star was at its brightest, giving the world a golden yellow glow, but the cerulean hued ocean planet Lao and its moon Brizo were also visible to the naked eye, and at certain times of day the light refracting off of Lao’s waters made the whole sky flash green. When the winter came it did so in a hurry, too, sweeping in under the dim purple light of the Hibernal Star, flash freezing the fields and orchards, and turning the Lakelands to ice. Snow flurried lazily for a fortnight or so and melted before it ever added up to an inconvenient amount. Before long the rotation of seasons was pivoting back towards planting and tending and time to get to work before the harvest crept up again.  

To an outsider, someone who hadn’t grown up there, life on Kamrea might easily seem rushed, stressful. Clocks ticked and calendar pages filled with Xs as Kamreans bustled along to keep with their constantly shifting time constraints and limitations. Nothing lasted long, and if you blinked you could miss things like the malachite color of the spring starshine bouncing off the waves on Lao or the iridescent glow Brizo gave off, even the faint but sweet smell in the air that signaled the beginning of the Thulian growing season, and you would have to wait an entire year for another chance.  

But to those who had spent enough time there, whether they grew up on the fertile planet like Clara or had transplanted themselves on Kamrean soil as Ezra had done, the pace and rigidity of the seasons wasn’t something to fight or fear. Instead it was a constant reminder that life was happening now, not later, that there was beauty in catching a moment that was meant to be fleeting, in appreciating small slices of time. Each day came with the potential to see or hear or feel something never experienced before, and the potential to miss those moments seemed only to invigorate the Kamrean philosophy of making every moment count. 

Which is precisely what I am doing. 

Ezra looked up between the branches of the crater-oak that the swing he and Clara occupied hung from, at the thunderhead that had been gathering in the sky over the last hour or so. Kamrea was about to experience one of those split-second switches, where it would cease to be Harvest season with the first raindrop to plummet from the fat-bellied clouds. Any minute, they and the fields and the barn and the town over the hills and everything else on this side of the globe would be caught in a deluge and soaked to the bone, to the roots, to the bedrock. He moved his arm from the backrest of the wooden swing to wrap around Clara’s waist, hand resting at her hip. 

Any minute now. 

Looking back down at Clara, he saw that she had taken her eyes off of the rippling stream that the swing was situated on the bank of, and turned her attention skyward as well. What little daylight that hadn’t been squeezed out by the clouds and managed to make it down through the foliage lit the profile of her face in clean, green-tinted hues and he briefly wondered if other people felt this level of awe and devotion when they were with the one they cared about most in life, or if this was unique to the two of them. If they don’t then I truly pity them. 

He watched her shoulders rise and fall as she sighed, the small motion one he had seen her do countless times before but still always bringing a flush of warmth to his chest. “End of another season.” She gave him a smile that quirked to one side, a mixture of pride and nostalgia and love for her farm twinkling in her eyes to make her face light up more than the leaf-filtered, cloud strangled starshine could. Oh, look at you, my Clara. Her tongue poked out then to wet her lips, and she stood from the swing, both of her hands clasping around the one of his that had been at her waist to pull him to his feet. “We should get inside before it starts coming down, or we’ll be soaked.” 

We certainly will be, that’s correct. 

“I think that you are absolutely right, Huckleberry.” Ezra took his turn to smirk then, catching her completely off guard as he stood only to use her own grips on his much larger hand against her. Pulling back, he yanked her into his arms, the second one swiftly enveloping her to make sure she was tucked tightly against his body, and then he jumped from the bank into the stream, plunging them both into one of the naturally formed deep pools at the base of one of the stream’s small cascades. Clara’s surprised gasp of his name devolved into a laughing shriek as their clothing suctioned to their skin, their hair dripping in their eyes, rivulets of cool, clear liquid running down their cheeks.  

The pool that he had jumped into was shaped like a circular basin, cut and carved by the force of the water spilling over the tiered rocks that brought the upper level of the stream to meet the level at the bank. It wasn’t rushing with extreme force now due to the dry harvest season, but once the rains came and filled the stream past its bursting point, the water would fall in relentless torrents that over centuries had created a deeper pocket in the streambed, an ephemeral pool that was currently deep enough for both of them to be submerged when he jumped, but still shallow enough for him to be able to touch the bottom. 

He set his feet down, thankful that the two of them had kicked their shoes off before sitting on the swing, both pairs still dry under the tree, and Clara wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms winding around his neck as his hands bolstered beneath the pockets of her denim shorts. Her eyes were still wide with shock, her lips wide in a laughing grin, and her sopping wet ponytail sprayed him with droplets as she shook her head. “Ezra! What are you- why did you do-” 

Before she could get a full question out, ripples started appearing on the surface of the water, a slow pattering sound accompanying them as rain started to fall, hitting the leaves of the crater-oak and plopping into the stream. “Well, it’s like you said,” he leaned in and used his tongue to collect a bead of water from in front of her ear, lips brushing her skin as she shivered and clutched him closer. “It was inevitable that we would end up water-logged one way or another.” 

He pulled back in time to see her breastbone sink, her breathing labored from his warm tongue on her damp skin, her light colored tank top nearly see through and plastered to her curves. Ezra had seen Clara come in from the rain. He’d seen her after a shower, Kevva, he’d seen her in the shower. He had seen her get wet when making adjustments to the irrigation system, or when he’d splashed her with soapy dishwater in the kitchen. But he had never seen this- the unexpected look in her eyes, the rush of excitement, the sheer absurdity of trying to avoid getting rained on and ending up in chest high water instead. You are the most ravishing woman in all of Kevva’s creation, Clara.

She laughed, pressing and rolling the curve of her forehead against his before replacing it with her lips. “Yes, but now our clothes are all-” 

Ezra took one of his hands away from where he held her to work its way between her shirt and her body, pulling upwards until his fist with the material bunched in it surfaced, and he peeled the soaked garment over her head. Making expert work of the clasp on her bra, he rid her of that, too. Before he returned his hand to the globe of her ass beneath the water, he let it trail down the valley of her chest, thumb and pinky grazing the inside curves of her breasts and pulling a breathy sound from her throat. “What was it you were saying about our clothes, Huckleberry?” 

He tilted his chin, cocking his head to one side as he switched hands beneath the water, bringing his other one between their bodies to the zipper of her shorts, yanking down as she stuck both of her hands under his shirt, running up the sides of his body as she followed his lead and rid him of his top. Flinging the olive green shirt that now looked black with how soaked it was onto the bank, Clara reached under the water to help him free her from the cutoffs she wore, their eyes meeting as their wet fingers bumped together in their hurry. 

“Just that we need to get them off, Ezra.” That clean, innocent light in her eyes that was filtering through the trees just moments ago was gone, replaced with a burning desire that the stream nor the rain could do anything to quell. “We need to get them off, right now.”

.

.

.

*taken from JSTOR:  Gathering flowers as a metaphor for timely enjoyment is a far gentler, more sensual image than the rather forceful and even violent concept of seizing the moment. It is not that as a culture we can’t understand what it means to harvest something when it’s ready—we do have related metaphors like “making hay while the sun shines,” after all. But there is something in the more Hollywood phrasing “seize the day” that has clearly resonated with people in the last thirty years. We understand the phrase to be, rather than encouraging a deep enjoyment of the present moment, compelling us to snatch at time and consume it before it’s gone, or before we’re gone.

Thank you for reading! If you would like to be added to or removed from the tags for this or any of my stories/characters, please feel free to let me know! :) 

Tags: @something-tofightfor​ @alraedesigns​ @pheedraws​ @shoopidly​ @fific7​ @valkblue​ @a-court-of-feysand-and-elorcan​ @cannedsoupsucks​ @tobealostwanderer​ @paracosmenthusiast​ @gracie7209​ @dihra-vesa​

[hiveswap]

Dying Like This

I had a shit day, so angst it is then.

Short fic about Wilbur and Technoblade. Set during late Pogtopia. Not proofread. Not even once.

Content warnings for self loathing, suicidal ideation, and like 2 biblical references.

This is all /rp.

John dont fucking read this

_________________________________________

Maybe if Wilbur had his wallet on hand, he'd open it and see a black and white photograph of him and his team, back when the world still had colour.

There he would stand on the crinkled image, wide smile on his face, fist raised to the sky victoriously, surrounded by people he loved.

He'd trace the blue jacket, that he knows is the colour of his lapis-hued sorrow, and try to feel as though he is back in that second when he felt the iron chains of tyranny fall free from his aching ankles.

But he doesn't have his wallet, so he stares into the opressing darkness of his soon to be mausoleum, and wonders if the smell of smoke is just as stuck in his hair as the black residue of soot is under his nails.

He wonders when that could have gotten there. Maybe it stained him when he cleaned the laterns in the afternoon, or maybe when he scribbled a mockery of the siren's song on the walls of the room that will mark the end of his sick concert.

Or it could have been there from the begining, as a silent warning for what's to come, as he drove his van to the side of a lake that no longer exist, and carefully placed ingeridents in small bottles.

There is a person talking to him. He looks up and sees his own face; perhaps wiser and more scarred, perhaps just inhuman enough to know that he is not looking in a mirror.

His words are of war and death, and he finds encouragement in them, pushing him further down the narrow passage that he knows so well is killing him.

He sees that Wilbur is not quite there, so he stands up and he almost reach after his flowing cape, nearly begs for him to touch him, since he barely remember the last time a hand was kind on him.

Deep down though, he understands he don't deserve the love he seeks.

In his best dreams he is Satan, as the angel Michael casts him down into a sea of molten brimstone, his wings a pale white, his robes the green of the world above, where all he had hurt are breathing freely again because of his good deed.

The almost-mirror man is returns now, he places a plate of something in front of him. His lips move, but he does not hear.

He rertieves a lighter and pulls down the chain of an unlit lantern above the two of them. Suddenly Wilbur is all too aware of the warm wetness of his face, of the dark circles and red spots of his eyes.

In its light he sees Wilbur, but he does not speak, instead he hands him a bottle of water and sits by his side with a look in his eyes that is not all that different from the one he gave him when they were smaller and the angel from your dreams had a different name, and he awoke to him crying for something that feels oh so irrelevant now.

he wishes he knew enough language in that second to tell him how it hurts, how he misses the wind and the smell of bread and the shade of the tall walls in his home above, but all that spills from his mouth is a couple small gasps of air.

He places a hand on his back, unsure and tense, not quite gentle but more than enough to break the barrier he pulled around himself.

"I am so tired." He breathes his shoulders shaking.

He pulls him into a hug and Wilbur holds on to him like a drowning man to his draft, like the seed of evil to Noah's ark, like a man who smells like smoke to his twin who smells like blood.

For a split second he can imagine dying like this.

[musicmakesyousmart]

M. Geddes Gengras - I Am The Last of That Green and Warm​-​Hued World

Hausu Mountain

2019

[threelivesthreeworlds]

EXCERPT FROM PILLOWBOOK, CHAPTER 21, BOOK 2. IN WHICH YE QINGTI’S FIRST (AND LAST) LOVE IS A GODDESS.

Ye Qingti never thought one day he would cultivate into an immortal, and yet he had only to wash away the dust of the mortal world in the Jade Pool, and go see Da Luo Heaven Qing Yun Hall's Eastern Lord, and he would become an immortal.

Ye Qingti remembered that the lifetime during which he was a human was four hundred years ago. He was born to the Ye family during the Jin Dynasty, and was the first son of the Marquis of Yong Ning. The house of Yong Ning was a militaristic one. Every generation of the Marquis of Yong Ning died at war, and his father spilled his blood on the battlefield when he was thirty five, and so he was only seventeen when he became the marquis.

At that time, the Jin Dynasty was at the end of its strength - sons of great families were predominantly good-for-nothings, but the sons of the Ye family were the best out of a rotten lot, and Ye Qingti was the best of this best. According to common practice, since Ye Qingti was handsome, had a good personality and a great house, he ought to be first on the list of every house looking for a son-in-law. However, since the start of the Jin Dynasty, the Yong Ning peerage produced an infamous amount of widows, and the great families that truly cared for their daughters usually did not wish to marry them, and so for every generation the Marquis of Yong Ning had a hard time getting married and could only hope for the Emperor to arrange a marriage.

When Ye Qingti became the Marquis, conflicts at the border were endless and troubling, and so the new, young Marquis could not wait till the Emperor arranged a marriage before he went off to patrol the border, and stayed there for five years, driving away the the Da Tan tribe that was causing trouble at the border in the process.

Ye Qingti made incredible progress, and the Emperor was very happy, and not only rewarded the house of Yong Ning greatly once he returned to the city, but also arranged a marriage with Councilor Qi's eldest daughter, and then gave him a beauty to be a second wife. In this dynasty, past emperors sometimes liked to give beauties to their subordinates, but the current Majesty lived for forty something years and was on the throne for twenty something, but never gave a beauty to a subordinate. Even though he was a general, and did not think as much of the atmosphere at court as the civil officials did, he thought this matter was somewhat bizarre.

After a few rounds of secret investigation, he found out that the beauty that had been given to him was a Consort Chen that had been living in the Emperor's palace, who had not at first been particularly noticed, but had saved the Emperor from the water at the Wei Tuo Hu Fa Dan four years ago, and earned His Majesty's interest. According to the rumors, Consort Chen loved His Majesty ridiculously deeply when she was unfavored, but without reason, when His Majesty became deeply in love with her, she was very cold with him and made him angry constantly. An even more private secret was that even though Consort Chen was so cold, His Majesty still favored her greatly for four years, and no night in those four years did Consort Chen ever let him near her.

Ye Qingti was sat on the wall drinking and watching the moon, and hearing the spy say this, dropped the jar in his hand, shattering it on the floor, paused for a long moment, and said, "What a curious woman. If His Majesty has tolerated even that, what great mistake could she have made that cause His Majesty to give her to me as a second wife?"

The spy paused for a moment, and said: "She...wrote Her Highness the Noble Consort a love letter."

To take a second wife was not like marrying a first one, from engagement presents to meeting the bridal party, carrying all out according to the etiquettes. To marrying a wife took up many months, and to take a second wife was only to pick a day, and lead her in through the back door. Ye Qingti's whole heart had been on the battlefield since he was young, and rarely took an interest in matters of romance, but he was rather curious about this Consort Chen. The day Consort Chen came to the house, even though Ye Qingti left the study late at night, he decided to go to Bi Yun Courtyard to meet this curious woman.

Because he was too lazy to get maids to come open the door, Marquis Ye flipped over the wall directly, and without even touching the ground, he heard a light laugh like a silver bell, and looking toward the sound, saw a blue lotus pond, full of lotus leaves, and a great distance away there was a white-clad woman with light footsteps walking between the water and the lotuses to chase the fireflies in the pond.

Beneath the silver moonlight, that woman suddenly turned her face, and between relaxed, dark eyebrows there was a flower, bright eyes as if the stars were melted in them, the smile touching her lips adding to an already beautiful face. Marquis Ye heard a great noise in his mind, and two phrases from a text he'd read as a young man crashed into his heart: like the moon concealed by light clouds, floating and swaying like the snow on a flowing breeze.

When he flipped over the wall and landed beneath an old pear tree, he stepped subconsciously and broke a branch, and in the silent night the sound was especially attention grabbing. As expected, the woman in the pond appeared alarmed, a warm white light shooting straight into the pavilion in the middle of the lotus pond, and after, the woman was gone.

He hurried to the pavilion, and within, a green-clad woman rubbing her eyes stood up from a stone stool. The green-clad woman had a round face and could only count as somewhat good looking, looking at him blankly for a moment, and then said: "Marquis Ye?" But he noticed the flower on the woman's forehead. No, it wasn't a flower - it seemed more like a birthmark in the shape of a beautiful flower, like spread phoenix feathers, like the one on the white-clad woman's forehead a moment ago.

He stayed at the borders for long years and had seen all sorts of bizarre things, and thought her playing dumb was adorable and laughable, narrowing his eyes and asking her plainly: "You're a demon?"

He thought she would deny it, like a snake demon that had married a hunter of a border village that he had encountered when he had been twenty, who denied it to the end even when her tail came out. But she only paused half a moment, and asked him with a distressed expression: "Someone like me looks like a demon?" Before he could respond, she sighed. "This is getting ridiculous. Before, they just thought the flower on my forehead was a demon flower, and now my real body is being thought to be a demon." After sighing, she continued to ask him: "Do I really seem like a demon? Why do I seem like a demon? Have you seen a demon as pretty as I am?"

It was because she was so beautiful it seemed impossible she was human, that he was sure she was a demon, but she asked him if he had ever seen a demon as pretty a demon as her, and so his heart was moved, and though he thought the hypothesis was somewhat ridiculous, asked her with a smile in his eyes: "What, are you a god from the heavens?" 

She pursed her lips a little: "Do you mortals think there are only gods in the heavens? I'm not a god from the heavens - I'm a god from the country of Qingqiu. Have you heard of the Eastern Wilderness? I am the goddess of the Eastern Wilderness, Feng Jiu."

When she said this, her clear eyes danced with teasing, and even though she wore the round face of Consort Chen, one forgot her face and only saw her clear eyes.

The heart in his chest began, violently, to beat.

Ye Qingti had lived twenty three years, and had not known what love was. The first time he tasted love was to fall in love with a god. This god was very beautiful, lively and gentle, was an excellent cook, liked to mess around with weapons, and made good conversation with him. According to her, she came to the mortal realm to make a love calamity for the current Emperor.

She asked him: "Do you know what it means to create a calamity? I'm actually not a professional at creating calamities, but I have such bad luck. I came to the mortal realm to to repay a debt of gratitude, but then I met my aunt who was here to change someone's fate and got roped into it." She complained about the Emperor to him: "Siming made me create a love calamity for him last minute. Do you understand how difficult that is? Siming gave me a play, and I used all the ways the horrible ladies use to hurt men written on there, and he still loved me deeply without regret." She shuddered. "I didn't have any other choice than to go with a bad idea and write his Noble Consort a love letter." She sighed: "I did something like that, don't you think he should've given me a noose or some poisoned wine? What was he thinking, to give me to you as a second wife? Now even if I want to leave, I don't dare to, for fear of implicating you!"

She took him for a friend, and sincerely complained to him, and so he held a jar of wine, drank and smiled. He remembered hearing someone say that gods had no feelings, that those who were gods had neither the seven emotions nor the six desires. That he fell in love with a god meant there would be no conclusion. Sometimes he hated that his heart was moved that night, hated that that moment of being moved could last for five years, taking root deep inside so that he could not remove it if he wished to. He had been lost, and had struggled, listened to Taoist lectures from the Councilor, and meditated with Buddhist monks, but after all that still wanted to return to her side, even just to watch her from afar. She said she was here to create a love calamity for the Emperor, but it seemed she also created a love calamity for him.

He didn't want to burden her, in actuality, thought to bury his feelings until he too, grew old and died and would be buried, but when it came to the moment of death, he couldn't keep it inside.

After Consort Chen hurt the Emperor, the Emperor began to take a liking to studying Taoism, trusting especially an old Taoist, giving him the rank of royal advisor and constructing an Imperial Tao Temple, discussing Taoism with him on the fifteenth of every month.

He only knew that night that this Taoist was an evil demon, who had wanted to take the Emperor's soul to create a magical pill with it, plotted for five years and thought to take the Emperor's life during that rare astronomical period of yin, and took a demon blade, Lan Yu, to attack the Emperor when he came to the temple as usual.

He hadn't thought the silver bell always attached to her wrist was a magic item that could tell when the Emperor was in danger, and he hadn't thought that a god could have feelings. When the demon blade Lan Yu was flying toward the Emperor, her face was clearly pale, and when she put herself in the path of the blade in front of the emperor, her voice seemed as if her heart was ripping out of her chest when she called "Donghua!" The Emperor's name was not Donghua, that was the first time he had heard such a name. Without hesitation, she threw herself in front of the Emperor, and without hesitation, he threw himself in front of her. 

The tip of the blade stabbed into his chest, but he held it tightly in his hand. 

He was afraid the point of the sword would travel through his heart and hurt the woman standing behind him. 

The demon Taoist died under her sword, and when the guardes belatedly formed a protective circle around the Emperor, he finally collapsed into her arms.

When she chattered to him, he always liked to smile, and even at his death, his pale face held the trace of a smile. "They say...Gods have no feeling, and I...believed it. But...Gods can have feelings....yes?"

He saw her nodding as she cried, and wishfulness blossomed in his heart: "This life...our fate has ended...Can we...make a promise....for the next life?"

She was still crying, the tears falling on his face, but did not give him the answer he wanted. Choked with tears, she said, "Qingti, I owe you a life. I will pay you back."

"Qingti, I'll observe mourning three hundred years for you."

"Qingti, please rest in peace."

He loved her so deeply, he gave his life for her. But there was nothing in the world that said one could exchange a life for a feeling.

He thought, she said gods could have feelings, but refused to feel for him. She cried and said she would pay him back - a life, yes, but could someone pay back a feeling?

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Road Trip : Punk!AU

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Punk!Aevryn x Punk!Valdo, Punk!Jaskier x Reader, Punk!Geralt x Punk!Yennefer Word Count: 3,329 Rating: T (swearing and violence) Taglist: @heroics-and-heartbreak​ @whatevermonkey​ @mynamesoundslikesherlock​ @magic-multicolored-miracle​ @ultracolorfulnerdcollection​ @coffee-and-stories​ @nevadawolfe​ a/n: This one is pure, distilled angst with just a whisper of muddled yearning. Ball’s in your court, Joz. Enjoy.

Part VI - Your shockwave whisper has sealed your fate

{Part I}{Part II}{Part III}{Part IV}{Part V}

When Valdo Marx pictured the renaissance of his great love story it had never happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Still he sat at a little table in the corner, awaiting Aevryn’s return. He clutched his phone in his hands, oversized vintage headphones tamping down his unruly brunette curls as he tried to calm himself by listening to his favorite album. His thinly veiled hipster sensibilities appreciated it because he knew no one else had ever listened to it outside of perhaps five people at most. His aching heart loved it because it was hers; a recording they’d made in his father’s studio when they were kids. The sonorous notes of the violin echoed in his mind, a secret unrequited anthem that kept her close at all times.

He saw the door open from the corner of his eye and sat up expectantly, hope plain on his face that faded to high-pitched anxiety when he saw who had entered the café.

“Valdo,” she said, sitting across from him without invitation, ever the queen of the space she inhabited no matter how briefly.

“Yennefer,” he replied, “What the hell are you doing here?”

She raised an eyebrow at him and the violet eyes fixed him with a cool, unimpressed look. But there was more there, curiosity, and maybe a little bit of uncertainty.

“Hardly a good first move, Valdo. Don’t you know the best way to win a woman back is to get her friends on your side?” she asked. Valdo scoffed and the bottle green eyes looked askance. His slender fingers slid the headphones off of his hair, curls springing back in place without so much as a dent. He crossed his arms in front of him, creasing the lines of his blazer.

“I’ve long given up any hope that you lot will ever be on my side,” he replied, his tone a blend of warm anger and icy disdain.

“It’s not like you to give up,” Yennefer remarked. Valdo considered her words carefully. She was a woman of few words but she was sharing them with him which had to mean something. Aevryn wouldn’t send her friend to speak for her, she was braver than that. And, he hoped, she cared for him enough to face him if she was going to end things forever. But hope was a dangerous thing and he’d been made a fool for it before.

“As charmed as I am to see a one-time rival and eternal thorn in my side, tell me what you’re doing here or tell Aevryn she can deliver her messages herself,” Valdo said, the words bolder than he felt, his heart beating rapidly at the thought of Yennefer walking out and taking all hope of a future with Aevryn with her.

“I’m not here for Aevryn,” Yennefer said and then reconsidered and said, “Actually, I am a bit. I wanted to meet with you first. She didn’t want me to, for what it’s worth, but I insisted.”

“It’s rare to meet someone more stubborn than Aev,” Valdo smirked.

“And yet, here I sit,” Yennefer replied, matching him smirk for smirk. He nodded in acknowledgment and gestured for her to continue, eyes slipping to the window every few moments, looking for a glimpse of mussed, rich brown hair.

“What makes you think that things will be different this time?” Yen asked, through with pleasantries.

“Because I’ve decided they will be,” Valdo answered simply.

“Oh well in that case, cheers,” Yennefer said sarcastically, her face unimpressed. Valdo swallowed a litany of crass, passive aggressive responses and leaned forward, emerald eyes meeting violet.

“I was a fucking idiot. I made a mistake. No, not a mistake, a choice. A really shitty choice that I have spent years processing. I went to therapy,” he said this last point with emphasis and Yennefer had to admit (well, not aloud) that it was a good sign. “I have been dealing with the consequences of my actions and I’m making new ones. I’m not going to pretend I’m some fuckin’ saint or that I’m a new man because frankly, darlin’, Aev liked the old one just fine. But I’m a better man in a lot of ways.”

“So you talked to a shrink and had to deal with some consequences and now you think you’re worthy of her,” Yennefer said.

“Of course I’m not bloody worthy of her, who could be?” Valdo exclaimed.

“Well on that we’re agreed,” Yennefer replied, though she couldn’t deny that it was what she’d been hoping he’d say. She knew it was time to uphold her end of the agreement with Aevryn and go get her from the little café across the street she’d posted up at, but she had more questions and she wasn’t going to get a chance like this again.

“You’re a pretty fucked up individual, all things considered. How do you do it?” Yennefer asked.

“What? Be fucked up? Like most things in my life, it’s mostly inherited I s’pose.”

“No, loving. How do you still love her and trust yourself with loving her? How are you not scared all the time?”

Yennefer wasn’t usually this open but Valdo was also probably the only person in the world where she could say this without it getting back to Geralt or Jaskier. And, despite his many, many flaws, he knew how to keep his mouth shut. Valdo thought about her question, eyeing her carefully but holding back the many questions of his own.

“Honestly?” he said, “I am scared. But I also know that I can either be honest with myself about what I want or I can keep trying to drown myself in distractions while the yawning pit of self-hatred that’s been eating me from the inside out grows larger.”

“Well when you put it that way it sounds easy,” Yennefer said.

“Isn’t it?” Valdo asked with a shrug. Yennefer looked back up into his eyes and held his gaze for a silent moment, considering what he’d said and what could happen next. She rose suddenly and nodded briskly.

“Thank you, Valdo,” she said, and walked out without another word.

-----

“I’m just saying it doesn’t make sense,” Jaskier argued, gesturing wildly as he had been for the last hour since Yennefer and Aevryn had gone for some alone time, “You think it’s odd too, right? You must!”

The question as directed at Geralt who grunted noncommittally, avoiding Jaskier’s eyes. You recaptured one of Jaskier’s hands in your own and gave it a comforting squeeze.

“Babe it’s been a weird few days, maybe they’re just getting their nails done,” you said. You looked to Win for support and she looked between you and Jaskier with an uncomfortable, blank expression.

“I mean it’s definitely possible,” she muttered, slipping an earbud in to try and drown out the welling conflict around her.

“Maybe Yennefer is the one who needed the time alone,” you offered.

“No, Aev was crying the other day. Crying, Y/N! She always tells me when something’s wrong and that means it can only be because of that rat bastard Valdo Marx,” Jaskier’s mouth curled into a disgusted grimace as he spat out the name. “But why would Yen be helping? She hates him as much as I do!”

“Maybe we should get something to eat,” you suggested, “Milwaukee has some good places, right Win?”

You sent the question your friend’s way but she was lost in her own world and didn’t hear you, leaving you floundering on your own. You looked to Geralt for help and he nodded before putting a hand on Jaskier’s shoulder.

“Jaskier, you need to eat. You get paranoid when you haven’t eaten.”

You shot Geralt a baleful look as Jaskier began to sputter and pulled his hand away from yours again to punctuate his angry rant with his arms but he still followed as Geralt led them off to find food.

-----

All at once, there she was.

Aevryn. Maybe, if he was lucky, his Aevryn.

She found him immediately, Yennefer having told her where to look though he was a hard man to miss. Even in a crowd she could find him. The caramel colored hair had been swept to the side and the sea green eyes sparkled with excitement. He rose from the table and crossed over to her. She held out a hand as he threw open his arms and they laughed awkwardly.

“Oh this is stupid,” she said, and moved into the hug. He embraced her so tightly she struggled to breathe but the pain was lost in the warm, familiar scent of his cologne. He screwed his eyes shut tight and took his first, full breathe in months. When they pulled back, reluctantly, she wiped a tear out of her eye.

“Stupid,” she laughed nervously again, moving to take a seat which Valdo quickly moved out for her. Once she’d been seated he took his place again and they just looked at each other, hearts beating a staccato duet. She placed her hands on the table and she tapped on it with her fidgety fingers. Valdo placed a hand over hers and it fit perfectly, as it always had.

“So I listened to it,” she began. She noted the way he sat up in his seat and tried to force his face calm but the forest hued eyes were pleading as he nodded, waiting for her to continue.

“It was a fucking mean thing to do,” she said. His face fell and he shook his head.

“Aev what do you… No, I wasn’t trying to…”

“You knew exactly what you were doing,” she insisted. Her words were severe but she didn’t look angry, her eyes holding none of the heartbreak or malice he was unfortunately familiar with.

“Did you, uh, did you listen to all of it? Did you hear Tom-”

“I’ve listened to it 12 times since it released. Half of them crying,” she said. Valdo’s eyes scanned her face helplessly, the whole plan falling apart in his grasp as he held her hand tighter.

“Aevryn I swear to Christ I-”

She pressed a finger to his lips, stilling his words. She felt his tongue lick gently against her finger between the slightly parted lips and she shivered. Her eyes sought his and held the gaze intently.

“It was beautiful,” she whispered. His face lit up beautifully and Aevryn felt herself slip just a little bit more in love with, awed that there was more room to fall for someone who had held her heart since she was a child.

“Aevryn I meant every single word, I l-”

“Oh I think the fuck not.”

-----

Geralt had headed to the best reviewed place in the area, determined to get something in Jaskier’s mouth so he would stop talking for a moment. He didn’t see Yennefer hurry out of the café across the street calling to them. He didn’t think anything of the way Jaskier tensed and then ran for the door. Only when he heard Jaskier yell did he realize what must be happening.

“Fuck,” he bit out, hurrying after his friend.

Jaskier stood before Aevryn and Valdo, chest hurting with all of the emotions it held. Aevryn looked guilty, the picture of someone caught in the act while Valdo sneered at Jaskier, clutching Aevryn’s hand possessively which only fueled Jaskier’s rage.

“Jaskier… please let me explain,” Aevryn began. To other patrons in the shop it looked like a salacious lover’s quarrel, a woman caught two-timing her lover. You reaching for Jaskier’s hands trying to pull his attention away and calm him down only made it look more exciting and more than a few people took out their phones to start snapping photos. A server hurried over.

“Hi, sir? Sorry, you’re going to need to please keep it down,” they asked. Jaskier’s body was taut like a snake ready to strike but he forced himself to be polite to the lady. He glowered at Aevryn who stood.

“Aevryn!” Valdo cried, losing the calm exterior he’d tried so desperately to cling to as she slipped from his hands.

“I’ve got to talk to Jaskier, I’ll be right back, you stay here,” she said, giving him a small smile before turning back to Jaskier who made a disgusted sound and charged back out the door, nearly knocking over Yennefer in the process. You’d heard of people being beside themselves but you’d never seen it depicted so clearly or painfully as Jaskier who paced and seemed so overwhelmed by anger and hurt that he struggled to breathe.

“Jaskier please,” Aevryn began, tears already coming to her eyes as she tried to approach her friend.

“Don’t,” he bit out, “Just don’t… fucking stand there and try and tell me to be calm or to listen or hear that he’s better. Jesus fucking Christ, Aevryn, what does it take?”

“Jaskier,” Yennefer tried cutting in but he wheeled on her, blue eyes flashing with white hot rage.

“Don’t,” he snarled at her and for once Yennefer backed down, stepping aside where Geralt wrapped an arm around her waist and she let it stay there, reassured by his presence.

“How could you do this?” Jaskier asked, “You know what, no, don’t answer because frankly there is nothing you could say to make it ok.”

“I’m not an idiot, Jaskier, and I don’t need you to try and make me feel like one,” Aevryn argued.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot but, fuck, I must be!” Jaskier argued, “I mean, what, how long has this been going on? And I didn’t know! I knew something was wrong but I had no fucking clue. What other secrets are you hiding from me? Were you ever not keeping secrets or have you been lying to me our whole friendship?”

“Jask…” Aev couldn’t form the words, overwhelmed by the pain in her friend’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t mean any of this… I just…”

“Aevryn?”

Jaskier’s eyes darkened to pure anger again as Valdo walked out to the little alleyway you’d all congregated in behind the café. He was looking at her anxiously, worried by the tears in her eyes, so worried he made a beeline for her and didn’t think to glance at Jaskier whose body coiled and launched, striking so hard he knocked them both over. Amid the scuffle he could hear you screaming and feel Geralt’s hands try and seize him but Valdo managed to grapple him and shove him up against a wall, getting in two good punches, one directly into Jaskier’s mouth and the other in his ribs. Jaskier roared and seized Valdo around the throat, constricting his breathing long enough that the man stopped punching and then released him, forcing him onto the ground as he began to strike, punch after punch, heedless of anything but the need to vent all of the anger and pain that had welled in him over the years. Years spent staring at Valdo Marx’s smirking, taunting, heartbreaking face that had the sheer nerve to do it again. And again. And again. All without any way to stop him.

“Jaskier stop!” Aevryn cried, fighting against Yennefer who held her back from joining the fray, “Jaskier please I love him!”

Jaskier’s fist, bruised and bloodied, stilled in the air. Geralt pulled Jaskier off of Valdo who groaned and tried to sit up. Aevryn ran to his side, gently touching his bleeding temple and taking in his eye that was already purpling. There was blood staining his clothes but when she looked back at Jaskier she saw it was his. Valdo’s eyes were trained on Aevryn alone, unaware of anything but the words she’d said, echoing in his mind.

“Jesus, Jaskier,” you gasped as you eyed the blood running from his mouth, one hand holding his ribs. Jaskier stared at Aevryn and she saw the broken look in his eyes.

“You love him,” he repeated, voice raspy from his screaming, sounding tired and defeated. Aevryn nodded, tears filled with regrets and, she hated herself the most for this, some relief. It was out. Not as she’d planned or hoped, but it was all out there. Jaskier nodded, wordlessly, eyes falling to the ground. Yennefer walked to stand by Aevryn and Jaskier looked up to meet her eyes as well. They were unapologetic, but not without regret. He nodded again and scoffed, wincing immediately after and clutching his side.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” Geralt said, eyeing Jaskier’s ribs nervously.

Jaskier wordlessly walked away, not giving a second look back as you and Geralt helped him out to the curb to find a taxi, Roach parked too far away to walk with him. Win stared at you, stunned, and you exchanged confused, hopeless looks. She looked back over at Aevryn who was trying to help Valdo stand.

“Win, go find Roach and drive her to the hospital,” Yennefer said, helpfully offering your friend something concrete to do that didn’t force her to pick a side. She nodded gratefully and set off.

“Did you mean it?” Valdo asked, standing now as Aevryn winced at the black eye.

“Of course I fucking meant it,” she cried. He smiled and pulled her into an embrace that was meant to be celebratory but she only sobbed harder and even he wrapped her up tight, rocking her slightly and humming a comforting song the way he had years before.

“I’m going to make this alright,” he promised, “I love you and you love them, and I’m going to make it right for you. You’ll see, Aev. I can’t do everything but I’d do anything for you.”

-----

Sun had long since set but Jaskier stood in the same position he had since he’d been discharged, one bruised rib and a suspected concussion later. They’d parked Roach back in the same spot they’d arrived to town and he stood outside of the van, arms crossed, staring into the distance. Geralt drummed a restless beat against the steering wheel with his fingers and you sat cross-legged on your seat, feeling helpless. You’d tried to get Jaskier to sit in the van with you but he’d insisted that he wait right where he was. Win was in the far back of the van, headphones in, trying hard to stay above the waves of anxiety and pain that swarmed her from all sides. S

“Jaskier,” Geralt said.

“No.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt repeated, sighing deeply, “She isn’t coming.”

“You don’t know that,” Jaskier replied stubbornly, pale blue eyes fixed on the horizon.

“Babe…,” you began.

“Y/N, don’t, I know my friends. They’re going to be here. Yennefer promised… she said… they’re going to be here,” Jaskier insisted, but you heard his voice crack.

“Aev texted me,” Win said, her voice small but carrying in the terse silence. Jaskier stiffened and you looked hopefully at your friend who bit her lip as she took a shaky breath to continue. “Um, her and Yennefer are getting a ride with Valdo. She said they’ll meet up with us when the van is fixed.”

You reached out an arm to rest on Jaskier’s shoulder but he stayed stock still.

“No,” he said, “No, they’re coming. I know they are.”

You and Geralt exchanged sorrowful looks and didn’t say anything more. Jaskier stood for another three hours as night bled into the early hours of the morning. When the first stretch of dawn began to reach across the sky, he climbed into the car wordlessly and leaned against the side of the van, curling into himself as well as tightly as he could. You closed the door behind him and Geralt stirred Roach to life, briefly waking Win who had fallen asleep. She looked up hopefully and when she saw your tear-filled eyes she reached out a hand and took yours, holding it tight the whole rest of the way as Jaskier stared out the windows, seeing nothing.

[peaches-of-1]

The Heart of the Lamia | Chapter 2

Naga!BTS x Black!Reader

The continuation of my Peachtober Hybrid!AU. This was supposed to come out in November, but that didn’t happen. Here it is now. One more part after this.

This chapter includes: mention of snakes, slight angst, an image of food, implied death, mention of death/blood. Ask for more tags as needed

A large red snake watched as she was taken to a bedroom usually reserved for lost humans. Slitted eyes watched carefully as the exhausted form was carried by the oldest. Did she not want to be with them so badly? She could rebirth a nation. It was her fate to find them and do so. Why was she hesitating?

Jimin had gone off to go sulk somewhere other than his room and Taehyung was close behind, knowing the sorrow in his soulmate’s heart. Yoongi glanced at Namjoon and the two shared a nod before the white scaled creature went off on his own to attend to some business, giving a glance to Jin and the beautiful girl passed out on his broad shoulders.

The youngest made eye contact with Namjoon, a question on his face answered by a head shake and a compassionate frown. Jungkook sighed knowing she had refused them. He slumped against the cracking yet sturdy wall.

“What next?” The black haired man questioned no one in particular.

“Is her mother alive?” Hoseok asked as he stood next to their leader.

Namjoon shook his head, “Don't know. Do you think you could--”

“If Jin can get a piece of her hair without being blasted, I can try. He knows what I need to do my work.”

The purple eyed Naga nodded, “Right. I'd like to speak to her first if I could.”

The red head acknowledged the request as Taehyung comforted the angry Jimin above the waterfall. The older Naga could understand why the young adventurer, their princess, would not want to birth a nation when she thought her life led to more.

“She's our last chance, Tae.” A strained voice cried out while the sun began to set, making their world even more orange hued. “If she refuses or leaves, there's no way we can survive the King's next attack on us.” The younger boy sniffled. 

Taehyung rubbed his back, “Just give her time. I'm sure she'll accept her destiny if we just give her time.”

With a tearstained face, Jimin asked, “And if she doesn’t?”

“We wait. Either way, we wait.” He wrapped his tail around his closest friend’s as a sign of camaraderie and unspoken support.

I knew I was moving and I remembered who it was, but I couldn’t bring my body back to consciousness. My ashe was strong. My body was weak and could not move. I could hear very little as light went away and turned into darkness. Jin was humming to himself, though. It comforted me.

When I felt my body fall upon a bed, I smelled its age. This was a bed, I’m pretty sure. I couldn’t open my eyes to confirm this fact for myself. A soft fabric was tossed over me as the humming continued. Soon, I felt a hand on my shoulder and on my face. Warm breath caressed the tip of my nose as I heard his words clearly.

“You’re more beautiful when you’re awake. Rest well, and I’m glad you have come to us princess. I know you will make the right choice.” Then a sigh. “I wish I could kiss you, but I shall wait until I have your permission.”

Somehow it got even darker as I felt the room get colder. He was gone. I was asleep. What was the right choice anyways?

Jin soon returned with a strand of Y/N's curly hair stuck in one of his glittering scales which resided upon his shoulders and upper back. The hair was plucked by Hoseok who went into one of the main chambers to begin the ritual of correspondence with Namjoon. The sunset was always a bit too long here, it felt, as it had begun when the two went into the living chambers and the sun was still glowing with no moon in sight.

“Is she set up in a clean room?” Yoongi asked, appearing out of seemingly nowhere.

“Of course she is!” Hissed the oldest but knew the mint haired Naga was only speaking out of the truest concern. “The others kept Her room cleaned up nicely though I thought they always ignored me when I asked. It almost shines like it does in the legend.”

The small one made a noise that sounded as though he was pleased, “Plase, let me know when she wakes up, hyung. I wanna show her something. Might take Hobi a while to contact the mother as well.”

“Understood. I’ll go back to my guitar and will check on her soon. I know she said no, but I hope we can change her mind.” Jin rubbed the back of his neck.

Yoongi nodded, “I wonder if she knows even we’re missing part of the story. She was supposed to have the other half, but it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.”

With the clink of soft hands against a hard surface, Hoseok prepared the glass mirror that had long been shattered and then fixed with gold. Mixing Her hair with several elixirs filled with magic and finding the unknown. He just had to find her elder kin. A part of him was nervous that it wouldn’t work out and they’d all be wiped out for kidnapping their savior.

“This isn't hard, Hobi.” Namjoon’s calming and assuring voice broke through the self-doubt. “You know the face is like Her’s. You have the DNA which binds them. You can find her mother.”

The man coiled in the center of the room and used his gift to search for the woman who chose who would find them. Who sent Y/N to the boys because she herself refused to find them, or failed in her efforts to do so.

Hoseok spoke ancient words that spilled from his lips, causing his hair to slowly lift into the air and a golden aura of light to wrap around his being. The others wouldn't interrupt unless it was life or death. His eyes filled with sunlight and Namjoon made his way towards the mirror.

In his mind's eye which was reflected upon the broken mirror, Hobi saw graves. Generations of women who failed to find them. Some who weren't accepted as the women they were. Others that had been accepted completely, but would have more trouble in the process. Then he found himself looking at a brightly patterned skirt and a white tank top being cleaned by a river.

“Mother of our Savior, with a heart like fire, is this who I'm speaking to?”

The older woman yelped and then peered into the water with a face like Y/N, just a few more wrinkles around the eyes and mouth.

“It's you. It's real.” She gasped noting the midnight slits in the purple pits of his eyes.

“Did you ever doubt?” The question came honestly.

“Absolutely,” The answer just as truthful, “But I'm guessing Y/N found you. How many are left?”

A heavy swallow, but he kept her eyes, “7”

Furrowed compassionate brows and a solemn nod, “Where is she? Preparing for the first ritual?”

Namjoon shook his head and replied, “She's worn herself out refusing us and is now resting in the room of your ancestor.”

“That's my girl.” A hearty chuckle left plump lips as eyes closed shut. Soon eyes returned with a glint of curiosity, “Any bruises?”

“Not on us, no. We didn’t try anything.” He said with his hand over his heart. “Even if we did, the necklace she wears upon her person--”

The older face nodded, “Right, it protects the true heir. I knew it was her from the moment she opened her eyes. They used to have the mark of magic, but there were several years including several wars. Magical children were hunted. She only found out about her powers before she went on her search. I told her what I could, but she didn’t listen. It isn’t much, but it’s there.”

The dredloced woman made a face that tinged with sorrow, “I’m glad she’s alive. We hadn’t heard from her in months. I am glad you found her and that you contacted me. Her magic may have gotten stronger since I last saw her. Well, not like I have to tell you that.”

“Magic resides in all of Medusa’s children.” Hoseok replied, not breaking his focus with an easy smile.

Namjoon turned his attention to his friend before his eyes set back onto the gilded mirror, “Do you think you can talk to her once she wakes up? We've told her all we can, which is everything. She needs more convincing...and we were--”

“Y'all were hoping I could get her to spread her legs for you.”

Namjoon blushed at the straightforward wording, “Y-yes. To put it frankly.”

“My answer is the same as her’s. No.”

“I have told you there are only seven of us left. If the ritual is not completed before--”

“You want her, you need her to give birth to your children so that you reclaim your rightful lands. I know the story. I know that you will all end sooner or later if she does not.” A breath was taken alongside a stern glance to read the young man. “Since that is the case, then win her over and convince my daughter of how badly you need her yourself.”

Dark hands spun pink magic which went through the communication and dispersed on a broad and glistening chest. “It is her choice, not mine. She is more than a vessel. Until then, you will be unable to contact me. Goodbye, my never ever after.”

The connection ended and Hoseok couldn't bring it back. His eyes returning to their yellow and green tone. Y/N’s mother may not have believed in them, but her faith in magic was stronger. Well practiced. Both men sighed and Namjoon’s posture slumped in defeat. They didn’t have time for this, but he couldn’t be mad at a mom supporting her daughter’s choice.

The older of the two men spoke in the thick silence, “She gave me a recipe.”

“A what?” Namjoon was puzzled, and moved his head from his hands to gaze up at him.

“For a dessert.” Hobi responded. “I'll head into town and get the ingredients for Jin.”

The leader scratched his head, “Alright, be safe. Be back before it's too late.”

“Of course.”

“It'll be good to give her something familiar. Make her more familiar around us.”

I awoke to the smell of sugar and...home. It was home? No. Not at all. My home was more beautiful than this. I followed my nose into what I guessed was supposed to be the dining room and in the smell sat several snakes with the torsos and heads of men. The ones I met earlier.

“It was not a dream then.” I said in my mother tongue.

“No, it was not.” Namjoon replied the same.

I looked at him in shock, “How do you know my…”

“He’s been studying your language for years, Princess Y/N.” Jungkook was the one to answer me. “He wanted to make sure he could talk to you if you ever came. I was inspired by him to do the same.”

His eyes glittered. A snake with the eyes of a doe, what a world we lived in.

“Sit next to me, Y/N. Please?” Taehyung asked and I decided to oblige.

My bare feet sat next to the emerald scaled creature as I glanced around at the others. They were all so intent on my every movement, but although the attention was uncomfortable it was not unwanted. I know it sounds odd. Yet, I knew there was a connection here. Something I was unaware of. Something...missing. Jimin was the only one not looking. Did he still hate me so?

Jin came out and placed a plate out in front of each of us. Dinner was a type of soup. Stew, I should say. It was strong and hearty. Very different from the delicate tastes I had during my stay at the King’s palace. The stone floor was hard on my back, so I did my best to adjust. Had my one month in the house of royals already made me unable to bear the grit of a real human’s life?

A broad and firm mass was behind me, and I looked behind me to see a collection of red scales from the young man who was sitting to my right. Hoseok smiled at me with a heart shaped grin that I had never seen before.

“Use my tail if you need padding, Princess Y/N.”

“Simply, Y/N is fine. I assure you.” The words came out more stern as I had intended. “Although you have told me what I am, I do not think I can carry the responsibility.”

The meal was quiet and yet warm. These men knew each other so well and Taehyung was so kind to me, making sure I had enough to eat and drink. His smile was so endearing that I didn’t want to say no. His aura was so charismatic. I felt as though I were still just a village girl in love with a village boy who would later have his blood on my hands.

“Don’t make her eat too much.” Jin scolded him. “She’ll throw up and not have enough space for the special dessert I made. I worked so hard on it too. It’s a recipe from her mother.”

I shot up, “My mother?”

The oldest sniffed and then mumbled something in Korean before basically running to the kitchen. Is that why it smelled so familiar? I looked around for an answer.

“Yes, we contacted your mother.” Namjoon was the one to speak. “Hoseok here is very apt in the...magic of linkage. We contacted her in hopes she could talk some sense into you, though it seems you didn’t end on very good terms.”

“What did she say?” I asked, my throat getting tight.

Hoseok spoke up, “She said--”

“No.” The word came out in their language. “I want to hear him say it.”

He told me that she was glad that I was ok and that she was proud of me. My mom didn’t say that she missed me, though. Why would she after lying to me all of my life? Still, she supported me and gave Hobi a telepathic message of some sort. A recipe she knew I loved.

As if on cue, Jin came out with bakalawa bil jibna. Lybian baklava to simplify it. I grabbed one and ate it, not minding the heat. The cream cheese filling caused my eyes to blur. It wasn’t like Mama’s, but I missed this treat so much. She did miss me then. A white tail offered a piece of cloth for me to dry my eyes.

“She told us you travelled many months to find us.” Hoseok said. “Can you tell us about them?”

I did as the boys seemed interested. My many travels across many lands in search of what I believed to be my fate. The hot sands and rough forests, the deep lakes and long sea voyages. All to get to here. However, when I talked about palace life, they scoffed and became tense. The meal was done, so I finished quickly saying my adventure had ended here for now.

“Trust me, Y/N. Every day with these boys is an adventure.” Jimin said with a laugh before cutting himself off. “Ah, I’m going to bed. G-goodbye, princess. Um, Y/N.”

Yoongi approached shyly to speak to me, “I wanna show you something. Hobi got some clothes for you to wear to bed, so grab that and meet me by the river door.

On my bed was a light orange gown with sparse silver beading. Not too expensive, but more than I thought they'd get. I held it in my arms and grabbed the water pitcher that was nearby before meeting up with the shiest snake man.

“You are so much cuter than I thought you'd be.” He admitted. “Sorry if that's odd to say. Also sorry for earlier. We're just really scared about our future.”

He said this as he lifted a fallen branch out of the way. Thicker than my waist. With so much ease. My heart and eyes fluttered at how gracefully he did so while still keeping the conversation going.

“We understand if you wanna go back to the king tomorrow, come sunlight.” He motioned for me to go first.

“Probably.” I replied, biting my lip and holding the fabric close to my chest. “What did you wanna show me for now?”

“Hot springs.” He pulled away the curtain like leaves to reveal the source of humidity in the area that seemed to glow. “I come here after a really stressful day. It's not enchanted or anything, but it makes me feel so comfortable.” 

“Is it really ok for me to--” I began to ask.

“Yes...it is, cuz I like you. Not just because of, but also cuz you're very...I'm sorry. I'll send one of the others to come get you, help you find your way back.”

And off he slithered with reddening ears and a soft smile. His white tail glittering beautifully in the moonlight. Alright then. It had been a while since a boy had been so shy towards me, and I quite enjoyed such a strong and powerful creature being so innocent and reserved. The king was wrong. They weren’t human, not by a long shot, but they weren’t beasts.

He didn't give a proper explanation either when I asked if it was ok, I thought as I disrobed and placed my clothing on a nearby tree branch away from the water. It was just past sunset as I soaked in the heated water.

Nearby flames kept me comfort as I used the pitcher to pour over my head. In the silence, I gave myself the chance to think. These were seven beautiful creatures that believed I was the one to give birth to their next generation in order to keep the lineage alive as they were the only ones left. I didn't want them to die out. I wanted them to reclaim their lands and be as happy as they once were.

They were no match with such small numbers and regular human women weren't very successful in birthing their young. They still existed somewhere, though. Right? They had to.

I sung my head under the water and held my breath, seeing very clearly the details of the natural rock and admiring the glow even though the water was far from clear. My eyesight had been good ever since I was young.

I had adventured far and wide to find my fate. This was it, no doubt about it, but. I wanted to do more than simply be a mother. Legs open for them to lay their young inside, though I couldn't help but image how big they were. And according to the cave drawings, they had two p--

I dove down deeper in the water as my necklace lay dormant. Why was I thinking about that?!?!? I had to keep my head on straight.

A mother. My mother.

I remember the day she told me about my magic that had been dormant. It’s because I got lost and that snake. Afeaa with her black and white stripes. I saved her from a hidden trap and she saved my life in return. It explained why the snakes never bit me, why I often found them coiled up outside my bedroom. Why they always wanted to bite him. He...

My lungs brought in a huge gulp of air as I resurfaced. The boys spoke about wanting to claim this area back once their numbers were high again, but there was no way the king would let them live so long. There had to be something more. There had to be. I was sure as I went towards my clothing.

“Princess Y/N, hyung told me to come and get you and--” Two eyes that seemed to hold the galaxies inside of them peaked through the leaves and then hid. “OMG, I'm so sorry, Princess. I didn't think you'd be so exposed when I arrived. Please forgive me.”

I got dressed, trusting he wouldn’t peek. A torch was gripped tightly in his glossy black tail.

“Jungkook, right?”

He nodded, “Y-yes, Princess Y/N. I really didn't mean it. Really.”

“I know. My necklace would've glowed if you were trying to perv on me. I think.” Though I wasn't 100% sure.

He smiled quite cutely for a beast, “Would you rather walk or ride me?”

“Ride you?” The words came out before I realized his back was towards me. “Ride your tail, right. I shall do that since I'm unsure of my footing here.”

However, neither the misunderstanding of words or the strong muscles that rippled with every movement helped to shoo away previous thoughts.

“Namjoon hyung wants to know if you'll be staying or leaving at sunrise.” The young one did his best to make conversation.

“I should return. If not, the king will surely come and attack here sooner rather than later. Will Namjoon be taking me back?”

A nod, “Yes. He says he wants to talk to you, but he is working through some stuff. He over thinks a lot over small things. Watch your head.”

I ducked my head down and we went through a thick area of trees, my hands gripping tightly at his arms before we went upwards.

“Your room is here. Hobi did a good job at getting clothes for you.”

I stepped off of his tail and onto the smooth rock floor and thanked him. He was shy and hesitant.

“Forgive me for being so forward, but I hope you don't hate us. We've been waiting for a long time for you, Princess Y/N, but I know you don't feel the same.”

I reached out my arm, “I don't hate you guys. You've shown me mostly kindness and patience, understanding. I'm just, I wanna do more than be an incubator.”

He smiled, “Understood. I'll let Namjoon know you'll be leaving and try to get the others to understand. Thank you for not hating us. Goodnight, Y/N.”

The light left with him, leaving me to simply rest before tomorrow's lengthy walk back into the kingdom. They were really...nice. I didn’t want my heart to beat for them, though.

[snowbellewells]

“A Private Revolution: Part Two”

Friends - Your lovely little response to this fic I posted pretty much just for fun to try something different has really made my week and warmed my heart!! :)  Thank you so much for reading (please remember that I have not done tons of research in history or French geography here) and I hope you will enjoy the conclusion to this little venture!

Part Two

by: @snowbellewells

Their flight lasted through the evening hours, as soft dusk lengthened into deep indigo shadows and then turned over to black night, punctuated here and there by what seemed to be large fires in the distance (Killian tried not to place just where) and the occasional frightening roar of a large crowd piercing the night and running their blood cold. Once they had slipped from the grounds of his family’s estate, as silent and unheeded as shadows themselves, they dared not stop, uncertain what the nightmare nipping at their heels might bring, but sure it would devour them whole if allowed to catch up. The angry horde that had been gathering when Emma came to rouse him to action would have already torched the Jones family manor no doubt, but how far would they pursue to find the nobility they meant to punish?

Pulling each other onward hand-in-hand, Killian and Emma were both breathing heavily, nearly dead on their feet and hours into the forest after crossing fields, streams and roads of their once-familiar countryside, when they finally stumbled into a small clearing, run off their feet and unable to go any further. Stopping was a terrifying decision; being caught so obviously fleeing the chaos and destruction all around them could be tantamount to death.

Killian had almost resigned himself to that fate as he had sat alone in his apartments at the family villa, knowing the mob was on its way, and that he had perhaps lived far too sheltered and coddled a life, that the universe might well take its due for the ease that he had enjoyed. Once Emma had come to him though, he had been inspired to save his own life. That she would go with him, leaving everything - the only world she had ever known - behind, made him desperate to make it out, to reach safety, if only for her sake. She had to survive. In his life, there had always been her, a light brighter than any of the gold or finery, and though he had not always understood what that meant, he did now. Emma was everything - all he had left - and seeing that she was not hurt and did not pay dearly for standing by his side when all else fell away was the only thing that mattered.

The sound of her dropping heavily to the hard-packed dirt and dry grass under their feet, brought him back sharply from his inner thoughts, alarmed that she didn’t move or speak , but merely huddled there silently shaking in cold or fear, he wasn’t sure which. “Emma,” he gasped, barely retaining enough sense not to cry out in distress, and rushing to her side.

She shook her head, and he could see her try to wet her lips, though both of them were parched dry from exertion and it did little good. Her hand fluttered exasperatedly at her side, as if trying to wave off his anxiety on her behalf, just as she had always put off his help when he wanted to aid her in dusting, washing, or whatever chore she had been assigned in their chateau and she was trying once again to convince him it wasn’t his place to clean with the maid, just talk and entertain her, keep her company. She always said that would make the work time hurry by. “I am not hurt, Killian,” she managed, her voice still a bit breathless and thin, but the tone of consternation at the second son of the Jones family fussing over her somewhat reassuring and familiar. “I am fine... I promise.”

He tilted his head to search her face more closely in the dark, not sure if he should believe her and relent in his concern, or if she were merely being strong for his benefit. Quite spent himself, he only managed to huff, “Are you certain, Swan?”

Her lovely pink lips quirked up at the corners a hint of mischief sparkling in the pale green light of them as she looked back at him, in spite of her exhaustion. “I am, truly. What about you? You’ll pardon me for saying, my Lord, but you appear near collapse yourself.”

Ducking his head to hide from her all-too-knowing gaze, Killian found his hand trailing up to brush against his earlobe, worrying the skin just behind it in an endearingly awkward gesture he’d had since childhood. Sheepishly he nodded, though not deigning to admit her triumph aloud, and accepted that they were both in as good a shape as could be expected.

He grew a bit thoughtful, as the stiff breeze rushing through the branches overhead began to cool the sweat on both their skin and the chorus of owls, frogs, and crickets began a nighttime symphony. A small part of him wished to take a measure of comfort from the normalcy as it began to erase some of the terror that had drove them onward. Yet, he hardly dared grow complacent, when the young woman at his side had cast her lot in with his own.

Neither spoke for a time, though their harsh painting slowed to steadier breaths and eventually blue eyes met green with tentative momentary relief.

“Shall we stay here for the night?” Emma ventured hopefully, biting her lower lip with pretty white teeth and worrying her hands together in her lap. He could see tremors in her thin frame and cursed himself for a fool at not seeing the chill she must be suffering sooner.

“Aye,” he affirmed with a short nod. “Seems as fine a place as any.” As he spoke, Killian attempted to subtly unclasp the fine traveling cloak his mother had once gifted him from his shoulders and lay it, along with a  comforting arm around Emma’s own. Were he too obvious, she would certainly chafe against his hinting at weakness, but he could not stand to see her cold and shivering; not after all she had already sacrificed for him this night.

Emma’s eyes cut to him sharply with the action, in spite of his attempted stealth; however, she held her tongue, and after several breathless minutes on his part, leaned into Killian’s side. Much relieved, as he too was feeling the night’s chill rather more than he cared to admit, Killian pulled her a bit nearer still in his grasp, burrowing his chin against the downy-soft blonde halo of hair at the crown of her head, and closing his eyes for a moment against the dark, disorienting world in which they were set adrift. If nothing else, they still had each other. That thought slightly dulled the chill trembling that had begun to quake through his own veins, though he continued to feel them run through Emma from time to time, and he tried to shield her further in his surrounding embrace in response.

After some time, with their combined body heat thankfully diffusing between them, and the shivers besetting them both subsiding, Killian found the courage to ask Emma at least one of the questions which had haunted him since they’d stolen from his home. “What of your parents, Swan?  Do they know where you’ve gone? They cannot have approved you taking such risk simply to help me… your employer.” There was a heavy pause before Killian stumbled over the label to their association, not feeling it quite right, but uncertain what other to apply. He cared for Emma far beyond her station in society, but he would not assume he meant the same to her. Though she had come back to urge him to save himself, to see his own worth through his blame and self-doubt, and prod him into flight, she was so good - loyal and true - that she would quite possibly have done much the same for anyone of her acquaintance.

For her part, his golden-headed Swan looked up at him for some time, her emerald-hued gaze studying him carefully in the bare moonlight, as if trying to decipher whether or not she could say whatever truth was hovering on her tongue. Finally, she drew in a deep, fortifying breath and ever so lightly, still holding his gaze with her own, pulled back from him just enough to raise her delicate hand to his chest, tentatively brushing her fingertips along the open collar of his loosely buttoned (blouse?) under his heavier woolen jacket. Her breathing sped up even as she did so, and the heat that coursed through him at the sensation of her light, curious touch through the dark hair that furred his solid chest effectively drove away any lingering night chill he felt.

“Well,” she hedged, eyes dropping from his at last, “Papa did try to forbid it,” she gave him a tremulous little half-smile while shaking her head slightly. “He wanted to be sure I was safe with them...but...Mama...she loved your mother so much...and she has always adored you and Liam as well.  She - she got him to see that I really had no other choice. I had to come to you, to help if I could… I couldn’t let you…” her voice trailed off then, as if the too-terrible alternatives still waiting on the tip of her tongue could not be voiced. Where she had sought out his eyes when their conversation began, Killian now felt keenly how she avoided meeting his gaze. She had told him why back at the chateau, but it was only now, as she struggled in a way that pained him, that Killian dared to believe her previous words.

Still, he had to be sure. “What is it?” he finally urged on a whisper, tilting her face up to search her eyes once more, gentle fingers still cradling her chin. “Someone who…?”

Emma seemed to smile at him with a sort of affection only she could muster, that warmed those dazzling eyes of hers as well as curling her lips and dimpling her cheeks prettily. She gently pulled back from him just slightly, as if needing to gather herself before she went on. When she at last shook her head and blew out a breath, he almost chuckled easily along with her self-deprecating words, “I am not at all sure why I’m the only one baring my soul here, Milord.” Mischief flitted across her face along with the mix of embarrassment and amusement which had already been present, but Emma’s expression quickly turned serious once more. “I told you, fool that I am, being just a servant girl and all. I couldn’t leave someone I care about - someone I love - alone in their misery. The rioters and looters were gathering in the streets. It frightened me, what some of them were planning. I know you feel horribly that some have so little, so much so that you rack yourself with guilt you don’t deserve. They were making for the fine estates first, and...I feared if they came for you… that you might not fight back.  Living with myself if I had stayed away and you… you were…” Unshed tears beaded her lovely long eyelashes as her words floundered to a halt, and Killian found his breath stolen away as he put his fingers out to cover her trembling lips, soothingly pressing in a gesture that tried to convey he understood. He couldn’t yet speak around the lump in his own throat.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could barely even blink, much less give Emma the answer she was obviously waiting on tenterhooks to hear. She had always been a bright spot in his life, even before he knew or understood what that might mean. Even more so after the loss of his beloved mother when so much of the place he had grown up in and the things he had so treasured went dull and grey. But even after he realized what the pull towards her meant, he had never put it into words, never spoken it aloud. She was so fiery and brave, so sparkling, sharp, and charismatic. The world might say that her class made her less than him, but to Killian’s mind it was reversed. How could he ever hold the attention and love of an angel like her?

However, as he felt her breathing falter and a tear tremble and finally escape to trail down her cheek, he knew he must speak. Emma attempted to pull away, embarrassed, and he gathered her close again tightly before she could. “Wait, Emma… please…” he begged. She shook her head where she had buried it against his chest, now blatantly refusing to meet his eyes, though he had heard the sniffle she tried valiantly to hide and cursed himself for being its cause.

“You don’t understand,” he attempted once more, hoping he could forestall her shutting herself off from him after the risk she had taken with her heart as well as her person. He simply had to make her see. “Emma, I feel the same. Surely you must have had some idea. Please believe me. I was merely shocked for a moment. I never thought that you could feel the same.”

Her delicate frame stilled in his arms; all fighting against his hold ceased, and big, beguiling green eyes stared back at him, blinking away the tears that had started. The look on her face seemed suddenly so hopeful, so awed, that he could not contain the answering smile that broke across his own face - even if they were freezing, lost, on the run, and their next day no longer a given. “I believed it once,” she murmured, her voice low and her fingers, as if finally freed to do so, reaching up to trace along the planes of his face. “But I did not dare hope that it would still be true.”

Killian shook his head, stunned, and having to laugh at them both, and how foolish they had been, each devoted to the other, but afraid to let them know. Leaning his head down to rest his forehead against hers, he breathed out in a comforted voice, “Strange as it may seem, my Love, I felt exactly the same.”

Emboldened by their mutual confession, he gathered Emma’s slight frame to his chest and allowed his lips to sip and taste the sweetness of hers, set alight by the feel of her kiss and of Emma in his arms.

She responded in kind, and the flame growing between them was enough to warm them both through the darkest watches of the night.

~~~**~~~

Nearly two weeks later, as they stumbled through the gates of the estate where they had learned along the road that French soldiers were sometimes stationed between campaigns, they were ragged, beyond fatigue, and half-starved, but still together and buoyed by the simple twining of their fingers together hand-in-hand.  That they had been lucky enough to find the very regiment Killian’s long absent elder sibling marched with was beyond their wildest dreams of blessing. Being able to fall into his strong arms; broad-shouldered, warm and steady Liam gathering both of them in his grasp with tears in the corners of his eyes as he happily brought them to the campfire and shared his own rations, was like finding themselves safely home.

Tagging: @therooksshiningknight @searchingwardrobes @spartanguard @jennjenn615 @bmbbcs4evr @whimsicallyenchantedrose @laschatzi @darkcolinodonorgasm @gingerchangeling @revanmeetra87 @mayquita @kingofmyheart14 @nikkiemms @blackwidownat2814 @vvbooklady1256 @ilovemesomekillianjones @charmingturkeysandwich @resident-of-storybrooke

[caffeineivore]

So yes Spirits again...

I am trying to like, find the plot of this thing. I don’t know if there is one.

A/Z. Prompts used: Blue, melody

**

The building is standard industrial concrete, the sort which could become anything and everything from a distribution warehouse to a dance studio, and is all but empty inside when Zhen unlocks the door.

“My latest acquisition,” he tells her with a wry smile. “It used to house a self-storage company until they got into some trouble with the law. Big sting, lots of contraband of the weapons and drugs variety.” A whimsical smile crosses his mouth. “I bought it because it was cheap, but also because the walls are blue.”

It’s just the sort of fanciful thing he’d say, green-gold eyes gazing deeply into her blue ones as his smile grows, and it’s hard not to be charmed, even though she knows quite well that the charisma is part of his birthright. But she’s never been the sort to give in so easily, and so she raises an eyebrow instead of smiling. “Did you have any particular plan for this building? It could become anything, really. I’m sure Jareth would have a few notions of what to do with it if you asked.”

“He’d probably suggest turning it into something horrifying, like a Target with a Starbucks built inside,” Zhen affects an exaggeratedly scandalized expression. “Perhaps he’d come up with something even more soulless and appalling. He’s a terrifyingly creative fellow.”

Raina can’t quite hold back a giggle at the very idea of Jareth, with his discerning Ælf-kine sensibilities, partaking in anything so plebeian as the design and construction of a Target of all places. “Well. I’m quite sure it’d be a profitable endeavour if you did decide upon that.”

“Undoubtedly, but the headaches wouldn’t be worth it. Mortals are so aggravatingly rude in those types of shops. Especially middle-aged women with coupons and caterwauling offspring.” He blinks his eyes slowly, almost drowsily, the way a fox might upon catching sight of a hare it didn’t want to spook, then throws up both hands, palms outwards. And then, right in front of her eyes, the room begins to fill, furnishings and decor appearing all around them as though conjured under the wand of a stage magician. And yet... Raina takes a half-step back, right into a padded high-top stool the likes of which wouldn’t be out of place at any dim, intimate whiskey bar. She reaches out and feels smooth-worn wood underneath her fingers, and then in her view, a glistening row of bottles appear. Some bluesy melody plays in the background, a smokey rasp of a torch singer’s voice against syncopated drumbeats and the sultry wail of a saxophone. It’s so realistic, so tangible to all the senses that she would never have thought it an illusion had she not just walked into an empty building a few minutes ago.

“Impressive,” she breathes, running her fingers over the wood of the bar. Almost immediately, a squat tumbler of amber-hued single-malt Scotch on the rocks appears in front of her, the icy condensation cold and wet against her fingertips, the rich yet astringent smell of the alcohol pungent on the air. She takes a cautious, tiny sip-- it even tastes like expensive liquor-- and yet there’s something subtly lacking, as though her body doesn’t recognize it as alcohol consumption and cue in the metabolic process of converting the ethanol molecules into acetaldehyde. For all it tastes and looks and smells like Scotch, it has none of the chemical or physiological properties. An illusion, almost flawless, but not quite.

“I don’t drink, not anymore,” Zhen gives her a crooked, self-deprecating grin. “The last time I did, I ended up on a misadventure which ended up with me caught in the business end of an abandoned hunter’s trap in the mountains for a good six months. I was starving and almost feral by the end of that ordeal, by the time I’d finally gotten free. Your colleague actually found me in his backyard. Fed me a cold plate of leftovers. He was perhaps three or four years old, then.”

Raina pauses, and then, in her usual quick fashion, she connects the dots. “I wondered why you acted like you were running into an old friend at Adam’s wedding.” She also knew the bare-bones story about Adam King’s story-- a rough childhood with poor, dysfunctional biological parents which could have ended up as any number of tragic statistics, an alcohol-induced car accident which he miraculously survived, then an auspicious placement with an adoptive family that turned his life around and brought him to the place he was today. ‘It was as though I had a guardian angel who brought me out of that car wreck and into a new world,’ Adam had said to her before. Smiling, she steps away from the hyper-realistic bar and up to Zhen, reaches up with her cool fingers and touches his warm cheek. “You went to bless his marriage. That’s why you started seeing me. So you’d have a reason to be there.”

Slowly, he nods, and with a slow flicker like a set of lights blinking out, the whiskey bar disappears, accoutrement by accoutrement, until it’s just the two of them standing together in an empty warehouse again. Oddly enough, though, the bluesy music continues to play, softer and sweeter now, as though coming from the next room. He dips his head, covers her fingers with his own even as he brushes his lips over her forehead. “I did, I suppose, have ulterior motives when I met you. Not bad ones, but I didn’t just meet you for you. Until... there you were.” His eyes meet hers over the curve of a gentle, ironic smile. “I was captivated, you know. And then, immediately, sad. People live such short, short lives. I knew, if I got close to you, I’d be devastated if you left me. And yet I couldn’t resist. Do you forgive me?”

Raina thinks of her mother, who’d been wooed by a mortal man and married him hundreds of years ago. Her father had been a portrait painter for a Renaissance court, and enjoyed fame and privilege from his talent and the great wealth that his fae wife had brought with her as a dowry. But three times he’d broken his word to her mother, and so she’d left him, taking Raina with her to be raised in the Old Way. Her father had died penniless and broken-hearted, abandoning his prosperous post in court for painting water-scapes, turbulent, murky things as he’d gone from creek to lake to sea, bewailing his fortune and begging forgiveness from a wife who would never return.

“Will you promise never to lie to me, or break your word?” She feels as though she’s standing on a precipice, gazing into the unknown depths. She barely remembers what her father looked like, but she’d inherited his dark hair. She imagines that he must have been handsome, perhaps almost as charming as Zhen, agreeing readily to that which her mother had asked of him in a haze of enchantment.

He kisses her forehead again, then dips his head to kiss her mouth, lips warm and dry against her cool, damp ones. “I won’t make any promises,” his mouth traces the words against hers, feather-light. “I won’t make any promises that I might ultimately break, be it through fate or will.” The cavernous room changes again, filling with rows of well-worn pews. The music changes to something more solemn and grand, pipe-organ rather than saxophone, and the flickering light and faint scent of candles fills the air, though lacking something of the heat. It’s just the sort of back-drop, the appropriate setting, where a man might make his vows. The candlelight forms a halo around the old-gold curls of his hair, and he takes her hand, lays a kiss over the back of each. “I will make you one promise, and one promise only. And that will be to love you for as long as we both shall live.” 

The room is all skillful illusion and the man is all consummate charm, and yet, Raina finds it in herself to believe him. She slides her fingers through the tousled silk of his hair, then skims them over the nape of his neck, reveling a bit at his involuntary shiver as his lips home in on hers. “We may both live for a long time yet.” The words are muffled against his mouth, his skin, and his response is almost lost against her own.

“I stand by my promise.” 

At some point, later, the room shifts again, transforming into what almost looks like a luxurious suite of rooms out of a mansion somewhere. Zhen lifts her off her feet, depositing her onto soft sheets that feel precisely like silk underneath her fingertips. She finds herself laughing, even as he kisses all the skin he can reach, clever fingers tugging at fabric to expose more. “I should have figured you’d bring me here to make love.” 

He doesn’t say anything in response to that. But the bluesy melody starts playing again in the background, a sultry-hot caress of notes in the air with the weight of fingers on bare skin.

[artemis-entreri]

Swordplay

Artemis Entreri groaned. More so than the pain, the wetness on the back of his thigh jolted him into wakefulness, and he was dismayed to see that the light of the false dawn had already breached the defenses of the shuttered window in his bedroom. 

Another interruption, the tired man thought with a grimace. He gingerly felt the bandage and, despite exerting no pressure against the injury, the wound still produced trumpet flares of pain. More or less fortunately, Entreri was no stranger to pain, and he brushed away the signal as he examined the crimson stains on his fingers. It was warm. His wound was seeping again, and needed a change of bandages. Ever since being struck by the thrice-cursed weapon that nullified magical healing, it felt like his life revolved around tending the injury.

The assassin glanced at the space beside himself, hardly surprised that it was empty but feeling a pang of loneliness nonetheless. He knew that the mercenary needed less sleep than he did; in fact, the drow didn't need to sleep at all. Though Entreri understood that Jarlaxle already accommodated, even indulged, him by taking his reverie lying down as opposed to in his preferred sitting position, the human couldn't help but wish that the drow slept in the same way that he did.

Realizing his bout of sentimentality, the assassin shoved himself up, the sudden motion blaring pain from his leg up and down his body and drawing his countenance tight. Despite his wince however, Entreri was glad for the distraction as he dragged himself to the edge of the bed, whereupon he moved his injured leg with the assistance of both hands so that it could dangle with his foot barely touching the floor. A soft orange glow from the partially-open door told him that his companion was likely reading a chapbook again.

Entreri slipped off of the bed onto his good leg and took hold of the crutches leaning against the wall near the headboard. He poked the door open with the end of one and hobbled into the next room, whereupon he turned and headed for the final room in their residence without sparing a glance at Jarlaxle. Not a full glance anyway, for the ever-cautious assassin habitually took in his surroundings even without directly studying them, and he noted his companion was leaning back in his chair, the only visible hand holding the chapbook above his face, his head leaned back and resting against the top of his chair. Jarlaxle twitched almost imperceptibly, but Entreri managed to see the trace of motion, and knew that he'd startled the mercenary. He deliberately avoided considering exactly why though, as he was fairly sure he didn't want to think about it. He was already ashamed that he'd been needing his companion's assistance in tending to his wound, and even though it had been a custom for the past many tendays, still Entreri hated his forced lack of independence. To further inconvenience the one he was forced to rely upon was insult to quite literal injury.

Pointedly eliminating Jarlaxle from his peripheral vision, Entreri hobbled into the room where they'd stowed the medicinal herbs, bandages, tonics, and all manners of mundane treatments imaginable. There were potions and scrolls there too, for despite their lack of efficacy on the assassin's injury, Jarlaxle insisted that they kept them close by "just in case". With a pained sigh, Entreri lowered himself onto the pallet and guided his crutches to the floor. He sprawled unto his stomach, the vulnerability of his position increasing his chagrin, which was already mounting with each heartbeat that he waited for Jarlaxle to join him. The assassin closed his eyes and forced his focus away from his current predicament, to the virulent blade that had done this to him. One of the very few things about the predicament he found himself and his companion entangled with was that the sword in question had not actually been Charon's Claw. Both weapons were artifacts of ages long past, however the aptly named Sword of Suppuration was apparently less lethal than Claw's toxic touch, however it was proving to leave a wound that was utterly unimpressed by every form of magical healing available to two highly resourceful fellows. His musings about the weapon called its form to his unwilling mind, and he again saw the blade's sickly green-hued glow with his mind's eye, and recalled the hideously gelatinous ichor that perpetually oozed from its venomous edge. That the sword was a work of masterful beauty only made it more hideous given the verdant, undulant, and somehow serpentine luminosity that it allowed entry into the world of Toril. Entreri forced himself to relax, drawing his mind onto remembered cadences of motion, remembered motions that, in fact, had been anything but relaxing at the time. Even as he calmed, he felt a tingling sort of anticipatory arousal spread throughout his form, and he hoped that the damnable wound might finally be losing its grip on his vitality.

A ray of sunlight shone directly onto his closed eyes, and Entreri snapped them open with a jerk of his head. The room was bathed in morning light now, and the assassin realized with startlement and dismay that the wetness in his thigh had exacerbated to sticky clumping and itching. He didn't have to crane his neck to detect the putrid scent, and when he did look back at his leg, he ascertained with alarm that his wound was the source of it. The chair where Jarlaxle would sit in while tending to him was empty, and the implements in the room were exactly the same as when Entreri had entered the room. 

Alarmed, the injured man hoisted himself up enough to stretch his arm and grab a few pieces of clean cloth. Setting them on the cot, he pushed himself up to his knees, his injured leg protesting against the pressure placed upon it. His gray-tinged pallor lost more of its dusky brown undertones as he unraveled the bandage, for each time that he neared the seeping wound he had to tug at the material. He continued unwinding until he could no longer, with still some layers to go, the bandages had fused with his wound from the secretion drying, and Entreri feared that he would rip his wound open should he force it.

Gritting his teeth, the distressed man moved his injured leg off the edge of the pallet in the same manner that he'd risen from his bed earlier. However, unlike earlier, when he lifted himself onto his good leg, excruciating pain shot through his damaged leg, and it was all he could do to control how he toppled forward. While he managed to not hurt himself further, Entreri could not avoid bumping into the table upon which the various treatment materials were piled. The assassin managed to stop his crumple with the chair, however it wasn't without a flurry of clattering and shattering about him.

His pain excruciating, his dismay maximum, Entreri cried out before he could stop himself, "Why haven't you come yet?'

"I've been trying to!" The voice that answered him was filled with anguish, albeit of a different sort, the sort that brought a flush to the austere killer's face.

The sun was halfway to its zenith. Outside, bakers packed up their unsold pieces of morning bread. Entreri focused on those distant indistinct pieces of conversation while Jarlaxle removed the final bits of bandage that'd fused to his festering wound. Next came the stinging poultices, each bite painting a new star in the assassin's vision. 

"There!" the drow finally announced. "Now to re-bandage... oh, would you please lift your leg, Artemis?"

Entreri didn't budge. It'd taken the last of his strength to get back onto the pallet, and he simply didn't have it in him.

Jarlaxle sighed and climbed onto the pallet, whereupon he sat cross-legged and used his own protruding knee to leverage his companion's leg off the cot. 

"Didn't you relieve yourself just earlier today--yesterday-- twice?" the assassin voiced groggily.

The mercenary nodded, then realizing that Entreri couldn't see him do so, answered softly, "Yes, but, I'm accustomed to more sport."

Despite his exhaustion, Entreri managed to snort. "I do believe that Ilnezhara was counting on that."

The assassin felt his companion shift unnecessarily, and guessed him to be uncomfortable. Jarlaxle's uncharacteristically abashed response confirmed his suspicions.

"She doesn't understand. Dragons are not monogamous, not to mention that they hold themselves in such high regard that they fail to consider the worth of other races."

Entreri snorted again. "Sounds just like drow."

The assassin felt the deft fingers dancing about his leg pause. He felt a pang of guilt in his chest, but it was as effective a dam against his bitterness as a stick wall against a flood.

"It must be very flattering, that a dragon would desire you so as to brandish an item of ages past in order to force you back into her bed." Even as the words left his lips, Entreri felt shame.

"It must be very flattering, that a dragon would be so threatened by a mere human that she would brandish an item of ages past to render him unable to fulfill his partner's needs," Jarlaxle shot back, but fell into silence as quickly as had Entreri.

"So go to her bed then," the assassin quietly said.

Jarlaxle didn't respond. Only the occasional neigh and creak of passing carriages broke the silence in the room. The drow stared hard at his companion's dark locks, matted to the human's head by sweat, then allowed his gaze to drift to the oozing wound that magic couldn't heal, that recovered so inexorably slowly despite his companion's exceptional health. The ruby eyes flashed angrily.

"She has flattered me so much that I've realized that I am too good for her bed," the mercenary growled. 

Despite his exhaustion, Entreri's eyes snapped open, and he reflexively began to turn to study his companion. However, a delicate but strong hand on his lower back stopped him. The assassin smiled into the cot. 

"Unable to fulfill his partner's needs?" he echoed, the corners of his lips curling up into a smirk.

That night, passerbys gave the mostly-abandoned house a wide berth. It was already rumored to be haunted, but what they heard that night chased away any doubts to the matter. Foreign tones rang out from within, dark but alluringly melodic, more chilling than the winds of Icewind Dale but simultaneously hotter than the Calishite sun, with flowing vowels and clipped consonants, intensity, ardor and passion in every syllable. 

The final lights of the city snuffed out when the assassin pulled himself up beside his companion, who was snoring inelegantly, legs still spread as they were moments before he'd lost consciousness. Entreri wiped the back of a hand across his mouth, the motion failing to remove the triumphant grin adorning his angular features. His smile grew more satisfied as he reasoned that he wouldn't be waking up alone the next morning. 

[[ The intended timeline of this piece is sometime in the far-ish future, in which Artemis and Jarlaxle have obviously resolved their differences. More importantly than them being together is that this assumes Artemis has gotten to a place of relative trust and comfort in which he does accept Jarlaxle’s help, even subconsciously growing to rely on it, despite all of his conscious objections otherwise. 

That’s my justification anyway for a fluffy and kinda OOC piece. >_>

Title courtesy of my s/o, because there’s a deadly sword, Jarlaxle’s playing with his own “sword”, and finally Artemis plays with Jarlaxle’s “sword”. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ]]

[kanghuteh]

the loneliness of the way

In many ways the beginning of 茶道, the way of tea, for me was in Manila. Living in Mabuhay Temple, the Chinese auntie who came in with her crystals and gold, silk shirts, antique yixing tea ware and delicate porcelains sat us down with 肉餅/hopia and proceeded to brew a Tie Guan Yin oolong for all 15 or so of us retreat members. She had her Filipino helpers set up a driftwood table with a built-in drain, her kettles, and a set of smelling cups and drinking cups. She told us about the story of the oolong, an Iron Guan Yin statue blessing a devotee with the tea leaves, as green as jade. Her yixing cups coated with glaze on the inside smelled fragrant as she showed us how to hold the cup gently, like the hand of a beloved, warming the walls of the clay to help the scent rise up into the air. She told us to take a bite of the hopia made of mung bean, and as we drank said to see if we could see how the flavor changed, how every brew was different, bringing out more and more notes. Could we be mindful of this?

Almost everyone didn’t seem to care much, the troublemakers making noise, the rest just grateful to be eating. It was later in the day and we were all starving from Kung Fu drills, cleaning the temple, and learning about Ch’an meditation and Mahayana Buddhist theory. But the way she returned again and again to show us how to hold the lid of the pot, how to hold the gaiwan, trying her best to stay calm in the face of students refusing to listen to her—it told me something about how the way of tea supported her Buddhist practice. She reminded us of the Guan Yin outside, holding her vase of holy water out into the world, blessing us with compassion over and over again, how the taste of oolong spread in our mouths much like this benediction.

The first person I drank tea in this way with again was a man I met in Kaohsiung, the last month of my stay with Fo Guang Shan. It was a budding romance as I balanced the decision to continue with this path or to return to the world. One day, he invited me to walk down from our mountaintop monastery to the visiting hall at the foot of the mountain to drink tea. We walked around and decided to try some tea. The lady offered us some oolong and we drank together, savoring the flavor, my heart turning towards the world again. He asked the tea host to snap a photo of us as we drank the tea, thanked her for her time, and left.

After that, tea was mostly a lonely affair for me. After having married him and moving to San Francisco, when I picked up the way of the tea, it was not something we would do much together, as I thought we would. The strain of our issues, our diverging paths slowly becoming evident. Once I cooked a Lunar New Year’s meal for us and prepared some tea and he refused to join, citing a moon day, wearing all white. I sat and finished the dumplings myself, brewed myself some tea for the night, the celadon cup clinking on the glass pitcher as I poured the tea, clear and hued. What was love like, I asked myself, what was partnership like. The tea splashed and looked, for a second like a quiet river being pooled into a vessel.

Of course, it wasn’t like we didn’t have tea together, but the times I sat down for tea and invited him to join were spurned too many times, in such violent ways, that perhaps it was wise that I acknowledged the beginning separation for what it was instead of hoping it would go away.

We shared many meals with tea together, but these times are always coupled with a memory of his impatience, his dislike of something or the other. I think in our marriage, he only sat down for tea with me alone twice. Near the end of our marriage, I took out jasmine mung bean cakes, some pastries, made some dumplings, brewed some jasmine pearls a Mandarin teacher gave us and invited him to sit. He grabbed a few dumplings and left the room.

Of course, other times he joined in when his friends or our friends would come, happily chatting. Those were good nights filled with soft music, small clouds of incense, and tea, late into the night.

After he announced he was leaving for an attempt at being a monk, I didn’t drink tea with anyone for a long time. I often brewed tea for myself in my room, at first meditating so hard at his urging, him asking me to follow him into his path. At night I would brew a bitter mix of chrysanthemum, chamomile, and valerian root in my gaiwan and gulp it down, praying for sleep to take over sooner so I would no longer have to cry. The first month of that separation, I would wake up and sit intently, brew a cup, praying for the same sense of renunciation to appear within me again. I wanted to follow him because I still loved him. And one day I found that I had to stop. It became clear: it was not my path now. I would brew tea for myself to wake up at first, and eventually stopped. It didn’t feel right to brew tea now, something I had hoped to keep doing with this man for the rest of my life. The way of tea, the way of Buddha Dharma felt so utterly lonely now. There was no one in the Bay I could sit with to explain my sadness to, no one in the Bay who could say: this was unfair but your acceptance of it is also virtuous, also good, also strong. Instead I dismantled my shrine, put away my gold statues, returned further into the world.

One of the last things we did together was to have tea. He insisted upon it and at the time I only obliged because I missed drinking tea with someone. I began brewing occasionally for myself at our NYC apartment, the one I asked him to join me in for my immigration’s sake and for his sake—he was falling in love with an ex and had hoped to pursue a life with him. I told him if he wanted to truly be a monk he should leave this man behind and begin pursuing his intention of renunciation more definitely.

This night that we drank tea, he was on his way to a meditation group that I had always wanted to attend, that I’d stayed with prior to our move to the city. I stayed away for his whole time here because I didn’t want for us to be associated together then, I wanted him to build his own way into the path. It didn’t feel right to stand by him as a companion in this way when he had stopped being mine, even as a friend. This night we drank together, I enjoyed the teas and for an hour we were back to being old friends. As we left the distance grew larger and larger. He asked me to join him for a sit, but it was much too painful. After all, how could I return to the faith that brought me this much pain?

Only when I look back now do I see the importance of this moment. He was asking me to relive the things we did together as a farewell. Tea was one of the things we did. But at that point, I didn’t need a farewell from him. I just needed him to be kind.

Our time together in New York has been perhaps one of the most painful ones in my life. After this tea session, he would call me an enemy who was forcing him to stay in the world. He was quite selfish in his method of renouncing. I couldn’t say it then, but now I can. I can acknowledge it now and begin to heal. Even though New York has opened many old scars, created dark times in my heart, it also reminded me of friends I could have outside of this, good friends who still stuck around after our marriage and friends I knew from back then, and friends I was about to make.

I slowly began to pick up the way of tea again. An old friend from our time in Kaohsiung, who knew us from the beginning of our relationship visited New York. She invited me to come try out tea houses with her, places I didn’t think I would ever go to. She sat down in a tea house and listened to my story, held space for me, and acknowledged the pain I had endured in that relationship: the racism, the privilege, the harshness of it all. For once, I was allowed to acknowledge the wholesome and the unwholesome in how he treated me. It felt that all our other Buddhist friends during our marriage had never once let me do that. The loneliness eased a little bit. I could begin to heal then. I didn’t have to revere him as a saint just because his actions now are purer: I could still say that in the past, he was unwholesome and he hurt me in many ways. I didn’t have to deny that that had happened just because he was a holy man now.

So now the way of tea has taught me, much as it did earlier on, that it was a way to hold space for myself and others. It could bring me peace again, much like how my return to the Dharma on my own terms, not one manipulated by my feelings for someone, brought me ease. So I begin opening my space, holding space for those who need this same healing. My friends in dharma and tea taught me these same things, reminding me that I am able to hold space for others to express their griefs and that I can trust others to hold space for me in this way. I’m always grateful for this lesson. The way of tea taught me that. There is still camaraderie and companionship in this world. Living and the way to enlightenment of any sort, for being useful to the world is inherently lonely, but what tea has shown me is that it can occasionally be a little less lonely.

Nowadays I begin picking up the gaiwan, pour tea in my own tea room, invite people to come. I want to be open again. I want to share grief and joy to those who want to. To acknowledge our hearts and to always, always be able to say hello anyway. A tea tray I have says that the fragrance of tea fills the room. I want to say: the fragrance of a listened heart also fills the room, and tea helps that happen.