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trulymadlysydney · 4 years ago

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Somewhere In Time: Ten

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

tw: Death, Loss of Parent

Previous Chapters HERE

***Please Do Not Repost Without Permission***

March 10th, 1990, 11:54am

Seventeen year-old Oliver Ward sighs, glancing mindlessly out the window of the old retirement home and fighting a yawn.

It isn’t that he doesn’t love his Saturday mornings spent with his ninety one year-old companion, because he does. In fact, most Saturdays he forgets that this is even an extra credit assignment at all. He knows, of course, how terrific this is going to look on his college applications-- but he doesn’t think of it like that. Over the past month or so, he’s befriended the older gentleman he’s been assigned by his AP psychology teacher, and the old man has taken a liking to him as well. Most Saturdays, Oliver loses track of the time because he finds himself lost in some story the old man is sharing with him.

This Saturday, however, Oliver doesn’t much feel like socializing.

It isn’t anyone’s fault but his own. Not really, at least. The previous night had been spent tossing and turning in bed, with a total of two non-consecutive hours of sleep. He’s exhausted, he’s bummed, and he’s pretty sure he’s lost the girl of his dreams.

“Awful talkative today, aren’t you?” The older gentleman speaks in his thick accent from his spot on his recliner, drawing Oliver from his thoughts and startling him.

Oliver turns, softening when he sees the man’s understanding smile. He chuckles sheepishly. “Sorry, Mr. Styles. Got a lot on my mind I guess.”

The gentleman— Mr. Styles— nods knowingly. “Well, I figured as much,” he says. “And I know how that goes. Do you want to talk about it?”

Oliver sighs again, moving closer to Mr. Styles. “I’m afraid it’ll bore you, sir. And I’m not sure you’d understand.”

Mr. Styles grins a dimpled grin, with a twinkle in his eye. “Try me.”

That’s something that Oliver loves about Mr. Styles. He’s never judged Oliver, no matter how silly he thinks he sounds, and honestly he gives better advice than anyone Oliver has ever known. He seems to have an air of mystery about him-- he always has-- and Oliver is sure that Mr. Styles knows at least two secrets of the universe that he’s keeping to himself.

So he shrugs, taking a seat on the bed beside the old man. “Okay. So. There’s…. a girl.”

Mr. Styles nods understandingly. “Always is, isn’t there?”

“She’s the grade below me. She’s my best friend, but lately it’s been…. I don’t know, kinda more than that? I think?”

“Mutually?”

“Yeah, I mean…” Oliver fiddles with his hands in his lap. “Yeah. We’ve been hanging out and stuff. Even kissed a few times.”

Mr. Styles wiggles his eyebrows. “Oooh, I see.”

“But lately I feel like…” Olivier sighs. “I don’t know. Like she’s getting bored with me.”

Mr. Styles sits back further in his seat, reminiscent of a therapist in his comfy chair. “What makes you say that?”

“I think she wants me to like… commit.”

“Ah.” The old man chuckles. “I see.”

Oliver eyes the older gentleman, curious as to how Mr. Styles could possibly understand any of this. As far as Oliver knows, Mr. Styles has never been married. A few times, he’s mentioned a girl from his youth, but never anyone after that. All Oliver knew about the girl is that she up and left, leaving poor Mr. Styles alone and heartbroken. And truth be told, Oliver had always found it silly how Mr. Styles had never moved on from that.

Oliver shrugs. “Anyway… I dunno. She’s been playing hard to get recently, like maybe she’s bored with me? Like, she flirts and stuff, but then when it doesn’t go further I feel like she gets annoyed. And...I want to commit, but what if I’m getting mixed signals, you know? I mean like, what if that’s not actually what she wants? You feel me? What if I ruin what we have going by trying to label it? And besides,” he sighs, “I find out soon if I got into Syracuse. And if I did get in, I would start there in the fall. What if she doesn’t want to do the long distance thing?”

Mr. Styles chuckles wittingly, but not in a condescending way. “Well first of all, son, I think you’re completely overthinking this.”

This brings a smile to Oliver’s face. “I have been known to do that.”

“That being said, you seem to really like this girl. And from the sound of things, she likes you as well. Am I wrong?”

“Well, that’s the thing. We’ve kissed and stuff, but like, what if I’m reading it wrong?”

“How can you possibly read a kiss wrong?” Mr. Styles grins.

Oliver sighs. “You’re right. I know. Feelings are just… really hard.”

“Who is the lucky lady anyway?” Mr. Styles settles further into his seat. “Can’t say I recall you ever mentioning having a girl.”

“Her name is Roni,” Oliver says. “Well, Veronica. She goes to my school. I think I may have mentioned that.”

Oliver has launched deeply into the backstory of how he and this girl met, completely unaware of the way that Mr. Styles’ face has gone entirely ghostly white. The old man is frozen in his chair, unblinking, and hardly listening to a word Oliver has said.

He doesn’t even realize he’s cutting Oliver off when he speaks. “I’m sorry… what did you say her name was?”

“Roni?”

“Last name?” Mr. Styles presses.

“Uhh… Elliot?”

If Mr. Styles didn’t look ill before, he certainly does now. Oliver takes notice of this, rising to his feet. “Mr. Styles, are you alright?”

Mr. Styles blinks a few times, his breath heavy as shakes his head. For whatever reason, he won’t look at Oliver now. He looks at the wall, out the window, at the floor-- literally anywhere but at his young companion. Oliver begins to grow worried, and he steps towards Mr. Styles, putting a concerned hand on his back.

“Should I call the nurse?”

It’s when Oliver asks this that Mr. Styles seems to regain some sense of consciousness back. He blinks up at Oliver, almost like a curious little child, and shakes his head-- as if reminding himself to be present. “No,” he says quietly. “No, don’t call the nurse.”

“You’re scaring me,” Oliver admits. “Where did you just go?”

Mr. Styles swallows thickly, eyes growing misty. “You said… Veronica Elliot?”

Oliver nods. “That’s right.”

The way that Mr. Styles scans Oliver’s face makes him grow anxious, and it becomes apparent that Oliver wants to let go and perhaps take a step back. He’s a good kid though-- one who genuinely cares for Mr. Styles-- so he stays put. “Sir?”

Mr. Styles lets out a shaky breath, obviously still processing everything that’s going on, before looking back up at Oliver “I just--” He trails off, noting for the first time the worry in the young boy’s eyes. He softens just a bit.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Oliver says. “I can call the nurse, it’s not a big deal! I just--”

“No,” Mr. Styles says, suddenly seeming more like himself than before. “No, there will be no need for that, son.”

Oliver hesitantly relaxes, still keeping his eyes trained on Mr. Styles’ face. “What just happened?”

“It’s nothing,” Mr. Styles says, the slightest bit of color slowly returning to his face. “I just… knew her mum. That’s all.”

“Oh!” Oliver seems to take this as an acceptable answer, obviously relaxing again. “Yeah. Her mom died like, five years ago actually. It was super sad. Car accident.”

“Five years ago,” Mr. Styles repeats, more to himself than to Oliver. “God.”

“Yeah,” Oliver says, nodding. “She’s okay! Lives with her grandparents. They’re super cool.” He smiles suddenly, as if remembering something. “They like me a lot.”

Mr. Styles smiles absently. “I’ll bet they do,” he says gently.

“Anyway,” Oliver sighs, “I don’t know. Do you think I should go for it?”

Mr. Styles takes his time with his answer, still trying to process everything he’s hearing. Oliver seems preoccupied with his own thoughts, which is good because he doesn’t notice the dampness of Mr. Style’s eyes.

What Oliver doesn’t know is that Mr. Styles is reliving every memory he has with the same girl Oliver is fretting over. Mr. Styles is suddenly twenty-five years old again, in 1925, dancing in his living room with the girl from the future, and he’s young and head over heels in love with her. He’s remembering everything that the young girl had told him about her timeline, about the boy named Oliver who was waiting in the future for her-- who befriended her shortly after her mother passed and asked her to be his girlfriend just before he graduated.

This all checks out, and it makes Mr. Styles’ heart feel something it hasn’t felt in ages. He blinks a few times, trying to clear out the moisture in his eyes.

“Well,” Mr. Styles says, after a long pause. “I think that… life is too short to let something so good pass you by. Do you really like her?”

“So much, Mr. Styles.” Oliver nods eagerly. “And I think she likes me too, I’m just scared.”

Mr. Styles shakes his head, doing his best to cover up the shakiness in his own voice. “Don’t be. You need to make this girl your own. You never know what tomorrow holds. You don’t want to lose her, and spend the rest of your days wishing you still had the chances that you have now.”

Oliver can tell that Mr. Styles is deep in his own head now, and he debates even speaking at all. Mr. Styles continues on. “Can’t even begin to tell you how much I wish I could go back and change some things. Make some better decisions.”

“I know what you mean,” Oliver says, even though he really doesn’t. How could he?

“And,” Mr. Styles says, making an effort to sound less philosophical--less introspective-- and more human, “from the sounds of things, she really likes you, too, son.”

Oliver smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mr. Styles swallows a lump in his throat. “Take my advice, and don’t mess this up with her. She sounds like a once in a lifetime kind of girl.”

“But what if--”

“No more ‘what if!’” Mr. Styles sounds more stern than Oliver has ever heard him, and it takes Oliver aback. “Get her. Love her. Love her now. You don’t realize how important she is, Oliver. These feelings are real. These feelings make life worth living. You can’t pass them up because you’re too scared.”

“And if she doesn’t feel the same way?”

“She does.” Mr. Styles softens as soon as he speaks, as if realizing he’s being far too blunt. “Oliver, she does. Trust me on this one.”

Oliver opens his mouth, then closes it. Mr. Styles somehow seems to read his mind, and he continues speaking. “Make her your girl.”

“You really think I should?” Oliver asks quietly.

“I know you should.”

After a brief pause in which the two stand seemingly at a hold, Mr. Styles clears his throat gently.

“Don’t let her pass you by,” he says, for emphasis.

Oliver smiles, nodding his head in finality. “Alright,” he says. “You’re right, Mr. Styles. I can’t let her pass me by, can I? I really like her, and--”

“And I know she likes you, too.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna call her.”

Oliver moves like he’s going to leave the room, stopping abruptly as if realizing that he’s here because of school. The two seem to have the thought at the same time-- that Oliver is getting college credit just for spending a few hours a weekend with Mr. Styles, and they laugh awkwardly together.

“Sorry,” Oliver says. “I didn’t mean to--”

“You know what you can do for me, son?” There’s a smile on Mr. Styles’ face, but there is a serious edge to his tone of voice. “Genuinely?”

“Anything,” Oliver says. “Anything you need.”

“Bring her in.” Mr. Styles smiles, contrasting Oliver’s confused expression. “Bring her in, and let me meet her. Hm? Would love to meet her.”

“Yeah?”

Mr. Styles nods. “Yeah,” he says, somewhat absently, but with a smile for Oliver nonetheless. “Would love to see the young lady that’s done such a number on you.”

Oliver laughs, and even Mr. Styles lets out a personable chuckle-- as if he’s in on some joke that Oliver didn’t know he was keeping.

“I suppose I could bring her in,” Oliver says, “but again, I don’t want it to be weird--”

“It won’t be,” Mr. Styles says. The playful gleam still lingers in his eyes. “What, am I not interesting enough for her?”

Oliver laughs. “No, no! She’ll love you!”

The words hit the old gentleman’s heart in a way that Oliver doesn’t notice.

She did love him. She does. She just isn’t aware of that yet.

“I hope you’re right,” Oliver adds. “About all of this, I mean. I hope she does like me and I’m not just… I dunno, reading too far into it?”

“I can assure you that you aren’t, Oliver.”

There is no trace of doubt on Mr. Styles face, and it makes Oliver both nervous and reassured. He smiles. “Alright then,” he says. “I’ll talk to her.”

Mr. Styles relaxes into his chair, nodding his head in finality. “Alright then,” he echoes. “Good man.”

Oliver returns once again for his weekly visit the following Saturday, only this time, he’s hand in hand with his new girlfriend of four whole days. He’d taken Mr. Styles’ advice and asked her to be his after confessing everything he was feeling for her. She, of course, felt the same way, and though it didn’t come as a surprise to Oliver it did come as a great relief.

Roni hadn’t seemed as thrilled to go share the news with Mr. Styles, however, once Oliver brought it up.

“Why did we have to come so early though?” Sixteen year-old Roni whines, as she and her new boyfriend Oliver make their way into the Senior Citizen’s home. “Like, couldn’t we have come in the afternoon? I’m sure Mr. Style wouldn’t even know the difference.”

Oliver chuckles. “It’s Mr. Styles,” he corrects, “With an S. And he seemed really excited about this! This is the time he gave me, so this is the time we’re here.”

“Why was he so excited anyway?” Roni asks, picking at a hangnail on her thumb. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“No,” Oliver says, “but he knows me. And he helped me out a lot! Gave me a lot of advice about you. Least I can do is introduce him, you know?”

“I guess,” Roni mumbles to herself as Oliver checks in at the front desk.

Everyone here seems to brighten at Oliver’s presence. All the little old ladies know him by name, and he’s quite the charmer. It’s one of the reasons Roni likes him so much, really. He talks so fondly about his Saturday’s spent here, and Roni can’t think of a single person his age who would enjoy it as much as he does. It’s cute the way he gushes about Mr. Styles, and how he had mentioned him when he’d asked Roni to be his girlfriend-- officially-- four days ago.

Truly, Roni feels like she owes a lot to this Mr. Styles, and she really can understand why he would want to meet her. The least she can do is thank him for telling Oliver to man up and commit already.

Oliver clips his badge to the collar of his shirt and gives Roni a little visitor’s sticker on which he’s scribbled her name with a green sharpie. He’s dotted the “i” with a little heart, and it makes Roni’s cheeks grow hot when she notices. He smiles, nodding his head towards the receptionist and interlacing his fingers with Roni’s.

Roni follows her boyfriend down the long hallways, into the elevator (where she has a mini makeout session with him because, come on, who could resist him when he’s looking this cute?) and onto the third floor.

He leads her out into the hallway, trying his best to dismiss how flushed and messy he looks (honestly, Roni takes pride in her work) and giving Roni’s hand a subtle squeeze as they walk along.

Roni looks at the doors as they walk, subconsciously counting the numbers in her head 304, 305, 306… each room an entire home to these people. Each room a final resting place for all of them.

Oliver stops walking in front of door 310, and suddenly Roni grows nervous. Her stomach seems to do cartwheels as Oliver smiles down at her. “You’re gonna love him,” he says quietly, as if to reassure her. “He’s the coolest.”

Before Roni even has time to reply, Oliver is rapping his knuckles against the large wooden door. Two quick knocks, followed by one that seems out of rhythm with the other two.

After a few seconds, nothing happens. Roni shifts her weight to her other foot and waits, somewhat impatiently, wanting nothing more than to go home and make out with her boyfriend. Oliver seems to feel her energy, giving her side a few playful yet charged squeezes that make her giggle.

“No!” she squeaks, squirming out of his grasp. “Don’t do that here!”

The door opens as Roni is mid giggle, and she and Oliver are met with a little old man, hunched over and looking at them with a warm and expectant smile. He’s dressed nicer than Harry’s ever seen him dress, and on his head rests a little gray cap that’s probably as old as he is.

“Oliver,” the old man says by way of a greeting. And then he looks at Roni.

The reaction he has to Roni is strange to say the least. It doesn’t make Roni uncomfortable by any means, but something in his demeanor shifts, and he seems to grow a hundred times more serious. His stare is intense; so much so that it makes Roni shift her gaze. His eyes seem to grow strangely misty, and his jaw begins trembling-- as if he’s about to cry.

He looks at Roni like he’s known her all his life, and it’s strange. She almost feels bad that she doesn’t recognize him as well.

She clears her throat, trying to lighten up the now tense silence. ‘Hi!” she says, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and holding out her hand. “I’m Roni.”

Mr. Styles swallows audibly, his trembling jaw hardly calming as a smile tugs on the corners of his lips. “Roni,” he says. He takes her hand in his and gives it a squeeze, never once removing his eyes from hers. “How wonderful it is to finally meet you.”

Roni looks at Oliver, wondering if he feels the same intense vibes that she’s feeling as well. She laughs awkwardly, unsure of what else to do. “I’ve--uh-- heard a lot about you, Mr. Styles!”

Mr. Styles grins, an old hidden dimple flashing amongst the wrinkles of his cheeks. “All bad, I hope,” he says, and now Oliver laughs.

“Of course,” he says. “I had to let her know what a menace you were!”

Mr. Styles laughs, sounding suddenly young and full of life again. He moves slowly to the side. “Come in, please. Make yourselves comfortable!”

Roni and Oliver share a glance and a quick smile before they enter the room. It isn’t much, but it’s cozy. Roni is surprised when she’s met with a delicious vanilla smell emanating from a candle in the corner of the room. (Not that she’d been expecting the place to stink, of course, but she absolutely had expected it to smell like old people, which it did not.)

“Wow,” Oliver says, as if even he is surprised with the state of the room. “Mr. Styles, you cleaned this place up nice!”

Mr. Styles grins. “But of course,” he says. “You have to when you have a pretty girl coming over!” He looks at Roni. “Does this boy not clean up for you when you’re spending time together?”

Roni giggles. “He does. Although I have to say, the vanilla candle is an excellent touch. I don’t even think Oliver owns a candle!”

Mr. Styles shakes his head, a playful smile on his cheeks. “What a shame. Oliver, you best buy some candles for your lady!”

Oliver and Roni both laugh. “Vanilla is my favorite,” Roni comments.

“Somehow I had a hunch,” Mr. Styles replies with a playful wink.

With every passing minute that turns into an hour, the three grow more and more comfortable together. It isn’t weird, or forced, and Roni marvels at how easy it is to talk to Mr. Styles. He asks her questions about her life, oddly fascinated by every word that comes out of her mouth. The way he watches her with his undivided attention makes her feel important.

He plays music from a little tape recorder that sits in the window of his room. It takes him a moment to figure it out, and Oliver has to help him a bit, but he finally gets there. Roni doesn’t recognize any of the music playing (nor does she realize the way Mr. Styles watches her reaction to a few specific songs very closely), but she enjoys the tunes nonetheless.

He shares memories associated with each song; what specific stories each song calls to his mind. And Roni listens, fascinated with every single one of them, realizing that she could genuinely listen to this old man speak about his youth for days.

A stack of books on the nightstand near his bed draws Roni’s attention at some point, and she rises to her feet to go examine them further. Mr. Styles notes her movements and smiles, almost knowingly, to himself. She thumbs at the one on the top of the pile, a small menu from some pizza place marking his spot towards the back of the book. She cocks her head to the side to get a better view of the books title:

Alternate Realities: by Lawrence Leshawn

She blinks a few times, the concept of an alternate reality very new to her. Without thinking, she picks the book up and scans the back of it. She glances back at the pile, noting the various ones on time travel, meditation, and astral projection. Time travel being the only topic of the other three books that she’d ever considered before, this discovery of books feels like a landmine of information.

“Bit nerdy, innit?” Mr. Styles’ voice pulls Roni from her thoughts, and she turns to him, still holding the book in her hands. His eyes twinkle. “Is that what the kids are saying these days? ‘Nerdy?’”

Roni giggles. “It is. But this isn’t nerdy.”

“Ohh,” Mr. Styles says, playfully brushing away her words with his hand. “Come now. Yes it is.”

“You’ll never get Roni to agree with that,” Oliver speaks up. “Haven’t I told you before? She’s super into all that!”

Roni feels her cheeks go hot with embarrassment, but Mr. Styles’ only smiles at her. “No kidding!”

“I mean…” Roni trails off shyly, worried she’s about to make a fool of herself. “Yeah. Kinda. It’s silly.”

“It’s not silly,” Mr. Styles replies quickly, a hint of gravity to his words. “Never say that.”

Roni debates telling Mr. Styles everything; about how she’s trying to find her mother, about how she’s already tried (and been unsuccessful) multiple times, and about how he is the first person (other than Oliver) who hasn’t actually thought she was silly for this at all.

But she’s only just met Mr. Styles, and she doesn’t want to bombard him with her own personal life story just yet-- nor is she certain he would really care. So she only shrugs, a soft smile spreading across her cheeks.

“Yeah. I just… think it’s neat. That’s all.”

There’s a look on Mr. Styles’ face that seems to say that he’s interested, but he doesn’t want to push her. He waits patiently for her to continue, but when she doesn’t, he tries pressing just a tiny bit. “Any particular reason?”

Even Oliver is watching her now, waiting for her answer even though he’s already known for a while. He offers her an encouraging smile, and Roni hesitates briefly before speaking “I just want to go back and see my mom again. She passed like five years ago and I just…” She trails off, feeling silly despite the understanding looks on both Oliver and Mr. Styles’ faces.

“I understand.” Mr. Styles speaks up after a few moments of silence. Roni doesn’t notice the all knowing smile on his face, or the way his eyes have grown damp. She doesn’t catch the way he swallows down the lump in his throat. Or how he looks at her the same way she looks out the window: pensive and lost in thought.

“Anyway,” Roni sighs, halfway through a laugh. “I don’t know. Oliver is the only one who believes me and even then, I’m not sure he really does.”

“I do!” Oliver laughs, shrugging almost defensively. “I do. I just don’t know if they’ve like… I dunno, developed some way to time travel yet. I don’t know if technology has come that far, you know? What do you think, Mr. Styles?”

Both Roni and Mr. Styles seem to be deep in their own little worlds, but it’s lost on Oliver as he waits for a response from the older gentleman. Mr. Styles smiles to himself, chuckling gently. “I think it’s entirely possible,” he says, voice quiet. “And I hope miss Roni never gives it up.”

Roni smiles, turning to face the old man. “You really mean that?” she asks, stepping towards him. “Like, you really think it’s possible?”

“I can promise you it is,” he says. “I’m certain of it.”

Roni, realizing she’s still holding the Alternate Realities book, holds it up and gestures at it with her free hand. “What about this stuff? I’ve never really heard of it.”

Mr. Styles grins, obviously glad she’s asked. He shifts in his seat, speaking slowly. “Have either of you ever heard of a parallel universe?”

Roni and Oliver both shake their heads, and Mr. Styles raises his eyebrows. “No? Well. It’s a plane of existence, similar to the very one we’re living in right now now, that co-exists with our own. It is said that there are multiple.”

“Multiple… existences?” Roni questions.

“That’s right,” Mr. Styles continues. “Not much is known about them. Especially considering that it isn’t even known if they exist or not. But if they do, it is said that some are wildly different than your current existence now, while others are exactly the same with only a few minor differences.”

“Gnarly!” Oliver exclaims. “So like, somewhere out there, I exist but I’m a billionaire?”

Mr. Styles chuckles. “It’s possible.”

“Wait wait wait,” Roni says, significantly less convinced than her boyfriend. “So you mean that somewhere out there in the world, there’s another Roni? Who has no idea I exist?”

“We don’t know.” Mr. Styles shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe she knows all about you.”

Roni shakes her head, trying to wrap her mind around all this new information. “That’s nuts.”

“Not really,” Oliver offers. “Kinda makes sense if you think about it.”

“So wait” Roni says, setting the book on the dresser and walking to stand by Mr. Styles. “I told you why I’m into this. Why are you into this?”

The old man goes quiet, smiling a tight lipped smile and hesitating as if really giving thought to his answer. “I like to think that in another reality, somewhere in time, I’m with my honey.”

Roni softens. “Oh, I see. Did she--” She’s about to ask if Mr. Styles’ girl passed away as well, but she thinks better of it, unsure as to whether or not that’s an appropriate question.

Mr. Styles chuckles quietly, knowing exactly where Roni was going with her question. “I lost her,” he explains, because it isn’t technically a lie. “Many, many years ago.”

“Oh.” Roni frowns. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” At this point, it’s impossible for him to hide the way his voice cracks. Roni looks at him, then averts her eyes, as if she feels guilty for hearing it. Oliver sighs, stepping forward.

“Mr. Styles--”

“You remind me of her,” Mr. Styles says, ignoring Oliver. The look on his face makes it seem like he’s got more on his mind.

“Yeah?” Roni steps towards Mr. Styles, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

He sighs, reaching up to place his hand on top of hers. “Yeah,” he says. “More than you’d even believe.”

“Wish I could’ve met her.”

Mr. Styles grins up at her, swallowing thickly and patting her hand. “Yeah. She was my honey.”

He takes a deep breath, looking away from Roni and glancing out the window. There’s a charged silence. Oliver squirms uncomfortably, but Roni stays right where she is, waiting patiently for Mr. Styles to continue.

“I think she’s doing just fine,” Mr. Styles says. He smiles up at Roni. “Wherever she is.”

“Maybe she’s with my mom,” Roni offers.

Mr. Styles closes his mouth, blinks back a few of his tears, and nods his head. “Perhaps she is. Wouldn’t that be something.”

“I didn’t mean to like… make you sad or anything, Mr. Styles--”

“You didn’t, darling.” The old man shakes his head. “Don’t be silly.”

Somehow, Roni doesn’t believe him.

The subject is swiftly changed and the rest of their visit goes by relatively smoothly. Mr. Styles is back to his cheery self before Roni can even think twice about the interaction they’ve just shared, and soon the three are laughing and chatting away like best friends again.

All too quickly does their visit come to an end. They say their goodbyes, although it’s obvious that Mr. Styles doesn’t want their time together to be over. He looks almost emotional to be saying goodbye to Roni, something that neither of the two teenagers seem to understand.

After he gives her a warm embrace, careful not to hold her too long or, heaven forbid, make her feel uncomfortable, Mr. Styles pulls away, holding Roni at arm’s length.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

Confused, Roni cocks her head to the side. “For?”

“You’ve made me feel young again. I cannot even begin to express how badly I needed this.”

Roni smiles. “Oh. You’re welcome then!” She giggles. “It was so nice meeting you, Mr. Styles.”

“The pleasure was all mine, honey.” His hands tremble as he lets go of her. He turns to Oliver. “You bring her back to visit sometime soon, alright?”

Oliver chuckles. “I will. But don’t go liking her more than you like me, now. I’ve been here way longer.”

Mr. Styles laughs. “Sure,” he says, “but she is prettier.”

Oliver slings his arm over Roni’s shoulder. “Well I can’t argue with that, can I?”

When they finally do go their separate ways, Roni and Oliver playfully chase each other out to Oliver’s car-- blissfully unaware of the way that Mr. Styles watches them from his bedroom window with tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. They don’t know that Mr. Styles doesn’t leave his bedroom for the entire rest of the day-- to the point that the caretakers at the home begin to worry about him.

They don’t know that Mr. Styles has just reunited with his honey, after nearly sixty-five years of looking for her, and that she has obviously no idea herself.

Oliver continues his weekly visits to Mr. Styles room for a few more weeks, noting that he is completely unlike himself, until mid April when Mr. Styles passes away.

Oliver attends his funeral. Roni, visiting a cousin out of town, does not.

Both Roni and Oliver eventually forget about the old man completely, moving on with their lives and living together in blissful ignorance of just how odd time can be.

It isn’t until ten years later, in April of 2000, that Roni seems to recall the little old man, realizing with immense sadness how significant he really was.

With a heart shattering sob, she hopes that he’s with his honey, somewhere in time, just like he said.

------

December 31st, 1999, 11:54pm

It is ridiculously bright when Roni tries to open her eyes.

She opens her eyes too quickly at first, immediately regretting it and squeezing them shut again. The act of closing them once more, however, pushes a hot tear that’s been waiting for release from the corner of one eye

And suddenly, it all comes flooding back to her.

Harry, 1925, Violet LaRue, the ocean, her mother…

She is so overwhelmed all at once with emotions that she grows sort of nauseous, and she sits up immediately to try and stop the spinning of the room around her.

The room --her and Oliver’s shared bedroom-- looks completely untouched, as if she’d never left. There is hip-hop music booming downstairs, lots of chattering, and a smell in the air that can only be described as drunk people. The silence in the room, however, contrasts the chaos that’s occurring downstairs, and it makes her head pound.

Roni looks around slowly, noticing the skimpy, revealing party dress she’s wearing that clings to her every curve. It looks untouched as well, albeit a bit disheveled, and she reaches a cautious hand down to smooth it over her lap.

She hears Oliver’s booming laugh downstairs, and the sound feels like a stab to the heart. He must be completely wasted. The clock on the wall reads 11:54pm, and she knows she has to get back down to the party before the clock strikes midnight.

Never in her entire life has Roni felt anything like the feeling she’s currently experiencing.

Surely she couldn’t have dreamt it all. It was real-- Harry was real, and seeing her mother was real. Besides, the fact that she’s even crying right now tells her that she had to have been experiencing something physical.

Which reminds her…

Roni rises to her feet and makes her way over to the mirror hanging on the back of the door. She pulls the neckline of her dress down, and feels her own breath catch in her throat when she finds what she’s looking for.

There, in the exact spot on her chest that she’d been anticipating it to be, is a bruise left by Harry. The last remaining physical reminder of his existence.

With a shaky hand, she gently brushes her thumb over the purpling skin. It stings, just a bit, but it’s real. It’s there. And it’s too much for Roni to handle.

Grateful for the cover of the commotion downstairs, Roni can’t help herself but to let out a pathetic sob as everything comes flooding over her. How could she have been with Harry not even five minutes ago? And her mother? How was her mother just there and now suddenly she’s gone again?

How can she be expected to go on in a world where neither of them exist, and she’s the only one with knowledge of what she’s just experienced?

She collapses to her knees, eyes closing and another choking sob echoing from her throat. She reaches up to wipe her damp eyelashes, mindful of the fact that sooner or later she’s going to have to go downstairs and face everybody again— which she can’t do with a face full of runny makeup.

But right now she doesn’t care. Right now, she’s overwhelmed, and upset, and deeply, deeply missing the love of her life.

It’s been ages since she’s cried this hard, and it feels somewhat therapeutic, although it doesn’t fix the terrible ache in her heart. Her throat hurts and her chest heaves. She reaches up to cover her own mouth to quiet her wails as her heart feels like it’s physically breaking.

She misses him. She misses him so much.

On top of that, having her mother so close to her after so long without her--only to have to leave her once more-- is more painful than she had ever anticipated it would be.

Roni remains like this for another minute or so, until she’s drawn by her thoughts when she hears her own name faintly downstairs. Someone asks where she is, and Oliver slurs out that she’s been gone for a while. When someone suggests that he go find her and he jubilantly agrees, Roni panics.

“Shit.” She reaches up and wipes at her snotty nose; stumbling awkwardly to her feet and making her way to the mirror once again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Roni scrambles to fix her hair and wipe away the splotchy mascara stains under her eye. She prays that Oliver is too drunk to even notice that she’s crying, and she swallows down the intense heartache still in her throat. When she’s at least somewhat satisfied with her appearance, she hears footsteps coming down the hallway— her cue to leave. With a deep breath, she opens the bedroom door just in time to eee Oliver approaching.

Oliver, with his sweet, drunken smile, immediately opens his arms. “Ronnaaaaaay!” He says, by way of greeting her. “There you are!” He doesn’t wait for her to respond, instead he just wraps her up in his arms and gives her a big, suffocating squeeze. He pulls away to press an obnoxious kiss to her forehead, and it breaks Roni’s heart even more.

On any other occasion, she would find this unbearably adorable. But now, the scent of the alcohol mixed with his cologne is making her even more nauseous than she already was.

After a few more wet pecks to her forehead, he squishes her cheeks in his hand and kisses his way down her face, pausing only once he reaches her mouth and realizes it’s wet and salty. He pulls away, not removing his hands from her cheeks, and furrows his eyebrows as he scans her face. “You been crying?”

Roni knows that if she opens her mouth, she’ll lose control again. So she only smiles, turning away and giggling softly as she nods.

Oliver doesn’t seem to find this as humorous as Roni does, and he tilts his head so that he’s once again in her line of vision. “Heyyy, hey,” he coos. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

She sniffs, trying her hardest to keep her light smile on her face. “It’s nothing,” she says, throat raspy and voice hardly above a whisper. “I promise.”

“It’s not nothing,” he says, wiping at Roni’s damp face and gently guiding her back into their bedroom. He’s thoughtful like that-- he doesn’t want Roni to feel it necessary to squash her emotions should anyone walk by. He knows she wouldn’t want anyone else to see her crying like this. He doesn’t close the door fully, leaving only a crack, before turning to Roni.

She doesn’t say anything, but the way he’s being so ridiculously sweet to her is making her want to cry harder. This isn’t fair; not fair to her and definitely not to him. She crosses her arms over her torso, feeling ridiculously vulnerable under his gaze.

He gives her a sympathetic smile, and there’s a look in his eyes that comes across almost as if he knows what’s going on. She lets out a little half laugh/half sob, and she feels closer to him than she expected to in this moment. She speaks.

“Are you gonna say something?”

Oliver cuts her off, speaking only a half second after her. “You tried that time travel junk again, didn’t you?”

His words feel like a slap to the face, but they aren’t exactly wrong. She stays frozen, mouth agape, and then wilts.

“Yeah,” she whispers, because what else is there for her to say?

“Ohhh, babe.” Oliver steps towards her, wrapping her in his arms. I told you it wasn’t gonna work.”

Roni knows she should have expected that kind of response from him, but still. Ouch.

For a split second, she almost loses it. She almost tells him everything; about how it did work, about how she’s actually been gone for a little over a week now-- not just a few minutes--, and about how hard it was to find her way back. She wants to mention seeing her mom, and she wants to rub it in his face. “You were wrong! You were wrong about it all! I saw my mom! She hugged me!”

It’s when she considers telling him about Harry, however, that some sense is knocked back into her.

Just the mere, brief thought of Harry makes her want to break down again, and subconsciously the mark on her chest that Harry had left begins to sting. She chews the inside of her cheek so hard it hurts.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Oliver’s use of the pet name that Roni had grown so used to hearing from Harry’s mouth makes her nauseated. She tries to break free from Oliver’s grasp, but he holds her tighter. “I know how much you wanted it to work.”

“Stop,” she whispers.

He doesn’t hear her.

“I know you’ve tried for years, but haven’t you been through enough heartbreak?” Oliver sighs. “I really think it’s time you give it up, Ron. I don’t know why you won’t just listen to me about this stuff.”

“Stop it.” Roni finally does break out of Oliver’s embrace, and in his drunken state he blinks dumbly back at her.

“Did I say something?”

“Fuck’s sake,” she says, wiping the tears on her cheeks. “You’re right, okay? I’m an idiot. I’m done trying. I quit. Is that what you want to hear? Can we fucking stop?”

Oliver frowns, hesitantly taking a step towards Roni. “Babe, I didn’t mean--”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Roni says, harsher than intended. “Okay? Drop it. Please. I’m begging. I just want to go to bed.”

“But it’s almost midnight.” Oliver is pouting now, and although it should make Roni soften a bit, it only makes her angry.

Oliver takes a more definitive step in Roni’s direction. “I don’t want to start the new year fighting with you, babe. Can we just go back down to our party? We can talk about this tomorrow.” He shrugs. “Or not! We don’t have to ever talk about it again if you don’t want to. I just want to bring in the new year kissing you, surrounded by our friends. So can we just… please?”

Roni scans his face, feeling more and more on the verge of breakdown with every passing second. She closes her eyes, wishing she were anywhere but here, and covers her face with her hands. “God,” she groans, before taking a big breath and opening her eyes again. “Fine. Sure. Let’s go.”

Oliver smiles softly, holding out his hand timidly for her to take. “Sure you’re not mad?”

It isn’t Oliver’s fault. Of course it isn’t. So how can Roni be angry with him?

She sighs, trying to bitterly laugh off a tear that’s threatening to roll down her cheek and ignoring his hand. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I’m sure.”

“Not sure I believe you,” Oliver chuckles, “But okay.” He steps in, closing the gap between him and Roni and puckering his lips. He speaks in a babyish voice that, in any other circumstances, would absolutely melt Roni. “Gimme kiss?”

It makes Roni even more upset than she already is, but who is she to deny Oliver? He is none the wiser as to what’s going on, and she can’t exactly drop this bomb on him right now. Not when he’s drunk. Not when there’s a party going on downstairs.

Not when they’ve been together for so many years with absolutely no problems before this.

Before Roni even has time to process what’s happening, Oliver is taking her wrist in his hand and pulling her impossibly closer to him. He kisses her, softly at first, and then a bit more passionate once their lips are fastened together.

It’s Oliver who is making all the effort then; tongue maneuvering it’s way into Roni’s mouth as seductively as he can manage. Roni would have no objections to this in any other situation. In fact, she would welcome this. The normal Roni would suggest she and Oliver skip out on the midnight countdown altogether, in fact, and elect to stay up here bringing in the new year whilst fucking like rabbits.

But not now. Of course not now. In fact, probably not ever again. How could she ever go back to Oliver now? After Harry? After everything she’d felt for Harry?

How could she have done this to Oliver?

She gently pushes Oliver off of her, hoping he doesn’t note the tears in her eyes. “Please,” she says quietly. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Oliver giggles, “Kiss your boyfriend? You scared our friends will catch on? Start thinking we might have crushes on each other? Assume you think I’m hot?”

Roni knows Oliver is playing around, but she genuinely is not in the mood for that right now, and she’s afraid that if he says much else she’ll snap. She groans, leaning in and pressing the most bland, unemotional kiss to his lips. “Lets go,” she says. “Please. We’re going to miss the countdown.”

She begins making her way out of the room with Oliver close behind her. “I expect a much better kiss than that when the ball drops!” Oliver says. “Much, much better!”

Roni’s heart is pounding in her ears so loudly she can hardly hear herself think. Her face grows hot while the inside of her body feels cold. She’s having a panic attack, no doubt about it, and for once she’s glad that everyone is going to be too drunk to acknowledge it.

“Ron?” Oliver asks as he and Roni begin descending the stairs. “Hey, Ron? Baby… will you stop a minute?”

“I don’t want to miss the ball drop,” Roni says, refusing to turn around and trying her hardest to sound like her breathing is under control.

Oliver stops her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Sweetheart,” he says tenderly. “You’re being weird.”

“I’m not being weird,” Roni insists, more urgently than intended. She sighs (the shakiness of her breath incredibly obvious to both of them) and softens as best she can.

“I’m not being weird,” she repeats. “Just tired.”

“You know if something is going on you can tell me, right?” Oliver sounds more sober than he has in hours, and the way he looks at Roni makes her insides shake with guilt.

She opens her mouth to speak, but has to forcibly stop herself when she almost says Harry’s name. She scans his face, so genuinely concerned and yet ridiculously kind, and she swallows down the vomit rising in her throat. “Yeah,” she says “I know.”

Oliver smiles. “Okay then.” He gives her shoulder a squeeze and follows her lead back into the living room.

Roni feels like she’s in a dream as she moves; like her body is here physically but her mind is elsewhere. In the strangest way possible, her brain feels small and disconnected entirely. She can see everyone cheering when she and Oliver walk in. She can feel her friend put a red solo cup filled with alcohol into her hand. She can hear her name being called, but she doesn’t register it. She doesn’t register anything that’s going on at the moment, actually.

Her attention is briefly caught when she hears people start counting down, signaling that the ball is about to drop. Their exuberant voices sound far away, however, as if she’s hearing them from the next room over. Her face feels cold and her hands feel sweaty, and she thinks maybe if everyone would scoot over a bit she’d be able to breathe better.

“18….17…. 16….”

Someone accidentally bumps into Roni, knocking into the cup in her hand and sloshing a bit of its contents onto her dress. No one reacts; in fact, no one else even notices. Oliver gives her hand a quick squeeze, pulling her close to him and wrapping his arm around her waist.

“...12… 11….”

Roni’s ears burn. She knows where she is, but she cannot, for the life of her, focus on a single thing. Her heart is hurting. This doesn’t feel right. She shouldn’t be here.

Slowly, the room around her begins spinning. Roni wobbles a bit on her feet and Oliver catches her, probably chalking her wooziness up to her being as drunk as he is. She almost wishes she was, because maybe that would make everything hurt less.

“...8… 7…6”

Roni’s throat feels like it’s closing in on itself, and her mind seems to be running far behind her actual body. She tries to blink herself into some clarity, glancing around the room. She’s looking--hoping-- for someone who she knows damn well isn’t there. Someone who couldn’t even try to be there. The only person she cares to see at this point.

“...3...2...1…”

The entire room erupts in cheers, which definitely doesn’t help the throbbing in Roni’s brain, and the song Auld Lang Syne blasts from the tv. There is nothing but chaos surrounding Roni, and she almost gags at the feeling of the lump in her throat. She opens her mouth to say something, but is promptly cut off when Oliver pulls her in by her hips, fastening his lips to hers in a kiss that feels a far too enthusiastic for Roni’s taste.

The way he’s holding her by her hips would be enough to make her swoon on any other occasion. But now it makes her feel suffocated, and she doesn’t even close her eyes as she gives Oliver a half-assed kiss back.

No one else in the room seems to be aware of what’s going on. They’re all too drunk, too busy making out with their respective partners/fuck buddies/love interests for the evening, to seem to care or even notice at all that Roni’s eyes are wide open. The guilt, the pain, the longing for Harry-- all of it wraps itself around Roni’s heart and squeezes like a python.

Oliver pulls away, a dopey smile on his face. “Happy New Year, baby!”

He looks so thrilled; so beyond naive to not only the fact that she’s hurt him in what she’s certain will be an unforgivable way, but also the fact that she is more concerned with missing Harry than feeling much else at all right now.

“Roni?”

A voice from off to the side catches her attention, and she turns in slow motion to see her and Oliver’s mutual friend, Zach, squinting at her. “Ron, you don’t look so good.”

“Wait, yeah,” comes Zach’s girlfriend, Skye. “Girl, are you okay?”

Roni hears their questions. She hears them, but she doesn’t process them. Zach and Skye aren’t the only people who seem to be concerned, as more and more people around them quickly catch on.

“Sweetheart?” comes Oliver’s voice, and Roni turns, almost drunkenly.

“Is she drunk?”

“Did she take something?”

“She looks green!”

“Baby?” It’s Oliver’s voice that breaks through the deafening noise the most, although Roni still can’t even really process what he’s saying. “Roni? Hun, can you hear me?”

“Everyone step back!”

“Let her breathe!”

“Can someone get her some water?”

“Ron?”

Her breathing is so shallow now that she can actually hear herself gasping for air. She feels like she’s choking. She hates this. She hates these people. She doesn’t want to be here.

Where she wants to be is with Harry. Alone with him, in his tiny apartment that isn’t even half the size of the room. The year 2000 nothing but a vague memory, something she knows is so far in the future that she’ll never have to worry about it. She should have stayed.

Goddammit, she should have stayed.

As she looks around the room at these people who she should love-- who she should be thrilled to be surrounded by-- she realizes that she’s never felt more alone. Not a single one of them would understand what’s going on. How is she supposed to continue on into the new year-- the new millennium-- feeling so isolated in her own feelings?

“I can’t breathe.”

She can feel herself saying the words, yet her own voice sounds so fuzzy and far away.

“She can’t breathe!” someone repeats. “Everyone back up!”

“Can we get her some water?”

“Ron?”

It’s too much. It’s all too fucking much.

Roni’s knees wobble a bit before she feels them buckle. The last thing she sees before hitting the ground is Oliver worriedly scrambling to catch her.

And then everything is dark.

#Harry Styles #Harry #One Direction #Harry Styles fanfiction #Harry fanfiction #One direction fanfiction #fanfiction #Harry Styles AU #Harry AU #One Direction AU #AU #Harry Styles angst #Harry angst #One Direction angst #angst

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dontmindmyshadowhunting · 4 years ago

Text

Dru meets Ash (Fan Fic)

This is Chap 6 of “Welcome to Faerieland”, a sequel to my Kitty Fan Fic "To never being parted" although it can be read as a standalone story.

Dru meets Ash (again, although she doesn’t know they have already met) in this Chapter.

AO3 Link here.

*****

Jaime and Dru landed a little away from a clearing where a revel was being held. Jaime hastily slipped the Eternidad back into his pocket. He would give it back to Cristina eventually, but in the meantime, he knew she had no trouble being escorted in and out of the Unseelie Court whenever she wanted to. Perks of being the King’s girlfriend.

Jaime and Dru had both dressed in faerie clothes, in order to blend in. Dru was wearing a long azur blue dress that brought out the color of her eyes. It fell just above her ankles, revealing high-heeled boots (conveniently hiding a few daggers). An upturned collar and long sleeves covered the marks on her neck and arms, though the low-cut neckline would inescapably draw anyone’s attention to her cleavage. Her dark brown hair was efficiently pulled into an elegant bun. Where Jaime and Dru’s skin showed, both had covered their marks with concealer.

As they walked toward the revel, and the music grew louder, Dru turned to Jaime. “I have to go find a friend of Nene’s. She may help us locate Ty and Kit. It’s better if I go alone, she knows the Blackthorns very well but she’s a bit wary around other Shadowhunters. Don’t stay too far, though. And of course, I don’t need to tell you not to drink or eat anything.”

“No, you don’t,” Jaime answered a little harshly. Blackthorns knew a great deal about the Fair Folk, but so did the Rosales, he wanted to remind her.

When they had finally joined the party, Dru waved at a faerie woman with blue hair and purple eyes who was standing next to a tent, in deep conversation with a kelpie, and left Jaime to stand awkwardly at the edge of the forest.

He had not been there five minutes when a fey swooped in to offer some refreshments.

“No, thanks,” he replied immediately, lifting one of his hands reflexively to prevent the fey from coming any closer.

“Are you certain? Mundanes are particularly fond of this one,” he said, pointing to a blue drink, “it makes you look younger. Not that you need it, of course.”

“Huh. Is there a drink that makes you grow like two years older, without altering your appearance?” The faerie stared at him aghast. Jaime couldn’t blame him. “Never mind, very stupid question,” Jaime mumbled.

Dru appeared then, her eyes glowing in excitement. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the forest.

“So... any information on where we could find your brother and Kit?”

“Have you ever been to a revel before?” She replied, ignoring his question.

“Hum. No, but Cristina told me a bit about them…”

“Come over here,” she said as she drew him further into the forest. She stopped in front of a tree, put both her hands on his chest and pushed him against the trunk. His back hit the wood with a loud thump but it was mostly drowned by the sound of his heart beating in his chest.

Her gaze was intense, dark eyelashes batting seductively over her blue-green eyes. Jaime swallowed.

“Er- Dru, what are you doing? Aren’t we supposed to go hunting for Ty and Kit?”

“Relaaax. What happens in Faerie stays in Faerie, doesn’t it?”

She bit her lower lip and he gasped.

“God, Dru, those lips…” Jaime choked. His thoughts were becoming more and more incoherent.

“Can I… kiss you?” she asked.

“God, yes. Please.” Jaime slumped against the tree trunk, feeling all the tension leave his body at once.

Dru closed her eyes and he did the same. As she pressed her full lips against his, he could feel blood burning through his veins like wildfire. Yes, yes, finally. He could be struck by lightning - he probably would - he didn’t care. He would die a happy man.

She bit his lower lip and he could taste his own blood, but he didn’t mind. Feisty little Dru. He brought his hands on either side of her face to cup her cheeks, but instead of soft skin he felt a very light... stubble. He pulled away immediately and found himself staring into a pair of bright blue eyes, the colour of a summer sky. Kit Herondale was smiling at him, his grin as mischievous as ever but somehow it looked wrong. All wrong.

“What does your heart truly desire, little Shadowhunter?” he said, cocking his head, and it was not his voice, but a woman’s voice.

From one moment to another, Kit’s blond hair and blue eyes were replaced by a faerie woman with gray fine hair drifting around a pale face, her skin smooth and ageless. He was staring at a leanansidhe. He cursed himself. What a fool he had been.

He stepped back, feeling sick, and hit something hard behind him. He was about to turn when he was dealt with a blow on the head. His sight blurred and he barely had the time to blink before he fell into unconsciousness.

****

As she was talking to Nene’s friend, Dru saw Jaime disappear into the forest with a faerie. What the hell was he thinking? They weren’t here to have fun.

She thanked her contact, who unfortunately didn’t have any information, and moved to where Jaime had vanished inside the forest.

The tree trunks were spaced, but their branches leafy and close enough that it was difficult to see beyond a few feet. She cursed Jaime silently as she got deeper inside the woods, the sounds of the revel now receding and being replaced by the sounds of nocturnal animals and insects. She thought about all the horror movies that warned you from doing just that.

If it wasn’t for her years of Shadowhunter training she wouldn’t have heard the soft footfalls behind her. She stepped further into the forest until she was at an advantageous position for a fight and whirled to face her stalker. It was a very tall faerie knight dressed in elegant velvety clothes. Probably gentry and part of the King’s guard. He smiled at her and she kept herself from shivering from the coldness of his grin.

“What are you doing here all alone, little girl?”

He probably thought she was a helpless mundane with the Sight. Admittedly, she didn’t look like the Shadowhunter women type, with her curvy figure.

“Minding my own business. As you should.”

“Do you know there are dangerous creatures lurking in these woods?”

“I definitely do. And let me tell you a secret…” She cupped her hand around her mouth and spoke in a stage whisper. “I am the scariest one of them.”

The faerie knight laughed.

“I am Ruadhan Fairburn. I used to be one of the best knights of King Kieran’s guard, and I have met him personally once. I am also acquainted with Gwyn ap Nudd, of the Wild Hunt. You certainly don’t frighten me.”

Oh, no. He did have a reputation as one of the realm’s best fighters, before King Kieran had suggested he retire, probably due to his attitude.

She mimed checking her watch (although she wasn’t wearing any). “Oooh, so it’s already time for a bit of name-dropping? Sorry, none of these ring a bell.”

No need to tell him she had seen Gwyn cry in front of Love actually a week before, on Friday’s movie night, and that she affectionately called King Kieran Kiki.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. When I am done with you, my name will be printed in your memory.”

“Hmmm. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll pass.” She started running her hand through her hair casually, intending to pull out her hair stick made with adamas. It was a gift from Jem who had it made by Sister Emilia.

The faerie’s expression turned furious. “I am not really giving you a choice,” he said in a clipped tone.

An audible sigh had them both whip their head toward the general direction of the sound.

A few feet away, up a large tree, a boy - or rather a young man judging by his frame and the length of his long limbs - was lounging on the thickest branch. He was reading, holding his book high, so Dru could not see his face, only white blond hair tucked behind pointy ears. He was dressed in stunning finery, all black, his collar turned up. He was wearing dark silk gloves and his long fingers were splayed across the cover of his book. He was most certainly part of the gentry, or even royal blood, Dru thought.

“You heard the lady,” he said in a bored voice, and Dru could not help but startle at the sound. It was a beautiful, lyrical voice. “She is not interested. Now, move along. Go hump a tree or something.”

“Excuse me?” the faerie knight spluttered, his delicate features set in a mask of shock. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t know who you are, but I know what you are, and that’s enough to convince me not to develop our budding relationship any further,” he answered, turning a page.

The knight started to advance on him, but the blond faerie didn’t even lift his nose from his book. With a flick of his hand, he had the faerie knight hauled away like a puppet, as if a giant invisible hand had grabbed him from behind.

“Don’t move any closer. What did I just say about me not wanting to develop our relationship further? Have you never been taught how to take no for an answer?”

The faerie knight was seething but he backed away, walking in reverse, before he whirled and disappeared inside the deep forest.

“Thanks, I guess.” Dru said, relaxing her stance. “Although we could have avoided the drama. I had the situation quite in hand before you intervened. I could have knocked him out before he had the chance to spell out the word asshole.”

The faerie laughed, and it was a beautiful chime sound.

“Ladies shouldn't have to dirty their hands,” he said, as if she had not just uttered the word “asshole”, disqualifying her as such.

“What century do you live in?” she asked, shaking her head. “Anyway, I am a Shadowhunter, dirtying my hands is part of the job description.”

She saw his whole body suddenly tense. Slowly, he brought the book down, just enough to reveal a pair of green eyes under delicate blond eyebrows. As soon as he caught sight of her, his eyes widened in surprise and he let the book fall on the ground, the resulting thump muffled by the grass.

In a single swift and elegant motion, he had jumped from his tree and was standing a few feet away, facing her.

Up close, she could see his eyes were a clear emerald green. It made her think of grass fields glowing under the spring sun. His features were sharp and ethereal, his white blond hair tousled as if they had caught wind. Physically, he was the opposite of Jaime, all pale white and thin silvery curls where Jaime had brown golden skin and dark thick hair. They both had a lean figure and a debonair manner, but where Jaime was almost gangly, the faerie was all graceful moves and regal stance.

He is absolutely gorgeous, Dru admitted reluctantly. And he was watching her as if he knew all the secrets of her heart, as if he had always known her and was merely returning to her after leaving for a short while.

Although she was almost certain she had never met him, something about him struck her as oddly familiar. She was idly wondering whether her mind had conjured up one of the princes of her books. Maybe, he was the product of her own fantasy and he would disappear from one blink to another… But no, she had not been the only one to see him. Get a grip, she told herself.

“It’s you,” he breathed.

Dru tried to regain her composure. She straightened up as she answered. “It’s definitely me.” She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight, For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night,” he whispered in a daze.

By the Angel, his voice. Everything about him ensnared your senses, enticed you to love and worship him. But Dru knew better than to let herself be fooled by men’s - especially faerie men’s - spells and enchantments.

She swallowed and answered in her most detached voice. “Shakespeare. Romeo meets Juliet. Act I Scene 5. Already bringing out the heavy artillery, I see. Do you always quote other people’s work to make yourself interesting? Or do you actually have a personality?”

The strange prince was taken aback for a second. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his face. He was breathtaking when he smiled.

“Oush,” he replied, miming a sword stabbing through his chest. “That went straight through my heart.”

“This line may work its spell on the naive and gullible girls you usually manage to sweep off their feet, but it definitely doesn’t work on me.” Dru sniffed.

The fey cocked his head, as if he was inspecting a strange wild animal.

“You assume that I am trying to seduce you?”

She rolled her eyes and whirled, avoiding to stare at him for too long. He was quite intimidating. And she needed to find Jaime.

“Don’t be a jerk, in addition to being a cliché,” she said without a backward glance, as she walked away. She could hear the sound of his laugh behind her, echoing in the forest like ringing bells.

****

Tagging @gabtapia sorry I’ve been so busy lately but I am definitely back now with more chapters.

#cassandraclare #cassandra clare fan fiction #the wicked powers #the dark artifices #jaime rosales #drusilla blackthorn #ash morgenstern #ash and dru #dru and ash #ash x dru #dru x ash #tda fanfiction #tsc fanfiction #the shadowhunters chronicles icons #the shadowhunter chronicles

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baconpal · 4 years ago

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pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me. Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

#juvenile rant #pokemon #if you read all that then good job cus jesus that got long #please just respect yourself #you deserve better games #you arent weird for wanting things to be good #anyway have a good night

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xiaosean · 4 years ago

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why you should watch douluo continent

the drama adaptation is such a good rendition of “soul land” and stayed true to the plot line and character development. it was fast-paced (perfect for me) but may be confusing for those who don’t know the story. i personally love the donghua, and i think the drama did an adequate job of portraying everything in their own way 😁 (read at your own discretion; this contains spoilers)

things i liked:

initially, i didn’t like the dreamscape bc wtf is it doing there? why is he hearing his mom’s voice in episode 1 (it just kills the entire momentum of the plot); and then after i got to episode 39... fucking ep. 39, i knew the dreamscape needed to be there in order to save tang san’s life; mr. wang who wrote the script, props to you.

the cgi 🥰✨ i had really low expectations bc if there’s shitty cgi like cql... i wouldn’t be able to handle it. but it’s so good ??? please, i know the ape soul beast was small and funny looking (bc they had to spend money on the water dragon lmao), but other than that, it was so good and how each and every character’s powers were able to shine

le outfits + makeup - they’re not super pale 😭😭😭 finally !!! and the outfits are so nice, SO SO NICE, each and every character holy hell

how they changed hu liena’s (aka. qian renxue) role in the drama --- she’s my fav female antagonist; she’s so good here, her character was annoying at first, but she’s so dynamic and independent, and just wants to impress her mom. you see her helping tang san + his squad during the last 5 eps because SHE CARES about her mom despite her strict upbringing 🥺 her and tang san have a ship name called 糖葫芦 (candied hawthorns) and i think that’s so cute hehe

the seven devils 😂 i loved the seven devils in this adaptation almost as much as i loved them in the donghua; each and every character got their own storyline, they’re not boring nor do they draw attention away from the tang san’s main plot, and you see so much development (esp. in ou sike and dai mubai)

headmaster, da shi, and er long trio! 黄金铁三角 iconic and they captured it so well 😭 they chose the actor for the headmaster so freaking well i’m screaming! he loves money so much and his little facial expressions as a third wheel is everything, the comedic relief! and da shi... i see y’all thirsting over calvin chen okay 😌 he’s so much better in the drama tbh & er long is majestic and amazingly powerful and cunning, i love her !!! and props to luo san pao, the best doggo ever!

the seniors! they basically perfected tang san’s relationship with dugu bo... it was antagonistic at first, but then they became besties over poison 😭❤️ i loved dugu bo’s character in here bc he was so funny & didn’t get social cues LMAO // the ape soul master was brief but he honestly made my day with how much he respected the tang family & how he took care of his father back in the day // 七宝琉璃 squad was also 🥰 (less hot than in the donghua lol) but they also somehow made jian yeye the comedic relief? i love how they��re so accepting of ou sike despite him being a support soul master

tang san’s mom - i can only hear her voice, but she made me cry & i love her for that

tang san ❤️❤️❤️ xiao zhan’s voice over just blended in with his character & it was just so wonderful; tang san in the donghua was smart, so fucking smart, cunning, but the kindest at heart; xiao zhan truly portrayed that and my most memorable part was when da shi said “your only flaw is that you let your emotions get the best of you” (this is so important), and you see him later try to control his emotions and not act rashly, especially when confronted with 时年 & 比比东 --- also crying scenes 11/10

bibi dong powerful, POWERFUL WOMAN, props to her voice actress, i got chills when she said, “你根本没有资格知道” // tang hao, wow he’s just like i imagined, but i wish he was a little more emotional in ep. 1 bc the blue silver plant in tang san is essentially his lover’s martial soul

how the concept of family was generated within the shi lan ke academy squad 🥺 it’s such a feel good drama, istg, makes you so happy when you’re having a bad day ✨

things i didn’t like:

xiao wu’s character portrayal (the scriptwriter’s fault, not xuanyi) // i honestly let it slide for the first 10 episodes bc i usually start falling for a character later on, it’s normal; but drama xiao wu didn’t fulfill the 小舞姐 in my heart 😔 i get that many people like her, but it’s not the same! xiao wu in donghua is beautiful, independent, and outspoken, BUT MOST OF ALL HER LOVE FOR TANG SAN IS OBVIOUS, you don’t need to say “一起去” every other line in the drama; i think this could have been remedied if they stayed true to the storyline and let tang san enter the secret dimension alone, bring the mythical herbs back, and have xiao wu prick herself to activate 相思断肠红 (they completely butchered the significance of the flower i’m so angry; fyi: the flower can only belong to you if your heart loves one person --- there’s the most beautiful backstory to the flower but drama douluo said nah). also, drama xiao wu is so clingy and she started exposing herself from the beginning... no momentum build-up whatsoever 😔 it’s 斗罗大陆, not 斗罗大陆: 小舞传 and sometimes it felt like she was being so insistent on following tang san around, i’m just 😓

the whole canghui academy scheme --- it was confusing for 10 eps straight until they got to the end of it, but I guess the drama wanted to add that part in because they wanted to focus less on the competition and more on 变异武魂 (the mutated martial souls) in order to defeat bibi dong

how the beginning was so confusing 😫 i wish they just stuck with child tang san remembering his past life as a disciple in tang clan & then learning 玄天宝录 on his own bc that was such a great part of his character development + understanding of soul masters/their weaknesses; and the fact that he would rely less on his parents

the kiss + confession at ep. 40 // could have done w/o it or even a simple forehead kiss; the confession from tang san was way too quick considering there’s little to no emotional build-up towards that moment (other than bibi dong doing all the work like the queen she is) and there’s no surprise element either? like we’ve been knew she’s a soul beast since ep. 5 🥲 and the kiss was awkward & like i said, sanwu’s love doesn’t need words or actions to confirm... it’s this innate thing that the audience should be able to see (if the scriptwriters focused a little more on BIG plot points that boost the sanwu relationship, then it would have been perfect) ^^ i wish they spent more time on the romantic aspect of the relationship bc even after 30 eps, they seem like siblings when OP said They’re Not.

overall thoughts:

this is purely my opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt! the cons imo were minor except for the development of the sanwu relationship; it doesn’t seem like romance to me 😔 but hopefully it’ll get better in the (maybe) second season when they take some time apart to grow? i’m surprised how much they referenced the original story (characters and such), and i am thoroughly impressed with WHERE THEY ENDED IT, and how they rounded all the new/old plot points together in a way that makes sense. i also don’t hate any of the antagonists, which is why this drama is so lighthearted and easy to watch. it’s not emotionally taxing (sans tang san crying bc xz breaks me heart 😭💕), and safe + enjoyable to watch with family! you’re gonna miss it once it ends, and i think that makes a drama successful 😁 also i’m not gonna go into depth about the mysterious ending bc i might spoil it for those who want to watch the donghua LMAO (but if you want to know my theories, shoot me an ask)

#douluo continent spoilers #SPOILERS TAG RIGHT THERE.#don't say i didn't warn you!#douluo continent #douluo dalu #ruby talks

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jakey-beefed-it · 4 years ago

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Today was... almost completely unproductive, even for me, due to various mental Crises that arose in the like... Venn diagram overlap of my sundry issues. Mental health talk below the cut so you can avoid it if you’ve got your own shit to deal with/might be triggered by that kind of thing.

Kinda did almost a checklist of disorders being problems. ADHD brain? Represented. Autism? Probably! Depression? You betcha. Anxiety? Hoo boy and then some. Mania? Maybe! Self-loathing? Energy levels off the charts, cap’n. Basically my brain was the equivalent of blaring alarms from all quarters and spinning out of control.

Anyhow I eventually managed to... not be doing that ...and in the process kinda realized that maaaaybe I haven’t been Handling My Shit as well as I thought. Like I’m medicated... for depression. Which is good! I haven’t thought seriously about literally killing myself for several years now. That’s a big improvement! Not to be sneezed at. But it’s hardly a panacea for the rest of my bullshit.

Anyhow anyhow I’ve internalized a loooot of really horrible shit I’m always speaking out against as an anti-capitalist pro-mutual-aid aspiring feminist; basing my self-worth on lots of unattainable things that I don’t even believe in but that somehow equate to me being a Failure as a Man(TM) for being a hot mess disability soup. Some of it is also no doubt related to the whole ‘Gifted’ Kid Burnout phenomenon as well. I was ‘a pleasure to have in class’ and always sought approval and validation because I had anxiety, not because I was gifted, sheesh. Whole childhood equating my value with being ‘smart’ and then having my entire ego collapse under the inevitable weight of not being able to hack it in my first attempt at college because my brain was actively trying to kill me with self-hatred that only got worse the more I failed to live up to my ‘potential’.

I’m much less of an elitist shitbag these days regarding myself as no different from any other h. sapiens sapiens in that we are all fundamentally dumb, panicky apes who sometimes need a minute to remember the whole tool-use or reason things. But while I’m really good at not holding it against other people for being dumb panicky apes, even though I don’t regard myself as better than anyone (far from it) I still somehow hold myself to these standards I long since dismissed as unreasonable to expect of anyone, much less a guy with a grab-bag of mental illnesses that makes his spongy thinkmeat even less effective than biology normally dictates. And inevitably fail to live up to them, of course. And then feel worse about myself. Forever. Well, ok, not forever, even if I do continue to manage the no-self-murder streak (which seems likely) I’m still definitely going to kick off at some point. But for my whole damn existence, which sucks plenty.

Anyhow anyhow anyhow here goes the first of hopefully many simple admissions of imperfections and forgiveness of that.

I am not a digital artist. I could spend lots of time and effort to develop those skills, but frankly I don’t... wanna. Instead of feeling guilty at having abandoned pursuit of the lovely art tablet my family got me many years ago that they ‘wasted’ their gift, I can just admit that I’d much rather continue drawing in pencil, inking in pigment liners, and scanning into a digital format for sharing on the internet. I like tactile hobbies; it’s why I get so much out of painting miniatures. And digital art is still tactile in that you’re holding a stylus and/or tablet, but it’s not the same, and I prefer physical art on physical paper. And that’s okay.

I am not a fantastic dungeon master. I’m aight. I am, in the words of the best mug ever (a gift from my sister), the “World’s Okayest Dungeon Master.” I can put together a campaign, it will mostly hang together, my combat encounters will vary from ‘pretty good’ to ‘super boring’ but my plots are generally interesting and my players keep coming back so I must be doing something right.

This one’s kind of cheating because I’ve acknowledged it before both publicly and internally for like... fifteen years ...but I am not, and never will be, a world-class miniature painter. I don’t have the manual dexterity, the patience for producing and executing many many layers of very fine glazes, or a strong enough desire to devote more effort to improvement than befits a hobby I mostly do to relax. And that’s okay. I paint pretty good, and I slowly get better. Sometimes I’m the best painter in my local store! And that’s good the hell enough to satisfy my external competitiveness, while my internal competitiveness of striving to do better than I myself have done before gets all the real attention. I do want to improve! And so I do, but at a steady pace that doesn’t stress me out.

I’m not a diligent writer at all. I like writing, and I love coming up with plots and characters, but I’m terrible at sticking to a daily writing habit. I’d like to get better at that, and I can, with effort. Honestly giving myself permission to write more fannish bullshit (Warhammer stories, SW:tOR stories, D&D stories) might help clear some of the roadblock. I don’t shit on other fan writers; I long ago admitted that it’s valid and cool when other people do it, but to this day I have still only written a handful of Warhammer bullshit and one (1) Mass Effect fanfic. All the while my idea for a novel has grown and evolved and never really gotten past a very rough first draft that is now almost completely useless due to rethinking everything because I’m not in the habit of actually writing. I can do something about that!

I desperately want everyone to like me and think well of me and never be mad at me but you know what, that’s not... remotely achievable much less healthy. I have various tendencies toward ‘people pleasing’ that tend to end up with my own boundaries trodden upon and far more people taking advantage than real friends. I am very fortunate in that I DO have some real friends, many of them online, but yeah. It’s okay if not everyone likes me. Even if they somehow did, it wouldn’t make up for the all-consuming singularity-like wound of self-loathing that the people-pleasing urge is probably trying to fill.

I can be unreliable due to my many, many issues. Most of them are mental, but some of them are physical. I can’t always do things that should be ‘easy’, whether it’s my brain saying no, or my body. Instead of making too many promises for fear of ‘looking’ disabled and/or trying to make everyone happy... sometimes I need to admit that there are things I do not have the capacity for. Preferably ahead of time, rather than bailing at the last minute or just.... not showing up. This probably would’ve been good to know about myself before I nearly failed out of college in my first attempt but hey, hindsight and all that.

I might be about as cis and straight as a guy can get, but I am not and will never be anything remotely like an Idealized Man due to my weight, disabilities, general body type (even at my thinnest I had a belly pooch and flabby chest), shit, right down to my hair but that’s got some big overlap with the Idealized Man being a straight-haired white boy when I’m merely a wavy/curly-haired white-passing boy. And shit, if I had some gender fuckery that’d be a whole other animal, but even though I kinda got assigned male and went ‘Yeah that’s about right’ I still deserve to not have to live up to some unattainable ideal.

There’s... a lot more, obviously (hoo boy is there a lot more) but that’ll do for a start.

#rengh #Jake is a big fat crazypants

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sillyfudgemonkeys · 3 years ago

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Comic buff with a thought, I notice the P5MM art and composition is more striking and closer to p5's art and style than the other manga, which is fine, but kinda... flat. (I find myself thinking there's something missing when I read it, then I look back at P5MM and I notice how there's more clever paneling, imagery, and stylistic choices akin to the games in it (like that one goro panel ya had a rant about) and I realize what's missing) That could be why P5MM is brought up more, just a guess. I dunno how you feel about all that though, I'm curious.

Under the cut cause it gets long cause of pictures:

I am very big on art style and visual presentation. I do actually judge a book by it's cover (manga, game, movie, show, yadda). If I find something pleasing to my eye I'll read it.....even if the contents are trash. Domestic Girlfriend is one, horrible manga (didn't finish, was holding out for Momo, aka best girl, and getting closure for her....then I bounced). Didn't watch the anime (didn't need to I was way ahead in the manga I think), but I know that opening is wasted on it. ldskfjaf Don't invest your time into it, it's not worth it, you would probably learn better morals from P5.......probably. But yeah I found the art style pleasing enough to try it out (I's not amazing by any means, but I like looking at it....or did.....that writing man....dat was bad ;w;).... *waves hands vaguely in air* yeah.

Fun fact, it's why I got into Persona. I happened across an ad for P4 on the PS2 in the Gameinformer magazine, it showed a screenshot from an animated cutscene plus one of the fully body art for the chars and I was like "Yes this is my jam!" (which only doubled down when I read what it was about, and it was a murder mystery and the article also talked up "the mystery of the glasses" which fakldjsalkfs yeah). So yeah it really clicked for me.

Tbh it's why I'm probably going to get back into freaking Bleach, and it's why I got into it and Naruto over One Piece (I don't think I'll ever read ON I'm sorry). Tite Kubo has sexy art what can I say? Can't trust a thing that man writes now but eh. It's also the reason I read a lot of Shojo (and now Yuri) manga, cause their art style is usually what I find very appealing (even if I've read the same gd shojo love story just by a different name for the 1000th time, give me the flowers and sparkly eyes! they are my life blood!)

And I've mentioned I really like Saito's art style. I've (attempted) to color some of his pieces on top of animate some manga frames (most of which I haven't actually published......I...I should....get around to finishing those up....haha...aha....haaaa). I really like his art, it's pleasant. But even with good art, I can still see past it and see what BS it's peddling and it can hamper my enjoyment of it. If I don't look at the context of the scene or the words on the page, I can be down with it. But when I'm reading.......I get annoyed. I balk at anything with Goro. I guffaw whenever Makoto's on screen (cause Saito nails her from P5, she acts useful but really she's useless but the narrative views her as useful it ironically makes her useless......it's the weirdest thing I've ever witnessed >.>). Like Saito really.....gets P5 it seems, down to it's flaws even (tho he can actually make the good parts of P5 shine, or at least parts that P5 failed to execute....execute in a way). But he also makes the flaws.....shine that much harder for me.

Now the Reg manga? it's nothing special art style wise, in fact it starts off VERY wonky, and while still wonky, has gotten a lot....better/cuter (esp Ryu). Not like shojo cute just.......I wanna squish their wittle faces cute (at times when it's not serious).

Like when it comes to Reg Manga these are the two pieces that have appeared in it that I feel kinda hit the P5 mark in terms of style:

(look at Mona, coming into this world like the pustule that he is 8U)

Which isn't much, but it's something. At least Reg's AOA is better looking than the anime. 8U

But I dunno, as the chapters go on, the Mangaka allows for more cuter expressions, and I just like their neat:

(btw I colored that page)

I dunno, it's not as overtly cutsey as Saito:

But they are still charming in a more simple way (without out having them go full chibi), it subtle but it gives it flavor. "Silly why are most, if not all those pics of Ryu and Anne?" I dunno guys maybe you should ask them how their backs are doing, cause they're the ones who are carrying the Reg manga when it comes to this! 8U

Tho I do think the first ch or two of Reg does a better job capturing P5's feel than the rest of the chapters, I think the mangaka is just.....bogged down by exposition and the game's BS that a lot of text on their pages so it almost reads like a novel:

ALots of text, not the most dynamic of framing with the panels. It's kinda eh. I haven't really read the manga past the 2nd dungeon tbh (I mean......as the residential #1 Makoto hater, I think that's fair.....that I'd start to zone out during my least fav dungeon....and then continue zoning out during my 2nd least fav dungeon askfdjaflk)

But during the first two dungeon arcs, I liked how.....bad the PT were at thieving, I liked how green they were. It was obviously a learning process. I also like some of the fight choreo (Saito did the best hand to hand one in the series in P4U's Yu vs Sho....which I actually animated....spoiler.....no I have no released that...my dumbass wants to tempt fate and see if I can redo it in color even tho it took me 4 days non stop to get that animated in just black and white.....but I am a fool so alas 8U). I mean it's not mind blowing, but it was simple and decently thought out, which is more than I feel like we usually get (esp with the anime shows....or at least P4/5's).

But I think what draws me in is....it's lack of P5 style. P5 style has them being still oh so cool despite being new at everything. It's tired me out. P5's how identity is style. It's....style over substance (gonna rile some feathers with that....Cvit(?) vid title). But P5 is overtly stylish, to the point it......weighs on me. Drags me down. Tires me out. I don't think they're cool, I'm bored with it. Ironically, Reg manga lacks that, which......def would make someone (and me usually) give it much of a passing glance. It's very basic I guess. But.....consider me, being in P5 hell, surrounded by all it's nausea inducing stylishness, sees a small break in the hellish hurricane to see.......normalcy. It kinda makes me connect better with the kids (kinda, it's still P5).

They feel like normal kids, trying to do their thing (sometimes trying to look/act cool and failing), and.....it's just the absolute antitheses to P5's brand......and I think that's why I like it. KLFJDSAFLKJA;

Anyway, who knows, maybe when I catch up on Reg in english and re-read MM with the official translation I might change my mind about a few things, or at least how I rank them. But for post length sake, and my sanity sake, I think I should keep the anime and mangas out of the "Which entry do you hate least" post......because I should just make another post where I go into both mangas as well as compare and contrast the anime! :D I'm just delaying some insanity for later haha....

Wait.........I just remember Day Breakers exists......and I liked it....still do....don't have much issue with it. Well shit, that is probably the one entry I hate the least. fklsdjfalkjdfkla;jsL;FJljsfdlskafaj *sobs* nO NO, I committed, and that's just a sad loophole. fdklsajflakfj *sobs* I still need to the game thing, cause let's be honest, the games are where it counts.

So right now my ranking for manga/anime is:

Daybreakers>Reg manga> MM>>>>>>>>>>TV Show Anime and it's OVAs (may the burn in the hell fire from which they spawned)

Oh, one last thing, forgot to put it in but I dunno where to put it now. I like how the manga tones down the pervyness some:

I mean Ryu is a fellow monkey. u_u .......but it's for the best I don't have to see his ape expression. ;w; (iirc the pyramid scene was a lot shorter/faster, but that's by the grace of reading and books rather than animation I suppose).

#silly asks #silly answers #i can't believe day breakers is what I hate least dfkjsalfjaf

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tiesandtea · 4 years ago

Photo

SUEDE: Style & Substances

Alternative Press, May 1997 (no. 106). Mag cover. Written by Dave Thompson. Archived here.

Suede Give Us A Glimmer...

Bleeding through the debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. Dave Thompson travels to London to discover why Suede are one of the few bands that matter in an age of stars who are "just like you."

Brett Anderson leans against an amplifier, hands in pocket, shoulders hunched. To his left, the rest of Suede are playing Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross"; to his right, a television crew is fiddling with camera angles. He wants a cigarette, but he never smokes this close to showtime. Instead, he swings a keychain and glowers into the monitors. It's rehearsal time in Studio Four, a theater-sized room as the BBC, and the only person who's enjoying himself is an increasingly rotund-looking Jools Holland. He's the host of this evening's show, and he's away in another room entirely.

Later...With Jools Holland is a British TV institution. Less than three years old, it has nevertheless sewn up a comfortable niche somewhere between the chart-conscious grooviness of Top of the Pops and the more indulgent pastures of MTV Unplugged. It's a showcase for bands to run through a handful of new songs, play a favorite or two and give a taste of their live prowess without boring the unconverted senseless. Boring themselves senseless, of course, is another matter entirely, and as Suede are counted into the third rehearsal of their opening song "Trash," you can almost sense the desperation in Anderson's face. Then the action starts, and he's utterly transformed. Though he's barely moving and scarcely singing, he's conveying an intensity that explodes from his very presence, drawing the most disinterested eyes in his direction. Even the soundmen look up from their meters, and the camera crew compete for his undying attention. If Anderson weren't a rock star, he'd make a great lunatic. But because he is a rock star...well, he's probably a lunatic anyway. You would be, too, in his shoes. If the 1990s have given us anything, it's the demystification of the rock star. From the boy-next-door Weezers to the angst-ridden whiners, the message is the same: I'm no different from you; I'm no better than you; and, of course, I'm just as screwed up as you. Enter, or more properly, re-enter Suede, with their third album, Coming Up (Columbia). And all that hard work reducing idols to idiots counts for nothing. Because Suede couldn't be "just like you" even if they wanted to. Bleeding through the "is he?/isn't he?" debate about vocalist Brett Anderson's sexuality and the "does he?/doesn't he?" of his rumored drug intake, the overall glamour with which society equates a fucked-up lifestyle drapes Suede like a second skin. The scent of teen spirit clings to them, the doomed romanticism of consumptive youth which peaked on their last album, 1994's Dog Man Star, and peeks through the stunning Coming Up. Suede deal in emotional extremes, from the A Clockwork Orange apocalypse of their "We Are The Pigs" video in which armed hooligans howl through a burning industrial landscape while Suede gaze down from giant video screens, to the incandescent loneliness of the current "Saturday Night" video, in which a London subway station is transformed into a rave to which the band have not been invited. The band's junkie chic is as apparent in the stoned immaculate presentation of their latest wasted-youth album-cover artwork, as it is in the gorgeously gaunt frame which Anderson angles for the television cameras. Add a live show that oozes subversive glamour; couple that with the fearless decadence of Anderson's greatest lyrics, and whether it's all an act or not, Suede are a walking advertisement for the joyful sins of sleaze. Backstage in the bowels of the BBC, Anderson sighs. He's heard all this before. "Yeah, you can look at it like that, but that's other people's interpretation of it, and that's their problem. You can't look at yourself through other people's eyes, then worry about what you say through their ears; you've got to have some self-belief in what you are." Which is, right now, the biggest thing on 10 legs. Across Europe and the Far East, Coming Up charted at No.1 and has already outsold both its predecessors. Three singles have kept the pot boiling ever since, and the current Suede line-up (their fifth on record since their 1990 "Be My God" 7-inch single debut) is their strongest yet. Like Brian Eno's departure from Roxy Music, founding guitarist Bernard Butler's exit did not so much rid the band of one creative spark, as open the door for the flowering of another. Anderson's unequivocal grasping of the reins, only partly aided by the recruitment of guitarist Richard Oakes, may have diluted Suede's overall sound, but it has sharpened their vision to a razor's edge. The further addition of keyboardist Neil Codling fills the gaps that teen maestro Oakes couldn't plug; the Simon Gilbert/Mat Osman rhythm section is a thunderous roar that never lets up; and Coming Up is unmistakably the sound of the same great band that recorded Dog Man Star. The difference is, Anderson affirms, they've stopped pissing around. "After Dog Man Star, everyone thought we were going to do an operetta or something like that. But you get things out of your system. We wanted to refocus the band, the fact that we were virtually starting again; we wanted to readjust the basics." And did it work? "You can't completely divorce yourself from your past. I haven't got the memory of a goldfish; I was aware that I'd made two albums before it. But it felt fresh, and it felt as though we were making the record away from a lot of the crap you have to deal with, away from the spotlight, which was great. Plus...", and here he gestures to new arrivals Codling and Oakes, "... there's less of an obsession with self-importance, which was definitely a change in the band. The last two albums were quite precious and self-important, and that can be good and that can be bad." Ah, preciousness. Plough through five years of Suede press and the buzzwords leap out: "superficial", "fake", "David Bowie" - three hollow sides to the same soulless coin. But most of the people who call Suede "pretentious" are the same ones who fancy the Spice Girls. And the closest those cynics get to class is the corridor outside the school room. "It does bother us a bit," says Anderson. "People always want to polarize bands into camps, and what I always find objectionable, even with journalists who are pro-Suede, is, they always want to write about us as an alternative to this good, honest musicianship going on elsewhere, which kind of implies that there isn't any good, honest musicianship going on within Suede." Anderson resents that implication, just as he resents the accusations of vanity that are flung at him with equal frequency - the two go hand in hand, after all. "People ask, 'Are you vain?' Hang on, let me turn the question around. If you were going to appear on television in front of five million people, you'd probably look in a mirror to see what you look like. You'll brush your hair and put a bit of make-up on because you don't want to look like a pig. Does that mean you're vain? I don't think it does. "Ninety-nine percent of my career thought is dedicated to thinking about music; a very tiny percentage is spent on image. I may go shopping once a month; but while I don't think we're the honest blokes down the pub, we're not kooky weirdos either. We're just what we are." A decent image, though, is still worth a thousand songs (ask Marilyn Manson), and if it's not their Englishness that holds Suede back in the U.S., then it has to be their appearance. They look weird. Catch the "Beautiful Ones" video: Codling apes the same abstracted pose of diffidence and boredom that once made a star of Sparks' Ron Mael; and Osman and Oakes look like they're trying to extinguish a particularly persistent cigarette end. Their singer is fey. Imagine Bryan Ferry if a stick insect stole his trousers. Their music is arty. And they come on like they're somehow special, so special that America poses little interest or challenge to Suede. Other bands make no secret of their desire to crack the country, nor do they hide their disgust when they fail. Suede, though, never seemed bothered. Past U.S. tours (three so far) have been languid affairs, barely publicized flirtations which almost gratefully acknowledge that as far as most people are concerned, Suede might as well be a lesbian performing artist. Anderson dictates the band's Stateside manifesto: "I don't give a shit." "Don't get me wrong: please don't portray us as some sort of anti-American thing, because we're not. But as far as America is concerned, you can talk about airplay and videos, but all it really boils down to is the fact that America doesn't like Suede. And I'm not going to knock it, if they don't like it, they don't like it." And what don't they like? Kurt Cobain had a tummy ache, and a nation felt his pain. Trent Reznor's dog died, and a nation held his hand. Brett Anderson wrote songs about holes in your arm ("The Living Dead") and pantomime horses ("Pantomime Horse"); he equates love with flyaway litter ("Trash"), and he's never been in rehab. "I hate that rehab shit! That's one place where America get really suckered, with those rehab rock bands. Let me explain what going into rehab means. It means you're cool because you used to do drugs, but now you're a good lad, and you're really '90s, so you want to give them up. But it's a complete excuse, and anybody who says it or does it is a complete careerist. I don't think the public shoulg go out and buy records by people whose record companies have told them to say they're going into rehab. You want to talk about fakes and falseness in the music business; I think this rehab rock thing is such a lot of dog shit." So you don't just say no? "I can't sit here and honestly say that drugs are bad for you, because I don't believe that, and I don't think anybody with a brain believes that." He elaborates: "Smoking a bit of pot and taking a bit of LSD can open a few barriers in your mind, although I certainly don't think taking smack, taking coke or taking crack does anything. I know I've taken drugs before and looked back on it and said, 'That's fucking crap; you should have got your act together and stopped taking them.' They just numb you and turn you into a wrong-thinking fucking idiot. "But that's the whole problem with drugs, isn't it? You can't say 'drugs' because there's so many different factes to it. 'It's an aid to creativity.' Well, some of it is, and some of it isn't. You can't paint everything with one brush." As for the veneer of glamour which Suede's own observations convey, the danger that, to quote the new album's "The Chemistry Between Us," "we are young and easily led," Anderson remains equally adamant. "There's no point in trying to filter things like 'Don't talk about this, don't talk about that.' Lots of times when I'm talking about drugs, I'm talking in a pedestrian context. I'm not trying to make it into a big deal; I talk about it like I'd talk about anything else that's in this room." And though he agrees there is a moral question, he also believes it's impossible to do much about it. "The only way you can set yourself up as something moral is in the broader sense, by not treating music as this completely throwaway, meaningless thing, and not treating the sentiments expressed in the music as completely throwaway, meaningless things. "That's where I see my position morally, someone who can write a love song and actually bring a degree of warmth to someone else. You can't act as censor in your words; you just have to be positive about what you're doing and see that making records that people love, that people cling to, and that help people through sticky patches in their lives is, at the end of the day, a positive thing to do. There's very few things I think that are positive in the world, but music is one of them." And that is that. In an age when a star is only as big as his last three videos, and most stars are as interesting as a line at the post office, Suede are three albums into a career that means more to more people than any of the bickering of Suede's petty, wormwood competitors; and certainly far more than the bitter, twisted harping of their detractors. Stars shine, shit stinks, and the lowest common denominator is nothing to be proud of. No one really wants to watch Hootie feed his blowfish, but Brett Anderson spends "Saturday Night" moping around on a subway train, and it's the best thing on MTV this year. Who cares what else he gets up to? Turning as he heads for the soundstage, Anderson won't be drawn. "My drugs of choice are ginseng and chamomile tea, but don't worry. I'm going into rehab soon."

#brett anderson #mat osman #simon gilbert #richard oakes #neil codling #suede #coming up month #coming up era

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alarawriting · 5 years ago

Text

52 Project #7: Lord of the Kethrie

Moriy was on her way home by the cornfield path, when a voice hailed her. "Mage-ap! Mage-ap Moriy!"

She turned, and saw a man from the village running toward her. "Ranni! What's happened?"

He reached her, slightly out of breath. "We've been having a problem with Kethrie raids. They've stolen the crops from Wana's field and from Jumin's before we could harvest them, and they've been wrecking other people's. Could you and the Mage do something about it?"

Moriy was almost reluctant to say yes. She'd then be committed to telling Mage Willa, and Willa was not rational where the Kethrie were concerned. But duty was duty. "I don't see why not," she said, finally. "I'll tell the Mage."

Willa was in the garden, planting, when Moriy came in. "The villagers say they've got a problem with Kethrie raids."

Willa stiffened slightly, leaning back on her heels. "Faelha again." She got to her feet. "It's more than time somebody dealt with the Kethrie once and for all," she said. "And I finally have the power to do it. It's taken me a long, long time, Moriy, but I finally have the power."

***

As they prepared for the summoning rite, Moriy was plagued with misgivings. A hundred times, Willa had told her of her grudge against the Kethrie. One hundred years ago, before Willa was a mage, the Kethrie had carried off her only daughter Xathë. It was well known that most or perhaps all of the Kethrie were former humans, changed by Kethrie magic into their own long-lived kind. Xathë had been lost to the Kethrie Lord Faelha, transformed into a Kethrie, over a hundred years ago. But for Willa, it might as well have been yesterday. Her obsession with avenging her lost child had driven her to become a mage in the first place, and had never left her. Moriy was sure that wasn't healthy, but what could she do? She was only an apprentice-- it wasn't for her to judge whether her master was mentally well or not, and she knew of no other mages who could judge Willa.

Now Willa intended to use the power she'd accumulated to hurt the Kethrie, possibly to destroy Faelha. Moriy wasn't sure they deserved that. The Kethrie were nuisances, but necessary ones. Who would take the unwanted children, the bastards, the deformed, the extra mouths that the poor could not feed, if the Kethrie weren't there? There was only Willa's word for it that they took wanted children as well-- it had not happened again since Xathë was taken, more than four times Moriy's lifetime ago.

"What exactly are we going to do?" she asked at last. It was near sunset, and they were on a hill outside the village, in a clearing near the top. Willa was using dried rice to draw a pattern, a wide circle in the grass.

"We're going to summon Faelha and punish him."

"I know that, Mage-lady. You said it already. How are we going to punish him, though?"

"We're going to lay a geas on him. I haven't decided what yet, though."

"Doesn't the Kethrie Lord have magic of his own, though?"

"Of course. Help me with this sigil, Moriy, there's a dear. Just make a circular outline with the rice. I'll draw the patterns."

"If he's got magic of his own, how can you be so sure you'll defeat him?"

"What do you think I studied a hundred years for? Child, do go faster-- we have to be ready by sunset."

By the time sunset came, the sigil in rice was drawn, and Willa and Moriy had taken their places. Moriy could feel the magical force of the summoning rite, a crackle in the air like lightning, building up as Willa chanted the words of the summoning. Moriy herself stayed in place, frozen, holding the implements-- a rock, a vial of water-- that represented the Kethrie. The charge in the air intensified, and the boundaries between here and there blurred in the center of the circle.

Until, finally, Faelha arrived.

Impossibly, inhumanly, weirdly beautiful, Faelha's face was of no determinate sex, with a soft and childlike beauty made sharp by wild white hair piled high on Faelha's head, falling straight and long beneath the pile, and purple eyes like chips of amethyst. A slender, androgynous body, achingly beautiful. Faelha, lord of the Kethrie-- whose soft, beautifully inhuman face bore a startling resemblance to a human mage-lady's.

"Xathë..." Willa whispered.

"You called, I've come, mage-lady. Faelha of the Kethrie is bound to your service, at least so long as it amuses me to be." Knifelike smile. "So what shall it be, Mage Willa? A question answered? A task performed? Or do you wish merely to feast your eyes on my beauty?"

Moriy half-sighed. Never mind that Faelha looked, if anything, more woman than man; she wouldn't mind spending the night feasting her eyes on Faelha's beauty. But Willa's voice broke the spell. "You are not Faelha. I remember. Faelha had wide shoulders and wide hips, thick legs, red hair--"

"I remember something like that, a long time ago." Faelha made a dismissive motion. "That was the other Faelha. The one before me. I'm Faelha now."

"When? When did you become..."

"When?" Faelha laughed, like breaking glass. "You people are so preoccupied with time! How should I know `when'? There's no `when' in Underhill. All there ever is, is `now'."

"You're a woman."

"Is that a question? I feel no real need to respond to such stupidity if it wasn't a question."

"A question," Willa replied.

Faelha spun around. "Man and woman, old and young. I am the all-powerful powerless Lord of the Kethrie, child of all dualities, bright denizen of the dark, black denizen of the day."

"But you were born a woman, weren't you?"

"Don't bother me with stupid questions. I was never truly born at all until I was born into the Kethrie."

"You were Xathë. My daughter." Willa reached out her hand. "Xathë!"

"I am no one's daughter and no one's son."

"You're Xathë! I know it! Xathë--" Willa's voice was growing in strength and conviction. "Xathë, my baby, taken from me a hundred years ago--"

"I am Faelha and none other."

"You're Xathë!" She stepped out of the circle, ran toward Faelha-- and Faelha vanished.

"Into Underhill," Willa snarled. "No, by the gods! I won't lose her again! Moriy!"

"I'm here.

"We're going to Underhill." She kicked apart the circle of rice.

"How can you be sure it's Xathë? The Kethrie are tricksters-- maybe Faelha just looked that way--"

"No. It wasn't an illusion. I was looking for that-- I'd have Sensed it. It was Xathë." Willa started off down the hill. "By the time the sun rises tomorrow, I will have Xathë back."

***

Underhill was under every hill at once. This hill would do as well as any other, Willa said. So in twilight they descended to the bottom, and Willa spoke the words of a rite to open gates as they stood in front of a rockface. The rock slid aside, showing them a tunnel.

"This is only the entrance to Underhill. After this, there are three magical gates in Underhill proper," Willa warned Moriy. "Do you have your knife?"

"Yes, Mage-lady," Moriy mumbled, unhappily. She was tired, and she didn't want to spend the night roaming Underhill. More than that, though, she feared Willa's obsession. Faelha had feared it too, she thought. It was difficult to tell emotion on a Kethrie face‑‑ they were mobile like the faces of the mad, or a running brook, with their mobility more unreadable than blankness; but Moriy had been studying magic for five years now, and she was advanced enough to have some of the gift of Sensing. She had Sensed Faelha's fear. Fear made people-- and undoubtedly Kethrie, who were not that different from people-- desperate, irrational, dangerous. And Faelha was dangerous enough without fear reckoned in. Was Willa's obsession pushing both of them in over their heads?

"Mage-lady, are you sure this is a good idea? Have you been this way before?"

"Once," Willa said. "I came this way once before, without magic. But I haven't forgotten."

Willa started to walk forward into the darkness, and was brought up short by a Kethrie looking like a small deformed man, who seemed to materialize out of the shadows directly in front of her. He raised a spear to her face. Instinctively Moriy's hand went to her knife, and she moved forward to protect the mage.

"Halt! Who goes there!"

"I am Mage-lady Willa of Ada Village, and this is my apprentice Moriy. Let me pass."

"No mage nor mortal shall pass this way without a token," the Kethrie intoned. "Do you have a token?"

"Yes," Willa said, and removed from her pocket a small object. She spoke a Word, tossing the object at the Kethrie. Moriy went beet-red. The object was a curse-charm, to cause impotence in men. The Kethrie's spear wilted, and Willa lunged forward, grabbing the startled dwarf by the ear.

"Ow!" He struggled and kicked. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"No, by the Holy Names, until you swear a geas. I charge you to answer three questions, speaking only truth and all the truth, without misdirection or falsehood, else that curse be on you and your spear all your life. Do you swear?" She tugged on his ear.

"Ow! Ow! Yes, I swear, I swear!"

"Good." Willa released him.

"Can you make him do that?" Moriy asked. "I thought you couldn't make a Kethrie swear to tell the truth. Because they have unreliable natures. Don't they?"

"Oh, this one will tell the truth, if he ever wants to enjoy loving attentions again. I didn't mean only the spear in his hand when I cursed him." Willa smiled at Moriy. "It's only an herb-witch charm, maybe not true magus art, but I find simple herb-witch charms to be the most effective in dealing with these creatures."

"Are you going to ask your questions, or aren't you?" the Kethrie demanded.

"Yes. The first is, what is the query of the Third Gate?"

He smiled. "The ritual of the Daily Wheel," he said smugly.

"Good," Willa said. "I thought so." The Kethrie lost the smug expression and stared at her pop-eyed. "The second is complex. After one passes the third gate, do any more gates stand between one and Faelha's palace?"

"Don't ask that, mage-lady," the creature whined. "Please don't."

"I ask, and you are charged to answer. Tell me true."

"Please--"

"Would you like to take that limp thing back to your love-friend?"

He winced. "No. No gates after the third."

"Good. Come on, Moriy." Willa gestured for her to follow into the tunnel.

"Ask my third!" the creature wailed.

"I lied. I haven't got a third. Moriy, are you coming or not?"

"Mage Willa--" Moriy knew perfectly well that if the hapless Kethrie never answered a third question, Willa's geas would remain on him. "You can't leave him like this!"

"Can't I? His kind stole Xathë and made her one of their own. I can't forgive that. And they live a long time-- this one himself may have been on that journey."

"Have pity!" the Kethrie wailed.

"Mage Willa, this one hasn't done you any harm. Besides, if you recover Xathë, you won't have a grudge against the Kethrie, will you?"

"I shall always. They took my baby. But very well, if it's that important to you--" She turned to the Kethrie. "What becomes of your kind if Faelha is Unnamed?"

Unnamed! A swift thrill of horror went up Moriy's spine. Willa meant to Unname Faelha? The Kethrie screamed. "No, no, no! Don't ask that, don't ask!"

"You would all cease to be," Willa said softly, maliciously. "The magic that creates you, that keeps you alive, is bound in Faelha. And since you did not answer-- I did-- my geas still holds. Come, Moriy."

The creature was on his knees, moaning. Cease to be? "Go on, Mage-lady, I'll catch up. I want to ask a question of my own."

"To free him of the geas?" Willa sounded slightly contemptuous. "You have a soft heart, Moriy. Perhaps too soft. Do as you like." She turned and walked into the darkness.

"You'll ask me another question? You'll free me of her curse?" the Kethrie pleaded, piteously.

"Yes. My question's really simple, but you have to answer completely and totally truthfully, or Faelha might be Unnamed."

The creature went white. "You would curse us so?"

"Not a curse, a prediction. And not if you answer truthfully." I hope, Moriy thought. "The question is, Do the Kethrie ever take wanted children?"

"No."

"That sounds like a pretty glib answer. Are you sure--"

"It's in our deepest places, in the magic that makes us what we are. There must be Unwant or a child can never be ours. No Human wanted by Humans can become true Kethrie." His spear straightened as the geas lifted.

"And is Faelha true Kethrie?"

"That's two questions. I'm under no geas."

"I know, but it's really important."

"Faelha is Kethrie. Everything we are is bound into the power of the Faelha. Is your real question `Was Faelha a child of Unwant?'"

"Yes. I guess you could say it is."

"Then I answer you true. The Faelha's heir, the child who will be Faelha, must be a physically perfect Human-- but there must be Unwant or we cannot take that one, either. No child can be taken by the Kethrie without Unwant in the hearts of all its kin."

"Thank you." Moriy went past him into the dark tunnel, chanted a spell for sight in darkness, and ran to catch up with Willa, troubled. The Kethrie spoke truth-- for all its conniving, it knew better than to lie with such stakes at risk. And that meant that Willa had not wanted Xathë, then.

***

Willa was standing by a gate, which was guarded by two gargoyle-like Kethrie. "There you are, Moriy. I've been waiting."

"Sorry," Moriy said meekly. "You could have gone on without me."

"No, I need you for the second gate. And I might need you after, in dealing with Faelha." She turned from Moriy before Moriy could ask how exactly she did plan to deal with Faelha, and approached the door. "I seek entry!"

"All who enter must answer the door's riddle, or die," one of the gargoyles said sternly.

"This is Moriy, my apprentice. As is my fate, so is hers."

"Mage Willa!" Moriy was shocked. If Willa died now, Moriy's life was forfeit as well.

"So you don't have to answer a riddle, too," Willa said. "They'd change it on you. You're safer this way."

The door sprouted a face, a dull-looking wooden thing that spoke in a deep slow voice. "Riddle me this," the door groaned. "What goes through the door without pinching itself? What sits on the stove without burning itself? What sits on the table and is not ashamed?"

"They've changed the passriddle," Willa told Moriy.

"Well, do you know this one?" Moriy asked nervously.

"Answer my riddle," the door said.

"Of course I know it." Willa turned to the door. "The sun, is the answer."

"Correct." The door didn't look happy about it. It swung open, slowly and with what Moriy sensed was bad grace.

"There's three gates we have to get through?" Moriy asked as they stepped through.

"Right. Two now."

"And then what?"

"Then I find Xathë and take her home."

"But-- if she really is Faelha--"

"Don't worry about it. I've got it all worked out." They stepped out into what looked like a pebble path through a gloomy forest. "Just follow me, Moriy, no matter what you see. Nothing can hurt you if you stay on the path."

"You're not going to Unname Faelha, are you?"

"Moriy!" Willa turned, her voice snappish. "Will you pay attention? I've told you, don't worry about it!" She spun back and marched down the path, her voice still sharp. "Now come!"

Moriy walked resolutely, as creatures both grotesque and sublime called to her, trying to entice or scare her off the path. Five years as Willa's apprentice had taught her that she could trust the mage with her life-- and yet--

What were they doing in this maze? Why were they on a quest to find Xathë? If Xathë was Faelha, wasn't she, or he, or whatever, happy enough already?

"The next task will be yours, Moriy," Willa said. "I got as far as the second gate, but there was a trial by combat."

"Ah." Moriy nodded. This was something she understood. She was a big girl and muscular, and long before Willa had taken her as apprentice she had been a champion wrestler among the children. Though a mage-ap's training was demanding, Willa had encouraged her to keep up with her physical skills as well. Too many mages, Willa among them, were helpless in a physical fight. Moriy touched the knife at her side, lightly. If it came to a fight, she was prepared.

They came within sight of the second gate, and Moriy revised her opinion of her own preparation. Two Kethrie guards were standing watch, and there was a huge, shambling hulk of a Kethrie in front of the door. Moriy swallowed. "Is that--"

"They had an ordinary Kethrie, last time," Willa whispered. "Blast and wither. I shouldn't have mentioned it." She shook her head. "Xathë, why are you fighting me? It's Mother, dearest. I've come to take you home."

"She can't hear you."

"Oh yes she can. If Xathë is Faelha, she knows everything that goes on in this domain." Willa sagged and sat down on a rock, hard. "And she's set a task too hard for you‑‑"

Moriy sized up the big Kethrie. She was unsure of their goal-- but she didn't want to disappoint the wizard, and she had to believe Willa's intentions were honorable, in the end. Willa was a good woman. She wouldn't do something as destructive as Unnaming someone‑‑ that must have been an idle threat. "He looks beatable," she finally said, Sensing out her enemy's limits. "Big, but slow. And stupid as a brick."

"You think so?"

An image of Faelha flowed to life in front of them, a ghostly illusion. "Why don't you both go home?" Faelha asked. "Underhill is no place for your kind."

"Xathë!" Willa reached for the image.

"Xathë me no Xathës, I am no child of yours. Now go away!"

"If we can pass the gates, you cannot deny us passage," Willa said.

"You endanger us, mage Willa. You threaten and confuse. You shall not pass through the gates."

"If we can defeat the tests of the gates, you cannot stop us."

"I warn you once, mage. Get out. Go home. While you have legs to carry you and eyes to see your path."

"We shall not. Xathë, I will free you."

"I need no freeing! I am no Xathë! I am Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie, and if you do not leave my realm I'll kill you!" The image sparked with fury.

"You cannot kill us until we've passed the three gates," Willa said. The image winked out. "Come, Moriy."

The guards challenged them. "Who would pass must win trial by combat!"

"I'm the Mage-lady's champion," Moriy said, stepping forward and trying not to be too frightened. She was 20 years of age. Five years ago, before she entered Willa's service, she had been living on the streets of the city, far away from here. She had been big for a young girl, but there were many bigger, and so she'd had to learn how to defeat those bigger than she was. "What's the combat?"

"Two falls out of three, against the Yorthal, champion of the Kethrie!"

Two falls out of three. Right. As the creature shambled forward, she calculated where she needed to apply leverage. Its hands reached out for her, but she darted under them and threw all her force at one of its legs, pushing it off-balance. Once she had it precariously balanced, all it took was a good shove and it fell over.

It got up, with a menacing expression on its face. Moriy stood outside its easy reach. This time, it protected its leg, so Moriy played a dodging game, trying to work her way under its defenses. It twisted about repeatedly, grabbing for her. Once she was careless, and it hit her-- a glancing blow, as its leverage was terrible, but strong enough that it sent her flying. Moriy staggered back and fell on her backside.

"Moriy!" Willa shouted. "You can't lose now!"

Moriy got up as the Yorthal lumbered at her again, and dodged out of its way. It swung for her, but she leapt back, weaving and bending. Her heart pounded-- if the Yorthal hit her again, it'd be over. So she was careful, but not overcautious-- she needed to take risks to win. She lured it and tangled it, making it overbalance itself in the course of trying to reach her, with its legs twisted and its arms out and waving. Then she grabbed one of the arms and pulled, as hard as she could. The Yorthal, off-balanced anyway, toppled forward. Moriy dodged out of the way as it crashed into the mud and splattered her.

"My champion wins. Open the gates!" Willa ordered.

There was a storm brewing on the other side. Moriy could feel the charge building up in the air. "The next step will be the easiest," Willa said, as they stepped into the wind. "Though they think it'll be impossible."

"The ritual of the Daily Wheel?"

Wind built and whipped at their hair, trying to steal Willa's words away. "Yes. They don't expect me to know what ritual they mean."

"But-- even I know the Daily Wheel!" The Daily Wheel was a rite spoken at births and deaths, invoking the cycle of nature. It had only the magical potency that birth and death rites gained through constant usage-- it was a rite, not a spell.

Willa shook her head. "So do they. But none of you know it all." She began to run. Moriy followed suit, as the wind built to an even higher pitch, and the rain began to fall lightly.

"Why are we running?"

"Because we're close!"

The storm broke. The heavens-- or rather, the roof of Underhill, the skin of the Earth-- opened, and drenched them. Wind whipped rain into their faces. The last gate had no guards, but no handles either-- it could only be opened by magic. "Moriy! Draw a protective circle and don't leave it, whatever you do!"

As Moriy obeyed, Willa stood in front of the gate, and began to pace a circle, quartered by a cross. She chanted. The words were the Daily Wheel, and Moriy frowned. What had she meant, none of them knew it all? The words she spoke were none but the ones Moriy knew.

"Night become day.

Day become night.

Girl become woman.

Dark become light.

Boy become man.

Woman become crone.

Man become dust

And leave her alone.

Let the Circle turn."

She walked the circle around and around, until the borders and inside quarterlines of it seemed to glow, seemed to spin. Then she stopped in the center of the circle, at the place where the crossed lines met, as the circle spun clockwise around her. Willa threw her hands up to the sky, and shouted a second verse-- one Moriy did not know.

"Woman to girl!

Man become boy!

Sun return east!

Backwards we twirl

As shadows turn solid

And dust becomes man

Let the Circle turn backward!"

There was a sound like lightning, cracking the air, and the wheel Willa stood inside stopped and reversed direction.

Time in Underhill was weak enough to be wrenched backward, but the strain was tremendous. The plants outside Willa's and Moriy's protective circles grew tiny and disappeared into the ground as the gates crumbled to dust.

"Spin forward!" Willa shouted, and the circle she had made stopped, and faded. She stepped out of it. "It's safe, Moriy. Come on!"

Moriy stared disbelievingly at Willa as she left the circle. "You-- turned time backwards. That can't be how you're supposed to do it..."

"It's not. The gate recognizes Kethrie who speak the Wheel, and lets them through, but it wouldn’t open for us, Daily Wheel or no, because we’re not Kethrie. I had to get creative for us." She shrugged. "Reversing the Wheel wouldn't work outside Underhill-- time's too strong outside. As it is, there'll be earthquakes out in our world‑‑ but if I get to Xathë, it'll be worth it."

"Earthquakes? We're supposed to protect the village, not give it earthquakes!"

"I don't think anyone'll be killed. Moriy-- this is why I became a mage. The only reason. I wanted revenge on the Kethrie-- I never dreamed I could recover Xathë. But that's all I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed. I'll have my daughter, whatever the cost!"

They stood on a hill, overlooking a vast city. On another hill, far beyond the city, there was a palace. An army of Kethrie were surging up the hill toward them, armored and equipped with magical weapons. None of the weapons were of iron, but stone and leather and magical blades would kill them just as dead as steel weapons would.

"How are we going to get through that?" Moriy demanded. She was badly shaken. Didn't Willa care at all for the village she'd protected the past twenty years? Moriy cared, and she'd only lived there five.

Willa laughed. "Faelha!" she called. "I know the laws of your domain! I have passed through the gates, so I may go where I wish!" She turned to Moriy. "Take my hand!"

Moriy reached to her mistress. As their hands touched, it was as if an electric current went through her--

--and they were elsewhere. Inside a vast hall, as impossibly beautiful as its sole occupant.

Faelha stood before them, as androgynous as before, despite Moriy's knowledge of Faelha's original sex. All the Kethrie were changed from human norms. Most became grotesque gargoyles. Faelha had apparently been beautified by the change, but given more than one sex. The features, neither precisely male nor female, and yet not neutered either, were now twisted in a mocking smile. "You have come a long way to see me, Mage Willa," Faelha said softly. "You have damaged my world and your own."

"Xathë." Willa reached out. "Xathë. My daughter--"

"You abandoned your daughter to the Kethrie. Did you not? Born out of wedlock, the child would shame you. You begged the Kethrie to come--"

"I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!" Willa screamed. "How do you know? You were a baby! You can't remember what I said, what I did--"

"I am Faelha. I am the Kethrie. All that my predecessor did, all that all my ancestors did, I know. I don't remember you myself-- but I do know that the human mother of this Faelha gave her child away. The fact that she later sought to take the child back is irrelevant. Once a parent gives a child to us, that child is Kethrie for all eternity."

"No!" Willa's face was dark with fury. "I won't lose you again! Xathë--"

"I am no Xathë of yours! I am Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie! I have indulged you thus far-- my debt to you, for giving Xathë to the Kethrie and to her new life, my true life. I could have destroyed you at any time. But I showed forbearance. That is about to end."

Faelha was lying, Moriy realized suddenly. Passion gave power to magic, and Willa's passion was a mad obsession. Faelha could not stand against her approach, even with all the resources of Underhill.

"Go away. Now! Before it's too late!"

Willa pressed her palms together and began chanting. "Rannian, Kilian, Dagarris, Konj, Rachelis, Kandra, Lohara, Kyri, Aquiel, Sariel, Jabaran, Lacan..." The names were of powerful beings-- called demons in some places, and saints, angels, or even gods in others. Calling on the names gave Willa power, which began to build around her. Hastily, Moriy drew a protective circle around herself. If there was going to be magical combat between Faelha and Willa, no protection she could give herself would really be enough‑‑ but she had to do something.

Faelha hurled magical energies at them, trying to disrupt Willa's chant. "Madwoman," Faelha hissed. "Go home! You risk your life and your apprentice's! Leave me be! Go home!"

Nothing stopped Willa's chant. Not Faelha's transformations into serpents and wyrms and firedogs; not the cracking of the floor underneath her, for her own protection was a shield of energy, and did not need the pattern of a sigil. But Moriy did, and when the floor shattered, her protection was destroyed. She went flying, thrown by an energy backlash into a marble column.

"I'll kill your apprentice!" Faelha screamed.

Willa continued the chant.

In that moment, sick and dizzy from the blow to her head, Moriy saw her own death; concentrated energies at Faelha's fingertips, and Willa chanting on, oblivious. Or ignoring her. Willa would sacrifice anyone to recover Xathë‑‑ even the village she had worked to protect so long; even her own apprentice.

Faelha hurled the gathered levinbolt at Willa, who simply absorbed it into her growing power. "Should I kill the 'prentice because the master is a fool?" Faelha raged, and Moriy realized, shocked, that the Kethrie Lord did not want to kill her. "Get out, mage, or I'll kill you!"

The power Willa had gathered turned the air white around her. "I Unname thee," she said, and the power had a focus. The words echoed, reverberated, cutting out the underpinnings of reality.

Faelha screamed. With the power Willa had built up, simply speaking the words had cut Faelha off from the powers of the Kethrie Lord. Moriy tried to get to her feet, but the world was spinning, and she fell back. Mage Willa, no! she wanted to scream, though her voice would not obey her.

"Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie, I Unname thee. By the names of St. Arion and St. Amadeus, I Unname thee. None bear the name Faelha. None bear the title Lord of the Kethrie."

"Oh no no no," Faelha wailed, and seemed to crumple inward. "Have mercy, mage-lady! Mercy! Don't take my name!"

Only by Unnaming Faelha could the Kethrie Lord be Named Xathë again. Moriy knew now what Willa intended: to make Faelha a nameless cipher, and then reshape what was left into Xathë, lost in infancy a hundred years ago. And she didn't care who she killed to do it-- a village, her own apprentice, or even an entire race. If Faelha only died, a new one could be appointed. They were not immortal, after all, merely long-lived. But if Faelha was Unnamed, none could ever bear that name again. And Faelha was the Kethrie, the linchpin of the magic that preserved them. If there were no more Faelha, there would be no more Kethrie.

"By the names of St. Belial and St. Barradis, I Unname thee. None bear the name Faelha. By the names of St. Charles and St. Corrie, I Unname thee. None bear the name Faelha. By the names of St. Dariel and St. Doraine..."

"No," Faelha begged, falling prostrate at Willa's feet. "I beg of you, no! Please! My people-- my people--"

As Willa continued to chant the names of saints, beings of power, Faelha screamed. The beautiful features had dulled, and the luminescent purple eyes had turned glazed and grey. Willa continued, relentlessly. Her magical shield was gone, all her power focused into ripping a Name out of the cosmos, but Faelha no longer had the power to fight her. From the place where she'd been thrown, Moriy could see Faelha writhing in anguish as the name was stripped away.

Where are the Kethrie? Why aren't they stopping this? Moriy thought wildly. Someone could stop Willa physically now-- her shield was gone, and she wasn't paying attention. Surely, the Unnaming of Faelha was the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, and surely they could stop it if they were here-- so why didn't they come? Or could they? Were they bound somehow? Had they fallen into some helpless stasis when the rite began?

Faelha had spared Moriy's life.

She had to stop this.

Moriy staggered to her feet. The world spun wildly, and she had to lean on the wall. Willa chanted on, and Faelha sobbed, crumpled on the floor. Willa had gotten to saints' names that started with S. When she reached Z, it would be ended, and Faelha would be no more, Unnamed forever.

How could Moriy stop the rite? In her condition, how could she disable Willa? Willa was no fighter, but Moriy couldn't see straight-- and Willa was insane. She would strike Moriy down if Moriy tried to interfere.

Unless Moriy struck her down first. If she went in with her knife and struck while Willa's attention was elsewhere...

No! There must be another way! she thought, begging, praying to all the gods to give her another solution. There was none. Willa was on W. If Moriy didn't act now, a whole race would be wiped out.

She staggered forward, as Willa pronounced the name of St. Yuaris, and plunged her knife into Willa's back.

The energy Willa had built within herself backlashed through Moriy, grounding itself. For a moment, she was transfixed, magical energy sleeting through her body and paralyzing her. Then the energy was gone, and she and Willa collapsed.

***

A soft moaning woke her. Moriy struggled to sit up. Her head felt somewhat better, and she could see properly. Willa lay on the floor in a heap, blood oozing out around the knife. Moriy ripped off part of Willa's cloak, pulled out the knife, and bound the wound.

"Oh, Mage-lady, Mage-lady," she whispered, agonized. Willa was an old woman. Magic had kept her middle-aged and fit, but Moriy's blow had cost her too much vitality-- she seemed to have shrunken into a wizened crone, one who could not survive a knife in the back. Though Moriy had been careful to strike no vital organs, the blow itself was deadly.

She looked up. Could Faelha--? But Faelha was sitting in a fetal ball, rocking back and forth, moaning. The beauty was gone, leaving Faelha gray and somehow strangely unformed.

"Who am I?" the mostly-unmade creature asked. "Who am I, who am I, who am I?"

"Faelha," Moriy said. "You are Faelha, Lord of the Kethrie. That's your Name."

With that, the magical energy Willa had lost to the ground seemed to rush out of the walls, the floor, the aether itself, and fall into Faelha. The features changed without truly altering, becoming those hard and beautiful lineaments of the Kethrie Lord. The eyes lost their glaze and shone forth like violet gems. Slowly Faelha straightened and stood.

"Mage-ap Moriy of Ada Village." Faelha's voice was uncharacteristically soft and gentle. "You struck down your own master to save me, didn't you? To save all the Kethrie. And you gave me back my name."

"I couldn't let her kill all the Kethrie," Moriy said, feeling tongue-tied. "Anyway, you didn't kill me when you could have."

"I did not do enough for you to warrant this." Faelha's head shook in negation, or perhaps amazement. "Ask of me three boons. Anything in my power to give is yours."

"I want you to save Mage Willa's life," Moriy said.

Faelha looked disturbed. "So she can attack me again?"

"Please."

"I have sworn you boons." Faelha waved, and Willa filled out, her features returning to those of a middle-aged woman and the wound under the bandages closing. "It is done. Next?"

"Heal her mind, if you can. Make her forget there ever was a Xathë."

Faelha smiled, slowly. "Wise. Yes, wise." Faelha knelt and touched Willa's forehead. "Dear mother, I am dead. I died abirthing," Faelha whispered in a childlike voice. "Seek me no more, for I am gone."

"Will that-- what did you do?"

"Her daughter Xathë was stillborn. To heal the children of other women, Willa became a mage. No Kethrie stole her child. This is what she remembers."

"You can do that?"

"Not of my own will, no. Normally I only have such power over Kethrie. I must be given it over humans by a human's request. And your last?"

"Leave Ada Village alone. Don't take our crops, don't play tricks on us, just leave us."

"Fair." Faelha nodded. "Ada Village will be off-limits for your lifespan, Mage-ap Moriy." A frown darkened the beautiful features. "But don't you want anything for yourself? I could grant you wealth, fortune in love, a beautiful countenance, fame--"

"I've asked three boons already. That's all you offered."

"Oh, Moriy." Faelha smiled, almost tenderly. "Such a noble child. You will credit yourself as a mage. Here." Out of the aether, Faelha conjured a small flute on a string. "You did not ask, so I shall give. The debt I owe you is worth more than three boons paid to other people. If ever you or one you have willingly given the flute to, without trickery or force, are in grave need, play on this and I will come. But the need must be grave, or I will be angry."

"I-- I can't accept such a gift from you--"

"You must. I will bear no debts. I owe you my Name and my people's existence, Moriy; I must repay."

Faelha was right; the Kethrie could play tricks, but if they owed a debt, they were bound to repay it. "All right. I-- thank you." Moriy took the flute.

"It is owed you, nothing more." Faelha stepped back. "I will send you both home, then."

And in a moment, they were lying outside the protective wards of Willa's cottage.

Willa lay on the grass, sleeping peacefully, injuries to body and mind healed without scar. Moriy was less fortunate. The memory of Willa abandoning her to Faelha's whim would not leave. But now that Willa was free of her obsession, perhaps Moriy could forgive her for leaving her to die.

And maybe someday Moriy could forgive herself for striking her down.

She bent down and lifted the mage, carrying her inside.

#52 project #alara original writing #fantasy #fae #i'm late! i'm late!#why yes i did have a crush on David Bowie as Jareth why do you ask #written in like 1990 or something and only minimally revised #so i hope it doesn't suck

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santaclausdeadindian · 4 years ago

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Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe? What, Germany? Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything. It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird. Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

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incandescent-eden · 4 years ago

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31 Days of Horror: Distort (1)

My story from yesterday for the first day of @witch-kid-writer ‘s 31 days of horror! (The prompts are really cool, I highly recommend checking them out!)

Total word count: 1653

TW / CW for: body horror, graphic descriptions of bodily horror sounds, moments of unreality, graphic descriptions of panic attacks, fatphobia mention

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Imogen Gong was a quiet person. She had good grades, full AP classes and honors society in high school, got a partial scholarship to get into a decent college, practiced piano and violin and Chinese - the perfect image of what she was expected to be. Her parents were so pleased with how far their daughter had gotten.

For her part, Imogen wasn’t going to contradict them. Yes, I’m going to a great school, she told aunties who would cluck and congratulate her. Thank you, I’m really excited, I worked really hard. She would muster up the most emotion she can, tried to bend fatigue into pride, tried to twist empty, meaningless compliments into some amount of self-esteem.

And, as she should have prepared for, but didn’t expect, she crashed hard. Sure, her grades were still average, but the compliments dried out, and her sleep schedule became less of a schedule and more of a metronome bouncing back and forth between never sleeping and sleeping through classes, with panic attacks set as the notes. Quarter note equals sixty-six, repeat five times a day, her old piano teacher’s voice echoed in her head when her chest was tight and her muscles clenched involuntarily, and air was scarce.

If only she could play her panicked breathing as an instrument and her heart as a drum, and play a one person symphony orchestra, so she could become famous and rich and drop out entirely.

As it stood, she dropped her theory of computation class her third year of college and, in an effort to avoid having any eight am classes, re-enrolled the second semester that year in Professor Tenner’s class.

Professor Leonard Tenner was a curious man, in the way that he was absolutely, bizarrely average. He wore rectangle glasses and an ill-fitting suit every day he taught, and boyish white cheeks and balding brown hair. He spoke with a mild voice, with an accent that was painfully American, but just standard enough that his dialect gave no indication as to where in the United States he was actually from.

Imogen sat slumped in the second row.

“So suppose, I have this graph. The shortest path, then…” Professor Tenner would say with a small smile, as he drew the graph in faded whiteboard markers on a grayed out whiteboard, filling in circular nodes.

Professor Tenner looked up from the board for a second, his light eyes boring into Imogen. “Is everyone following along alright?” he asked with a mild smile.

The words that crawled from his mouth twitched and writhed, as though laughing, curling into themselves and over and into the students’ ears.

“I hope you’re all getting this information,” Professor Tenner continued. He traced the edges between the graph nodes, added number weights full of circular two’s and eight’s.

Each graph had different colors, pallid red and green and purple and blue graphs full of crossed, curving lines. The flat, gray whiteboard was stretched and distorted with the graphs scrambling over every inch.

“The shortest path, then…” said Professor Tenner, again and again and again, pacing from one end of the classroom to the other.

“The shortest path, then…” All the while, the graphs continued to twist.

Imogen’s pencil shook. He was going too fast; she couldn’t possibly write down the question that quickly.

“This will be on the exam, so make sure you know it,” said Professor Tenner. Imogen’s intestines twisted, as cross as the garish graphs that stared mockingly back at her with their incomprehensible paths of varying lengths. She hadn’t realized exams were coming on so soon.

The shortest path. The shortest path was...

“Oh, would you look at the time?” Professor Tenner said, at last. “I’ll see you all in class next week. Remember, the homework is due on Tuesday, and my office hours are Thursday from three to five!” His voice could barely be heard over the rush of students packing up to leave.

Imogen silently packed her things and went back to her room.

“Everything alright?” Cathy, her roommate, asked, when Imogen entered. Cathy was already seated at her desk, her psychology textbook cracked open, glasses smudged.

“Just tired,” Imogen replied, collapsing on her bed. The mattress was stiff. Her stuffed rabbit, Floppy, teetered precariously on the edge of the unlofted bed, moments away from falling to the cold tile floor covered in shed hair.

“I feel that,” Cathy said, highlighting a passage of her notes. “I’ve been studying my ass off for this exam.”

“I’m sure you’ll do great,” Imogen said, crawling under her blankets. The twisting in her torso would not go away. “I’m going to take a nap. Stayed up til four last night trying to do Tenner’s homework.”

“God,” muttered Cathy piteously.

Imogen made a noncommittal sound in agreement, curled into a ball to try and stop the cramping.

When she awoke, it was dark, and Cathy was gone. Probably at dinner or in the library. She checked her phone: notifications from Twitter, an email from her stats professor reminding everyone to bring a pen to class, and a grading notification from Tenner’s class. With a frown, Imogen checked the grade notification. The soft blue glow of the screen was cold, despite the thick blankets in which Imogen wrapped herself.

Her skin prickled with heat and ice simultaneously, staring at the impossibly curved score that danced on the screen as her hand shook.

Taking a small breath, Imogen locked her phone, throwing herself back into darkness. The twisting in her intestines worsened.

She was vaguely aware of Floppy lying on the dirty floor, but Imogen was too numb to poke her hand out of the blankets that swallowed her and rescue the stuffed rabbit. The world was spinning.

Imogen closed her eyes. Willed the spiraling graphs to disappear. Begged the curved, bloated, distorted score from her last homework to have been wrong, to stop glaring at her from behind shut eyelids.

Her breathing started to get faster. Quarter note equals forty, then fifty, then sixty six. In out, in out, in out, gasping and gasping and gasping, and suddenly it’s not her piano teacher’s voice she hears, but Professor Tenner’s.

“The shortest path, then…”

Imogen flipped on her light, shaking as she stumbled out of bed. The world itself wasn’t moving, not logically, but the straight path to the bathroom turned into a twisted maze, spinning around her with every wobbly step.

The bright fluorescent lights of the bathroom washed everything out as Imogen leaned on the counter, hovering over the sink. In, out, in out, the breaths came, faster and faster, but then - finally! - slowing down. Her skin was a pale green in the bathroom mirror, the same green as Professor Tenner’s markers.

Faded, weak, a shadow of the bright green the marker once must have been. And used to draw twisting graphs, twisting and twisting like Imogen’s intestines.

Imogen watched her eyes in the mirror, watched as the dark brown shifted from hopeless to glaring. If she could just stop cramping, she could start to do something.

To her surprise, her organs complied. The pain went away immediately.

Imogen blinked. Pinched herself.

Watched with glee as the skin gave way, stretched and curled around her fingers as she twisted. Laughed, even.

This had to be a joke. She tugged at her fingers, her thumbs, her palms.

Pop.

She had always struggled to play tenths on the piano, but no more.

Gazing in the mirror incredulously, Imogen pulled at her cheeks, watched as her lips curled into a smile.

She could get taller, she realized, stretching herself by several inches. Crack, crack, pop, went her spine. Her face slid into a wider smile even as her cheeks flattened. Mom had always wanted her to be taller, thinner. Now she could be.

For a second, her smile lingered, until the homework score flashed in front of her eyes once more.

The twisting in her intestines returned.

Will as she might, Imogen could not erase the pain this time. She grabbed her abdomen. Hugged it tight. Watched as her skin turned from sickly to pink from the blood rushing, twisting with her own hands this time. Twisting and twisting and twisting until the pain went away.

She kept twisting, desperately trying to erase the smooth curves of the number that flashed in her mind. Stretched her limbs outward at sharp angles, as far away from smooth curves as she could get. Pinched and pulled, faster and faster, copying the graphs Professor Tenner had scribbled on the board. Twisted her joints until they were the half-filled curlicues of her professor’s handwriting, and pinched her skin until it was the faint purple and green and red and blue of the markers.

Ignored the sounds of popping and crunching and squelching.

Imogen smiled to herself. There was no one else to smile to - she couldn’t even see where her mouth was in the mirror.

The shortest path was clear in her mind, now, an obvious path from elbow to lung to pelvis. Imogen kept shifting, rearranging, distorting herself until she had created each graph configuration of Tenner’s questions and several more.

Shortest path, longest path, minimum spanning tree, and so on. All of them were clear now.

A new number flashed before her eyes, the score she would get on this exam if the answers came as easily as they did now.

She could challenge herself more, get harder and harder questions right. Add more paths, more nodes, more edges, more cycles. Her breathing picked up again, this time from excitement - quarter note equals fifty five.

The sprawling, spiraling skin and the cracking and clacking of bones as they connected to form a new graph were barely even noticeable now. Imogen solved the shortest path from her knee to her skull, faster than before.

The shortest path, then… echoed Professor Tenner’s voice in Imogen’s mind, again and again.

#writeblr #horror #body horror #original fiction #original writing #31 days of horror #distort #body distortion horror #panic attacks #reevie writes #original story

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lightshadowverisimilitude · 5 years ago

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No excuses: POV (Happy Lights if you have it in you :P)

Happy Lights, ho! Thank you to @eak1mouse for beta and sounding boarding.

This is Loki’s POV of the scene at the end of Chapter 7 of Strange Turns. Enjoy!

~*~

Loki woke to a rhythmic motion that took him several painful moments to identify as breathing. He kept his eyes closed and maintained the illusion of unconsciousness while he pieced his fractured memories together. They were increasingly hard to hold on to, sliding in and out of time, merging with dreams and nightmares and the glow of Purpose.

He remembered being chained to a flyer, a Chitauri drone pressed suffocatingly close to the line of his back. He also remembered laying on his back in the grass under the boughs of a flowering tree, watching the sunlight turn green through the leaves. Both of those things seemed equally close and equally distant.

The air around him was quiet, but not empty. It did not smell of metallic steam, or the strange sharpness of the ships, or the offensive odor of the drones. It was a different smell, something familiar and half remembered, body odor and lightning.

When he cracked his eyes open finally, Thor was looking down at him. Loki went very still. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d woken exactly like this, his brother all glowing smiles and approval, shaking him awake for a hunt or a fight or we never talk anymore, brother, I miss you.

This version of Thor did smile, but he did not glow. He looked older than Loki remembered from the golden age of their childhood, when they were still the best of friends. Old, and very tired, with his eyes lined in worry and his face streaked with drying blood and smudged greasy dirt.

Thor didn’t speak, and neither did Loki. He knew better than to initiate a conversation with one of their illusions. If he waited long enough, it would start to speak, and he could place when they were, and how he was expected to behave. Over Thor’s shoulder, he could see only shadowy shapes, but nothing alarming, no sharp edges.

Thor shifted slightly, and Loki moved with him. He realized that he was being cradled like a child, wrapped up in cloth and held to Thor’s chest. It was not new, one of their illusions holding him, comforting him. What came next would remind him of if he’d failed most recently, or done something to please them.

Silence stretched endlessly, and then motion over his shoulder. Loki automatically ducked closer to the comforting bulk of his brother’s body, and then stopped, expecting the laughter. The rebuke. The form under him to melt into some new horror.

He looked up to see Steve Rogers sitting on Thor’s other side. Loki reacted instinctively, flinching away from the new element. Deep in his chest, violence stirred to life. He controlled it, forced it down. Reacting violently to any of the Avengers usually earned him praise, but he was at a loss to explain the strange position, Thor cradling him as if he were precious, and now, now that Loki was paying closer attention, the writhing mass of tentacles on the floor. One of them was coiled around Rogers’ waist, and he petted it absently as he stared at Loki.

They didn’t know about the tentacles. They didn’t know that Loki had sent some of them to Earth, and they didn’t know about the single, agonizing telepathic connection he’d managed in order to get the warning out.

Thor and Rogers were speaking over his head as he did his best not to stare at the tentacles moving lazily just out of reach. It never worked that way, but he thought for a moment that he could just stay quiet and they might forget him, carrying on with their reality as if he didn’t exist.

Rogers waved his fingers deliberately in Loki’s line of sight to get his attention. Loki looked up to his face, projecting calm that he couldn’t feel. After the months, the years, the eternity, he was mostly just tired. That didn’t mean they couldn’t come up with some way to entertain him if he seemed bored.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to tell me the truth,” Rogers said with exaggerated care, as though Loki didn’t speak the same language, as though Loki hadn’t invented so much of his language. “I’m going to believe what you tell me.”

You shouldn’t, Loki wanted to tell him. Loki was a liar, as much now as he ever had been. More. He kept his mouth shut.

“Were you with the Chitauri willingly?”

A laugh hammered at the inside of Loki’s ribs. He couldn’t answer, or it would pour out like madness sliding over his tongue. Loki wasn’t sure he had ever done anything willingly in his life, had ever not been manipulated to one end or another, had ever been master of anything at all.

“Did you willingly aid the Chitauri in attacking Earth?” Rogers tried when Loki’s tongue didn’t unbind.

“Yes,” Loki snarled. He remembered that first invasion, the Purpose singing brilliant and blue inside him, and how badly he had wanted it, how dearly he had believed - still believed, still wantedneeded to be crowned king of this miserable muddy rock and it’s miserable stinking apes who thought they could look him in the face, who thought they could make him a joke, who thought they knew him.

He had wanted to take it because it had been his brother’s, and he had wanted to break it because his brother had loved it, and because in all their thousands of years, it had taken only three days for Earth to make Thor worthy.

“Why would I want that?” he asked himself, confusion returning. He hadn’t, always, had he? In those days, weeks, months after he fell. He’d never thought about Earth at all.

“This invasion… was that your idea as well?”

Loki recoiled. Oh, no, he had been well and truly abused of any notion that he had ideas by then, but he had tried to tell them that the Tesseract was gone, that Earth was useless. He had wanted then to… save something, hadn’t he? Loki felt himself speaking, words tripping foolish and honest off his tongue, but what did it matter? If he was still in their clutches, they knew about his pinpricks of betrayal, his whispers, his dishonesty. Denying it now would only draw out the farce, and he wanted them to know then, he wanted them to know that he hadn’t been beaten entire.

“I tried to warn you, and I tried to just… just stop breathing, but they wouldn’t let me, and they came anyway, and I wouldn’t fight so they… they….” The Void closing around him, cold, cold and screaming and pulling him apart one atom at a time, and then his mother brushing his hair back, kissing his forehead, he’d been ill, there’d been a fever, he was better, but how she had always hated him, how she wished he’d just died in that frozen wasteland before Odin ever brought him home, and again, opening his eyes, it was just a nightmare.

It was just a nightmare.

“Do not take him away from me,” Thor said, wrenching him out of the spiral, returning him to the illusion.

“No one is going to take him from you,” Rogers said, a sweet promise that made Loki want to sob for frustration and anger and hatred and longing. Rogers reached out to touch him. Loki flinched automatically, expecting the pain so acutely that he felt it burning in his skin even as Rogers withdrew.

Rogers’ voice was maybe tight with anger or disappointment, and Loki would need to get himself under control and learn which it was and what it meant. The illusion would break eventually, he didn’t need to hasten it along with carelessness.

#ladyshadowdrake writes #Happy Lights #Loki #Tentacles #elvenavari

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Monday, January 25, 2021

Americans remain sorely divided as Biden’s quest for unity begins (Washington Post) The other day, Stu Ross, a retired elementary school teacher, threw his neighbor out of his townhouse in Harrisburg, Pa. The guy had said he saw nothing wrong with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. The two haven’t spoken since. So when Ross heard President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day appeal for a lowered temperature, for unity, he wasn’t seeing a realistic path to that goal. Ross called the new president’s first speech “soothing and calm.” But unity? Normalcy? A return to how things used to be, to Biden’s idea that “politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire?” Come on. At the dawn of an administration that seeks to return to a less fractious, even boring, politics, many Americans grant that Biden’s quest for a quieter culture is a nice enough goal, but, from the left and right, many say the country’s divisions remain too deep to allow for such a shift. In Topeka, Kan., Ed Myers has no patience for the debate over whether to hold Donald Trump to account for his role in inciting the attempted insurrection at the Capitol. A retired farm equipment factory worker, Myers says he was suspended by Twitter after he wrote that Biden is “an illegitimate president.” The way Myers sees it: That puts him in the same boat as Trump, whose Twitter account was banned for “incitement of violence,” which Myers views as a move to stifle free speech. So no, Myers sees no reason to unify, no cause to rally around the new president to combat the virus and revive the economy.

Barred From U.S. Under Trump, Muslims Exult in Biden’s Open Door (NYT) As the results of the American presidential election rolled in on Nov. 4, a young Sudanese couple sat up through the night in their small town south of Khartoum, eyes glued to the television as state tallies were declared, watching anxiously. They had a lot riding on the outcome. A year earlier, Monzir Hashim had won the State Department’s annual lottery to obtain a green card for the United States only to learn that President Trump, in his latest iteration of the “Muslim ban,” had barred Sudanese citizens from immigrating to the United States. The election seemed to offer a second chance, and when Mr. Trump was eventually declared to have lost the vote, Mr. Hashim and his wife, Alaa Jamal, hugged with joy. Few foreigners welcomed Mr. Biden’s election victory as enthusiastically as the tens of thousands of Muslims who have been locked out of the United States for the past four years as a result of the Trump-era immigration restrictions popularly known as the “Muslim ban.” By one count, 42,000 people were prevented from entering the United States from 2017 to 2019, mostly from Muslim-majority nations like Iran, Somalia, Yemen and Syria. But the human cost of Mr. Trump’s measures, stitched into the fabric of disrupted lives stained with tears and even blood, can hardly be counted—families separated for years; weddings and funerals missed; careers and study plans upended; lifesaving operations that did not take place.

A Digital Dragnet Is Coming For The U.S. Capitol Insurrectionists (HuffPost) The insurrectionists might have been able to leave without being arrested. Their friends and family members may not have turned them in. But slowly but surely, the digital surveillance net is tightening on the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Most of the cases being unveiled by federal authorities are still originating with tips from the public, and there are hundreds of future defendants who have yet to be identified and charged. But a few of the criminal charges appear to be built on wider-spanning search warrants to social media companies that appear to have given federal authorities investigative leads they’ve used to identify lawbreakers. The cellphones that the Capitol insurrectionists carried with them when they tried to overturn the results of the presidential election through force were feeding information to a variety of tech companies that now hold incriminating information about their users’ violations of the law. “We’re all carrying tiny tracking devices with us all the time, and people aren’t necessarily conscious of the extent to which that information is obtainable from a variety of sources,” said Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at Cato and an expert on technology, privacy and civil liberties.

Mexican president Lopez Obrador tests positive for COVID-19 (AP) Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday he had tested positive for COVID-19, amid an intense second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed the health system of the country’s vast capital city close to saturation. The 67-year-old president said in a tweet that his symptoms were light and he was receiving medical treatment. Lopez Obrador has maintained a busy public schedule during the pandemic and has said he enjoys good health, after suffering a serious heart attack at the age of 60 in 2013.

Spain’s virus surge hits mental health of front-line workers (AP) The unrelenting increase in COVID-19 infections in Spain following the holiday season is again straining hospitals, threatening the mental health of doctors and nurses who have been at the forefront of the pandemic for nearly a year. A study released this month by Hospital del Mar looking at the impact of the spring’s COVID-19 surge on more than 9,000 health workers across Spain found that at least 28% suffered major depression. That is six times higher than the rate in the general population before the pandemic, said Dr. Jordi Alonso, one of the chief researchers. In addition, the study found that nearly half of participants had a high risk of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks or substance- and alcohol-abuse problems. Spanish health care workers are far from the only ones to have suffered psychologically from the pandemic. In China, the levels of mental disorders among doctors and nurses were even higher, with 50% reporting depression, 45% reporting anxiety and 34% reporting insomnia, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.K., a survey released last week by the Royal College of Physicians found that 64% of doctors reported feeling tired or exhausted. One in four sought out mental health support. “It is pretty awful at the moment in the world of medicine,” Dr. Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in a statement accompanying the study. “Hospital admissions are at the highest-ever level, staff are exhausted, and although there is light at the end of the tunnel, that light seems a long way away.”

French Roosters Now Crow With the Law Behind Them (NYT) The crow of a rooster and the ringing of a church bell at dawn. The rumble of a tractor and the smell of manure wafting from a nearby stable. The deafening song of cicadas or the discordant croaking of frogs. Quacking ducks, bleating sheep and braying donkeys. Perennial rural sounds and smells such as these were given protection by French law last week, when lawmakers passed a bill to preserve “the sensory heritage of the countryside,” after a series of widely publicized neighborhood spats in France’s rural corners, many of them involving noisy animals. The disputes symbolized tensions between urban newcomers and longtime country dwellers, frictions that have only grown as the coronavirus pandemic and a string of lockdowns draw new residents to the countryside. Perhaps the most prominent of these noisy animals was Maurice, a rooster in Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, a town on an island off France’s western coast. His owner had been sued by neighbors—regular vacationers in the area—because he crowed too loudly. Politicians and thousands of petitioners rushed to the Gallic rooster’s defense, and a court eventually ruled in 2019 that Maurice, who died last summer at the age of six, was well within his rights. It is too late for Maurice. But his successor, Maurice II, can now crow with the full-throated confidence of someone who has the law on their side.

Davos ski resort eerily quiet without economic talkfest this year (Reuters) Student protesters who urged world leaders at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos to “Stop (f)lying to us” must be pleased this year, at least as far as the flying is concerned. The streets of the little Alpine town that welcomed around 3,000 business chiefs, political thinkers and state leaders for last year’s annual meeting lie deserted. Discussions have moved online, starting Monday, and COVID-19 restrictions are also keeping regular tourists away. “Look around, it’s empty. Normally, all hotels would be fully booked at this time,” Reto Branschi, head of Davos Klosters tourism, told Reuters in an interview this week. There are no helicopters patrolling the skies, no protesters trying to outwit security forces sealing off the Alpine resort. But not everybody is sad about the lack of buzz. “Complete peace and quiet,” a local woman wearing a mask said. “I don’t miss it at all.”

Trapped for 2 weeks, 11 workers rescued from China gold mine (AP) Eleven workers trapped for two weeks inside a Chinese gold mine were brought safely to the surface on Sunday, a landmark achievement for an industry long-blighted by disasters and high death tolls. Hundreds of rescue workers and officials stood at attention and applauded as the workers were brought up from the mine in Qixia, a jurisdiction under Yantai in the eastern coastal province of Shandong. The cause of the accident is under investigation but the explosion was large enough to release 70 tons of debris that blocked the shaft, disabling elevators and trapping workers underground. Such protracted and expensive rescue efforts are relatively new in China’s mining industry, which used to average 5,000 deaths per year. Increased supervision has improved safety, although demand for coal and precious metals continues to prompt corner-cutting. A new crackdown was ordered after two accidents in mountainous southwestern Chongqing last year killed 39 miners.

U.S. carrier group enters South China Sea amid Taiwan tensions (Reuters) A U.S. aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas”, the U.S. military said on Sunday, at a time when tensions between China and Taiwan have raised concern in Washington. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defence identification zone in the vicinity of the Pratas Islands. The U.S. military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which is claimed by China, to conduct routine operations “to ensure freedom of the seas, build partnerships that foster maritime security”. China has repeatedly complained about U.S. Navy ships getting close to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.

Israel targets flights, religious scofflaws, as virus rages (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Israel will be closing its international airport to nearly all flights, while Israeli police clashed with ultra-Orthodox protesters in several major cities and the government raced to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control. The entry of highly contagious variants of the virus, coupled with poor enforcement of safety rules in ultra-Orthodox communities, has contributed to one of the world’s highest rates of infections. Experts say that a lack of compliance with safety regulations in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox sector has been a major factor in the spread of the virus. Throughout the pandemic, many major ultra-Orthodox sects have flouted safety regulations, continuing to open schools, pray in synagogues and hold mass weddings and funerals despite broader lockdown orders. This has contributed to a disproportionate infection rate: The ultra-Orthodox community accounts for over one-third of Israel’s coronavirus cases, despite making up just over 10% of the population.

Arab Spring exiles look back 10 years after Egypt uprising (AP) The Egyptians who took to the streets on Jan. 25, 2011, knew what they were doing. They knew they risked arrest and worse. But as their numbers swelled in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, they tasted success. Police forces backed off, and within days, former President Hosni Mubarak agreed to demands to step down. But events didn’t turn out the way many of the protesters envisioned. A decade later, thousands are estimated to have fled abroad to escape the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi that is considered even more oppressive. The significant loss of academics, artists, journalists and other intellectuals has, along with a climate of fear, hobbled any political opposition. Human Rights Watch estimated in 2019 that there were 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Egypt third, behind China and Turkey, in detaining journalists. El-Sissi maintains Egypt has no political prisoners. The arrest of a journalist or a rights worker makes news roughly every month. Many people have been imprisoned on terrorism charges, for breaking a ban on protests or for disseminating false news. Others remain in indefinite pretrial detentions.

Severe winds wreck homes, displace thousands in Mozambique (Reuters) Severe winds and heavy rains wrecked thousands of buildings, ruined crops and displaced almost 7,000 people in Mozambique over the weekend, officials said in their first detailed report on the disaster. Tropical cyclone Eloise hit Mozambique’s Sofala coastal province on Saturday morning before weakening and heading inland to dump rain on Zimbabwe, eSwatini—formerly known as Swaziland—and South Africa. The region’s Buzi district had been particularly hard hit with wind speeds of up to 150 kph.

Raising kids bilingual can make them more attentive and efficient as adults (CNBC) Adults who grew up speaking two different languages can shift their attention between different tasks quicker than those who pick up a second language later in life, according to a new study. This is just one of many cognitive benefits of being bilingual. Research has shown that bilingual kids are constantly switching between two languages in their brain, which increases “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or multiple concepts at once, and “selective attention abilities,” the mental process of focusing on one task or object at a time. Other studies have shown that bilingual children can complete mental puzzles quicker and more efficiently than those who only speak one language. The reason? Speaking two languages requires “executive functioning,” which are higher-level cognitive skills like planning, decision making, problem solving and organization. Basically, this task is a workout for the brain. The mental benefits of starting a new language early appear to last even as children grow into adulthood.

#headlines #news

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