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anthrofreshtodeath · 3 years

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Inspiration struck last night 👀 - putting this here so you can let me know if it's worth continuing/if you would want to read more of it. Super AU!

Jane cut the engine of her Ford Ranger just outside the tiny strip mall off of Sixth Street. It had been a splurge just after she got brought on as the head baseball coach of Empire High School, a treat for herself for finally getting a big-person job and generating some regular income. Her mother had convinced her to do it, actually, because Jane had been on the fence for months, waffling so many times that Angela piled her in the family Buick and dropped her off at the dealership. Find your own way home, Angela had said, and it better be in that brand new truck.

Now, Jane was thankful for the push, because southern California summers in her old Civic with the busted A/C were no fucking joke. They were still no joke now, but at least she could blast cold air on her face when needed. Like now: even at six thirty in the morning, temperatures climbed above eighty in early August, and she settled into the discomfort of an already damp back. At least her front still looked fresh. She glanced in the rearview mirror one last time before she got out, taking off her adjustable black cap with her school’s insignia and smoothing the tied-back black hair on top of her head. Presentable and believable: a baseball coach with a ponytail and a Nike dri-fit short sleeve windbreaker over her t-shirt.

She hopped out, satisfied enough to not be looking like a hooligan, and when she planted her turf shoes, she could tell the asphalt was already on fire. The boys were gonna be whiny as hell this afternoon. That made her grin just a little bit. She ambled up to the donut shop-slash-panaderia on the corner, straightening her posture when the door jingled and signalled her entry.

The short, middle-aged woman with her graying hair in a bun and an apron around her waist brightened when Jane approached the counter. “Buenos días, Coach Rizzoli,” she greeted with a smile and voice so cheery, she’d obviously been up for hours already. Probably baking as Jane finished weight-lifting in her backyard before the sun came up.

Jane smiled softly in return. “Buenos días, señora Gutierrez,” Jane said, deferential even though at nearly 5’11”, she must have been almost a foot taller than Mrs. Gutierrez. “Como está?” Short Spanish phrases sounded pretty darn good in her mouth, she had to admit, for all the Sicilian she heard growing up, and for being a product of Santa Ana. Spanish was more common than English in a lot of her friends’ homes growing up, so she caught on quick. At least enough to carry on a polite conversation, if needed.

“Bien, gracias. Tengo sus conchas aquí,” Mrs. Gutierrez asked as disappeared behind the counter to find what she was looking for, Jane’s order, reappearing with six pink donut boxes.

Jane opened her nostrils wide to take in the smell of flour, sugar, and a hint of cinnamon for the white conchas, her favorite. It was enough to feed a small army, which felt just about right for the staff meeting she had been tasked with supplying breakfast for. The first of the new school year. “Qué bueno,” she replied, not sure if she was referring to Mrs. Gutierrez’s overall well-being or the pan in the boxes. She pulled out her cash to pay, slipping her wallet in her back pocket, and in the seconds that it took her to do that, a single, piping-hot styrofoam cup of coffee appeared on the counter in front of her.

“Y un cafecito come le gusta,” said Mrs. Gutierrez with a wink and a smile. Occasionally, she did this, and it was her way of taking care of Jane, one of their family’s best customers.

Jane had learned not to refuse it. She just blushed and bowed her head a little bit, her lips pursed in a bashful smile. “Muchisimas gracias,” she said, taking a sip. Mrs. Gutierrez always left the cinnamon stick in it and added minimal creamer, just how Jane liked. Jane held back a moan. She decided she’d partake of the rest in the car, and then pocketed her change. She picked the boxes up by the string tied to them and huffed, ready to begin the day. “Y el Jonny?” she asked, and Mrs. Gutierrez nodded her head towards the back of the bakery.

Jane nodded and made her way toward the door so she could pop around. “Qué tenga un buen día, Coach,” Mrs. Gutierrez called after her.

“Igualmente!” Jane replied, already on her way. She deposited her haul on her front passenger seat, keeping her coffee in hand, and then walked over to the alley between the Gutierrez bakery and the block wall separating it from the Cardenas market just across the way. She put her hat back on, threading her ponytail through its opening, and adjusted her Oakley sunglasses as she stood by the dumpster that Jonathan Gutierrez currently filled with broken-down cardboard boxes.

He heard her shoes scuffling his way, so he turned. “Coach Rizzoli! It’s early as hell,” he said, “what’re you doing here?” He sweated through the ribbed tank on his torso and the black basketball shorts on his hips. Jane commiserated, having helped her dad out on many a plumbing job in the summer when she was in high school.

“Well, first day for teachers is today,” she said, sipping her drink. “And I had to get some of your mom’s pan for the meeting. They’d expect nothing less. I’m here lookin’ at you because she exhausted all my Spanish skills, and I needed to remind you that practice starts at one today.”

Jonny, as tall as her, lanky too, smirked. “I’m sure you could’ve found a way to say that to her,” he teased, knowing that she couldn’t have, not well.

“You’re a riot. One o’clock, and not a minute later, a’right? I will not hesitate to bench our centerfielder for opening day if he’s late,” she warned. Then she started to turn.

“That’s like seven months from now!” Jonny whined, setting his box cutter down and running a hand through his thick black hair. “I got work today! Last day before school starts next week!”

Jane rolled her eyes. “The perfect hair thing may work on the girls at school, kid, but it won’t work on me. Find a way to make it happen - if you get into Fullerton, it won’t be because I sent you, but because you did it on your own. Part of that means showing up to practice on time. Even in August.”

Jonny sighed. His mom would understand, but his wallet would be crying. “I’m tryna save up for a pickup like yours, though, Coach,” he tried, batting his eyes for extra sympathy.

Jane laughed, and then he did. “Listen. You show up for practice on time every day this year, and you and me’ll have a talk about replacing today’s wages for that new Ranger, a’right?”

“Ok,” Jonny said quietly. He knew that Jane knew they didn’t have much money. And he knew that she knew most everything about him - she meant what she said. She’d taken him under her wing when she’d noticed his boundless talent and his faltering attendance. When she found out it was to make enough money to keep him and his brother on the team, she’d covered the cost in full. That was two years ago, and now that Jonny was an incoming senior, they’d righted the ship together. There was only a little more to go until he applied to the school of his dreams, the one with the killer baseball program and just miles from home.

It didn’t hurt that Jane was the first woman to play ball there as a range-y second baseman, was eventually drafted from Fullerton. He wanted to follow in her footsteps as best he could. “Good. See you then, kid,” she said. He knew that she knew the best way for him to do that was to grind. To eat, sleep, drink, and shit baseball.

“Hey Coach!” He called after her as she made her way back into the alley.

She turned around. “What’s up?”

“I wanna focus on my forearms this year. Should I go the Altuve way?” he asked, smiling.

The Jose Altuve way: banging sledgehammers into tractor trailer tires. Jane guffawed. “I’m not saying do it, but I mean hey, guy’s 5’5” and hitting thirty dingers a year in The Show, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jonny said. “I’ll take it under advisement. Thanks,” and with that, he waved Jane off. She spent the rest of the ride to school thinking about how to safely incorporate forearm work into the team’s regimen in a way that didn’t involve sledgehammers.

The bread had made her truck smell like heaven, and it was the perfect olfactory accompaniment through the working class neighborhoods of Coronita Heights - the part that she felt more comfortable in. She’d grown up down the 91 in Santa Ana, one of Orange County’s most vibrant cities, and her street looked a lot more like these than the ones that Empire High School sat on.

But Empire was one of the top 15 baseball programs in the state, and she had jumped at the opportunity to coach when she’d been approached about it. She packed the few boxes from her parents’ house, used the rest of her signing bonus to put a nice down payment on a house in Coronita Heights, and hadn’t looked back. It had been good for her - she kept in shape, used that teaching credential she’d worked on at Fullerton to teach PE, and led the Knights to a CIF championship in the five years she had been there. She hunted another.

Soon, the burger joints, smoke shops, and insurance spots gave way to expensive houses and palm trees, and she saw the massive campus come into view. She hopped out of the truck once she parked near the office toward the front, downing her coffee and tossing it in the trash. She tugged her belt, looped through her white baseball pants, making sure the fit was good, and then she took the breakfast out.

Another school year was about to begin, and she was determined to make it a victorious one.

___

Maura smoothed her dress in the full-length mirror of her bedroom for what must have been the hundredth time. It was tasteful: sleeveless, dark blue, with a thin black patent-leather belt around its waist. She paired it with black heels, and she looked good. She knew, intellectually, that she did, but this happened every time she started something new: the nerves kicked in and she doubted herself. She curled her impeccably styled hair behind her right ear out of habit, and then made her way downstairs for breakfast.

Her palatial home in Anaheim Hills sat overlooking the city below, still sleepy at six-thirty in the morning. She was anything but, having already completed her run and entire grooming routine. She perused the options within her double door refrigerator, still quite imposing even under the expansive wooden beams on the ceiling that ran from wall to wall. She thought about eggs, protein always a good start to the day, but then remembered the expected temperature and decided a cold breakfast of yogurt and berries would be best.

Again, it was too hot for warm coffee, but the massive cold brew dispenser she had readied just a few days prior called her name and she filled a tumbler with it and her favorite almond milk creamer. She’d have one cup with breakfast and a refill for the road, as she always did from May to October. She reveled in routine; it was what helped her not to shake as she brought a spoonful of honey, dairy, and strawberry up to her lips.

Today, despite her several years of doctoring, would be her first job with the living since residency. In fact, it would be her first non-clinical job, well, ever. Even when she had volunteered for research, it had been in pathology labs, or oncology centers, or Alzheimer’s wards. Now, she would head the pilot program for a pre-med track at Empire High School. Well, pre-pre-med, she corrected herself. The point of the program was to prepare students from non-private and non-charter school backgrounds for the rigor of medical school. And, as a graduate of the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, as well as Boston Cambridge University for undergraduate work, Coronita Heights Unified thought her very qualified to head its inception.

Maura was humble, so she did not consider that they also factored in her copious research articles within the field of pathology, nor her several awards from the Medical Board of California. But they did, and so today she started her teaching/counseling position that included Advanced Placement Anatomy and Physiology, as well as Advanced Placement Biology and an elective of honors molecular pathology to boot. She had negotiated that last one to retain a taste of her passion outside of teaching.

Satisfied both with her breakfast and her mulling, Maura rose from her stool at the kitchen island, its white marble counter still gleaming from its recent clean this weekend, and made her way to the sink. She rinsed her bowl, placed it in the dishwasher on the top rack with the others, and then washed her hands for twenty seconds. Soap on, palm scrub, back-of-the-hand scrub, webspace scrub, for as long as it took to hum happy birthday to herself, twice.

She reveled in routine.

She unscrewed the lid of her tumbler and placed it under the dispenser in the refrigerator again, watching dark coffee wash over ice cubes with pleasure. The properties of matter, their predictability and regularity, calmed Maura. She could predict where each rivulet would go with accuracy, and then watch the change of color with no surprise when she poured in her creamer. She could control how light or dark it became, and thus control its flavor. She savored that one last ounce of control before she screwed her lid back on and walked over to where her purse and rolling cart awaited her at the front door.

She took one last look behind her, at the open concept living room so large it needed a sectional couch that no one used because people hardly ever dropped by, at the kitchen with state-of-the-art, industrial appliances that often cooked meals for one. It was her home, even if all of that were true, and the way that the southern California sun poured in through her floor-to-ceiling windows thrilled her. It thrilled her the way it had the first time she set foot in LA, for her first day of classes. She let that embolden her as she locked the door and stepped into her S-Class.

Navigation popped up as soon the engine roared to life, already pre-programmed with the route to Empire High School. She saw the calculation of a twenty minute drive, rearranged a few numbers in her head as she thought about the day of the week, the time of the morning, and the unpredictability of the 91, and decided twenty minutes was probably just about right. She’d given herself a cushion for twenty-five, and with a glance to the men’s style cartier on her wrist, she smiled and pulled out of the garage towards the main drag that would lead her to the freeway.

She jumped out of nerves and surprise when the system notified her of a call coming in. She smirked when she saw the caller ID: Dr. Nina Holiday, Hoag Hospital. Maura pressed the call accept button. “Need a consult already, Doctor?” she teased, her own voice always just a bit foreign in the morning after not having heard it for hours.

Doctor Holiday scoffed on the line. “You wish,” she replied, and then there were beats of silence. “I just wanted to call to wish you good luck on your first day. And to see if you’d reconsider.”

“If this is Hoag’s way of trying to lure me back, by making their premier neurologist do all the dirty work, I think I’m going to have to pass,” Maura said, and Nina laughed.

“No, this is just a friend saying you’re gonna be missed is all,” said Nina. “But I respect what you’re doing.”

“Thank you. I appreciate it,” Maura demured. “Pathology is in... very capable hands with Doctor Pike,” she said, and then immediately the two women guffawed.

“You couldn’t even get it out before you started laughing!” Nina asserted, “see? We’re up a creek with no paddle!”

“Whom the department decided to hire in my stead is not my business,” Maura replied professionally, “especially if they do not take my recommendations into account,” and then with more spice.

“You right, you right. And I know I said it before, but I respect you for this. I think my road to medicine might have been a lot easier if I had someone like you at my high school to guide me through,” Nina said seriously. “Just answer me something: you didn’t leave because of Ian, did you?”

Maura stiffened. She hadn’t wanted to think about that on her first day, but here Nina was, dredging it up. Maura wrung her hands on her steering wheel. “No. Not really,” she answered, and that was the truth. The timing of it all had just been awful.

“Ok. I just… with him being gone, I didn’t know if that would be better, or if you’d be haunted by ghosts, you know? If you stayed.”

“I think I needed a fresh start either way, Nina. I really do,” Maura said.

Nina took the hint that they were done talking about it. Her voice turned chipper again. “I’ve got a call at seven, so I have to go, but I’ll talk to you soon, ok? You can tell me all about your first week. Maybe over bottomless mimosas.”

Maura sighed with relief. She would need that. “Sounds great. Nina?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for calling. I’m… I’m going to miss you, too,” Maura confessed.

“Aw, Doctor Isles, don’t get all mushy on me,” gushed Nina. “Bye. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye,” Maura said after the line had gone dead.

Nina’s call had lasted most of the ride. Maura was grateful. Nina had been one of the few people to get to know her at Hoag. The hospital itself had a very competent staff. Excellent, really. And Maura was one of the best, so this led to a never-spoken, always-felt air of competition. It didn’t really lend itself to friendship. But Nina had consulted with Maura so often, that a comfortable working relationship eventually morphed into a casual friendship. That turned into drinks on the rare weeknights they had off and brunch on Sundays at some of the best spots in Orange County.

They promised to continue, and they would of course, but for the first time in their friendship, they didn’t work a floor away from each other, and Maura resolved that while she would do everything to keep it alive, she had to acknowledge the change. Fittingly, as soon as she did so, she drove into the staff parking lot at Empire High. Her new beginning.

Her welcome e-mail mentioned a staff meeting today, Friday, in the lecture hall at the front of the school, refreshments provided. So, she pulled next to the gunmetal gray Ford Ranger to her right, and gathered her things. Her cart could wait until they were dismissed to ready their classrooms, so she deposited her fob into her purse and sipped on her coffee for fortitude as she followed the sidewalk pathway past the front office to the lecture hall. She had mapped out the route when she had found out about the meeting, deciding that touring campus on her own before she began would reduce her anxieties, as well as the possibility of unknown factors. It was also why she had arrived right on time: early meant possible one-on-one conversations with strangers, and late meant all eyes on her as she hustled in.

She pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head when she reached the glass double doors of the hall, and breathed in one last time. It was a big, 360 degree breath: it engaged her pelvic floor and spread her ribs equally. It lowered her pulse and calmed her nerves, and then she was ready.

When she entered, she heard chatter. Lots of it. When she turned the corner and yanked open the wooden door of the room itself, she was shocked to see what looked like most of the staff already deep in conversation in their seats. Some stood, others stretched their legs over a couple of seats at once, some laughed and some nodded seriously. For a moment, Maura panicked, then checked her watch again. She felt her heartbeat fall a little bit when she looked up to the front and realized that no-one had started the meeting. In fact, there was a small line at the sign-in sheet, so she decided that rather than have a breakdown in the walkway, she should join the line.

She mustered as much courage as she could and stood behind the last woman, who smiled at her politely. Maura smiled back and thanked whatever powers that be that the woman didn’t try to engage. The line moved quickly, and staff members grabbed what looked like sweet bread just off to the side of the table as they signed in. She forewent the sugar and decided just to take the requisite printouts instead. By then, things started to feel a little more like a normal job orientation, so she turned on her heels to make her way back to the crowd.

The confident turn ended up being another mistake, however, because as she started to walk, she saw no openings. It was like the middle of a very bad dream, in which she needed so desperately to blend in, but all she could do was stand out. She felt eyes on her as she passed tables full of other adults, she heard conversations quiet and alter when she walked by.

However, just as she was about to give up and stand all the way in the back, someone called out. “Hey,” the voice was firm, raspy, and kind. She turned instantly and it kept talking. “You need a spot? I was savin’ this one for my brother, but, big shocker, he’s late.” Seated at a table in the middle of the hall with an all-white backpack on the empty chair next to her, two aluminum bat handles sticking out on either side of it, was… “Oh, and I’m Jane. Rizzoli. By the way.”

Jane Rizzoli. Maura thought the name fitting. Jane was so tall and so dark-featured and so handsome that she needed an Italian surname. And by god, she had one. One with a trilled-r and a plural i and everything: it was perfect for her in the way that all its sounds signified abundance. Maura’s mind rambled and she caught it; she wasn’t even sure how the phonotactic rules of Italian applied to Jane’s physicality, but they did, and Maura sat next to her without hesitation. She chanced one glance to the length of Jane’s torso as she curled to put her elbows on the table, and then she met Jane’s dark brown eyes.

It was then that she realized that Jane probably awaited some kind of response. “Maura Isles,” said Maura, holding her hand out. Jane shook it and Maura was not at all surprised by the firmness of the shake.

“Hey Maura. I’m uh, I’m the head baseball coach here. I also teach PE,” Jane explained. Then she looked down at herself, her uniform and the bats in the backpack now on the floor. “But you probably guessed that.”

Maura smirked, and laughed softly. “I don’t like to guess. It puts people in awkward positions. But I would say there’s lots of evidence to that fact, yes.”

Jane laughed openly and then took her hat off. “Well, I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess you’re the hotshot doctor that they hired for our new pre-med pipeline.”

Maura raised a perfectly-sculpted eyebrow. “And why would you assume that?”

“You talk like a doctor. And you dress better than everyone else in this room. Real doctor-y,” Jane wagged her own eyebrows up and down.

Maura watched Jane’s crooked grin, rapt. “One…” she began slowly, “doctor-y is not a word. Two, what if I were independently wealthy and taught, oh say, English?”

Jane shrugged. “Words are made up. And are you? Independently wealthy?”

Maura’s mouth twitched in humor. “Yes,” she answered. Jane threw her head back in defeat. “But, I am also the doctor piloting the pre-med program here.”

Just like that, the slender column of Jane’s neck brought her head forward again. “Thought so!” she said. Just as she did, The man who Maura knew from his photo online as the school principal walked in. People started to hush as he made his way to the front podium. Even she turned her attention, until there was the distinct warmth of whispering by her ear that dismantled all other thoughts. Jane was speaking. “Well, Dr. Isles,” she responded, “welcome to Empire High, then.”

#rizzoli and isles #rizzles #lauren writes rizzoli and isles fan fiction #the high school teachers baseball California AU no one asked for lmao #not sure if it's too niche or if there'll be interest for it #but it feels like if I do continue it it should be long?#idk we'll see

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theawkwardterrier · 4 years

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An Alliance with an Earl

Here’s one for @lavellenchanted. It’s no Steggy AU of A Song for Summer (although what is?) but maybe Regency Jily will suffice, Sarah...

Read on AO3 here

I am going to have to buy Frank Longbottom a very nice bottle of brandy, Sirius thought to himself as he looked down at the letter in his hand, but what he said casually aloud was, “It seems we’ve been invited to a house party.”

James finished whatever he was scribbling, taking care to sign his name with the full flourish before he looked up. Light from the wonderfully sunny day, the kind they would never have been inside for a mere year ago, caught his spectacles as he did. James had worn a pair from the time he and Sirius first met as boys at Eton, but when light used to flash across them, it paired with the grin he once wore nearly constantly and his foolishly infectious laugh. Now Sirius half expected James to take his glasses off and massage his eyes, the way their old headmaster used to do.

Instead he set down his quill and gestured to the letter in Sirius’s hand. “If it’s any of your cousins, I shall have to respond in the negative. Well, perhaps we should have Lupin draft the letter - he is less likely to phrase it as rudely as either of us might.”

Sirius tossed the letter opener he had been using on the day's post back onto the very edge of James’s stupidly massive mahogany desk and barked out a laugh. “As if any of my cousins would allow me to darken their doorway. No, it’s the Longbottoms - it seems that old Augusta has allowed Frank and Alice use of the country place and they’ve invited us to come for the week after next.”

He tipped his head to the side, slouching further into his chair. He had once only done such things in the parlor of Grimmauld Place, his parents’ London residence, because in their view posture, like wealth and good breeding, was one of those things which mattered and he made a point of not allowing such things to matter to him. But the habit was so ingrained in him now that every time he sat, he tended to perch himself with a leg slung over the chair arm or his back placed on the seat and his head allowed to hang. “Not having access to that all-important family tree of my mother’s, however,” he said, “I really couldn’t promise you that I’m not cousins with either of them somewhere along the way.”

“Aren’t we all? I think between the two of us, we must be related by blood or marriage to half the ton.” James stretched his arms back and above his head, rotating his wrists and making a slight groaning sound. “Not, however, closely related enough to stop plenty of mothers from shoving their most eligible daughters into my path at every turn.”

Sirius nearly responded as he once would have, with a jibe about that sort of thing being unavoidable for such a catch as the future Earl of Gryffindor. Two years ago, however, after the deaths of first his mother and then, weeks later, his father, James actually became the Earl of Gryffindor, and seemed to think nothing in that line of humor at all funny anymore.

Quite a lot had become unfunny to James, actually. Some days, Sirius worried that his friend’s shoulders would simply break from the responsibilities settling there. Oh, James still came out with them in the evenings, still made them laugh and could manage to charm nearly any woman in a given room. But his old self, the one who loved racing on the fastest horse or placing the highest bet, the one who thought duels were daring instead of a measure to be undertaken only under direst circumstance, who snickered with Sirius around the corner after they had placed a tripwire across the school corridor...Sirius suspected that boy to be gone for good. In his place was a nobleman who inherited too early, whose indulgent father had thought to have more time to teach him how to grow into the man he needed to be, and who was now struggling to meet the expected role under the weight of who he had suddenly become.

Which was why, Sirius thought, eyes scanning the invitation from the Longbottoms again, this would be perfect. Balls and parties around London brought with them some degree of diversion if not enjoyment, but also held a reminder of responsibility. A playful lack of interest in marriage had once been the subject of jokes between James and his mother, but finding a wife, having a child, had now become a grim and acute duty. Sirius hoped that this more simple gathering, merely a few friends out in the country air, would allow James some desperately needed socialization with much more limited pressure - not to mention that it would tear him away from the deadly dull work which seemed to pile endlessly upon his desk at Gryffindor House in London and at his estate of Godric’s Hollow.

“Anyway, Longbottom’s always done us a good turn,” Sirius said, forcing a bit of a yawn to keep his manner as informal as possible. James went tense at the littlest things these days, at the merest suggestion that he might lay his duties to the side for just a moment or any hint that Sirius thought he might need to relax. “And Alice is a fine girl from what I remember. It’s only polite for us to join them, since they asked.”

James looked over toward the window, the drapes drawn back to reveal the bright, busy Mayfair street outside. The sunlight caught the lenses of his glasses again so Sirius couldn’t see his eyes; still, something seemed to grab at his mouth for a moment and twist it in pain. But the next second, he was turning back to Sirius looking like himself again, or at least like this new self. He picked up his quill once more and said, “You know that I am only ever polite.”

It was a lie, or at least Sirius hoped that it was. Either way, however, it was an affirmative response, which was exactly what he had hoped for.

“I’ll inform the Longbottoms, then,” he said, still maintaining his nonchalance. “My handwriting has always been better.”

This was true, but he mostly said it because being bested at something always made James a bit disgruntled and this time was no different. Without looking up from whatever document he was currently taking careful notes upon, he crushed a piece of paper with his other hand and tossed it toward Sirius’s head.

So there is something of you left after all, Sirius thought with relief as he caught the crumpled ball. Let us hope that some time in the country is enough to bring you out again.

Having known Alice since her own first season four years previous, Lily was quite familiar with her friend’s sweet, detail-oriented, and slightly nervous personality. She had received numerous letters in the weeks leading up to the house party filled with particulars of the menu, questions regarding the ideal number of guests, or worries that there would not be sufficient entertainment, and had tried to send back her reassurances that Alice’s first instance of hosting such an affair would surely be a resounding success.

Yet, as her carriage came to a halt on the wide drive in front of the house, she was unsurprised to see Alice wriggling a bit and twisting her hands as she stood with her husband’s arm over her shoulder.

She alighted from the carriage and went over to greet them, trying to infuse a bit of levity into the way she said “my lady” to Alice, though it didn’t seem to work. Alice linked her arm with Lily’s under the premise of leading her into the house and whispered, high and trembling, “Frank’s mother insisted on joining us and bringing friends of hers, which has my numbers entirely off, and you know what Lady Longbottom is like besides.”

“You are Lady Longbottom as well,” Lily reminded her, but before she could say something else bracing, she saw, striding across the grounds with Sirius Black at his heels, another person who would apparently - and unfortunately - be joining them.

She successfully avoided him over the next several days, making certain to keep at least five people between them even when they were in company. The odd thing was, however, that he didn’t seem to notice her very much at all. No, that wasn’t right. He clearly noticed her, his chin dipping in recognition if their eyes happened to meet across a room, but he did not pursue her in the way he once had.

He did not, in fact, act similarly to the way she remembered in general: his remarks, when he made them, were astute and his sense of humor not at all mean-spirited, he tended to spend most of his time at the edges of the room rather than the center of it, and every time there was dancing he took at least one turn with Hestia Jones, who everyone know was very nearly on the shelf. The whole thing was the slightest bit confusing, though, Lily reminded herself, it was a perfect relief not to be approached. Their paths had crossed less in the past two years or so, but she remembered sharply their prior interactions.

On the day before they were to return to London, the gentlemen were called to a hunt while the ladies attended to their correspondence. Lily had just finished and sealed a letter to some distant cousins in Sussex when the footman brought the morning's post. It did feel a bit Sisyphean, finishing the last of your responses only to have more required, but Lily was certain that none of it would be for her; Alice had invited most of their close friends, after all, and Lily's family was not large.

However: "Oh, here is one for you, Lily," Mary said, picking it up from the tray and passing it over. "From your sister."

Lily swallowed. "How lucky." She stood, tucking the letter in her pocket with fingers that fumbled despite her best efforts. "Do you know, it looks as if it might begin to rain this afternoon. I would like an opportunity to spend some time out of doors before the weather turns. Would anyone like to join me for a walk through the gardens?"

Though Alice looked as if only her duties as hostess kept her inside, the mention of a potential storm made the rest of the group demur, as Lily knew that it would. Within five minutes, she had her cloak on and was making her way alone into Lady Longbottom's lush and splendid garden. She walked until she found a small seat to perch upon and, after taking in a few deep gulps of the air (it seemed that she had not been wrong: there was a tinge of moist heaviness to it that spoke of an oncoming storm) forced herself to open the letter.

She read it through once, then a second time to see if she had misunderstood. She had not. She wanted to cry.

In person or in writing, Petunia never said anything that Lily wanted to hear. They had been friends of a sort when they were small, but Lily had long since given up on her sister understanding her or even loving her despite not doing so, and she no longer sought her approval. If they could have stuck to basic pleasantries or the dutiful exchange of sentiments, that would be one thing, but in the last year, Petunia had turned nasty, and this latest letter...

"Da-Deuce it," Lily said aloud, leaning over to scoop a handful of pebbles from the ground. She pitched one toward the bushes, then threw the next one harder when it seemed not to alleviate any of her upset. Even that did nothing; she flung the full handful. "Damn it!" she shouted, disregarding all propriety, then placed her palms over her eyes, pressing down as if surrounding herself with darkness might help.

"Lily? Er-My apologies. Miss Evans, are you quite well?"

Her hands flew from her eyes. Standing before her, uncomfortable but certainly there, was the Earl of Gryffindor.

The first time he saw Lily Evans, James Potter was standing on the balcony of Lady McGonagall's home with Sirius and Peter. They had left Remus below distracting their hostess; she had been widowed several times longer than she had been married, but it seemed to suit her well and she ruled every occasion hosted at her home, and in the ton generally, with an iron fist.

"She's quite fine," Peter had said, jabbing a finger toward a lady in a pink gown who was being helped from a recently arrived carriage.

"Too fine for the likes of you, Pettigrew," Sirius said carelessly, though James did not get the sense that he was joking. Peter forced a laugh anyway.

"There's plenty of girls here tonight for all of us," James responded, scanning over the street. Most people seemed to have already arrived. "With the season just starting, no one's begged off for the evening or tired of each other's company yet."

Sirius snorted. "That's your opinion. I believe I tired of the company of most everyone here before I was past my dear father's knee."

"Well, there's always—" James started, but did not even complete his thought, much less his sentence. Instead he said blankly, "Her," leaning forward a bit over the rail as if this would help him take in each detail of the new girl who had just stepped from her carriage. She was followed by a slightly older girl wearing a most unattractive expression and a woman he would guess was her mother, but James did not pay them even a moment's mind. His mouth had slackened as he studied her hair - it looked dark from this height and in the barely lit street, though not dark enough to be brown - as he imagined her eyes, and took in each nuance of her expression, excited and just a bit forward, her shoulders thrown back as she stepped toward the party.

By the time James got downstairs and escaped a lecture about etiquette from Lady McGonagall, her dance card was full, but he at least found out her name. The next day, armed with the largest bouquet from the most expensive florist in the city, he stopped at the house that she, her mother, and her sister were renting for the season. There were several other gentlemen in the room already as he was announced, but he paid them no mind as he walked over to her, knelt, and said, "Miss Evans, I would like nothing more than if you would agree to become my wife."

Later, his father would berate him for this, for going about it without asking permission, for being too hasty, introducing himself and proposing marriage in the same breath. But he knew that this would not have made the difference. Because there was a look in her eye, as if she had been expecting this and had prepared her answer, when Lily Evans said, quite coolly, "No, thank you, my lord."

And now here she was, sitting in the garden before him, looking far less collected than she had that day. She had lost the aspect of the ingenue - she was near his age, making her at least two and twenty - though she was no less lovely for it. The deep red of her hair, the arresting green of her clear eyes, were familiar to him by now, though he did not typically see those eyes looking so startled.

“My apologies, Lord Gryffindor. I had thought you had joined the other gentlemen.” She hastily made as if to stand and curtsy, but he gestured at her to keep her seat.

“I had some business which necessitated my return to the house,” he said, trying to hold himself straight, the way his father would have done, but it did not work. He shrugged his shoulders, sagging a bit back to himself. “Well, that is not the truth of it. It is what I said when I begged off, but to be frank with you, I wanted a moment with my thoughts. And they were planning on shooting deer besides, something I have never quite been able to stomach. The Potter crest features both a doe and a stag, you know, and the deer are truly beautiful when they run - it always seems such a terrible thing to do, killing them.”

Fool, he thought despairingly, refusing to allow himself to collapse with his face in his hands. The first time you have spoken with her in years and you come off as a blibbering fool who is unmanned by the thought of a hunt. Not to mention using her given name - even if it is how you address her in your head.

But, strangely, instead of regarding him with even her usual disdain, she was watching him with a slight smile: the first, he thought, she had ever directed toward him.

“Do you refrain from eating venison then, my lord, in honor of your family crest, and the sight of the deer running?”

The lightly teasing sound of it, as if they were any sort of friends at all, made him grin far wider than the comment meritted. “I’m afraid that by the time I find myself at table, my stomach does not have such high minded ideals.”

She actually laughed now, and it made him comfortable enough to gesture to the place beside her. “May I sit?”

“Oh, of course.” She glanced over and saw her letter still there, crushed at the edge, and snatched it up. All traces of laughter left her face as suddenly as they had come.

“Have you received bad news from home?” he asked as carefully as he could, seating himself a decent distance from her, even on the small bench. “I know that you have a sister - is something amiss with her?”

Her mouth pinched inward, though not, he thought, as if his question had angered her. She swallowed and then said, “I would not say that something is amiss with her, no, though she certainly seems to think something is amiss with me. Or, I suppose, she thinks that I am still too much a miss.”

“I’m sorry?”

“As am I.” Her laugh now held no lightness nor humor, and he valued the true one she had given him all the more for it. She glanced over at him, seeming to examine his face closely; he did not have time to shift his expression, but whatever she found there was apparently correct, for she began, slowly, to speak.

“My mother passed this last autumn and since then I have been living with my sister and her husband, an arrangement which suits none of us. In their view, I should have been long since married and of no concern to them. My sister has hinted before, but she writes now that her husband has determined that I should be married before the end of the season, and if I have not found a match myself by that point, he has selected one for me.”

He watched her sit up straighter, the wind catching a strand of her hair and whipping it from her coiffeur so it lay in beautifully vivid contrast to her pale throat. She stared out into the gray bluster of the day as she said, “It is well known that Lord Snape has expressed his interest in the past. My brother-in-law did not initially view the match as advantageous enough, but it seems that given the lack of other prospects, that avenue has become sufficiently promising.”

James felt his fist clench atop his thigh before he truly thought to clench it himself. Severus Snape had been heir to his nearly insolvent barony through merest coincidence - all closer cousins were female, a fact which had led Sirius to remark that Edward Christian might have had the right of it in Blackstone’s ten years past and perhaps women should be allowed some latitude in inheriting. And yet, those with whom Snape chose to consort closely were the most disagreeable sorts of snobs, people who believed anyone without generations of nobility behind them to be worthless.

He seemed to think it a great compliment that he would single out Lily as someone meriting his particular attention despite her own father having been only Mr. Evans. One of James’s few consolations after Lily had rejected his proposal had been that she had apparently rejected Snape’s as well. He, however, had not taken it with good grace or even James’s own dazed acquiescence; instead, he had stated publicly that it was merely a sign of her low breeding, that someone of a more elevated bloodline would have been happy even to have been approached by him. (James had run into Snape one evening shortly after hearing of this, and would have called him out on Lily’s behalf had Remus not intervened - and had James not already been so foxed he could barely string the words together discernibly.) Still, in the years since, Snape had made it plain that he would be willing to consider her were she to humble herself enough.

“Surely there must be other options,” James said, a bit awkwardly. For the rest of the season following his initial proposal and even into the next, he had arrived at her residence with regularity, though he had not approached her so directly again - too humiliating, and impolite besides to press when he had been so clearly declined. But although it had been some time since then, he knew, even when he did not want to, that she was often called upon by others.

She hesitated, seeming to choose her words carefully. “I was, perhaps, not as wise as I might have been. Not as wise as I thought myself to be.” Her gaze drifted to her lap, where her hands were folded carefully over the letter. “I was not waiting for a love match, I truly was not. I simply hoped to find someone who was not on the hunt merely for looks or for a biddable wife, with whom I might find conversation and companionship, someone who truly saw me. I allowed myself to believe I had time to be selective, and while my mother lived she indulged me, perhaps even enjoyed being able to keep me close for some time longer. But now she is gone, leaving my keeping in the hands of another who is not so lenient, and it seems that I have waited too long. Those who were once interested have moved on to women who are prettier or younger or lighter-hearted, women with larger dowries or who do not seem as fussy as I, and I cannot blame them.”

I have not moved on. It came to his throat readily, nearly voiced before he stopped himself. He did not want a wife right now, he reminded himself, and he especially did not want a wife who was cornered into the marriage, and it did not matter if that wife would be the one woman to whom his eyes turned without his control anytime they were in the same room.

But if he could at least help her, just a bit, even if it would mean tormenting himself, well, it was not as if he were not in torment already.

“I wonder—” He cleared his throat. “That is, I wonder if you would consider...It is rather unconventional, of course, but if you were amenable…”

“Have you something to say, my lord?” she asked, turning to him with just the barest hint of amusement touching her mouth.

“I could, perhaps, affect as if I were courting you,” he finally spat out.

His breath held for a moment in his lungs, and he was certain that she would gasp or dash off or even strike him, but instead, though the humor had gone from her lips, she tipped her head to the side and asked, “And what would be the object of such a ruse?”

“Well,” he said, voice a bit too eager now that she had not reacted with outright negativity. “The season settles into such dull rhythms after a while that any new story always gathers interest. Considering our...history, I suspect that a courtship between us would have tongues wagging, which would certainly remind people of your charms. And of course, not to generalize regarding my sex, but men are always particularly roused by the idea of rivalry. Were I to pose as a serious suitor, it would surely spur others to emerge as alternative contenders for your affections.”

Her eyes narrowed a bit at this last piece, but she only said slowly, “And what would you gain from this arrangement?”

James forced himself not to cross his arms. “My own parents passed not long ago…”

“I had heard,” she said. “My sympathies,” and from her it did not sound at all rote. He nodded.

“Thank you. And mine to you, on your mother. But in any event, it has left me with quite a lot to learn regarding my position, and I have found the continued attention of certain mothers and their unwed daughters to be an extremely inconvenient distraction. Were I to be seen as having my affections already directed toward another young lady, I believe they would leave off, and I would have some reprieve to attend to the management of other things.”

She looked away from him once again, squinting out absently into Lady Longbottom’s hedges. One foot tapped a bit, and her finger ran around the edge of her letter, though he suspected that she did not remember exactly what paper it was. They were the sort of gestures that he would have taken for granted in another male of his acquaintance or in his mother, but young women were always on such perfect behavior around him that simply being allowed to see these common mannerisms made Lily seem filled with an extra bit of color, of brightness. He swallowed, unsure once more that making this offer had been in his best interest; then again, he had never been known to be hesitant or particularly calculating. Diving headfirst was always more his style, and he had rarely looked out for his own interests with any real care.

Finally Lily said, “I would, of course, not want to take you from your other responsibilities, but if this were to work, I would require a certain amount of attention to ensure that others truly believed that you found me of interest. Would three evening occasions and three daytime meetings per week be reasonable to you?”

“Perfectly agreeable,” he said, even as his heart began to pound in a manner so uncontrolled, he might as well have been running. “Let us say two dances together when we are in attendance at the same ball. I believe that expresses the right amount of interest while still indicating that there is a chance for others.” Traitorously, his mind began to slip into wondering about holding Lily’s body against his own in a close dance, how he might feel her laugh rippling over his skin during a more energetic reel, her face alight as she returned her hand to his.

She nodded slowly. “Thank you. That should do quite nicely. And, of course, if I at some point become affianced, I could spread word on your behalf regarding your broken heart if you would like - that should grant you a bit of extra time before the interest begins again in earnest.”

At her mention of becoming engaged to someone else, the wind, which had been pleasantly brisk a moment ago, seemed to cut through his riding coat, his skin, right to his heart. “I would certainly appreciate it,” he managed, keeping his voice as steady as he could.

“Well, I am very appreciative of this,” she returned. “I had not expected...It is most kind of you, my lord, even to offer such a thing.”

“Think nothing of it,” James replied, knowing all the while that he would be able to think of nothing else.

When they returned to London, the talk was all of what a success Alice Longbottom’s house party had been. Kingsley Shacklebolt and Mary Macdonald would certainly be announcing a wedding soon; Hestia Jones, several years older even than Lily and practical, was allowing Peter Pettigrew’s attentions; and - pigs might fly - James Potter seemed to have caught Lily Evans at last.

They had agreed to walk together in Hyde Park as a first outing, and for all her thought that a secret might bind them together and smooth over any lingering awkwardness, Lily was hard pressed to think of a more uncomfortable stroll she had taken in her life, and she had certainly been on her share of contenders.

Part of the problem was that she could hardly believe she had even agreed to such a scheme in the first place. It was ridiculous, unheard of, completely foolish of her regardless of the situation Vernon and Petunia might have placed her in. Even more difficult to conceive: she had agreed to it with James Potter of all people. The same James Potter she had rejected without remorse, who she had sniffed at when hearing of his later reckless exploits, counting herself blessed she was not attached to him in any way. Well, there were few people she was attached to more closely now.

“Have you told anyone?” she asked abruptly, the first either of them had spoken in some minutes, after the pleasantries regarding the return journey to London, how they had each fared so far that day, and the state of the weather had been exhausted. “Have you told anyone about our…?”

He cleared his throat, though whether from discomfort or disuse she could not tell; either seemed entirely feasible. “Our arrangement? I’ve told Sirius. Remus and Peter as well.”

“Ah.” She attempted to transform the critical press of her lips into a smile as she nodded to the passing Bertha Jorkins, though she could practically already hear Bertha dashing off to tell whoever was closest that Lily Evans had been walking alongside Lord Gryffindor with a most unattractive expression. “I suppose I might have expected, considering your closeness. I had heard that his lordship, at least, has rooms in your home.”

“Yes, Sirius has had a strained relationship with his family for several years now.” Lily, though no gossip, was aware that this was an understatement. It was well known that, had it not been for the scandalous reflection on the family, the marquess and marchioness would have disowned their elder son years ago for what they considered his lewd behavior and unseemly friendships; as it was, they rarely mentioned each other in public, and pretended the other did not exist when they were present at the same function. “Even when my parents were alive he had free run of Gryffindor House, and the place has only become emptier since so there is plenty of room for even one as untidy as he.”

Lily glanced at him, unable to help hearing the sadness in his voice although he tried to give the words some degree of levity. She did not comment on it, however, saying instead, “It is rather unconventional, though of course utterly reasonable.”

He shrugged. “Were Sirius my brother by blood, he would always have a place in my home. As he is my brother in all but that, I see no reason that he should lack such a place merely because of an accident of parentage. I have offered Remus and Peter as well - there are probably a dozen bedrooms going unused, and perhaps even more which I have not discovered - but they have both declined.”

“The decor is not to their taste?” Lily asked, winning her a laugh.

“No, Peter’s mother still has a residence in London and prefers he stay with her, and Remus…” He sighed, his mouth shifting a bit to the side, as if this were a problem he was well used to mulling over. “He has his pride, and a part of that is insisting on keeping his own lodgings. But he does join us for supper several times a week, and as Mrs. Pomfrey, my housekeeper, nursed him through many a childhood illness and injury, he cannot well refuse when she tells him we have food going spare and he must take some home.”

It was this comment which forced her to fall silent. Somehow it was even more shocking than the way he had seemed to her transformed in the Longbottom’s garden, smaller and more human instead of filled with that overconfident persistence she had remembered and hated, more shocking than when he had suggested this ruse in the first place. She could not help but think that when Lord Gryffindor sat in his office or attended a session of Parliament, some part of his mind was distracted by wondering how he could best take care of those closest to him, even if it made others about the ton think him odd for it. There was not even anything to be gained from his solicitousness: Lupin’s father, if she recalled correctly, was a missionary only distantly related to some minor viscount, and Pettigrew’s hope of becoming a baron rested on two uncles and seven purportedly hale and hearty cousins meeting untimely demises.

“It is most kind of you,” she finally said, but he merely shrugged.

“As I said, Gryffindor House is altogether too large. My father actually decided that two sitting rooms was quite enough and turned the third into a space for experimentation - he was a bit of an amateur natural philosopher.”

“Truly?” The grin taking over her face felt a bit silly, but she found the idea of it a bit silly, and entirely delightful.

“Truly. In fact, he enjoyed having such a room so much that he had one of the bedrooms turned over at our country home as well so he could continue with his discoveries there. He actually was fairly successful at it. His tonics and ointments might remain family recipes, but there is a pomade of his invention which is only growing in popularity.” His smile tinged a bit sad at the edges. “I think he would have been quite tickled to hear that.”

“I’m certain he would have been.” Familiar with the propensity for jollying people away from their remembrances, as if the sorrow of it was too much for polite conversation to bear when perhaps a moment of dwelling would be welcomed by the one grieving, Lily remained silent for several paces and kept her tone neutral when she said, “These experimental rooms of your father’s sound most entertaining. I wish I could see them myself sometime in the future.”

“Of course, why don’t I—” But he was too smart a man, to finely bred, to allow his tongue to run away with him and simply invite her over. They wanted to build a gentle interest in her from suitable parties, not ruin her reputation entirely. Instead he said, “I’m certain I shall entertain at some point during the season. My mother was well known for her gatherings, and I could never let down her reputation. I shall, of course, have an invitation sent for you, and we will make sure that there is a tour.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.” Her arm had been resting on his as they walked, but she allowed her hand to press a bit more heavily against him in gratitude. She had meant it to be a momentary gesture, but he turned to her then, his dark brown eyes catching hers from behind his spectacles, and she found that she could not look away. They were still walking, she was nearly certain, but how many people they were passing, what everyone might be observing, she had no idea.

It was he who cleared his throat and took his gaze from hers. “I suspect that was sufficiently convincing to anyone watching,” he said, and cleared his throat again.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.” Although, if she were truly forced to consider, she thought she might find that it had been somewhat convincing to her as well.

If the training on proper behavior that James’s mother had tried to instill in him had one benefit, it was the ability to keep a brilliant smile on his face even as he asked quietly, “Is there something I can do to make you more comfortable?”

The cotillion offered little chance to speak privately - one was constantly being forced to circle or line up beside other dancers - so it was not until their next brief whirl as partners that she was able to reply. “I am perfectly comfortable.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but you do not seem entirely to be enjoying yourself,” he said hurriedly at the next opportunity. “You have barely smiled.”

Many women of his acquaintance and most of the gentlemen would have lost track of the conversation as they stepped and wove and traded partners before rejoining, but she merely said, “Perhaps you are more accustomed to dancing with those with silly looks on their faces. Here, I shall make you more comfortable.”

The expression she pasted on was of such exaggerated adoration that he nearly burst into laughter straight into the face of his new partner. As it was, he returned to Lily grinning and found her doing the same.

A whisper seemed to start at the edge of the ballroom (they were quite definitely not displaying the usual polite smiles reserved for these events) but James barely noticed that their plan was coming to some success.

“Well played, Miss Evans. Clearly I should have left it all to your capable hands.”

“See that you do next time,” she responded with a regal nod, and the thought of next time filled his mind with such sudden brightness that his grin stretched anew and did not stop when the music did.

“Unacceptable!”

At her sister’s hiss, Lily looked up from the embroidery in her lap, but did not need to ask what was causing Petunia’s upset. She was altogether too familiar with the expression that came with minor household imperfections, and by the glare being leveled at one of the teacups, she suspected that some nigh invisible spot had been detected.

“All our visitors have gone,” Lily hastened to say. “I’m sure there is no need to disturb—”

But it was too late. Petunia had taken the cup and stalked from the room, undoubtedly to berate the poor housekeeper or whichever maid came across her path.

Shaking her head in sympathy, Lily nevertheless allowed her gaze to wander over to the place behind the curtain where she had hidden the novel she had been reading before the callers had started arriving. Petunia barely allowed such pursuits in privacy; reading in front of gentlemen would certainly have earned a reprimand.

There had been a goodly number of callers, enough that Lily found herself hopeful for the first time in a while, but she would be glad to have a chance to relax, a few moments to just be in her own mind. She was standing on soft feet to go retrieve the book when the butler arrived and announced, “Lord Snape.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she was not at home. Over this one thing she had control, and it would be so easy to exert it; she could nearly feel the relief of avoiding him. But something, a wisp of remaining affection for a childhood friend or a desire to see whether she would be able to bear him should the worst case scenario come to pass, made her nod and say, “Show him in, and please inform my sister that he has come.”

The butler stayed after bringing Severus in, standing guard beside the doorway for the sake of propriety in a way which made Lily feel protected rather than surveilled.

“Won’t you take a seat?” she asked as she did the same, but he did not seem even to take heed of her words.

“You danced with Lord Gryffindor last night,” he said. His riding gloves, held as a pair in one hand, smacked lightly against his thigh, and Lily held herself back from flinching.

“Yes, we recently discovered that we have much in common with each other, despite past differences. I found him a most amiable partner,” she responded, her tone not as cold as his but not particularly warm either. She reclaimed her embroidery and began to work on it as she added, “I had not realized that you were in attendance at the ball.”

He gave a short, sharp laugh, and she could not help but notice the difference between it and the one Gryffindor had given the night before. “It was not the sort of affair that I would take interest in. I was in attendance at the Selwyns. The company was a bit less...mixed.”

And there it was once again, this idea that could not seem to be purged from him, this idea her old friend seemed to have no interest in overcoming. “I find that with such an attitude, I cannot regret not having received an invitation,” she said, making three flawless and focused stitches in quick succession.

“But—” He began to surge forward, until the butler let out a loud and pointed cough. Jaw tight, he stepped back once again and said, “As my wife, you would have received such an invitation and would have no fear as to the attitudes shown you. There would be only deference. You would be under my protection.��

Her hands fell still in her lap. She looked up at him directly and spoke with precision. “I have no interest in engaging with people who would only tolerate me were I under your protection, and I have equally little interest in marrying a man who believes that it is deference and a shield from petty remarks which I seek in a marriage.”

There was a twitch of anger in his face which he covered over quickly. Severus had always masked things so easily; it had once seemed natural to her, a part of him, but now she found it slightly frightening, not being able to tell his true thoughts or feelings.

“Very well,” he said. “That is your opinion. Only remember when Gryffindor has thrown you over for the next pretty thing which comes his way, that I will still be here.”

Lily swallowed. Steadfastness was an admirable trait, but being the sole focus of someone like this felt more like being a hunted animal, a butterfly trapped behind glass, only meant to flutter prettily at the one who had caught it and locked it away, stolen from nature.

“Ah, Lord Snape,” Petunia said from behind him. Her voice was not pleasant - she and Severus had never liked each other - but it was polite, and Lily realized how much her sister and brother-in-law were depending on Snape to take her if no one else did. “May I offer you some refreshment?”

“I shan’t be staying, Mrs. Dursley,” he said, with equally cold politeness. “I merely wanted to ensure that Miss Evans is well. Good day to you both.” He gave a short, sharp bow, and walked past the butler out the door.

Lily rested her hands on her lap for a moment, then forced herself to pick up her embroidery. Even if Snape were no longer in the room to see, she did not want to give him the power of her anxiety.

She cast her mind once again to the plan. It had seemed a longshot at the time, slightly foolish, but she needed it to work. Unbelievable as it seemed, she had placed her trust in the Earl of Gryffindor, and she needed him to have been worthy of it.

“I must say, Miss Evans,” James said, “that you are quite the most stubborn woman of my acquaintance, possibly the most stubborn in the whole of England.” He kept his tone fairly low in deference to the fact that they were surrounded by dozens of other pairs of dancers, but he knew that his amusement came through regardless. She was arguing her point with the focus and diligence of an experienced barrister, which was entirely annoying while also being entirely too much fun.

“Well, England is not particularly large, so I shan’t worry overmuch,” she responded pertly.

“I rescind the comment. You are surely the most stubborn woman in all the world.”

“Merely disagreeing with you regarding the best type of pie does not make me the most stubborn woman in the world, my lord. It only makes me someone who knows her own mind, and I should hope you would be aware of that.” He thought that she might break away from him to place her hands on her hips and wag her finger in the scolding so familiar to him from his time in the nursery, and he held on just a bit tighter, not out of any ridiculous concern for propriety, but simply because these moments when he was allowed to touch her were outlined with such care and detail that he did not want to miss a single second.

She did not even attempt to move from him, however, a smile breaking its way across her face instead. “And regardless, I have complete certainty in the superiority of the apple pie, as any right-thinking person would.”

“Lemon pie,” James responded staunchly, nearly gritting his teeth even as he grinned back. “On the day that you try the lemon pie we eat at home, you shall eat your words along with it and beg my forgiveness.”

“I shall certainly sample it when offered, if only in the spirit of open inquiry and because I am absolutely secure in my own opinion, although I’m doubtful that I would ever beg anything from you.”

“Expect one at your home tomorrow afternoon, then. I do not retreat from a challenge any more than you.”

They were standing close enough that he could see the precise way her eyes flashed as she said, “I take your challenge gladly.”

“I say, is there to be a duel?” Benjy Fenwick, a longtime friend of James’s, seemed taken aback as he came alongside them. James felt similarly taken aback, shocked that the outside world had managed to intrude, shocked that it even still existed; without their having realized it, they had completed the steps of the dance and the next set was starting.

“Of course not.” Lily blinked, then adjusted her tone. It was not precisely fawning, James decided, nor coy, but there was a polite feeling to it, as if she had tucked away some of her warmth or her particular character. He wanted to bring it back, to make certain that the world did not lose that sparking magic of hers, but at the same time he found himself oddly relieved that Fenwick, who she had been so excited to add to her dance card, was not worthy of her true self. “A simple debate between myself and Lord Gryffindor. My apologies, my lord. It is terribly good to see you. Shall we rejoin the floor?”

Fenwick offered his arm and they took their places for the quadrille, while James retreated to the corner where Sirius was observing everything.

“Fenwick’s a nice fellow,” said the man who had only a moment ago been James’s best friend.

“Hmm.”

Sirius sipped at his cup, which James doubted contained only lemonade. “I’m certain Miss Evans would be delighted if he were to further his attentions toward her.”

“He isn’t—Fenwick is fine. He never excelled in a single class to my knowledge nor has he grasped sarcasm, he seems entirely content to be an unassuming third son without particular purpose, and I have beaten him handily every time we have fenced, but he is fine. However, Lily—Miss Evans needs more than fine. She needs more than nice,” James said, exasperated. “We’ll simply have to keep this up until she finds someone else. Someone better.”

“Indeed.” Sirius sipped again, a damnably amused shimmer in his eye. “I suppose keeping up your arrangement would be the only way of achieving that.”

“Of course it is,” James said.

“Of course it is,” Sirius echoed, but he was smiling, almost as if in relief. James turned away, even though he was fairly certain that he did not want to watch Lily dancing with someone else, smiling at someone else.

No, not fairly certain, absolutely certain. But if she was the most stubborn woman in the world, he was the most stubborn man, and he forced himself to keep on. The whole point of this was to find Lily a husband, and she had made it perfectly clear that she did not consider him to be a contender. He would have to become accustomed to seeing her with someone else. He would simply have to.

“Not only pie but ice cream as well?” James asked, licking chocolate from his spoon. “How does one manage to have so many wrong opinions?”

“Unbelievable as it might seem to you, an opinion is not wrong simply because it is not yours,” she responded, taking a dainty bite from her own dish. “Although, to tell you the truth…” She looked this way and that before leaning across the table just slightly. He mirrored her at once; apparently it was lucky that he was a part of the plan because he seemed more eager for gossip than any ten ladies of Lily’s acquaintance. “I actually only order the maple because it seems the least popular. It’s terribly sad to think of it simply melting away for lack of interested customers.”

He gaped at her for a moment. “But then you miss out on the chocolate,” he said, with a sort of implacably simple logic that belonged in childhood. She laughed.

“The maple isn’t actually bad. It simply isn’t as popular because it is overshadowed by the other flavors. Even the lavender gains an audience simply because it sounds sophisticated. But…” Her voice lowered even further. “Sometimes I finish my serving and then ask for a dish of chocolate as well.”

“Gluttony, Miss Evans?” he said, eyes glinting. But where she might have once reminded him sharply that he certainly had more experience in deadly sinning than she, now she merely raised an amused eyebrow and said, “Enjoyment, my lord,” before sitting back and picking her spoon up once more.

He seemed to watch her more closely than the simple movement deserved. “Enjoyment indeed,” he said, and his low voice was not as one telling a secret, but one who had forgotten he was speaking aloud. She glanced up at him sharply, but before she could say anything more, he too had started on his ice cream again.

“One thing I do miss from my travels is getting to try the local delicacies,” he remarked. “There is quite a bit more to the world than the traditional menu would lead you to believe - although I will confess that I was glad to come home to lemon pie and chocolate ice cream.”

“Oh, yes, you mentioned that you had traveled. Where did you go?”

He waved his spoon. “All sorts of places.”

“Please, you must give me something more particular than that. I have never been even to Scotland and might never, and so I may only read about other places in books and listen jealously to stories such as yours.”

“Well, most people start off in Paris, but we - Sirius and I - went to the Netherlands first, then throughout Prussia, then down to Italy and Greece, and across the water to the Ottoman Empire. We even got a chance to see Egypt and some of North Africa before…” His mouth had clearly been coming up with the words before his mind was ready for them. When he realized what he would have to say next, he seemed to take a steadying breath, sliding the ice cream away from himself as if it no longer held appeal. “Word reached me that my mother had taken ill. We cut things short.” He swallowed. “Unfortunately, it made no difference.”

The urge to reach across the table and touch his hand came to her quite suddenly; she was nearly surprised into giving into the impulse. Instead she folded her hands on the table and said softly, "That must have been quite difficult, moving so quickly from a time meant for freedom and adventure and frivolity to one of urgency and then of mourning.”

“I wonder if mourning should always feel sudden, even if one were expecting it,” he said. Once she would have thought it shocking if not impossible for this man to take such a serious tone or speak such a profound thought aloud, but she was finding that there was quite a lot about him which was unexpected for her but no less true.

He cleared his throat. “Regardless, you needn’t be jealous: our travels were not as full of frivolity as all that even before we received the news from home.”

Perhaps if she had not spent the last several weeks so often in his company, with such an awareness of his every expression and how it would be perceived, she would have mistaken the charming smile he gave for a true one. As it was, she said simply, “Oh?” and waited with patiently folded hands for him to continue.

His eyes observed her keenly for a moment before dropping to his lap. Slowly, he said, “I thought that merely reading in the newspapers about the ruin Bonaparte made of things on the continent was enough. I thought I understood. But it was nothing to actually seeing everything that people needed to rebuild, hearing from the locals all that they had lost.” His expression turned self-deprecating. “I had once thought that had I not been the eldest and only of my family, I might have been a soldier, but I could barely stomach even the aftermath years later.”

“I think you could have been a soldier had you the opportunity,” she said. “I believe it can only be for the good to have soldiers who fight not because they enjoy the battle or out of a desire for glory, but to bring peace, to protect the innocent. And of course we have determined that you can come up with an innovative strategy with haste, a quality I’m certain would have served you well.”

That actually made him smile truly, and she could nearly see him trying to brush away his unfortunate mood. “I thank you for your compliments,” he said. “And of course, all of that was no more painful than what you had to bear. You have lost your mother more recently than I did my parents. If anything, I should be comforting you.”

“There needn’t be a competition between us regarding our suffering,” she pointed out. “And taking a turn at being comforted simply because I am next in the queue is not how I like to remember my mother.”

“How do you like to remember her? I confess, we—” He gave an uncomfortable cough. “We had little opportunity to speak.”

She wondered if he remembered that, although they had indeed spoken little on the occasion, it had been her mother who had guided him gently from the room after his ill-fated proposal. She suspected not - he had seemed quite dazed in the moment.

“I have rarely enjoyed simply being in company with someone as I did her,” Lily said instead. “Our minds seemed to work quite similarly. I miss so many things about her - her quiet humor, her independence although even as a girl I could tell that she wished my father had not passed so young, and how she always seemed to know exactly the solution to any problem in the household, any social faux pas - but more than anything, I don’t know that I will ever find someone who seemed so often to echo my same thoughts. I’m afraid it left my sister a bit isolated at times. She engages with the world so differently. It was Mama who always encouraged me to continue reaching out to her, trying to allow some understanding between us.”

Now it was her turn to glance down at her lap, although she forced her eyes back up toward him mere seconds later. “I imagine these last months would have been easier if Petunia and I did have some sort of understanding, even an imperfect one. I am not speaking of my...situation, although I am certain that would have been different had we been closer. But there are so many memories which only we two now share, and I wish we had closeness enough to recall them together.”

He nodded. “I was lucky to be able to spend a few weeks remembering my mother beside my father before his passing. Perhaps that time would have been better spent in discussion of our holdings or my responsibilities, and had he known what was to come he might have insisted upon it, but I find that I cannot make myself regret those times. And now I have been lucky to have Sirius nearby to share with me his memories. He spent so much time in our home, with my parents, that he can easily recall to my mind things I did not even realize I had forgotten: the way my mother ordered a new perfume for each season, or how my father would sit alone with a cup of hot milk when he was particularly pensive.”

His throat seemed nearly to catch as he swallowed. “I suspect it is always easiest to bear these sorts of things when you are with people who will listen, even if they cannot share experiences with you. I am sorry that you do not have the same.”

“Well,” she said, “I wonder if perhaps I do.”

She had not known she would say the words until she did, but she had felt them all the same. She had her own friends, it was true, and yet no one seemed to want to discuss her mother’s passing the way he did, no one even seemed willing to try beyond platitudes or small embraces. And he seemed overwhelmed by the comment, his lips falling open just a touch, eyes large and bright behind his spectacles as they caught hers.

“Miss Evans.”

She very nearly fell from her chair, and her only consolation was that he nearly did as well, although he recovered more quickly, his from-the-cradle training pushing him to rise and bow smartly. She had forgotten, somehow, that they were in the middle of Gunter’s, that their object for the day was to be seen in public laughing together and enjoying each other’s company in order to rouse the notice of others, that being with him - pretending to be with him - was only meant as a waystation on the path to the man with whom she would actually spend the rest of her life.

Somehow, as she sat at their small corner table, she had only been seeing him.

“Miss Lily Evans,” Lady McGonagall said again, and Lily remembered to stand and curtsy. The countess looked her over closely, then turned and said, "You could hardly do better, my boy."

In their limited interactions, Lily had rather liked Lady McGonagall and she suspected that she was liked in return, but she was still surprised at her warm and roundly approving tone.

The countess continued: "And James Potter. Earl of Gryffindor, Viscount Peverell, cousin to the king, heir to the Potter fortune..:” She glanced him over and tilted her head to speak directly to Lily. “I suppose you could have done worse." She turned back. "See that you're worthy of her," she said, in that way of someone accustomed to being obeyed without question.

And while Lily could feel her eyebrows practically springing into her hair, he merely smiled and said, "I am trying my best.”

He really was remarkably good at pretending - for a moment, even Lily nearly believed him.

Having already attended the agreed upon number of occasions for the week, James could easily have begged off of the Weasley’s supper party and spent the evening at home or at his club or out with his friends (up to less savory pursuits, if Sirius was allowed to be in charge). He told himself that his reason for accepting the invitation was simply because he liked Molly and Arthur - regardless of their financial status, they were actually enjoyable company, unlike many in the ton - but that did not explain why he had not cited another engagement following the meal instead of sitting through the gentlemen’s retreat and then their return for cards and socializing. Overall, as he watched Lily set her face fiercely across from him at the whist table, he found any excuse less and less convincing by the moment.

Sirius elbowed him. “It seems as if you have a tiger for a partner,” he remarked in a low tone, somehow managing to lounge in his chair while holding his cards properly before him.

“If you are referring to my demeanor, you should well address me directly so that I may tell you just as directly that I have rarely lost and do not intend to do so tonight,” Lily interrupted, running a fingernail casually across the top of one of her cards. She faced Sirius directly, and James suspected that he was the only one who would be able to detect the hints of humor in her face. “And if you were referring to my hair, my lord, well, perhaps you should retire once again in order to refresh your arsenal with more creative comparisons.”

Grinning, James watched Sirius and Remus staring at her in astonishment. They had exchanged pleasantries before, but this was the first time his friends were spending time with Lily, and she was certainly leaving an impression.

“Goodness, Sirius,” Lupin finally said, a chuckle building in his throat. “If you do need to retire after such a carefully aimed attack, I can certainly replace you as a partner.”

“No need.” Sirius sat up straighter, staring Lily down with good-natured ruthlessness. “I have talent enough to come up with my riposte as we play.”

Lily said, “One might say that if there has not been a response within the first moment, there is not one forthcoming,” then bowed her head politely to Sirius, adding, “Not, of course, that I am referring to anyone in particular.” She faced across the table once more and said, “Now then, shall we play, my lord?”

“James,” he blurted before he could think better of it. "You should call me James."

It meant something, giving her leave to call him by his given name, and he wondered if he had been holding himself back from this particular development, one which now felt inevitable, as some sort of protection. The thought of it felt quite tangled about in his mind, but regardless, he needn't have said it in front of his friends.

He could tell that they were gaping at him - well, Remus had his eyebrows raised so high that they were practically on the moon and Sirius's expression had defaulted to arch surprise - and he even thought that Molly Weasley might have looked over instinctively from her own whist table to ensure that nothing was amiss, but his eyes were for Lily alone.

"James, then," she murmured comfortably, though he seemed to see a touch of something like nervousness, even fear, in her eyes as she said, "And you may call me Lily, of course." But it was gone the next second as she said to the group at large, "Shall we play, then?"

"I like her," Sirius declared as they sat in James's study later that night having a brandy together. "I like her quite a lot."

"As do I." James tapped a fingernail absently against his glass. Lily was indeed a champion whist player - he was willing to lay the lion’s share of their team’s victory at her feet - and her dress tonight had been a most fetching shade of blue which offset her hair quite startlingly. Obviously she wore green beautifully, and he had once seen her in a gown of deep purple which redefined the shade for him, but the blue in the candlelight as she laughed and schemed over her cards…

"I can tell," Sirius said, and his voice was sober enough to break James from his thoughts and look over at him. "I can tell that you like her. It has been some time since I saw you smile with such frequency." His own smile returned and he said, "Although I would wonder if she would consider you worthwhile after tonight. You should call me James, indeed." He repeated it, voice lower and more pompous than James believed his to be, then in an oily, seductive way, then with a shy blink through his lashes, until his impressions were apparently so hilarious that he fell into laughter and could not continue.

Dear Miss Evans,

Dear Lily,

Madam,

I hope this note finds you well, and my apologies for leaving without a proper goodbye - or truly any goodbye. I had an early letter regarding a fire near one of my estates which necessitated a speedy departure. Luckily the damage appears to be less serious than feared: there are no severe injuries, it seems that only minimal repairs will be required, and the harvest will not be affected.

I spent the morning helping to clear some of the wreckage, and then was deemed competent enough to swing a hammer and so was able to help with some repairs. In the afternoon, I assisted with a foaling, although to be frank, I'm not certain that I was truly any help at all. If I recall, I mostly spent the time asking the farmer whether it would truly work and flinching away as I wondered whether that amount of fluid was normal - which it apparently is. (If any of this should happen to make its way to Sirius, I'd like it to be impressed upon him that he would certainly have done no better in the circumstances, and if he doubts it, he may come try next spring.)

I shall likely be staying another two weeks at least - now that I am here, there is some business it would be wise to take care of - but I hope that my absence gives opportunity to those perhaps not bold enough to come forward while I am about. Only recall, of course, that you do not have to give in to such gentlemens’ attentions if you do not want to...unless you desire a husband over whom you can take charge. It would, after all, be only natural for you to desire someone whose stubbornness will not outmatch your own. But if you are waiting for something else in a man, please recall that you are a most excellent catch and quite eligible on your own, and someone with the highest qualities to recommend him will see that in due course.

In the meantime I remain,

Yrs &c

James Potter

Dear Gryffindor,

It is quite a relief to hear that things were less dire than initially believed - although I suspect that they might be a bit dire still if they are allowing you near hammers or any other tools. I shall, however, refrain from sharing my opinion on that with any of your friends or acquaintances, as it would likely spoil the illusion of our deep affection for one another (to my knowledge, most ladies do not express their ardor by pointing out the flaws of their supposed beloved). Nor will I mention the incident with the foal - unless I am severely provoked to it.

Since you bring up potential suitors who might be suffering from attacks of nerves at the thought of crossing the formidable Lord Gryffindor, I did dance twice with Mr. Davey Gudgeon at the Abbott ball evening last. In the first dance he was anxious but quite sweet, but in the second he mistimed his cross-step during the Duchess of Devonshire's Reel, knocked into Miss Vance (or as he put it “nearly had his eye taken out by her!”), and seemed to desire me to spend the rest of the evening fetching him cool cloths and telling him that the redness was not visible. It depressed things quite considerably, I must say.

I shall be waiting with bated breath for these gentlemen of highest quality who you allege to be on the horizon. My criteria remain, I believe, modest: kindness, someone who will be a friend to me, and who will be open to conversation. (Degree of stubbornness matters not at all, regardless of your inferences to the contrary...) Hope with me that they come soon: if my need for air becomes too pressing, I shall be left gasping at the feet of Lord Snape, and there is more than one reason I have worked for many years to avoid such a fate.

With best and most sincere wishes,

Lily

Dear Lily,

I shall keep in mind not to provoke you, although I should ask that you grant me some amount of latitude in what is meant by provoking lest I blunder into it and you are forced to cast aspersions on my reputation as an iron stomached lord of the domain.

Although by your description, Mr. Gudgeon has set the standards quite low in this regard. If these are the men of the ton, I believe my reputation would remain intact even should my inability to assist in live animal births be revealed. (My reputation with Sirius in specific would, of course, never recover.)

I hope that whoever you partner with at the next occasion is more suitable, and that it is certainly not Snape. Forgive me for asking, but I wonder if I misunderstand your comment regarding him. Has he caused you insult or injury further than is commonly known? I give you my assurance that I shall refrain from rash behavior, regardless of your answer - although you must know that I might countenance a considered, planful vengeance upon my return.

James

Dear James,

Your reputation remains intact here in town, although Lady Bones did frown most ominously upon your absence at her party two nights past, even with your other friends present. (Mr. Pettigrew seemed a bit downcast, despite my efforts to cheer him; it seems that Miss Jones has been engaged to another.) Apparently you have a habit of slipping from your promises of attendance. It is a lucky thing for you that it was I with whom you entrusted your secrets, or she might be casting aspersions in revenge even now without you here to defend yourself. (I suspect, however, that she would not, regardless of her pique - she is quite dignified.)

Regarding your own revenge, there is no need. Lord Snape and I were acquainted as children, prior to his inheritance, and he believed that our past friendship and certain areas of mutual interest were enough to assure his suit. However, in the intervening years, I found his choice of friends to be quite reprehensible and his values not to match with my own. I care little regarding his insults toward me, but he was similarly disparaging to those for whom I care, or stood by and listened while others acted similarly. For those reasons I refused him, and while I have the choice, I will refuse him still. You are already doing quite enough in allowing me to continue to have such choices, and for that I must thank you once again.

Yours,

Lily

Dear Lily,

I avoid Lady Bones because she is so intimidating that I perpetually fear that simply being near her will result in unintentional confessions. Even Lady McGonagall, who is quite shrewd and can devastate with her tongue lashing, has a sense of humor beneath it all; Lady Bones seems all mind and sharp eyes.

Perhaps this observation is another which can remain between us? Although if I encounter her again, I might find myself revealing it regardless.

As for Lord Snape, I still find that I would rather confront than avoid him, but as this is your battle, I shall defer to you. (If his path and mine were to cross, however, I wonder at my own control.)

I am to journey home in two days’ time, and while I do not find myself anticipating my arrival back in the social whirl, I hope that you will have some time free to walk with me at least. We must remind everyone of our affections most publicly, after all, as the attention of the ton is short - and besides, it has been quite too long since last I saw you.

Yours,

James

Her drawing room did not lack for suitors these days, her dance card rarely had an empty place, and surely someone would offer for her soon, but as they walked through the park together, even given the gloomy weather, Lily found herself overwhelmingly glad that James had returned.

He was speaking of a visit he had taken to the school in the village, his manner proud as he described the recitation that the students had performed for him - although he turned sheepish as he described how, when one boy had asked him to show them his own skill, he had needed to make up an excuse and flee in order to avoid embarrassment.

“Truly, you could not have been such a terrible student that you cannot remember a single thing,” she admonished, laughing slightly. He really was quite intelligent, as determined as he sometimes seemed to act otherwise; they conversed often on literature and current events, and his friend Lupin had once let slip that James had received a first at university.

James tapped his head. “I’m certain there is some passage or poem lurking around up here, but what if I had erred in front of them? I could never have endured the shame. And, being frank with you, I was never a particularly engaged student. That crop I saw was all much better and they deserve the credit for it.”

“I had not realized that you would be so involved in the education of your tenants,” Lily commented, lifting her skirt a bit to avoid a puddle which had collected in a dip in the path.

“Many are not, but my family has seen it as a responsibility of ours for some time. Not everyone will find themselves at university, but there is no reason that we cannot help to ensure that there is instruction beyond the most basic of reading and sums.” He said this all very staunchly, brow furrowed, but he relaxed a bit as he added, “My father would often send books down for the schooling of the boys.”

“And what of the girls?” she asked before she could stop herself.

Her sister would have hissed at her in shock and shame, both for the impertinent tone and for even bothering to ask the question, but James just grinned. “That was my mother’s pet project, actually, a schoolhouse educating the village girls. Whenever she had heard that my father had provided more materials or hired on a new schoolmaster, she would do the same for them. She was quite an admirer of Wollstonecraft.”

“Really? I had not heard,” Lily said. It was not altogether surprising, as she had never interacted with James’s mother in life, but gossip did travel far and fast. And Lily was sure that if she had known this about the late Lady Gryffindor, she would not have forgotten; although she had hidden it from not only Petunia but their mother as well for fear they would be scandalized, Lily had read both Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and Vindication of the Rights of Woman and considered the ideas within them often.

“It’s likely fairly common knowledge in that corner of the country but she kept it a bit quiet in London. She always said that it was easier to change people’s minds when they did not know your opinions well enough to start bracing themselves and preparing their counterattacks without having even heard your points.” Strangely, it was not the smile on his face which spoke more to Lily of his love for his mother, but the gruff clearing of his throat as he said, “She could likely have worked for the War Office, my mother. Napoleon would have been dispatched much sooner.”

“I wish I could have met her,” Lily said honestly. “I wish I could have met both of them. They both sound quite lovely, quite special.” She had one arm resting in his, but she drew up her other hand and covered his fingers lightly, trying to communicate the truth of her sentiment.

James nodded. “They were, to me and to each other. I was terribly lucky to be able to watch their partnership for as long as I did.” He squeezed her fingers back.

His hand, Lily realized, was warm beneath hers, warm and very strong and somehow comfortable. She did not know how it had happened or when, but she had grown to adore walking alongside him, hearing his thoughts and having him listen to hers, watching the way his face crumpled a bit with concern over his friends or his tenants or news from the continent or some issue in Parliament, seeing his concern turn into determination, registering the degree of his every smile and laugh, especially when they were for her.

She thought of the things she had told him she wished for in a husband, comfort and companionship, someone who truly saw her, and she knew that she had that in James, and that she had more too. He had told her that he had arrived back in London near twilight the previous evening, and that after so long in the carriage he had wanted to stretch his legs so he had walked part of the way to Gryffindor House. She had not mentioned that she had been at her window as he passed, that she had involuntarily drawn in a breath at the sight of his undone cravat, of the leanly muscled forearms beneath his rolled up sleeves, of the hair that she once thought foolishly messy but which now seemed dashing as he brushed it carelessly from his eyes.

Neither had she told him that she had run down to receive the post each morning that he had been away, and not only because she had feared Petunia withholding his letters from her if she got to them first. She did not mention that she had read them over more than once, conjuring up his awkward little gestures and his seriousness and his enthusiasm, imagining him swinging a hammer beside his tenants, rubbing a finger against his lips as he read her own correspondence the way he did when he was particularly engrossed in something. She did not speak of the way, when she lay in bed, she thought of his eyes lighting up behind his glasses as he returned to see her, nor of the way she would fall asleep smiling just from the thought of being with him once again.

Oh, she thought with polite surprise, even as it felt as if a rock were sinking into her belly. Oh, God. I’ve fallen in love with him.

She had never questioned her refusal of his proposal all those years ago. There was no doubt that he would not have suited her at the time, that after a short time he would have realized that she did not suit him. Only, if they had turned into who they were now and they had already been married…

She allowed herself a moment to imagine it, being married to James, being a friend to him over the years not only at a distance or because of some scheme but in true partnership as his parents had been. To have all that they did now, but also to be able to touch each other, to be alone together.

But she could allow herself only that moment. He had made it more than clear at the outset that he was uninterested in marriage at present, that he now found the idea a bothersome distraction. She had missed her chance, and she would simply have to live with it. Fenwick had danced with her thrice two nights past, tantamount to a proposal. She would live a fine life with him, and James would be happy, one day, with someone else.

Swallowing against the tears in her throat, she squeezed his hand once more and let him go.

When Remus came running into the room two days later, James thought he must be falling ill once more. His friend kept his condition quiet, but he had developed malaria as a child after time spent abroad due to his father’s work; attacks of the illness came on periodically, bringing with them terrible fevers and pain which James hated to watch and could do little to stop.

“Shall I call for the doctor?” he asked desperately, forcing his thoughts straight as he rose from the table where he had been having a late breakfast and shoved out a chair for Remus to collapse into. “You’re meant to have that quinine remedy, aren’t you? Have you run out?”

But Remus only shook his head frantically, finally rasping out, “A drink, please.”

James hastily poured him tea, remembering only after he had handed it over that it would likely be cold by now. He had come down to breakfast late already, and then had lingered quite a long time absently eating through progressively more tepid eggs and fish as he read over reports from his solicitors. But Remus took it down in a gulp, making a face only after he had finished and returned the cup to the table.

“You’ve been found out,” was the first thing he said.

James slowly regained his seat. He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I was at the stationers,” Remus continued as his breathing calmed slightly and his color began returning to normal. “And I was approached by Lucius Malfoy and Rodolphus Lestrange - those bounders married to Sirius’s dreadful cousins, you remember.”

“Of course.” If James had not already known and disliked the men in question, he would have pitied them, Lestrange especially. “But I don’t see—”

“They said that they knew that Lily had been having one over on everyone,” said Remus grimly. “And they know of your part in it too. It’s apparently already being spread all over town. According to them, as soon as Snape found out, he went to go see Lily’s brother-in-law: he seems to think that Dursley will simply give Lily over now that there are even rumors about her being duplicitous or what have you, and having only met the man once I’m inclined to think he’s right.”

James stood from the table so quickly that he didn’t unbend his legs in time, hitting both knees on the tabletop and needing a moment to straighten himself. Fingers fumbling with his cravat, he called for his coat and hat, only pausing after he had done so to ask, “Did they say how they found out in the first place? I don’t expect that Lily was spreading it around, and I only told you three.” There was an unpleasant turn in his stomach at the thought of Sirius’s unbound tongue when he was in his cups. But surely even then, he would not have revealed the information? If Lily’s life was ruined because of this…

“It was Peter,” Remus said.

“What?” James said, his thoughts still on how Sirius would have to grovel, but then the words made it through. “What?” he said again, so shocked that he sank back into his chair. “Peter?”

Remus said, with the air of a doctor giving a fatal diagnosis, “He was trying to ingratiate himself to them, I think, but they kept needling him about Hestia Jones throwing him over. So he struck back by letting them in on the most sensational secret that he had.”

“I’ll have to—” James began weakly, but then his anger took over. “I’ll speak with him later,” he said, rage bristling through him, pushing his shoulders back. He found himself wishing that the morning had never started, but it was too late for that. He took a fortifying breath as the butler returned and set his jaw. He would need to handle things regarding Peter, but for now he had somewhere else to be.

Fifteen minutes later, he was nipping at the heels of another butler as he walked through the hall to the drawing room of the Dursley house.

“No callers all morning?” came the voice of Lily’s entirely unpleasant sister. “It seems that the bloom has quite come off the rose. I caught Vernon in my second season, you know. It seems that once again you will not be so lucky.”

“The bloom coming off the lily would have been the more apt reference, Tuney,” Lily replied. “And I am quite grateful that you were the one to catch Vernon. But regardless, perhaps everyone somehow divined that I would prefer some quiet time with my thoughts this morning.”

“And what thoughts are—”

“The Earl of Gryffindor, madam,” the butler announced, mere seconds before James entered the room.

Petunia Dursley rose and curtsied. “My lord,” she said, although with a turn of her lip as if she would prefer to call him something else, or even to comment on his lack of manners in barging into their home. If James had not been so distracted, he might have even appreciated her lack of ingratiation: too many people began positively groveling as soon as they heard the title. As it was, he was distracted by the sudden realization of the flaw in his plan. For all that the ton relied on rules and propriety, Mrs. Dursley clung to the concepts with a martial gleam that put most others to shame. She would never leave them alone and unchaperoned, not for a moment. Perhaps he could trip her, and in the chaos, whisper something to Lily…?

“Would you like to sit down?” That was Lily now; he focused enough to watch her gesture to a chair across from the sofa which she and Petunia shared, and even to follow her direction, although he was still distracted by the necessity now of coming up with a plan.

“Would you like something to eat or drink, my lord?” Lily again. She had set her embroidery aside and was eyeing him oddly. He had the feeling that this was not the first time he had been offered a refreshment.

“Tea would be lovely,” he managed. Maybe her sister would go to arrange it…

But no, Petunia Dursley simply rang for a maid, then picked up her own embroidery and began conversing about the weather as if she were being forced into niceties with a pistol at her back. He was able to manage answers for several minutes, sipping tea occasionally, even as Lily looked at him in a way which clearly showed she thought him mad.

“The weather is indeed lovely,” he finally interrupted a bit desperately, although he knew that firstly, it was not, and secondly, Mrs. Dursley had been asking whether he believed that there would be more rain this month than the same time last year. “Perhaps I might take Miss Evans on a walk?”

“Fresh air would certainly be wonderful,” Lily said swiftly.

Petunia glanced between both of them suspiciously. “You walked only yesterday, Lily, with Mr. Fenwick. I’m afraid you will become too dark and hearty-looking if you step out so often.”

James Potter had never even considered being rattled by an exam, a fight with a fellow gentleman, or an upbraiding by his mother. The slightest sweat broke out on the back of his neck now.

And then, several things happened, if not at once, then in very close succession: the front door burst open followed by a stream of unintelligible invective; Petunia rose, calling, “Vernon, is there some trouble, darling?” and began to cross the room; and James, spotting an opportunity, upended his teacup onto her skirt with a barely believable, “Oh, my apologies!”

Instead of causing her to leave the room at once to put herself to rights, this clearly non-accidental dousing simply made Petunia eye him stonily, mouth agape. James ignored her, turning and starting, “Lily—” before being cut off.

“Thought you could pull one over on us, eh?” Vernon Dursley had arrived in the room, impressively red in the face. The color became even more impressive as he spotted James, and he barked out a “You!”

“We’ve been found out,” James said rapidly, returning to face Lily alone. “It was my error. I should not have—In any case, I have heard that Lord Snape has already tried to finalize things, but if you were to marry me, I believe that you would be…”

She was looking at him with the same vaguely curious expression that she had all the way back in the garden at the Longbottom house party. The arguments he was about to make - that the power of his title and standing would offer protection to her reputation, that it was only honorable that he make amends in this way considering it was his lack of discretion which had allowed their secret to be known, that he would trouble her as little as she liked within their marriage - died on his tongue.

All he could remember was Lily making conciliatory faces to Alice Longbottom behind the back of the redoubtable Lady Longbottom, Lily’s small and capable hand against his arm as they walked, the feeling of her assured steps, of her warmth against him when they danced. Lily’s look of concentration as he explained something dull regarding crop rotations, her careful gestures as she offered some solution. The gleam in her eye when she won at cards, the way she gave Sirius as good as she got and spoke with Remus about literature and was kind to Peter even when he stepped on her toes. Lily, choosing the maple ice cream because it was the least liked, looking fascinated at the idea of his father’s old work rooms, conceding a point only after he had presented his best arguments, teasing him that he allowed his hair to stay in such disarray because he did not want to seem shorter than Sirius, speaking so lovingly of her mother and tilting her head in welcome as he spoke of his own parents. Lily’s smile, her laugh, her mind, the way he felt such joy whenever they spent time together…

He had thought himself in love with her years earlier, but that had been mere infatuation, an enjoyment of her appearance, her outward manner. He had been drawn to this one woman who had not been charmed by him, who had offered novelty through her rejection, but that was not love. This, knowing her and wanting to be known by her, always, this was love.

The teacup was empty, but he placed it politely on the side table before he slid from his chair and knelt before Lily. He took both of her hands in his and held them near his mouth. Surely this was allowed? Hands were allowed, he had kissed many of them, although not ungloved like this and not with this precise level of intimacy. The Dursleys certainly seemed to take offense: Petunia gasped in nearly all the air in the room, although she left enough for Vernon to bellow out an “I say!” James ignored them both, watching those spectacularly green eyes of Lily’s instead.

“I have no flowers,” he said softly, “and I have no ring, although I can obtain both very soon, but if you would have me, I should like to marry you. Not because you must, and not because of what my name can offer, but because you are my friend, because I adore you, because I want you to be my partner in every dance, today and for the rest of my life, because my favorite times are when I am with you, because I want to spend each one of my days with you beside me.” He swallowed. “Will you have me?”

And just as he had known the first time he had asked what her answer would be before she said it, he knew now too.

Two years later…

Sirius was not certain whether it was his sighing or his constant checking out the carriage window, but a few miles from Godric’s Hollow, Remus had apparently had enough.

“Please,” he said, faintly begging. “Borrow a horse and ride ahead.”

“It would not be polite to leave you alone,” Sirius pointed out dutifully, glad that his mother was not there to see him acting in such a manner.

Remus countered, “It would, in fact, be more polite than what you are doing now.” He gestured to the manuscript atop the travel desk on his lap. “I have much to keep me occupied, and you are merely a distraction from it. Now go.”

And so, less than an hour later, Sirius directed his commandeered horse up the neatly maintained path to the house. A servant was already hurrying out as he swerved to a stop by the front door (Lily had been welcomed easily as countess, and her staff always rose to exceed her expectations), and Sirius tossed over the reins and bounded up the steps two at a time.

He was recognized immediately by the butler and footmen and maids, but he only nodded in acknowledgment of their bows and curtsies as he strode through the entrance hall and made his way to the main staircase.

Barely had he reached the upstairs landing when he heard a door thrown open and saw James barrelling toward him.

“Sirius,” his best friend shouted, nearly knocking him over when he couldn’t manage to come to a stop quickly enough. Without apology, he grabbed Sirius’s hand and hauled him further down the hall. “The baby’s here.”

“I know,” Sirius said, laughing. “You wrote to us, that’s why we came.”

But James didn’t seem to hear him. “Come see the baby,” he said, words nearly toppling over each other in his excitement. “Come see Lily. Come meet my son!”

His spectacles were falling down his nose and he looked as though he hadn’t slept in the days since the baby was born and there was a large, unpleasant looking stain on his waistcoat over his ribcage, but Sirius had never seen him so happy.

And as he allowed himself to be dragged for his first glimpse of the future Earl of Gryffindor, Sirius realized that the best friend of his childhood was well and truly gone. Or perhaps not gone, he decided, but transformed. James had left behind old habits and made way for new. He had laid aside the roles of rake and man about town and had taken on others, earl and husband and now father. They would no longer challenge each other dangerously or act below their age and rank, and that was no pity. James had happiness here, a different kind than Sirius had once expected, but no less true for it.

“Let’s go see your son,” Sirius said, and James laughed a wholly exhilarated sort of laugh, running his hand through his hair and beginning to describe the baby as though Sirius wouldn’t see himself in only a moment.

Two weeks later, Frank Longbottom received two bottles of extremely fine brandy alongside a note from Sirius Black.

Congratulations on the birth of your son, and my belated thanks for the invitation.

“What invitation?” Alice said, rocking their new baby Neville as he read the card aloud to her. “I should hope that you have no intention of inviting people around for months yet.”

“Not even—”

“Especially not your mother,” Alice said with exhausted vehemence.

“Well, I have no idea what he’s talking about, regardless,” Frank said, hefting one bottle to eye level. “But it’s a jolly nice gift anyway.”

“I would have preferred some chocolates, and Neville might have liked another blanket, but I suppose we shall make do.”

“Oh, Nev will like this perfectly well one day.”

“One day quite a long time from now,” Alice remarked, but she smiled as she did.

#Jily #Jily AU #James Potter #Lily Evans #long post #too much Bridgerton can't cope

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sternbagel · 3 years

Text

Inspired by the wonderful OC lore that @charlotte-balfours-garden wrote and posted, I decided to finish this piece that’s been sitting in my drafts for months about my own RDR OC, visual references here!

Note: This takes place in canon, Chapter 3, and while everyone calls her Alberta Taylor at this point, it’s not her real name, just something she’s been going by for years because of something in her past. Professionally, she’s a bounty hunter, but has dabbled in other things.

Read This First

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, at least the one thing today that hasn’t been surprising is Arthur finding Al has dragged a chair over to his tent to read, one leg propped up on the chest at the end of his cot. Sometimes she’ll set up there to get ample shade from the sun, and according to her, the chest is the perfect foot rest height.

“Afternoon, Arthur,” she greets lazily as she turns the page.

“Miss Taylor. Comfortable?”

“Sure.” She cuts her eyes up at him from under the brim of her hat, seemingly just to give him a greeting glance and smile, but when she spots the shiny new accessory pinned to his vest, her head raises higher. “You steal that off a dead lawman or somethin’?”

And it begins, Arthur thinks with a snort. “No, Dutch—” he waves an arm in the direction he came from, though Dutch has long ago left that area—“got us ingratiated with the local sheriff, so now we’re honorary deputies.”

“Was Sheriff Gray drunk?”

That’s surprising. They only met the sheriff yesterday, and he’s not sure the full story of their encounter has been relayed to the rest of camp, just the orders not to cause any trouble. “How’d you know his name?”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he realizes that most likely, it was Hosea. Those two are close.

She answers with a cavalier shrug before he can say anything. “I’ve been here before. Once. Didn’t stay long.”

Arthur takes the bait she leaves out. “Why not?”

“Well, it’s Lemoyne. I don’t spend very long here if I can help it. But first time I got to Rhodes lookin’ for bounty posters, Sheriff Gray was puking in the bushes. Somehow he managed to get out that they do all the bounty hunting themselves. No reason to go back.”

“Well, that’s pretty much how I found him when I went lookin’ for Dutch and Bill.”

“Figures,” she laughs, shaking her head. “Not that I really care, but where is Bill? Didn’t see him come back with y’all. Still with the Sheriff, ingratiating himself?” She looks thoughtful for a moment. “I didn’t get that impression off him, but I wasn—”

Arthur holds up a hand and shakes his own head with a smirk. “No, no, the Grays around here don’t seem… his type. Matter of fact, I should probably warn Bill to just play it cool—“

“What, drunk, dumb, and ignorant ain’t Bill’s type? What about that guy we saw him chattin’ up at that saloon in Armadillo?”

“That ain’t what I mean,” he snorts.

“I know.” Al flashes a playful smirk. “I’m just messin’.”

“Well, anyway, no, he’s off hidin’ some wagon full o’ moonshine we stole off some bootleggers under the Sheriff’s orders. Hosea’ll know what to do with it.”

“Moonshine?” This seems to pique her interest, again to Arthur’s surprise. “You know who you stole it off of?”

“Yes…” Arthur’s eyebrows knit together. He slowly lumbers over to his table, laying down the deputy badge and watching her carefully. Al’s expression is calm, but it’s a thin enough veneer that he sees the curiosity building by the second. “What’s it to you?”

“Curious.”

“Yeah.”

The book in her lap finally closes. “I used to run with some moonshiners not too long ago.”

“Alberta Taylor. Well, I never took you for a bootlegger.”

She throws an arm over the back of her chair and lets her head fall back, exposing more of her neck. It’s then that Arthur notices she’s not wearing her usual green neckerchief. Or her green jacket. She must be really burning up to be in just her workshirt and jeans. “Not every professional bounty hunter is a staunch upholder of the law, Arthur Morgan,” she says matter-of-factly with a lift of her brow.

“I never said that. Didn’t mean it neither. I mean, look who you fell in with, I know better. I just ain’t seen you drink much moonshine.”

“Sure. Always been more of a beer and tequila woman.”

He plops down on his cot and lights a cigarette. “Then what you doin’ runnin’ with moonshiners?”

“Tell me who you stole the liquor off of first, cowboy.”

Arthur concedes. Al is stubborn. “The Braithwaites. And those fellers that run around here with those yellow bandanas. Sadie and I ran into ‘em a few days ago. Uh—”

“Lemoyne Raiders?” She sneers. “I’d hoped someone had snuffed ‘em out by now. Hijo de putas.”

He takes a long drag of the cigarette before answering. “Yeah, that’s them. You’ve had some run-ins with ‘em, huh?”

“Like I said, just the once. Three of them stopped me on my way into Rhodes. Brought ‘em into town, dead, which is when I met Sheriff Gray. They didn’t have any bounties on ‘em, so all I got outta one of his deputies was five dollars. I know they weren’t even worth that much, but he coulda paid me more,” she grumbles. Her light Cuban accent comes out more the lower her voice goes.

“Sounds about right. Least ya got paid somethin’.”

“I guess.” She picks at the spine of her book for a moment. “Wasn’t long after that I met a… moonshiner legend, so to say, through a mutual friend. Though friend seems to be pushing it.”

He gets the sense she’s not fully sour on the “friend,” so his shoulders shake in amusement.

“He was a lot like Uncle, actually.”

“Lord.” Arthur snickers, smoke billowing out of his mouth.

“Yeah. Not as lazy. Probably younger, but who knows.”

“I reckon Uncle ain’t as old as he wants folks to think. Besides just bein’ too lazy, it’s probably why he don’t trim his beard.”

Al laughs, rougher than usual until she coughs and clears it up. “Damn humidity.”

“Tell me about it,” Arthur agrees, leaning forward and propping one elbow up on his knee. “So, this… moonshiner legend.”

“Ever heard the name Maggie Fike?”

The name isn’t familiar, but it isn’t unfamiliar either. “Don’t think so,” he settles on.

“Well, she’s been mostly out this way rather than out where y’all been running around. Revenue Agents caught up to her a couple years back, tried burning her alive. Didn’t work, but gave her a nasty scar and bad eye. Almost puts Marston to shame. Almost,” she adds with a grin as he walks between Arthur and Strauss’ tents.

“Take a look in the mirror, Miss Taylor,” he grumbles back. Then he chucks a cigarette butt at a chuckling Arthur. “You too, Morgan.”

John disappears around the side of the tent as Arthur brushes off the butt. “Cranky cause he ain’t had his midday nap.”

“Pick better material.”

Al chuckles and presses the palm of her hand on her hat, affixing it more securely to her head. “Anyway…”

“Anyway…” Arthur sighs lightly. “You said she survived?”

“Yeah, went into hiding for a while. Somehow got a hold of my ‘friend’, who then asked me for help gettin’ her business back on its feet. Easy work at first. Finding a good location for the shack, gettin’ her some supplies, that stuff.” She waves a hand around. “Most folks don’t pay much mind to a bounty hunter buyin’ supplies in bulk like I was or destroying illegal stills. Sometimes I brought in the other moonshiners to the local town to collect on a bounty. Made for a better cover for what I was really doing.”

“Takin’ out the competition.” Arthur chuckles.

“Exactly. Then came—”

“What the hell are you two talkin’ about anyway?”

Al puts her hand back on her hat before tipping her head back, almost touching the back of the chair, and looks at John, upside down. Arthur leans forward more to get his own look and the rangy outlaw, who’s circled back around to the other side of his wagon.

“And what the hell is that?” John asks. He’s looking directly at the badge on Arthur’s table, disgust etched into his features. As if it’s some rotting, maggot infested carcass Arthur’s using for decoration.

Arthur sighs and briefly explains again.

“So this is just another excuse for you to play dress-up, eh? Guess I need to tell Hosea you’re itchin’ to go scammin’ with him again.”

“You do that, it’ll be your pecker in the stew pot next meal.”

Al’s crossed her arms over her chest and is watching them with barely contained amusement. “Playing dress-up? I don’t think I’ve seen that side of you yet, Arthur.”

“And you won’t,” he growls. “Only reason Hosea takes me on those jobs is because he knows I hate it. Just once I’d like him to take Marston instead.”

“You sure about that?” Al studies John as if she’s a talent agent in the big city. “Doesn’t he like to avoid mayhem on those jobs?”

John snorts indignantly. “Yeah, well, I’d like to see you try and follow Hosea’s lead. I swear even he don’t know what he’s doin’ half the time.”

“But it works.” Her eyebrows raise pointedly.

“But it works,” John concedes.

“Well, next time you go, let me know. I’d love to watch y’all work.”

“Whatever,” John grumbles as he waves her off and saunters away. Apparently he’s given up on butting into their conversation.

“I ain’t pullin’ that type of job with Hosea again. What we had set up in Blackwater, sure, but not...” Arthur wags a finger in the air, then unfurls the rest of his fingers and waves his hand once before letting it fall back in his lap. “Not that. The girls and Trelawny are much better’n me anyway. Safer that way.”

Al shrugs. “I won’t argue that.”

“So, back to what you was sayin’?” Arthur’s not willing to let the moonshiner story drop. It’s not often she lets down her walls and tells stories of her past that don’t directly involve some bounty she’s nabbed. He knows what happened to her family, but that had been a moment he wasn’t meant to see, and neither of them have ever brought it up again.

“So after we get a shack set up, she gets word of where this old buddy of hers is, go rescue him so he can make our moonshine. Not long after that, her nephew’s gettin’ moved from Sisika, so I go rescue him.”

Arthur pulls the cigarette from his lips and folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the wagon. “Just you against a bunch of lawmen?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, Morgan,” she drawls, lolling her head to the side.

“Suppose I shouldn’t be,” he chuckles.

“No, actually, I had a couple friends with me, cashed in on some favors. I’m not stupid or reckless enough to take on an armed prison transport.”

Arthur just shrugs. “Woulda believed you either way.”

“You’re too trusting,” she remarks. There’s a teasing lilt to her voice, but her eyes sparkle with something else.

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Well, we bring them back to the shack, get the business up and running. Enact some revenge on a rival of hers in the meantime, I get to kill the agent who tried to burn her. Spent about a year with them. I didn’t do a lot of the actual running of moonshine, one of those friends who helped me break out Maggie’s nephew, Lem, did most of that. I focused on taking out the competition, clearing out Revenue Agent roadblocks when we were sure we couldn’t sneak past them. The real dirty work. But I didn’t mind, kept me moving, out of the government’s crosshairs enough that I could keep killin’ those damn agents.”

Arthur cocks his head curiously. But she isn’t done talking, so he lets her continue, holding onto his question for now.

“Couple months before I ran into y’all, I told them I’d have to leave. I’d spent so much time in this area, couldn’t… Needed to get out and go back out west. See some old friends, see some open country. They reckoned they’d be fine without me, but threw them the name of another friend I knew’d be able to help them, pick up my slack.”

“So… you think they’re still runnin’ that shine?”

“No reason not to. Never heard anything about her being captured. Got a letter from them while I was in Blackwater, actually. They’re doin’ well.” She gives a fond, reminiscent smile. “That friend is working with Maggie now, too. Dunno how she stands him, but…”

“Good. Since we’re over this way, you plannin’ on seein’ ‘em?”

“They’re north, Roanoke Ridge territory. Might, if I feel safe leavin’ you fools by yourself for more than a week.”

Arthur chuckles and shakes his head. “I reckon we can survive without ya for that long.”

“With all the trouble you been causing lately? I don’t think so, Mr. Morgan.” Al fans herself with her book, smirking at Arthur pointedly.

“I actually got another question for ya,” he diverts.

“Shoot.”

“I been thinkin’ about this since you got here, but now, knowin’ how much you seem to hate the Revenue Agents, how come you’re a bounty hunter, takin’ payouts from the government, but runnin’ with a bunch’a outlaws? After a year of runnin’ shine, that is.”

A simple shrug is her reply, and the pause is so long Arthur isn’t sure she’ll actually give him an explanation, until, “You have your code, I have mine.”

“Huh,” he grunts. They watch each other casually for a long moment, then he asks, “You gonna explain?”

He can see her weigh her options, and eventually she relents. “You know…” Her expression immediately tells him what she means: her past, what happened to her.

“Yeah,” he offers quietly.

“Well, nobody’s born a seasoned gunslinger. When I first started bounty hunting, I had to take the easier targets. Most big pay days, or the jobs that are good start for those of us that’re green, they’re people who rob banks with a pen, rich people doing rich people crimes. They’re soft, easy, and all it really takes to catch them is knowing the land better and being tougher than city folk. Which ain’t hard at all. So, until I could stand on my own, those were the only kinds I took. Then I started goin’ after the bastards I really wanted to. People like the Johnson Brothers.”

She nearly spits the name. Arthur feels the sting in her soul.

“I never take those soft bounties anymore,” she continues after a deep breath, seeming more like herself again with every word. “Unless I need a break. But it’s been a while since I have.”

“Been a while since you took a bounty at all.”

She must notice the question in his voice. Not judgement, but question. “No. You’ve been kicking up too much fuss. Wouldn’t be smart for me to be seen around town here more than once or twice.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. While it is mostly true, it’s about all he’s going to get out of her, but he knows the real reason why. Even if she won’t admit it to herself. “Got me there, Al.”

“Not hard to do, Arthur.”

#also we're going with the bill is gay theory. but like. half the gang is gay so she's not making fun of that.#she hates bill. so she's making fun of HIM directly.#hope that comes across lol.#also i hope it's okay to tag you in this!!! I can fix it if not #rdr #alma tejada #my fics #i guess that's gonna be a tag. i mostly just share this shit with friends and post my much bigger projects elsewhere

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cicada-bones · 4 years

Text

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 13: Letters

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

Rowan lived up to his word and forced the princess to pull double duty in the kitchens. So she worked both the breakfast and the dinner shifts that week, leaving her exhausted and aching and irritable. But she took to the work well, not seeming to feel the punishment as it had been intended. Which irritated him.

Though he had a much better understanding of the girl, he still hadn’t figured out a way to turn that knowledge into anything useful. Therefore, every afternoon they sat for hours in the pouring rain while the princess tried and failed to find a way around those iron bars in her mind.

The girl was still infuriating, still arrogant and impudent and wild, but he didn’t hate her as much as he had before. If he had cared to think about it, he would have probably characterized his feelings as an antagonistic dislike.

She still aggravated him, and he still goaded her right back. But he understood her better now, and found that he couldn’t hate her.

No more dead demi-Fae turned up, but Rowan still spent every morning searching the woodlands and digging through papers for leads. He didn’t make any progress. The maps and missives just stared back at him, blank and unhelpful, while the forests remained infuriatingly empty.

But one morning, Rowan received news through the fortress courier.

Fenrys was back in Doranelle, having finished his assignment in Varese. And apparently, he missed irritating Rowan to death.

Rowan –

I arrived in Doranelle just this week. I didn’t realize you would still be at Mistward, or I might have stopped there on my way back. Not that I miss your pretty face – I just need to collect on the favor I did for you in Varese. You owe me.

Connall and I are the only ones currently in the capital, so there won’t be much help coming your way (we drew straws, and I received the absolutely wonderful pleasure of responding to your very thoughtful and not-at-all-grouchy message).

Lorcan is now with fleet along the southern coast, pushing east towards the rebel camps. As you know, it’ll be unlikely that he responds in time to actually be helpful – if at all. Vaughan is still on the other side of the world, doing whatever the hell Maeve asked him to do there, so there’s almost no chance of you reaching him. But I’m sure you knew that.

Gavriel on the other hand, we just got word from – he will be returning within the month, back from the outpost on the northern edge of the Cambrian Mountains. The soldiers he was stationed with were all killed – slaughtered by a band of rogues sometime after midwinter. He tracked the killers to their base, and executed their leader. But still, those were soldiers Gavriel had known for decades, some even longer. You actually probably knew some of their names, but I don’t, so I can’t relay them to you.

In his message, Gavriel said that he was looking for you, and had visited Lord Siarill’s court in the east where he thought you were still stationed. But of course, you weren’t there, and after checking with Lorcan in the south, he said he would be returning. I tried to send a letter his way, but we’ll see if he gets it.

Neither me, nor my brother, know anything – there have been no reports here of any strange bodies, missing people, or of whatever that dark creature was.

Are you sure that the bodies aren’t just from normal crime? Fae gone bad? And about that creature – you never actually saw anything, right? Just a weird darkness?

Maybe another Fae has been blessed by Hellas and is raging across the countryside. Though it’s hard to imagine anyone more unstable than Lorcan. Perhaps he’s just in a mood and decided to take it out on his demi-Fae cousins. I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. Lorcan could probably dry someone up into a husk if he wanted to.

I refrained from asking our dear mistress, assuming that if you got that desperate, you could very well ask her yourself. Good luck with that.

I will, however, search through the library for you, but I doubt I’ll find anything helpful. What you had to say was too vague, and far too reliant on your own experience with the creature, rather than its identity, characteristics, or history – and you know what it’s like in there. Impossible to find anything you’re looking for even under the best of circumstances.

Let me know if anything interesting happens, its dead boring here – as per usual. Could use an evil demon creature to spice things up. Perhaps I could even set it on Connall – he certainly could use a good sharp shock. Brooding bastard.

Hope you’re enjoying training that pretty princess, because if you aren’t, I’d be glad to take your place. I’ve heard she’s fiery. Sounds like fun if I’ve ever heard of it.

Let me know of any developments, I will do the same –

Fenrys

Rowan’s jaw was clenched the whole time he read the letter.

Even so, he knew that the boastful male did actually care about the lives of the demi-Fae, and would help him if he could.

Not that it meant that he was excited to repay the favor the male thought he was owed – the last time Fenrys had called in a favor, the pair of them had woken up in an abandoned cottage nearly ten miles away from where they’d been staying, soaking wet, short two purses full of gold coin, and absolutely no memory of the night before.

Fenrys still told the story at every possible opportunity.

Rowan growled at the paper in his hands, forcing his thoughts away from the infuriating male. Instead they fell on Gavriel. Which honestly wasn’t that much better.

Rowan had known many of the soldiers in Gavriel’s company. Many of them had families, had mates that would now be mourning them. The emptiness in his chest twisted.

Rowan drafted a quick reply, relaying the information he had gathered on the appearance of the new bodies, as well as the inferences he had been able to make about the dark creature. It wasn’t much.

A few days later, another surprise. Lorcan had also received his letter, and bothered to respond.

Whitethorn –

So you ended up training the girl. My condolences.

I’ve never heard of anything remotely similar to whatever this creature is. It doesn’t sound like anything blessed by Hellas, or by any other of the gods. Are you sure that it isn’t just the skinwalkers?

I am still in the southeast, the rebels are proving harder to put down that originally thought. Don’t bother me again for anything unimportant.

– Lorcan Salvaterre

Rowan’s face twisted into a frown. Well, at least he’d responded at all.

Each evening he listened to Emrys’ stories, usually hidden beneath the stairs just out of sight. The girl's black eye and split lip had begun to fade, while her limbs had strengthened, her skin regained some color, and in general, she began to look healthier. More human.

Perhaps because of that fact, he didn’t overhear any more worried conversations between Emrys or Malakai, nor did he catch any strange looks from them. Though the girl still kept away from others in the fortress, it seemed that she was settling in to life at Mistward.

Nightmares still plagued Rowan, and every morning he was jerked from sleep well before dawn, sweat coating his limbs and images flashing behind his eyes. But occasionally, something different flickered through his mind. A set of lips, the taste of jasmine, a flicker of flame –

Whenever that happened, Rowan threw himself into the misty wind, coating himself in its icy touch and locking those thoughts away where he didn’t have to deal with them.

A week after the incident with the skinwalkers, Rowan collected the girl from the kitchens at noon as usual, and they made their daily trek up the mountain to the temple ruins, the girl’s mortal pace somehow having become even more irritating with time.

It was unusually sunny that day, and the echo of the power within the temple stones felt stronger, richer than usual. As did the girl’s. Not that it seemed to make any difference with her shifting.

They sat for just over two hours, mostly silent among the glowing stones, before the girl stood, groaning. She paced for moment, her hands on her hips, studying the stones.

She looked around as if she could feel the effect of Mala’s touch as well, could hear the whispered prayers of long-dead worshippers, begging the goddess for her blessing.

She broke through the heavy silence. “What was this place, anyway?”

Rowan dogged her steps, leashing his irritation at the impertinent question. “The Sun Goddess’s temple.”

She cocked her head. “You’ve been bringing me here because you think it might help with mastering my powers – my shifting?”

He nodded faintly.

The girl turned and placed her hand on the stones, soaking up their warmth, lost in thought. Only the vague outline of the temple remained, the barest imprint of a brick path, crumbling pillars strewn about like abandoned toys.

For some reason, its loss saddened him. An ancient place of fire and worship, destroyed and forsaken by time.

The princess broke through his reverie unexpectedly, “Mab was immortalized into godhood thanks to Maeve,” she ran a hand down the jagged block, musing aloud. “But that was over five hundred years ago. Mala had a sister in the moon long before Mab took her place.”

Deanna and Mala, sisters and eternal rivals, keepers of the sun and the moon. “Deanna was the original sister’s name. But you humans gave her some of Mab’s traits. The hunting, the hounds.”

“Perhaps Deanna and Mala weren’t always rivals.”

Rowan cocked his head. “What are you getting at?”

She just shrugged, running her pale fingers over the white granite. “Did you ever know Mab?”

He was quiet for a long moment, considering.

“No,” he said at last. “I am old, but not that old.”

“Do you feel old?”

The question was pointed, but not aggressive. She wasn’t asking as a challenge, or a taunt. For some reason, she wanted to know. It was a question to seek understanding, not dominance.

So he answered. “I am still considered young by the standards of my kind.”

She did not relent. “You said that you once campaigned in a kingdom that no longer exists. You’ve been off to war several times, it seems, and seen the world. That would leave its mark. Age you on the inside.”

Curiosity broke though him, threading its way through his ice like roots pushing into the earth. He turned his gaze towards her, “Do you feel old?”

She met his gaze calmly, measured and quiet as she considered the question. “These days, I am very glad to be a mortal, and to only have to endure this life once. These days, I don’t envy you at all.”

Her words were heavy things laid at his feet. But still, that curiosity did not let up. “And before?”

She turned away, looking at the distant horizon. “I used to wish I had a chance to see it all – and hated that I never would.”

The burden of royalty – of an heir. A burden he had never felt, though he was a prince. Before Lyria, he had passed his life attempting to escape just such a trap as the princess had been born into. But after her death, he had sold himself into his own gilded cage. It was strange - in a way, they were almost similar, both trapped.

Rowan formed another question, but before he could ask it, the girl spoke again, sidetracking him. “Is this where the stags were kept – before this place was destroyed?”

Just last night, Emrys had told the story of the sun stags, ancient beings who held an immortal flame between their massive antlers, so similar to their cousins in the west. The stags of Terrasen. They had once been stolen from a temple in this land, never to be seen again.

“I don’t know. This temple wasn’t destroyed; it was abandoned when the Fae moved to Doranelle, and then ruined by time and weather.”

“Emrys’ stories said destroyed, not abandoned.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Again, what are you getting at?”

She paused. Then shook her head at the ground and said, “The Fae on my continent—in Terrasen … they weren’t like you. At least, I don’t remember them being that way. There weren’t many, but …” She swallowed hard. “The King of Adarlan hunted and killed them, so easily. Yet when I look at you, I don’t understand how he did it.”

His mouth twisted into a frown. All those lives, snuffed out, because of one man’s cruelty. For the first time, he was angry at his queen for her pettiness, for her refusal to send aid. It wasn’t only this girl’s fault that Terrasen had fallen – he should have been there. Should have helped.

“I’ve never been to your continent, but I heard that the Fae there were gentler – less aggressive, very few trained in combat – and they relied heavily on magic. Once magic was gone from your lands, many of them might not have known what to do against trained soldiers.”

“And yet Maeve wouldn’t send aid.” Her jaw was clenched, her brow furrowed.

“The Fae of your continent long ago severed ties with Maeve.” He paused again, unsure why he was justifying, but still unwilling to admit to this foreign princess that his queen had been wrong, and needlessly cruel. “But there were some in Doranelle who argued in favor of helping. My queen wound up offering sanctuary to any who could make it here.”

She seemed to sigh, closing her eyes for only a moment as she stepped away from the ancient carvings and back to her usual spot, the scent of her boundless grief and guilt and ache wafting from her like a perfume.

They sat in silence until twilight descended and they returned to the keep, night blanketing them in its heavy folds.

···

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

#WatE repost

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kosmosian-quills · 5 years

Text

Novel Prep Tag

I was tagged over a month ago I’m so so sorry!!! by @writingonesdreams! Thank you for your patience with this one!

I’m doing this for Angel!

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

The crown princess of a small island country is on the run after the royal family is overthrown. She has to learn to survive with a group of criminals while hiding her true identity.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

Well originally I saw this a standalone novel, but after some talks with a few people I am considering a backstory novella set before the story starts, but I won’t properly begin this until after I finish the first draft.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

An opulent royal castle, a dense forest in a storm, old collapsed buildings, soldiers stood neatly in line, posters and propaganda.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The main ones that come to mind are mostly stuff from here on tumblr! I’ve read a lot of amazing writer’s works, and honestly the writers themselves are the people who inspire me most. I mean. @writingonesdreams, @cirianne, @ardawyn, @eluari all have amazing WIP’s and are awesome people!

But ofc the question stipulates stories, so I’d have to say - the Persona game series and Anastasia!

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

MAIN CHARACTER(S)

6. Who is your protagonist?

Królewna Anjelika Maciejewska Górskanka - The Crown Princess of a small island country, and the only child of the King and Queen.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Before the story, it’s got to be her Maidens of Honour (especially Kasia) and Michal, the man who is in charge of protecting her.

During the story, it’s technically still Michal, and a few individuals that I have not introduced yet.

8. Who is their enemy?

The disgraced former army General who betrayed her family and tried to kidnap her, and now has total control of her country.

Her sadistic cousin too, who is now captain of the secret police that is in charge of hunting her down.

9. What do they want more than anything?

To be safe and free with her friends and (some) family again, without having to run and hide anymore.

10. Why can’t they have it?

The General’s hunt for her is very impeding of a peaceful life, and some of her friends are captured or otherwise separated from her during the initial weeks of chaos that the country decended to.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

She believes that her life will never be able to return to normal (and it will not ever be the same), but as long as she has her friends she will be able to grow stronger with them together.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

Anjelika is approximately 5′5″, has brown eyes and brown hair that is just shorter than shoulder length. She is skinny and has some lower body strength thanks to her regularly dancing ballet. She is graceful and has a “public” smile and a “private” smile.

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

The Princess battles with her identity, who she was before, who she pretended to be, and who she is now. Three very distinct facets of her identity that she struggles to overcome and accept as a part of her, mainly due to the upeval that her life became.

14. What is the external conflict?

The General’s rule is ruthless and relentless. He’s actively hunting her down with the purpose of wedding her and forever making him a part of the royal lineage. She doesn’t want that to happen, and simply wishes that she had any semblence of power to make it all just stop.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Recapture, being humiliated in front of not just her citizens, but the remainder of her family and especially her friends.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

Where the Princess has been hiding the whole time, if that counts. Basically, Anjelika’s story starts as soon as the overthrow happens. Michal’s takes place almost a year later, and they sort of meet up for the climax.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Kind of. I have an idea, but because I haven’t decided on a climax I cannot really say for sure with regards to the fate of some characters (some I really want to kill and others I am on the fence about, for example).

18. What is the theme?

Loyalty, friendship, (found) family, bravery, survival, and acceptance of one’s true self.

19. What is a recurring symbol?

Roses and other flowers. Roses are a symbol of the royal family, and the buds that grow throughout the story sowing seeds of hope for a better future, that things will get better.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

The small island nation of Kosmos. It’s a country just off the coast of Poland with shipping ports to Sweden, Denmark and Germany too. Has a mountanous region in the centre of the country, the capital city (and the castle) are on the south-east coastline. They’re famous for flowers, making food and clothes adorned with them is a huge cultural draw for many (rose vodka is nice enough, but some especially corn poppy vodka is practically lethal when it’s homemade).

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

The Princess with her friends on the day after the overthrow when she witnesses something that she did not want to see.

The separation that leaves Anjelika alone in her own country, hunted like a dog.

One of her friends joining the rebels to help rescue their captured friends.

A semi-canon, not-quite-decided-yet scene in which Matylda has a position of power over her tormentor.

I have many. My problem is getting them written down!!

22. What excited you about this story?

The thought of friendship and loyalty even through such awful times, trying to stay strong and true to one’s goals and ideals. Just. The friendship, ok.

AND the prospect of it being full enough to publish one day and own as a thing that I did.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Mostly daydreaming, a rough planning of scenes and what I want to happen, and writing very very little. I need to get better at this honestly.

Tagging a few people. Sorry if you’ve already been tagged! I’m very curious to see yours, but feel free to ignore!

@cirianne, @ardawyn, @eluari, @dove-actually

#writerblr #writeblr #writeblr tag game #WIP: Angel #my WIP #my writing #novel prep tag game

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imagineclaireandjamie · 5 years

Text

On Foreign Ground. Part 3.

Anonymous said to imagineclaireandjamie: Hi! Will there be any more On Foreign Ground? Thanks!

I’ve had this in my drafts for a while, Anon, but only just had chance to finish it. Enjoy.

Parts One and Two found HERE.

-----------------

Standing against the cold stone wall, Claire held her breath and waited for her stomach to stop rolling. She’d told her mother that she would ride home alone and her face, paler than usual, had said enough that she didn’t argue with her on the matter. Being able to return home without an escort meant that she could take a slight detour.

The sound of the wind rushing through the trees brought her back to the present and urged her onwards. The light was fading rapidly and she still had no real clue as to where she was going - though the ground beneath her feet was evening out. If all else failed, she’d find herself a comfy place to set up camp for the night. No stranger to sleeping in the open air; Claire had a good grasp of the land and (although her parents knew little of her nocturnal habits) had spent a fair few nights hunkered in the forest close to the edge of Grant clan lands.

A spark of light on the horizon caught her eye just as she was hunting for the perfect place to rest and she dismounted silently. Tying her horse to the closest tree, she peaked beyond the treeline. She heard the cock of the gun before the crackle of fallen leaves signalled that she had company. Turning slowly, she bit her bottom lip, her heart beating a firm erratic pattern beneath her ribs.

“Who are ye?” The young man whispered lowly, the rifle professionally held close to his cheek. She knew in that moment that she’d inadvertently located the correct family from the simple cock of his brow - the resemblance between the wee lad in front of her and Jamie was unmistakable. “And be honest, aye? I’ll ken if yer lying to me.”

“Claire,” she replied slowly, her eye catching his as she stopped - only half turned towards him, “Claire Grant and I mean you no harm.”

“Then ye willna mind coming down to the house to explain yerself to my father.”

The situation suddenly seemed less dire - surely Jamie would be inside and she’d be able to at least catch his eye as she was being interrogated by his father. Nodding, she elected to ignore the braying of her horse as she was led from the wooded area and down behind a rather large farmhouse that she assumed to be the Fraser family home. It was clear some event was happening as they rounded the side of property and up towards the front door. The sound of bagpipes flowed the moment the door was opened and she was greeted by the heady aroma of freshly baked bread.

“Straight to the kitchen, aye?” The young man behind her whispered, clearly trying to skirt her away from the festivities happening within.

He sat her down at the table before closing the door, leaving her alone in the cold room. There were mountains of cooked food lining the countertops, the scent of it making her tummy rumble and she realised that she hadn’t eaten in a number of hours. Unwilling to disturb the dinner of her unwitting hosts, she tampered -as much as she was able- the urge to fill her stomach and clasped her hands in her lap nervously.

She hoped the Frasers would give her the opportunity to speak. If they didn’t allow her to see Jamie, though, she didn’t know what the outcome of the impromptu meeting would be.

The sound of raised voices brought her out of her thoughts, the door slamming open to reveal a party whose eyes all fell immediately onto her as she sat, her curls falling out of her wonky cap.

“Mistress Grant.” Mr Fraser senior spoke with an air of anticipation, the look on his face leaving Claire with no doubt that he was in full patriarch mode. She was an outsider, an interloper from another clan who had no permission to be loitering on his lands and she could tell he was ready to deal with whatever issue arose from her shock arrival.

“Sir, Mr Fraser…” she stuttered, not really knowing how to address him or where to begin.

“Does yer father ken you’re here?” He asked, with some trepidation in his tone.

Claire shook her head, more of her curls tumbling from beneath the flimsy fabric.

The youngest man, the one who’d brought her down here, scoffed, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes in disbelief.

“Rabbie, hold yer tongue, aye?” His father cut in, stopping the lad dead in his tracks, leaving no room for argument. “Then, mistress, if ye dinna mind me asking,” though he clearly wanted an honest answer, “have ye a reason for trespassing on Fraser lands?”

“Jamie.” She said without any preamble. “I w-was looking for Jamie Fraser. It was an accident, actually finding you. Is he here?” She sounded more confident than she felt and she could see the colour drain from his father’s face - as well as the shocked and horrified glances from the rest of the clan who’d gathered in the kitchen alongside Mr Fraser.

“How do ye ken my brother?” An elder lad interjected, the fire in his gaze causing her to sit back in her chair. The wood beneath her suddenly felt unpleasant.

Swallowing back her nerves, she licked her dry lips and laid her shaky hands flat against the tabletop in front of her. The words fled her mind and she was left struggling to respond coherently in a way that wouldn’t sully Jamie’s reputation.

“William!” His father castigated, but she could already see the rebellion alight in the Fraser siblings, both now stood shoulder to shoulder.

“No father. She’s interrupted our handfast, and now she comes to our kitchen - wi’ Jamie’s name on her lips and no possible explanation of how and why she should be searching for him? We need answers, aye, afore the whole Grant clan comes marching down here searching for her and us left wi’ no reason she should be here. Come, lass, how do ye ken my brother?”

“Is he promised?” She asked, ignoring the question and the threat completely in favour of knowing whether she’d turned up in the middle of his handfast celebrations. Her heart was in her throat as she turned fully to face the family who were all still stood solemnly in the doorway though she knew it was completely selfish and hypocritical.

“Where did ye meet him before, mistress?” The only woman present, and clearly his mother was the swath of bright red hair that sat perfectly curled on top of her head, said diverting her away from her original question. Her posture was the only one to seem open and welcoming. She had cut to the quick. Her bright blue eyes trained on Claire’s as she virtually read her mind.

The men all turned to look at their matriarch as Claire tried to recall precise dates.

“The first time? A year or so ago - before he went to study in France. And again? A few weeks ago, in the woods close to our clan border. It was chance, when I came upon him initially but after that, I went to that spot a lot hoping to meet with him again…” She trailed off when the silence surrounding her erased her sudden burst of confidence.

“Did ye ken he had a secret lassie?” William asked, turning to face Rabbie. “Since ye and Jamie arena apart frequently these days?”

“I kent nothing!” Rabbie returned, the siblings both trying to find reason in her statement.

“Hush boys,” their mother and father both broke in simultaneously, “ye love him?” Mrs Fraser continued, her expression softening even more as she took one meaningful step towards Claire.

She looked away, closing her eyes as she brought to mind the image of her and Jamie the last time she’d seen him. “Yes, I suppose...in as much as I loved him in that moment and then longed for him the moment I had to leave.” The feel of him against her inner thighs made her flesh burn, the hairs on her arms standing on end as the pleasant memory surfaced before leaving the truth hanging on her tongue. “I took advantage of him,” she confessed, unable to look at her hosts as she spoke, “we fell asleep together and as dawn broke and I began to wake…”

“No,” the abrupt interruption made her turn quickly, her eyes opening to catch his gaze as he appeared behind his father, “I wanted you as much as you wanted me. I didna tell ye because we didna get the time, but I was pining for ye just as much. I dreamed of you, as ye did me. We woke, slowly, together and I didna stop ye because I was desperate for yer touch.”

The room seemed to disappear all at once and she forgot that she was sitting in a room filled with his family as the remained enraptured by one another.

“Christ, Jamie,” William hissed, anger lacing his tone, “ye lay with her?”

“It was my fault.” Claire corrected. “I --wait,” stopping herself, she suddenly recalled the party going on in the lounge beyond, the Frasers guests all blissfully unaware of the stramash currently escalating in the kitchen, “is this your handfast, Jamie?”

“No, thank Jesus!” Rabbie cursed, his cheeks flaming red at the previous announcement.

With the tension in the room easing, Claire felt the lead weight lift from her chest at the news. Though her comfort was short lived when she remembered the reason she’d found herself here in the first place. “I know this is presumptuous, but I can’t go back home, I didn’t know whether I would be able to find you, but it was the only place I could think to come for refuge.”

“So ye mean to bring Malcolm Grant down on us all?” Disbelief radiated from Jamie’s brothers who clearly didn’t approve of the suggestion. Rabbie simply stood with his mouth gaping open whilst William openly voiced his disagreement. The adults said nothing, but Claire sensed something more positive from their less aggressive countenance.

“Rabbie!” Their father hissed again making even Claire flinch. “Ye willna make such wild statements until ye ken the full truth of the matter. Now,” he continued, looking pointedly at Claire, “it’s clear we have some business to discuss but I dinna think Jenny and Ian’s handfast is the place to continue it. Jamie, ye take Claire to yer room and make sure she’s comfortable. Now is no’ the time to introduce her to the rest of the clan, aye? And she needs to rest. Boys, back to yer sister. And I’ll hear no more about it!”

With the brothers absent, Claire took a jagged breath and let the tension drain from her rigid spine. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, her body shaking as she rubbed the stray tears from her eyes, “for disturbing your celebration, Mr and Mrs Fraser.”

“Dinna be daft!” His mother soothed, coming to stand by her side as she gathered Claire against her chest. “I ken yer father and I ken yer struggle. I’m glad ye were strong enough to get yourself here, that ye didna feel it necessary to suffer alone wi’ this. Now, get yerself something to eat - ye must be half starved - and rest, we’ll look after you both, lass.”

— —— —

They left via a quiet set of stairs away from the celebrations, Jamie holding tightly onto Claire’s hand as they tried to escape without drawing attention to themselves. HIs father had made it clear on their exit that, though he was happy for them to share the room, they must not advertise the fact until it was obvious that they were settled as man and wife - something that Claire was content to do. She could lie low, hiding from her father was preferable to facing his wrath.

Away from the party still raging below, Jamie wrapped her in one of his cleanest tartan shawls, watching as the fatigue played across her face in the candlelight. As much as it had been a taxing evening he was grateful that she had managed to unwittingly stumble close enough to the big house that Rabbie had found her. He’d only heard half the tale, but he knew something big must have happened for her to rush away from the Macpherson’s with the aim of seeking him out so late.

“I’m simply a vessel to him. If I go home, you’ll never see me again. If we were to be married, he would lock me away, that’s why I had to come.” Her eyes shone with unshed tears and he could see the truth of it floating in her watery irises. Searching her gaze, as quickly as he could, he twisted her hands in his searching her wrists and neck for any visible signs of damage. Finding none he looked back into her eyes and swallowed the enormous lump in his throat. “Did he hurt ye?” Knowing little of the Macphersons, Jamie bit the inside of his cheek. The man she was betrothed to was old enough to be her father and then some and it was entirely possible that he wasn’t the sort to treat a young lady well. “No,” she replied, taking his palm against hers, “but the look on his face said he wasn’t above it should the need arise.” All at once the nightmare reappeared in her mind - of what her life would be like should she have to wed Macpherson, sending tingles down her spine. “I cried the day I got my courses. I had wished so hard for our child so you’d have a reason to steal me away that when it didn’t come to pass my heart broke. I thought then that it was over, any chance of escaping the fate my father had set for me.” “Do ye think ye need to be wi’ child for me to whisk ye away, Claire?” Jamie asked, shocked, his eyebrows drawn together and his eyes clouding with an all too serious gaze.

“I--” she began, taking a large gulp of air before continuing, “I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to believe we could be together, you and I, no matter the circumstances. But since my father banned your name from our house I guessed there was something deeper buried in our family history which might prevent it.”

“And since when has that ever stopped a couple in love?” He enquired, a quirk to his brow as he delicately leaned his forehead against her own. “I think the fact that yer here wi’ me now and not riding home behind yer parents answers that question quite neatly, aye?”

“So what do we do now?” The blush that had settled across Claire’s cheeks subsided a little as she curled tidily against Jamie’s chest. He was warm, hot enough to relieve the chill from her as she began to rest her sore eyes.

“Dinna worry about that now, sleep first. Tomorrow we’ll eat and I’ll show ye Lallybroch. Mam and Da will help us in the morning.”

— —— — A dark corridor stretched out before her, the black curtains lining the barred windows as the rain lashed violently against the panes of glass. Though she knew it was just a dream (feeling the wisp of Jamie’s arms around her even through the heavy haze of the nightmare) she couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of foreboding. It was the room she’d been shown, her would-be quarters in the Macpherson castle, complete with its own draughty living space. The four poster bed called to her, the grey silk sheets wafting in the breeze as the lace draped from the posts flared in the wind.

“No…” she called out, unaware of whether she was actually talking in her sleep or not, “Jamie!” The feeling of cold was beginning to seep into her bones, her flesh crawling as the walls seemed to close in around you. “H-hold me...please…”

She was crying and shaking, but he held her as she’d asked, cuddling her shuddering shoulders against him as she sobbed into his neck. Since they’d fallen asleep in one another's arms she had woken like this frequently, her mind clearly elsewhere in her dreams. Without prompting further, Jamie had held her as she calmed, whispering endearments into her ears which seemed to be working as the night wore on.

“They’re going to come for me.” She whispered when she’d finally woken fully. “Your mother knows, I saw it written all over her face when she was looking at me. Somehow she knows my fathers’ voracity. He’s going to be so angry and that will only exacerbate his need to track me down and bring me home - no matter the consequences. I love you,” choking out the words she took a deep breath, “it’s important that you know that. That I’m here for you, not just because I’ve been pushed to it.”

“They were promised, or that was the intention. Mam used to tell us the story as bairns but I didna tell ye when I first kent who ye were - I thought ye’d think me daft.” Chuckling, he shifted himself closer. He felt her calm for the first time since they’d hidden beneath his clean sheets. “It felt like history repeating, falling in love with ye - and you wi’ me.”

“Your mother...and my father?”

“Oh aye. She’d already met and fallen for my father, though, and instead of courting wi’ Mr Grant,” he pulled her closer and kissed her forehead as he retold the story, redirecting her moudline thoughts, “they eloped. The next time anyone came upon them they were handfast and mam was pregnant wi’ William.”

“Is that what we have to do…?” Sighing contentedly, Claire allowed her fears to slip away as dawn approached.

Jamie let his hand glide over her hip, feeling her skin shudder beneath her cotton shift at the same time as she reached up to run a single finger over the outside of his bare thigh. Hitching her leg up and over his hip, it wasn’t long before they were silently nose to nose, Claire beneath him now as she slowly untied the string holding her shift together and gently shimmied it up and over her head. It took a little work, she had to allow Jamie to lift one hand each time to free her of the material, but the moment their flesh touched she knew it was worth it.

“Christ yer beautiful.” He gasped, his head tilting to get a glimpse of her in the moonlight. “All I could think of after ye left me the second time is whether I’d get to lay wi’ you again. Whether I’d get to see you properly. I hoped...and prayed...that it wouldna be the last as well as the first time.”

“And it wasn’t.” She whispered in return.

Without further preamble he shifted himself, his lips caressing her until he felt the arc of her breast. He could feel the warmth of her already encasing him as he shifted his hips further and it wasn’t long before desire rushed around them, the air in the room growing heated as they moved together, as one.

Deep pants filled the room, their ragged breathing disguising the creeks of the bed as they met, quietly, over and over again. Neither being experienced, Jamie didn’t recognise the signs (nor did Claire at first) until her fingers began to dig painfully into the skin just above his elbows, her breath coming thick and fast as she tried to inhale as much oxygen as possible before throwing her head back and biting her lip. Her felt her then, the inside of her gripping him so very tightly as he followed her into the abyss,

Jamie awoke from his self-contained bliss after a brief moment, his whole body delightfully drained of energy as he blinked sleepily up at Claire. She seemed in a similar state, her moist hands cupping his arse as he pulled her against his chest.

“That willna be, either. No’ if I have anything to do with it.” He sighed, drawing the covers up once more as he closed his eyes, their hearts beating directly next to one another as they fell back into a dreamless sleep.

#;Mod MBD #On Foreign Ground #jamie x claire #ficlet

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impossible-ancient · 6 years

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Autumn Hunt

---Chapter Two---

-A Girl’s Name-

[Read Chapter One here: “Don’t Lose”]

{Exactly 2800 words}

Loud rumbling is heard from a group of men running down wooden stairs. Pratt steps to the side of the hallway to allow them to pass, since they seem to be in a hurry. The one man in front with blond hair peeking out of a hood, stares back at Pratt on his way down the steps. He and the others hold sniper rifles, but this man has two.

“Are you Pratt, also known as ‘Peaches,’” the blond man asks the young deputy.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

The blond man tosses him a large .50 caliber sniper riffle. Pratt analyzes its silver coating and it barely even has a scratch on it. He turns around to look where they’re headed, and they all stop to stare at him.

“Well, come on,” the blond man nags with a thick southern accent.

Pratt follows the group outside of the Veteran Center. The sun is so bright that everyone squints their eyes. It’s like that little stinging in your eye from the sun reflecting the morning snow, only it wasn’t winter quite yet.

“Oh shoot,” the blond man says as he looks around him, “wrong exit. I still get confused in this place.”

Pratt tries to hide his laughing. The same man begins to walk around the home towards the front of the building. Behind the home is an open courtyard full of giant cages. The group of men pass close by one of them and Pratt sees a woman asleep on the cold ground, with a bowl of meat scraps in front of her. And, when the deputy looks around, he sees a man in another cage, sitting and facing the group. The blond man and the others barely glanced at them. Pratt slows his walking, faces the blond man again and asks, “why are these people trapped in cages like that?”

He doesn’t stop walking. His hooded head never turns around, but he quietly replies, “don’t worry about them dang sinner!”

The group walks through a narrow walled-off alleyway on the side of the house, and finally reach the front driveway. They approach a large red SUV with thick tires and the windows rolled all the way down. The blond man tells Pratt to stand to the side for a few moments, and the other men begin to load equipment into the vehicle. Pratt recalls the man with dark curly hair from earlier this morning, and that man pulls a cardboard box out of the trunk. He yanks out a pocket knife from his pocket, opens the box, and pulls out a set of orange vests covered in plastic wrapping.

“Oh shoot, Rick,” the blond man exclaims, “these huntin’ vests are brand new!”

Pratt had no idea that anyone was planning on hunting today. But he watches as the curly-haired Rick and the blond man open the rest of the bags, and they hand them off to the others. Rick hands Pratt an orange vest and it smells like fresh plastic right out of the factory. It’s Velcro pocket closings where met with a set of key rings on the sides. Rick announces that Jacob will be joining them shortly, and that he’s finishing a conference call with his family. Part of it could be heard over the intercom system by mistake:

“Can you even use a computer, Jacob?”

The group of men look around as they hold in their laughter.

“If you’re going to invite the father,” one of Jacob’s brothers says, “then send…eh…Jacob…why is there an echo?”

A rustling and a loud clicking noise soon followed. The group of men chuckled as they look up towards the house’s second floor. The poor man didn’t know how to even use half of the crap sitting in his office. He usually just has someone make appointments and send emails for him.

A few minutes pass. Jacob comes walking out of the Veteran Center towards the SUV, holding his red-painted sniper riffle in his pale scarred hands. He now wears a dark gray and red vest with a few buckles on the sides, and his regular gray shirt beneath it. His dog tags and lucky rabbit’s foot are somewhat visible through the partially zipped vest.

“Hello Jacob,” the group greets collectively as if he is their commander, which he technically is.

“I’m sure you guys heard my baby bro whining on the phone. My mistake,” Jacob jokes.

He then opens the driver door and steps to the side, letting Rick seat himself behind the steering wheel, before Jacob closes the door for him. Jacob then opens the left rear door and a shorter man with a red hat hops in first. The blond man steps to the side and tells Pratt, “after you buddy!” The deputy enters the back of the vehicle and shoves the rifle into any free space he could find, before the blond man hops in and shuts the door behind him. Rick tells the group to sit their riffles against the seats, pointing downwards for safety reasons. Jacob hops up into the passenger side. His feet kicking the guardrails, and his long legs bending before closing the door. The big man looks back with a short grin and shouts, “Ready for some good ol’ huntin,’ guys?” The men in the car cheer loudly and Pratt joins in on it, only because he doesn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. The engine starts and the big SUV pushes forward in a rough jolt of an acceleration. Rick slams the breaks and looks around.

“Woah,” Jacob shouts after keeping his head from flying forward. He turns to look at Rick and stares at him for about five seconds, and then continues, “if you can’t drive a stick then you shouldn’t be up here, Rick.”

Rick opens the door and offers up the driver’s seat to someone else. He switches places with the man in the red hat and the SUV begins to move again, and much smoother this time. They approach the main gateway to the Veteran Center and the four guards on the sides wave at them. Jacob begins to go into detail about their destination: An open woodland area just off Clagett Bay. The SUV drives on the blacktop road for quite some time, then rolls onto some harsh dirt and gravel trails. Crossing old creaky bridges and crushing over sticks and dead logs, and the drive alone was a great start for this little outing.

“Hey Jacob, isn’t this where your old friend lives,” the blond man asks.

Jacob looks back in his seat and from the corner of his eye, replying, “he’s not a friend anymore. He hasn’t been for a while now.”

Pratt looks at the visible side of Jacob’s seat in the front, and asks who he’s referring to.

“Uncle…I mean…Eli. He wouldn’t join the Project, so he started his own thing called the ‘White Tail Militia.’ Something like that.”

The group silently looks around admiring the view of the woodland area, searching for Elk near the waters. The open windows let in a rushing cold draft, but it’s scent of woodland pine sap was worth shivering. Neither of the two guys up front ever bothered the radio. Knowing Jacob, the radio would either play his favorite old tune, or be shut off completely. He doesn’t care too much for the Sunday Church mix that his siblings kept on repeat all day long. Pratt is always hesitant to start a conversation, fearing saying the wrong thing, or attracting the wrong kind of attention. He’s extremely surprised that he isn’t in one of those cages, or even dead by now. He is one of the marked enemies (or at least he was originally). Maybe he’s beginning to gain some of Jacob’s trust, but he still senses that heavy barrier between them. Yet, the deputy tosses out a quick kind word.

“Thanks for the shirt and vest, sir.”

“Yeah,” Jacob replies barely even paying attention, looking out of his open window for any wildlife.

A voice comes from the driver’s seat calling out to Pratt.

“Hey man! Hey,” the man calls out. Pratt looks at him and then into his smiling dark eyes in the reflection of the rearview mirror. He continues, “Muh name’s Rain. Like ‘Rainfall.’” Jacob and his group are actually sort of, well, kind. Better yet, they seem to be fun to travel with. But a paranoid Pratt doesn’t trust Jacob either.

A little more ways up the slope and the SUV finally rests its engine at the Clagett Bay Resting Area. Everyone hops out. Pratt looks around and waits for Jacob to be the last one to join the group. He finds it strange that everyone barely even moves until Jacob either leads or commands them. Jacob instructs the group of men to keep their orange hunting vests on at all time. Next, he separates everyone into two groups.

“Oh, my name’s Deveraux, by the way,” the blond man finally tells Pratt, “but just call me Dan.” Both give each other a quick smile. Jacob pairs Pratt with Dan while Rick and Rain go with Jacob. There are to meet back here in 30 minutes whether they had caught anything or not.

“You guys be safe out there,” Rain tells them with a smile.

The two men go their own way along a dirt path, up and over hills. Little feet patter with pebbles crunching under their shoes. Dan wears a hoodie and utility belt with his dark cargo pants, that of an Eden’s Gate hunter. But, today he carries a rifle like the rest of the gang. The air up there is so cool and fresh this early in the morning. The two climb over a huge log covered in vibrant green, damp moss. Pratt steps back over to it just to observe the wavy brownish mushrooms along the rotted fallen tree’s side. Dan turns around a few seconds later as he realized Pratt had stopped.

“Aye there,” he shouts and then walks over to Pratt, “Nah, I want you to be in my sight at all times. You seem like an alright guy, but Jacob wants me to keep an eye on ya.”

Pratt nods his head in agreement. The two men continue their trek. Dan was no idiot. He doesn’t know much about the deputy, and he’s not going to let Pratt out of his sight holding that sniper riffle either. They continue walking again side by side.

“So, do ya like go to college or anything like that,” Dan asks Pratt.

“I graduated a few years ago actually,” Pratt replies.

Dan looks around for any Elk or other fauna in the area, as he asks, “What kind of job ya got?”

Pratt’s breathing gets heavier and his heartrate begins to quicken. He quickly tosses out a lie that won’t have to come with more questions that he couldn’t answer:

“I’m a…helicopter pilot…tour…guide,” he hesitates to piece together. Well, it was sort of true anyway.

The wind kicks up blowing Pratt’s un-moussed long hair into his face. The two trek deeper into the woods kicking through dead leaves. Dan spots one of those hexagonal hunting treehouses, which are the metal platforms high up in the trees. They reach the rusted blue ladder and Dan let’s Pratt climb first. Both of them sit on the platform and wait for any sign of wildlife to enter the area, remaining alert with rifles in their hands. Pratt notices Dan glance at a silver and bronze-plated wristwatch on his arm, before pulling his sleeve down. He warns the deputy that they have about fifteen minutes before they needed to head back to the Rest Stop area. The young deputy begins to ask Dan questions about his life in general, hoping that he can begin to understand why they had joined The Project at Eden’s Gate.

“Do you know who the Father is, Pratt,” Dan asks.

“I heard that he’s some sort of preacher.”

Dan chuckles showing his teeth in a smile, turning his head and then looking up into the woodland canopy. He shakes his hooded head, and then adds, “The Father is our light. He opens our eyes and speaks the truth.”

“What about your life in general,” Pratt interrupts, having more interest in Dan than in their leader.

“I usually don’t piddle around in that,” Dan replies, “but since you asked; I used to be an electrician…slash…mechanic…slash, a few different jobs here and there. I ain’t even 30 yet, and the Seed family offered me an early retirement if I work for them.”

“Doing what exactly?”

“I’m mainly a hunter and sometimes a cook,” Dan answers, “I get paid a few hundred for the week.”

Pratt nods his head, and asks, “So, what does “the Father” do that the mayor can’t?”

Dan tilts his head to the side, turns his body to face the deputy, and then smiles. He begins counting his fingers one by one, and says, “Ain’t gotta pay for gas, ain’t gotta pay for any food in Jacob’s house, free water, no rent, barbecues every weekend, no bills, free cable, everybody got a job around here, which means no unemployment, free school for the little kids, John Seed represents you in court and even pays your hospital bills…”

Pratt had to interrupt Dan just to get him to stop.

“But, what about those who don’t like him…those who disobey,” Pratt questions.

“The Father chooses those worthy. He chooses those who must be cleansed. And, if they cause any trouble…then they won’t be around anymore.”

Something peeks its head through the shrubs on the ground. The leaves rustle loudly. It’s the head of an elk feeding and sniffing around. Its hooves pattering around on the crunchy leaves. Dan slowly picks up his sniper rifle and steadily aims it at the animal down below. Pratt does the same. The elk looks around and turns its head almost 180 degrees, as it checks for predators. Dan realizes something which causes him to hesitate. He tells Pratt to put down his rifle. The elk moves much slower than usual.

“Do ya see her belly? It’s swollen,” Dan tells Pratt, “she’s got babies.”

The hunter sets down his rifle and instead of scaring it, he waits a few minutes until it wanders away. The two men climb back down the ladder attached to the tree platform. A black folded wallet falls from Pratt’s baggy plaid shirt pocket, slipping out from beneath his orange hunting vest. He doesn’t even notice it as he walks back down the hill towards the SUV. Dan stops walking and picks it up and opens it. The blond man doesn’t take anything, not that Pratt had any money anyway, other than $30 and a few commuter train one-week passes. He reads Pratt’s driver’s license. He then jogs to catch up to Pratt and begins walking with him again. Pratt watches as Dan takes a cigar from a plastic gray bag in his pocket, before hearing the sharp clicking of the flickering lighter. Dan looks to Pratt on his right, and asks, “I got an extra if ya want one.” Pratt kindly declines the offer.

“’Staci Pratt,’” Dan mocks as he begins to climb a steeper hill with the deputy, “that’s different.”

“What?”

Dan makes a quiet wheezy chuckle and asks, “Ain’t that a girl’s name?”

Pratt rolls his eyes but answers, “It’s like Casey or Kelly. It can be either boy or girl.”

“I was just playin’ around with ya,” Dan jokes while handing the wallet back.

When the two return to the SUV they see Jacob and Rain already there, with the windows rolled down, ready to go. Rick had put the rifles in the trunk and waves to Pratt and Dan to hurry up. The two men jog the rest of the short distance up the path.

“Did you guys catch anything,” Rick asks.

“We only saw a momma holdin’ babies,” Dan replies in a muffle with a cigar in his mouth.

“Nah, we can’t kill a momma elk like that. It wouldn’t be right,” Rick replies, “We didn’t see anything out here either.”

Rain hops back into the driver’s seat and starts up the SUV. But then he begins to hum a tune. Rick begins to sing that tune wording out, “Only You!” And then, Dan soon after begins singing along. Pratt smirks and looks at how silly the guys all look as they sing in the car. They seem so playful like a family on a road trip. Jacob looks behind his seat out of the corner of his eye. And, when Rick and Dan sang one of the high notes, Jacob laughed and covered his mouth. The deputy couldn’t believe it: Jacob Seed…just…laughed.

#My baby brother whining on the phone! XD #Ain't that a girl's name?#Deer Babies!!!#Far Cry 5 Jacob #Jacob Seed #far cry 5 jacob seed #Far Cry Jacob Seed #Far Cry 5 Pratt #Deputy Pratt #Staci Pratt #far cry deputy

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siarven · 7 years

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An introduction to my WIPS and projects including Links to read more!

Monster

Status:

Not yet started to write/paint. It will one day be a graphic novel. I hope. A 3D short film exists which is when I first developed the idea. Mind you, that’s my 2nd semester short film, it’s not perfect and I had no idea what I was doing. But given all that I’m still really proud.

I have about two thousand ideas for four-panel comic strips and short comics and short stories and a whole novel and a graphic novel. One day I’ll make them all!

Synopsis/Description:

Sierra is nine years old and she has befriended the monster under her bed. At first she was kind of scared until she realized that the monster was probably as scared of her as she was of it. Now they’re both very comfortable with each other and the monster usually wakes her up during the night because it wants cookies. Suffice to say Sierra is not amused. They do kind of love each other, though, even if it’s more in a sibling sort of way.

Dreams and Shadows

AKA my current WIP fantasy novel

Status:

First Draft done. Second and third drafts abandoned half-way through because they were stupid. Currently on the fourth draft, the one that might actually be worthwhile!

Wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo 2014 which was back then 93,734 words. At first it was called Dreamweaver, then Dreamweaver and Shadowdancer, and then I shortened that because it sounded stupid. Now the total wordcount that I’ve invested in this stupid book is in the 500K words area, and the current approved words are roughly 75K. It’s probably going to be two books if it continues getting longer without my permission. Also, it’s a fantasy novel set in a world that’s more or less steampunk-y (because who doesn’t love steampunk) :D

Synopsis:

How does one break someone? There are different ways for different people. Take Ben, for example. He has many friends, many loved ones. To break him one needs to isolate him from everyone else. Pull him away. It won't work by just taking someone he loves -- he loves too many, it wouldn't be complete. He has lived most of his life with a chipped heart anyways -- another crack would hurt, but in the end it wouldn't make much of a difference. But then there's also Ava, his little sister. By isolating him one isolates her as well, because her whole world revolves around him. Sure, she's got friends, a mother, a father. But there's only one person she can't live without, so by taking him away you break her, too. It’s an art to break someone, an art that only few have mastered.

When Ben wakes up the world and his place within it have changed. There was an accident he can't remember, and now he's in a strange parallel world where nobody can see him, changed in ways that go so much deeper than he could ever imagine. He's alone now, invisible in the crowd, isolated from everyone he loves. And with his loss Ava's world burns down within a single night, leaving behind nothing but ashes and broken bones.

Ben must find a way to Return before those he left behind finally give up on him. Ava needs to learn that isolating herself only rarely helps and that accepting help from others might be difficult but necessary – and that she might be the only one who can help her estranged parents reconnect and rebuild their relationship.

Also, there might be a way to help Ben, even if Ava is only half certain that he’s still there at all.

The good thing is that they’ve got a guardian on their side, the family cat Amber, who can see both and knows much more than she lets on.

More about it here!

Icicle Soul

Status:

Currently on hold. Started the first draft during Camp NaNo a few years ago, plotted the whole thing, and then wrote something else. This is the project that I’m most hyped for! I just never feel as if I’m good enough to write it yet. It’s also the one I’m going to write when I’m done with Dreams and Shadows! AKA the thing that’s keeping me focused and writing because once I’m done I can get back to this one! :D It’s also the story that is simplest to pitch and probably sounds the most boring but actually it’s really complex and I love it so much (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Synopsis:

Four different people have to face the Lord of Winter because otherwise Spring won’t return to the worlds.

Morning Star

Status:

Currently on hold, started with the first draft which is not yet finished. Completely plotted out, characters are fully developed, many great plot twists, magic system and worldbuilding are there... just have to write it. AAAAHHH.

Synopsis:

The Ekhir Empire has survived for over 60 years but now that the First Emperor has died the throne passes on to his only surviving son, a monster by all accounts, throwing millions of lives into the bloodiest conflict to date as the various rebellions form into one to fight back together against a common enemy.

The Guardians created and appointed by God have split into two factions whose conflict has grown into a full-blown civil war, fought by beings who command incredible powers. A small group of people has decided to search for the body of God and to re-awaken her from a coma that, according to legend, started millions of years ago, in hopes of getting help during the fights. What only one of them knows are two important facts: One of the travellers is Lucifer Reborn; and in addition, if they actually manage to find and re-awaken God, she will die. The storyline follows twelve different POV-characters as they try to survive the conflicts that threaten not only their lives but also their families, friends, everyone they ever loved and everything they ever knew.

Since this no longer takes place on earth I’ll change Lucifer’s name when I get back to it^^

An excerpt can be found here! ヽ(‘ ∇‘ )ノ

Burning Skies

Status:

Currently on hold. Another half-written NaNo project. The origin story of my fictional universe (the one where all the other stories except maybe Sierra’s take place.) I’ll definitely write it one day.

All the NaNo chapters that I’ve written for this are on my sideblog @lirhin which was my writing blog back then, here. First draft though, so probably kinda wonky.

Still love the concept, and all the plot twists. And the magic systems! I’ll start from scratch when I write it again, though.

Synopsis:

It’s been three hundred years since The Fall. Society has slowly started to revive, pick itself up again, rebuild what was destroyed and retrieve what was lost. Only, the questions remain: What was The Fall, why did it happen, how can we make sure that it doesn’t happen again? Everyone who knew the answers to those questions died back then. A lot of knowledge has been lost during those last days of chaos – including the knowledge of magic. Something of legends, people say, stories told children at night, to try and keep them from acting stupidly. The only problem is — magic has never been lost, just pushed away. Now the power thickens and it’s returning, fast, and the costs are very high. Too bad that the world is trying to force every single mention of it away, and too bad that it’s becoming more and more important in the grand scale of things…

Rin has been abandoned by everyone she’s ever loved, left behind and betrayed. And she knows that she will one day destroy the world. At least that’s what everyone who’s trying to kill her tells her (and she’s dealt with a lot of those people). They have never told her how she will do that but apparently many of them think that she will, somehow – and why shouldn’t she believe them, after all of their attempts? If they think so, so be it — and if the world doesn’t care about you, why should you care about the world?

Cass, on the other hand, has had a similar life in the one sense that she’s completely, utterly alone and lost. Working as a slave for a man who owns a dozen children like her isn’t easy, especially if he choses to train each of them according to their newly-given talents. When the chance finally arrives, the chance to escape and achieve freedom once and for all, Cass doesn’t know what to do. Run and hide or stay and plot revenge?

Firewings (Feuervogel)

Status:

Currently on hold, also going to be at least a trilogy, I guess. This is my first “proper” story, the first time I participated in NaNoWriMo, and I really owe everything to that program. First I wrote it in German, then I re-wrote it in German, then I started re-writing it in English, and now I’ve got at least 600K worth of words. I still love the worldbuilding, magic systems and characters. I might have to think about the plot when I re-write it. Still love it though. Also, it has a lot of characters even if it only started with one (Ilien... always Ilien).

I named my side blog @lirhin after one of my main protags from this project, and my username on NaNoWriMo is also Lirhin... guess why (✿◠‿◠)

Synopsis:

Erlanthar — a world where demon-like creatures, the Skadar (meaning Cursed), come out at nightfall to kill and torture all life they can find, human or otherwise. Everything that protects the human population at night are runes and prayers — prayers that they and their families might be spared tonight, that the runes won't fail, that everything will go on. Several different plotlines follow a series of characters: Ilien has lived alone for a very long time solely for the purpose of revenge, hunting down demons in his spare time, until one night he saves a litlte girl from being kidnapped. Her parents were murdered during the kidnapping, so he sort of adopts her, calling her Lirhin since she’s stopped talking. Now the kidnappers want her back. Jeanna is still a child when her mother and older sister are killed (amongst others) in a demon raid because there was a flaw in the rune system of the whole village. While Jeanna is determined to learn how to protect herself the whole village starts to collaborate to survive the night. Everything changes when she discovers something unbelievable about herself and her older brother. Razouk is brought up knowing that he is not good enough, that he will always be second choice after his sister. He decides that he must prove himself, which is quite difficult when you don't even know the real identity of the man you want to prove your worth to. Then there are also Meena and Arrick, crown prince and princess, watch as their kingdom falls apart since their father is not capable of ruling anymore and their mother is the only person holding everything together. They must find a way to survive and do the best they can for their people. Finally, Rheon is fed up with the way the kingdom is ruled, being the ruler of a major city himself and fearing for his people who are starving to death. He decides that he must do something about that and that the best way is to start a rebellion.

Sky Citadel

Status:

Currently on hold. A former Camp NaNo project. I love it and I’ll come back to it. Probably not top priority though.

Synopsis:

What was once forgotten must be relearned.

What was once lost must be reforged. How can we stand against an enemy when we cannot stop fighting ourselves, each other, our only allies? When we have forgotten the truth about them and about ourselves, when we don't remember the threats of the Deeps? How can we survive if our biggest threat is rising again and we don't remember how to fight? The People of the Spired Sea have forgotten the past, have forgotten about their guardians, the Faye, and how they were saved. Now the old inhabitors of this world are returning but humanity's struggles are directed at each other, inside the community, and at the Marked who have started to rise again to protect humanity against the once-known threat. Jaivyn has lost everything he ever had, and yet gained so much. Ivy had everything and lost it all. And they are only two of the Marked, mankind's "Saviours", broken and conflicted, who are supposed to fight the Ancients and ensure that the Spired Sea has a future. How can anyone do something like that while they cannot even save themselves?

An excerpt can be found here! (▰˘◡˘▰)

#dreamshadow #sierrasmonster #iciclesoul #morningstar #skycitadel #firewings #burningskies #siarven writes #my wips #my ocs #wip #this took so much longer than expected

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resbang-bookclub · 8 years

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AMA Transcript: In the Colors of a Photograph

Last week, @victoriandancer and @guacamoletrash dropped in for an AMA about their 2016 Resbang, In the Colors of a Photograph! Check out some of the fun:

Q: How much research on marine biology did you do for this?

victoriandancer: UMM not much, lol. I was a biotechnology major in college (which was only a few years ago) and I'm an immunology research technician now. I mostly pulled from my head. Some of the boat questions I looked up, and a few obscure marine bio things. I didn't want to go into too much detail and lose people who weren't bio nerds like me lol.

Q: Favorite part to write?

victoriandancer: My favorite part was the very first day they were out on the water and Soul was photographing Maka's explorations. It was so serene and sweet and fun at the same time!

Q: For guac: You said it was your first time using Photoshop for your piece! Did you learn a lot?

guac: All I had ever used it for was a photography class I took in high school, and boy oh boy. I don't think I'd ever used the brush tool until September? I learned so so so much, and I'm so ready to learn so much more!!!!!!

Q: Did anything inspire/motivate you to write this particular story/setting? And how did you think of it?

victoriandancer: I was trying to stick with biology because it's a comfort zone for me, but I didn't want to do the normal "college lab class." Tried that before and didn't work. I honestly can't remember how I decided on the marine biology idea, but when I did think of it, I just ran with it and never looked back haha.

Q: Did you listen to any music while writing this or did any music inspire any scenes?

victoriandancer: No music involved lol. If I do listen to music it's Two Steps from Hell because there are no words and it puts me in the writing/study zone. But music itself doesn't usually find its way into my writing. That may change if I ever write one focused on music. And since I love writing Soul so much, that may happen one day. Two Steps from Hell would then be a good place to start lol. Yay for brainstorming future fics!

guac: Here is a playlist I made while thinking about this story and trying to make art for it. I'm just gonna toss it here: https://open.spotify.com/user/gmenapacheco/playlist/6IIFWmmG7rIb7uYIkshanT

Q: Was there a scene in particular that you found it challenging to write?

victoriandancer: Hmmmmm, I get stuck with writer's block A LOT. I have no attention span lol. I got stuck right before the final climax scene. I think I knew the fic was going to end after that and I didn't want it to end, but time was running out and I was panicking and just AHHHH. I'm usually good writing the middle of a scene, never the beginning or end lol.

Q: How much of the story is personal experience and how much is research?

victoriandancer: I looked up a few boating questions (especially diving terminology and boat parts terminology). Photography I wanted to keep general enough to not confuse myself lol. For marine bio stuff, 99% came out of my head from previous classes lol.

Q: What was your writing process like? Once you had the idea for the fic, did you tend to write linearly or did any scenes from later on come earlier in your writing?

victoriandancer: I write very linearly. One day I want to experiment with writing different scenes at different times, but I'm afraid I'll never get them to connect. I'm definitely an analytical person over creativity, so writing the story linearly helps me keep it all straight lol.

Q: Did you have a writing goal for yourself, i.e. 'work on pacing' or 'better flow' for this resbang, and if so, what was it?

victoriandancer: Completion was my goal lol. I did the FMA Big Bang challenge and that was my first completed multi-chapter fic ever. I was very comfortable with my plot and story line in that one, and not so comfortable with this one, so I just wanted to finish it and have it be a cohesive unit.

Q: For guac: How did you choose which scenes to illustrate???

guac: So I actually wanted to do multiple scenes and there is a draft for a second one and a concept doodle for a third WHICH I AM STILL CONSIDERING DOING BECAUSE THIS FIC IS NEAR AND DEAR TO MY HEART AND I WANT TO EVENTUALLY DO ALL MY IDEAS. I basically was just doing my favorite scenes from what I had read. Which were A LOT.

victoriandancer: DO THEM!!!!!!

guac: I WILL. TRUST ME. It's on my "list of things to do before 2018."

Q: Was there a scene that went in a different direction than you had originally planned?

victoriandancer: So I expected Tsubaki and Black Star to come back in at some point, then I got carried away with silly friendship and it just never happened lol.

Q: Was there anyone who was hard to characterize or write for you?

victoriandancer: Black Star, definitely. I didn't want to get carried away with his antics, but I still wanted him to be funny. And I also didn't want to just copy him from the show either. Not sure how well I succeeded with that, but I sure tried lol.

guac: You write a good Black Star.

Q: When did you start writing? Was this something you had a lil prepared before Resbang or was it a sprint to the finish or...?

victoriandancer: Both? So I started with a good goal (a few hundred words a day) but I don't remember when I started. But then I had a very sudden job change and big move and time got away from me so it was definitely a sprint to the finish lol. It must have been at least August that I started.

Q: Was there a particular location you were thinking of while writing?

victoriandancer: I was thinking of California, but I've never actually been to California? More a place where sunset happens over the water.

Q: Guac, was there something that you found super fun/easy or conversely gave you lots of trouble art-wise?

Q: guac: So this was my first time using Photoshop to make illustrations. Before, I had only used it when I took a high school digital photo class. I had to look up so many tutorials and things so that I could get things to look how I wanted them to.

Q: VD, did anything about the ending change as you went along or did your idea about how everything would pan out stay about the same?

victoriandancer: So I wrote at least 3/4 of the fic without knowing how to end it. I was forced to end it when deadlines came to hunt me down. So no, there was no plan to begin with lol.

Q: Did Tsubaki have a separate project?

victoriandancer: LOL yeah I wanted her to have a full fledged project and it just didn't pan out. I totally plan on writing a sequel (which would include more art shows and galleries than science journals) but don't know how to start.

Q: Do you have a favorite scene in general?

victoriandancer: Hmmmmmmm I don't know. Probably the scene where they’re snapping each other with towels. It's just ADORABLE (or should I say adorkable) and AWWWWWWW. And it was fun to write.

Q: So victoriandancer are you plannin’ on doing Resbang again this year? /nudge nudge

victoriandancer: YES I AM. I have no ideas yet but they will come lol. I think I want to get away from biology this time. My FMA fic was medical-related so that's why I'm going to try to get away from it. There would be too much overlap and it would stop being fun if I don't expand. (Shameless promo for my FMA fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7853809/chapters/17932963)

Q: What do you think you learned from this Resbang about yourself, or about your writing?

victoriandancer: So I learned that I can perform under some pressure. I was actually worried about taking this new job because I would be under some pressure from my bosses for good data, but this fic was kind of like a warm up for adjusting to my new job. When deadlines came for Resbang, I just buckled down and got it done, which gives me faith I can also perform my duties in my job under some pressure.

Q: Do you have a favorite fiction author?

victoriandancer: Ohhhh definitely Anne Bishop! She is AMAZING PHENOMENAL INSPIRATIONAL AND PERFECT.

Q: Oh, Dark Jewels trilogy?

victoriandancer: YES. But also her Novels of the Others series. Go read Written in Red NOW.

Q: Gonna follow that up with what was the most influential book or fic youve read?

victoriandancer: Ohhhhhhhh that's a tough one. I've always loved tsarodat's Dragon fic. You can see her writing morph and grow and expand throughout the chapters and I just always go reread it when I need a boost in confidence. There are probably others but that's the main one that comes to mind.

Q: Do you have any favourite writing spots or rituals?

victoriandancer: Nope. Just me and my laptop chugging away. I have an apartment so there's really no space for variation. I don't like writing in public. I would much prefer to be in the comfort of my home, even if my dog gives me strange looks once in a while.

Thanks again to victoriandancer and guac for a great AMA! Look out for more transcripts in the coming week!!

#AMA transcripts #rbbc #in the colors of a photograph

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hippieeloquent · 5 years

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biography writing services tech companies list

10 Tips for Writing a Biography Crockett Johnson, "How to write a novel," illus. from Ruth Krauss's How to Make an EarthquakeAs we await a verdict from my editor about the official title in the book formerly known as The Purple Crayon and a Hole to Dig: The Lives of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss (forthcoming 2012), I thought I’d share a few tips with any aspiring biographers available. Since I’ve only written one biography (albeit a double biography), you should needless to say go ahead and take these suggestions with a touch of suspicion. 1. Seek counsel from experts. Biographers Leonard Marcus (Margaret Wise Brown), Michael Patrick Hearn (L. Frank Baum, forthcoming), Judith Morgan (Dr. Seuss) all kindly answered my questions. For instance, Michael got me into editor Susan Hirschman, who knew (and edited) both Johnson and Krauss. In addition to putting me touching HarperCollins’ archivist, Leonard also informed me that scanning city directories (the predecessor to phone books) can help you hunt down where people lived. I’ve spent an unusual timeframe with a microfilm reader, perusing city directories for Manhattan, Queens, and Baltimore. 2. Ask lots of questions. You’ll need to learn much about subjects through which you’re not an expert. So, for example, Mathematics Professor Emeritus J. B. Stroud explained the math behind the paintings which Johnson devoted his final decade. In addition to venturing beyond your areas of expertise, you’ll also find out about research methods you didn’t know existed. For example, my former neighbor Jerry Wigglesworth (a legal professional) told me that any probated will would be on file in probate court. Acting on his advice, I obtained copies of Johnson’s and Krauss’s wills in the probate court in Westport, Connecticut. 3. Pick a subject who were built with a brief but interesting life. During the dozen years I worked on read., I’ve often thought: “ah, how wise of Leonard Marcus to write about Margaret Wise Brown. She only lived being 42!” In contrast, Crockett Johnson lived to get 68. Ruth Krauss lived to be 91. That’s lots of years to pay for! Of course, I’m partially kidding in regards to the ages of your subject (and I are aware that Brown’s early death had not even attempt to do with Leonard’s decision to write down her biography). It’s most critical that the subject be interesting to you: you’ll likely be spending 10 years of your life learning them. The length of a person’s life's less important, although it will affect just how long it will require one to complete the book. 4. Are there any autobiographical records? Choosing someone that wrote some autobiographical narrative of her or his own could make your daily life much easier - set up account proves only partially accurate, you would no less than have something to go on. Crockett Johnson lacked any autobiographical impulse; besides occasional remarks in interviews (ones there are hardly any), he left no first-person accounts of his life. Ruth, about the other hand, did talk about herself. She never wrote the full-length autobiography, but created a quantity of autobiographical fragments. For this reason, it’s much easier to get into a feeling of her inner life. 5. Don’t delay! Start today! If you are set on writing a biography, stop scanning this post and begin working on it at this time. I’m not hinting this since the process will need about 10 years. I’m letting you know this because those are likely to die. Of course, if you’re writing about somebody that died 100 or more years ago, the probability of finding living witnesses is very slim. But, if you’re writing about someone born recently, then get started! I was very fortunate to schedule an appointment Mischa Richter (New Yorker cartoonist and colleague of Johnson), A. B. Magil (one of New Masses’ editors inside the 1930s, as was Johnson), Syd Hoff (New Yorker cartoonist, children’s author, and New Masses cartoonist inside the 1930s), Mary Elting Folsom (children’s author, an affiliate Book and Magazine Union, also knew Johnson within the ’30s), Else Frank (Johnson’s sister), and a lot of other individuals that have since passed on. But I narrowly missed chatting with Kenneth Koch (whose poetry class Krauss took) and Hannah Baker (PM’s comics editor, who dealt with Johnson on Barnaby). Immediately after buying a reply from Ms. Baker, I tried phoning her - she’d invited me to call, but included no number. My attempts failed. I immediately wrote again. A month later, a form reply from her niece informed me that she’d passed on. My letter to Mr. Koch arrived your day he died. Shortly thereafter, I had this type of vivid dream that Mr. Koch was speaking with me (from beyond the grave!) that I got off the bed, able to take notes on our interview… and then realized, ahhh, right, I was dreaming. And I went back to bed. 6. Organize! In the dozen years I labored on this, I interviewed 84 people, investigated over three dozen archives and special collections, read everything authored by or about Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, and consulted additional hundreds of articles and books. I looked over birth certificates, marriage certificates, census data, property deeds, wills, century-old insurance carrier maps, FBI files, photographs, and city directories for Baltimore, New York, Darien, Norwalk, and Westport, Connecticut. That’s lots of information to keep straight. Two parallel systems evolved. (1) Lots of file folders - both on the computer and within the physical world. In the physical world, as an illustration, an outside folder attended: each interviewee or else important person, reviews (this is actually two folders), biographical profiles and interviews, draft materials in connection with individual books, uncollected works (many file folders of Barnaby strips), census data, wills, and lots of more. I’ve 6 file drawers full of materials. And another three shelves full of printed work (books, magazines, etc). Oh, and a box brimming with audio cassettes (containing interviews). (2) A document I called “chronology.” It has three columns: Year, Life, Published Work. Here, for example, is surely an unusually brief entry (to the year 1937): Year Life Published Work 1937 RK not in Columbia University within the City of New York; Directory Number for that Sessions 1937-1938. Including Registration to November 1, 1937. Ruth Benedict is (p. 19).RK has adult measles, discovers Lionel’s infidelity, leaves Lionel.4 May: CJ at “New Masses party at Muriel Draper’s,” where he sees Donald Ogden Stewart make “a swell little talk on our [New Masses‘] behalf.” (Dave Johnson to Rockwell K., 11 May 1937 Rockwell Kent Papers, Smithsonian, Reel 5217, Frame 0971). New Masses. May 18: CJ is among Associate Editors. 14 Dec.: CJ is considered one of Editors. 9 Nov. (p. 2): CJ recognized as Art Editor.“Dutch Uncle with the Arts” (9 Nov. 1937): CJ overview of The Arts by Willem Hendrik van Loon (Simon & Schuster). I didn’t put my way through each year, but what I did invest there solved the problem locate events soon enough, gave me feeling of sequence. Some items are approximately located - the manuscript reflects the belief that the break-up of Krauss’s first marriage likely happened in 1938, but I neglected to factual that around the chronology document. 7. Leave No Stone Unturned… As you interview lots more people and visit more archives, you’ll build up a vast network of contacts, as well as a rich nexus of information. Pursue those leads! I drove to Denmark, Maine’s Camp Walden, an all-girls camp where Ruth Krauss spent two formative summers: there, I found her first published writing in the 1919 issue of Splash, the camp ground yearbook. I visited Staten Island in order to meet 67-year-old Thomas Hamilton, who as 7-year-old Tommy Hamilton starred as Barnaby within the 1946 stage production of Crockett Johnson’s comic strip. He had clippings as well as the entire unpublished script to the play, all of which he allow me to copy. 8. … Except for the Stones That You Leave Alone. At a certain point, you have to stop researching so that you can finish the novel. The research could be endless until you produce a conscious decision to curtail it. One approach to help retain the research process is always to start writing while researching. Doing so will help you to get a sense of the shape the book will in the end take. As you start out to glimpse the contours of the final volume, you’ll realized that - although interesting - you will find some leads that could be put away. 9. Learn to Write Narrative. Read plenty of biographies. Read “how to” books like Nigel Hamilton’s How to Do Biography: A Primer. Talk to creative writers and, if you can, have a creative writing course. (I was unable to please take a class, but I did consult creative writers.) I don't have any lessons in writing narrative or character … or creating any from the options that come with literary fiction. I did my best to write a magazine that's both scholarly and told a good story, but this is very challenging. Reading other non-fiction (especially biographies) and conversing with my creative-writing colleagues helped me work out how to try this. 10. Leap Before You Look. Finally, it might be necessary to forget much of what I’ve written here, and approach your task using a certain amount of ignorance. If you begin using a full understanding what you are engaging in, you do not start within the first place. Fortunately, should you be serious about writing a biography, nothing I’ve said here will deter you - because (1) difficulty is but a welcome challenge for the determined scholar, and (2) only by writing a biography is it possible to truly appreciate how enormous the project is. Even after scanning this post, aspiring biographers should nevertheless be sufficiently unaware thereby capable to approach their task with optimism. Writing a biography is often a painstaking, challenging, often plodding process. As the narrator of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers laments, “It is to get regretted that no mental technique of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered, by which the characters in men can be reduced to writing and set into grammatical language with an erring precision of truthful description.” However, while he also notes, “such mechanical descriptive skill” would yield simply a “dull, dead, unfeeling, inauspicious likeness.” In other words, difficulty is really a necessary a part of rendering your life: “There is not any royal way to learning; no short cut for the acquirement of the valuable art. […] There is no way of writing well plus of writing easily.”1 But, to get rid of with an upbeat note, whilst the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss has certainly been the most difficult book I’ve written, they have recently been one of the most rewarding. It’s pushed me, forced me to formulate intellectual muscles I didn’t know existed, compelled me to boost my writing. It’s the very best book I’ve written, and may even well be the most effective one I ever will write. To purchase biography writing services go to http://techcompaniesbiographywritinglist.mystrikingly.com/blog/career-profiting-with-biography-writing-services

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topicprinter · 5 years

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Hey everyone,Over 6 months ago I posted here with growing 57 trends that you could capitalize on for business opportunities, along with a plug for the app I’d created that found them.Your feedback was awesome and motivated me to keep running with it and growing it. And thanks to that, I managed to sell the site to Brian Dean of Backlinko recently. So I thought I’d share the story here.I have to admit though, I hadn’t monetized yet and I was incredibly lucky with how things worked out. So I’m not recommending this as a reproducible guide for anyone but hopefully you still enjoy the read.How It StartedI began work on Trennd.co back in April while living in Japan, and back then it was originally called TrendList.io.imageI’d started to realize that it’s 100X easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride a big market trend. Jump on the opportunity before the competition gets too fierce.A great example of this is Jon and Justin at Transistor.fm, who spotted a growing B2B market for podcast hosting and bootstrapped a SaaS for it.Another classic example — Pieter Levels tapped into the digital nomad and remote work trend while scratching his own itch with Nomad List and Remote OK.Both market awareness and market timing were critical for these guys. On top of execution skill of course.But also, businesses take years of sales, marketing and general hard work even after you’ve launched. I’d like to know that life force is going into a growing opportunity, not a shrinking one.I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.I needed a shiny new app or tool to play with. 😛But I couldn’t find anything, so I started to build it for myself.The first version was literally just a CLI tool that output trend graphs to the console.I thought I might as well package it as a B2C SaaS product. But woaaaah no, not another sales grind. Especially B2C.Let’s just put it up for free and see if I can even build an audience (basically email list) around it first.As I proclaimed on the about page, “Revenue is obviously at zero right now. It will likely stay there for a while. Probably forever.”Not wanting to miss the opportunity to try a fancy new web stack, I wrapped the tool up into a NextJS web app. This choice was primarily to capitalize on the out-of-box server-side rendering it offers. That way, I could actually get this project to rank properly on Google for all the various trends.I listed Trennd in early May (way before it was finished) on Product Hunt’s Ship service. Admittedly though, I probably should’ve done much more than this and actually talked to potential users/customers before writing any code.But I was very bullish on the concept since I was building Trennd to solve my own problem. 👹imageBut with a total of 153 subscribers from PH Ship 2 months later, it definitely felt like there might be more cost-effective ways to acquire initial users than the $80/month there. But the brand exposure and potential support from those guys on launch is still valuable.By May 20th I felt I had something that I could finally start to show people.But around the same time, I also realized that Trend List was the brand name of Trendlist.org. This is a contemporary graphic design site with Domain Authority of 38 and a huge presence on Google SERPs. I really didn’t want to compete from day 1 just to show up on Google when people search the brand name.imageAnyway, I found 3 other names that I’d be more than happy with: Trendful, Trennd and Trend Geek. I threw Nice Trend Bro into the running at the encouragement of my wife.Then I realized this rebrand could be a fantastic marketing opportunity in itself. So I decided to run a public vote on the new name via twitter poll as a fun and novel way other people could get involved. Plus this way I’d ensure it’s a solid name that works for everyone.With the Twitter poll underway for a week, I wanted to capitalize on this 7-day window and get as many votes as possible.Reddit Pre-launchI quickly got it up on Reddit as an initial “pre-launch”. I’d mainly wanted to get some initial users to help iron out any wrinkles and bugs, and to point out any big holes in terms of functionality.And as a professional “wantrepreneur”, I’m often lurking here on r/entrepreneur and I thought you guys might find Trennd useful.But I came in with my guard up. I knew full well you would chew me up and spit me out in an instant if you sensed I was here solely to promote.So I found 57 of the most interesting trends I had at the time and used them as a shield going into the post. I made sure to provide value first and ask for feedback second. I stuck around the comments section all day replying to everyone who took the time to comment.imageThe response to this Reddit post was huge! It received over 500 upvotes across 3 subreddits. One kind stranger even gave me Reddit Gold.In terms of number, Reddit brought:80 email subscribers50 user signups1k trafficNot a bad start.I also got a huge amount of awesome feedback on how I can improve the app and make it more valuable. Like requests for:Better data granularity for shorter time frames.Enabling Keyword trends too, not just Google Topics.Plus dozens of smaller things (like moving the trend close button to the top right so it’s easier to click on mobile).After this Reddit success, the twitter poll had over 100 votes for the new name. It was a close run between Trendful and Trennd.And, somehow, Pieter Levels came across Trend List, loved the concept and voted for the name Trennd!imageI’m a huge fan of Pieter’s and Nomad List. I was watching his Bali video about his maker journey literally days before starting Trend List! So for him to vote and like the idea was both uncanny and amazing.And in the end, the name Trennd won by a small margin.Following all this initial traction, Trennd was featured on Harry Dry’s killer Marketing Examples blog.imageI made the front page of Indie Hackers too with the top milestone too. Love the IH community so this was a big deal to me!imageAfter the first 5 weeks I was absolutely chuffed with the results. (That’s British slang for very pleased!)I hadn’t set any goals, but 353 email subscribers was way beyond anything I expected.And I was even more pumped that the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly positive.I’ve made some other small products, but they were like trying to get a massive boulder uphill. Every time you stopped pushing for new customers, it would roll back down on you. Old customers would churn and you hadn’t replaced them.But this one felt obviously different. It was the first thing I’d made that people just shared automatically and it kind of took flight by itself.And with an email list in the hundreds, I started a weekly email newsletter called Trennds For The Weekend**.** My primary goal there was to make no-fluff, straight to the point emails, with a carefully curated list of the most interesting and fresh trends each week.imageThe newsletter was the one thing that I made sure happened every week. It was great motivation to get things done to have something to talk to the readers. Plus it was an invaluable way to keep in touch with Trennd’s growing audience and have an open channel for feedback. If I started to go in a wonky direction re: trend quality, web design, email format, bugs, or anything really, somebody would usually let me know via email reply and help to straighten the ship’s course.Next up was a Show Hacker News launch, which I expected to be a giant flop as most things usually drown in the noise.Show HN LaunchSo Friday at 10pm and I’m sat at my desk in Japan ready to post to Hacker News. My wife’s already gone to bed, but I figured this was the best time to post such that people were awake in both US + Europe. Plus I could reply to any comments and keep check on things through to Saturday morning JST if I had to.So I drafted my opening thread comment and hit submit.“Sorry, your account is too new to submit this site.”Oh man. I’d been thinking about this submission all day. And I couldn’t even post. 🤦🏼‍♂️Anyway, I emailed the mods at Hacker News to explain and they very quickly and kindly marked it ready to go through. My account was made in 2017, but turns out “too new” can also mean not having participated much in the community.Flash forward to the following Friday and this time it went through.We’d made sure to phrase the title to resonate with the audience. On Hacker News (and in most places I suppose) simple, clear and humble works best. this is where fellow indie maker Vincent was awesome — he helped me to get this title spot on, along with a bunch of other great advice that made a huge difference.The post immediately moved onto the best of Show HN page, and then quickly onto the main page.imageTraffic increased to 400 concurrent users on Trennd and we briefly peaked at #1.imageIt was at this point that Trennd got the infamous “Hacker News hug” and the site died. The free MongoDB Atlas database plan did not appreciate this flood of connections. So I had a frantic 15min where the website was down while I upgraded to the paid tier.It’s a shame that I lost this quarter-hour of Hacker News prime time. And I’ve since implemented some server-side caching that prevents the database from getting hammered.But since I recovered quickly, we remained near the top of the front page for 12 more hours, which is good enough for me. Let’s not be greedy. 😛I manned the comments section into the early hours of the morning, got some great discussion and a tremendous amount of positivity from the crowd.Twitter BonanzaJust as I started to think everything was all over and we were back to normality. The buzz started to spill over and have a huge domino effect onto Twitter.Dozens and dozens of people tweeted about Trennd.Thankfully I’d updated the twitter preview image beforehand (thank you Michael!). So there was a pretty placeholder image and sweet description when dozens of people shared and tweeted about Trennd.And then, the cherry on top of it all was that Rand Fishkin of Moz tweeted about it! Unbelievable! This made my month. 🍒imageThe number of likes and retweets on the back of this was insane too. I’m a twitter newbie, so to get this kind of exposure blew my mind! 🤯It also led to us getting picked up by the hackernewsletter and kottke.org which drove some good traffic our way too.imageAll of this combined to rocket us above 2000 email subscribers:Subscribers: 2,163 🎉Visitors: 28,353 🕵️‍♀️Pageviews: 124,026 👀It was really cool how ready people were to contribute and add trends of their own too. It confirmed my hypothesis that we could crowdsource the surfacing of new trends to some extent. In a similar way that Product Hunters crowdsource new products.But with this came the issue of quality control. One visitor, for example, added “Donkey Porn” as a new trend, and it may well be trending, but I had to moderate it away. 🤫At this stage, I felt I’d truly validated interest in the project with over 2000 subscribers, marketing to get another X hundred subscribers wasn’t going to change anything.I needed to make the platform more powerful. So I held off a Product Hunt launch thinking I’d keep that powder dry.Monetization (Or Lack Thereof)I also started to think long and hard about how to monetize the site at this time. I needed it to at least pay some of its own bills and maybe even some of mine!In the medium to long term, I knew a premium version of Trennd was the way to go.But I couldn’t figure out what this should look like and wanted to do it right.There’s no point damaging hard-earned goodwill by pushing out a rushed premium product too soon or something that’s the wrong fit.Somebody did ask for a “private Trennd dashboard” where they could favorite trends and even get personal alerts. They even said they’d pay $100-$200 per month for it. Turns out, they found Trennd immensely valuable to discover new programming languages sooner so that they could make Udemy courses around them. (If they were the first to get a course out and get good reviews, it’s like a winner take all market and can be very profitable.)But, to me, all the value seems to be in the trends themselves and spotting hotter trends sooner. Not the ability to put certain ones in a personal dashboard. They’d just use the free version! Plus how many tech course creators are there out there? For better or worse (I think better!), I dismissed it as a dead-end.Instead, I began to look for a community or affiliate sponsor and started to have pricing conversations with people. Even though I was still small fry in terms of traffic and a few thousand email subscribers.I managed to set up a nice sponsorship ‘swap’ with Unreadit (which is awesome, check it out!) and that was a good fit and worked out well for both of us.It drove a bit of traffic, some new subscribers and gave me some stats about how well Trennd sponsorship slots converted for future potential sponsors. But it didn’t bring in any cash money since it was just a swap.imageHaving that deal in place did give me an excuse to scuttle back into my code cave though. 🦀Code CaveThis was with the view to making Trennd more robust and sustainable for the long term.The #1 challenge was, and still is, the noise to signal ratio. Nobody wants to click through page after page trends to find the ones relevant to them. They need to be able to slice and dice the trends in more ways/dimensions that are relevant to them.So I hunkered down in my little white room in our Japanese “mansion” (which in Japan basically means an apartment).imageI added things like absolute search volume data and the ability to sort on it. More consistent categorization standards and automatic classification of trends too.With the data granularity, you can see the 3-month chart data was weekly at first. So pretty crummy with only 12 data points.imageBut then below that with daily data points instead you can really see the difference.imageAnyway, I’ll stop boring you with the various small additions and improvements I made over this time. Back to the story. 😛Traction Despite InactionI’d done zero marketing for over a month. 🤦‍♂️The hype last month around the Hacker News launch and Twittersphere had naturally died down, along with the web traffic.It’s way too easy to put marketing on the back burner and keep building in general. That’s where I’m personally most comfortable.Yet, I know too well marketing should be an ongoing crusade, alongside product improvement.The most successful indie hackers I see around — they have systemized routines that enable them to continually output valuable content.But to my surprise, the mailing list count was still ticking up every day despite all this, and the site had seemed to reach a healthy equilibrium of 100–300 daily visitors.imageThese were both big green flags to me. (I’m not sure if green flags are actually a real thing. Emojipedia doesn’t think so… 🚩)Pieter Levels tweeted about us again out of the blue too! This was several months after the first time and drove several thousands of visitors to the site. imageAcquisitionAll kinds of people had been putting themselves forward asking to get involved. And this was happening on a semi-regular basis!The problem is, co-founders bring a huge amount of risk with them. Differences in vision, work ethic, and so many other things.They’re big unknowns, so I’d decided to stick by myself and the devil I know.That is until I received the following email from:imageI thought I recognized that name. Googling Brian Dean… Oh snap!Yep, it’s Brian Dean of Backlinko.com 😮imageMore googling… Interesting, he’s acquired things before. I don’t think he’s joking around.imageI’d just had my wedding 2 days before and we were off to Okinawa for 4 days, so my call with Brian had to wait. Best to play hard to get anyway. 😜Then 1 call, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 31 seconds later — we had a deal.And we literally shook hands over Skype video! 🤝As for the acquisition number… that’s why you’ve read this far, right?!It’s really difficult to put a price on something that’s not making any money yet. Well, actually it’s not. Most people would just say $0. And traffic was growing but spikey and low in an absolute sense.But at the same time, we were both massively excited by the potential and the concept is partially validated and de-risked given the initial traction obtained.We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.So I can’t retire yet, but it’s a HUGE win!The main thing is - now I don’t have to worry quite so much about paying rent every month and I can start to think more big picture in general.And perhaps even more importantly, it provides validation to myself (and my wife!) so that I can keep working on these “projects” of mine and not get a “real job” just yet.To be honest, I didn’t know if I was just crazy and wasting my time for 6 months.To my Japanese in-laws, I was the slightly strange, unemployed “freeter” at home on my computer all day.imageI have to say, writing during the process made a huge difference. It keeps you sane as a solo-founder and allows you to track your own progress at a high level.Also, being as open as possible and sharing metrics such as subscriber growth, traffic and revenue helped to attract support and keep me accountable when it was only me working on it.And overall, all of this helped to create a story around the product, without which people don’t have reason to care.What’s NextIt’s awesome to have Brian behind the project now. This is fantastic news for Exploding Topics. He’s a massive name in the SEO industry of course, but also a super-smart guy who really knows his stuff and enables us to take the project to the next level!He has a great instinct for direction, based on years of experience and success online. This includes his “head-ache detector” as he calls it, which can foresee potential problems way further in advance than I can.And we’ve also fast-forwarded to having Brian’s huge audience to put new features in front of and see what they think.I no longer need to slowly grow Trennd’s audience via a trend community/discussion platform over months and years, while also trying to wrestle with product-market fit.Instead, we can focus on building a better product. This means the core value of trend discovery and getting people hotter trends faster**.**To this end, we’ve been able to refocus on the backend. Now we monitor way more places on the internet as sources for interesting new topics and keywords across health, business, marketing, fashion and more.We’ve also decided to niche down. This is a vital step and something I’d been sweating and delaying for several months. But with Brian’s help, this is something we’ve been able to move forward on.The problem is there are so many different potential customers: indie makers like me looking for their next project idea, investors looking for a company stock pick, affiliates seeking the next hot product or people just seeking to feed their curiosity.But we’ve settled on professional bloggers**.**These guys are our new focus as they constantly need fresh content ideas across a range of categories to write about. And if they’re one of the first to write about an exploding topic then this makes a huge difference to their results.They also potentially make for good customers. (Even though we don’t have our premium version yet!) It’s still good to choose a nice market where people immediately ‘get’ the product and are willing to pay for it if it provides value.This market has proven itself before too, as Nathan Barry of ConvertKit said about going from $1k — $10k MRR:Niche down as small as possible. Going from a generic email marketing company to “email marketing for professional bloggers” was critical. (source)We’ve renamed it too. I know, I know… I’ve already rebranded from Trend List to Trennd, and now we’re doing it again? But hear me out.This product spreads by word of mouth very well.But try telling your friend to “check out trend, but with two n’s. Oh and it’s .co not .com”. Not good. 😅So we’ve gone with ExplodingTopics.comLovely. Easy to remember and easy to spell. Has a balanced look to it on paper too, but maybe that’s just me.And the word “topics” aligns better with our new target audience.Plus we now have a sweet new design. I feel it’s much more intuitive and way sexier in general. 🤩imageBefore it looked like a project, now it looks like a product.And here's the plug, the inevitable plug:And we’re finally launching on Product Hunt today. Both Brian and I will be active in the discussion all of today (3rd December 2019):That’s it! Glad you made it to the end, hope you enjoyed the story and thanks again to you guys at r/EntrepreneurUntil next time,😘Josh

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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junker-town · 6 years

Text

6 winners and 5 losers from the Odell Beckham Jr. trade

Congrats, Baker Mayfield. Take a bow, Jay Glazer. Free Saquon Barkley.

The Giants and Browns shocked the NFL world by agreeing to a trade of superstar receiver Odell Beckham Jr. The Browns sent back their 2019 first-round pick (No. 17 overall), one of their 2019 third-round picks, and safety Jabrill Peppers to the Giants.

Like any deal, there are parties involved that go beyond the individual pieces in the trade itself. Here are the winners and losers from the mega deal between the Giants and the Browns.

Winner: Baker Mayfield

Baker Mayfield has to be the biggest winner from this trade. The Browns quarterback was sensational as a rookie, throwing for 27 touchdowns to 14 interceptions in 14 games last season. He went from uneven first-year signal caller to legitimate offensive rookie of the year candidate after putting up massive numbers following Hue Jackson’s firing and Freddie Kitchens’ promotion to interim offensive coordinator.

Now, Kitchens is the club’s full-time head coach, and Mayfield gets one of the top receivers in the game to play with — and he already had Jarvis Landry, David Njoku, Antonio Callaway, Rashard Higgins, Duke Johnson, and Nick Chubb. There is a ton of playmaking talent and from the looks of it, they’ll have the right guy throwing him the ball.

Judging by his reaction to the trade, Mayfield is understandably pumped too:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Baker Mayfield (@bakermayfield) on Mar 12, 2019 at 5:08pm PDT

Winner: Odell Beckham Jr.

Beckham doesn’t have to play with an aging Eli Manning anymore. To remind you how bad it’s gotten, just watch this throw from their Monday night game against the 49ers last season.

This was atrocious pic.twitter.com/jirrDrjtSD

— dean (@DeanlsReal) March 12, 2019

Beckham finished his 2018 season with a perfect passer rating after completing both of his gadget play passes for touchdowns. Manning had a rebound season that stands as his statistical best since 2015 — and he still had only the league’s 21st-best passer rating. That was enough for Beckham to publicly (and tamely) call out his quarterback last October in an ESPN interview with Josina Anderson.

Manning just turned 38 years old. Unless he gets on the TB12 plan, this situation isn’t going to get much better for him.

Loser: Saquon Barkley

Poor Saquon Barkley. Now that Beckham is headed to Cleveland, Barkley becomes the clear-cut No. 1 weapon for the Giants’ offense. There won’t be any big-time receiving threat to scare defenses from loading up the box, unless Sterling Shepard has an extreme breakout season in 2019.

Barkley had 352 total touches on offense in his rookie season. He did turn that into 2,028 total yards, 15 touchdowns, and the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award, but that was when he has sharing the field with Beckham for 12 games.

Now Barkley will be dealing with a depleted passing game while becoming a bigger piece of the offense. There’s no reason to think why he wont approach 400 total touches next season.

In the words of the great Steve Smith: “Ice up, son.”

Winner: Jarvis Landry

Jarvis Landry and Beckham have been friends for years, dating back to before they took the field together at LSU from 2011-13.

In high school, Odell Beckham Jr. told Jarvis Landry: “I want to be on the same team as you, I want to do some legendary things.” Now they’re teammates on the Browns! ( : @God_Son80) pic.twitter.com/KCdvZgadW8

— SB Nation (@SBNation) March 13, 2019

Beckham and Landry are reunited again now in Cleveland, where they’ll hope to pick up where they left off from their time in Baton Rouge — a reunion Landry’s been publicly hoping for for nearly a year.

Come to the @Browns reunite me with my brother @OBJ_3 #13 #80 https://t.co/EW4oJEkqgF

— Jarvis Juice Landry (@God_Son80) March 26, 2018

The move also reunites the playmaking, do-it-all duo with wide receivers coach Adam Henry, who served in that role with LSU from 2012 to 2014 and has been the Browns’ positional coach since 2018.

This will be the best situation that Landry has played in since he joined the NFL. He has bonafide No. 1 receiving option across from him for the first time and saw the upside that Mayfield can bring during the back half of last season.

Loser: Eli Manning

The good news for Manning: He’s got the starting job with the Giants and $23.2 million coming in 2019.

The bad news:

Giants wide receivers: 1. Sterling Shepard 2. Corey Coleman 3. Quadree Henderson 4. Jawill Davis 5. Alonzo Russell 6. Brittan Golden

— Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL) March 13, 2019

The Giants are probably going to add some more weapons before the season starts. But it’s gonna be bad.

Loser: Whatever poor quarterback comes after Eli Manning

It’ll be interesting to see how the Giants handle having two first-round picks in the upcoming NFL Draft. Will they draft their future quarterback this year, or add two players that secure a foundation for a quarterback in the 2020 draft?

Either way, the Giants will have to add a successor at quarterback to eventually replace Manning. Playing with Beckham and Barkley would’ve made life easier for any young quarterback, but now Beckham is gone.

New York does have some pieces outside of Barkley in receiver Sterling Shepard, tight end Evan Engram, left guard Will Hernandez, and the recently acquired right guard Kevin Zeitler. But they don’t quite pack the same punch that Beckham did.

Winner: John Dorsey

In his time as general manager, John Dorsey has turned the Browns into a legitimate AFC contender. He’s ferociously attacking the window that Cleveland has with its rookie quarterback by trading for guys like Beckham and Olivier Vernon.

Now, the Browns arguably have the best roster in the AFC North and are poised to make a deep run into the playoffs. That’s not a bad turnaround for a team that was 0-16 in 2017 and 1-15 in 2016.

Browns safety Damarious Randall might’ve called it all along. A couple weeks ago, he tweeted:

John Dorsey lowkey a genius...

— Damarious Randall (@RandallTime) March 5, 2019

After the Beckham trade, he followed it up with:

John Dorsey is officially a genius...

— Damarious Randall (@RandallTime) March 13, 2019

Have to throw some love to Sashi Brown, too. He kind of set up the assets for all of this talent infusion to be possible.

Hats off to Dorsey. But Sashi deserves credit for originally acquiring assets Dorsey deployed to get OBJ, Denzel Ward, Nick Chubb and Demarious Randall. Also left him with Garrett, Ogunjobi, Njoku and Tretter https://t.co/MtYx6eNr6R

— Kevin Cole (@Cole_Kev) March 13, 2019

Loser: David Gettleman

When Gettleman was fired by the Panthers in July 2017, it was abrupt, surprising, and probably not undeserved. He’d already run Steve Smith, DeAngelo Williams, and Josh Norman out of town, and the Panthers fired him before he could screw up contract negotiations with Thomas Davis and Greg Olsen.

Sound familiar, Giants?

Just a couple months ago, he promised Beckham wasn’t going anywhere.

Gettleman: We didn’t sign Odell to trade him.

— New York Giants (@Giants) January 2, 2019

Before trading away Beckham, he shipped off Vernon to the Browns too. Meanwhile, New York is still going to be on the hook for a significant amount of both players’ paychecks.

As of now, Odell Beckham Jr. and Olivier Vernon are scheduled to count $32.5 million against the #Browns' salary cap in 2019, and $24 million against the #Giants' salary cap.

— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 13, 2019

On top of those two trades, the Giants allowed Landon Collins — their best defensive player — to walk in free agency.

And just like that, Gettleman scrubbed three of the best players from the roster for reasons that are hard to explain. Do the Giants actually have a plan? Because it sure doesn’t look like it.

If only the Giants had listened ...

I tried to tell u @Giants fans Dave was your problem but u laughed and called me bitter! Well welcome to the salt wagon jump on and let’s ride together lol

— DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 13, 2019

Mean while dg in Gotham right Now.. pic.twitter.com/ROYhW8QA5G

— *Joshua R. Norman (@J_No24) March 13, 2019

Winner: the goddang Browns

Here are the Cliffs Notes for Cleveland’s offseason so far:

traded for Olivier Vernon

signed Sheldon Richardson

signed Kareem Hunt, which in a vacuum is a good, soulless move they absolutely did not need to make.

traded for Odell Beckham Jr.

Sure, Jabrill Peppers might turn into something special and losing a first-round pick hurts, but the Browns are cashing in their assets for veteran contributors and now, on paper, look like a real threat to win the AFC North. Mayfield is surrounded by weapons. The pass rush is going to be powerful inside and out. Every other team in the division is having issues:

The New AFC North@Browns - Added Odell Beckham, Olivier Vernon, Kareem Hunt & Sheldon Richardson@Ravens - Lost C.J. Mosley, Za’Darius Smith, John Brown, Terrell Suggs & Eric Weddle@Steelers - Lost Antonio Brown & Le’Veon Bell@Bengals - Re-signed Bobby Hart & C.J Uzomah

— NFL Research (@NFLResearch) March 13, 2019

Ever since the beer fridges unlocked in Cleveland last fall, it’s better getting better and better to be a Browns fan.

Loser: Breshad Perriman

Breshad Perriman verbally agreed to a one-year, $4 million deal with the Browns on Tuesday before the Beckham trade broke. That didn’t last long:

After trade for Odell Beckham Jr., Browns’ GM John Dorsey and agent Drew Rosenhaus mutually agreed to not to follow through on verbal agreement with WR Breshad Perriman, per @mortreport and me. Perriman now will sign a one-year, $4 million deal with Tampa Bay, per source.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) March 13, 2019

Beckham’s presence blocked Perriman’s potential ascension to a starting role — though he only started two of his 10 games with the club. Rather than take on a supporting role, the fifth-year pro — who has career totals of 59 catches on 126 targets for 916 yards — will try to fulfill his potential with the Bucs.

He’ll get the chance to fill DeSean Jackson’s vacated role in Tampa, but will that really be better than seeing absolutely zero double teams as the Browns’ third wideout option behind Landry and Beckham? Perriman could have shined in limited snaps and put together the kind of season that makes Washington throw a four-year, $40 million contract his way. Instead he’ll take his chances with Jameis Winston.

Winner: Jay Glazer

A month ago, The Athletic’s Glazer made a self-described “bold prediction” when he told his readers that he thought Beckham would be traded this offseason. Then everyone lost their damn minds so much that Glazer tweeted this poetically profane message to his, as Shakespeare would scribe, haterz:

For all you fucksticks who spewed shit at me, my kid, my mom, my mom’s kid, my kid’s mom, my head size, body size, intelligence, my mom’s intelligence all because I made a prediction about your team today save your ridiculous fuckin insults for shit that matters in life.

— Jay Glazer (@JayGlazer) February 14, 2019

Who’s laughing now, fucksticks?

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topmixtrends · 7 years

Link

I WENT TO LUNCH with Ben Loory a couple years back, and afterward, we walked to a gelateria. While I wolfed down gelato, he sat across from me, not eating, and asked how he should end a story about an ostrich and a UFO. He gave me the premise and the outline of the story so far, and I puzzled along with him, but mostly nodded with my mouth full while I watched him chase down his own neuron fire like some kind of fabulist Good Will Hunting. About 15 minutes later, we were talking about something else entirely when he announced that he had it: “The aliens put their head in the sand.”

It all made sense when I read “The Ostrich and the Aliens” in his spectacular new collection, Tales of Falling and Flying. As with all of his stories, I felt that satisfying click, the visceral understanding that the pieces locked together, even if I wasn’t quite sure how.

I asked Ben over email about his stories, his process, and other Ben Loory things. Here’s a look at the inside of his weirdo genius brain.

STEPH CHA: You have this distinctive metered style that makes your stories instantly recognizable as Ben Loory stories. How did you develop this style? Are there unpublished proto-stories where it’s halfway there? How defined are the rules? Do you have like a personal style guide?

BEN LOORY: It’s weird, you know, no one has ever asked me about that. I think most people don’t even notice. (Which is good, because if people started calling me a poet, I’d probably never sell another book.) Anyway, yeah, that just emerged gradually. Going way back: When I first started writing stories, I was really just thinking of them as story ideas — as outlines or treatments; I was brainstorming, hoping to find a good one to write a screenplay out of. It was only after I’d written maybe 15 or 20 of them that I started to think, “Hey, these are actually really cool as they are, as these very short, simply told, action-packed little stories.” They didn’t have a lot of extraneous description, didn’t rely on metaphors or similes (or anything people usually remark upon as “good writing,” really), didn’t have much internality or background characterization — it was all just pure story, pure happening, beginning to end. And I started to ask myself, “Why don’t people write stories this way?” I mean, this is the way people tell each other stories, if we’re all just sitting around talking, at a bar or a party or a dinner or something. So I figured that was the assignment I was giving myself, and I set out to write a book of these stories.

But then — okay, getting to the point now — after I’d been writing those stories for about a year, I remember there was one night — and I wish I could remember which story it was — but there was this one night where I was writing a story, and it ended, accidentally, in a kind of rhythmic half- or slant-rhyming couplet. And at first I was like, “Oh jeez, gotta change that”; but then the more I looked at it, the more I liked it; I liked the way it brought the story together at the end with this kind of bang, the way the rhythm of the prose told you the end was coming, and then the semi-rhyme made it feel complete. So then I started ending all the stories that way — sometimes with a full rhyme, but usually with a near-rhyme or half or slant rhyme, and always trying to get the meter of those last sentences moving that way to build up to it. I don’t even know how to describe it, really — I think it might be ballad form? But I’m not an expert. And then, over time, that rhythm that began in the closing paragraphs began to spread backward through the stories, it just started to infect my prose in general, until finally I just found myself writing in that meter, even when I wasn’t planning to. I remember the night I noticed that — I remember sitting there, thinking: “Be careful! This is what happened to Dr. Seuss!” But then I was like, whatever, Dr. Seuss did okay, so I just embraced it and have pretty much written in that meter ever since.

So yes, to answer your question, there were early versions, at least of my early stories, that were written before that meter emerged, and yes, I had to go back and shift those stories around in order to fit the “guidebook” — but that guidebook isn’t written down; I don’t even really understand it. I just kinda know when it feels right and when it doesn’t. I like the way the meter adds this beat, this pulse to the story, that propels readers along — I think it’s kind of hypnotizing.

I know you read widely, in pretty much every genre. I wonder if you ever think, like, “One day, I’m gonna write a dystopian trilogy, or a 600-page realist novel set in New Jersey.” When you sit down to write, is it always short stories that come out?

Well, yeah — so far! I’ve always said, “Hey, if one day I sit down and a novel starts coming out, so be it, I just do what I find myself doing.” (That’s my rule.) That being said, I did actually have a novel idea not too long ago — it came to me in the night one night sometime about a year ago. I wasn’t writing, I was just lying there, staring at the ceiling, and it came to me, just sorta crept on in, and very quickly I saw the whole thing spooled out — it’s this Jonathan Franzen–type multiple-perspective decades-spanning realistic novel centered around a thrash metal band, starting in the mid-’80s. It even has a title (which is a really good title!) and I know how the whole thing goes, even the last line. (I’m leaving out all the cool stuff about it — don’t worry, it’s better than it sounds here.) So then I spent some time thinking, “Well, do I write that?” I figure it would probably take me about two years. And I did actually toy with the idea for a while, and even wrote the opening chapter, but in the end (at least, so far) I decided it wasn’t worth it. That two years would be two years I wouldn’t be writing stories, and I could probably write between 50 and 100 stories in that time! And those stories would be good — or at least, I hope they would be — and they would be my stories, which I kinda feel like only I write. So do I really want to preemptively flush those stories down the drain in favor of writing a novel that pretty much any writer could write? I mean really, it might be good, but it would just be another realistic novel about some people in a band … only really differentiated by the specific flavor of my prose. Which just doesn’t seem like enough to keep me going. I don’t know; I might do it someday. Mostly because I really love the title.

I feel like when a reader picks up a book by an author she likes, the expectation is that it’ll be the same, but also different. How do you think your writing has changed since you published Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day?

I don’t know. I don’t think it’s changed much; my hope is it’s just gotten better, more focused. This book does come out of a better time in my life, though; Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, I started writing when I was really at rock bottom; it was a scary and kind of terrifying time in my life, so the stories were pretty dark, pretty horror-based. The last few years have much better, so while there’s still a lot of (at least) existential horror in this book, I think a lot of it is more fable-y, fairy tale-y, maybe a little more fun? But I could be wrong. It’s hard to step outside and judge.

I noticed you wrote some stories in the first person this time. That’s new, isn’t it?

Yeah, first person was a bit of an experiment. I actually started doing that a long time ago — it was right after I’d finished (or at least, thought I’d finished) my first book … I’d been writing all these third-person stories where no one had names and they all took place in this kind of nebulous, cartoony otherworld. And when I finished that book, I got up the next morning and I was like, “Okay, what do I do now?” So I figured, well, I guess I’ll write some more stories. But when I sat down to do it, I suddenly felt like I was faking it, like I was just copying what I had done before. So I decided to switch it up and just do the opposite of everything. So I wrote a lot of stories (and I do mean a lot, probably around 200 [just first drafts, but still]) and they were all in first person and they were all about “real”-seeming people, characters with names who lived in the same “real”-seeming town. For a while, I was planning to put out a whole book of these stories, it was like Winesburg, Ohio, but in the Twilight Zone, was how I saw it. Anyway, that ended up not panning out, for a couple reasons (first off being that all the stories ended the same way, with the main characters either dying or leaving town, which got kind of ridiculous after a while). But I still kept writing the stories — I really liked a lot of them — and after a while I started going back and forth between those and the ones in third person. Now I just sort of indiscriminately move between them, whenever I start to get bored. It’s just become another arrow in the quiver.

I will say that first person was really hard for me at first. Coming from screenwriting, I tend to see stories from outside — as pictures, as people out there in front of me, walking around, doing things. First person is weird because now you’re in some character, and what are you doing there? You have this body, this mind, this whole past and language to deal with, and how do you stay in that and deal with the expansiveness of it all and not let the outside world just get completely washed away? In the end I think my first-person stories remain a little mysterious. The person at the center of them is always a little blocked out; it gives them an interesting feel, but they get a little claustrophobic if you read too many of them in a row. I was actually thinking of them recently when I was reading those new Rachel Cusk books. She does the same kind of thing, where there’s this big hole in the very center of the narrator, where you’re used to this grandly etched monument. It’s unsettling.

How do you start a story? Like the first story in this collection is about a dodo who hasn’t gone extinct with the others, and who wants to prove to himself and others that he is in fact a dodo. Where did that come from? I have about one good story idea every one to three years, which is why I write novels. Are you getting hit by new story ideas like every week?

I don’t actually have ideas, is the thing. People always laugh when I say that, but it’s true — I don’t even want ideas. In the past, I always sat around waiting for ideas, waiting for a “great story” to fall into my lap, fully formed, thinking then I’d go off and write it. And every now and then I would have what I thought of as an idea, but then I’d cling to it so tightly, so desperately, so carefully, that I would never actually do anything with it out of fear I might lose it or mess it up or something and never get another. So finally I decided to just let all that go, and now I don’t deal in ideas. Now I just deal in images and characters, I start simple and then just follow the characters and let the stories unfold.

So, for instance, in that story about the dodo, I started with just the “idea” of a dodo. It’s nothing fancy, a million people have done it. So whatever, a dodo comes to mind, so now I’m writing a story about a dodo. So I sat down and wrote that first part of the first line: “Once there was a dodo.” Then I looked at it and wondered what would happen next, and the first thing that came to mind was that he probably died, because they all died, and that made me laugh, so I wrote it down: “… and he died with the rest.” So then there I was, it seemed like the story was over? But how could it be over, it just began! So then I added: “But then he suddenly got back up again!” And then after that, the whole thing just flowed out, he’s running around proclaiming that he’s a dodo and no one believes him because the dodos are all dead and he’s trying to prove it but there’s no way to prove it — it all just follows inevitably. But that wasn’t the idea, it didn’t start with that — it just started with an image, a simple statement: once there was a dodo. That’s it.

I think a lot of people think about imagination as this kind of telephone that you pick up and then someone tells you what to do. But for me, it’s more like an openness, a determination, to just follow what you have right there on the page and respond naturally and honestly to what’s happening. It’s a matter of just trusting your instincts, all the time, and resolving to never turn away from them.

I know you work on some of these stories for years. When do you know that a story is done?

For me, there are two parts to a story being done. The first is the hard part, that’s getting the actual story right, which for me is mostly figuring out how it ends. Most of my stories tend to hinge on paradoxes or logical contradictions or impossible things like that, and so somehow managing to resolve those unmatchable threads in the end always throws me into a terrible brain pretzel. Usually what happens is eventually something gives and the emotional conflicts in the story come together and then the last line appears and at that point I usually burst into tears. Either tears, or I feel like a great big giant hole has opened up inside me and I’m falling down into it (those are the scarier stories, I guess). And it’s that moment, that point where the story suddenly surprises me with an unexpected emotional charge, that I’m looking for, and once I’ve found that, I know I’m at the end. It’s always an emotional thing — there it is.

After that, I leave the hard part and move on to the impossible part, which is getting all the words right, getting the whole thing flowing properly. That usually consists of me sitting in my house, reading the story out loud to myself over and over and over, making sure I don’t trip or cringe at any point, and then doing that again and again and again. And that work could go on forever and ever, because what seems perfect today is never perfect tomorrow. As a writer you grow and change and you’re always in different moods and different psychological/intellectual places and you’re always seeing the story from different vantage points in your life, so, whatever … long story short, you can never actually get a story perfect, I hate to say. So eventually, after straining for perfection for however long, eventually you just kinda get tired of moving the same couple of commas back and forth, or sticking a word in and taking it out, and at that point you just kinda say, okay fine, whatever. And then that’s the end of that.

This is a book of 40 stories in three parts — 13 each plus a bonus. I’m guessing this was deliberate, since your first book was organized the same way. How did you land on that structure? And how did you group/order the stories?

That structure just emerged during the editing of the first book. I’d started out with a manuscript of 101 stories, but Penguin asked if I could cut it down to 30 or 40 (they seemed to think a 500-page book of fables by a first time author was a bad idea). Of course I went with 40 because I didn’t know if I’d ever get a chance to put out a book again. My editor thought it might be helpful to divide it up into different sections, as a way of giving people guideposts, sort of rest stops along the way, so I just immediately split it into three, because I’m obsessed with three-act structure. That made 39 — three sections of 13 stories each (which I also found numerologically pleasing) — and that meant one story would be left over, to kind of hang out by itself at the end. That made good sense to me because that last story was the one from The New Yorker, which was longer than the rest of them and had been written in a slightly different style.

As for order, for the first book, I basically just put the stories in chronological order by when I started writing them. This was after months and months of trying (and failing) to make up a natural-seeming order for them. Chronological order worked out well, because there’s already a natural evolution to the stories; they start out kinda scary and about mostly unnamed people, and then slowly start to change, they get weirder and wilder and then animals start talking, and then all hell breaks loose. And at the end, in the last few stories, it contracts; the stories settle down into this strange, spooky, surrealist thing, and then it goes out on the explosion of “The TV.”

For the second book, I didn’t how to structure it, so I just went with 40 like before, and kept the three sections and that +1 at the end — I really like having that “+1” spot because it gives me a place to stick a story that’s a little different from the rest. In the case of Tales of Falling and Flying, it’s the story “Elmore Leonard,” which is longer and maybe a little more “real world” than the rest. I’ll probably do the third book the same way.

Did you write toward 40 or did you leave tons of stories on the cutting room floor? How did you decide what to put in and what to leave out?

Well, I did aim for 40, but it was more of a corralling and whittling down — I don’t leave anything on the cutting-room floor, exactly, it’s more like some stories just go back into the oven. I have hundreds of stories I’m working on at any given moment, and I’m always writing more and juggling them around and moving back and forth between them. So the ones that came together and really felt exciting to me come deadline-time, those were the ones that went into the book. The others will come together someday, for some book. I never give up on a story.

Do you have a favorite story in the collection?

No. They are all my favorites. But! There are some that I feel particularly attached to, usually because I worked on them for so long — they sorta feel like family members I lived with for years, trying to help them get on their feet. “Death and the Lady,” for instance, I think I worked on for 10 years (not a solid 10 years, but coming back to it again and again). “The Rock Eater” and “The Sword” and “Elmore Leonard” are in that group. And “The Woman, the Letter, the Mirror, and the Door.”

There are also those stories that still feel mysterious to me — the ones that I know feel done to me, but are still just slightly beyond my comprehension. Those I always love because I don’t really feel responsible for them; they feel like these gifts that sorta floated into my life and began to eat from my hand. So in this book, those are “The Fall,” “The Madman,” “Gorillas,” and to some extent “Picasso” and “The Ambulance Driver.”

And then, beyond that, there are the ones that just make me laugh, the ones that when I read them, I just feel like a little kid sorta discovering stories all over again, which is weird because they’re my stories, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. “The Porpoise” in this book is like that — I’m smiling now, just thinking about it — and also “The Cape” and “The Frog and the Bird.”

And fine, okay, “War and Peace” is my favorite.

You’ve done a lot of teaching since your first book. Has that taught you anything about writing? Any great advice you give to students that you don’t actually follow?

The main thing I’ve learned as a teacher is that what works for you as a writer is not necessarily what works for anyone else. You can’t just say, “Here’s the key, do this,” because the key to everyone’s personal creativity is different. So instead you have to come up with lots of different keys — even ones that you yourself don’t find even slightly useful — and just keep throwing them out there in the hopes that someone will catch one and it will work. Being a teacher requires a much more open mind; being a writer is just a matter of being true to yourself. They are related of course, because you’re dealing with the same field. But the skills involved are completely different.

As a writer, the main way being a teacher has changed me is that it’s made me a much better editor. I’ve gotten much quicker at zeroing in on story problems, whether in other people’s work or my own. Somewhere along the way, I developed a list of common questions — How does this character pay their bills? What does this character do when they’re not at work? Does this character have any friends? Do they like them? What are they afraid of? et cetera — that I find are usually pretty helpful for beginning writers. And hey, you know, they work for me too! You just get to know the territory a lot better.

Do you write for any particular kind of reader? What do you hope people get out of your writing? Like what’s the best kind of email you can get from a fan?

I don’t really think about readers when I’m writing (when the book is out, they suddenly become very real). I just figure that we’re all basically the same, so if it works for me, it’ll probably work for everyone. Sometimes I wonder if people will know some strange word, but in the end I just go with whatever feels right — that’s the only thing I can be sure of. I never know what people mean when they talk about writing for a particular audience; it just seems really condescending and bizarre — not to mention completely impossible. I have a hard enough time figuring out how the story goes, what the characters want, how the events are going to unfold — now somehow I’m supposed to change all that around to please some nebulous, generalized group of nonexistent people, based on how I think they’re going to react? Just seems like a cynical and doomed undertaking. If the readers like the story, then they become the audience — that’s about the best I can figure it.

As for what I hope people get out of my writing: basically, I’m just hoping for an experience! An emotional, experiential, hallucinatory one, and one they can’t turn away from. Ideally, I think a story should provide an experience that a reader’s never had — or even dreamed of! Both as a reader and a writer, I’m always hoping for a roller-coaster of the mind and the heart and the soul.

I’m always happiest when people just tell me they like the stories, or when they tell me they were moved by them, that they made them happy or sad, or made them laugh or cry. I’m always a little distrustful when people compliment the details; when they pick out a particular line or some specific image or moment. I feel like when you love something, when it really affects you, there isn’t a whole lot to be said. (Wow, thank you, that was great — that’s what I’d tell Tobias Wolff if I could.) Not that I won’t take any and all compliments! But it’s the emotional response I’m after.

What’s next for you?

Well, I’ll probably write some more stories. And one day maybe I’ll vanish into the night.

Steph Cha is the author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and Dead Soon Enough, all published by St. Martin’s Minotaur. She’s the noir editor for LARB and a regular contributor to the LA Times. She lives in her native city of Los Angeles with her husband and basset hounds.

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