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hunterclaringtonjoy · 3 years

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Hunter’s Choice

Who: Hunter Clarington & Frannie Fabray When: August 12, 2021 Where: Frannie’s Apartment What: Hunter considers what’s next for him now he’s graduated and has a proposition for Frannie.

Hunter’s Choice

Hunter had been lucky to be able to keep his apartment after graduation but the contract was coming to an end in just over a week and then he’d be forced to go home. Despite his father’s wishes, Hunter hadn’t signed up to join the army yet so it appeared as though going back to Canada would be his only option.

The wishes of Clarington Senior were more accurately demands in the form of daily phone calls or emails from Mr C’s “friends” in the US armed forces less than gently trying to persuade Hunter to join whatever training program they could pluck out of thin air for the son of a respected officer. Of course, none of this communication came directly from Mr C though as that would require him to give up his time to be part of his children’s lives, he could simply direct their paths from afar and continue to be hands on as little as possible.

Between spending time with Frannie, Ollie and Benji whenever the latter wasn’t with his new boyfriend, and working with the Eagle Scouts program mentoring the young men aiming to achieve the highest award of the Boy Scouts, the summer had flown by in a blur of joy and excitement with his family which was barely keeping his fears for the coming fall at bay.

Every time those fears threatened to overwhelm Hunter he’d go to the gym and swim lap after lap never stopping long enough to brake his concentration from his sights set on the spot on the wall at the other end of the pool and he’d only leave the water when he was in pain from either burning lungs or burning muscles from the effort he’d exerted.

The 20th was fast approaching and Hunter needed to have a plan in place for the next step in his life, he couldn’t put this off any longer. He’d actually slept in his own bed in his own apartment the night before so thankfully he wasn’t disturbing Frannie and Ollie with his pacing, which he’d been doing for at least two hours now as he twisted the box in his hand between his fingers deftly as one might do with a pen. This was Hunters’ chance to change his trajectory and make his life his own and not live in his father’s shadow.

Taking a deep breath Hunter walked up to Frannie’s apartment and by-passed knocking on the door and simply walking in. thinking on it hunter couldn’t even remember the last time he had knocked and waited for Frannie’s response. That apartment was more like grand central station these days what with Hunter coming and going as he pleased to spend time with Ollie, Sam and Nikko popping up whenever they wanted, and then Benji and Mason appearing out of thin air at all hours of the day or night. Hunter of a year ago would have laughed if someone had said this was going to be his life, and yet he wouldn’t change it for the world.

“Hey babe,” Hunter called closing the door behind himself, feeling relaxed as soon as he was on the other side. “I wanted to talk to you about something.” He tugged nervously at his button up, smoothing down the bottom hem over top of his dark wash jeans, hoping Ollie wasn’t currently a sticky mess and ruin the white shirt. Hunt scolded himself momentarily for bothering to wear white in the vicinity of their son but he wanted to look good today.

“You know it’s been embarrassingly obvious that I’ve had no idea what to do after graduation after you managed to talk me out of being my father’s carbon copy and I need to thank you for that somehow because I found something perfect for me, at least the next year. The swim team is looking for a coach for the next academic year. Ours is taking off and moving to New Zealand to coach an Olympic hopeful and I couldn’t pass up what seemed like a perfect opportunity. Yesterday I found out I got the job. So I’m staying here. I’ll be able to rent a home over at the on campus staff housing association so if you want, you and Ollie could live there with me?”

Hunter had never spoken a sentence so quickly in all his life. He wasn’t the type of person to anxiously jabber on about nothing, he was brought up to be clear and concise but it was a big ask to propose such a thing to Frannie, to someone he felt so many things he’d never felt before. Frannie’s answer would be truly life changing for them all and he was about five seconds from starting to recall every single one of the Jewish Hebrew prayers Ben had taught him for luck.

Frannie's Response

Frannie had been pulling all her classic moves to avoid talking about what was actually bothering her. Well, what had be bothering her for ages... but only now was back to the front of her mind since talking to Benji. It was ironic, really, that one of the people she was most concerned about in this whole situation was Benji, and now he was encouraging her to talk to Hunter about whatever was "weird."

And despite what Sam kept thinking, the weirdness was not from some kind of unrequited love between herself and Hunter... but Sam had gotten into her head about what living with Hunter could mean. For a while, the thought had been circling her brain to tell Hunter that he should just move in with herself and Ollie when the lease was up now that he was no longer a student. She'd just figured that would be easier for everyone, right? And she had a spare room. Nothing had to really change, right?

But with Benji living with her as of recent until the leases opened up for him to get his own place, the idea fell to the back of her brain. It would be weird to have him here and Hunter trying to move in too, or at least that's what she told herself.

The door opened and she didn't even look over, just started talking. "I got more juice boxes. Also, string cheese, animal crackers, and some more p.b. and j for sandwiches, s-" She stopped speaking when she realized it was Hunter and turned her head quickly. "Oh shit, sorry. I thought you were Benji. Hey," she smiled before turning her attention back to the laundry she was folding, honestly unsure of what articles of clothing belonged to who. "What's up?"

She nodded as she listened to him speak, glancing over every few seconds so he would know she was paying attention. She shook her head a little, her cheeks feeling a bit warmer, when he credited her with changing his mind- which seemed very unbelievable to her. But she stopped folding and turned to look at him with wide eyes when she heard his job opportunity. "Hunt! That's amazing, what the hell! You're going to be am- wait, what did you say?" She blinked, dropping the still unfolded shirt back into the basket and running her hand over her hair. "You want us to live with you? I-" She stammered a bit, letting out a small laugh. "That's- I mean, you... I was going to ask you that…"

Hunter’s Proposition

“Good to know my brother is still actually showing up here, I swear he’s at the Smythe’s more than anyone else.” Hunter laughed, “Not that I blame him after Chris…” He huffed, grabbing down the bottle of bourbon he had hidden at the back of the highest cupboard in Frannie’s kitchen and pouring a couple of ounces into a glass to calm his nerves. Hunter still felt ill-will towards Chris after he found out Ben had needed to break up with his childhood crush, making Hunter more on edge than ever about Ben entering a new relationship because clearly people felt like they could treat the youngest Clarington like garbage and Hunter wasn’t going to stand by and let that happen again.

Watching Frannie stumble a little as he continued to talk always amused Hunter. He was the type of person that had no qualms continuing to talk without letting people respond, so seeing Frannie go from joy about his job announcement to what appeared to be nerves or surprise in reaction to his invite made him chuckle but only because he found it adorable and endearing.

However, the most interesting part of Frannie’s response was she took had been getting ready to ask him the same question. “Ask me to live here? As convenient as that sounds I’m ready to stop sharing a bedroom with my son, and little brother when he feels like spending the night with his ‘Mom’.” He grinned, in the back of his mind thinking about how this could be an opportunity to get into her bed… But the little voice of restraint in his mind, which oddly enough had the voice of the Smythe’s sister, told him to take it slow.

“We can get a three bedroom over in the staff complex, they have some renovated town houses that would be perfect for the three of us so if you have exams or cases to study for I can keep Ollie occupied in a different part of the house.” Hunter explained, wandering over and picking up the discarded shirt and smiling, it was one of his that he’d often pull on first thing after waking up to bathe or change Ollie before he showered and got ready for the day himself.

“So what do you say? Think you can live that far from Jolly Green and little Prescott?” Hunter give his best sensual persuasive smile, practically batting his eyelashes.

#franniexfabs #about: frannie #para #Hunter’s Choice

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maggotmouth · 3 years

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hillo sexthy legends !! i’m nora and i’ll be writing margo colby n probs sm1 else bcos lets be real, i lack self-control. u can find her pinterest here n some info abt her sexy self below the cut. plot with me on discord ( hot girl midsommar#8664 ) or in my ims !! x o x

* CAMILA MORRONE, CIS WOMAN + SHE / HER | you know MARGO COLBY, right? they’re TWENTY-THREE, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, ELEVEN YEARS? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to SCRAWNY BY WALLOWS like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole BLEACH WHITE SNEAKERS POUNDING ON A GYMNASIUM FLOOR, USING THE SAME BLUNT SCISSORS TO HACK THE SLEEVES OFF AN EXES T-SHIRT THAT YOU USE TO CUT YOUR 3AM FRINGE, A WALNUT-SHAPED ACHE IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH FOR THE PERSON YOU COULD HAVE BEEN thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is AUGUST 8TH, so they’re a LEO, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nora, 25, gmt, she/her )

CLICK ANYWHERE ON THIS SENTENCE FOR SEXII GOOGLE DOC!!

bullet point summary of margo.

— born margaret but NOBODY calls her that. its colby, coach or margo, and go to the privileged few. margo grew up in the creek commune n then dropped out of school cos of a teenage pregnancy so she was a bit of a cautionary tale back in’t’day (said tht in my yorkshire accent). she now works for summer camps coaching pee wee soccer and pee wee cheer, as well as helping out her beekeeper dad on his honey farm, which is jst north of abernathy creek, and working at scuba on the off seasons.

— its just her and her dad, and has been for as long as she can recall !! everything she knows about her mum could fit on the back of the weathered passport photo she keeps in her wallet of a stranger who shares her face - her name’s melody, or at least tht was name she used when working as a dancer, she’s from argentina and dropped mag’s dad as soon as someone w more money came along.

— margo’s father is a beekeeper with his own organic honey company. margo and her dad moved to irving in the early 00s, the summer between grade school and middle school, because her dad had heard about the communal living in abernathy creek and wanted to lend his skills there and live off the fatta the land in a very lenny from of mice and men kinda way.

— for a few years of middle school margo was bullied for living with the ‘freaks from the creek’, but when they realised how chill her dad was with underage drinking, margo ‘keg-bringer’ colby soon gained popularity among the more renegade students. every so often, the high school parties would happen at her end of town, occasionally with members of the commune even offering the high schoolers a spiritual experience they’d never forget (often in the form of mushrooms) which meant people tried to stay on her good side. to get an invite to a margo colby party handed you a free pass to make up the most ridiculous shit about the commune you liked and nobody else could say anything, because they’d never been to the creek.

— at school, margo had a lot of ‘behvioural issues’ bcos of undiagnosed adhd, she found it difficult to sit still for hours n write down huge chunks of information n her restlessness was seen as laziness. she was encouraged to do sports, as were most of the kids who weren’t that academically inclined, but she turned out to be pretty hot shit at sprinting, because she grew up surrounded by bee houses and he who runs slowest gets stung, baybeyy!! so yea, in school sports became her LIFE. she was gonna get a sports scholarship to college but ended up dropping out of school in senior year n becoming one of those kids who could have had it all but lost it.

— she had sex with sutter at a house party when she wasnt really ready because it felt like the right thing to do at the time and everybody else was doing it. she’d attended health class, she’d seen the corny videos. she knew about all the statistics, but she also knew that it had never happened to anyone she knew and the pull out method was basically safer than the morning after pill and way less expensive.

— a teenage pregnancy knocked her out of the runnings for prom queen and meant she had to leave school early. she didn’t go to college when her friends did, instead she spent the time interviewing potential foster candidates and eating her weight in lindt chocolate while marathoning love island in her room.

— she had a son, who she passed off to someone else a couple of towns away. it was a closed adoption which seemed like the best idea at the time, but she now wishes she had access to his life.

— after peaking in high school and jumping between jobs for a few years, she got a more permanent role at scuba which she loves with all of her heart and soul, but unfortunately a bar job doesn’t pay the rent.

— she works at summer camps coaching junior soccer and netball on the side. she’s extremely competitive and takes it very personally if her team lose. the kids all call her, coach colby n write her longwinded letters about how they’ll never forget this summer camp before they go back to their suburban picket fence houses n she keeps all the letters in a drawer n takes them out to read when she’s feelin depressed.

— enjoys surfing and worked for a number of years on resorts like mila kunis’ job in forgetting sarah marshall. she went on to work 18-hour days as a stewardess on luxury yachts which is a part of her backstory i added after watching season one of below deck because i guess i really am that fucking impressionable. met most of her surf friends doing tht but said she’d never in her life do it again bcos it was mostly just picking up after rich white ppl for shit pay. she came back to irving n thats when she started doing the summer camp jobs so she could move out of the creek n get her own apartment.

— she never actually finished senior year so she’s currently going to night school at the community college to get through her exams and is trying to save to go to college or open university. she wants to major in criminology. she’s super ambitious but also super adhd so she fluctuates between thinking she can achieve anything to just feeling like a failure n thinkin whats the point

— used to shoplift to feel joy and as an act of resistance to her hippy commune routes, but now sees herself as a reformed, bin-diving freegan (sims 4 eco living can i get a hell yaaaa). also she thinks it’s totally wrong to steal when you have enough money and clearly don’t need to steal to survive, ppl risk imprisonment for basic necessities, so for her to do it for a brief thrill and some new shades felt a bit derogatory

— was raised jewish. became a vegetarian as a child because it seemed, at the time, easier than having to explain which foods she was and wasn’t allowed to eat together, so she just cut out meat entirely. still a vegetarian now and dabbles in veganism, although its become less about not eating certain meats in the milk of their mother and more about her global impact / carbon footprint

— nurses little animals to health in her garden. has a hedgehog name OJ short for orange juice not the other one filthy pig. her and her dad have always been huge animal rights activists and existed on a vegetarian diet. the only one in their house who isn’t vegetarian is their cat, auggie. (short 4 augustus gloop)

— has a lot of stupid ass stick and poke tattoos. there was a phase during her years as a barmaid where she wanted to train as a tattoo artist n would mostly practice on herself or any friends who would let her

— she doesn’t form many long lasting friendships cos she tends to be super excited when she makes a new friend and just see them all the time but then it wears off and she can ghost a bit. she’ll always coming pinging back but she’s not the most predictable or loyal friend, sometimes she’ll sleep in your house every night for a week and then you won’t even get a text from her for a month. her best friends are elderly neighbours and houseless people she meets when volunteering at the foodbank. she thinks they’re more authentic than most of the ‘fake posers’ she meets down the vela pier

— calls herself a butch lesbian but still has sex with men when she wants validation. sexually attracted to some men, especially effeminate men, but only romantically attracted to women. very possessive of the gals in her life.

— stopped giving a shit about getting older or adhering to anyone elses bullshit standards, realised it was all fake p much as soon as she dropped out of school and one by one her friends just stopped texting her

— lives in one of the lofts in port apartments. it’s open plan with rugs and lava lamps everywhere. she has a palette bed. its all very ‘sustainable chic’. like, oh wow, a pallet bed that im supposed to think you made from scratch but i KNOW you got it off ebay because you thought it looked trendy

— constantly says shes poor but still buys clothes from urban outfitters. sus.

— frequently found at fannies flirting with the cute bisexual bartender with a choppy black bob.

general vibe / personality

vibrant, vulgar, self-absorbed, tenacious, veers bewteen apathetic and dogmatic, temperamental, flighty, unreliable, magnetic, charismatic, passive aggressive, likes to play devil’s advocate, takes the moral high ground. estp and a leo

likes: 70s music, john wayne movies, black mirror, philosophy, cowboy chic culture, dc comics, the smell of locker rooms,, deep red lipstick, lacrosse sticks, smoking weed from a bong, dogs, karaoke, pet rats, kate moss, late-night strolls, hawaaiian shirts worn open over a bralette, skinned knees, thai food, picking the apples at the very top of the trees, zip-lining, cigarettes, the idea of pegging but not the practical application of it, decorative lamps, LGBTQ+ pin badges, worn-out furniture, twangy electric guitars.

dislikes: girls who call other girls ‘pick me’ girls, woody allen movies, mental mathematics, wealthy children, quentin tarantino, ironing, institutionalised misogyny, the imaginary future, french literature, ‘dump him’ feminism, wes anderson films, spoken word poetry nights, college-educated bar staff who act like they’re better than you, indie softbois, the general mentality of cheerleading squads.

aesthetics

orange peel, the smell of bleach, skeleton drawings in the margins of a journal, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, bleach white sneakers pounding on a gymnasium floor, setting dumpsters on fire for the hell of it. a hit flask of vodka decorated with hello kitty stickers, split knuckles, alien conspiracy theories and sci-fi paperbacks, doc martens with fraying laces, a child in an oversize bee keepers suit, scabbed knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you, a tennis racket you punched through in a fit of temper, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

hoo boy this is getting LONG AS FUCK but here are my wanted plots

wanted plots

ok margo’s been in irving since she was like 10. she’s quite a vivacious person?? she dresses completely instinctively without any sense of cohesion so she stands out. a guy once told her she was wearing the ugliest outfit he’d ever seen and he thought that was so cool and brave of her. but anyway where was i going.. she grew up in the abernathy creek so stuck out like a sore thumb,,,, maybe ppl who were super interested in the creek or maybe poked fun at her bcos of it idk.....

b4 she dropped out, margo used 2 b in with the cool kids at school bcos her dad would buy them booze and rarely ask for the money. maybe a fun plot cld b with some of the ‘it girls’ she used to hang around with b4 she got pregnant n dropped out and they all went off to college n stopped texting her.

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! some1 she feels like she knew before irving ???

since margo literally can’t differentiate between romantic and platonic love, she’s got off with so many of her mates, so i want awkward friendships where they nearly dated, or exes that have now just turned into weird friendships. fwbs. enemies with benefits. all the angst. all the slow burn mutual pining we hate each other narratives

locals who play sports. margo wld be all over community soccer n take it way too seriously. maybe ppl she plays hockey with. girls who she’s like, weirdly intimate with but its not a thing cos the other girls straight !!! what do u mean !! aha just fun !

she works part time at scuba. i want a mate that just goes and sits in there talking to her until her manager gets angry.

she's also a surf instructor and occasionally works as a lifeguard!! gal has like 7 jobs ik but regular swimmers hmu

ppl she coaches at the gym !! she wants to be a personal trainer

i reckon she might have recently started meditating to try and calm down her mind cos its always bustling with thoughts, n i think she’s p interested in buddhism so if anyone’s a buddhist hmu

someone she’s trying to make a zine with on female empowerment and women in film and art, etc. just a very feminist zine.

TLDR: angry sports gay, former high school track prodigy turned drop out, who likes feminist literature, wearing leather jackets over slip dresses, and smudged red lipstick.

this was so long !!! im sorry !! if you’ve read this far have a biscuit, love x

#aaaaaaa #we back boys #irvingintro #hmu for plots bayybeyyy

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docholligay · 3 years

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In The Desert

My second of three eventual Passover fics, finally done, if literally nothing else. 4,500ish words, and I hope you enjoy it at least somewhat!

Moses never saw the Promised Land. He guided others to it, but he died before he ever set foot in that promised space, before he ever was allowed to know the feeling of safety and peace and home. To reach the goal he had longed for.

Mercy tried not to think too much on this, and told herself often that the Promised Land was only a place, and maybe it was Moses’ short-sightedness that did not allow him to see that the Promised Land was had while he wandered, in the arms of his wife, in the giggles of Jewish children knowing what it was to grow up free, in knowing that he had guided his people to something far more frightening but far greater. To inspire them to live a life of uncertainty, with great risk, but great reward. The Promised Land was where you found it, Mercy would say, often.

Sometimes she even believed it. This year was harder.

Was he ever resentful, she wondered, absent-mindedly setting the low table, for the punishment? That for one moment, he reacted in anger and bitterness instead of in patience and grace, that he lashed out, and so was barred from the doors of promise forever? Mercy thought on these things, and her own trespass against God, wondering which had kept her wandering all these years, without the promise she had so hoped for.

Sitting in Canada with her small second Overwatch, the way forward had seemed so simple. She had escaped the bondage of loneliness, and now there was only to keep going, to increase that family around her, to grow in love, even to hope for that thing she had imagined might be lost to her for so long, something she hadn’t dared hope for. She loved her Overwatch family. She loved her wife. She loved for a child. Now she could see it all growing further away, a golden land that she, like Moses, would only ever see others enter.

Tears filled her eyes as she considered it, blurring the fork she set down on the table. The day was rainy and cold, even for the general London April, and it went all the way through her, darkening and covering any warm space she may have been able to find within herself.

It was a year of failures. The same ones, over and over again, of bodies as quarrelsome and betraying as the Israelites, of ground being lost and joy being further and further away. This was meant to be a day of celebration, of freedom, but it all felt so empty, the freedom of a stray dog without home or comfort.

There was a knock at the door, and Mercy stood up straight, adjusting her sweater and tucking her hair behind her ears. There was no reason to ruin the day for everyone else, even if she could not find the joy for herself. When one is happy, it is easier to serve God and your community, she had read, from some rabbi, somewhere, and she did not deny that this was true.

Why then, had God denied her so much?

“Ang!” There was a bright, high peal through the entryway as Tracer sat on the small chair next to the door, taking off her shoes slowly, “Sorry, took us a bit--”

“We’re on time, Lena.” Emily smiled as she hung up her jacket.

“Oh. Right then, me planning is as bang on as ever,” She laughed merrily, “Entirely didn’t assume I’d missed the mark, exacting as I am.”

“You’re early.” Mercy touched at the edge of the couch.

“Someone tell Fareeha, she’ll want to note this in the official Overwatch ‘istory.”

Emily took her shoes from her and set them in the rack. “She’ll only be telling you you’ve no excuse hereafter.”

Tracer shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Bloody fucked every which way, I am.”

Yes, Mercy’s mind answered, you are.

It’s clearly degenerative and aggressive, whatever got set off. The seizures will get harder to treat, and the tremor, not to mention we have about a whack-a-mole’s guess at what it’ll start going after next. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think it’ll affect her cognition, luckily. Or unluckily, I guess...

She heard Pradeep’s voice echoing in her mind, and did her best to shake it off. She hadn’t given up yet. Things weren’t so bad that they could give up yet. There was still a chance, however small, wasn’t there? Even if they could just arrest it, just stop it where it was--her eyes flickered to the brightly colored cane Tracer’s hand reached for, more commonly carried than not now--she could live out the rest of her life in relative happiness. She could see it, in her mind’s eye. That golden strip of promise just beyond the horizon.

But she hadn’t been able to touch it, no matter how many specialists she bullied into consulting with her. No matter how many papers she read. No matter how long she walked and how fervently she prayed.

“Ang?” she looked up, and realized that Tracer was now standing in front of her, a puzzled look on her face. “You alright, love?”

Mercy shook her head. “Of course, only I am lost in my mind. Tired, I think.”

Tracer looked at her for a moment in that sharp way she had, eyes flitting like a hummingbird across Mercy’s face, but she was saved by a knock at the door, and the further entrance of Dva and Winston, chatting amiably as Winston carefully sidled into the apartment, McCree a short but meaningful distance behind them.

There they were, an assembled party, still crossing the long desert, signs of promise beginning to pop up around them. Since the battle for London, the world had taken a different view of them, an altogether kinder one. Pharah had her office building, constructed where she had always hoped. McCree had gotten a pardon from Interpol itself. Tracer had been offered damehood, which she had rather aggressively rejected, and the Victoria Cross, which she had aggressively accepted. All of them where heroes worldwide, their work seen for the long journey it had been, and honored. Mercy should have every reason to be pleased.

Professionally, her life had never been better, or the way more clear.

“Angela,” her wife’s voice pulled her out of the thought, “the family, I think, is assembled.”

She said it with a half-smile as she looked over to the strange assembly that filled the room. Mercy nodded, and watched as Pharah walked over to the table she had built with her own hands, in the center of the living room. There was a bubbling sort of excitement among all of them, and why wouldn’t there be? It was the first Passover in Pharah and Mercy’s new apartment, the one built on the bones of the old. Life had been destroyed and life had been rebuilt into something more suited for them, something better. Renewal. Hope. Mercy could see it all, and reminded herself of it, as Pharah playfully bickered with Tracer before grabbing her by the armpits and thumping her to the floor, back up against the couch. The rest of them settled in their own spots, on the floor, looking over to Mercy from time to time.

A perfect Seder, with the people she loved, and yet her eyes wandered to the corner next to her seat, the one she hadn’t even realized she had left clear. There should have been something, someone, there this year. She had prayed for it, she had pleaded for it, she had given and fasted and hoped for it. And yet the corner stood empty. The promise was for other people.

”It’s not surprising given your advanced maternal age,” she said it gently, but Mercy still winced, “and...some of what you’ve been through.”

Mercy was not now, and had never been, ignorant of certain medical realities. Her entire life since she was a child, had been the understanding of such things, and the painful knowledge that very often what we wish was true directly contradicted what was on the chart. The doctor kept talking, and Pharah squeezed her hand.

Pharah. She’d offered to be the one to carry a child, despite it not being her immediate inclination. Mercy had never been able to find the words to tell her that she needed to be the one to do it. That she had lost her entire family all those years ago, and needed to be related to one other person on this earth, and to know that. Even she didn’t understand it completely, only knew that it had driven her onward. Only knew it kept her coming back to this office to be told that the best they could do was keep going.

The best she could do was ignore the chart.

She should have filled that corner with something other than her own empty hopes. She blinked back the bitter saltwater of her own affliction, and began to walk toward the table.

“Pesach is a story of the impossible,” she sat herself down next to Pharah, but just kept staring at the Seder plate in the middle of the table, “We were slaves. We could not be bringing forth our own freedom. Only God could do that, and there was no reason to believe he would be doing it at all. We had been in bondage for so long. There was no reason to believe God would be giving us the Torah. There was no reason...to believe that we would be here. No reason there should be any Jews left at all.”

Mercy wished one of them would stop her, that one of them would recognize the ramble for what it was was. Mercy barely understood it herself, and anger touched the edge of her mind as she considered all the things God had done but also all the things that he had chosen not to do. He had chosen to allow the Holocaust, and where had their deliverer been? He had allowed the Jews to be blamed and pilloried for the failings of AI technology, in both the fringes and, more quietly, in the larger community. He had allowed them to be shot while they worshipped, or bought groceries, or simply lived their lives. He had allowed Mercy to hear every suspicion and cruelty of the others in the labs and offices, who could not imagine the blonde, blue-eyed woman next to them could possibly take offense. And then, he had allowed Mercy’s house to be bombed, twice in her life, he had allowed her wife to be tortured, he had allowed Tracer to suffer, and he had allowed Mercy to remain childless.

“Why.”

The fifth question, left out of the Haggadah.

She looked around the table at them.

“Why did he save us? And then, sometimes, why did he not? I--” she shook her head, “am never understanding the reasons. Why. I am only always asking. Why.”

It was a why to God, for certain, for all the things she thought but good not bring herself to say, but a why to herself as well. Why had she stayed? Why did she pray every morning, why did she say Shema before she laid down at night? Mercy would have been the first to say that it wasn’t about God, but also she could not have answered what it was about at all. What did she find in her prayers and her study, knowing so keenly that God would not hear her, had not heard her cry for years?

Perhaps that was what drew the Jewish people together--knowing God will not listen, and saying the prayer anyhow. Knowing that to be a Jew was to live in danger, and to wander, but refusing to be anything else. To never stop asking, no matter how silent God became.

Even David, knowing God would punish him with the death of his child, had kept pleading, and fasting, and praying, to the very end. There had always been the chance God would turn back.

“We’re outmanned, outgunned, and those things can keep coming--”

“Didn’t say we was going to win did I?” Tracer’s eyes narrowed and her voice raised, pulling the attention of the room back to her. “Said we was going to fight.”

She looked out over the tightly assembled group packed into the room.

“Some of us will die today. Likely a good number of us. ‘E’s right you know. There’s no reason to believe we can take the advantage over them. Every reason to believe that London is going to be nothing but a pile of rubble and fires at the fag end of it all. But I,” She thrust her finger into her chest, “am not going to give over this city bloody quietly. It’s a part of me, innit? And we’re a part of it. Can’t untie the Oxtons and England, and I don’t mean the bloody Crown, and I don’t mean the bloody government, I mean England.”

Tracer paced across the top of the bar. “I am fighting for England, and for London, and what that is, is every kid running out the schoolyard, every pissed stumble ‘ome, every day of our lives, THAT is London. And England. We are London. We are England. Not anything or anyone official. Not Parliament. Not the fucking royals. You and me, and your dad, and mum, and this grotty little pub, and me footie team, and the greengrocer down the way, and Alfie’s flower stall, THAT is England, and I won’t let anyone, or anything, take this place I love, while I still draw a breath in this world. I won’t ever surrender. East End gets flattened, East End gets the worst of it, but we don’t roll over and give it up. We never ‘ave.”

She stopped for a moment, then nodded. “And I won’t start now. I can’t win, maybe. But I guarantee you, I can give them the worst day of their lives, and even if they stomp over these streets, they’ll remember my name. That’s what we’re fighting for. Not because we can win. Because we fight for what we are.

Mercy gave a weak chuckle and shook her head. “We are telling this story not to answer these questions, but to keep asking them. We are telling it, to give our own answers. God--” her voice caught, barely believing herself in that moment, “--God is revealing himself, in us, all the time. We, we are God’s hands, and God’s eyes, and...his words, when we remember. When we can be seeing the midrash in our lives.”

She took a deep breath.

“Tonight we remember that we are free. Tonight we remember the things that make us slaves.”

____

The smell of brisket filled the air. Pharah’s timing had become more and more impeccable over the years, throwing herself into the celebration of Passover, a love letter to her wife written with the greatest tenderness in pan sauce and flourless chocolate cake. Mercy had always, truthfully, questioned the wisdom of the most serious of plagues being recounted as they were on the edge of the feast. But perhaps that was the point of it. Perhaps it was about being kept waiting for your desires, your hopes. Perhaps it was about wondering if it would ever come.

“Aaron said to Pharoah, the worst would be coming. That God would take the firstborn of the Egyptians, but that the Hebrews would be spared, if they were marking their doors with the blood of a lamb…”

Sacrifice. Something always had to be sacrificed. A lamb. A child. A friend. Perhaps this had been her downfall, that she was unwilling to sacrifice anyone. She would never be Abraham, committing her dearest loves into harm. She wanted to save them all, and she had been punished for this disobedience, all those years ago when Overwatch fell. They had made something ugly of her love. Maybe God had seen her, and decided what the sacrifice would be for her.

Maybe God would take the firstborn, however Mercy felt about it.

It would be easy to blame God for that empty corner of her living room and her heart, for it was all within his power to give. But the things that happen to us are rarely laid at God’s feet alone, and Mercy imagined her own moments of frustration, of foolishness, and wondered, which one was it that had brought her to this moment? If she had wanted to have a child, why then had she spent so long pursuing her work, running through war zones and long nights in laboratories? She should have known there are some things which still have a time limit. She should have known there was no guarantee.

But if God had not wished it, why had he sent her Pharah? It was already to already believe her chance lost, but to show her that sliver of what might be, that green and verdant edge at the horizon of the desert, that was crueler still.

She understood why some of the Hebrews had returned to slavery. It was easier to never know what you were losing. What could be lost.

Tracer twisted against her back uncomfortably for a moment, but focused herself and shook her head. “I don’t understand why the first-born ‘ad to die, God being mostly angry at Pharoah.”

“It was no longer a warning.” Pharah took a sip of wine. “There had been nine warnings. It was a punishment.”

“‘Ardly seems fair to punish the lot of them for a bit of governmental wankery. Some ordinary Egyptian’s not keeping the ‘ebrews enslaved.”

“But I doubt they protested the murder of the Hebrew sons. It is a kind of blood for blood. That they had so many chances to avoid that is a mercy in itself, God would have been right to kill their children first off. Justice. ”

“No, isn’t justice. Revenge. Eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Fareeha. Think you’d be defending your countrymen a bit more.”

Pharah smiled and leaned toward Tracer. “Some of us are not compelled to excuse our country’s imperialism, and violence.”

Tracer leaned back against the couch. “Alright, fair cop and well ‘it, but I am still right about the firstborn, Fareeha.”

Her own Hilell and Shammai, ever arguing, ever debating, ever loving each other. She had watched that grow and bloom, too, over the work of years, step by step as they wandered together through an uncertain land. She had doubted, when she first fell in love with Pharah, that anything other than the glue that was Mercy would keep them together, but that had been arrogance. Tracer was more loveable than she seemed at first blush, and Pharah more loving than most would have imagined, and the two of them had grown together, though never in quite the same direction.

Tracer was right, of course, that there was something unjust in taking something so precious, for a casual sin. Pharah was right, of course, that the sins of the community must be borne by the community, too, and that there had been so many chances to turn back. Did God ever owe them an apology, for such rashness? Or worse, for such calculation? It was one thing to act in anger, it was another to take something so precious so calmly.

Perhaps the worst of it was that he was not angry at Mercy at all. Perhaps it was only that simple, calculated punishment that led her to this day, to the taste of saltwater and horseradish even more bitter on her lips than she had believed possible. It purged her mouth of the sweetness of the wine and the richness of the meat, leaving only that acrid dryness in its wake.

Perhaps the worst of it was how angry Mercy was with him.

The plagues passed. Freedom was had, for some, but even as the meal passed in front of her, Mercy kept thinking only of her own bondage, of the unanswered cry to God. She saw it in the empty corner beside her, the shake at Tracer’s hand as she drew the wine to her lips, in the way Pharah had carefully assigned the seating and set the table, in the way Winston avoided her gaze as they spoke of Yocheved’s baby, in the way Dva spoke to her so gently. The way Emily looked at her and Tracer both.

In this victory of a meal, Mercy tasted only the failures of this past year. Miriam’s Well kept them alive in the desert, but Mercy began to wonder if it hadn’t been the bitter alkaline of survival, and not the sweet cool of living.

The blessing over the wine buzzed from her lips without a thought, and the door opened. Next to her, sitting at that empty corner, was Elijah’s cup. The cup filled with the hope and promise that some year, everything she had been waiting for would come through that door. The cup was an outstretched hand to God in the darkness, whispering about trust. Every year, she had held out that hand. She held it out after her parents were killed. Held it out after Overwatch fell. Held it out as she was in exile from the medical community. She kept looking ahead in the dark, trusting what she could not see.

She believed.

To believe in Elijah. To believe that hope could always walk right through the door, that it could sit at your table and drink your glass of wine. To believe that there was a chance to see the dream fulfilled, to touch your feet on that Promised Land.

Next year, in Jerusalem.

It was too much to ask. It was too deep a failure, this year, marked by all of her insufficiencies, unable to have a child, unable to save Tracer, throwing herself at these same things again and again, the outcome never changing. She’d gotten no closer to getting pregnant. Tracer’s health continued to deteriorate.

Not even taking the moment to excuse herself, Mercy got up from the table and ran into the small, tight powder room, the one Pharah had barely managed to niggle into the plans. She pulled herself into the bright white of that room, and she cried, and she cursed, in every language she knew, that God had kept everything from her, that God was punishing her for nothing, that God had judged her for her failings and ignored his own. She was angry. She kept that anger close to her like a flame, even as the immense darkness of her own sorrow crept in. She forgot there even was a Seder, in the other room, saw only the burning, everlasting bush that was her that was God that was the anger and love of all her people, all those years.

There was a knock at the door, and Mercy wiped at her eyes. Pharah had been so tender and good, through all of this, and the last thing she needed was--

“It’s Emily.”

Mercy had not expected that, and for a moment, it disarmed her so thoroughly that she opened the door.

There was nothing exchanged, for a moment. Emily would say that she was no great mind, and no great judge, and no great hero, comparing herself unfavorably to the company Tracer generally kept. She would say this never seeing her own gift for knowing the kindest thing to say, for looking at the faces of people as she did her class of children and opening her own heart to them.

“It’s just this year, Angela.” Emily nodded. “I know.”

It was not a question, nor a complaint, nothing but an acknowledgment of the thing that had been Mercy’s own plague, sent by God, or, at the very least, not evaded by him. Mercy nodded, tears still streaming down her face.

“Do you know Moses died, never seeing the Promised land? He was going through...and a mistake, meant God would never let him see it. He was kept from the promise of God.”

“Promised Land. I suppose it would be easy for a place you never see to be perfect.” Emily leaned against the doorframe. “I don’t know much about the Torah, of course, but I remember the story hardly ending with happily ever after.”

Mercy shook her head. “They were….argumentative, and lost faith, and difficult.” she sniffled. “But they were not in the desert.”

“It’s hard, to be Moses, isn’t it Angela? You go among people who don’t understand you, you try to lead them in whatever way you can, and for all that, you feel you will never find home. God barely listens to you, but you stay all the same. I think you’re brave for it.”

“I’m not--”

“Aye, you are. The moral compass for as long as I’ve known them, and for longer than that, I know. Lena and Fareeha would say so, as well.” Emily sighed. “This year has been forty for all of us, but for you I know most of all. But,” Emily looked back over her shoulder and stared at Tracer, “It’ll end, won’t it? Even Moses stopped walking.” She turned back around and wiped the tears from her eyes. “The Promised Land is just another beginning. But I don’t know the Torah very well.”

Mercy looked up at her. “You are knowing it well enough.”

“I’m sorry, about the baby. Cried over that myself, me and Lena never being able.” She sighed. “I just keep walking. What else can we do?”

“I’m sorry I,” Mercy closed her eyes, “I am failing you both.”

Emily put her arm around Mercy’s shoulder. “No. You could never. You’re taking us on the journey.”

“I should go back, to the table. I am being--”

“We’ll keep going, aye. Eventually, we’ll find the end of it, whatever that is.”

Hand in hand with Emily, Mercy walked back to the table. She was no clearer or calmer on the subject of God, of what he was denying her, of what he was denying all of them. But she saw the faces of her fellow travellers more clearly. It was not only Moses who made the journey. It was not only Moses who felt lost along the way, and it was not only Moses who died reaching for that unattainable goal, who strived and hoped against everything.

They were together. She did not find the Promised Land, but she found their hands in hers.

She poured the final cup of wine. All things come to an end. Even the desert.

#HON HON HON #The third one is The Promised Land and will theoretically be done someday ahah

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stones-x-bones · 3 years

Text

A Mother’s Touch || Morgan and Bex

TIMING: Current (Don’t @ me timelines are weird) PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @inbextween SUMMARY: Bex has more questions about her place in the world, and finds that Morgan might understand more than she thinks. CONTENT: Domestic Abuse mentions, Child abuse mentions, Transphobia mentions

Curiosity was one of Bex’s more troublesome personality traits. It had gotten her into quite a bit of trouble as a kid-- sticking her hands in places they shouldn’t go, like under rocks and through fences; or asking questions that didn’t exactly have kid friendly answers to them-- and her mother had often chastised her for it, so it had become one of the things that she had hidden and locked away inside herself. Except, lately, she was finding it harder and harder to keep that part of herself from surfacing. It was happening more and more frequently in which she found herself unable to hold back the array of questions that filled her head and toppled from her lips. But, more and more, she was finding herself wanting to be curious. And after everything that had happened to her-- from the cockatrice, to the mutant in the alley, to the dream world, to Frank acting so strange-- she could no longer hold back the questions that had flooded her mind since Nell had first tried to tell her what she was: what was a witch, and what, then, was magic all about? Clutching one of the books Morgan had gotten for her chest, Bex made her way downstairs. She knew the older woman would be in the great room, because she was always either there, at work, or in her shed, and it was late enough at night that Bex figured she wouldn’t want to be outside in her shed. Luckily, neither Mina nor Deirdre was around, so Bex had found enough confidence within herself to sidled into the great room and clear her throat. “Morgan?” she called out tentatively, staring at the older woman with wide eyes, “Can I-- come sit with you?”

Morgan was trying to write. On an impulse, she could talk in circles, for hours maybe, especially with Deirdre to ask her things, but as March gave way to April, she found her thoughts shrinking around the question of her history, her self, and suddenly even something so simple as a lesson plan took hours. Her eyes drifted toward a spot on the wall, searching for a hint, a bone to excavate, something that wouldn’t fade in the turn of another miserable year in this place.

She set down her stationary with relief when she heard Bex come in and shoved it all onto the coffee table. “Of course, honey,” she said. She craned her head around and saw her, a little brighter, a little more bursting with some secret thought or other she couldn't keep down. But her bruises were starting to fade and she didn’t look half as scared as when she’d first shown up at the door. “Grab a pillow and get cozy,” Morgan urged, refreshing her smile. “And tell me what’s on your mind.”

Bex hurried over to the couch, as if Morgan might rescind her offer. Still clutching the book to her chest, she pondered how to start the questions off. She didn’t want to burst with them, to offer too many and overwhelm her-- but she didn’t want to ask too little and end up regretting not asking more. “Well, I--” she started, shuffling the book from her chest to her lap as she settled into the couch next to her, “guess I was just curious.” Ran her hands over the cover of it. “What was it like?” she asked, looking up at her. “Growing up-- this way.” Tapped the cover, which was revealed to be about magic and the essence of God through Jewish faith. One of the Zohar texts, but it was obvious Bex meant more of the magic part and not the Kabbalah part. “Knowing that you were, you know--” she still hesitated to say the word-- “special?”

It took Morgan several seconds to understand what Bex was asking, and when she did, no answers rose immediately to her mind. “Well it was…” Fine? Except for her mother, which made up what percent of her memories? “It wasn’t any one particular thing all the time. It was still growing up with my parents.” She shifted position to face Bex better and beckoned the girl closer. “But it was wonderful, when they first told me. I was four, maybe five? My dad had been reading Matilda to me, out loud before bedtime. And it was just around my birthday when he finished. And then the next morning, he and my mother sat me down for a very serious grown up talk, and they explained that they knew what I had been getting up to on my own, floating toys, rotting vegetables, breaking glasses. At the time, I wasn’t totally sure if those things were me, or if I had a ghost--” She paused to snigger but waved it away, not wanting to bog Bex down with the depressing context. “And I still wasn’t sure what to make of what my parents were telling me, until my dad explained it. It was like Matilda, only it was real. And I loved that story so much and wanted it to be true so badly, I was ready for them to show me everything. And they did. I got a little kid friendly demonstration of what they could do, and then a very stern lecture from my mother about how magic was not a toy or a game or anything fun, and even if it was a part of me, a sacred, fundamental, inextricable part, it was still going to be a lot of work. But the lessons and everything else she had in store for me came after. That day was just for being happy, and for feeling...special. Like a girl in a book.”

Bex listened intently and wondered how her life would’ve been different had she known she had this power. Her mind hesitated to use the same words Nell and Morgan did. Magic was reserved for something unexplainable and mysterious, and this power seemed anything but. At the moment, it seemed frightening. Even as her curiosity piqued, she couldn’t help but remember only the pain it had caused her. The small joys she found in things like fixing a pot or making a plant grow slightly didn’t outweigh any of the fear that she felt. But she wanted to feel the way Morgan and Nell seemed to feel about it. She wanted it to be something more than an innate fear inside of her. But she didn’t know how to get there yet. “And you-- you said you’re Pagan. Is that-- did you grow up that way? With stories about m-magic and...stuff?” She wasn’t really sure what she was asking at this point, but she needed to work through the confusing questions before she could get to the ones she really wanted to ask. Her mind didn’t work any other way. She needed to process the small steps before the big ones.

Morgan squinted, trying to figure out where Bex was going with this. The girl was Jewish and proudly so, enough to start reading the Zohar rather than consider another faith. So where did Morgan’s religion come into anything? “Stories?” She repeated, trying to process. “The kind of paganism my family practiced had more to do with living in tandem with the flow of the earth, and the flow of the universe. There are, in other sects, deities, like the horned god and the morrigan, but we didn’t see them as beings with minds and wills that need to be appeased, but old, special names for broader forces, at best. But, there were rituals, the holy days follow the solstices and equinoxes, aligning the mind and spirit according to the seasons, growth, life, harvest, death. And we would use our magic, our power, to perform these rituals. And there were principals within this set of beliefs for how we should engage with our power. But the stories...the prayers we gave were to the earth, the stars, the elements. The story is just that...we belong here, and we should act like it. And it’s our job to remember that we have a will and an agency in our life, as a fundamental part of our existence. And we have to use that agency and work that will in a way that bends toward our highest and greatest good. But working your will isn’t always spellcasting. Sometimes it’s just being kind, or sticking up for yourself, or intervening when you see something wrong.” She sighed, unsure if this was the news Bex was hoping for or not. “I have some books on Celtic and Norse folklore and religion, if that’s something you were hoping to learn. I’m sorry if this isn’t...is there something you’re fishing for in particular, Bex?”

Bex recognized a lot of what Morgan was saying from the very text she had in her lap. Just...different. Connecting to the earth, to the flow of the universe, to the energy inside of it all. “I’ve always...struggled, to connect to my faith. I mean, I’ve been going to Temple every Sunday for as long as I can remember-- probably longer. But there was always this disconnect. I couldn’t understand what it was, I still don’t. And Judaism doesn’t really-- at least not Orthodox-- it’s not really erm, fond of...what I have. Or what...I am.” And perhaps they both knew she meant more than just magic. Her hands dug into each other, nervous peeling of nail beds. “And it’s not that our holy book doesn’t make room for people like me, or even people like you. Our God is about forgiveness and kindness and passing that on, and I always thought that, maybe, there was something inside of me that was wrong or bad, because how could I not relate to something like that? How could I not connect with something like that? And I guess I just wanted to know, if-if it was just me. If it’s just me. If-- if you ever struggled with it. With being that way while still staying faithful.” She chanced a tentative look up at Morgan. “But you...it was always a part of you. How does it work? How do you-- how do you do those things you said? Connect to the earth with your power?”

“Oh, Bex…” Morgan sighed. She had struggled, a lot. But not for any of those reasons. It was so much more awful than that, and went on for so much longer than anything she could bear to wish on Bex. She hung her head, sifting through her memories for some other excuse or rationale that wouldn’t feel dishonest. “There’s nothing inside you that’s wrong or bad, honey. How could there be? And feeling estranged or unwelcome or just disconnected--I feel like that’s more common than people realize. I believe that more people feel that than are willing to admit it. Honestly, I think it’s better to say so, than to do something you don’t mean.” But none of these assurances answered Bex’s question.

Morgan dug her hands into her skirt, tight enough that one of her fingers bent out of place. “The way I connect to everything now is different to how I did over a year ago,” she said quietly. “And even before then, I would struggle, yes. Left out. Left behind. Like everyone got a number and a place in line except for me, and whatever I did was squeezing in where I wasn’t wanted or taking something I wasn’t meant for. But I can’t…” she let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know if that’s something I can talk about without knowing you’re going to believe me. I know you’ve been reading about--my family. The things that they did. That happened to them. But do you...believe in it, Bex? Do you understand what’s in there?”

Bex gave a confused look. It hurt her heart to hear how Morgan had suffered, and how she could relate to some of the ways Morgan said she’d struggled. Left behind, left out. Placed in a line you didn’t belong in but had to stay in. She was confused because she didn’t understand what Morgan was asking her. Hadn’t Morgan herself told her her family thought they were cursed? And if magic was real, then, by extension, so were curses. The Zohar talked about curses. It was forbidden. She put her hands back on the cover and tapped her fingers on it. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly, “I think I’m still-- trying to figure it all out. I mean, I believe that your family was cursed. It’s kinda hard not to when you read...all of that. But I don’t think what I think of as a curse is maybe what...you think of as a curse. It’s--” she looked back down at her book, “I don’t understand any of it. I’m just trying to wrap my head around the idea that I’m--that I have-- I don’t even know how to do that. I don’t know how to be this way. Even reading this, I don’t know what part of the world I fit into. I-- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I just want to know how it all works. I’m tired of being in the dark about all of this,” she said, curling her knees up to her chest, the book pressed between. “You said if I wanted to get a handle on all of this, that I needed to stop lying to myself. But I...what if I don’t know what I’m lying to myself about? I don’t know what’s my truth anymore.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Morgan said, quieter still. “You haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve told you before, I’d rather have your honesty than anything else.” She sniffled and offered a smile, though it came out sad. “And I could--” she paused to steady her voice and sighed. “I could tell you about all the things that happened to me, every three years, because of a nineteen-year-old girl’s curse of eternal suffering. And the things I ran away from, and the things I ruined, and the people I hurt, and the fear I carried, and all the times I wondered if I had done something to deserve it, and if it would make things better or worse if I had. And I could tell you about how the girl cast the spell, the Norse and Celtic sigils she cobbled together to make something more cruel than anything she had in her books. And if that is what you want, I will. Everything I know how to talk about is yours. But there is so much in this world, Bex. More than anyone can digest at once or even in two or three talks. It takes time…” She scratched at the corner of her eye, trying to check for tears leaking over the side without making a thing of it. “But I don’t know if that will give you what you want. I can tell you that it’s no more mysterious to be someone with your magic than it is to be any other part of yourself. That it’s just patience, acceptance, nurture. I can tell you that you know, your soul knows what’s true and what isn’t, but you have to bring that in, honey.” Slowly, hesitating, she reached out a hand, hovering by her hair in a silent request. “What is it that you’re afraid of being a lie? Or is there something you’re afraid of being true…?”

Bex put her chin on her knees as she listened. It wasn’t fair, everything Morgan was saying. It wasn’t fair, that Bex couldn’t understand. It wasn’t fair that the world was cruel to people who didn’t deserve it. How could she believe in a God, a power, that did that to others? She buried her face in her arms. She didn’t move when Morgan reached out to her, but she didn’t flinch away either. The fading bruises on her arms hurt. “Why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?” she asked into her own skin. “Why are there so many parts of me that feel so wrong? You keep telling me there’s nothing wrong with me, but I feel-- I feel so wrong. And I just wanna know how to not feel that way. How did you do it? Did you ever think it was bad? This power? The way you-- the way we are? How come I have to be this way? I don’t want to be this way.” She sucked in a breath. They were going in circles. She was going in circles. “I’m afraid-- I’m afraid letting myself be this is going to change me.”

Morgan combed her fingers through Bex’s hair when she didn’t flinch away and shifted closer, so she didn’t have to reach so far. She stayed like that, finger combing Bex’s hair in slow, steady strokes while she spoke. “But what parts, Bex? There is nothing about you that deserves any shame. I’ve known you this long, and I’m only more proud to know you than I was before.” She brushed the tip of her finger along the shell of the girl’s ear. “You are only and ever you, Bex. Unless you’re breaking yourself into a different shape to please someone else. But something that’s in you, that’s as much a part of you as your bones, can’t do that.” She wished that there was a way, from all her talks with Deirdre over the last year she had learned something more useful than simply denying the false story and trying to make her own more persuasive. She didn’t know how to compel someone to change their mind, or how to lift the self loathing out of a heart. “You can only become more yourself through this. And no bad came from an accessible education. It’s ignorance that hurts. But can you tell me-- maybe I could assure you better, if I knew what you were afraid of changing.” She touched her knuckles to her cheek, realizing only at the fuzzy, nothing sensation that she wouldn’t be able to tell if the girl was burning up with anxiety, or anger. With a mournful sigh, she went back to combing Bex’s hair. “I want to help,” she murmured. “Explain it to me, as best you can. It doesn’t have to be perfect or anything. Maybe I can piece it together if you tell me a little more…”

Bex couldn’t tell yet if Morgan’s touch was comforting. She felt her fingers brushing gently through her hair and wondered if there was ever a time her mother had done this for her without the malice that had usually preceded it. She couldn’t remember. Her childhood felt like a movie that she could only observe from the outside. She could remember thinking, even as young as five, that something was wrong with her. Because lightbulbs exploded or lamps toppled over or windows broke and her parents would tell her it was bad. With their words, with their hands. And if it was bad, and it was part of her, then she, too, was bad. It wasn’t something she could think her way through, not when she’d been conditioned in the opposite direction. “I’m afraid I-- what if I can’t do it? What if I’m not good enough? I-- I already failed my parents. I can’t-- if I do what you want me to, if I accept what I am, I can’t go back. They won’t let me come back. And I-- I don’t even know what kind of person I really am. My parents shaped me as a child, and then my school shaped me as a teenager, and now it feels like this place is trying to shape me into something else and I don’t know who I am or if I ever was anything, or if I can take much more. And what if I’m not enough? What if I’m not good? Where will I go then? Who will I be then? If I change again, I lose again. I’m afraid if I change again I’m just going to be alone, and I don’t want...I can’t take that again.” She decided, then, that it was comforting. She leaned into Morgan, still curled up in herself. “I want to know how me being...magic is going to make anything better.”

Morgan eased an arm around Bex’s shoulders and tucked her in with a loose grip before turning her attention back to her hair. It was easier to focus on that than anything else. “Hey, hey--” she cooed. “I don’t want you to be anyone but yourself, Bex,” she said. “Not some performance you’re putting on out of fear, not some set of made up rules to fit someone else’s idea. That’s not living. I just want to know you. And who you are, the amazing, incredible things you are capable of--” she sighed. “I don’t really believe in good and bad. But if there is anyone who might be truly good at heart, it would be you. And it is your choices, the kindness you decide to give to others, to yourself, the levity you bring to try and cheer your friends, the risks you take in the hopes of something better, that is what defines you more than anything you’re born with or born as. The choices you make that are your own, not pressured or beaten or intimidated into you. But you will always have a place here, if you want it. And the reason why accepting yourself, being kind to yourself, is going to make anything better is that you will have so much more peace, and so much more control in every other area of your life. All that energy you spend hiding and shaming yourself and repressing your light can go to good things, fun things, neutral things, whatever you want. You will have so many more choices, better choices, ones that can help other people, help the world, because you will have cleared out all the ones that are consuming and breaking and killing you. And getting to do cool stuff, live-saving stuff, just by wanting to is just as awesome as it sounds. But that’s just my two cents, Bex. I’m not going to make you do anything while you’re here.” She pulled back just far enough to look at the girl. “Am I making any sense…?”

It wasn’t fair, Bex thought. None of this was fair. Nothing she’d been born with or as was fair. She wished it would all just...go away. She wished she’d never been born the way she was. She wished she’d never found out she had magic. But wishes only went so far. And Morgan was right, because fucking hell, Morgan was always right. That also didn’t feel fair, but Bex knew that was because she was just being childish. She wanted to believe everything Morgan was saying-- really, she did!-- but those parts of her that ached so deep inside it felt like a part of her kept from accepting the reality that yes, she could choose who she wanted to be. She’d never had the choice before. She felt a silence settling over herself. Tomato, she thought. But that also wasn’t fair. She’d been the one to come down here and ask Morgan to talk. The book felt suddenly heavy in her lap. Somehow, she’d thought reading it, understanding it, would make her feel better. It didn’t. Because it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in magic, or that she didn’t believe she was-- it was that she believed her magic was bad. And no book would change that. She lifted her head enough to look over at Morgan. “Yeah,” she answered quietly. She let out a long puff of air, looking away again and resting her chin on her knees. “I need to tell you something. And I know you already know, but I need to say it out loud. So that I can make it...feel real.”

There were a lot of ‘secrets’ Bex held that Morgan had already figured out, but she wasn’t about to guess which one. She soothed Bex’s shoulders with a brush of her fingers and shifted so she could meet her eyes. “Of course. Whatever you need, honey. Okay? You’re cared about just the same.” She offered another smile, brighter now. “What is it, Bex?”

Bex wished someone else had said that to her. Why hadn’t her own parents ever told her that? Whatever she needed. She wondered if she could ever call this place home. Wondered how a woman with ice cold hands could make her feel warmer than a woman with warm hands and an ice cold heart. She met Morgan’s eyes for a brief moment before looking away. “I’m trans,” she mumbled, “and I-- I know it doesn’t change anything, obviously, but I wanted to be the one to tell you.” She shifted and held out the book to her. “None of these books tell me anything about myself. Not about being trans or a witch, or anything else. I just wanted answers.”

Morgan’s smile widened, showing only kindness. “I wanted you to be the one to tell me too,” she said. “Thank you, Bex, for trusting me with this. I hope, so very much, that you give the rest of yourself the same ease, the--relief you must have had when you looked in the mirror and finally saw someone you recognized. Someday.” She looked down at the book and set it aside on the coffee table. It had been a well-meant idea, at least. “No one can tell you how to be yourself except for you,” she said. “But there are plenty of books and media resources for trans girls that we can track down, if you want, and no shortage of material on magic and being a witch. Maybe with the right materials, when you’re ready, you’ll be able to cast your transmutation yourself.I am sorry, though, that it can’t be any easier. Truly, Bex.”

“You know,” Bex started, “I knew I was a girl when I was, like, five? Six? I remember because I saw all the other girls in my class wearing dresses and I wanted nothing more than to wear a dress, too. I also remember telling my parents and I guess, at the time, things weren’t so bad, because they just said okay. And the next thing I knew, my closet was full of dresses and skirts and I got to grow my hair out. They pulled me out of school and put me in a new one. I wasn’t allowed to start hormones until I was older, but even then, they were on top of it.” It sounded like a dream come true, really. “Except...I realize now it was because they were afraid. They told me never to tell anyone, that it was our secret, and that if anyone tried to find out, to tell them and they’d take care of it.” She looked over at Morgan. “They gave me a good life. I got to grow up as a girl because of them. Do you know how many trans kids never get anything close to that?” Her eyes fell back to the book. “I’ve been blowing things up since I was about that age, too. They never said a word about it.” If they had that much shame for her being trans but still had the gall to pretend, then what did it say about her abilities? “Books are nice. But I think I need something more. I just don’t know what that is.”

“The absence of cruelty isn’t the same thing as the presence of kindness,” Morgan muttered. Maybe it would be smarter to play along with Bex’s deluded affection for her parents. She certainly understood it, and maybe there was even something good she couldn’t perceive and understand about holding onto those scraps of ‘love’ and pouring affection and apologism on them like water, hoping they’d grow into something. But her fear that Bex would think she agreed with her parents was much stronger. If she was going to fuck this up, maybe it could at least be for trying to be a voice of reason. “...It could be that they didn’t understand what they were seeing, when you were doing what every other child witch in the world does. Or they were in denial. You’d think people would realize that willful ignorance just hurts everyone, but I’ve known at least one person who holds onto it like it’s the only thing worth keeping. Maybe it’s easier to do that, than admit you’re miles out of your depth. I don’t know. Only they do.” And she certainly wasn’t going to encourage Bex to dial them up to ask. “If you figure it out, I’ll do everything I can to bring it to you. I want that for you. Okay?”

This wasn’t the way Bex had wanted things to go tonight at all. She’d wanted to talk to Morgan and get answers to her question and maybe figure out how to feel at least a little better about herself. It wasn’t that Morgan’s reassurances weren’t helpful or nice to hear, but she felt like she was going in circles. “I don’t think my parents like being wrong about anything,” she muttered in response. She shifted, then, and laid her head on Morgan’s shoulder, arms still tight around her legs. She looked at the bruises on her arms and the bandages that were finally starting to become less and less. “I wish my mom had been more like you,” she said without thinking too much on it. She didn’t want to think anymore, she’d thought about so much today. “Do you think I’m wrong, for still loving them?”

Morgan closed her eyes at Bex’s words and held her just a little tighter. She wanted that too. Horribly. Impossibly. And what could she say in response that wouldn’t tell on herself and ruin everything? “...I’m here,” she said at last, wavering. “And you’re not wrong, no.” She brought some of Bex’s hair over her shoulder and twirled it around her finger. “Maybe it hurts us more in the end, or leads to some kind of trouble, but I don’t know how many kids can help loving their parents, even when they’re cruel. Maybe we think if we hold on, they’ll learn to love us the way we want. Maybe it’s just...how it is,for better or worse. But whatever it is, I don’t think it says anything bad about you, that you want to love and forgive them so much. I just hope… that part of you doesn’t get hurt so much that you become afraid to use it at all.”

Bex stayed quiet. She listened to Morgan and felt the truth in her words and understood that it came from experience. How else could she know so well, the way Bex longed for her mother to one day hold her gently and tell her she really did love her, and she really was proud of her? How else would she understand the pain of not having that love? Of desperately wanting a sign, any sign, that it was possible? Bex finally uncurled herself and let herself be held. It still took conscious effort to remind herself that the hands holding her would not hurt her, but she allowed enough of that part of herself to quiet, and she relaxed in Morgan’s arms. “Do you love your mom still?”

Morgan sagged with relief as Bex uncurled and wrapped her up the way she’d been aching to. She let her head come down to rest on the girl and closed her eyes and let herself be still save for the slow, steady breathing she measured out in her head. She tried to think of Ruth Beck as seldom as possible, but she was hard to forget, living in close quarters with so many haunted women. It hurt, always, but thinking about the things her mother had done was easier than answering Bex’s question. She’d had four years to get over it. She’d turned the ghost of the woman away, when the answers she got weren’t what she wanted. What was she still holding onto, if she’d already rejected her? And yet she had left the door open, for something, anything to change for so long as her mother’s soul lingered. And what the hell for?

“Yes,” she admitted at last. “Very much still. I think I’d stop if I knew how, but I don’t.”

In some strange way, it was relieving to know that Morgan still loved her mother, too. Bex knew that her mother was a cruel woman, but she also knew that her mother could be gentle. She had been the one to buy her dresses as a child, and tell her that she could be a girl if she wanted. Bex even remembered falling asleep in her lap by the fire some nights, or sitting with her on the couch while they watched movies. She remembered bedtime stories and forehead kisses and burying herself in her mother’s arms when another parent had tried to scream at her for going in the women’s bathroom. Her mother’s cruelty wasn’t always towards Bex, but when she did turn it that way, Bex always forgave her. Time and time again. Because she loved her, and all she wanted was for her mother to love her back. “Does it still hurt? To love her?”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “Sometimes it feels worse than what she did. Or didn't do. I have every reason in the world not to love her anymore, and now that she’s--gone, mostly, there’s not much chance of a better ‘someday.’ But even when I remember everything, I uh--” She hiccuped a wet laugh. “I’m still just the little girl she didn’t want, wanting her to save me from my hurt.” She swiped at the tear rolling down her cheek before it could land on Bex’s hair. “And it wasn’t all bad, which makes it worse, in a way. Maybe. I tell myself if it was all bad, I’d let her go easier, but maybe it would be more of the same.” She shrugged. “She’s the one who taught me how to cook. Made the best birthday cakes. Probably the alchemy.”

The familiarity of Morgan’s words hit Bex like a punch to the gut. Not that she’d ever been punched in the gut, but she assumed this was what it felt like. It felt a little bit like her future was being told to her, laid out in front of her. She didn’t have to hear it or see it to know there was probably a tear in Morgan’s eye. She’d pretend she didn’t know. Instead, she settled in closer and put her arm around Morgan. “Will you teach me how to cook?” she asked into the quiet.

Morgan’s next tearful laugh came out more freely and she didn’t even bother to hide her sniffles, understanding that Bex knew. This was her present. Her wounds were still raw and infected. “Absolutely, Bex.” She gave her a quick squeeze. “Besides, Deirdre’s too easily distracted to ever let me teach her, and we need to save the rest of the pots from burnt water somehow, right?”

#chatzy #wickedswriting #chatzy: morgan #a mother's touch #domestic abuse mention tw #child abuse mention tw #transphobia tw

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anon-tribetwelve-confessions · 4 years

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I have nothing to lose as the fandom is crumbling so I will spill out my heart here. For everyone to see and maybe Adam when he gathers up the courage to lurk will also read this.

This is my catharsis.

For 3 years I slept thinking of this man every night. For 3 years I rooted for his success. For 3 years I cried at his personal posts and wished he would make it on top and be able to be happy. For at least a year I build up my courage to message him and bugged him with supportive messages and art, friendship(all be it annoying) and compliments. I spoke about him to my family, friends and even strangers. I praised his work to hell and back and supported anything he said. Planned on using savings to support him on patreon this year. Made fanart, fan fics, blogs and countless of posts singing his greatness. My heart would skip a beat every single time he would give my work or messages attention. Cried when he faced struggles, cried when he said he was lonely, cried when he said he was stressed, lost nights with my heart stuck in my throat waiting for his content. I read nearly 5K pages of his tumblr blog carefully, taking note of small details about him. Showed everyone who would listen what he was doing, pictures of him, made him an example. I was thinking so much about him I've started seeing him in my dreams regularly. That's how much I admired you. That's how much I wanted you to succeed. That's how much I rooted for you. I was even hopelessly in love with you for a while. Supporting you from afar.

AND IN THE MEANTIME YOU'RE GROOMING FUCKING MINORS. HAVING CRUSHES ON TEENS 8 YEARS YOUNGER THAN YOU.

I am disappointed beyond comprehension, Adam. 3 years of my life were dedicated to your work, even the side projects, and a piece of my heart had your full name engraved on it and I'm incredibly angry I couldn't see what kind of person you were sooner. Maybe I wouldn't have waisted all this time remembering your shoe size, where your grandma was born after you told me, your favorite food, looking up Jewish holidays and what greetings I could tell you with anon on tumblr, and so much more for someone who grooms minors... And what hurts most is that I'm not the only one in this situation. Countless others felt the same for you. Rooted for you. Wanted only fortune and happiness for you. You've disappointed us.

When you called me "Cutie across the pond" on messenger I cried of joy. I was happy for months. I didn't kill myself anymore for a full month.

And yet.

Adam,your fucking coward. Fucking come back and explain yourself. Come back and fucking talk. I know you're lurking, just fucking say something about this,Adam. Stop running away and fucking take responsibility. YOU CAN'T DROP OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND EXPECT THIS TO JUST DISAPPEAR. THIS ISN'T AN "OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND" SITUATION.

Signed: Robin, hopelessly in love with you for 3 years, greatly disappointed in you. One of the thousands of people who you continue disappointing with your actions.

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clairecrive · 4 years

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“Why?” - Alfie Solomons x reader

A/n: I know that I have a lot of requests to do but I'm not very inspired lately and then I've listened to a song and I couldn't stop typing. So that's how this imagine has come into existence. I hope you like it and are not too mad at me.

Inspired by: “Secret love song” by Little Mix

Tag list: @mollybegger-blog, @deaflikehawkeye, @br0ck-eddie, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @evelynshelby, @fandom--0verdose, @shadow-of-wonder (let me know if you want to be added)

When she had accepted the invite for Tommy’s ball, she didn’t even consider the possibility of meeting Alfie there. He wasn’t the type to go to parties or to dance, or to admit that he actually liked Tommy. Then, much to her surprise, Tommy had mentioned that the Jewish gangster was indeed coming. That had almost made y/n change her answer and stay at home. However, her pride forced her not only to attend the party but also to walk across the hall with her head held high and a polite smile forged on her face. She couldn’t help it when it changed into a genuine one when she spotted the familiar hat and coat hanging on the dresser nor could she deny that she was excited about the prospect of seeing him. It had been so long… But she had to remember that whatever there was between them was gone, Alfie had wanted it and she couldn’t do a thing about it. Her smile gradually disappeared from her face when she remembered their last interaction. Now she was dreading the time she had to actually face him. Ignoring him would arouse suspicion and she didn’t want anyone to know. So she settled to a civil short conversation. Not even that if it was possible.

“Alfie,” nodding, she simply greeted him as good manners required her to do.

“Hello love.” He returned the nod, holding her gaze.

The term of endearment had the same effect on her that it always had but it wasn’t paired with a light smile this time. It felt like someone had punched her in the gut, taking all of her breath away. Hearing the voice of the man she loved and seeing him in front of her after so much time, was a huge relief but at same time gut wrenching. How dare he? She knew that Alfie called almost everyone in this way, but with her, it had another meaning. It must have it because she wasn’t just everyone. No. She was more, she meant so much more to Alfie that he couldn’t call her in any other way. She was the love of his life, no matter how much he wanted to deny it or push her away. Deep down he had always known it, from the first time he had seen her, that time when she was brought to his office, drenched in water from head to toe and looking at him like he held all the answers to her questions. God, that felt like a lifetime ago. So many things had happened and looking at her now, just nodding at him like he was one of her acquaintances like he meant nothing to her, Alfie was trying to pinpoint the exact moment where everything had gone to shit.

Oh, but he knew. He was perfectly aware that the reason she was not standing beside him now but dancing in the arms of another man was entirely his fault. It was him that had refused her after all. That fatal day, the words left his mouth thinking solely at her welfare. If only he had known that those words would only cause inexplicable pain for both of them.

“I don’t understand Alfie. We’ve been living together for almost a year now, we’ve been through thick and thin and now you’re telling me that you don’t want to be with me? I thought you cared about me. After all you’ve done for me…” she voiced her thoughts, confused and rather hurt by the words that just left his mouth.

“Well pet, it’s not that right? It’s just that the situation has changed.”

“Please Alfie, enlighten me as to how it’s changed in a way that prevents you from being with other than you not wanting to.”

“We can’t be together, y/n.” He simply stated, his voice low, his eyebrows creased and his eyes not meeting her eyes. He couldn’t bear it.

“Why can’t we?” She wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Even if it was him that she had to fight.

“I love you, Alfie. Does it not mean something for you?” she confesses softly turning towards him, turning her back to the window she had been looking through.

“I’m tired of this secret relationship we have. I want to hold your hand in the streets, I wanna kiss you when we dance and not pretend that you’re just being a gentleman by dancing with me. I love you so much that I want to shout it on the rooftops so that everyone should know. Why can’t it be like that?” She kept going when she met with nothing but silence on his part.

“Speak Alfie. Say something, anything!” She cried fed up with the cold exterior her had put up, her heart breaking more and more with every passing second, unaware of the inner turmoil that was taking place between Alfie’s heart and mind. Only he and God knew how much he wanted to take her into his arms and kiss her tears away in that moment. But he couldn’t, so he didn’t, allowing his silence to draw an endless pit between them.

When had Alfie become one of those men that fall into clichè traps as he had? “I’m not good enough for you”, “You deserve better” are some shitty lines that he had always hated. He wasn’t selfless for god’s sake. He was a ruthless gangster. When the fuck had he become such a soft-hearted bastard?

But again, he knew the answer. It was her. It was since his eyes had first fallen onto her shivering form that he had felt a shift inside him. It was nonreversible. God knows how much he had tried to go back, but he couldn’t. There’s the simplicity of it. Every person that comes into your life has been put into your path for a reason and for the time that they’re in your life you’re going to influence each other inevitably. Alfie knew that. And to be fair, right now looking at her fair form, swirling around the ballroom, he couldn’t seem to find in himself to wish that everything could go back to when she wasn’t part of his life. Fuck, she made everything better. That sounded cheesy as hell and Alfie hated the effect she had on him. However, he hated even more that he wasn’t with her now. Fuck his bad hip and the fact that he was a terrible dancer. He’d put himself through the pain and public embarrassment just to see her smile and look into her eyes as they lit with happiness. He had witnessed the precious moment once and getting rid of the memory was something Alfie couldn’t put himself to do.

“Why are you smiling pet, mh, are you amused by my dancing skills?” Alfie asked when looking down he noticed her wide smile.

“Of course I am, never saw a man dance better than you, Mr Solomons.” She joked with a cheeky hint in her eyes.

“Are taking the piss at me, love?” He feigned offence with a fake threatening tone.

“I would never, sir.” She answered amused, knowing all about Alfie’s kink.

“Cheeky minx.” He whispers bumping his nose with hers, drawn in by those sparkling eyes. Before he let himself indulge too much into his desires, he became aware of the countless set of eyes on his back and straightening his posture, he took a step back clearing his voice, putting an acceptable amount of distance between them again. If he noticed how her smile fell and her eyes lost their spark he didn’t let him show and she just tried her best to not let her disappointment show through her face.

Y/n was painfully aware of Alfie’s eyes on her while she was dancing with Peter. She knew that it won’t be easy for neither of them to face the other. The last time they spoke was when he ended things between them after all. He wasn’t quite over it, nor him and by the way Alfie tensed when she walked past him, she figured that he hadn’t quite moved on either. Yes, he had come to the party unaccompanied but it was his fault that they hadn’t gone together in the first place, so y/n didn’t feel guilty by dancing with Peter. Uneasy yes. She saw the lamp of recognition and joy shift into one of hurt that flashed into Alfie’s eyes when he spotted her and then Peter standing beside her. But if he was smart enough, and she knew that he was, he would notice the absolute lack of affection and warmth in her eyes whenever they would land on her date. There was no point in pretending that there was something going on between them and in fact she hadn’t, she had always been the worse at lying. As a matter of fact, she had been honest from the beginning with Peter as to where her heart laid. However, she did hope that seeing her with another man would arise something out of Alfie. Anything that showed her that he cared about her. That there was still a chance for them.

The feeling of his eyes never leaving her form was certainly a good sign, or she hoped it was. To be honest, y/n had often thought about going back to him during the weeks that they had been apart. But she couldn’t. She was tired of living love the way Alfie had forced her to. She wanted more and she desperately wanted it with Alfie. It seems though that destiny had other plans for them. Why she couldn’t be his and he hers, she still couldn’t understand. To her it was really easy: she was already his. Simply as that. If only he knew. Or maybe he knew and didn’t care. She hoped that by the end of this dance she’d know the answer.

#alfie solomons #alfie solomons imagine #alfie solomons x reader #alfie solomons imagines #peaky blinders #peaky blinders imagine #tom hardy #secret love song

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comeoncomeout41 · 4 years

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I just watched the Elf episode of The Holiday Movies That Made Us on Netflix after remembering that I started writing an Elf supercorp AU for Christmas in 2018 (don’t judge me) and found my old notes app first draft so Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! MAYBE I’ll finish it this year... (she said as a lying liar who lies.)

*The fic in which Kara’s pod crash landed at the North Pole, 13 years later her adopted elf mother Eliza and her elf sister Alex tell her about her cousin Kal now Clark Kent and she decides to go to Metropolis to meet the only other person like her. She meets Lena “naughty list” Luthor. And Clark and Lois are Jewish.

🔥🎄🎄🎄🧝‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

Some elves are born to work in Santa’s workshop. Kara Zor-El, however, was not born an elf or even from this earth for that matter.

When her pod crash landed at the North Pole thirteen years ago, she had no memory of a lost planet, no recollection of a cousin she was sent to protect who had already grown up to become Superman, and no idea how to be an alien living with elves. Santa was perturbed as to what to do with a skittish teenaged alien who cringed at the sound of tiny hammers building toys.

The elf doctor, Eliza Danvers, having a daughter around Kara’s age, naturally stepped in to help raise her, teach her elf culture, and attempt to control her powers. There were several mishaps of course.

Kara’s eyes lit up the first time she saw a Christmas tree. Literally. The green pine was burned to a crisp with her heat vision. But she quickly uprooted another tree from outside the elf village and helped Alex redecorate the new tree. And spent several hours carefully placing the new lights and ornaments, after breaking several of the glowing strings of light and the ornate red and blue colored bulbs. When Alex had trouble reaching the top of the tree, Kara swooped her up under her arms to help her place the star on the tree. And she managed to only break one of Alex’s ribs in the process.

After years of being at the North Pole, Kara was actually a wonderful toy maker once she learned to control her strength. When other elves managed to meet their five hundred toy quotas, Kara would have five thousand toys completed. The workshop wouldn’t need any teddy bears for another century, but finding storage for all of the toys Kara built was becoming difficult.

So from there, Kara’s primary job became Elf Master of Letters. She spends several hours each day answering letters for Santa as Santa’s tight schedule and the millions of letters he received each year became too much for the old bearded man. And although she always needed a little proofreading as the different Earth languages were sometimes difficult and much different than her native alien tongue, she enjoyed writing and speaking to children all over the world, bringing them the joy of Christmas.

Alex read over the letter Kara had just finished typing. Her younger but much bigger sister looked to her with a twinkle in her eyes and waited patiently. When Kara saw the red ink marked all over Kara’s letter she cooed and gasped, “That red is so pretty Alex. I know Raymond in Denver will love it! He told me red was his favorite color. I wanted to tell him that’s Santa’s favorite color too! But I didn’t want to give all of the big man’s secrets away, you know?”

Alex sighed and rested her hand on her sister’s shoulder, “Kara, these are your typos. Look here.”

Alex pointed to the last line, “Beleiving isn’t singing. Singing is beleiving.”

“He asked if he could see what the North Pole looks like. I set him straight. Believing isn’t singing. Singing is believing. That was in that one Santa Claus movie you had me watch, which I know isn’t historically accurate or based on true events, but I still,”

“Kara, remember your English spellings. I before e except after c? And it’s seeing not singing.

“Except in some cases like neighbor and weigh. And I just thought! It’s a play on words because ‘the best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear!’”

Alex smiled at her then, “You’ll get the hang of it.“

“Yeah, okay so I can’t spell that great, but the writing was good right?” Kara looked hopeful.

Alex shoved her shoulder, “You know you have more Christmas spirit than any other elf. Now come on and fix these typos, so we can go drink hot chocolate with Mom.”

That night when Kara had gone to bed, belly full of twelve drumsticks, eleven pickled peppers, ten cups of hot chocolate, nine hams glazed, eight glasses of milk, seven strudel pastries, six white chocolate goose eggs, five onion rings, four carrot cakes, three French bagels, two turtle chocolates, and a chocolate pecan pie, she curled up on her elf sized bed. Eliza had knit a fourth blanket onto her elf quilt the previous month when her toes started peeking out at the bottom. Alex had tucked her in tonight, making certain she was snug as a bug in a rug in the tiny bed, wishing sweet dreams of sugarplums dancing in her head.

She was content, happy, home and tomorrow would be her thirteenth birthday at the North Pole. What more could her life possibly be, what could be more rewarding than being apart of the magic that brought Christmas to children all over the world? And still Kara thought of that world and all of the little lights that wrote those letters to Santa, the gleaming eyes of all who opened presents on Christmas morning, and she wondered if any of them were like her. If they could hear the faintest sounds of snow falling or reach up and touch the clouds. If they could roast chestnuts with their eyes or see through all those pretty presents wrapped neatly under the tree. If the people of this world could believe that Santa would come every year to bring them gifts, then she had to believe that somewhere out there, there was someone else who was just like her.

That night Kara dreamed of a beautiful red sunset and little baby boy named Kal. It all felt so real, seeing him jet across the sky in a similar pod to the one Kara had found in an abandoned workshop years ago, knowing it must have been how she found her home. She wrote a letter to Santa as soon as she woke up, asking him to find a home for Kal for Christmas.

_____

Kara had been in trouble a bit, always an accident, because really how was it her fault if Blitzen couldn’t keep up with her? He could have flown faster if he hadn’t eaten all of that maple syrup and maybe then he wouldn’t have been left behind! She carried him back the whole way anyway! After she found him three days later in the Swiss Alps.

But this time when she was called to Santa’s office and Eliza and Alex sat patiently waiting for the charges from the big boss, Kara didn’t know why she was here at all, or rather, now she was on the floor with wood debris around her rear because the little chair was a lot lower than she had anticipated. That was the tenth one this month.

Santa cleared his throat and rubbed his white bearded chin, “I read your letter, and I spoke to your mom and sister. I think they have something they’d like to tell you.”

Kara widened her eyes and looked to her mom, “Are we going to adopt Kal? Like you adopted me? Please say we can Eliza. I promise I’ll teach him myself how to control his powers, and I can build him a crib myself. I’ll even chop down the tree for the wood and we can,”

Eliza cupped Kara’s face and kissed her forehead, a tear prickling at the corner of her eye, “Do you remember Kal now sweetie? Do you remember Krypton?”

Kara blew out her breath in bewilderment, “Krypton? What’s that? Is that where I’m from? Is it in Canada? I’ve always felt I was probably a Canadian because I don’t get cold at the North Pole, and I make the best maple syrup every year during the elf Christmas party.”

Santa nodded, “Its true, you really do.”

Alex gasped, “you know you’re not an elf?”

Kara chewed at her fingernails, “Well I’m not, am I? I’m bigger than all of you and I can lift a Christmas tree over my head like it’s mistletoe and fly with reindeer and all sorts of stuff. I’ve known for awhile I’m not from here, but this is still my home. You two are still my family.”

Alex held back all her unshed tears, “But you have other family out there, and we can’t keep you from knowing about Kal anymore.”

So that day Kara cried when Santa showed her the picture of Kal, or Clark Kent as he was called on Earth, glasses askew and a beautiful woman on his arm. Clark without the glasses bearing what she was told was her family crest, the House of El, taking up the mantle of Earth’s greatest hero, Superman. She had crafted thousands of figurines of her only living blood relative, and yet she hadn’t the faintest idea that she had been sent to protect him for all of these years. He had grown up, not alone at least. He was raised in Kansas on a farm, and now he lived in Metropolis with his wife Lois Lane and their son Jonathan Kent.

“Does he even know I exist?”

_____

Kara changed into her best elf attire and her bright red boots that Eliza had made her for Christmas, letting her open one present before she left. Today was the day that she would fly to Metropolis and meet her cousin for the first time. She couldn’t wait, but the dread at leaving Alex and Eliza settled deep in the pit of her stomach. And all of the letters to Santa she still wanted to respond to sat neatly at her desk in her room.

She was leaving behind her entire life at the North Pole. She told herself she wasn’t losing her home, but it still felt like it. Santa’s workshop, Eliza and Alex, it was all she had ever known or could remember. Would it be the same when she came back? Would her room still smell like a gingerbread house and would her stocking still hang by their chimney with care? Would Kal come with her or would she split her time between Kal and Alex and Eliza like some children who get double presents when their parents divorce?

Alex knocked on her door and waltzed in, “Hey Kara, mom made you something to take to Kal. There’s a winter storm over Greenland, you should probably get going soon.”

Kara wiped the tears from her eyes and her sister rushed to hug her. She had to bend down a little and lift Alex off the ground, but no way was she leaving without giving her sister a proper hug.

“I’m going to miss you and mom so much, Alex. I’ve never been away from home for more than a few hours, how am I going to make it to Christmas without you both? Will you even still want me back?”

Alex nuzzled closer, “You better come back because I don’t want to imagine this place without you. Who’s going to lift the fridge so mom can sweep under it hmm? Who’s going to change all of the light bulbs in the workshop when they blow out? Who’s going to drink hot chocolate with me and watch Hallmark movies in July?”

Kara laughed, shaking her head and deposited Alex on the floor, “I thought you hated the Hallmark channel.”

Alex simply rolled her eyes, “But I love spending time with my sister, and I love you, you big sap. I swore I wasn’t going to cry.”

Feeling slightly better Kara shoves her sister’s shoulder, a little too hard and catches her before she falls, “I love you too, dork. Don’t open the present I got you until you get back, pinky swear?”

Alex locks pinkies with Kara and kisses her thumb, “I’ll miss you. Please be safe. No breaking the sound barrier, watch out for pigeons because there’s a lot in Metropolis or so I’ve read. And when you see Kal remember to call him Clark Kent.”

“Got it, and don’t eat anything I don’t buy myself or anything not given to me by Clark, Lois, or Jonathan because there’s a high chance it’s not candy.”

Kara hugged Eliza for thirty minutes after that, and then Alex for another ten minutes before waving goodbye to Santa and all of the elves at his workshop. Metropolis wasn’t so far for her to fly, and she’d be home in no time.

She coasted through the peppermint sparkled glaciers, touched the northern lights, sailed through the skies above the Arctic Ocean, grazed the top of the Daily Planet, and landed atop the small two bedroom apartment building on the rent controlled side of town. Inside the windows of the corner apartment on the top floor, Kara saw Kal with his family, lighting candles, looking happy and calm. She decided to wait until morning to meet Kal, Clark, alone.

She listened into the city around her, all of the heartbeats like a million tiny hammers beating together, all except one. Kara flew the city, pinpointing the sound, admiring all of the lights on all the trees in all of the buildings and all the shining multicolored bulbs lining the streets. And it was there, in the tallest tower of the tallest building, one light shone through the wall to wall window, a small desk lamp in the large office. At the desk a woman with jet black hair and skin as white and fair as snow sat, typing away at her computer, nibbling on the pen in her mouth. She strained her long elegant neck, and stretched her arms above her head before getting back to work.

Kara glanced below the balcony to the street corner, finding what she knew the young woman needed. She floated down to the alley and walked into a coffee shop, took some time figuring out how to pay for a cup of coffee with the paper and coin money that Santa had given her before she left. Smiled and thanked the cashier for helping her, put one of the bills in his tip jar (it was a hundred.) She quickly flew into the woman’s office, left the coffee on her desk, and flew out of sight, feeling a little like Santa herself in the moment.

The woman grabbed the coffee absentmindedly and sipped, not expecting it to be so hot Kara sees her fanning her mouth and frantically searching the room with her eyes. When she turns to peer out her balcony, Kara sees her face, hard jaw line, soft endearing green eyes. She smiles as the woman screams and locks her balcony door as the windows go pitch black.

#supercorp #elf au

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staystrange · 4 years

Text

a sentence in the story of us

Schitt’s Creek • Patrick Brewer / David Rose Rating: T • ~4k words • ao3

David realizes he has no idea what he’s going to walk into since everything he’d meticulously planned for months had been completely ruined by the stupid rain. But to his surprise, he realizes that none of that matters to him anymore, that all he needs for the wedding to be the thing of perfection that he’s always hoped it would be is Patrick at his side. And that’s where Patrick is right now, his smile limitless and his eyes incapable of straying far from David’s as if they were connected by an invisible string. David knows in that moment with extreme clarity that he’s never been happier in his entire life, and he also knows that Patrick would say the same without so much as a nanosecond of hesitation.

-or-

Scenes and moments from David and Patrick's wedding reception.

Title from "This Promise" by Sam Tsui and Casey Breves. If you want to add some joy to your day, go watch the music video - it's five minutes of footage from their wedding and it's beautiful.

David Rose pulls away from his first kiss with Patrick as husbands (husbands!!) and rubs his hands up and down the fabric of Patrick’s sleeves, mouthing “I love you” to him without caring that his eyes are definitely crinkling at the corners. Their arms extend across each other’s backs as they walk back down the aisle and towards the door to head over to the Café Tropical (Twyla’s Cafe Tropical now, David reminds himself), where, if all is going according to their new plan, everything should be set up for their wedding reception. David realizes he has no idea what he’s going to walk into since everything he’d meticulously planned for months had been completely ruined by the stupid rain. But to his surprise, he realizes that none of that matters to him anymore, that all he needs for the wedding to be the thing of perfection that he’s always hoped it would be is Patrick at his side. And that’s where Patrick is right now, his smile limitless and his eyes incapable of straying far from David’s as if they were connected by an invisible string. David knows in that moment with extreme clarity that he’s never been happier in his entire life, and he also knows that Patrick would say the same without so much as a nanosecond of hesitation.

When they reach the doorway, Patrick pulls David into a side hallway, leaving their families and their guests to walk out into the miraculously clear early evening without them. “Don’t worry, I told Stevie to set aside a plate of hors d’oeuvres for you in case they’re gone before we make it over there,” Patrick says softly, leaning in even closer to David.

David lets out a breathy laugh, burying his head in Patrick’s shoulder and whispering “I love you” in his ear. Apparently, the three words that David had only ever said twice before meeting Patrick are the only words he’s capable of saying to him now, and the only way he can express the overwhelming emotion filling him from head to toe. “You told her to save me extra of the potato puffs, right? Because those are —”

“Your favorite, I know, and yes, I did,” Patrick replies, finishing David’s thought. David’s eyes slowly travel down Patrick’s body and back up to his face again, and he knows Patrick’s are moving along a similar path, the silence that now fills the Town Hall allowing them a moment to appreciate each other in their wedding suits without being interrupted. “Okay, I never thought I’d say this, but I am so glad you managed to resist all of my attempts to get you to change your mind about not letting me see you in your wedding suit before today. As soon as I saw you, I almost stole you away from Alexis and kissed you before you made it down the aisle,” Patrick says.

“Just kissed me? That’s it?” David raises an eyebrow.

“Well, I would have done more than kiss you but we were in public, at our wedding no less.” Patrick’s breath hitches on the word “wedding” this time, and the tears that David had thought he’d run out of during the ceremony manage to return enough to fill his eyes. “David, you look, well, beautiful isn’t a strong enough word, but it’s the only one I can think of right now,” Patrick continues seriously, clasping his hands together at the nape of David’s neck, careful not to touch his perfectly-styled hair.

“You do too,” David replies, his fingers ghosting over Patrick’s sleeves again before coming to rest at Patrick’s waist. Their bodies press together, fitting together perfectly, and David is hyperaware of every point of contact between them like they’re flirting and dancing around each other in the store all over again. He sees Patrick glance down at David’s right hand, the light glinting off of his four gold engagement rings, and then at his left hand, bare except for the smooth gold wedding band on his left ring finger that perfectly matches the one in the same place on Patrick’s left hand. A tinge of disbelief works its way into Patrick’s expression - no, not disbelief, David realizes. It’s wonder. David kisses him then, and for a brief shocking moment he wishes he could stay in the grimy hallway with his lips against Patrick’s, in each other’s arms, sharing the same breaths, instead of joining everybody else at the café. But David knows his stomach would never stand for that, so he pulls back and sighs happily at his husband.

“Ready to head over, David?” Patrick asks.

“Ready when you are, Mr. Brewer,” David replies, picking up the bouquet of white roses he’d left on a nearby bench.

“It’s Mr. Rose now,” Patrick reminds him as they walk through the doorway, and he’s right, it is.

———

The door to the café is closed as they approach, but just as Patrick’s about to pull it open with his right hand (his left is holding David’s), Stevie cracks it open and smiles at the sight of them.

“Oh good, you’re here. We’re just about ready to introduce you two for your first dance, so wait for my cue. I’ll take those,” Stevie says, all business, as she reaches for the bouquet of flowers in David’s other hand, “and your potato puffs are waiting for you at the head table. Ronnie’s guarding them, and no one would dare mess with her, so no need to worry.”

“Thank you,” David says quietly. “You’re an incredible Maid of Honor.”

“I know,” Stevie replies with a smirk, but David knows she’s secretly pleased.

She slips back inside, and a few moments later, David hears her voice amplified through the café’s sound system. “It is my honor to present the grooms, Mr. and Mr. Rose, for their first dance as husbands.”

The door flies open, narrowly avoiding hitting Patrick in the face, and Jocelyn smiles at them with a hand on the door as David and Patrick walk into their wedding reception and take their places in the middle of the makeshift dance floor. The opening lyrics of “Simple Kind of Love” play from the speakers (they hadn’t been able to afford a live band or even a DJ, so David and Patrick had curated the perfect wedding playlist together) and David rests his head on Patrick’s shoulder again as they start to sway back and forth.

David remembers the day Patrick introduced him to what would eventually become their first dance song. It had been a rare day when neither of them was working at the store (the weather forecast had predicted so much snow that they’d decided to close the store for the day just to be safe), and David had woken up to the sound of Patrick’s acoustic guitar. He’d rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up, listening for a few moments before walking over to Patrick and pressing a good morning kiss to his temple. “Is that an original song?” David asked once Patrick’s calloused fingers had stilled on the strings.

Patrick chuckled. “No, not this time. It’s just a song I found the other day and liked.”

“Can I hear it?” Patrick reached for his phone, but David rested his hand on Patrick’s arm to stop him. “I want to hear you sing it.”

Patrick nodded, his fingers returning to the guitar strings. David was surprised by how much he related to the song, the lyrics describing a love so magical that neither person needed anything else but each other. A few years ago, David would have scoffed at the idea, but as he listened to Patrick sing, he realized that at the end of the day, nothing else mattered as much as Patrick.

“She’s queer and Jewish, too, by the way,” Patrick had said after the last notes had faded away.

“What?” David responded, still lost in thought.

“The artist who wrote the song, she’s queer and Jewish. She recorded it with her wife.”

“Oh,” David said, surprised.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, and Patrick started nervously picking at the guitar strings. “You don’t like it,” he said, his hands still again.

David shook his head at how wrong he was. “No, Patrick, I love it,” he whispered. “Can you play it again?”

David saved the original recording to his Spotify account, and he started listening to it whenever his racing thoughts kept him awake long after Patrick’s breaths had evened out next to him. He’d once woken Patrick up by crying while listening to it, and Patrick had smiled his fond smile that he only ever shared with David and reached for one of his earbuds so they could listen to it together.

When it had been time to choose a song for their first dance at their wedding reception, they hadn’t even bothered to consider another option.

As they keep swaying, David notices that Patrick’s singing along softly so that only David can hear, and David holds his husband even tighter as he mouths the lyrics into Patrick’s shoulder.

‘Cause you’re right here, and that’s all I need from you Forever dear, my soul will cling to you And I know that we’re the simple kind of love And we don’t need anything but us

When the song ends, Patrick presses a gentle kiss to David’s lips and then another to his favorite spot on the side of David’s neck, pulling him into a hug.

Stevie and Alexis run up to meet them in the center of the room, throwing their arms around David and Patrick, who are still locked in each other’s embrace. The force of their impact knocks the breath out of David’s lungs for a moment, but he doesn’t mind; he’s filled to the brim with love anyway. The four of them stay huddled in a group hug for a few moments until David has to gently nudge Stevie and Alexis back so that he has room to breathe (because unfortunately it is not yet scientifically possible to sustain life on love alone). Patrick laughs, taking David’s hand and pulling him over to their seats.

———

David’s only halfway through his stash of potato puffs when Stevie takes the mic in her hand again and taps it to get everyone’s attention.

“Is this thing on?” she asks, her voice echoing through the room as she shifts from one foot to the other. “Okay good.” She has a crumpled bundle of papers in her hand, and David can tell even from a distance that they’re damp with nervous sweat. “While David stuffs his face with potato puffs —” David tries to shoot her an incredulous look in response, but fails miserably because his mouth is, in fact, stuffed with potato puffs — “I guess now is a good time to give my speech. As David knows, I can’t be sincere to save my life, but he asked me to do this anyway. So David, if this speech sucks, it’s your fault.” Everyone laughs, and Stevie looks pleased.

She clears her throat and flattens the papers against her leg before holding them up in front of her face. “When I met David when he first moved to Schitt’s Creek, all he was to me was the guy who was living in room 8 of the motel who demanded extra towels all the time. Then, he became the guy that I got high with and the only person in this town that I actually wanted to spend time with. For a brief moment in time, he was the guy that I was sleeping with — oh, don’t give me that look, Roland, everybody knows.” David chokes on the bite of potato puff in his mouth, and Patrick’s eyes widen. “But then we realized that we’d be better off as friends, and that’s what we’ve been to each other ever since.

“I’d never called anyone a real friend before David, and I think the same is true for him,” Stevie continues, and David nods in confirmation. “Having David as my friend has been the greatest honor and, dare I say it, joy of my life. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who’s as sarcastic and cynical and self-deprecating as I am, and the fact that we’re so alike is oddly comforting. After Patrick first arrived in town and had that fateful first meeting with David about the business license for his general but also very specific store, I started noticing changes in David. They were small ones at first, like the way he would smile fondly whenever he said Patrick’s name and the fact that he never shut up about him. But soon enough, those changes got bigger. I watched David push himself so far out of his comfort zone just to make Patrick happy, and along the way, he began to let himself trust people and be vulnerable with people. I guess I learned how to do some of that too just by being by his side and supporting and encouraging him through it all. David and Patrick have something that most people, myself included, only dream about, and watching them fall in love has been such an honor. I’m so happy for you both, and David, I promise I mean every single word of this and I’m not just keeping up our friendship for the free wine from the store.”

Stevie folds the pages back up and slides them into her pocket, raising her glass of champagne. “To David and Patrick.”

The rest of the room follows her lead, raising their glasses, some of them more full than others. “To David and Patrick.”

“To us,” Patrick says, turning in his chair to face David.

“To us.” David clinks his glass against Patrick’s and drains it.

———

There’s a little bit of a lull in energy as the guests finish their first course (mozzarella sticks, of course), so Stevie plugs the aux cord back into her phone and puts the wedding playlist back on. “Run Away With Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen blasts through the speakers, and David, more than a little buzzed after multiple glasses of champagne, jumps up from his seat, pulling Patrick to his feet. “We have to go dance, right now,” David insists. “Where’s Alexis?” He spots her on the dance floor already, making up dance moves on the spot with Twyla by her side.

David starts to walk toward her, but Patrick’s hand in his stops him from moving more than a few steps away from the table. “You don’t want to eat your main course first?” Patrick asks, gesturing to the plates that had just been set down on the table.

David considers his husband’s words for a few moments before shaking his head. “No thanks, there’s plenty of time for that later. You can’t just not dance when Carly Rae Jepsen plays. It’s a crime against humanity.” He scrunches his face up at Patrick and Patrick relents, following David’s lead as he joins Alexis and Twyla on the dance floor.

Before David realizes what he’s doing, he’s scream-singing the words along with Alexis, and more and more people are joining them on the dance floor. Once the second chorus hits, she hands him off to Patrick who had been dancing with Twyla. On “we could turn the world to gold,” Patrick takes David’s hand and holds it up, twirling David under their raised arms. The laughter that bubbles out of Patrick is unlike anything David’s ever heard before, and if this is what being married is like, David wants to spend the rest of his life making Patrick laugh like that.

“Hey, Patrick, will you run away with me?” David asks when the song ends, batting his eyelashes at Patrick.

“I already did the whole running away thing, remember?” Patrick replies, not giving in to David’s tipsy banter. “But sure, as long as it’s not a permanent thing.”

———

They dance to a few more songs on the wedding playlist, including another Carly Rae Jepsen song (“You can never have too many of her songs on a playlist, Patrick!”); Patrick’s favorite Taylor Swift song; and “Closer” by Tegan and Sara, a song that David has always loved but has gotten quite a bit more airtime on David’s Spotify since he’d started dating Patrick. “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey plays next, and as David takes a break from dancing, he notices his parents slow dancing together and looking at each other with so much love that he can’t help but smile.

A few moments later, David turns to Patrick. “So that’s why you insisted on putting this song on the playlist. You had already planned to sing it as part of your vows.”

“Indeed I did,” Patrick says, resting his hands on David’s shoulders. “David, you still haven’t eaten, have you?”

David smiles sheepishly. “No, I haven’t, but it’s fine, the people getting married never actually eat at their wedding.”

“Yes, but this is you we’re talking about, and your dad spent so much money on this incredible food for us. We owe it to him to go eat at least some of it.”

“Fine, I guess you’re right.” David rolls his eyes, but doesn’t object when Patrick gently nudges him toward the table. When Patrick doesn’t sit down next to him, he raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so we’re being a hypocrite now, aren’t we?”

“I’m going to go get us some water, okay? You enjoy the food, and I’ll be back in a second.” Patrick leans in and kisses David on the cheek before walking toward the drink table in the back. David watches as his mom stops Patrick along the way, giving him a hug and saying something in his ear. He can’t tell what she says, but by the way Patrick’s face flushes pink, he figures it’s either something incredibly embarrassing or something genuine and sweet, which would be uncharacteristic from his mother but on a day like this one, anything is possible.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone sit in Patrick’s chair next to him, and when he realizes it’s none other than Marcy Brewer, his mother-in-law, he swallows down the bite of food he’s chewing and smiles softly at her. “Hey, Marcy. Having a good time?”

“I just wanted to tell you that you and my sweet boy planned a beautiful wedding,” she says, her fingers twisting in her lap.

David shakes his head, surprising himself with his humility. “I had nothing to do with any of this. This was all Patrick and my dad saving the day when the rain sent me into a state of complete panic.” David takes a deep breath, willing the tears to stay at bay and knowing that he won’t be able to hold them back if this conversation lasts much longer. “Thank you for raising him and helping to make him the wonderful person he is. I’m so happy with him.”

“Oh, honey, thank you for making him so happy. That’s all we’ve ever wanted for him, and when we see how he looks when he’s with you, we know he did the right thing when he left and moved here, even though it was hard for us to wrap our heads around at the time.” David nods in understanding. “Welcome to the family, David.”

“Thank you, Marcy,” David replies.

David feels a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up to see that his husband has returned with two large glasses of water. He hands one to David and turns to Marcy. “Can I have my husband back now, Mom?” he asks her, leaning against the side of David’s chair.

“Of course. I was just officially welcoming David to the family.” Marcy stands and returns to her seat next to her husband, but not before smiling fondly at David. David can tell where Patrick gets his fondness from.

“I didn’t bring you this glass of water for you to not drink it, David,” Patrick teases, snapping David out of his thoughts. He rolls his eyes and raises the glass to his lips.

———

It doesn’t feel like any time has passed at all before Tina Turner’s “The Best” is playing out of the café speakers and Stevie and his dad are carefully moving David and Patrick’s wedding cake out into the middle of the room. David gasps at how beautiful it is, it being the one somewhat extravagant part of David’s original vision for the wedding that hadn’t been ruined by the weather. The cake is a soft cream color with white roses that match David’s bouquet and Patrick’s boutonniere spiraling down from the top layer to the base. The cake and the icing are both vanilla flavored, and the filling on the inside is a light chocolate buttercream. David cannot wait to try it.

Stevie hands David a large knife, and David moves it so that he and Patrick can hold it between them. “Just so you know, if you shove cake in my face and not only ruin my flawless skin but waste perfectly good cake as well, I might have to ask for a divorce. You’ve been warned.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick replies. “Whatever you say.”

They wrap their hands around the knife handle and slowly press the blade down into the cake. Stevie helps them carefully lift up a large slice and slide it off the knife and onto a plate without dropping it, handing Patrick the plate along with a fork. Patrick loads a bite of cake onto the fork and extends it towards David’s mouth; David’s lips part, and the cake tastes every bit as incredible as he’d imagined when he’d ordered it. His eyes slide closed of their own volition and he hums contentedly.

“That good, huh?” Patrick asks, and David nods, opening his eyes again and taking the fork and the plate from Patrick.

“Your turn,” he says, a bite of cake already on the fork. Patrick opens his mouth and David slips the fork between his lips, serving himself another bite of the cake for good measure as Patrick chews.

“Oh, wow, David, I knew there was a reason why I trust your taste in food. This is on another level of perfect.”

“I told you it would be! I wouldn’t lie to you like that, Patrick,” David says, setting the plate with half a slice of cake left back on the table. Patrick picks it up again and jokingly pretends to throw it at David’s face. “Don’t you fucking dare. I wasn’t kidding about that divorce.” Patrick laughs and takes another bite of the cake instead. The opening chords of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” lead Alexis, Stevie, and Twyla back to the dance floor, and David grabs Patrick’s arm and pulls him away from the cake to join them.

———

Many dances and at least one more slice of cake later, David is absolutely exhausted. Despite Schitt’s Creek’s small population, there are quite a few guests at the wedding, and all of them want their turn to dance with and talk to and congratulate David and Patrick. David appreciates it, of course, but all he really wants to do is talk to Patrick, kiss Patrick, just be with Patrick. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. His husband.

“Ready to head out?” Patrick asks David quietly. “We have to be up early tomorrow to say goodbye to your parents, so if you want to make sure we have time to actually enjoy the rest of the night’s activities, we should go. Unless you’re too tired, in which case we can just go to sleep. I won’t be offended.”

“Are you kidding? I’m never too tired for you,” David replies, standing and taking Patrick’s hand.

“That’s a lie, you and I both know that, but sure.” Patrick bites his lip in an attempt to hold back his laughter and folds his suit jacket over his free arm. “Got everything?”

David nods. “Lead the way.”

#original #fanfiction #schitt's creek #david x patrick #david rose #patrick brewer #alexis rose #stevie budd #this is a ridiculous amount of fluff #happy anniversary david and patrick!!#wedding reception #canon compliant #david is a carly rae jepsen fan #series finale spoilers

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lifeofresulullah · 4 years

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): Calling the Tribes to Islam, the Allegiances of Aqaba and Migration to Madinah

The Prophet Arrives in Madinah

The Muslims of Madinah heard that the Messenger of Allah had set off for Madinah from Makkah. Therefore, they went to the place called Harra after the morning prayer every day and waited there impatiently until the weather got very hot at noon.

One day, they waited for the arrival of the Prophet for a long time as usual and returned when they saw that it became very hot.

Meanwhile, a Jewish person who was on the roof of his house saw a few people in white clothes walking through the hot desert, mirages and fog. He knew that Muslims were waiting for the Messenger of Allah. He could not help shouting, “O community of Arabs! The person you have been waiting for is coming!” giving Muslims the good news.

This good news traveled like lightning among the streets of Madinah. The city was like a place of festival because the person who offered peace and happiness to humanity was coming. Muslims took their weapons and ran toward that area.

They reached the Prophet and Hazrat Abu Bakr while they were resting in the shade of a date tree. Hazrat Abu Bakr was standing near the Prophet. They greeted the Master of the Universe, for whom they had been waiting excitedly, impatiently and longingly, who was in a white garment, and started to stare at his luminous blessed face.

After having a rest for a while in the shade of the date tree, the Messenger of Allah and his friends proceeded to the village of Quba, which was to the right of Madinah, together with the people who came from Madinah to welcome them.

It was a very hot day in the month of Rabiulawwal.

The sun was sending its arrows made of fire down to the earth. The Messenger of Allah and the group of believers with him arrived at the village of Quba, which was an hour away from the city of Madinah, before noon. He went to the house of Kulthum b. Hidam, the leader of Banu Amr b. Awf. The fast journey on the scorching sand exhausted the Prophet. He decided to stay in Quba for a while due to the wishes of the people who wanted to talk to him.

The Prophet stayed in the house of Kulthum b. Hidam, who was quite old, at night and went to the house of Sa’d b. Haythama, who was a single Companion, during the day in order to talk to the Muslims. Besides, the other single Companions stayed in his house, too. Therefore, his house was called “Daru’l-Uzab [the House of Bachelors]”.

Hazrat Ali Rejoins the Prophet

Hazrat Ali had stayed in Makkah in order to return the valuables and goods that the Qurayshis entrusted to the Prophet to their owners due to the order of the Prophet.

Hazrat Ali fulfilled this duty and left Makkah three days after the Prophet left. He rejoined the Prophet when he was in Quba. His feet had swollen and blistered because he had walked all the way. The Prophet hugged him in tears, prayed for him so that his feet will recover and rubbed them with his hand. God Almighty cured his feet at once. The blisters and pains in his feet disappeared.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE QUBA MOSQUE

The Messenger of Allah stayed for more than ten nights in the house of Banu Amr b. Awf. During this period, he established the Quba Mosque and performed prayers in it.

Although some Muslims built a mosque for themselves before the mosque established by the Prophet, the first mosque built for the community of Islam is the Quba Mosque.

The Messenger of Allah himself worked in the construction of this lofty mosque, which was built on Kulthum b. Hidam’s land, where he dried his dates. Once, the Prophet was carrying a very heavy stone. One of the Companions approached him and said, “O Messenger of Allah! May my father and mother be sacrificed for you. Give it to me.” The Prophet said to him, “No, I won’t! Get another stone.”, expressing that he got pleasure from working. Thus, he served as a model with his efforts and hard work along with his other good attributes like, worship, taqwa, loyalty, mercy, resoluteness and courage.

Observing his efforts and hard work, Muslims worked enthusiastically without showing any signs of laziness or fatigue. The Prophet did not stop working until the construction of the mosque finished; he did not treat himself differently from other Muslims.

Importance and Superiority of the Quba Mosque

The Quba Mosque is a blessed monument of the luminous and magnificent period that started with the migration of the Messenger of Allah and that continued especially with his arrival at the village of Quba. Therefore, it was defined as a “mosque of taqwa” in the Quran. The following is stated in the relevant verse:

“There is a mosque whose foundation was laid from the first day on piety; it is more worthy of thy standing forth (for prayer) therein. In it are men who love to be purified; and Allah loveth those who make themselves pure!”

The Respectable Prophet always went to the Quba Mosque on Saturdays during his life sometimes on foot and sometimes riding and performed prayers there. Besides, he encouraged believers to perform prayers there giving the good news that a person who performed prayers in that blessed mosque in a nice and clean way would receive the reward of an umra.

The Quba Mosque is significant and important because it was built in a period when the barriers in front of Islam started to be removed gradually and the development and advancement of Islam started.

Suhayb b. Sinan Goes to Quba

Suhayb b. Sinan was one of the helpless and lonely Muslims who were exposed to the tortures of polytheists. When the Prophet was given the permission to migrate to Madinah, he could not find an opportunity to leave Makkah.

When he saw that Hazrat Ali was about to migrate, he packed his things, and set off. When some Makkans saw him, they followed him and said, “When you came here, you were poor; you became rich here. You want to take your wealth with you. We will not let you do it!”

Acting upon the courage based on his belief, Suhayb dismounted and took his arrows out of his bag. He said to the Qurayshis, who were trying to stop him from migrating, “You know that I am one of the best archers among you. I will shoot all of my arrows; if I run out of arrows, I will draw my sword! As long as I have one of them with me, I will not let you approach me!”

The polytheists could not answer this heroic call back. They knew that this hero of Islam would not surrender easily. On the one hand, there was Suhayb b. Sinan, who stood up with the courage supported by his belief; on the other hand, there were polytheists who were afraid due to the polytheism in their hearts.

Then, Suhayb made them this offer:

“Will you let me go if I show you where all my wealth is and leave it to you?”

The polytheists, who loved worldly possessions so much, said, “Yes...”

Hazrat Suhayb left his wealth to them and migrated on the way of Allah in order to practice his religion and belief freely.

He rejoined the Messenger of Allah in Quba in the middle of the month of Rabiulawwal. He had a pain in his eye on the way and he was very hungry. There was a bunch of fresh palms with leaves in front of the Prophet, Hazrat Abu Bakr and Hazrat Umar. Hazrat Suhayb started to eat the fresh dates immediately.

Hazrat Umar said, “O Messenger of Allah! Do you see Suhayb? He says he has a pain in his eye and he is eating fresh dates!”

When the Messenger of Allah said, “O Suhayb! You have a pain in your eye but you are eating fresh dates.”, he said, “O Messenger of Allah! I am eating them with the sound part of my eye.” This witty answer made the Prophet smile.

Then, Hazrat Suhayb said, “O Messenger of Allah! When you left Makkah, the polytheists imprisoned me. I gave them my wealth and bought (saved) my family and myself!”

The Messenger of Allah said, “Suhayb won! Suhayb won! Abu Yah¬ya! The sale turned out to be profitable! The sale turned out to be profitable!” He gave the good news and made Suhayb very happy.

Then, the following verse was sent down:

“And there is the type of man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah; and Allah is full of kindness to (His) devotees.”

They Leave Quba

After staying in Quba more than ten nights, the Messenger of Allah set off to Madinah on Friday. He was on his camel, Qaswa. Hazrat Abu Bakr was behind him; there were about one hundred people with weapons from Banu Najjar, from the tribe of his maternal uncles and many Muslims of Madinah on the right and on the left.

The scene was challenging, pleasing and hopeful. The Messenger of Allah, who was left alone in Makkah, was being accompanied by hundreds of luminous people! They were uttering takbirs (Allahu Akbar); their hearts were full of joy. They had waited for the Prophet, who presented them with the real belief and Islam, which is the source of the happiness in the world and in the hereafter, impatiently for days. Now, they were experiencing and feeling the unmatched joy of meeting him.

FIRST FRIDAY PRAYER IN MADINAH

During the journey, the Messenger of Allah turned to the left side and reached the land of Banu Salim b. Awf. When they arrived at a place called Ranuna, it was time for the Friday prayer. The Prophet dismounted his camel in the middle of the Ranuna valley, the place of the Friday Mosque, and performed the Friday prayer there.

It was the first Friday prayer the Prophet performed in Madinah.

The Prophet recited two sermons, one after the other, there. After thanking and praising Allah, he addressed the Muslims as follows:

“O people! Make preparations for the hereafter when you are healthy. You know very well that every one of you will be asked about the sheep that you left without a shepherd on the Day of Judgment. Then, God Almighty will say to him, without any intermediary, directly, ‘Did My Messenger not come and inform you? I gave you property and I granted you many bounties. What did you prepare for yourself?’ That person will look to the right and left but will not see anything. When he looks to the front, he will see nothing but Hell! Then, anyone who can save himself from the fire even with a half date should give it away at once. If he cannot find a half date, he should save himself by kalima at-tayyiba [nice word]. Through it, one good deed is rewarded by ten to seven hundred times. May Allah’s peace, mercy and bounties be on you!”

The Second Sermon

The Messenger of Allah stated the following in his second sermon:

“I praise Allah. I praise Allah and I ask His help. We took refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and our bad deeds. He whom Allah guides is rightly guided; but he whom Allah leaves to stray,- for him wilt thou find no protector to lead him to the Right Way.

I witness that there is no god but Allah. He is One; He has no partners.

The best word is the word of Allah. A person whose heart Allah decorates with the Quran, whom Allah includes in Islam though he was an unbeliever, who prefers the Quran to other words will definitely be saved.

Doubtlessly, the Book of Allah is the most beautiful and eloquent word. Love what Allah loves. Love Allah heartily. Do not get tired of the word of Allah and mentioning the names and attributes of Allah. Do not let the word of Allah cause gloom in your heart because the word of Allah distinguishes the best ones among everything. It informs you about the best deeds, the prophets, who are the most distinguished people, and the best stories; it states what is halal and haram. Worship Allah and do not associate any partners with Him. Fear Him truly.

Do good deeds and confirm them with your tongue.

Love one another with the word of Allah. Know very well that Allah punishes severely those who break their promise.

May Allah’s peace be upon you!”

In the first pledge of Aqaba, the Muslims of Madinah had promised to protect the Messenger of Allah fully when he arrived in their land.

After staying in Quba for a while, the Messenger of Allah was about to enter Madinah, the heart of their land; it was time for them to keep their promise.

Therefore, the Messenger of Allah finished the second sermon by stating that God Almighty would punish severely those who broke their promise.

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awakeandalive2012 · 4 years

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Grateful

The last several months have been a whirlwind of [much needed] change. For me personally, things went from 0 to 60 real quick from my last post. It’s been insane, but now I have a little bit of time to step back and take in the scenery a little bit. Which, in my own way, is to recount everything that I have been up to since moving back to the east coast.

As the title of this blog suggests, I am nothing but truly grateful for everything in my life thus far, even with everything that has happened this year thus far. My former coworkers, my family, my friends, every single one of you has been been truly helpful and sending so much love and positivity my way during this difficult time. So for that, THANK YOU.

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May 2020

My journey back to the east coast from sunny Los Angeles was eventful. We travelled for four days, with my mom and I alternating driving times in my car, while my dad tailed us (and sometimes sped ahead) in the other family car. Each night, we did stay in hotels (which we vigorously cleaned upon arrival).One of the highlights of this trip was making a detour into Scottsdale Arizona, where my grandparents used to live. We stopped at our favorite Jewish deli eatery, Chompies, and had one of the best meals in recent memories. We also visited some of my parent’s Israel trip friends who lived nearby. One of the hardest days was the last one, when we hit a massive rainstorm crossing through Arkansas and Tennessee. It was more rain than I had seen during my nearly four year tenure in LA. But also, it was the last leg of the trip and at this point, I was ready to return home safe and sound.

Even after all that, the long days on the road, the unexplainably cold night sleeps in hotel rooms, the constant pit stops, and the loving embrace that I gave my cats as soon as I barged in the front door, it didn’t actually hit me that I was truly back home. Not yet anyway.

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June 2020

My main focus this month was scouting and landing a job (and still is, spoiler alert). Boy, that is easier said than done. I know that millions are in the same boat as me right now, which is awful. Current political & pandemic atmosphere aside, I have been blessed with having enough funds to manage. Unfortunately, for the rest of the world, including former work colleagues of mine, are struggling every day to make ends meet and don’t have the same luxuries. I truly wish I could help them out, but being in a similar boat as them, it’s hard for me to figure out the most efficient way to do so. All I can do is be a friend, a positive light, who can provide positive energy and words of encouragement. Feel free to reach out and I will reply <3 To those who fit this bill, or to anyone who needs to hear; WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS. I promise.

I moved up to Virginia to be with Caleb in mid-June. He came down to Tennessee to help me gather my belongings, because yes I am a packrat and love stuff and it all wouldn’t fit in my car. That moment, when he finally drove down my driveway and made his way to my front door, I wrapped my arms around him super tight. We had done this routine numerous times before, but this one was the most impactful. To embrace him and know that we had successfully closed the gap on a nearly three year long distance relationship was truly memorable.

At this point, I felt in my heart that I was here to stay. But it didn’t really feel “real” yet; it was as if that nagging feeling of “check in to your flight” or “pack up your suitcase” was still triggering my internal reminders.

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July 2020

What. A. Month.

It has been one of the happiest months of my life. Firstly, Caleb and I finally moved into our own apartment together. I walked into the apartment for the first time on July 8th. Breathless, unable to fully encompass my thoughts and my emotions. In that moment, I felt as if a huge brick that had been crushing my soul finally tumble off. I walked in and looked around in awe. After weeks of searching and inquiring, I found us a place to call our own. We managed, in this crazy and turbulent time, to start a new chapter in our relationship together. Our first night in the new apartment, after the big move in, we shared a meal of Korean Fried Chicken together. In that moment, as we sat down and enjoyed our meal together (so delicious by the way), it hit me. Just like standing under a waterfall at summer camp, or a big gust of wind swirling your body around with its current. It finally hit me that I was home.

Secondly, Caleb and I headed down to Hilton Head for a much needed vacation with my family. Beach week for us is a family tradition; we have been going for at least 21 years now. This year was special, because the purpose of this trip was to celebrate my newly married sister. They held a small beautiful ceremony from our rented out beach house, which overlooked a nearby golf course and grandiose lake. The ceremony happened and I took a moment to look around. Even though there were only seven of us, in those brief moments, everyone was smiling. My family was happy, but more importantly, my sister was happy. Throughout my whole life, I know that Elena has been by my side, picking up the pieces where I fell and had my back. We even joked that she was the older sister figure, not me. She made me laugh, she was my rock, my confidant, my number one fan, and my happy place. I can never pay her back for all the joy that she has brought to my life. But now, it was her turn to to be happy. I was so glad to be a witness to that joy; she deserves every bit of happiness for her new life with her now husband.

Lastly, I got engaged. Yep, Caleb got down on one knee and proposed during beach week with my family. And yes, I cried. For the moment, since we didn’t have a ring yet, he used one of my sister’s birdseed bundles from the wedding ceremony and tied a ribbon from that bundle around my finger. All that set against a golf course sunset backdrop. Truly magical. When we got back, we went and got a ring. Even as I sit here and type up this post, I constantly stare down at my finger in awe and excitement. I get butterflies. I smile. The one moment in every girl’s life that she dreams of, finding someone truly special for them and realizing that you’re going to be with them for the rest of your life. That is happening to me. I never imagined that it would happen. Years of Pinterest boards and swooning over my favorite rom com doesn’t even come close to the joy that I am feeling in the moment. I am going to marry an amazing man, and it feels fucking amazing.

At this point, still job hunting and still coming up empty handed. But I continue my search because I know it only takes one.

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August 2020

Cut to today, August 5th 2020. Seriously, this year is both progressing at a snail’s pace and at top notch speeds. The job struggle still continues, but I’m still standing. Now that I have sat back and reflected on the last few months, I have had to slowly adjust both my mindset and time towards tomorrow. Every day, I am finding new strengths and weaknesses that I possess. Every day, I have made some choices for the benefit of our future. And, like I promised myself months ago, every day I try to write in some capacity. Because of the numerous events described above, that goal has not been met to my satisfaction. But now, as I rediscovered my feature script which I started nearly four years ago, I hope to make a dent of progress in that front.

In conclusion, I am truly grateful for where my life is right now and I am grateful for those people in my life who have helped me to get to this point. <3

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docholligay · 3 years

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The Wild Iris

I love poetry. I love poetry, and yet somehow manage to forget this until I am in the middle of reading poetry. I don’t know why, I’m usually not the type of person to forget I like things, or activities. But in this particular way, I am a bit silly, and then I’m reading Goblin Market to Jewlet and remember, “Hey, I actually dig this stuff.”

Anyway, I owe @miscanthusroots an extra and she asked if I would mind doing Louise Gluck’s collection of poetry, The Wild Iris, and even agreed to send me a copy to use when I had difficulty finding a copy that wasn’t too spendy.

I don’t have to tell you The Wild Iris is good, because it won a goddamn Pulitzer, and if something wins the Pulitzer the very least you can do is sit up and listen, but technical merit does not necessarily make something beautiful on a personal or individual level. So I wasn’t sure how I was going to experience the book. I’ve read Gluck’s work before but not necessarily a great amount of it, and, so far as I recall, not an entire book of her work.

Anyway, I suppose I’m dancing around the fact that it’s in some ways extremely difficult to talk about a book of poetry. Do you take apart each poem individually? I don’t have the time to do that, for this four hour chunk of writing about it, and so the best I think I can do is offer up my thoughts on the collection on the whole. I should say, that I am not a specialist in poetry at all, and though I had to study it to some small degree in college, I certainly don’t have the breadth of knowledge that someone who is very involved in poetics would.

There’s a thread in the collection of the natural world and prayer, the natural and the divine, and I think to some extent, the idea of God as gardener, but also us as gardeners of the world ourselves, planting and creating like small gods, but ALSO God as the garden himself. I had to read this collection like four times before I really came around to this idea, and came to very much like it.. The Matins and Vespers poems are (obviously) us talking to God, and I think the not-flower poems are God talking back to us.

Honestly, if you read the collection in the way one would read a novel, a conversation comes out of it easily--the first time I read it I wasn’t paying attention to this, I was reading them a bit scattershot, all taken as individual poems--but it’s this tangle between us and God, and the complication of our relationship with each other.

In the poem Retreating Wind:

I gave you every gift,

Blue of the spring morning,

Time you didn’t know how to use--

You wanted more, the one gift

Reserved for another creation

One of many poems titled Matins:

...You want to see my hands?

As empty now as at the first note.

Or was the point always

To continue without a sign?

Field Flowers:

….Your poor

Idea of heaven: absence

Of change. Better than earth? How

Would you know, who are neither

Here nor there, standing in our midst?

Now it was the flower poems themselves that gave me pause, the idea of the natural world, acted on by both God and man, commenting on the nature of life and death and the relationship between God and man, they read at turns deeply critical of man’s striving for immortality, of the human way of defining weeds and flowers , and how they can never truly understand what it is to live and die and live again,

So I had to go find out if Louise Gluck was Jewish, based on the impressions I got from her writing about God, sure, but what actually made me think about it was the way “God” in the poems speaks about us--there are plenty of Christians that struggle with God, but there’s a very certain way of looking at God as desiring us to overcome him and become him that I really only ever see in Jewish writings and stories. When I first thought this, I immediately then thought, “Nah, couldn’t be, she’s used Matins and Vespers throughout the book” but then I considered that I have been known to use Cathlic imagery myself simply because so many more people are familiar with it. Far and few are the goyim who recognize shacharit and maariv as anything at all. Anyway she is! On a personal level, I dunno, but we can’t get away from the viewpoints we’re raised with in many ways, and I was delighted to find out I was correct. Retreating Light is I think the best and clearest example of what I’m talking about.

You will never know how deeply

It pleases me to see you sitting there

Like independent beings,

To see you dreaming by the open window,

Holding the pencils I gave you

Until the summer morning disappears into writing

Creation has brought you

Great excitement, as I knew it would

As it does in the beginning

And I am free to do as I please now,

To attend to other things, in confidence,

You have no need of me anymore

How many things are said in that line, “In the beginning?” This idea that God loved the creation of us, and watching us, but also, has tired of us, has tired of our questions and needs, and that it has become the work of the day to day, but in the beginning, it’s so exciting. WE crave novelty, and maybe God does too, and perhaps that’s the way we were created in his image, that God longs for us, this children to grow and become better. It reminds me of the story (which I recently told on my chat) of the Oven of Acknai, where the conclusion of the story is God saying, “My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me” and smiling. That we, too, are creation.

I’m getting close to running out of time here, and it’s frustrating because I could say so much about this, but getting back into the idea of this reading as a novel, it’s also very cyclical. It begins with birth, as a flower, and ends with death, as a flower. And it’s really in this bit, in the bits near the end where I find the most emotional impact. Some of the ideas and imagery she’s using here aren’t exactly new but maybe it’s in knowing them that gives them that emotional resonance, for me. The line

In what contempt do you hold us

To believe only loss can impress

Your power on us

I mean, how many times have we felt that, at least, those of us who are still talking to God, where it feels as if God can only speak in loss and in taking? Even when you can see the evidence of other gifts, it can feel that way so deeply, and I tink that’s the gift of Gluck’s work here, is that the poems see things both from the side of God and the side of man, the way that all love is a struggle and this love most of all.

ANd these lines on the nature of death, like this one from Lullaby that just floored me:

Time to rest now; you have had

Enough excitement for the time being

I wish I could explain why things like that, put so simply, affect me so often, much more than anything overwrought. Maybe I’m just getting old, but just that idea of, “It’s time to rest now” just SLAYs me, well done, and the whole poem is great in that way but I’m not going to quote the whole poem at you.

Also this idea contained in the poem The Silver Lily

After the first cries

Doesn’t joy, like fear, make no sound?

I am rapidly out of time, but basically this poetry collection contains, especially in the back half, so much of what I love about the idea of struggling with life and death and God. Poetry can, at its best, have the gift of putting these complex feelings and ides into so few words, and there are brilliant moments in The Wild Iris where I feel like that happens for me, were a line sparks an idea, a feeling in my mind, lighting it like a match. I love when something can do that for me.

I need to remember how much I like poetry when I’m looking for books to read.

Oh also, before I go I have to point out this line that made me crackle because YES

Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair

on another person, which is called

Baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul--

#thank you for giving me a chance to do something I don't do often!

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matildainmotion · 4 years

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On Staying Put in the Pot of Life as Far as Possible

No, I don’t have a cure for the Coronavirus, though I hope there may be something helpful for our collective health in here. The virus was not the bug that started this blog. It was something, someone else.

Recently a woman, six years younger than me, mother to three children at my son’s school, died of cancer. I did not know her. I do not know her husband or her children, but I know plenty of people that do. Such a loss is felt across the whole community. I think of her, and of her family, daily now. Alongside the love I send them silently, is the thought that it could have been me, that it could be my husband, my children, left behind.

This is not a new thought. I have heard other mothers talk about it too, the sudden sense of responsibility they had on becoming mothers to do their level best to stay alive. “When I go to cross a road,” a new mother once said to me, “I now tell myself I mustn’t mess it up.” For me the thought pre-dates even motherhood because my maternal grandmother did not make it across the road – she died of Lupus when my mother was eight years old. The night after her death my grandfather committed suicide. As children do, I absorbed this story in my mother’s milk, in the smell of her, the sound of her. My father was a jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, so I had a dose of loss from him as well. Consequently, despite the fact that I have lived an incredibly privileged and protected life to date, I have a hidden ‘loss alarm’ inside me.

My loss alarm is like one of those annoying, over-sensitive smoke detectors that goes off every time you burn a bit of toast, as if the house were on fire. Except toast is not the trigger. Every time I hear a story of untimely loss, it goes off. Panic follows. There is no handy ‘re-set’ button on my loss alarm – it can sound out, keeping me awake, for weeks. The stories that trigger it can be newspaper headlines: terrorist attacks; aeroplane crashes; gun men; refugees who lose their lives as they attempt to flee. Or they can be more personal: a friend of a friend I knew who died in a fall at work; a boy near our village who slipped into a grain silo; someone’s sister hit by a car – each of these sets off my loss-alarm.

Let me be clear, the kind of panic I feel is not the same as that which is currently sweeping the world and causing the shelves in shops to empty of hand sanitizer and ibuprofen. I am not afraid of death. I feel nervous about death, but in the way I feel nervous before stepping on to a stage – a slight excitement about not knowing what is going to happen. At the moment bath bombs are all the rage in our house, and my latest fantasy of death is that it will be like fizzing away until there is nothing tangible left of me, whilst the ether around where I was turns a funky, joyful colour. The panic I feel is not about death, but loss – what those left behind will have to undergo. Before I became a mother I was afraid of the grief that I might feel. Now, whilst that still scares me, the loss-alarm sounds loudest when I think of my children, left bereft.

I have tried many different tactics over the years to shore up against this loss, different ways to try to muffle or mute the wailing of the alarm. Obviously, the best way to avoid it is to do what I can to help myself, and those I love, to stay alive. Just looking both ways and crossing the road with care does not seem good enough. There is still the risk of error, of bad luck, of reckless drivers, misplaced banana skins, or thunderbolts out of the blue. I am making light of it because it is hard to write about – it feels unbearable. I understand why the king and queen in Sleeping Beauty did not want to invite the thirteenth fairy to their baby’s christening, and then, after the fairy had gate-crashed with her curse, wished to rid the kingdom of all spinning wheels, to make misfortune, as far as possible, impossible. No needles allowed anywhere, so that their daughter may stay forever safe, awake, alive.

How to live with the knowledge that survival is not guaranteed? In fact the reverse is true – death is definite. Life, not so much. When I was younger I felt that if the facts were against me, I would have to resort to magic. ‘Magical thinking’ is a strange phrase – it sounds rather wonderful but it can refer to a form of mental disorder. On Wikipedia it is defined as “the false belief that one's thoughts, actions, or words will cause or prevent a specific consequence in some way that defies commonly understood laws of causality.” If I burn all the spinning wheels in the land, my daughter will be safe. If I count to ten and touch wood twice before I cross the road then I won’t get run over. When I was eight, in the mornings before school, I would ask my mother to promise me that she would not die that day. I knew she could not do this – there are dangerous roads to be crossed every day - but I hoped the promise had a magical power that might ensure her survival. As a teenager, my years of anorexia were another magical-thought practice, a way of starving to stay alive: if I can control my weight, eat impossibly little, then loss will never touch me. In my twenties I moved from magical thoughts to magical acts, training as a circus aerialist. Often aerialists are aligned with angels, people perfecting the art of flight. Not me. I was training in the art of holding on hard, with hands, toes, backs of my knees, neck, the fold of my hips. If I could get magically good at gripping, I would never have to lose myself, or anyone else.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. These are frightened magical practices. They put you under a spell of fear. The part of me that still engages in magical thought, believes that writing a blog like this is tantamount to suicide, that if I admit the possibility that loss could happen, then it will. It feels like signposting Sleeping Beauty towards the spinning wheel. But there are plenty of stories in which the protagonist’s very attempt to escape the feared fate, brings it about. Banish the fairy and she is sure to haunt you forever. Such a haunted life is not much of a life. I know - I’ve lived it. It’s not very magical. So here I am, a mother in my forties, still aware of that loss-alarm, wondering what better ways I could respond to it than by self-isolating, trying to avoid the many spinning wheels, sharp and whirring, in the world. And there is so much danger and loss around these days, loss of people, animals, entire landscapes, loss of life as we know it. So much loss that my alarm has been sounding almost constantly for months now and I have not been sleeping. I am tired. I’d love to sleep for a hundred years. But I can’t and anyway it’s not the answer. What’s to be done?

As ever I think the answer is right here, beside me. My daughter is on the bed, scribbling on my notebook as I type this. My children are beginning to teach me some other, more helpful responses to loss. Motherhood is fraught with loss. It comes with the territory. I don’t think you can make a life without becoming intimate with the possibility of losing it. Infertility, miscarriage, childbirth, still birth. I have been very lucky. I remember looking over my midwife’s shoulder as she filled in a form, after the birth of my daughter: ‘Infant born 10.08pm,’ she wrote in one square, and then in the next square, she noted down the word, ‘alive,’ and I thought at once of how it might have been a different word. One of our first jobs as mothers is to give birth. If we survive and the children survive, I think our last job is to die, to make way for them to step into the role of being the generation in charge. From start to finish motherhood is a glorious, dangerous business, not for the faint-hearted, which is not to say you need to be tough-hearted. It is, I hope, slowly teaching me instead to become more whole-hearted – to be able to hold the whole lot.

A passage that has always helped me accept the spinning wheels and their sharp needles is the one in Kahil Gibran’s The Prophet on joy and sorrow, in which sorrow is framed as a creative act:

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?....”

Carving, containing, holding are the verbs used here for understanding and processing loss. An alarm instructs you to leave the building, evacuate the vessel. Here is a different response: stay put, Gibran says, create a container, to hold the joy and the sorrow. I think good art is just this - a container. Be it a story, a painting, a poem or a pot – each is good at holding things. At bedtime my daughter listens to the teachings of another great spiritual poet: Winnie the Pooh. In one Pooh story the sad, grey donkey, Eeyore has a rare moment of joy when Pooh gives him, “A Useful Pot to Keep Things in” for his birthday. “You can keep anything in it,” Pooh explains, even sad things, like Eeyore’s other present, a burst balloon, and Eeyore is delighted. So that’s what I need then. Not an alarm, but a pot. A pot, not only for loss, but for the lot. Spending my life, however much I have of it, making that kind of pot feels like something I can do. That is what the novel I am writing is meant to be. And when I have finished that one, I will start on another totally impractical, utterly vital pot, a holding vessel. This is a braver magic.

I wonder also how I might integrate such a pot-making process consciously back within my mothering. Most evenings, as soon as it gets dark, my son declares that he is sad. He starts a count down, “By the time I get to ‘one’, I will have sadness overload,” he says, “You have to do something before that happens!” He starts the countdown, “Ten…nine…eight…seven….six….” What can I do? I only have six seconds left! I am tempted to rely on frightened magic, to pretend that I can keep all the bad things away, banish the beasts and the viscous fairies. I can’t. “Two…one…zero.” My son collapses on the floor.

“How are you doing?” I say.

“I’m so sad I can’t move,” he replies.

“Can you move your toes?”

“No.”

“That’s bad. I’ll have to carry you upstairs.” And, for now, I can still carry my great long-legged eight year old, and he rather enjoys it when I make groaning noises to show how heavy he is.

“Can you make it up the last two steps?” I say.

“Just about.”

Bit by bit, day by day, we practice our pot-making, bearing the things that seem unbearable, overloading with sadness and discovering that actually we can hold the load. This is not a fire drill. We are staying in the building. I am grateful for every day we get to practice.

I am still determined to do what I can to stay alive. But I believe that actually writing a blog like this, letting loss come to the party, inviting the thirteenth fairy, leaving the land whirring with spinning wheels, is my best chance at surviving. Not because my words will immortalise me, but literally, that my writing helps me keep on living, just right here, sitting on the bed, after another sleepless night, with the sun falling over my left hand typing this, and my right in shadow. So by all means wash your hands for twenty seconds, the current advice for the prevention of the spread of the Coronavirus, but as you do so, also for twenty seconds, ask yourself this: What helps you not just stay alive, but stay put in life? How do you hold it all? What useful pots do you have or are you making?

Mothers Who Make is itself meant to be a pot – a place for women who already hold a lot to come together and help hold one another. We have, in turn, put out a ‘pot’ to the world recently to ask for help in our work as we are currently unfunded. I’m busking here, online. If you like this blog and want to support me, and other MWM-ers, to sustain us in our pot-making, then please go here, and for £3 per month, become a ‘Matron Saint’ of our cause. And ultimately, for me, the cause is as grand and as simple as the need to practice holding everything - both life and the loss of it.

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dustyembrace · 5 years

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I've decided to switch from #Goblincore

Hey. So there has been a TON of discourse in the goblincore community surrounding the harmful portrayal of Jewish people as goblins. For me, and for every other person I know who has identified with this culture of being "goblin" it has been absolutely nothing of the sort, and personally has actually helped me in so many ways.

Before I continue, I just want to say that this is in no way me saying that people who are uncomfortable with the goblincore community because of the antisemitic background of goblins should feel guilty or invalid in feeling such a way, nor am I trying to gain sympathy in talking about my past and current struggles. I also do not hope that this is seen as an excuse, but rather as an explaination, and furthermore, an apology. I would just like to clear the air a bit and explain why the goblincore community has been helpful to me as a way to further communicate to the Jewish community that this blog was never meant to be a form of aggression, mockery, or hate, (and why it has taken a little while for me to switch this blog's content.) Despite it being a good and loving community for me, as a goyim I know it so not my place to say what is and is not antisemitic, which is why I refuse to argue against the antisemitic connotation many feel it has. (The same way I can not define what is and is not racist, as I am white.) I do, however, feel like I need to give this community a proper goodbye.

So let me start by saying this: I used to feel really, really bad about myself because of how "weird" everyone told me I was.

One way that the goblin community has helped me feel okay, is in my weird habits. I've been "collecting" (or as the goblincore community calls it, "hoarding") since I was around 14 because I didn't have a lot of love in my life, and even fewer loving people, so finding things like stray marbles, pretty rocks, shiny bottle caps, etc was my way of putting love into things that I knew no one else would love. Because I knew what it felt like. But of course not many in my life would see it that way, and I was ridiculed by my family and friends for the excitement and happiness these tiny things gave me, as well as the love I expressed for these things. Being in the goblincore community made me realize I was not alone in this.

I have also had many issues with accepting interests and hobbies of mine, rather than seeing them as something embarrassing. Not only do I like to collect things that wouldn't matter to most people, but I also enjoy dressing up in the tackiest and ugliest clothes I can find. I like putting random colors of acrylic paint on my face in no appealing manner. I get so excited and happy at times that I don't know what to do other than jump and run and yell (what a lot of people call "going feral" which is something I know a lot of people in the goblin community do, and also the first place for me to learn and see this term.) As a goblin, I was allowed to like bugs, frogs, rats, and slimey things that people in my real life could not ever understand, but other people, who just happen to use the term "goblin" to describe themselves, did. These are all things that I used to hate myself for, wishing I didn't like doing these things and that they didn't make me as happy as they do so I could be "normal," but seeing other people loving to do the same thing and putting a word to them gave me confidence and comfort in doing them. I finally felt allowed to like things simply for the sake of liking them.

Though, goblincore has probably helped me most with my appearance. To be "goblin," you can be so not conventionally attractive, and it didn't matter in any way because goblin isn't about what you look like, it's about how you feel. To be "goblin," your body shape doesn't matter. Your height and weight (something I've been personally insecure about for as long as I can remember,) don't matter. You can get dirty and messy, and it wouldn't matter. You could have weird physical features and it wouldn't matter. These would all just be something else to add to the ever growing list of all things "goblin." On top of all of these things, the people in this community see nothing wrong with being "ugly," and can find beauty in the things society deems ugly. I've been struggling with body dysmorphia since last school year, but being in a community that made looking ugly and weird and different seem so okay, and even GOOD at plenty of times, in a way and to an extent I had never seen before asisted me in becoming more accepting of my body for what it is. I do of course still struggle with my appearance, but being in this community has helped me realize that it's okay to look the way I view myself. That it really REALLY doesn't matter.

To be honest...in a way, it was a way for me to escape the stressful ways of life. Appearance and money and society and people. As embarrassing as it is for me to admit, my brain created a whole fantasy world of being green with big, floppy ears, living in a swamp. A world where I don't have as unhealthy of a body as I do and that I could run and jump and climb like most people. It was a escape, and it helped me to de-stress BIG time.

And tumblr was the only place where I could express my extreme love for these countless little trinkets I keep in organized boxes and chests in my room and actually have people listen (and agree!). Tumblr was the only place I could talk about how all of these things most people deem "gross" were actually nice and made me happy. Tumblr let me share my drawings and idea of this fake world and my wacky clothing and I was finally alright with expressing these things instead of bottling them all up where the world couldn't ever see them.

I know this all probably sounds stupid to and will be dismissed by all of the people who don't get it. But it's the same reason some people age regress. It helps in some ways cosplaying and hyperfixating both do. And just because some people don't get it doesn't mean it's not valid.

It is because of all of these things that I will not judge anyone who chooses to stay in the community, and I would not ever send hate to anyone who does so. (Nor will I break mutuals!)

But I've been feeling so completely torn up by guilt for continuing this blog, as I know this blog is only where I express these things, and it's existence will not change how I view myself, nor how I live my life. But to think that the way I have chosen to express all of the weird things about myself no one has ever accepted before, and to think that the vocabulary I have chosen to put to my strange habits is also hurting other people, sending and spreading a harmful message, and making Jewish people think I am unsafe pains me. More than having to bottle this all up again would. At least until I find a better and more appropriate outlet (art, writing, something I can keep more to myself) to express these things.

It is this want I have for the Jewish community to feel comfortable online that I will be switching this blog away from being specifically goblin, to be a combination of naturecore, crowcore, and also some ghostcore (as I've been beginning to resonate with that now, as well,) as a way to do my own part to let Jewish people know they are accepted.

Thank you, Goblincore Community, for helping me feel okay in my own being and skin after all these years of struggling to do just that. I now know, that none of these things make me all that "weird," that I don't owe anyone an explaination as to why these things make me happy, and most importantly: that I am not alone. I will never forget the joy I felt the day I found this community and couldn't help but think, and ask, over and over again "There's other people like me?"

But it is time I find a way to express it differently and use non-harmful vocabulary in doing so. Thank you if you read this far.

- the kid formerly known as 'goblin-gum' on tumblr dot com.

(Please no discourse in the comments. I was very genuine, and I tried my absolute best to be respectful and kind to both view points in this post. If you think something I said was disrespectful in some way, please let me know so I can fix my error(s).)

#goblin-gum #goblincore #goblin culture #goblin #goblin hoard #goblins #goblin aesthetic #naturecore #forestcore #cottagecore #ghostcore #crowcore

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