#i just really like having the big rows of wheat and stuff

[boolger]

A lapdog at a farm - snippet - COD

CHAPTER ONE IS OUT <3 TUMBLR OR AO3

This is a snip of the first chapter for my upcoming wip fic 🫡 yes I have 20+ other projects, no I will not stop myself. This is not really checked for mistakes and stuff will probably change in the actual first chapter of the fic. But here u go, a snack for my sinners.

Word count: 2.5k-ish words

Hybrid!Reader x Price, reader x kinda poly141 later in fic, more to come

Small summary: This is an AU with Price becoming a farmer, hybrid dog!reader as a spoiled pet who doesn’t want to live this country life and hybrid working dogs!Gaz, Simon and Soap, who gets bought by Price. Chaos and smut ensues. Anyways, there won’t be this much in this snip.

Minors do not interact. I will block you if I can’t see any kind of indication of age on your blog.

Cw: There is the whole aspect of holding hybrids as pets, there is violence and punishments in this snippet, being hit with a belt. there is smut at the end (not much). Reader has a pussy, she/her. Reader is chubby but I tried my best to keep other descriptions vague.

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The countryside was peaceful compared to the city; the lack of the bustling streets and constant traffic, created a quietness that was hard to describe.

Out here, at the new farm, the noise came from animals that lived in the stables and barn, the occasional rumble as a tractor turned on. The wind tickled the never ending fields of wheat and the long rows of fruit trees, under which the goats and sheep walked most days.

Here the stress wasn't like in the city. Sure, there were stressful moments and sometimes Price looked like he needed to sleep for more than just the few hours he got everyday.

But he didn’t have to worry about the morning traffic, waiting in a queue for an overpriced, questionable tea or coffee. There was no need for him to wear a suit, no noisy, overfilled train cars in the underground. No crowded dog or hybrid parks, no meetings or rules to follow - except those John Price decided for himself.

He was happy, it was clear to you. It had been three months since the move - he had gone back to his roots, buying back the farm that his parents had used to own a little while ago, using some of his endless wealth on renovating the place. There was no step on the stairs that was loose, like it used to when he was a kid - sure they still creaked, but you weren’t afraid they would disappear from beneath you.

It was modernized, but most of the old charm left. Price fit right in; the furniture he had inherited and never believed he would use was suddenly in the living room. His knowledge of the business world was abandoned in the city, for the knowledge of farming that he still had left from his youth. John got a couple of farm hands and workers, who helped him with the big place.

It was like he reclaimed his own self that had been buried beneath ties and paperwork. Now he didn’t smoke his cigars from stress, but from pleasure, clearly much happier.

It was like the farm had made John Price happy once more; his smiles more genuine, his true self stepping forth. Returning to his childhood home and taking over the farm had been the best decision Price had made. There was no question about it.

… and you hated every bloody day at the farm.

The early morning hours being disturbed by the farm waking up, the rooster crowing and John leaving the bed, giving you a pat in between your ears. The constant bugs, the muddy stables and the big animals, the helpers who always teased you for not fitting in, the lack of friends you had out here.

You were not made for farm life. Literally. Simply not made for it.

Some would argue that you, as a hybrid pet, didn’t have a say in it and sure, legally you didn’t. But you were a lapdog, an elegant pet. Not a farm dog. Created to be cared for and cuddled, you were a purebred cocker spaniel hybrid; you weren’t made to run around on a farm, following John on his duties And doing work.

Sure, you had the instincts to hunt a few things here and there, but it was mostly balls and the occasional bird or squirrel. You weren’t a guard hybrid, not really a working dog.

You had had enough trauma throughout your life - you deserved not to be forced into this!

You wanted John to be happy, you really did - you loved your Master! When he bought you a few years ago, when you were still aggressive and unruly (… more than now at least), you had thought he would tire of you like everybody else had. But with patience, rules, training, praise and punishment and a whole lot of sex later, you were a perfect hybrid pet for the city! People always praised how well you looked, laughing when Price said you were really a little troublemaker. You would follow him throughout the fancy apartment, on your daily walks, sometimes for meetings.

But why the fuck did it have to be a farm? He worked around the same time that he did before, genuinely seeming to enjoy himself. Forgetting about poor you!

Out here, there were no hybrid daycare that you would go to when he had long days, there were none of your playmates nearby, everything stank of animals and there were no places nearby for you to get your hair and fur styled and pampered! No nail technicians, no fancy cafes, no shops for John to buy you things in! No special made coffee or chef-made meals every other evening, no freshly baked croissants.

You felt like you had tried. You really had.

But after the first week, you had your first breakdown - and as the weeks passed, they didn’t stop. At first, John was sympathetic, like the perfect owner he was.

Cooing at you, kissing your forehead, as he gently scratched your ears. Kissing away any tears, saying it was okay - that you were just overwhelmed, that it would be okay. That you would come to like it out here.

Big fucking joke.

He had tried every trick in the book, in an attempt to please you and made you less upset, but as days turned into weeks and tantrums began to appear, you knew his patience began to disappear.

He followed professional advice and then the advice of the neighbors down the street, Rodolfo and Alejandro (who had caught you running away at one point), tried some of the workers’ advice. He had given you your own room, and it was mostly designed like your own, perfect to the pale green paint on the wall, all your toys and dog beds, your CDs - everything. He had tried hauling you along every day, trying to give you a routine to follow - but after two weeks, he gave up, not having the energy to deal with a tantrum that got worse and worse each day. He went on walks with you, fucked you silly, tried his best — and you didn’t want it.

No, you wanted to go back to your old life. Not this country life that you hadn’t signed up for, with horses that neighed loudly whenever you passed them; they were definitely going to trample you at the first chance, you knew that. You could hear foxes scream in the night, warning you of the dangers. The goats and sheep were so fucking loud and no you didn’t want to go pick fresh apples off the trees - had he seen the size of the spiders crawling on them?

When you in one of your biggest tantrums took off and bolted from the farm in distress, Rodolfo and Alejandro had almost hit you when you emerged from the corn fields onto the road.

You had cried the entire drive home, no matter what the two men had tried saying, especially as Rodolfo called Price in advance — your master was livid. The worst thing was, that it was not that kind of anger where he yelled at you before punishing you - no, this one was almost silent, a sharp grip on your collar as he dragged you along after thanking Rudy and Ale.

He had belted you then, ignoring your crying and screaming, only stopping when you broke, sobbing and going quiet. He had explained it to you then, what could have happened, what dangers you could have ended in - and as you sobbingly apologized and tried to explain, that you wanted to go back to the city, John had sighed.

Said that he had pampered you too much since he got you, which had made you greedy and attention seeking. Which only made you cry more, as you hid your face in his neck, fingers digging into his shirt, ass cheeks burning.

“Spoiled rotten, little birdie,” he mused, though you could hear the softness in him, your tail wagging a little, hoping to get him to be less mad.

“‘M sorry,” you had whined, ears tipping down, “wanna be good but I don’t like it.”

Your rather dull escape attempt resulted in several things. An AirTag on your collar, so that he always knew where you were. A remarkable lack of treats, sex and then… the crate.

You fucking hated the crate.

Sure, it hadn’t been nice of you to bite one of his pillows into a simple pulp of fabric, feathers everywhere. Or create chaos in the kitchen… or get drunk on his fancy whiskey (that one had ended worse for you, hangover was a bitch and there wasn’t much sympathy from John). And yes, you might have ripped most of the flowers surrounding the house up, until one of the workers had caught you. Maybe pissing yourself in the middle of the living room while staring him in the eyes and ignoring his warnings had been a little…excessive.

But the dog crate? You hated that thing.

Hated it when he locked you up, ignoring your whimpers and whines, your promises to behave, ignoring your little howls as he left.

Mean. The farm had made him mean. Perhaps you had become a bit unruly too, but it was like he didn’t take your clear suffering seriously.

Mean and happy - unruly and suffering. What a pair you were. One of the workers, Laswell, who was a big helper and often stayed over for dinner, suggested a fucking shock collar. You had growled, only stopped when John sent you a sharp look.

You had even heard him talking over the phone with somebody, saying that he didn’t want to rehome you, but he didn’t know what to do.

That had made you melt a little and you had cried as you had crawled into his bed a couple of hours later, begging him to not abandon you.

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

It was a random morning a couple of days later, that you found him still in the kitchen, reading the newspaper, humming to himself while smoking a cigar.

He looked nice like this. Despite how he sometimes muttered about being too old, he wasn’t really that old. Late thirties, and perhaps it was the peace on his face or the sun rays that kissed him, which made him look younger. But still. There was a decade between you, but days like this, you were reminded that it didn’t matter.

“Are you going to stare all day or are you going to join me, Darling?” He asked teasingly, pulling you from your thoughts. You let out a little huff and kissed him good morning, receiving a pat on the ass before you sat down on your own seat. It had been a while since the two of you had eaten together - often he was up at the crack of dawn, so his calm behavior and gentle humming was unusual to say the least.

“Why are you not working?” You asked carefully, as you ate some of the bread, trying to ignore how it wasn’t a fancy sourdough one - though you were pretty sure he had picked it up from a local bakery in the village which was a little drive away.

“Because,” he put the paper down, then tapping some ash off the cigar into his ashtray, before looking over at you, a pleased smile on his face, “you and I are going on a trip.”

“A trip?” You didn’t even bother to be embarrassed about how your voice got higher with excitement or how your tail thumped against the backrest of the chair as you wagged it, “where are we going? When? Can we go now?”

Price had laughed, a happy sound that you knew not many got to hear; it made your heart beat a little faster, made you feel butterflies in your stomach.

“Well, we got to do a few things first to get ready, and you,” he used the cigar to point at you, your tail wagging a little faster, “need to not freak out when I tell you where we are going.”

Despite the warning, tears streamed down your cheeks when he told you. John didn’t get mad as a part of you had expected; he knew your abandonment issues first hand, knew how you had been left behind before, from one bad owner to another.

“You’re going to sell me and leave me with a mean owner and I’m gonna die of hunger and thirst - and - and —“

“Not gonna leave you, princess,” John crooned, covering your face in kisses as you hiccuped and sniffled, clinging to his clothes, “you know that. My favorite puppy. Pretty girl.”

Despite your tears and small sobs, your tail wagged at his words, “silly puppy,” he mused with a smile, gently scratching your lower back, “‘m not gonna sell you. Ale and Rodolfo are looking for a hybrid, I figured we could go look at the auction as well.”

“What if - what if - what if you’ll like them more?” You sniffled dramatically, sure that your life was only going to become worse than it already was. One thing was this bloody farm and the crate, another thing was having to share Price. You didn’t like the idea one bit. If that happened, you were going to show him how a proper tantrum was thrown - the crate would probably be the least of your worries.

As if to prove his love, John bent you over the table, fucking you in between the clattering dishes and cutlery, tea and coffee almost spilling over. Despite how many times your owner fucked you, it made you lose control of your mind every single time. His cock reached so deep inside you that it bordered on pain, your mouth open as you panted and moaned at each thrust; your soft stomach being pressed against the edge of the table, one hand holding onto the back of your collar, the other on your tail. The table rattled, John groaned and moaned, your fingers desperately trying to hold onto anything.

“My princess,” he snarled darkly into your ear, “you’ll always be mine-“ a moan, a grunt, “- no matter what happens, yeah?”

“Yes ye-ah- yes, sir, I’m yours - ah ah - I’m yours!” you managed in between pants and wails of pleasure, fear of abandonment forgotten in the ocean of euphoric satisfaction.

You came harder than you had for a while; the reminder of your worth, of how you deserved his worship, making you cream around his throbbing length, legs in spasms afterwards. He pushed deeper, filling you up with a loud roar like sound, his hands moving to grab onto the fat of your ass and hips as he came. Pain and pleasure made your toes curl and a content sigh left you, your tail wagging against Price as he chuckled.

[neproxrezi]

wait no fuck putting that in just tags im invested now. yknow that bit in the stanley parable where the narrator goes 'i think i know what makes a good game' and it's just constantly pressing a button to avoid getting a game over? that's what too many survival games / 'immersive' survival mods do when they implement a hunger bar

like dont get me wrong i really enjoy inventory admin and shit like building a farm in minecraft, but watching a meter slowly tick down and going 'okay its now time to press a button so i don't die' isn't fun gameplay to me it just adds a level of clockwatching, anxiety and irritation i could have done without

[trans-p03g]

👉👈 would you mind sharing some Folklore AU lore? It looks really cool and interesting :D

I'm real tired so I'm gonna just copy-paste my discord messages, I've been meaning to post this for a while so might as well fkfnfnf

It's gonna be LONG because I've got to explain the species before I even get to the story

Also thank you!

TW for mentions of death and cannibalism

The story takes place in Leshy's forest, which is based off of Notecka Forest. A mostly dry forest placed on big dunes, made up mostly of pines and some birches, with the rivers Noteć and Warta running through it and some ribbon lakes here and there.

Leshy

He's a leszy (leshy) (also known as borowy, boruta, borowiec, gajowy, leśnik, leśny dziad, dziad borowy and wilczy pasterz (shepherd of wolves) (these are all mostly combinations of words for forest, forest rangers and old men), obviously. The rulers and protector of their forests, they're a neutral spirits that generally don't care much for humans unless provoked. Leshys take forms of huge men whose size depends on how tall and helthy the trees in their forests are. They are shapeshifters, notably taking forms of brown bears, eagle owls and wolves. They could mimick the sounds of animals and wind. As mentioned they were the protectors of the forest and if they didn't like you, they could make you get lost in the forest and lead you towards predators. Similarly, they could be appeased with a gift, usually of some produce like wheat. People would traditionally leave them gifts to assure a safe travel through their forests. Hunters and lumberjacks also gave them gifts to, you know, not be killed for tampering with the leszy's forest.

In modern times they're also depicted as forst rangers with a riffle or a bat strapped to their backs.

In this AU specifically (aka stuff I made up); Leshy's species don't have names, which is why he's just referred to as Leshy. His apperence depends on the seasons. He also blooms when he's happy/in love, the flowers that sprout on him are corn poppies which are the national flower of Poland.

Leshy is a pretty lenient dude, letting many different spirits live in his forest even when they cause trouble or don't respect him much (cough cough P03 cough cough). Even if he's not as respected as he should be, he's pretty much THE guy people come to with problems and who has the final say in decision coz. you know. his forest.

P03

They're a strzyg, also known as strzyga or strzygoń (depending on the gender) (striga in english). They're evil spirits commonly refered to as polish vampires, though the only thing they share is their blood sucking ways (and I mean, we already have a proper vampire).

Strigas are born as normal human - well, almost. They're children born with two hearts, two rows of fully developed teeth and two souls. Other traits they had was hairless pits and unibrows (kinda a weird detail but okay).

They're pretty much normal humans during their first life but after they die, one soul passes on while the other stays in the body and reanimates it. At first they're just humans with more pale blue-ish skin, but with time they become more monstrous and owl-like.

They can shapeshift into owl, which is how they find their victims. They feed on humans, first drinking all of their blood then devouring their insides.

They very often targeted the people that have wronged them in their first life. Which makes the fact that strigas were often ostracised, drove away from villages or even killed seem like a very dumb idea. Even if none of these things happened, strigas would often die very young and rarely lived past their 20s. Just a fate thing, I think?

There are many ways to kill a striga, either doing these when they first died or finding their body during the day and burying it in one of the following ways: burying it face down in the ground, cutting its head off and placing it between their legs and facing down, burying them with lots of small things like rice, grain or pennies as for whatever reason strigas have a compulsory need to count them (which is also a good way to get away from them, just spill some rice and run for it, they'll have to stop and count it), burying them with stakes put through their mouth and each limb, putting a flint in their mouth, burning, slapping them with your left hand, burying them under a big rock, putting a card in their mouth with 'jesus' written on it, and finally, ringing the church bell which made them turn to wheat. (Not all of these methods are canon to the AU and are just hearsay)

Things I added to this: P03 is constantly hungry and cold, but can eat animals to deal with his hunger between his usual meals. They need to be buried in a very specific way to die, just dealing normal damage won't work, which is why they were able to survive beheading and losing 3 limbs.

P03 was a medieval serf peasant, meaning he was bound to the land he worked on, lived on it, didn't get paid and could only be married off to another peasant with the land owner's permission. Just very close to being a slave but not completely as they couldn't be traded or sold.

One autumn, they were hit with early frost which killed most of their wheat. P03 knew he was probably not going to survive the winter anyway, plus being fed up with this life, he grabbed some wheat and headed to the nearest forest, asking the resident leshy to help him...disappear. But was continuously turned down.

It was basically just "Do you need safe passage through my forest?" "Nah but you could make me get lost and let the wolves eat me" "What the fuck, no?????"

Anyway so P03 was right, he died just a few weeks later. Or, well, got horribly sick and was buried alive as people often were back then. They dug themselves out and wandered for a while, eventually ending up in Leshy's forest where he collapsed from exhaustion and eventually froze to death during the night.

Leshy found them the next day and brought them to Grimora. He reluctantly let them stay and the two ended up working out a system; if anybody caused trouble Leshy would lead them to P03 and they'd take it from there.

Also the two have a cute romance that ends in marriage and then divorce because the two of them being canonly divorced in Polish Folklore AU is somehow SO funny to me

Nowadays they have a very bad relationship. Also instead of dressing up like a normal fucking person P03 just threw some modern clothes over their medieval ones.

Grimora

She's a baba jaga (baba yaga). They're mostly seen as evil, but can be neutral or even helpful spirits. Old ladies that lived deep in the woods in their huts with chicken feet and flew on mortars. They're usually blind or have very bad eyesight due to their age, with one skeleton foot. They age a year for each question they're asked, which is why they're not usually helpful. They can deage themselves through different means, in some stories by consuming blue roses and in some by consuming little kids (fun diet).

They can help people too, sometimes playing maternal role or a teacher to young women. Often assiociated with animals like owls, black cats or ravens.

(As a funfact; some experts believe baba yaga was once a goddess of death or a similar being in slavic mythology, warped over time by christian influence into an evil baby eating grandma)

So obviously, Grimora is the kind sort of baba jaga. She has a good relationship with Leshy and often invites him over for some tea. She also wanted to straight up kill P03 when they first showed up in the forest because she was worried a striga would cause problems, fun!

She's actually pretty young for a baba jaga, only older than P03 by like 100-300 years.

Magnificus

He's boruta/błotnik (devil boruta/mud). There are a lot of water spirits that often get confused with one another and this one is no different, błotnik shares a lot of similarities with other water spirits like wodnik. Technically boruta and błotnik are different things but błotnik has so little info on them that I am combining the fuckers.

Błotniki are male swamp dwelling spirits, described as having long green beards and hair, their bodies covered in algae, dirt and fish scales. They're rarely found in folklore and are often seen as a swamp dwelling wodnik/vodyanoy, leshy or chort. They had hobbies similar to any other polish water spirit, aka sit at the bottom of a body of water and drown any poor fucker that came a bit too close.

Boruta, specifically tlking about Boruta błotnik, was a rich man turned demon that dwelled in the basements of castles, pushing people to do evil deeds. Baruta błotnik took a form of a giant bird often seen in swamps and similar habitats.

In this AU, Magnificus was once a noble man, though nobody knows how he turned into what he is today and he refuses to tell. He's pretty territorial and grumpy, only really tolerates Pike, Goobert and Lonely Wizard on his turf. Has an alright relationship with Leshy and Grimora, there's mutual respect there even if he's a bit of a dick. He often shittalks Leshy with P03 though, that is if he's not trying to drown the striga for fun or turning them into a target practice for any of his 3 pupils.

okay, I don't have all the species picked out for the other characters but here's the idea, with some notable exceptions like Lonely Wizard and Angler:

grimora's ghouls - household spirits

p03's workers - air spirits

leshy's subordinates - forest spirits

mags' pupils - water spirits

okay, rapid round for the things i do managed to figure out the species for:

Pike - rusalka, a female water spirit who hates mankind and loves to fuck with them (and drown them)

Goobert - either topielec or poronnik, the first one is a male water spirit who likes to drown people and the second one is a spirit of a drowned infant or aborted fetus that loves to, you guessed it, drown people

Lonely Wizard - bobo/bobok/babok/bebok, a tiny fucking...freak with long limbs that chased and scared children, could be appeaced with food

Prospector's hound - bies, a beast symbolising chaos and nature

angler - wodnik/vodyanoy, naked old men resembling frogs that loved to drown people

Okay so for the story

Kaycee was Luke's friend, she loved to travel and research folklore creatures and she'd often ramble about it to Luke. She kept a notebook of her research and doodles.

Though one time the curiosity finally got her killed, as she found herself locked in a small, old and ruined basement with a basilisk. She knew better than to look into its eyes, but that's not much help when the beast also has sharp talons and a beak. At the end as she was cornered she willingly looked into its eyes, figuring being turned into stone was a better fate than being mauled and ripped to pieces by an overgrown rabid chicken.

Luke didn't take the news well. He got her notebook from Kaycee's mum. He was considering continuing her life's work to honour her.

As first steps forward it and to maybe consider where to go from there and clear his head, he decided to take a few weeks long camping trip to a forest. Preferably as far away from home as possible, he just needed to get out of there.

He eventually ended up choosing one national park and, knowing a bit from Kaycee, decided to humour her beliefs and leave a gift for a leshy living there. He chose a small, pretty rock that he placed on a stone at the edge of the forest and briefly addressed the leshy.

Leshy, being kind of sad that the tradition of leaving him gifts died down over time, was ecstatic over the rock and decided it was his job to protect that human now.

Cue Luke having a life crisis in the woods while Leshy is curbstomping P03 and Magnificus in the background to keep them from killing him.

some small funfacts:

-p03 fucking hates nobility so he and mags don't get along

-leshy was the one who taught p03 how to fly

-leshy also used to take care of him, like bring him snacks or making sure he was warm and comfortable in winter

-though they no longer get along, leshy got p03 prosthetic legs made of wood he himself grew so they could move more easily as a human

-grimora and leshy carry around small bags of rice just in case p03 decides to be annoying

-p03 likes to piss grimora off by asking very stupid or unecessary questions, but he usually gets cut off in the middle by grim just holding up the rice sack as a threat

-kayce was in this forest before and made friends with leshy, he later on makes friends with luke and recognises the notebook he has and the handwriting in it

-luke is stupidly lucky and keeps getting away with shit he shouldn't. like avoiding being eaten by p03 by shooting a random question out of nowhere, which just happened to be divorce/love life related, and he just got so stupidly lucky about the fact that p03 and leshy were divorced

-aside from leshy, p03 was the one who mostly prevented mags and other characters from killing luke, just so he could be the one to kill and eat him

unfortunately for p03, his own form is a perfect grabbing size for leshy and very, very throwable

fill in the blanks

more funfacts

-leshy is protective of every inhabitant of his forest, even p03 and magnificus. he and p03 might have a long and complicated history but if somebody wants to hurt p03 they have to go through leshy first

-magnificus is the embodiment of "GET OFF MY FUCKING LAWN" but in evil water spirit that drowns people way

-mags has a one-sided rivalry with angler, he's angry at the guy for being in his river/lakes, meantime angler just couldn't care less

[thelivebookproject]

Talking Books With @resident-book-nerd!

[What is this and how can I participate?]

Important note: I haven’t changed or edited any of the answers. I’ve only formatted the book titles so they were clearer, but nothing else. Because I’m incapable of shutting up, my comments are between brackets and in italics, so you can distinguish them clearly.

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

[Image description: a square titled “Know the blogger”. Name & pronouns: Kayla, she/her; country: United States; three adjectives to describe her: goofy, loyal & hardworking /end]

1. What do you eat/drink when you read?

That’s a great question with multiple answers!! ☺️ It definitely depends on what I’m reading, for sure. I’m currently getting my Bachelor’s in History and Creative Writing, which involves a lot of academic-type reading, so when I do reading like that I love to eat anything sugary like MnM’s, mini Oreos, sour patch kids, Fruit Snacks or hot chocolate! When I’m reading fun books I still love to drink hot chocolate, but if I’m not drinking that I’ll probably eat Combos, goldfish, Cheez-its, Saltines, or Wheat Thins! 😆 Oh, and sweet iced tea is a must, always 😂

[This is definitely detailed! I personally eat nothing (I either eat or I read, not both at the same time), and sometimes I drink water but not really often. I like to read and do nothing else, I’m single-minded like that hahaha]

2. Last book series you read obsessively? 

The last book series I read obsessively is actually the series I’m reading right now! It’s a duology by Evelyn Skye- The Crown’s Game and The Crown’s Fate. They’ve been sitting in my TBR for a while and I thought I’d give The Crown’s Game a shot a couple weeks ago, not really anticipating that I would like it as much as I did, but it was stunning! I just got my hands on the second one and I am absolutely loving it ☺️ The series has Russian history and magic and romance and well thought out plot lines that actually made me gasp out loud!! It’s a combination of all these things I love to read and learn about at once and it’s great 😆

[*notes down series* This interview project of mine is being really bad for my TBR... So many recs, so many books I’ve never heard about!]

3. Do you impulse-buy or do you plan everything ahead?

I definitely impulse buy/impulse check out from the library! What I want to read really depends on my mood, so if I plan everything out then odds are I likely won’t want to read what I’ve planned for myself/bought for myself 😂 However, when I do impulse buy or check out books, they’ll sit around for months or years until I get to them eventually or until they’re due 😂

4. Who is your go-to person for recommendations?

I actually don’t really have a go-to person for book recommendations! I usually just poke around on goodreads (I’m always looking for more people to friend/follow on goodreads!) and tumblr. I will ask either my local librarian or my supervisor at the library I work at in college if I really am stumped though!

5. How do you diversify your readings?

I try to diversify what I read in a lot of different ways! In terms of genre, I stay in my lane so to speak because I know what I like and don’t like (aka I don’t really read paranormal, thriller-y, dystopian type of books), but I love the classics, YA books, contemporary stuff, or any type of fantasy or history/historical fiction book, so when I’m choosing a book to read I try not to read too many of the same genre in a row at once. (For instance I’m reading a historical fantasy book right now and listening to a YA contemporary book, and the book I read before these was another contemporary type YA book, so yes technically I’m reading two YA contemporaries in a row but I’m also reading the fantasy book so I can switch it up when I want to ☺️) 

In terms of reading diverse books, I love reading as many LGBTQ+ books I can get my hands on because I love reading about love (Lordy, I really am mushy don’t tell anyone haha)!! I’m also really big of reading female authors and, of course, I love reading books with characters of all different ethnicities/cultures/races! I also love reading books that take place in all sorts of different places/time periods ☺️ I can’t really follow reading challenges or things like that very well (because I have a weird thing that prevents me from reading a book if I’m under pressure/if I feel like it’s assigned reading or something like that I’m just weird haha), so I just read whatever I’m feeling like at the given moment!

Free space!

Like I said before, I love seeing what everyone else is reading so don’t be a stranger on goodreads or tumblr! Message me, send me an ask, come talk to me about anything!! Seriously, books, TV, movies, literary theories, any sort of historical topic, how your day was, things you think I should read or watch, anything! I always love talking to new people and making new friends 😆 I love the booklr community so much and I’m excited that I’m finally getting more involved! ☺️

You can follow her at @resident-book-nerd and on her Goodreads.

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Thank you, Kayla! This was really fun.

Next interview: Saturday, 20th of February

[alarawriting]

52 Project #29: The Last Boy (Inktober #11: Disgusting)

This is fanfic-adjacent; it’s an unauthorized sequel to Alice Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree Jr)’s story “The Screwfly Solution”. It is... less dark than that story, but if you’re familiar with it, that’s not saying much. (If you aren’t familiar, don’t worry, this story explains the backstory necessary.)

This is a horror story... or at the least, dark science fiction. (Nothing supernatural in this one.) I am not tagging any of the triggers inside because spoilers, which are destructive to a horror story, but I will include them at the end, which is below the cut. If you rapidly scroll through the story you can reach the trigger list without actually reading any of the story.

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Roy is very excited, running, practically skipping, ahead on the trail. “Uncle Matt! This is great! I can see the woods up ahead already!”

Matt forces a smile, because he’s very much afraid of how this expedition might end, but he has to try. He has to have hope. “Sure is. Ready to go hunting?”

“You bet!” Roy turns around and flashes Matt a big, heartwarming smile. His face is pocked with acne and he’s late to have lost his last baby tooth; it’s a gap on the upper left side of his face. He looks so young, so boyish. Which he is; he’s thirteen. Thirteen is still a kid. Matt’s sixty; thirteen’s practically a baby to him. They grow up so damn fast. “You think we’ll bag a deer?”

“We might. Or we might bag a goose. Or we might come home empty-handed. The point to hunting is to be quiet and patient, and let nature bring to you whatever it will.”

They hike up to the tree line. This is one of very, very few forest areas that’s still being tended and managed by people. The rocky hiking trail up to the tree line’s been kept clear of scrub; there are bushes and tall grasses on either side of the trail, but nothing on the wide stretch of packed dirt.

From here Matt can look down the side of the mountain, to the acres planted with corn and wheat, the women working in the rows, a couple of men stationed to sit by the road with their guns, watchful for whoever might come by. He knows them both. Good boys. He took Evan out on a hunting trip like this one, ten years ago, and they came home with a deer and a couple of rabbits. Jase was called Lisa back then, and didn’t need to go on a hunting trip like this. The tradition of the hunting trip when you’re thirteen isn’t for the girls, or the gay boys, or the trans kids. Most of them resent that, until they get to be old enough to understand why.

“This is the best,” Roy says. “Just me and you, Uncle Matt. How long has it been since we got to just spend time together, just two men?”

“I think you were 10. We went out to the river and went fishing, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. I didn’t catch anything,” Roy laughs. “You got a couple of fish, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Matt says, smiling as he remembers. “Had to throw ‘em back, though. They were too small.”

“Why don’t we do stuff like that more often, Uncle Matt? Just hang out, without all these stupid girls around?”

Matt sighs. “You have school and I’ve got work; crops don’t grow themselves and we don’t get security by going on vacation.”

“Yeah, but why do we have to even live here? Why don’t we go live somewhere where there’s just men?”

“That’s a little hard to find. There’s not a lot of men around,” Matt points out.

“Because the stupid girls wouldn’t go to them and have their kids,” Roy mutters.

That is a disturbingly misleading viewpoint on what happened, but Matt tries to let it go, for the moment. “Hey. We need to keep quiet now,” he says softly. “If there’s any deer, we don’t want to scare them.”

Roy nods, and the two of them walk quietly into the forest.

***

Roy was such a sweet little boy.

Matt remembers him bringing the pictures he drew to Matt and to his mother – who Matt, despite being called uncle, is not actually related to; Matt is uncle to all the boys he takes under his wing – and being so enthusiastic about showing it to them. He remembers one of the pictures, of himself and Roy holding hands. Another, of Roy holding hands with his mom. Roy hasn’t had anything positive to say to his mother in weeks; he’s been disobeying her, insulting her, calling her stupid and saying he doesn’t have to listen to her because she’s just a woman.

It’s biological. Roy wasn’t raised to even have the concept of men somehow being better than women at anything or for any reason. Most of the boys develop the attitude around puberty, the result of a disease that infected the entire world over a century ago. Many of them get over it. Many don’t. Matt never suffered it at all; it’s linked to heterosexual desire, and Matt knew he was gay ever since he was nine.

He remembers Roy running around with a toy airplane, declaring that when he was grown up he would help restore humanity’s control of the skies, working to bring back the airplanes. He remembers Roy making him lemonade when he was six, cooking him an egg when he was ten. Roy making a card for his mother’s birthday with a big heart on it. Roy asking him what stars were made of.

It’s going to be all right, he tells himself. Evan was a little ass to his mom and his sisters, and it all worked out for him. Lebron actually punched his mom when he was fourteen, and he came through it. Roy’s going to be fine.

All the boys mean so much to him, but Roy is special… maybe because he’s the most recent one. Matt hasn’t been working with the little boys so much, lately. There’s enough men in the settlement now that the younger men, with more energy, are taking up more of that role. When Matt himself was a child, there were almost no men – Uncle Harry was the only cis man he’d known. Of the boys he grew up with, only Andrew, Tyrone and Jose were still there by the time he was an adult, plus Deandre who was trans and joined them in their late teens. He’d dated all of them except Deandre, who was straight. Ended up eventually with Cole, three years younger than him. Cole had a heart attack six years ago, and after that Matt couldn’t bear to open himself up to any of the new little boys, not without the emotional support of an adult man to share his life with. Roy has been the last one to call him Uncle.

“Uncle!” Roy hisses. “Is that a deer? Over there?”

Matt looks where Roy is pointing. “It could be,” he whispers back. “Let’s see.”

They walk closer, carefully, trying to be quiet. But Roy steps on a branch he doesn’t see. It snaps, and the vague outline that might be a deer startles and runs, proving that yes, it is a deer. Roy pulls out his gun and fires, but misses, predictably.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” Roy swears.

“What have we said about language?” Matt asks mildly.

“Come on, Uncle Matt. I’m not a baby anymore,” Roy protests. “Besides, I said ‘shit’ when I stubbed my toe on a rock on the way up here.”

“Yes, but ‘shit’ is disgusting and everyone makes it. ‘Bitch’ is an insult specifically for women, and calling something a ‘son of a bitch’ when you want to swear at it is basically saying that it’s the fault of mothers if their sons are terrible.”

“Well, who else’s fault would it be? Stupid b – stupid women don’t know anything, but they act like they know everything.”

“I think that’s a little bit of an overgeneralization. I know you’re not getting along with your mother lately—”

“She just makes me so mad. She’s always telling me what to do! Like she knows everything!”

“She is your mother,” Matt says mildly. “And she’s twenty-five years older than you. That does tend to make people know more than you.”

“Yeah, but not her. She really doesn’t know anything. Sometimes I just wanna punch her.”

“That happens to a lot of boys at puberty, but they get over it. By the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll be amazed at how smart your mother has suddenly become.” He smiles at Roy.

Roy glowers. “I don’t think so. Girls are just disgusting. I just want to hang out with men, like you. You’re not a dumbass, Uncle Matt. All the girls are dumbasses, but the guys aren’t.”

“That’s the hormones talking. You’ll get over it.” Matt points at the ground. “Do you see that?”

“No, what?”

“Tracks. For the deer.” Matt crouches down and points them out to Roy. “We can see what direction it went in, now.”

“Oh, yeah! I can see it now!” Roy starts to run, but Matt holds him back by the shoulder.

“Roy. Slow. Patient. Quiet. The deer can run faster than you or me, but it burns more energy doing that. If we walk, we catch up with it, because it’s got to rest. But if it hears us, it’ll run again. So we walk, and we’re quiet.”

“Right. I get it, Uncle Matt.” Roy is much more quiet and careful about where he puts his feet after that.

***

When Roy was eight, Matt walked the fields with him and showed him how to sow corn. They went to the vegetable plots and planted carrots and lima beans. Roy was so proud the day they harvested his carrots, and he got to eat one. Matt took him fishing the first time, that same year.

The little boys are always so sweet, so bright, so full of promise. It hurts so much when they don’t fulfill it.

Please, God, let Roy be all right. Let him get past this. Of course he would. Matt has been training him, teaching him since he was small (but there were others, other boys Matt had loved like his own sons, who he’d trained and taught, and they weren’t around here anymore).

He should have been around more often in the last three years. Roy was heading for puberty and that scared Matt. Still does. He visits the boy often, but Roy is right – they haven’t done anything together, just the two of them, in a long time.

“You ever spend any time with any of the young men? Jase, or Evan, or Fred?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I hang out more with the guys closer to my age. You know any of them? Steve, Paolo, Rafael?”

“Sure, yeah, I know them.”

“Paolo has a dad,” Roy says enviously. “When I grow up I want to be a dad.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because humanity needs more men to be dads,” Matt says. “You can go live where they’re using your donation, if you really want to be a dad, and help to raise the kid you helped make, or you can stay here and help raise the boys as an uncle, and maybe go out and visit the places where they used your donations.”

“How come I can’t stay here and raise a boy here?”

“Genetic variation. If we let human men have sons with their sisters, we get inbreeding. All kinds of diseases. Sending your donations to the other compounds makes us strong and healthy as a species.”

“Did you ever donate, Uncle Matt?”

“Back in my day, if your balls worked you had to donate. We didn’t have enough men. You know old Gran Stacie, she had to donate too. She couldn’t take the hormones to look feminine until there was a safe compound for women to live in and plenty of donations so the human race could keep going.”

“She’s okay, I guess. But the other girls are really stupid and gross.”

Matt stops Roy there. “Hey. You keep saying that. It’s like you’ve forgotten everything we taught you about our history.”

“I remember history,” Roy protests.

“So tell me. Why do we live this way? Why do women live in secure compounds with only a few men? A hundred years ago the world was very different. Tell me how it was, and what changed.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. You do.” Matt sits on the ground, and gestures for Roy to sit across from him. “Come on. Tell Uncle Matt all about it.”

Roy rolls his eyes. “A hundred years ago men and women lived together but then there was a disease and it made the men sick and the sickness made them want to hurt women so they couldn’t live with women anymore, the end,” he says in a rapid sing-song.

“No. That shit doesn’t fly with me, kid, and you know it doesn’t. Tell it to me right.”

Roy sighs. “Okay, okay. So. Back then, women and men lived together all the time and every kid had a dad, and the men still took care of the women but there weren’t a lot of men trying to kill them, just one or two weird ones.”

Matt, being an adult, is aware of how far this is skewed off the truth of what life was like a century ago, but the boys are being raised with no awareness of historical misogyny. Nothing to give the disease any historical justification it can hook onto. They learn more details when they’re proven to be safe. “So far so good.”

“So back then, there was this thing we used to do to kill flies where we made the male flies wanna kill the female flies instead of mate with them.” This is also a distortion of the facts, but Matt lets it go as well. “Then suddenly, men were trying to kill women instead of having sex with them. But it was just the straight men who were affected and they had to have balls. Women weren’t affected even if they had balls, and gay men weren’t affected, and men who didn’t have balls weren’t affected, and men who didn’t want sex even though they had balls weren’t affected, but all the men who had balls and wanted to have sex with women wanted to kill the women. And a lot of the time, little girls or old women that no one wanted to have sex with, because they thought in their heads it was God telling them to kill women or something. They didn’t know the truth.”

“And what was the truth?”

“That it was aliens. They spread the virus around on Earth because they wanted humans to die, just like the flies, so they could take the Earth for themselves. But humans are more complicated than flies. So there were men who were affected too much, who killed little boys because little boys look like little girls, and there were men who weren’t affected as much, who’d killed their wives but they were trying to protect their little girls. And there were men who didn’t have sex with women even if they wanted to because they were trying to honor God or something, and those men could resist wanting to kill, because the wanting to kill thing was related to wanting sex. If they could resist one, sometimes they could resist the other. Plus, all the asexual men and the gay men and the trans men and other kinds of men without balls like castrated men, plus the trans women, who could fake being men so they could stay alive. And there were also a lot of women with guns, too.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, most of the women got killed, and the men who were doing the killing, they didn’t have any kids. But the women who survived, they went into compounds where all the women had guns and they would kill strange men who came near them. And a lot of the kinds of men who didn’t want to kill women would help women get to those compounds. They called them ‘allies.’ You’d have been one if you were alive in those days, Uncle Matt.” This is said proudly. Roy doesn’t realize how much Matt is still called on to be an ally, even today.

“I would have, yes. So how did we get where we are today?”

“A lot of the places were run by women who hated men even before they started killing women, called rads, and the rads were okay with women getting donations from ally men, but if they had boy babies they wanted to send the babies to live with the men or else throw them outside and kill them. And the moms didn’t want to do that and they thought it was stupid. So they made their own compounds and they let ally men live there. And if boys grew up and they didn’t want to kill women, then they were allowed to give donations and be dads. But if they did, then they couldn’t be dads and they couldn’t live there anymore.”

So much heartbreak, so much agony, skimmed over so neatly and briefly. Mothers pleading with their baby boys, grown to young men, not to do this, before the boy killed the mother… or the mother killed the boy, in self-defense. Entire compounds of women lost because some mother couldn’t bear to kill her son, so she locked him away instead… and he got out. Boys with the compulsion to kill sent to live with the femicidal men, only to be killed themselves, because there were no boys among the men anymore and the young boys were more feminine than anything the killer men had seen in years, by then. Or castrated, so that they would theoretically be safe to stay, except humans were complex and some of them retained the femicidal compulsion even in the absence of testicles, and the horror of boys everyone thought were safe suddenly murdering their sisters. Gay boys in love, their hearts shattered when their love interest proved to have enough interest in women that he became a killer.

They’re more careful now. Things like that don’t happen anymore.

“And the killer men thought that the aliens were like messengers from God or something, but the women and the ally men killed a lot of aliens. And when lots of aliens were dead, they realized that their plan to get Earth for themselves by making the humans die out from killing all the women wasn’t going to work, because humans are complicated. So we guess they changed their minds, because they left and no one has seen them since.”

“And that’s a good thing. We lost a lot of people when the aliens were willing to fight back in self-defense. If they’d had the stomach for it, they might have won, and humanity might have been wiped out. But, we assume, they weren’t willing to die to take our planet; they’d been trying to kill us off so they could have all the bounties of the Earth without doing any damage from removing us. If you try to settle in swampland and you try to kill all the mosquitoes, and instead the mosquitoes start killing you back, maybe you go find somewhere else to live.” Or maybe you come back, later, with a new plan… but humanity has collectively decided that, while it’s important to try to have contingencies for that possibility, it’s more important to rebuild humanity and reclaim what was lost. Matt worries about that, but it’s not something he can do anything about.

“You think they’re ever going to come back, Uncle Matt?”

Maybe. “No. We kicked their butts hard enough I’m pretty sure they’re gone forever. But they left us with this giant mess to clean up.” He sighs. “This stuff you’re feeling about how girls are stupid and irritating and you can’t stand being around them? That says, you’re in puberty and you’re going to grow up to be attracted to girls. Maybe guys too, but definitely girls. And the virus is waking up in you, trying to turn your desire for girls into hatred, but it doesn’t have to win. A lot of guys make it through this stage no problem, and never hurt anyone.”

“It doesn’t feel like a virus. It feels like they’re stupid and boring and gross and I hate them.”

“Of course it does. If it felt like a virus, the men a hundred years ago would have figured it out before they killed most of the women. It messes with your emotions, Roy. It takes feelings that are natural and normal, and twists them around. But if you understand that, then you don’t have to let it win.”

“Okay,” Roy said, and rocks backward, looking around him. “Can we go hunt for the deer now?”

“Sure, kid.” Matt gets to his feet. “We’re done here. You remember what they taught you about controlling your anger?”

“Yeah. Take deep breaths, take a step back from the situation, walk away if you hafta.”

“Right,” Matt says. “Let’s get a move on. That deer won’t shoot itself.”

***

They amble along through the woods. Another deer makes itself known, and Roy takes another shot, but misses. “Dammit! I was sure I had that shot!”

“I thought you did too,” Matt says. “But they move fast. You gotta be able to sneak up on them and shoot before they hear you coming.”

“Can you do that, Uncle Matt?”

“Used to. I’m older now; wouldn’t be surprised if the deer could hear the creak in my bones.” He grins.

And then they circle around a big rock, and there’s a girl.

She’s a teenager, about Roy’s age, maybe a little older. “Hi!” she says cheerfully. “I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone from around here! You’re from the compound down the mountain, right?”

Roy’s face twists into visible disgust, and he backs away. “That’s right,” Matt says calmly. “I’m Matt, and this is Roy.”

“My name’s Jennifer!” Jennifer has dark, wavy hair and tanned white-person skin. She’s wearing cutoff shorts, sneakers that have been patched many, many times – there are no companies that make goods from the old world like sneakers anymore – and a short-sleeved blue buttondown shirt that’s been tied up under her breasts to show her midriff, and opened in the front far enough to see her cleavage. When Matt was young, women were advised not to wear anything that could be arousing, because if they ran into a killer male, their life might depend on how much he was not turned on. By now, though, so many of the killer males are dead, and with women outnumbering men by three to one, the women and girls dress in whatever they want. It was never a good strategy for dealing with the killer males anyway; too many of them were willing to kill women dressed in nun robes, so it plainly had nothing to do with revealing clothes. There are numerous large lumps in her front pockets, which could be rocks, or animal bones, or any number of things.

Matt’s gay and far too old to see teenagers as anything other than young kids, but Roy is plainly very uncomfortable with Jennifer’s state of exposure. “What are you doing here?!” he half-shouts, angrily, at her.

“I’m from a compound on the other side of the mountain, and I hiked up here to try to collect mushrooms,” Jennifer says, her voice just a little bit too loud.

“Well, we’re hunting, so I’d like it if you could be a little quieter,” Matt says. “Don’t want to scare the deer.”

“Ooh! Hunting sounds fun! Can I join you?”

“No,” Roy says, loudly.

“Oh, come on!” Jennifer pouts. “I’ll be quiet!”

Matt takes in Roy’s trembling hands, the whiteness of his lips. Terror, or rage, or both. Roy’s expected to control himself no matter what the circumstances, but Matt… really doesn’t want to push him. Not now, when he’s so fragile. “Sorry, Jennifer, but Roy and I really came out for some uncle-nephew time. Maybe you can join us another time, but not now.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Huh,” she says. “Okay! I know a lot of guys like to go hunting with their dads or uncles when they’re thirteen. You’re thirteen, right?” This is directed to Roy.

“None of your business!” Roy snarls.

“Yeah, he’s thirteen,” Matt says tiredly. “Nice meeting you, Jennifer. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”

“And maybe we won’t,” Roy mutters. He and Matt hike up the trail, away from Jennifer. “Good riddance.”

“I want you to think about this anger you’re feeling. It’s really out of proportion to the situation, isn’t it?”

Roy sighs. “Uncle Ma-att, I just wanna go hunting with you! I don’t wanna talk about my feelings!”

“Sure, but it’s safest for everyone if you do. What’re you supposed to do when you feel really angry?”

“I already took a step back from the situation! I told her to go away!”

“Didn’t hear any deep breaths,” Matt says.

Roy manages to deeply breathe sarcastically. It’s an impressive trick. Matt would never have thought it possible to breathe in a sarcastic way. Most of it’s with body language and facial expression, but there’s definitely a sarcastic note in the breath itself. “Now can we go find a deer?”

“Maybe we’d have better luck setting up a snare to trap rabbits.”

Roy’s whole body sags. “I wanted to bring home venison, Uncle Matt! Nobody cares if you bring home a rabbit!”

“All right,” Matt says mildly. “We’ll keep going.”

***

The forest is full of sound. Birds chirp and call. Squirrels and other animals rustle in the branches and bushes. Many of the sounds go silent as Matt and Roy approach, but not all. They come up into a clearing, someplace where someone, long ago, had a concrete pad. Most of it’s broken and destroyed, but there’s enough of it that even after a hundred years, the forest hasn’t completely taken it back.

And then there is the deer, quietly grazing on the other side of the clearing.

Matt whispers to Roy as he points it out. “Quiet, now.”

Roy nods. There’s a broken half-wall part of the way through the clearing, blocking the deer’s view of them if they go low. Matt and Roy crawl toward it. Once they’re behind it, Roy pokes his head up, very slightly, following Matt’s hand signals. He lifts his rifle. Quietly. The deer doesn’t stir.

Matt hears a tiny click. His eyes go wide and his blood runs cold.

Jennifer comes bounding into the clearing behind them. “Hi, guys! Didn’t think I’d run into—”

The deer leaps and runs off. Roy spins around, utter rage in his face, and screams, “You stupid bitch!”

“Roy, don’t—” Matt tries to grab Roy, tries to pull him down, throw off his aim, but it’s too late. The gun goes off, twice. Splotches of red explode on Jennifer’s chest, and she falls backward, twisting as she does so she lands on her front. Red oozes out from underneath her.

Roy drops the gun from fingers suddenly dead white and shaking. “I – I didn’t mean to – I was so angry--”

Wounds where the red had blossomed on Jennifer would be fatal; she’d bleed out almost immediately, and the quantity of red seeping out from under her body suggests that that’s what happened. It looks like a strike to the aorta, or the heart itself, maybe. Matt cannot stop himself. “No, no, no—”

“I’m sorry!” Roy screams. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry—”

Matt gets hold of himself. “Roy. Roy, come here. Come here, son.” He means it as an endearment – Roy is neither his literal son, nor has he raised the boy as a father – but it’s real as well. Roy is like a son to him. All of them have been, and he loves Roy so much, and his heart is shattering.

Roy collapses in his arms, sobbing. Matt holds the boy tightly with one arm. “It’s not your fault, Roy, it’s not,” he tells the crying child, tears welling in his own eyes. “It’s the virus. I know you didn’t mean to. I know you’re a good boy.”

“I’m so sorry—I just got so mad, and the gun was in my hand—”

“I know,” Matt says, as the boy’s wet face presses against his shoulder. “I know. I love you so much, Roy, you know that?”

“I love you too, Uncle Matt,” Roy says into Matt’s shirt, still sobbing, and a sob escapes from Matt’s chest as well as he raises his pistol with the arm that isn’t holding his nephew, his child, his son, the little boy who trusts him and loves him, and as Roy cries against his chest and cannot see what he’s doing with his other hand, he lifts the pistol to Roy’s temple, awkwardly, being sure not to touch him with it, and fires.

The sobs stop. After a moment they start again, but they’re only Matt’s.

Jennifer gets up. “I’m sorry, Matt,” she says quietly.

“Get the fuck out of my face,” Matt snarls. “You provoked him! I told you to back off! I told you we weren’t having you join us!”

“I have to do my job,” Jennifer says wearily, and there is no longer any mistaking her for a teenager, despite the expertly applied makeup on her face. She’s short, she looks young, and with the right makeup none of the boys ever guess she’s not a teenage girl. There’s red all over her shorts, soaking her legs and belly, from where the bags of fake blood in her pockets burst, and splotches of red over her heart and her liver. The paint pellets look horrifically real; they even smell like blood.

No, wait, that’s probably Roy’s blood he’s smelling.

"Fuck your job.” Matt holds his little boy in his arms, with both arms now that he doesn’t need one free anymore. “You pushed him. If we’d just given him a little more time – a little more training—”

“And who might he have killed while you were giving him a little more time? His mom? One of the girls his age?”

“He wouldn’t have had a gun!—"

“He could have had a rock. Or a steak knife. Or a baseball bat. I’m so sorry, Matt, but—”

“If you say ‘that’s the law’ or ‘those are the rules’ to me, I will hit you,” Matt snaps. “Not because you’re a woman, but because you’re a piece of shit.”

She sighs. “I know you’re distraught. It’s horrible, having to do this—”

“You didn’t even know him!” Matt screams. “You didn’t watch him when he was little, you didn’t teach him to tie his shoes, you didn’t play airplane with him – you didn’t—”

“I had a son,” Jennifer says sharply. “Don’t tell me I don’t know how much it hurts, when we have to—I was 16 when I had my son. It was six years ago that – that he took his test, at thirteen, and he failed it.”

“There’ve been so many,” Matt whispers. So many little boys. Slightly less than half of them pass; that’s why the ratio of women to men is around 2:1. He was so, so relieved when Blake turned out to be a girl and took the name Cassandra, twelve years ago; the trans kids are immune to the violent impulses. He’d known that Cassandra wouldn’t have to face the test, that he’d never have to take her on a hunting trip she might never return from. So relieved when Joe, eight years ago, reported himself gay at eleven and then showed no sign of aggression toward his mother or sister or any girls his own age.

But all the others. All the others, he’d loved, and they’d loved him, and trusted him, and he took them up the mountain on a hunting trip… with a gun that could only shoot paint pellets and blanks, and the paint pellets only after the bait’s radio transmitter came into range and switched it on.

Roy would never have bagged a deer with that gun. But if he hadn’t shot Jennifer, if he’d controlled himself and proved he could overcome his femicidal impulses, Matt would have “discovered” that there was no ammo in it, and given Roy a different gun, and then they could have had a real deer hunt. Like Evan, ten years ago. Like Jamal, five years ago. Like LeBron… how long ago had LeBron even been?

He’d already decided he wouldn’t take on any new little boys, after Cole died. Roy was the last one, the last child to shepherd to adulthood, the last he had to test. “God,” he cries, holding the little boy he’s just killed in his arms. “Why couldn’t you have let me have the last one? Why didn’t you give him the strength to overcome it?” He rocks the body back and forth. “Why did you let any of this happen? Why do you make us have to kill our sons?”

“God’s got nothing to do with this,” Jennifer says softly. “This is evil. If God allowed such evil as this to exist, then She’s not worth worshipping, and if She can’t stop it, then there’s no point in blaming her. It was the aliens.”

The aliens his ancestors drove off planet, who he’ll never have a chance to fight, or get revenge on. There’s no one he can blame who’s here. He understands the system, he understands the necessity. Little boys who try to commit femicide once don’t have the control to stop themselves from doing it again, and if it’s not the bait with her paint bags in her shorts and the radio transmitter to make the gun fire paint pellets, it’ll be a girl or women who really dies because the boy will have a real weapon. They can’t let the femicides live among them, and they can’t send them away to live with the few bands of roving femicidal men that still exist… the only reason those still exist was that once upon a time, femicidal sons were turned out into the wilderness. Where they could grow up to be bandits who invaded compounds, stole the food, and murdered the women. The men, too, because the men would defend the compound, but the women they’d hunt and kill for fun.

He would never have wanted a future like that for Roy. But he didn’t want this, either.

“I’m… I’m going to go. I’ll radio the compound and let them know the results of the test.”

“You do that,” Matt says bitterly. He knows his anger isn’t fair. He knows his attempt to drive Jennifer off, put off the test at the last minute and get her to come back another day so Roy could maybe develop stronger self-control first, was wrong. He knows it could have resulted in Roy murdering someone he loves. Loved. But how much better is it that Matt had to murder someone he loves? Why do they need to kill the teen boys to protect the women? Oh, he knows why, he signed on for this job years ago because he knew why, he’s seen what happened when a boy grew into a killer and turned on the women he knew. But why has God or Fate or Allah or whatever the fuck is up there listening to human prayers allowed this? Why is this horrible thing something that they are forced to do?

After what seems like hours, crying and holding Roy’s body and whispering how sorry he is, he’s finally out of tears. He looks down at his pistol. Cole’s dead six years on now, and there’s no man in his bed waiting for him, back home. There’s no little boy he’s working with, and there will never be one again. Is there anyone to care if he lives or dies, now? What if he ate a bullet, right now, so he could stop seeing Roy and Jason and Manuel and little Matt, named for him and he still shot him in the head while the boy was bent over the bait’s body, and all the others, all the boys who loved and trusted him, and failed the test he brought them into? Was there any good reason not to?

…there were the boys who’d lived. Adults now, all of them, but they loved and respected him as their old uncle, and they still were willing to spend time with him, sometimes. There were the girls, who yelled “Mister Matt! Mister Matt!” when they saw him and crowded around him, showing off their accomplishments, and he’d never have to take any of them up the mountain. There are trans boys who just figured it out, and need an older man to mentor them and teach them how to be a man, and none of them will ever need to go up the mountain either. There are the gay boys who want to talk to him about boyfriends, and how to date a guy, and how sex works, and all the other things gay boys need to know.

He can still help the children. But he’s never going to take on a little boy as his nephew again.

After a few more moments, he picks up Roy’s rifle, which can’t fall into the wrong hands, and his own pistol, and slings them into the holsters he has for them, on his belt or on his back. Then he picks Roy up and cradles him. A fireman’s carry would be easier, especially with the long hike down the mountain, but he wants to give his boy’s body as much dignity as he can. He won’t sling Roy over his shoulder like a flour sack. He’ll carry the dead weight of the boy down the mountain, and then he’ll carry it for the rest of his life.

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

this space intentionally left blank

triggers listed at bottom because they are spoilers

dashboard removes all the line spaces

so I have to put lines in

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Triggers: Child death. Serious misogyny. A backstory from the original story that involves a worldwide near-complete femicide.

[frutavel]

I picked up minecraft more seriously now as I'm sure you've noticed, and I think I posted about it here but I was documenting my newest adventure with the intent of writing about Tari and Sama trying to survive in minecraft

Well I'm not sure if I'm going to write it after all, but I still have all my notes and I think it's got some comedic potential so I'm posting them here, from when I first spawned in the world up until I stopped keeping track of things about three weeks later :D

I started mixing in Tari and Sama's POVs at some point, but everything noted here are things that for real happened to me while I was playing!

Under the cut because it's A Lot ^^

- Spawned by mushroom trees

- White horses everywhere

- Gather a little bit of meat and wool

- Find and kill some chickens

- Dig a hole in the ground

- Barricade the hole

- Fear.png

- Noises

- Survive the night intact

- Go out early to look for resources

- Find island

- B E E S

- Gather wood and resources

- Go back to the hole, begin talk of building on the island

- Go to the island

- B E E S v2

- Make beds

- Start building house on a lil hill

- Foundation layer done

- Creeper blows up half the hill

- Repair

- Go out get more food and wood

- Finish house

- Creeper blows up again but this time with more damage

- Trouble with skeletons, almost die

- Repair

- Find a cave

- Worry about building this close to cave, start talk of moving away

- Go explore cave to see what's up

- Gather coal and iron

- Find enderman stuck in cave, release enderman, almost die to enderman

- Spread lanterns and torches around house and cave

- Monsters seem to have given up

- Mood has been lightened

- Explore neighborhood

- Find pumpkins and more food

- Happyness ensues

- Make boat, go exploring by boat

- Tari doesn't come back until next morning bc he almost died while exploring by boat

- Come back w news of a village nearby and more food

- Make a furnace

- Make farm

- Tari stays home watching furnace

- Sama handles farm

- Things going good

- Decide to expand house

- Go hunting for wood

- Find more mushrooms

- Get home late at night very scared but everything is okay

- Mushroom soup babey

- Things seem good

- Go to bed, wake up next morning and go check on farm

- Creeper blows up the farm, half the house and almost kills Samaela

- Panic.png

- "Lead the way Taran-Zhu" he said "Let the healing begin"

- Samaela stays unconscious for a couple days while Tari does repairs

- Realizes they built right on top of cave system

- Samaela wakes up eventually

- Start talk about moving somewhere else again but for real this time

- Begin gathering resources

- Begin making planks for the building

- Take bed, take boat, begin looking for another place to build

- Go to oak tree forest, survey area

- Find big clearing of sand by trees

- Fear farming there won't work, move on

- Find big clearing on top of hill a little aways away

- Worry about exposure, scout nearby woods

- Very dark woods

- Like, really fucking dark

- Dark as shit but no caves nearby

- Spoke too soon, found a cave

- Woods are very dense, worry about getting lost after dark

- Clearing on top of hill seems like best option, unsure as to whether they should go farther

- Decide to hop on boat and keep going

- Find sea turtles, immediately forget sea turtles

- See desert biome, remember village, wonder if maybe building next to village is a good idea

- It's a desert so no

- Also kinda scared of the villagers

- Wonder about other biomes, keep going

- Find little swampy like area with lillypads and weeping willows

- Interest piqued , explore further via river

- Looks like a new biome but vibes are a little weird, keep going

- Row in between very tall mountains

- Starts getting dark, river gets too shallow to continue, make camp for the night, sleep with no issues

- Wake up feeling okay, dig a little bit around the riverbed to make room for boat

- Get on boat and continue exploring

- Row row row the boat gently down the stream

- Find another village, hang around village for a bit, move on

- Little spot accross the river from village seems nice

- There's sheep and cows and pigs, and it's close to the village if they need help

- And it must be safe if the villagers settled here

- Take a closer look around area

- Find cave

- Cave entrance is chock full of coal and iron

- Mine away babey

- Actually make it all the way down the bottom

- Cave is not that big and there are no monsters inside

- Get all surface level minerals

- Bags filled with coal go back to the surface

- It's night

- Panic

- Make quick camp at mouth of cave

- Sleep and wake up fine

- Decide to explore more of area

- Find another cave nearby

- This one looks big

- Bags are full no space for new things

- Tari wants to be closer to sea, Sama is torn

- Sama likes being close to the village

- They decide to build a temporary house near village

- Temporary becomes permanent

- Start laying the foundation and prepare to transfer things from the old house to the new

- Spend a fuckton of time building new house

- Really a fuckton

- Run out of dark oak wood, take boat and go back to oak tree and giant mushroom forest

- Very far away

- Chop until axe breaks, load up boat with wood, go back home

- Build build build buld

- For story purposes Tari says he's going to try and go farther to see if he can find more resources, Sama stays behind to build

- House almost done

- Starts setting glass for glass roof

- Finished the glass go to finish roof

- Runs out of wood again

- Sama goes to oak trees alone

- Woods spooky

- Gets wood

- Go home with no problem

- Tari came home aya!

- Finish house together

- Enjoy a nice evening on the roof

- Wake up next morning bc noises

- Enderman got inside

- Fuck

- Try to coax it out

- It gets angry, Tari gets badly injured but they manage to kill it

- Tari's turn to be in bedrest

- Sama tucks him in the glass room and goes downstairs

- Sees creeper creeping by the window

- War flashbacks

- Sneaks outside, gets it to blow up without damaging the house

- Goes to inspect the damage, sees pillagers in distance, chooses to not engage and pray they'll go away

- Tense day

- Pillagers keep lurking but don't do anything

- Go to bed

- Pillagers still there next morning

- Go fight them

- Success

- Go back hoping no more show up

- Decide to begin farm

- Farmwork has begun successfully

- Put out some lights, make some bone meal for the next morning and go to bed

- Wake up next morning, skeleton got inside

- Is killed easily but at the cost of Samaela's mental health

- She put in so much work on this house and doesn't wanna have to leave again

- Deep breaths

- Go outside to check the situation

- No more monsters around thankfully

- Bone meal helps get started on wheat which is nice

- Harvest wheat

- Put a little staircase in front of door

- It serves no real purpose but makes things feel a little better

- Plus it looks pretty

- Needs more minerals

- Go to cave

- Instant regret

- Skeleton and zombie climb out but catch fire as soon as they go in the light

- Okay

- Go in

- Cave has a little waterfall in it

- Lotsa iron and coal

- Creeper blows itself up

- Go in a littke deeper

- Growling and moaning everywhere but no sign of monsters

- Light up the place and start mining

- Find bottom of cave, nowhere near as deep as previously thought

- Calm.png

- Mine away like there's no tomorrow

- Growling intensifies

- Take a brief peek at mouth of cave and see that it's night

- Forgot to bring bed

- No sense going outside now when monsters are up

- Continue mining and hope for the best

- Water from waterfall sounds soothing

- Growling doesn't stop

- Wonder if they can hear her mining below

- Minerals no longer appearing

- Go back to mouth of cave and wait for sunrise

- Go outside, see creeper

- Fuck it kill

- It blows up and hurts her but she finds coal in the crater so it's not that bad

- Drags herself back home with tons of coal just as it starts raining

- Passes out

- Wakes up in bed

- Tari bounced back way faster that she did

- Damn troll regeneration

- He takes over for now

- Handles things inside while it rains

- Smelts some iron, crafts some lanterns

- They're out of wood again

- Also running low on food

- He leaves Sama with as many torches and lanterns as she'll take and goes off to the oak forest

- Gathers as many mushrooms as he can

- Chops wood until his axe breaks

- Suns starts going down, mad boat dash back home

- Makes it just a little after dark

- Deep breaths

- Time to plank the wood and make mushroom soup

- Things quiet down

- Spider gets in next morning

- Kill it with fire

- Discover that the reason mobs keep getting inside is because they forgot to put glass in one of the windows

- Fix that asap

- Deep breaths

- Wheat garden going well, decide to expand farm

- Get cows

- Get chickens

- Get sheep

- House is finished, wheat is growing, farm is working, Sama is healing

- They both go on a long long trek into the woods to pick flowers

- Go home with a fuckton of flowers

- Get wool from their sheep

- Make dye with flowers

- Make wool carpets for stargazing room and everywhere else

- Fill house with lanterns

- Things are good things are great

- Explore nearby caves with no issue

- Decide to make a basement

- They have time and resources to kill

- Begin digging

- Find iron and coal while digging the basement which is very fun

- Basement almost finished after a couple days

- Trader shows up

- Nothing to trade

- Trader hangs out until night

- Survives the monsters and keeps hanging around

- Finish basement

- Put beds in basement and make an exit that leads outside the house

- Sama hangs some chains around because why not

- Put chests and furnaces on basement

- Things going good

I did some other stuff after the basement, but I stopped takin notes at this point. Hope it was an entertaining read :D

[azvolrien]

Two Months

This is another little Asta-and-Roan vignette series, this time featuring the run-up to their wedding. Maybe a bit shorter than the last couple, with only four relatively short segments, but it gives a little more detail to some stuff that, while it’s been part of the setting inside my head for a long time, hasn’t really come up on the page before.

---

           15th of Messis – Two months to go

           Auchtertan Public Library

           Auchtertan was a small town – only a couple of thousand people called it home – but it drew custom from dozens of small farms up in the hills and tiny fishing harbours along the coast of Loch Gorm, people who either could not or did not want to make the long ride up to Duncraig, and so it had far more on offer than some of the bigger towns nearer the city did. Market stalls were set up in the town square every weekend, forming a loose ring around the ancient carved stone in front of the temple, but even during the week the grocer, butcher and baker were well-stocked. The post office was constantly bustling, there was almost always smoke rising from the bathhouse’s furnace chimney, and the library above the beach boasted two storeys filled with books on all subjects.

           Roan padded along one of the rows on the first floor, running her hand over the spines of the books on their shelves, to the desk Asta had claimed below one of the windows overlooking the sea.

           “Were the librarians able to give you the forms?” asked Asta without looking up from the slim paperback lying open on the desk.

           Roan laid the forms on the desk beside the book and sat down opposite her.

           “Good, good,” said Asta, still without looking up. Roan smiled and propped her chin on one hand, taking a moment to just admire her new fiancée. At this hour of the morning, the sun hit the library window at exactly the right angle for Asta to glow in its light. It drew out the warm gold of her skin and the black-tea chestnut brown of her eyes, and cast enchanting bluish highlights on her deep black hair. One lock had escaped her ponytail, falling forwards over her face. Roan reached out to tuck it back behind her ear, trailing her fingertips gently over Asta’s cheek.

           Asta finally glanced up from the book. The sun caught her eyes, turning them a beautiful reddish amber for an instant. “What?”

           “I like seeing you in your element for a change,” said Roan. “You do love your books.”

           “Yes, I’ll have to have a browse in their fiction section before we head home,” said Asta, turning her attention back to the book. “I’ve been meaning to find something new to read of an evening.”

           “Has that one been useful?” asked Roan.

           “Yes, as a matter of fact,” said Asta. “It’s a very comprehensive guide to marriage in the Sea Lochs. It’s actually a lot more straightforward than I was expecting – things would be more complex if we needed to arrange a temple service or book a venue for a big reception or get the registrar to come to us, but since we agreed we don’t need any of that, essentially all we have to do is fill out these forms telling the registrar that we want to get married and confirming that we’re both of age and of sound mind and so on and so forth, post them up to Duncraig, and they’ll get back to us with an appointment to actually go and get married.”

           “You don’t have to… I don’t know, get your House’s permission or anything? I don’t know how it works with the nobility.”

           Asta glanced back up and shook her head, smiling. “I would if I was in the core family or just outside it, but I’m so minor a branch of House zeDamar that I doubt I even qualify as a leaf. The only reason they would arrange a marriage for me would be if they wanted to emphasise how unimportant my potential spouse was to them.” Her smile faded and she cast her eyes back down at the pages. “Besides,” she muttered. “House zeDamar abandoned me when I needed them. I don’t owe them anything any more. I’d even give up the name if I could.”  

           Roan leant over the desk and kissed her forehead, bringing the smile back for a moment. “Can you not?”

           Asta shook her head again. “It’s not allowed. If you’re born to a noble house, you’re a part of it for life – and if you weren’t, you can’t claim the name through marriage or adoption. Which I suppose at least saves us any arguments over who’ll be changing their surname.”

           “‘NicBruide’ isn’t really a surname anyway,” said Roan. “Let’s get these filled out – they can be in Duncraig tomorrow if we get them posted by lunch.”

           ---

           13th of Sanguis – One month to go

           Dun Ardech, just inside the outer wall

           Asta knelt in front of the little shrine beneath its wooden shelter and lit three small cones of incense, one in front of each pewter god-figure on the flat slate altar, then clapped three times to draw the gods’ attention.

           “Mighty Voynazh,” she murmured, and laid a small beaker of wine before the god of war. “Great Siraki.” She placed a sprig of rowan-berries in front of the goddess of commerce and the protector of travellers. “Blessed Kura.” An ear of wheat for the goddess of agriculture and fertility. “Grant us your protection and your guidance.” That much was a standard invocation. Asta fell silent, considering what else to say. Whatever prayers her parents had offered during their engagement, they had never told her any of them. What was one supposed to say at a time like this?

           “I… am getting married.” Well, that was a start. “We received a letter from the registrar in Duncraig. They have availability in the middle of Gracilis. It’s sooner than we expected, but we decided to take it.” She lifted the beaker and poured the wine out on the ground before the little statue of Voynazh. “Mighty Voynazh, keep the shadow of war far from our doorstep,” she went on quietly. “Whether a blessing from Torravon is the same as a blessing from you or not… Please, let us live in peace, and make it so Roan never has cause for battle-madness.” She crushed the rowan-berries with a mortar and pestle, then tipped out the resulting paste on the flat stone before Siraki. “Great Siraki, clear our path on all our journeys; grant us safe passage over land and water, and be generous in the markets.” She picked up the wheat and rubbed it between her fingers so the grains scattered on the altar. “Blessed Kura…” She paused. “I suppose this is where newly-betrothed people would usually ask you to bless them with children, isn’t it? I suppose that would take divine intervention for Roan and I, at least without involving a third party in some way. But they never featured in our plans anyway, so… Help the hens to lay, keep the vegetable garden going, and I think we’ll be content.”

           The wooden chimes hanging above the shrine clicked gently and spun in the wind; the galloping horses carved around the top chased each other in circles. Perhaps that was an answer. Asta straightened her back and closed her eyes, breathing slowly and deeply as she listened to the wind rustling gently through the trees and the waves lapping against the rocks outside the wall. A couple of the hens wandered over to take charge of the wheat.

           After little while, Asta got to her feet and brushed the dust from her skirt. “How long have you been standing there?” she asked without turning around.

           “Couple of minutes, maybe,” said Roan. “I was wondering if I should chase the hens away from your offering.”

           “No, they’re fine,” said Asta. “I think Kura takes everything she can from it fairly quickly.” She did have to step in to set the statue of Voynazh back upright when one of the hens knocked it over.

           Roan picked up the hen, tutting in amused disapproval. “That’s probably heresy, you know,” she said to one beady yellow eye.

           “From a chicken?” asked Asta.

           “Henresy, then.”

           “Yes, they are known for their schismatic temple practices,” said Asta as Roan put the hen down and shooed her back towards the coop. She closed the shrine’s shutters and turned the little wooden bolt to secure them.

           “It’s not too late to try and arrange a priest for the wedding, if you want,” said Roan, chasing the other hen off for good measure. “I’m sure there’ll be at least one in Duncraig who’s free.”

           Asta shook her head. “I’ve never liked having a go-between – if I need to speak with the gods I’m quite capable of doing it myself.” She paused. “Roan?”

           “Mm?”

           “Do you believe in the gods?”

           “Are you calling off the wedding if I say no?”

           “No, of course not. I was just wondering – I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you pray. There wasn’t even a household shrine until we built this one.”

           Roan didn’t answer immediately; instead she pursed her lips and folded her hands behind her back, watching the hens.

           Asta went on. “There was a wizard I knew in Stormhaven who didn’t. Believe in them, I mean. I asked him why one day, once we were on good enough terms that he wouldn’t take it as either an insult or a challenge. He just shrugged and said he’d never encountered a good enough reason to.”

           Roan nodded thoughtfully. “I… believe that they exist in some shape or form, aye. Granda raised me on tales of the fearsome goddesses of the Sea Lochs – Torravon, the Cailleach, the Storm Hags – and I reckon I’ve seen enough of their work. I’m just not convinced they pay any attention to us.”

           “Maybe not.” Asta smiled and brushed her fingers through the windchime. “But I suppose it won’t hurt to try and stay on their good side just in case.”

           ---

           11th of Gracilis – Three days to go

           The City of Duncraig

           It was mid-morning by the time Pardus set its paws on the Kingsferry Bridge. At a gallop, the construct could have covered the distance between Dun Ardech and Duncraig in less than a day – and had done so more than once – but they hadn’t wanted to rush the journey and so had broken it at a coaching inn at a village halfway up the coast.

           Roan’s arms tightened around Asta’s waist. “I haven’t been back here in a very long time,” she said, her voice subdued, as Pardus strolled along the bridge. It was a spectacular piece of engineering: four towering stanchions of concrete and steel supported dozens of seemingly slender cables – each one thicker than Roan’s arm in truth – which in turn supported the roadway itself, high above the surface of Loch Gorm. At the far end loomed the city of Duncraig, creeping down the steep, rocky hillside from the crag-top fortress of the High King – now the seat of the Imperial Governor – to the hundreds of docks and jetties along the edge of the water.

           “Nor me,” said Asta, steadfastly keeping her eyes on the city, refusing to let her gaze drift to Castle MacArra atop the ridge on the other side of the loch. “Not since I came back through the portal from Stormhaven, and I was only passing through then; I didn’t stop to look around.”

           “I never wandered all that far from the university when I lived here,” admitted Roan. “Chances are you probably know the city better than I do.”  

           They rode up through the city streets until they reached Siraki Square, the wide granite-paved marketplace up against the cliff face below the fortress. The market itself was not yet open, though the stallholders were setting up in the stone-built booths around the fountain at the centre of the square. Around its edges, would-be customers killed time in other shops or waited at pubs and cafes. Roan eyed them with distinct wariness as Asta reined Pardus in outside the four-storey hotel that took up almost one whole edge of the square. Flags hung from a row of poles jutting out along the façade of white marble, displaying the rampant bear of the Empire, the dragon ship of the Sea Lochs, the striking wildcat of the monarch of Loch Gorm, and the castle-and-mountain of Duncraig itself. Above them, tall glass windows looked out across the square to the fortress, while the rooms on the other side would gaze down the loch towards the distant sea.

           Asta double-checked the letter from the hotel, nodded firmly to herself, and dismounted. Roan followed her a second later, casting another wary glance at the square behind them.

           “We’ll check in just now and leave our bags in the room,” said Asta, unstrapping the suitcases from behind Pardus’s saddle. “Then we can maybe go out for an explore, find somewhere to have lunch…”

           “Aye, that sounds like a plan,” said Roan absently, lifting one of the bags under one arm and hefting the other onto her shoulder. “I… Never mind.” Asta gave her a searching look, but did not press her.

           Their room overlooked Siraki Square from the second floor. It was not lavishly decorated – the walls were painted a plain, warm cream colour, their only extra adornment a small painting of a stag hanging on the wall above the bed – but the bed was wide and soft with a heavy feather quilt, a pair of comfortable armchairs and a small coffee table were arranged by the full-length window, and the bathroom was equipped with a long tub of enamelled cast-iron. Hinged wooden shutters – currently folded back against the thick stone wall – could swing across to block the light from the windows, while thin linen curtains could be pulled over to soften their lines.

           Roan placed the suitcases carefully on the floor behind the door, straightened up to roll her shoulders back, and flopped face-down on the bed. “Give me a few minutes before we head back out,” she said, her voice rather muffled by the quilt.

           “You can’t possibly be tired already,” said Asta, kneeling beside her. She pulled back the hood of Roan’s sealskin cloak so that the skull rested between her shoulder blades. Roan turned her head slightly to look up at her out of one eye. “You, of all people? It’s not even lunchtime yet!”

           Roan made a noncommittal sound.

           “Well…” Asta lay down so they were face to face. “I’m sure we can find some way to entertain ourselves if you’d rather stay in here.” She grinned, poking the tip of her tongue out between her teeth, and slowly ran one finger down Roan’s nose to her lips.

           “Tempting,” said Roan, smiling at last, “and for more than one reason. But I’m sure there’s a museum or something you want to visit.”

           “Well, I wasn’t going to push the matter if you didn’t want to, but I did see a poster for an exhibition on aquatic constructs-”

           Roan laughed, rolled over onto her back, and sat up. “Sounds good. Let’s have a look.”

           The market outside was in full swing by the time they walked back down to the hotel entrance. There wasn’t a single stall without a queue of waiting customers, and the crowds had spilled out from the cafes and shops to mill around in the square itself. Roan took one step over the threshold and froze at the sight.

           Asta looked back over her shoulder. “Roan?”

           “I…” Roan’s eyes were wide and staring, her pupils dilated despite the bright sunshine in the square. Teeth bared, she groped blindly for the doorframe and clutched it, the tendons on the back of her hand standing out like wires.

           “Hey! Hey.” Asta caught her other hand and reached up to stroke her cheek. “It’s all right. Look at me.”

           Roan closed her eyes hard for a few seconds, pressing her lips together and breathing heavily through her nose, before she obeyed. Her pupils had shrunk back to a more normal size, but her eyes were still wide and her breath still trembled.

           “Come with me,” said Asta. “There’s somewhere I want to show you.”

           She led Roan out of the square and down a series of side-streets until they reached a gate in a waist-high iron fence. It was only locked by a simple sliding bar, clearly more to stop animals than humans, and they walked through into a steep-sided ravine lined with dense bracken – now mostly dead and brown for the winter – and tall pine trees. The path of packed earth and scattered bark zigzagged down the slope until it levelled out by the shallow, swift-flowing river at the bottom. Asta sat down on a wooden bench by the river and patted the seat beside her. Roan lay down on her side on the bench and rested her head in Asta’s lap, closing her eyes.

           “I used to come here on the weekends, or when I had an hour or so away from Lady MacArra’s office,” said Asta, stroking Roan’s hair. “It was quiet, a good place to read – I’m not sure if even many life-long residents of the city know about it. South Craig – Lady MacArra’s house – is just downriver of here, down at the seafront.” She paused. “I knew you didn’t like crowds. I never realised you were afraid of them.”

           Roan took a long, deep breath in through her nose and slowly let it back out through her mouth. “I’m fine with thirty, forty people,” she said without opening her eyes. “A bit more if there’s enough room for them to spread out, like at the market in Auchtertan or out on the island. But when there are hundreds all close together like there were back there, it… It feels too much like a threat. And that doesn’t mix well with battle-madness, however well I have mine under control.”  

           “No, I suppose not. Gods, if Duncraig bothers you this much, you would hate it in the Imperial City.”

           Roan just nodded without sitting up. “Never felt any urge to visit it. Don’t think that would end well anyway.” She turned onto her back to look up at Asta. “Did you ever want to go back there?”

           “There’s nothing left for me in Kiraan,” said Asta. “Just a lot of memories, and the good ones are too tangled up with the bad. I do miss it sometimes, all the places I grew up with… but no, I never wanted to return.” She brushed Roan’s fringe back out of her face and leant down to kiss her forehead. “We can go back to the hotel if you want.”

           Roan took another deep breath and shook her head. “I don’t want to keep you cooped up all day. I’ll be all right if we can avoid the crowds.” She sighed and sat up. “So, did those posters say where this exhibit of yours is?”

           Asta smiled. “It’s at the Marine Museum down at the quayside. Don’t worry, I know a few shortcuts that’ll get us there without any crowds.”

           ---

           14th of Gracilis – A few hours to go

           The City of Duncraig

           Roan carried her plate back to the table. “I’m not sure about hotels,” she said as she sat down. “I don’t like hearing strangers moving around nearby at night. But it is nice to have a breakfast we didn’t have to make ourselves.”

           “They lay out a good one here, too,” said Asta, checking over the day’s itinerary in her notebook. “So, our appointment at the registrar’s office is just at the back of five and then we have dinner in the evening, but the day isn’t too busy up until then. Did you have any plans?”

           “I booked us a tub for a couple of hours at that huge bathhouse near the university. You know the one I mean? Our slot starts at half-ten, so we can find somewhere for lunch afterwards.”

           “Oh, is that where you vanished to when I was in the library? You were oddly evasive about that.” Asta added it to her notes, then glanced up, frowning. “There’s a bath in our room here.”

           “Aye, but it’s not very comfy. Not for two people, at least.”

           “True. Well…” Asta reached back over her shoulder and beneath the collar of her blouse, rubbing her fingertips against the raised cords of old scarring.

           Roan caught her reluctance immediately. “It’s a private tub,” she assured her. “No one has to see your back. Not even me, if you don’t want me to.”

           “Oh, I’m used enough to you seeing it,” said Asta with a small smile. “So, two hours at the bathhouse, maybe another two for lunch…”

           “If we make it a very leisurely lunch.”

           “Then that still gives us two and a half hours in the afternoon.”

           Roan scooped half a fried egg into her mouth and swallowed. “I… have a couple of things to take care of then,” she said. “But I’ll meet you at the registrar’s office.”

           “Will you be all right by yourself?”

           “I… will manage.”

           Asta silently searched Roan’s eyes for a few seconds before she nodded. “Five o’clock sharp, then,” she said, giving Roan’s chin a little shake between thumb and forefinger.

           Roan caught her hand and gently kissed the backs of her fingers without breaking eye contact. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

           After a long, relaxing soak in the bathhouse’s steaming, floral-scented water – “I’m very fond of our little bathhouse at home,” Asta commented, “but you have to admit it smells a bit eggy.” – and a lunch that was indeed leisurely in a neighbouring café, they split up outside the gates of the university. Roan gave Asta a quick farewell kiss on the forehead – as much for her own reassurance as Asta’s – before she pulled up the hood of her cloak, squared her shoulders, and strode away. Asta watched her until she had disappeared around a corner, then sighed and returned to the hotel. There were a few things of her own she needed to organise.

           Much to Asta’s relief, as the afternoon wore quietly on she received no word of anyone going berserk in the street and getting either injured or arrested. Five o’clock approached; Asta donned her new blue dress, gave her hair – loose from her usual ponytail – one last careful brushing, and took several slow, steadying breaths in front of the bathroom mirror. She didn’t usually bother with makeup, but for the occasion she had added some pinkish polish to her nails, a subtle shading above her eyes and a hint of a deeper red around her lips. Finally she put on a pair of earrings, each one a plain gold hoop about an inch across – a little showier than the simple cuffs or studs she usually wore, but not to the point of discomfort or distraction.

           “Everything’s going to be fine,” she said to her reflection, before she picked up her satchel containing her purse and the ring box, draped a woollen shawl around her shoulders against the chill of a Gracilis evening, and left the hotel. The sky was almost fully dark, but the streets were busy and well-lit and it wasn’t a long walk to the registrar’s office.

           Like most of Duncraig’s buildings it was a stern construction of grey stone, with a short but impressively broad flight of steps leading up to double doors of sturdy oak, but the windows showed a welcoming gold light from the offices and meeting-rooms behind them. Asta waited at the foot of the steps. A bell chimed somewhere, perhaps from one of the city’s temples. Five chimes. Asta bit her lip, glancing up and down the street and wondering how long she should give it before she started getting worried. She had no fear of Roan getting cold feet, but if something else had happened…

           “I’m here, I’m here! Sorry, not quite five sharp, I know.”

           Asta smiled; a tension she hadn’t really noticed until it was gone fell from her shoulders. She turned towards Roan’s voice and her jaw dropped.

           Roan gestured down at herself, grinning. “How do I look?”

           She still wore her usual cloak, plain yellowish-tan trousers and tough leather boots, minus her gaiters for a change, but one of her afternoon tasks had clearly been to pick up a new tunic. The fine woollen cloth was dyed a rich blood-red, trimmed around the hems with intricate patterns of interwoven vines with strange creatures – birds, dragons, even a water horse – hiding amongst them, all embroidered in varying warm shades of yellow and orange. It was still sleeveless and knee-length like her everyday tunics, but was split into two wide panels front and back, slit up the side from the hem to her hips, and was tailored to accentuate her bust and her waist. A strip of red-and-gold cloth had been tied around her brow, keeping her hair out of her face. Perhaps she had had someone see to that, as well – it had been unbraided and allowed to flow in loose waves down her back, brushed until it shone like polished copper.

           “Great gods,” was all Asta managed. “I – gods.”

           “Not often I render you speechless,” said Roan. Her grin widened. “Not without the use of my hands, at least.”

           “Roan!” Asta blushed and looked away, but she was still smiling.

           Roan ran one hand down over Asta’s hair, combing her fingers gently through it. “You look perfect, mo chridhe. Utterly perfect. Oh, I almost forgot – these two are Kirsty and Erik. They’ve agreed to be witnesses.” She jabbed a thumb at the two people who had been standing behind her.

           Asta gave them a polite nod, returned by both of them, before a flash of white in the corner of her eye caught her attention and she looked down at Roan’s left arm. There was a bandage of some odd, faintly shiny material wound securely around it just below the elbow. “Your arm – are you hurt?”

           “Hm? Oh, that. No, it’s fine – I’ll show you after the ceremony. Shall we?” She offered Asta her other elbow and they walked arm-in-arm up the steps. A clerk met them just inside the doors and led their little group through to one of the offices, where the registrar had already laid all the relevant paperwork out on his desk.

           “Wedding party of zeDamar and MacBride?” he asked.

           “NicBruide,” corrected Roan, her tone suggesting it was not the first time she had encountered this error. “But aye, that’s us.”

           The registrar glanced down at the forms. “Yes, I apologise – I misread.” He cleared his throat. “We are here to witness and register the marriage of Asta zeDamar and Roan NicBruide. Have you written any personal vows you’d like to say or shall we proceed with the standard version?”

           “I… have a few words,” said Roan. She turned to face Asta and clasped both of her hands between her own. “Asta zeDamar. I… I have spent a lot of my life alone. I’ve never made friends easily, not as a bairn or as an adult. Sometimes people would come into my life, but… sooner or later they all left. Because they had to. Because they were afraid.” Her voice trembled. “Because I sent them away.” She released Asta’s hands and held her shoulders instead. “You are the only one who ever came back. That alone would amaze me every day if nothing else did – and believe me, much else does, from the strength of your heart to the sharpness of your mind, every single day since that night you first showed up on my doorstep. You’ve put up with me for longer than anyone but my grandfather. You are the best friend I have ever had, the most trusted ally of my heart, and the love of my life, and I can’t bear to spend one more day of that life without being married to you.” She sniffed and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of one hand.

           Asta reached up to wipe the not-quite-shed tears away with her thumb. “You saved my life,” she said, “and I mean that in so much more than the purely literal sense. Yes, you treated my wounds and rescued me from the people who wished me ill – but more than that, you made sure I had the time and space and help I needed to heal, in that heart and mind you love so much as well as physically. Nobody has ever understood me – has ever listened to me – the way that you have. You make me happier than I’ve ever been before just from being your own kind, capable self, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” She pushed herself up on her toes to kiss Roan softly on the lips.

           “That part comes later,” the registrar reminded them with a smile. “Do you have rings?” Asta fished the little box from her satchel and handed one ring to Roan.

           “Silver,” commented Roan, holding the unengraved band up to the light.  

           “Gold felt a little too much like brass,” said Asta quietly, rubbing her throat with one hand. Roan just nodded, understanding immediately.

           “Asta Irina zeDamar,” said the registrar. “Do you assent to marriage with Roan NicBruide?”

           “I do.” She slid the ring she still held onto Roan’s finger.

           “Roan NicBruide. Do you assent to marriage with Asta zeDamar?”

           Roan placed the other ring on Asta’s finger. “I do.”

           “Then I pronounce you married.” Roan didn’t wait for any further instruction and swept Asta right off her feet in a long and thorough kiss.

           “Well, then,” said Asta, resting her forehead against Roan’s. “There we go.” Roan just grinned and kissed her again.

           They all signed the forms to render everything properly official and left the building, bidding farewell to Kirsty and Erik at the bottom of the steps.

           “Do you really not have a middle name?” asked Asta as they strolled back to the hotel together.

           Roan shook her head. “I’m just Roan.”

           “It suits you, somehow. Very straightforward. You were going to tell me what happened to your arm?”

           “I was, wasn’t I?” She carefully loosened and unwound the bandage from around her arm. “The cloth is spelled and treated with a special ointment,” she explained. “It helps to quickly heal the skin without fading the ink.” Bandage removed, she held out her arm to reveal a dark blue, five-pointed star inked into the soft skin of her inner forearm, just below the crease of her elbow. Inside its crisp outline, each segment of the star was decorated with similar knots and spirals to the rest of her tattoos. “I get them to mark important occasions, remember?”

           Lost for words for the second time that evening, Asta reached out with one hand, but pulled it back a hair’s breadth before her fingers met Roan’s skin. “It won’t smudge or anything, will it?”

           “No – it won’t be fully healed yet, but the bandage moved things along enough that the ink is set.”

           Asta smiled and brushed her fingers against the star. The skin around it was still a little pink and swollen from the needle, the lines of the tattoo a little raised, but it would settle back as it healed the rest of the way. “It’s very neat work.”

           “Kirsty’s, as it happens,” said Roan. “She’s my tattooist. Erik, now, he’s just a random man who had some time to spare.”

           Asta had to laugh. “It’s beautiful. Thank you. Although… You do know that the origin of my name doesn’t actually have anything to do with stars, right?”

           “I do, but ‘divine beauty’ is a lot trickier to make a tattoo design of.” Roan smiled and ran her fingers through Asta’s hair again. “However well it suits you.”

           Asta leant against her side with a smile, winding one arm around her waist as they walked, and said nothing.

           Roan laid an arm around her shoulders. “Our table at the restaurant won’t be ready for another hour and a half, ish.”

           “Oh, no.” Asta half-closed her eyes, her smile growing a little more suggestive. “However will we fill the time?”

---

What did you think she had in mind?

Roan has had her star tattoo in a few pictures I’ve drawn of her, but this is the only time the personal meaning behind it has actually been pointed out. ‘Asta’ is a diminutive form of the name ‘Astrid’, which does indeed mean something like ‘divine beauty’.

[kemetic-dreams]

A Simple Workout Plan For Serious Mass Gain

The age-old desire to build a strong, well-proportioned physique is still alive and well. Yes, the average gym-goer no longer yearns to build a monstrous, freaky, eye-popping body complete with gnarly veins, huge, stumpy legs and the inability to fit into a dress shirt. But everybody in the gym still wants to build an appreciable amount of muscle and strength. And they want to actually see the results of their hard work without it being hidden under a layer of unwanted body fat.

Building an impressive physique not only grants external benefits such as strength, power, and an aesthetically pleasing structure. It also provides many internal benefits: confidence, increased self-esteem, and self-discipline, just to name a few.

But with all of the traffic out there regarding specific plans, protocols, and formulas, it’s easy to bang your head against the wall and fall into the black hole of frustration and confusion. Drowning in information makes the temptation to throw in the towel even stronger. Another trap is to become a plan jumper. Are you constantly switching from plan to plan without any real commitment to one for a significant period of time? Do you lack any real results from the last six months of training? How about the last year?

You might need to start over.

If what you are doing now is working, then by all means don’t stop. But if you’re the type I talked about above, then an intervention may be in order. You may feel comfortable in what you’re doing; you may be strong in certain areas and like that feeling; or you may just be a creature of habit and fear change. Whichever category you fit into, you have to ask yourself a serious question: Is what I’m doing getting me closer to my ultimate goal?

The Forgotten Muscle-Building Secret

Step back from all of the noise, hype, and empty promises for a moment, and you may find the key to success in the gym staring you right in the face. It’s not some huge secret, it’s just been forgotten. Are you ready to hear it? Here it is:

The key to building muscle (or any other physical goal for that matter) is to commit wholly to any credible plan and practice discipline, consistency, and persistence with said plan. In other words, it really doesn’t matter what program you choose, as long as it is in line with your goals. It’s up to you to make it work. Pick a plan—any plan—and stick to it for at least six months.Work at it, stay with it, and believe in it. After six months, then and only then can you switch things up or try something new.

What you really need in your training are the basics. Throw out all of the super-technical, complex and advanced techniques that just have you spinning your wheels. Some of them may be very effective ways to accelerate your training, but you need to relearn the basics and build a solid foundation first. Start with the moves that enable you to use the most amount of weight and utilize the most amount of muscle mass. Multi-joint, compound exercises like bench presses, shoulder presses, pull ups, rows, deadlifts, squats, and dips are the big boys on the block and will give you the most bang for your buck. Steer clear of exercises like double biceps, high cable curls which yield little-to-no real results in the bigger scheme of things.

Training to Build Mass

Let’s take this step by step:

Choose how many days per week you will train. One of the best schedules is to train four times per week. With that in mind, shoot for Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday with Wednesday and the weekend off.

Next, choose your frequency. Training your entire body twice per week with a simple upper/lower split routine makes the most sense for a basic plan. That means chest, back, and shoulders on Mondays and Thursdays and arms and legs on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Exercise selection is next. You will want to choose no more than two exercises for larger body parts such as chest, back, and legs and no more than one for smaller areas such as arms, shoulders and calves. Just be sure they are those big, compound exercises we talked about, instead of the smaller isolation moves.

Determine volume (sets). Your total amount of volume need not be too high. We tend to do a little more where we excel and cut back on what is hard. Strive for an even playing field, and shoot for four to five sets per exercise. That should have you in and out of the gym in about an hour.

Choose a rep range. Traditionally, pure strength training follows a lower rep range of 2-6 reps, while hypertrophy (muscle mass) tends to sit in the 6-12 range. Depending on your goal, anywhere from 4-12 reps will be ideal.

Don’t forget about rest periods. This factor is one of the most influential in your training. For example, if hypertrophy is the goal, then rest periods of 45-90 seconds are best. Resting too long allows for less fatigue and more time wasted in the gym.

Commit to it. Without commitment, all of the planning you painstakingly laid out will be for naught. Make a promise to yourself that you will see this through for at least six months.

Nutrition for Mass Gain

Nothing is as complicated as the diet-marketing landscape. Every few months, there seems to be a new “greatest diet plan ever,” guaranteed to give you the results you’re after. These plans always seem to be limiting in nature, in that they eliminate certain foods entirely or have you only eating at certain times of the day. Some will even go as far as letting you eat what you want after a specific time.

At the end of the day, a balanced diet that includes nutrient-dense proteins, plenty of vegetables and fruits, and some healthy fat sources is always the answer for long-term health benefits and muscle-building purposes. If the latest craze seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Let’s also take your eating plan step by step:

Determine how often you need to eat. Gone are the days of eating every two hours on the dot. That only creates too much stress and makes you a slave to your eating schedule. At the very least, make sure you are getting in three solid meals with a pre- and post-workout snack.

Start with protein. No, you don’t have to eat a whole chicken or 12 ounces of beef with every meal. Also, don’t rely too much on protein powder. Getting in about one gram per pound of bodyweight will do the trick. If you go slightly below, don’t sweat it. Get protein from chicken, lean beef, ground meat, fish, cheeses, eggs, protein powder (for post-workout) and Greek yogurt.

Don’t be afraid of carbs. The bottom line is that you need carbs if you want to build muscle. Be sure they are of the complex kind and avoid any added sugars. Go with rice (white and brown), potatoes (sweet and white), oats, green vegetables, fruits such as apples, bananas, and berries, and whole grain breads and pastas. Start with two grams per pound of bodyweight and then adjust as necessary.

Include the right kind of fat. You need healthy fats to balance out your mass gaining diet. Oils naturally found in fish, avocados, nuts, and nut butters are great choices. Shoot for around 0.5 grams per pound to start.

Pre- and post-workout nutrition. Its’s important to get in a little something prior to training, especially if you’re the nine-to-five type. This should include a lean protein and a complex carb to get you through your workout. Additionally, it’s a good idea to have some post-workout nutrition on hand immediately after training, which should include a fast-acting protein source and some quick digesting carbs to help the recovery process.

Schedule cheat days. What’s a mass-gaining eating plan without a cheat day? If your diet is relatively clean and full of the good stuff, take a meal or two on a weekend (not the whole day) and have anything you want. It will give you something to look forward to at the end of the week, and give you a much-needed mental break.

Stay consistent. As with training, you will need to stay consistent with the eating plan as well. A good day or two each week won’t cut it. If you want to pack on some serious muscle, every day counts.

Sample Basic Workout Plan for Muscle Mass

Let’s take a look at what it might look like to put this advice into action:

Note: The HIIT cardio can be performed either after your training session, or on an off day (Wednesdays and the weekends).

Click here for a printable copy of this training plan.

Sample Basic Nutrition Plan for Muscle Mass

The following eating plan is adequate for the average 180-pound lifter wanting to gain lean amounts of muscle mass. This is only an example, and should be adjusted to fit your specific needs.

Training Days

Meal 1 (breakfast)

3 whole eggs, scrambled or omelet-style

2 slices of wheat bread (toasted) with low-sugar jam or jelly or ½ cup (dry) oatmeal mixed with skim milk

Meal 2 (lunch)

Chicken breast salad with ½ avocado and vegetables with an oil-based dressing

1 small baked potato or sweet potato or 1 cup cooked rice

Or

2 slices or wheat bread, 4 ounces of deli meat, 2 slices of deli cheese, low-fat mayo or mustard, and 1 piece of fruit

Pre-workout

1 apple, banana, or other fruit such as blueberries

1 cup of Greek yogurt or 1 scoop of whey protein powder

Handful of mixed nuts

Post-workout

1 cup of blueberries or a banana or other piece of fruit

1 scoop of whey protein powder

Meal 4 (dinner)

4-6 ounces of fish, chicken, ground meat, or turkey

As much green vegetables and salad as you want

1 small potato or 1 cup cooked rice

Non-Training Days

Meal 1 (breakfast)

3 whole eggs, scrambled or omelet-style

2 slices of wheat bread (toasted) with low-sugar jam or jelly or ½ cup (dry) oatmeal mixed with skim milk

Meal 2 (lunch)

Chicken breast salad with ½ avocado and vegetables with an oil-based dressing

1 small baked potato or sweet potato or 1 cup cooked rice

Or

2 slices or wheat bread, 4 ounces of deli meat, 2 slices of deli cheese, low-fat mayo or mustard, and 1 piece of fruit

Meal 3 (snack)

1 apple, banana, or other fruit such as blueberries

1 cup of Greek yogurt or 1 scoop of whey protein powder

Handful of mixed nuts

Meal 4 (dinner)

4-6 ounces of fish, chicken, ground meat, or turkey

As much green vegetables and salad as you want

1 small potato or 1 cup cooked rice

Building Muscle Isn’t Complicated

Packing on lean muscle mass isn’t rocket science. It’s rather basic, really. All it takes is a commitment from you, some discipline, and the practice of day-to-day consistency. In time, you will have built an impressive foundation, and more importantly, a sense of how your own body works and what you need to do for a better physique. Pick a plan, stick with it, keep it simple, and reap big rewards.

[amenomakakoyumi]

Apology from a Distant Time (Elise & Takumi)

Continued from here!

Elise could sense the discomfort in Takumi’s responses.  Well, she was pretty sure anyone in like a twenty foot radius could feel it.  The tension surrounding the pair was so obvious but she had absolutely no clue as to what had caused it.  Sure, Takumi was prickly like a pineapple that she was completely convinced was the inspiration for his funky hairdo, but he’d never reacted this way around her.  It was almost as if he were a completely different person.

She let him free from her embrace and took a few steps back, brow furrowing as she tried to work out just what it was that had him so intensely upset.  By the time Takumi turned around to face her, a big smile was back across Elise’s face. He was already so upset. She couldn’t bring him down even further by letting him know that she was now worried too. At least he wasn’t pushing her away or storming off grumpy like she’d seen him do before.

“A favorite place? Hmm.” That was kind of hard. She hadn’t been here for that long but she supposed she spent most of her time chatting about life and stuff with her sweet Gary Wheat in the stables. Or the dining hall. Neither of those seemed quite right for this though. “Maybe to the side of the greenhouse? You know, right where you can see the fish pond. I haven’t seen too many people hanging out there and I know you aren’t the most peopley of people.”

Takumi was very thankful that the hug was broken, and even though he knew Elise was such a happy little soul he had to wonder how she could possibly be so happy— that was a stupid thought, she wasn't going to be upset over something she didn't even know about. Right.

He shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to look away and not let his rough and upset face be seen too much. He wasn't even sure he could look her smile in the face completely confidently, or even bring up a little joke about how well she knew him that he didn't want to be seen around too many people. "...Right. Greenhouse sounds good. C'mon..."

...

Takumi wanted to practically sprint to the greenhouse, but he kept himself at a steady pace so he didn't burn himself out nor did he cause poor Elise to have to keep up with him. Instead, he just opted for a brisk walk, hoping that he didn't have to shove anyone out of the way because he was just not in the mood at the moment to shove people out of the way. Sometimes you just weren't in the mood to be so prickly.

It felt like he was a prisoner walking to death row, but he finally got to the greenhouse. He took a deep breath, then exhaled. "Right. Princess Elise of Nohr... listen. I need to confess." The way he was wording it, he was certain he was going to spill the beans. But he refused to do that to her. Why would he? What would it accomplish? It'd only serve to make things worse and then nothing would get better in the long run. No, instead it was best to just tell a truth that would be rough but actually do something for the long run.

"I'm... not from such a happy time like everyone else. You see... I'm really not good at explaining this, you'd have to ask Azura about it, but... I'm from another timeline. Where Corrin chose Hoshido rather than... well, not making a choice." He sighed at his own brother's incompetence. Couldn't that moron just have chosen correctly in every timeline? "And, well... to me, we're technically still enemies. Heck, I haven't even interacted with you in any sort of a positive way—" He stopped himself. Now that was just a plain lie. He felt awful just saying that. "Well. That is to say— not really, we have talked and I viewed you as... well, easier to talk to than your siblings. But unfortunately, we never really became friends. And I'm not sure if we can be friends. That's all."

He hated how he worded that. Like he was building a wall around himself as if he didn’t have enough walls surrounding him. But it was too late; the words had already come out and the bricks had already been set.

@sweetbabysisterandhealer

[beerecordings]

Hey, I'm the anon who asked about spoopy stuff. Yeah, haha, I was referencing the date. Don't worry about not getting it at first. As for ideas... nothing really comes to mind. The best I can offer is something machete-related because of Jason from Friday the 13th. Uh so Anti with a machete? Although, knowing Jamie and his ability to summon weapons, he'd probably be like "Um, excuse you." before whipping out a larger machete.

lolllll i still love that headcanon that JJ has whatever weapons he wants so much

but goddamn Anti with a machete that’d be scary dude you’re right

and all my experience with machetes is like chopping up thistle in my granddad’s fields with like the sun beating down on us

and for some reason i’m just seeing like Marvin in a great big field with a bunch of dead wheat

so maybe him and the other egos have run away and they’re living somewhere there’s no internet or electrical signals, just trying to stay safe

and he’s walking around the field, about a mile from their little house, running his hands over the dead yellow stalks, crinkling beneath his fingers

and he sighs and looks up and then down and then gasps and looks up again

at the black silhouette standing in the shadow of the sun.

It wasn’t there moments before

but now it is

perhaps thirty feet off

down the same row of wheat

standing in an impossible darkness

and holding a machete in its hands

[roswellroamer]

Day 11. February 9, 2020. Invercargill to Te Anau. 182 km.

We had a leisurely morning allowing to finish yesterday's blog and pack up after an enjoyable 3 night's stay in the apartment. Left around 9:30 dissuaded from attending the street race by the morning rains. We loaded and rode to find the Burt Munro statue by Queens Park. We had turned around just short of it on foot yesterday and got some good/silly shots with our bikes feigning a racing victory versus Burt in his now famous modified 1920 Indian Scout.

After checking off the last "must do" item in In'Gill we headed once again along the scenic southern route through Riverton and Orepuki. The cafe at the latter made such an impression the previous day that we again stopped there. This time for mushroom eggs benedict and blueberry wheat germ hot cakes. 👍 Back in the saddle we aimed for Tuatapere amidst innumerable sheep farms as we turned from the foamy and roiling sea with it's accompanying & unnerving 40mph+ gusts. They required near constant attention to maintain position within the left hand lane, often reversing lean angle on a moment's notice as the road ducked behind a small hill and the vortex/eddy forces instantaneous weight shifts to avoid being blown to one side and then the next. Reminiscent as I said previously of Patagonia. We are in the "Roaring 40's" with regards to latitude and notoriety of wind strength. The ever changing Fiordland weather then obliged us a shift towards blue skies as we turned north at Tuatapere onto unexplored roads at least as far as we were concerned. Saw loads of "HayHenge" stacks of hay wrapped in plastic as if to invite speculation on the etiology of the rows and stacks of waterproofed bales often exactingly placed about the Southland and Fiordland. A brown sign beckoned a turn from the route to explore the Clifden suspension bridge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifden_Suspension_Bridge

Aside from this still being the longest suspension bridge in NZ and dating from 1899, something pretty cool happened there today. I pulled up near the bridge and saw what appeared to be a couple of bikes parked on the bridge. As I neared the bridge I saw that there were a couple of Triumph's before the bridge and a couple of Rocket 3's on the bridge. I struck up a conversation with the 6 NZ folks riding the 4 bikes and it turns out that two of the guys were on Rocket 3 TFC's! 8 of the 750 sold worldwide were sold in NZ. One there was number 100 something and the other number 500 something. I just took delivery of #446 two days before my departure for NZ. It was fun talking with them about their new bikes which had endured the torrential rains and loads of dirt heading from the North Island to Burt Munro however had been cleaned immaculately since. The one guy gave me his email and I've since sent him a link to this blog. A local woman told me that the Waiau river flowing under the bridge was excellent for fishing at least according to her son. She was also a bit enamored by the TFC display. The Waiau River and lake Manapouri provided beautiful scenery and an interesting if not controversial hydroelectric history. New Zealand's largest hydroelectric plant there is capable of generating 850MW of power but has also depleted river flow dramatically and stirred controversy. The engineering marvel at one time generated something like 80% of NZ power. The tunnels that divert the water now on demand to Doubtful Sound utilize a 750' drop to generate so much power via tunnels 10km long through rock to do so. Impressive. Also note that the Waiau river was used for some key Lord of the Rings scenes towards the end of the first film of the trilogy as the river Anduin. NZ voted down the proposal to rename the river to Anduin in 2009.

We stopped by lake Manapouri in the little town of Manapouri for a view and a Coke Zero and a mince and cheese pie. Serene. Warm. Scenic. I could've sat there for another hour or more. But we remounted and headed the 25' around to Lake Te Anau and it's eponymous town. The bright sunny and warm day that emerged from the solemn and somewhat harsh Invercargill was a stark but welcome contrast. Loads of tour companies and souvenir shops were sprinkled between the lake shore road and the town's main drag. This is something of a jumping off point for trampers and folks looking to enjoy the scenic lake and all there is to offer in this pristine section of NZ. The lake itself is the largest freshwater lake by volume in the whole of Australasia and is the largest on the South Island. Volume is huge due to the enormous depth of the lake going to 1,368' deep putting much of the lake bed hundreds of feet below sea level. One of the topographical features that made this area one used in a number of scenes in Lord of the Rings are the 3 inland fiords (south, middle and north) on the western side of the lake. The only inland fiords in NZ. The area is a world heritage site, with 99% of the well over 4,000 square miles of the Fiordland National Park not ever coming into contact with human presence. This is how NZ looked before it was settled. Covered in trees and dramatic. Found the hotel I booked and was very pleased. It was a convent nearly a hundred years ago and converted into a special B&B type lodging. The confessional has been re-engineered into a dumb waiter in the lobby. Mark the owner is very hospitable and interesting. He owns the museum of language in Paris and also the DC-3 that we rode by on the tarmac at Manapouri airport. He informed me that I had reserved the "homestead" which turns out to be an entire house with 3 bedrooms, full kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. Sweet! Big, old, charming and a view of the mountains across the lake. Mark persuaded us to commit to his Greek chef's planned Hungarian dinner of goulash and also explained the myriad of touristic options. When we had stopped at lake Manapouri I had inquired at the docks regarding a boat trip to Doubtful Sound. More remote than the very popular and now for us canceled Milford Sound boat trip (due to the aforementioned road wash out) the agent informed me that all excursions for tomorrow were fully booked. However, Mark suggested at our Te Anau Lodge that the float plane excursion was a great way to see the Doubtful Sound as we as explore the many waterfalls and lakes of the Fiordland NP. I said yes right away and Ted was also in. A quick call revealed 2 open seats on the 6PM flight. Kismet in our favor today. After unloading our stuff we headed to the lake shore where it isn't difficult to spot Ivan's plane, the only float plane on the lake. We head to Bailiez cafe for some adult refreshments and soak in the beauty of the town, the screams the passers by at an outdoor high top table. At the appointed time we stroll back to the dock and find 3 folks from just outside Madrid (Spain, not New Mexico) also on our flight. We have a brief safety talk then climb into the six seater. Everyone has a window seat and headset communications make it easy to talk over the propeller/engine sounds. We taxi into the lake and as we gather speed watch a waterski boat make some much needed course corrections... the skier gave us a wave as we released from the light chop and soared overhead, about a hundred meters off our port (my) side. Pictures don't really do justice to the hidden lakes (13 of them, all super deep carved by glaciers), waterfalls, tree avalanches that take 400 years to repopulate, mountain tops and fiords. I put a couple here anyway. Lots of incredible views. Doubtful Sound info here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubtful_Sound

Our forty minute plane ride was so worth it. To see Doubtful without aerial assistance requires a cruise ship or seagoing trip or from here the journey involves a boat to a bus, over a mountain then down to another boat. About an 8 hour minimum to explore. On the way back we passed by Browne Lake and the largest waterfall in NZ at 2,742 feet tall, Browne Falls. But the falls are more of a water slide as it covers over 3,700 horizontal feet. This last issue prevents the falls from competing with Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world. We got loads of pics of course and a lifetime memory of this stunning and pristine place. A brief ride back the the old homestead (😆) and we went right to dinner. A cherry yogurt like appetizer was tasty followed by an unconventional that was accompanied by a barley salad in place of the usual noodles. But very good it was. Dessert was homemade carmel "Hokey Pokey" ice cream and a poppyseed pastry. Conversations with a couple Oregonian women, a Danish couple and an Australian couple as well as wine which was included with the dinner experience. Great day and night!

[littlelovelyspiderling]

The Experiment

Peter Parker agrees to help Black Widow test a new device. When he gets stuck, some of his fellow Avengers decide to have some fun. Post Infinity War so SPOILERS!!

Word count: 6,713

“Hey kid, how strong are you?”

Peter blinked and looked up from his homework, which was strewn across the coffee table in a chaotic jumble. “Who, me?”

“No, the other kid sitting criss-cross on the floor eating three orders of In-and-Out french fries.”

The teen smiled shyly, licking the salt from his fingers. “Oh, right. Well, um, strong? Yeah, I’m pretty strong.”

It was a long weekend. After a lot of begging and bribing, May had agreed to let him spend it at the Avengers compound. It actually took less convincing than Peter had expected, seeing how May had doubled down on strictness ever since her nephew’s impromptu field trip to space and the catastrophic fallout that had come to pass. Now that everything was back to normal, everyone seemed a lot more tense and protective. It took weeks before she let him go back to his evening patrols. But when he brought up Mr. Stark’s invitation to stay at the upstate facility for a few days, insisting that he’d get all his homework done and do the dishes for the next month, May had voiced her approval surprisingly readily. Maybe she was sick of having him cooped up in the house with her for so long: school had been canceled for a spell as the world tried to piece itself back together.

Or maybe she’d noticed how shaken the experience had left Peter, and she thought the weekend getaway might help cheer him up a little. If he was being honest with himself, Peter still wasn’t fully recovered from the whole ‘dying then coming back to life’ ordeal, and he felt like he’d never be back to his old self again.

But he refused to let anything spoil this trip for him. Because he was at the Avengers facility. Training, studying, and hanging with the Avengers for an entire three days. He could hardly contain his excitement.

“On a scale from Tony Stark sans suit to the Hulk, how strong would you say you are?”

“Hey,” Tony groused from the opposite side of the room. He shot a glare over his shoulder before turning back to the dizzying screen of 3D displays in front of him, which his fingers danced across like keys on a piano. “Why you gotta do me like that, Romanoff? I’m strong. I lift. I drink protein shakes and wheat grass and all that shit.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. Peter giggled.

“I would guess I’m somewhere between Captain America and the Hulk. Probably closer to Cap. Definitely below Thor.”

“You think you’re stronger than Steve?” Natasha asked. He was expecting judgement, but her tone carried an air of curiosity instead.

“Only because I was able to hold an entire ferry together,” he said. He glanced at Stark and lowered his voice. “And I sorta lifted an entire building off myself.”

“Really?” Natasha mused. “Well, in that case, I’d say you’re the perfect candidate.”

Spider-Man frowned, tilting his head to the side. “Candidate? For what?”

“Stark, you mind if I borrow the kid for a minute?”

Tony waved his hand in acknowledgement, murmuring under his breath as he continued to work. Peter hadn’t seen the man this busy since he’d gone about sorting through the complicated situation between Secretary Ross’ government agenda and the newly-reformed Avengers. Now, nano-tech was the word that kept popping up time and time again. He had no idea how his mentor could possibly make his Iron Man armors any cooler than they already were, yet he always found a way to make it so.

“Sweet,” Natasha said, taking the young hero by the wrist. “Come on, this way.”

Peter Parker had to admit: he was a little scared of Black Widow. He’d seen her fight, he knew her rep, and in her presence he always felt a bit uneasy, like she could break his neck at any moment and he’d never see it coming. Not that he expected she would—in general, Ms. Romanoff was nice to him. Certainly nicer than Sam or Dr. Strange, who never missed a chance to poke fun at him due his age, his height, or anything else they decided to find amusing at the time. Of course, Peter always had a witty comeback to counter with, and he knew deep down they didn’t actually hate him. At least, he hoped not.

But Natasha was close to impossible to get any kind of read on. She could seem very kind and relaxed one minute then serious and deadly the next. And no matter what she was doing, it always felt liked she had a secret ulterior motive at play, one that Peter could never guess.

She brought him to the next floor down. The elevator opened to large lab, which was packed with all sorts of machines, equipment, vehicles, and weapons. Most of them were covered by sheets and blanketed in a thick layer of dust, as if they hadn’t been touched in years. Others looked like they’d just been used, and some of the large machines were currently hard at work, creaking and grinding with progress.

“Wow,” Peter said. “What is this place?”

“Storage unit for all of the Avengers’ new tech,” she replied, stepping through the doors and on to stained concrete. “Some of its ancient, outdated. Lots of old Stark tech. We get new loads from S.H.I.E.L.D. every week.”

Peter followed, gazing around in awe. He trailed his fingers along the rows and rows of tarps, squinting to try to see what treasures lied hidden underneath. His touch caused one of the sheets to slip off to one side, and he froze in place.

“No way,” he gawked. He reached out and pressed his hand to the cold metal. “No freaking way! Is that—is this—Mr. Stark’s Hulkbuster armor? The giant Iron Man suit he used to stop Dr. Banner when he went crazy in South Africa?”

Natasha smiled at his childlike giddiness. “Yes, it is. Just the helmet, though. The rest is still under repairs after the fight in Wakanda.”

Peter squished his face against the dim lens and cupped his hands around his eyes. “This is so cool! I bet it’s like being inside a Transformer, or one of those huge Pacific Rim Jaeger things!”

“Probably,” she said, turning around to stifle a laugh. Geez—no wonder Stark was so destroyed after losing this kid. She pushed a lock of hair out of her face. “But that’s not the tech I brought you down here for.”

Spider-Man glanced up eagerly. “Which one? Am I gonna get to test some of the weapons in here? Is there, like, a strength-tester type machine or something?” For an instant, his excitement deflated. “Wait. You didn’t bring me down here just to make me move stuff, did you? Is that why you asked how strong I am? Because you want me to carry a bunch of heavy things around? I mean, I’m not saying no, I was just kinda hoping—”

“I’m not making you move things,” she assured him. She walked across the room to a counter that housed a wide assortment of tiny devices. She grabbed one from the line and tossed it to the ground where it materialized into a new shape in an instant, expanding like a high-tech version of those capsules you leave in water that grow into colorful dinosaurs. She nodded towards it. “I need you to help me test this thing out.”

Peter grinned and ran to her side. He skidded to a stop and beamed at the strange contraption. To his surprise, it looked like nothing more than flat, metal, slightly slanted table. A wrinkle formed along his brow as he tried to understand what the big deal was.

“A…table?” he said bemusedly. He poked at it, expecting it to grow legs or something. “What are we testing? How many cups I can stack on it before everything falls?”

“It’s from Wakanda,” she explained. “It’s made of vibranium.”

Spider-Man’s eyes widened. “Whoa, seriously? Like, the stuff Cap’s shield is made of?”

“Yes. Which means it’s hella expensive, so if it doesn’t work, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“What does it do?” he asked.

Natasha leaned against it with both hands. “It’s supposed to be able to completely immobilize enhanced individuals. In a situation where someone like you or Thor or an enemy possessing superhuman strength needs to be restrained in order to keep others safe, this thing can stop them in an instant and hold them for as long as we need.” She turned back to him and crossed her arms over her chest. “Sure would’ve been nice to have something like this back when we were fighting those alien freaks.”

Peter stared at her then back at the table. “So…it’s like…a cage…?”

“In a sense. It’s more like an instant straight-jacketing machine. Here, let me show you.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and moved him to the open space in the center of the room. He stumbled awkwardly over his feet until she had him place, feeling a little silly. Pulling two small beads from her belt, Natasha walked towards the back wall to stand opposite of him. She stopped when there was about twenty feet of space between them.

“All right, so let’s pretend we’re fighting.” She rolled the pair of beads between her fingers. “You’re an evil murderous alien monster with super strength. I’m the heroic Avenger who needs to stop you.” She coaxed him forward with a twitch of her hand. “Now, run at me like you’re going to attack me.”

Peter had no idea where this was going. He was a little afraid, but also incredibly curious. He swallowed his fear, then balled his hands into fists at his side.

“Um, okay. If you say so.”

Without allowing himself to think on it longer, Spider-Man charged. He didn’t know what she expected him to do once he reached her. Fortunately or not, he didn’t get the chance to find out. Before he had cleared ten feet, Natasha flung the beads at him. They split in half mid-air, then zipped towards him as tiny streaks of light. Peter was startled when he felt both of his wrists and ankles get hit with something. He staggered to a stop, staring down at his hands to find thick metal cuffs latched around both arms. They weren't attached by a chain or anything—they were just stuck there, like two heavy bracelets. He looked to Natasha with a scowl.

“Wait, what the hell are—?”

A beep sounded from what appeared to be a watch she was wearing. She had her thumb against a button in the center. Instantly, Peter was yanked sideways by the metal clasps. He yelped in surprise. He didn’t even have time to register what was happening before his back collided with a cold, smooth surface, and he found himself staring up at the ceiling, stunned.

“W-what the—?” Spider-Man tried to lift his arms, but they were pinned down by the metal wristbands. His legs, too, had succumbed to the same fate: arrested flat and completely immobile. Two bands of silvery-looking material shot out from underneath both of his shoulders and stretched across his collarbone, connecting in the middle of his chest to form a belt that restrained him even more than he already was. The same restrictive bands also formed around both of his knees. It took him a few moments to register that he was stuck to the vibranium table that had looked so innocuous only minutes ago, and he could barely move.

“M-Ms. Romanoff?” he called out fearfully. He strained to lift his head, which was about the only movement he was capable of. His terror subsided a little when she stepped into his narrow frame of view, looking just as surprised as he was.

“Holy crap. That was…wow.” She stared down at her watch, which Peter concluded was some kind of controller for the restraining device. “Those are some seriously strong magnets.”

“Is it working? I mean, is this what it’s supposed to be doing?” He squirmed and shifted as much as he could. He wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but being rendered so completely incapable of moving definitely rubbed him the wrong way.

“Yep. Perfectly. It’s designed to rapidly capture and contain opponents. It’s amazing how they manage to fit so much stuff inside such a tiny container.” She held out the device on her wrist as she spoke. “The base plate can shrink or grow to accommodate different kinds of combatants, from Antman-sized to up to twenty by twenty feet. It also has different levels of containment for more powerful enemies.”

Peter nodded, trying his best to look relaxed. “That’s—yeah, that’s really impressive. For sure.” He attempted to shrug, but even that was beyond his ability. “Seems a bit overkill, though, don’t you think?”

“There’s no such thing as overkill when it comes to protecting the world from aliens, kiddo.” She clicked a few of the buttons on her wrist controller. “I could set it so that you’re entire body is electrified stiff, or where every joint and tendon have their own personal restraints. The highest setting is essentially that scene from Star Wars where Han Solo gets stuck in carbonite, except with vibranium.”

“Really?” Peter beamed. “From The Empire Strikes Back? That’s actually possible? That’s insane!” Then he winced, flexing his fingers nervously. “But, um, please don’t do that to me.”

“I won’t,” Natasha said. “All I need for you to do now is to try your hardest to break out.”

The teen blinked. “Break out?”

“Shuri claimed that on the lowest security setting, not even the Hulk should be able to escape. In the event I need to use this thing in the future, I want to make sure that’s true. But since Bruce is still having trouble ‘hulking out’ and Thor would probably end up short-circuiting the whole mechanism, I figured you’d be the best test subject.” She gestured towards him with a wave of her hand. “So, whenever you’re ready.”

“Just…go crazy? Like an animal caught in a trap?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

Scoffing, Peter turned to look at the ceiling. “Okay. I’ll, uh, do my best.”

And he did. Peter summoned every ounce of his spider strength to try to break free of the bonds, straining and wrenching and twisting with all his might. He even tried getting his fingers around the cuffs and bending the metal so he could wriggle his way out. All of his efforts were to no avail. The vibranium restraints had him beat. He was stuck. Knowing that Shuri had designed the device, it didn’t exactly surprise him.

“So I guess that means it works,” Peter concluded, panting softly. “Yay.”

“It’s a very sturdy contraption,” Natasha agreed. “It should come in handy in the future.”

Spider-Man bit the inside of his cheek. “So, um, does that mean I can get out now? Or are there other things you need help with?”

“No, that’s it. Just give me a second. I need to write something down.”

Peter nodded, and she walked back to the counter, tapping at one of the screens. He rested against the metal table, more than ready to be able to move freely again.

A moment later, the elevator at the back of the room dinged and opened. As the person entered the lab, it took Peter a second to determine their identity from his unconventional position. The figure stopped when he saw him, furrowing his brow.

“Peter? Is that you?” Sam glanced to his right. “Uh, Nat? What’s going on here?”

“Science experiment,” she replied, not looking up.

“We’re testing to see if I can break out of this restraining thingy with my super strength!” Peter said enthusiastically. “It’s supposed to catch bad guys who have enhanced abilities and whatnot.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Can you?”

The young hero pouted. “No. But it’s made of vibranium, and it’s meant to stop people as strong as the Hulk, so…”

Sam walked to stand beside him, placing his hands on his hips. “Huh. Interesting.”

“All right, all done,” Nat said. She trekked across the room with her wrist held to her eyes. “Ready to be free?”

“Yes please,” Peter said sheepishly. But before she clicked the release button, Sam held up his hand.

“Hold on, Romanoff,” he said. His lips twitched into the tiniest sliver of a smile. “How exactly were you testing to see if he could break out?”

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean? I just told him to try to escape, and he couldn’t.”

“But that’s so unrealistic,” Sam insisted. “If you had a bad guy trapped in that thing, they would be fighting to get out like their life depended on it. He’s got no incentive to escape.”

Peter shifted against the restraints. “I mean, I am pretty uncomfortable. And my pride’s a little hurt that I wasn’t strong enough to get out.”

Sam shook his head, clearly unconvinced. “Uh-uh. If you really want to test this contraption’s integrity, you’ll have to give the kid a compelling reason to escape.”

“Like ice cream?” he suggested a little too quickly. When Sam snorted and rolled his eyes, he faked a cough. “I mean, um, a steak? Two steaks. And a cold brandy on ice.”

“Go ahead and try if you want,” Natasha told him. “But I seriously doubt there’s any way he’s getting out of this thing on his own. Even with ice cream on the line.”

Sam laid his hands on the metal table. A smirk pulled at the corners of his lips, like he knew something that nobody else did. “Well, that wasn’t really the type of incentive I had in mind, Romanoff. You’re suggesting we give him an award for escaping, which is one way to go about this. But I think punishing him for not getting out would be much more effective.”

Peter frowned. “Punish me? How? Isn’t being stuck in this thing already punishment enough?”

Sam drummed his fingers against the table. Peter could feel the short vibrations humming against his back.

“I’ve got one idea in mind,” he said, raising his hand over Peter’s midsection. “Are you ticklish, kid?”

The question took him by surprise. It was not something that came up in casual conversation. He wondered why Sam thought the information was pertinent to the experiment, until he realized what this was leading to. His first instinct was to guard himself, because experience had taught him that no matter what answer you gave in response, you were going to get tickled. But his wrists simply strained against the clasps. His arms were locked in place, splayed out at both of his sides. His feet and legs were firmly glued to the table. He hadn’t expected anyone to take advantage of the helpless situation Ms. Romanoff had placed him in, so he hadn’t even considered just how vulnerable he was in his current state. Until now.

Peter’s ears went red.

“I—um—I don’t—w-why—”

Those were the only words he got out before a finger poked him in the belly. A high-pitched squeak jumped from his throat before he could stop it. The grin that overtook Sam’s features made him want to die.

“Oh, so you are,” he said mischievously. Peter’s face flushed four different shades of pink in a matter of seconds. “In that case, this ought to give you a very big incentive to escape, don’t you think?”

“W-wahahait!” Peter stammered. Sam had literally touched him once, but knowing what was about to come was filling him with so much anxiety that he couldn’t contain the laughter already seeping into his voice. He pulled against the cuffs as hard as he could, but he knew it was hopeless. “I—I can’t get out! It’s impossible!”

“Aw, come on now, Spider-ling,” Sam said, swirling his finger just above his stomach. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. I know you can do this. I believe in you. All you need is a little motivation.”

With that, Sam started poking his belly with both index fingers, moving up and down his torso with teasingly casual movements. Within seconds, Peter was reduced to a helpless bundle of giggles, recoiling at every touch as much as the restraints would allow. Peter had been tickled before, so he knew he was pretty sensitive, but never like this. Being unable to defend himself made it a hundred billion times worse than all the times Uncle Ben had pinned him to the bed when he was little, or when May would trap him in the corner of the couch and tickle his neck with her fiendish nails. Here, stuck inside an inescapable restraint machine, there was nothing he could do but laugh himself into a frenzy.

“Nohoho! Plehehease!” the teen begged. Sam only grinned wider.

“Are you kidding? I’m barely even touching you.” Suddenly, all ten of Sam’s fingers convened on his stomach at once and began to scribble all over mid-section. “Now, if I was doing something like this—yeah, that would make sense.”

If Peter was able, he’d be thrashing all over the place, kicking his legs and hugging his arms around his body. Instead, the only thing he could do was desperately try to angle himself away from Sam’s merciless fingers. To his dismay, his efforts did nothing to dampen the onslaught of tickles, and his light giggling transformed into heavy, uncontrollable laughter that racked his entire frame. Off to the side, Natasha watched the poor kid amusedly. Not even she could deny how adorable he was.

“Ms. Rohohmahahanoff!” Peter squealed, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his face against the table. “Hehahahehehelp!”

Sam looked up from Peter without slowing his attack. “Yeah, Ms. Romanoff. Why don’t you help? I could use a hand over here.”

Natasha hinted a smile. “That’s okay. I think you’re doing just fine on your own.” She snagged a can of beer from the fridge in the cabinet and cracked it open. “But keep it up. I think it’s working.”

“You know what? I think you’re right.” He leaned towards the kid’s bright red face, tickling every inch of his tummy. “You hear that, Spidey? Nat believes in you too. Just try a little harder, and you’ll be out of here in no time!”

“Shuhuhahat up!” Peter laughed. “Y-you—you—ahahahahasshole!”

Sam stuck his tongue into the inside of his cheek. “What was that?” he said threateningly, grinning from ear to ear. He moved his hands down to Peter’s sides. “What did you just call me?” He started kneading his thumbs into the kid’s hipbones, going faster and faster with every passing second. “No, go ahead. Say it again. I dare you.”

Poor little Peter began to shriek with giggles. Clearly name-calling in his defenseless position was not a wise idea. Sam couldn’t help but chuckle at how high-pitched and childlike the young hero’s laughter was. He was too cute for his own good.

“Is someone dying in here?” a voice called from across the room. Sam turned to see Clint Barton standing at the foot of the stairs, furrowing his brow.

“Oh, hey B,” he greeted him. “Naw, no one’s dying. I’m just trying to motivate the kid to get out of this device on his own. He’s got really bad self-esteem issues.”

The archer strolled over to the metal table where Spider-Man lied. He was relieved to find that the noise he was hearing wasn’t from a murder scene, but instead the shrill, happy laughter of a ticklish teenager. He smiled and shook his head.

“Aw, buddy, what are they doing to you? Is the big, mean Falcon bullying you?”

Peter squirmed and squealed, knowing well there was no point in asking Hawkeye for help. Despite being a father, the master assassin was not very keen to pity, especially when it came to Spider-Man. He tended to lean towards the Sam and Strange side of the spectrum when it came to interacting with the younger hero. And from the smug grin plastered on his face as he watched Peter laugh helplessly, he assumed that wasn’t changing any time soon.

Nonetheless, groveling was pretty much his only option.

“Hehehehelp! Hehehehehelp me! Plehehehease!” Sam’s cruel, wiggly fingers never gave his ticklish tummy a break. “Ohoho my gahahahad! I can’t—I cahahahahan’t!”

“See? What did I tell yah? All he keeps saying is ‘I can’t do it’ and ‘it’s impossible!’ Even though he knows Nat and I both believe in him, he still doubts himself. Isn’t that heartbreaking?”

“Truly,” Clint agreed. To Peter’s horror, he felt a single fingertip start twitching against his left armpit. “Maybe he needs just a little more encouragement to give him that final push.”

“Maybe,” Sam concurred, smirking. Another finger found his right armpit, and Peter fell to pieces.

“Nonononohohohoho!” he pleaded piteously. “I can’t—I cahahan’t—I can’t!”

“Does Petey have ticklish underarms?” Clint teased, brushing his fingernails up and down the sensitive skin. Try as he might to guard himself, Peter was defenseless against the second layer of torment.

“Ahahahahaha!” he screeched. “Nohohohohahaha! Stahahahap!”

Clint smiled. “Hmm. I’d say he does.” He switched to digging all ten fingers into the hollows of each pit, the kid’s loud and giggly protests quickly teaching him which techniques were most effective and where his most ticklish spots were located. He knew applying his experience as an highly skilled interrogator to tormenting an innocent kid was a little harsh, but Peter’s laughter was so adorable and uplifting, all he wanted was to make more of it. One person tickling his vulnerable body was bad enough, but Peter was certain that two would kill him. Starting from wrists, Barton scuttled his fingers all the way down the teen’s arms, pausing just above his pits to build anticipation.

“Damn, you’re really making him squirm,” Sam chuckled, watching the poor kid crumble beneath Clint’s upper body attack. He continued to squeeze and pinch Peter’s sides and hips. The way he twitched from his every touch was amusing. “How are you going to survive as an Avenger if you can’t even take a little tickling, Pete? What if your nemeses find out your weakness and you spill all of our secrets to them?” He noticed Peter’s shirt had hiked up a little from his constant twisting and shifting, and a very evil idea popped into his head. He slipped his fingers underneath the material and started spidering his nails against his bare stomach. “One way or another, they always figure out how to get under your skin.”

Immediately, Peter’s laughter jumped three octaves and several decibels higher. “NOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” He threw his head back and arched his spine against the table. “STOHOHAHAHAP! STAHAHAP IT!”

“Uh-oh,” Clint giggled. “You’re in for it now.”

Ten deadly fingertips moved freely over his tummy, exploring every inch of the soft, unbearably ticklish skin. They dragged up and down his sides, clawed at his midriff, and drew ruthless circles round and round his sensitive bellybutton. And all Peter could do was laugh and laugh, balling his hands into fists against the table.

“What does that feel like?” Sam asked him. “Like a bunch of itsy-bitsy spiders? Crawling all over the itsy-bitsy Spider-Man’s belly?”  

“PLEHEHEHEHEASE!” he cried. “NOHOHO MORE! NOHOHOHO MOHOHORE!”

“Hang on, I want to try something,” Clint said, taking his hands off his underarms for an instant. Sam’s fingers gave his tummy a moment’s break, and Peter thought he might faint from relief. “I always do this to Cooper whenever he’s being a little punk.”

Peter didn’t even register Barton moving from the head of the table to the middle. He was too busy relishing in the feeling of not having twenty fingers simultaneously digging into his most sensitive areas. He didn’t think there was any better feeling in the entire world.

“P-please, hehe…” he giggled weakly, fighting to catch his breath. “Just…just gimme a minute…”

Not even three seconds later, Clint lifted up Peter’s shirt, wrapped his hands around both sides of his torso, and blew the biggest, longest, most insufferable raspberry directly into the kid’s exposed belly. The sound that left Peter’s throat the moment Barton made contact was less like a laugh and more like a scream.

Natasha glanced at the kid and shook her head with a chuckle. “You guys are so mean.”

While kneading his fingers into his sides and hips, Clint assaulted the kid’s tummy with raspberry after merciless raspberry. Peter bucked and shrieked, whipping his head from side to side.

“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! AHAHAHAHAHAAA!”

After six in a row, Barton smiled down at the puddle of laughter that used to be Peter Parker. “What do you say? Are you motivated yet? You almost ready to break out of this thing?”

Peter had hoped after so much tickling his body would start to get used to it, but no. It seemed as time went on, his skin only became more sensitive to every poke and touch that came his way. Which meant with each passing minute, the increasing intensity of the tickling was driving him that much crazier. This was not at all how he’d expected his weekend with the Avengers to go. He cringed beneath the fingers scratching and stroking his defenseless tummy, bubbling with laughter.

“What’s the matter? I’m just giving you a belly rub. Like you’re a puppy. A teeny-tiny spider-puppy. I thought puppy’s loved getting belly rubs. Don’t they?”

He scribbled his nails up and down his entire midsection. While Clint was busy teasing his tummy, Peter felt someone pull both of his shoes off.

“Maybe we need to try something new,” Sam suggested. “Maybe we need to give his arms and his legs a compelling reason to get out.”

“WAHAHAHAIT!” Peter squealed, but it was no use. Sam held his foot still with one hand and started tickling it with the other, skittering his fingers along the sides tracing the arch from ball to heel. Peter tried so hard to kick himself free. The vibranium restraints were too strong.

“I feel like most people are just ticklish in some places,” Sam chuckled, watching the kid twist and twitch and giggle as he viciously strummed his nails against the center of his foot, as if he were playing a guitar. “But you, my friend, are ticklish all over. I think there’s something biological at work there. Maybe you should see a doctor.” He peeled back Peter’s scrunched-up toes and started worming his fingers between every single one, making sure no piggies were left out of the tickle attack. Once he’d finished tormenting that foot, he switched to the other one, starting the entire cruel process all over again.

“I’M GOHOHOHONNA DIHIHIHIHIHIE!” he cried shrilly. “P-PLEHEHEHEHEASE STOHOHAHAHAHAHOP!”

“Who’s going to die?” Steve Rogers asked. He and Rhodes descended the stairs into view. They’re faces were clouded with concern.

“Peter,” Natasha said, pointing. “They’re tickling him to death.”

Cap glanced at the laughing, beat-red kid sprawled across the table. Sam and Clint were teamed up on the helpless teen, kneading his sides and tickling his feet. Steve pulled his phone from his belt and frowned.

“Then why did you text us ‘come 2 basement if u need a pick-me-up’?”

Natasha smiled and shrugged. “Because his laughter is probably the most contagious thing in the entire world.”

A moment later, Tony Stark appeared behind them, standing on his tip-toes to see over Cap’s shoulder. “What pick-me-up, Romanoff? Did my tanning bed finally come in?”

Sam winced. “Uh-oh. Daddy’s here.”

Steve stepped to the side to let him pass, masking a smile. “I think they’re bullying your kid, Stark.”

Tony glanced across the lab and spotted Peter between Barton and Sam. The sound of wild, high-pitched laughter met his ears.

Once he realized his only potential savior was in the room, Peter abandoned any dignity he had left. “M-MIHIHISTER—AHAHAHAHAHA!” the teen screeched. “MR. STAHAHARK, HELP!”

Tony jogged to his side, and Sam and Clint stopped tickling him, sharing a nervous look. He stared down at his poor little mentee, strapped to a table like an asylum patient, red as a tomato, panting and wheezing and giggling all at the same time. He looked so small and exhausted and desperate, like he’d do anything to be free. Stark felt pity swell in his chest for the hapless teen. But in a way, the kid also appeared…happy. He knew it was artificial, that it was a happiness being completely forced upon him. And yet, ever since Peter had returned to the world after disintegrating into dust in his arms, the smile that normally occupied his face at all hours of the day had become noticeably absent. He was quieter, more distant, less excitable. After everything he’d gone through, it was a lot harder to make the kid laugh.

Tony lifted his gaze to the group of people in the lab, honing in on Sam and Clint. A deep wrinkle formed between his eyebrows. He looked like a dad about to scold his children for picking on their little brother. Everyone waited to see how he would retaliate.

“Come on, guys. Seriously?” He traced his glare across every face in the room. Even Cap felt guilty for some reason. Then, slowly, a smile pulled at the corner of his lip. “If you really want to make the kid laugh, you’ve got to go for his ribs.”

Everybody blinked in astonishment. Peter’s relief reeled.

“W-what?” Mr. Stark?” His mentor looked down at him apologetically.

“Sorry, Pete,” he said, giving his hair a ruffle. Then he locked his fingers around his ribcage.

Tony understood that Spider-Man was a strong and nimble individual who had the ability to detect attacks before they even happened. His skill set made it difficult to ever catch him by surprise, including the occasional times Tony had tried to poke or pinch his sides to help ease the constant tension he carried in his shoulders. Despite the kid’s happy-go-lucky facade, Peter was an incredibly anxious person, and sometimes needed to be reminded to relax a little, especially in the presence of his fellow Avengers. But Stark rarely succeeded in loosening his nerves, and he’d never had the chance to make him fully, authentically laugh before.

But right now, Peter was trapped, and he had an aunt who loved to share embarrassing facts about her nephew. This was an opportunity too rare and wonderful to pass up.

So the genius billionaire started drilling his fingers into the kid’s ribs. The response was immediate and hysterical. He watched Peter’s face shift from shock to betrayal to denial to defeat in the span of two seconds. For the first few moments, he laughed like crazy, squirming and shrieking as Stark switched between tickling every rib and grinding his knuckles into his entire ribcage. His adorable, uncontrollable giggling filled Tony with endearment. But then, the laughter suddenly stopped. The kid fell completely silent. Stark thought for an instant that he’d hurt him or something, until he heard the new sound he was making.

Squeaky, violent hiccups began to leap from his throat and shake his whole frame. They punctured the silence sporadically and made his body jump against the table. During the spaces in between, he just lied there, laughing so hard he couldn’t make a sound. His eyes were scrunched shut and his mouth was wide open, smiling the biggest smile in the entire world. But the only sounds escaping him were hiccups.  

He couldn’t believe how much it tickled. He couldn’t believe Mr. Stark, his hero and idol, was the person tickling him to tears. He’d be burning with embarrassment were he not so busy laughing to death. By that point, Peter figured, yep, this is it. Things can’t possibly get any worse than this. Then two more sets of hands descended on him, one on his feet and the other on his neck. Clint and Sam were back with a vengeance, and they didn’t hesitate in picking up where they’d left off. Before collapsing into a mess of hiccups again, Peter managed to squeal out one short word.

“SHIHIHIHIHEHEHEHAHAHEHEHIHIT!”

They only tickled him that way for about thirty seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Tony was the one who finally put an end to it, certain that any more would make the kid burst. Even after all thirty fingers had lifted from his sensitive skin, Peter continued to laugh. Natasha clicked the release button, and the cuffs fell from his wrists and ankles, shrinking back into beads. Immediately, Peter curled into a ball, hugging himself around the middle and pulling his knees to his chest. Tony placed a sympathetic hand on his arm.

“I’m sorry, kiddo. I know that was mean. We’ll find a way to make it up to you. Want to get some ice cream?”

To his surprise, Peter was still giggling. His shoulders bounced as airy laughs sputtered from his lips. Stark smiled bemusedly.

“Kid? Are you okay? Look, no one’s gonna get you anymore. I promise.”

His reassurance did nothing to stem the continuos stream of giggles flooding from the teenager. He didn’t seem able to stop.

“I think you guys broke him,” Natasha said. Tony pulled Spider-Man to the edge of the table and tried to make him sit up.

“Peter, it’s all right,” he chuckled amusedly, holding him upright and rubbing his shoulders. It was like he was under an unbreakable laughing spell. “Come on now. Can you really not stop?”

The kid’s weight tipped forward, and he staggered off the table. Stark flinched and caught him with a start. Peter slumped against his chest, giggling into his shirt.

“I c-can’t breathe, hehehe…” he laughed weakly. “Please. My sides. Ohoho my gosh…”

Tony patted him awkwardly on the back. The others watched with small smiles.

“You’re fine, kid,” Sam snorted, giving his head an affectionate nudge as he walked by. “You definitely needed that laugh.”

“That has to be the happiest you’ve been in months,” Clint agreed, trailing behind him and tousling Peter’s hair. They both left via the stairs, satisfied with their work.

“We’ll be in the lounge,” Natasha said. The rest of the Avengers followed her. The sound of footsteps clomping upwards eventually faded. The room would have been left relatively quiet, were it not for Peter’s continuous giggling.

“Can you walk?” Tony asked, relaxing a little now that there weren’t so many eyes around. He held the kid with both hands against his back. Peter laughed softly, leaning into his embrace without answering. Stark sighed and smiled. “All right then. Up you go.”

Swiftly, Tony scooped the teenager off the floor and into his arms. Peter was too worn out to protest, too worn out to care. He wheezed tiny giggles into his mentor’s shoulder as he carried him into the elevator and up to the room Mr. Stark had intended to be his Avengers living quarters. Tony walked him inside and pulled back the sheets, then gently laid the kid into the bed. As soon as his head hit the pillow and the blankets were tucked around him, Peter’s laugh attack began to subside, even though his skin still tingled all over. His eyelids grew heavy, and exhaustion seized him full force.

“I know you probably hate all of us for that,” Tony chuckled, watching the kid practically melt with fatigue. “But Clint was right. I think that was the happiest I’ve seen you in a long time.”

He pulled the sheets up to the kid’s chin, then walked out of the room, leaving the door cracked just a hair. Spider-Man succumbed to sleep in minutes, his breathing finally steadying out.

Although he would never admit it, Peter knew it was true. In a convoluted sort of way, he was happy. The walls he’d built up based on the fear and trauma he’d went through suddenly felt destabilized, like reclaiming his old, lighthearted self wasn’t so impossible after all. He knew a long road of healing still lied ahead, and he hoped there were other ways he could go about breaking down the barriers he’d built up. But for now, in the quiet of his heart, he was happy. And it was a happiness he hadn’t experience in a very long while.

[foodinfotos]

There’s a burgeoning beer scene in Slovenia and some wonderful scenery too. Nick sees if something can successfully be organised in a brewery.

  The men in the ‘pub’ of the Union Brewery in Ljubljana are in fine voice tonight. As a woman cranks rousing tunes out of an accordion that’s almost as big as she is, they roar out the choruses whilst waving mugs of beer to the beat.

It’s all sung in Slovenian of course, so I have no idea what the words mean, but I’m happy to raise my own glass and cheer loudly at the end of each song. The conviviality meter has gone off the scale here in this packed bar/restaurant.

Also off the scale is the platter of meat in front of me featuring slabs of pork, tangles of spicy sausages, juicy spare ribs and more all piled onto sauerkraut and baked potatoes.

I try glass after glass of the excellent range of Union beers from the passing waitresses, all dressed in traditional costume, the brews certainly wash down the meat a treat.

A few hours earlier I’d taken the Union Experience, a tour of the ancient parts of this massive brewery that was founded in 1864, exploring areas full of original beer-making machinery, viewing the state of the art modern production section and trying some beers.

Yes, the Slovenians love the stuff, there’s no denying it. And alongside the massive Union Brewery, a whole host of small craft beer breweries have sprung up in recent years. Lagers, wheat beers and ales and malty porters and stouts in many styles and guises.

Some are becoming very famous, like the ones from Loo-blah-nah Brewery, the phonetic pronunciation of the capital city  Ljubljana. Their label proudly carries a picture of a dragon, the symbol of the city and they already brew a classic English Pale Ale that puts many of our own to shame.

Tektonic is another name that you’ll find on many bottles in the bars in town, they make brews called Magda, Sir Williams, Pop’s Place, Slovenska hiša, TOZD, and Cutty Sark. All delicious.

In fact, craft breweries are generally springing up like mushrooms in Slovenia which are, ironically, another delight in this country that is 60% green space. The main market in town is a treasure trove of fungi at this time of year with small pickers selling superb examples from trestle tables.

Love Ljubljana

It’s a very pretty city – attractive bars and cafes line both sides of the Ljubljanica River that divides the city’s old town. It’s easy and stress free to easy to walk around as a few years ago they took the radical step of pedestrianising the centre.

Now the only traffic to avoid is bicycles, and the sole intrusive sound is that of the soft whirr of the electric Kavalirs (Gentle Helpers) the free public transport option for the elderly, mobility-impaired and visitors. Just hail one and it’ll stop for you, too.

Walking however best reveals the true beauty of the marvellous baroque buildings while tourist boats putter under the many bridges.

The all wood ‘Ljubljanica’, which you can pick up from the pier on the Breg embankment, is the most romantic boat option. I happily sat up front, drinking in the sites as we headed up and down stream.

And while all the bars and restaurants offer tempting food, the Strelec Restaurant in  the imposing 900 year old  Ljubljana Castle that looms over the city, is perhaps the finest choice.

Take the funicular railway to the castle and up in the old Archers’ Tower and you’ll enjoy a well-priced but very fine-dining version of Slovenian cuisine.

A platter of beef tartar and smoked goose liver with pickled Jerusalem artichoke and a hazelnut mayonnaise was followed by venison, goose liver, smoked parsnip puree and Krško-polje bacon, named after the pig of the region.

And surprisingly vegetarians are well-catered for too, there was a roasted cauliflower and hazelnut dish as well as a rich soup flavoured with local truffles.

All the dishes were presented to MasterChef standard and the Slovenian wines – a Doppler Sauvignon 2017 and a Kristancic Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 – both very good examples of the quality Slovenian wine can achieve.

The loveliest place in the world?

Slovenia has more lakes and forest than it has inhabited regions. Leave Ljubljana and you’re almost instantly in countryside, the high mountains visible in almost every direction you look.

And at Lake Bled almost everywhere you look is also a Japanese or Chinese tourist armed with selfie stick. This is one of the must-see attractions on their grand coach trips around Europe and it’s easy to see why.

The 12th Century castle has a stunning position on a high cliff over the lake, totally unassailable on most of one side owing to the sheer drop. But beautiful as the castle is, the view looking down from it is even better.

In the middle of Lake Bled is a small island where the Assumption of Mary Church stands. A typical flat-bottomed boat, a pletna, rowed by a man who stands at the back, takes you the foot of the 99 steps up to the church. I had to stop three times to get my breath climbing up but it was worth it.

The incessant sound bell ringing from the tower that drifts across the lake is not the fault of a deranged campanologist, but of an old tradition that says if you ring the bell your wish will come true. Perhaps many locals have come to the church to wish the bell to stop.

Back on dry land, in the village by the lake once dominated by Tito’s holiday home, there’s a small, old-fashioned, but good restaurant – the Restaurant Sova.

Try the slow cooked veal cheek baked in prosciutto with the local cheese, kajmak, with a mustard cream and mashed potato. It’s a rib sticker of the best kind.

But back to the beer. A visit to Carniola Brewery in Žirovnica on my way home to the Four Points Hotel in Ljubljana finds a manically impassioned owner/brewer presiding over a compact brewery in an industrial park. He’s also squeezed in an on-site bar that’s open on Thursday and Friday afternoons, and all-day Saturday, with draft and bottled beers on sale.

He’s been producing many interesting beers since 2012 and doing well enough, he tells me, to be now awaiting delivery of much larger equipment so he can step up production to meet demand.

After a quick tour and several beers, I can see why his beers are popular, really fine quality and interesting flavours.

Craft beer is so big across Europe these days that the Four Points group of hotels have cleverly decided to make it a feature of their own bars. Every Four Points hotel has a signature pub where guests and locals can enjoy the brand’s Best Brews and BBQ™ programme.

Best Brews offers guests the chance to sample craft beers and enjoy authentic local flavours at every hotel pub across the brand’s 200+ property portfolio, with each brew strategically chosen for its unique flavour, popularity, and quality ingredients.

That night my Four Points restaurant put on a superb meal featuring matched local beers to show the kitchen’s skills. Smoked local hams, marinated trout and beetroot with goats cheese all went down well with a bottle of Tektonik Hercule Wheatbeer and Buckwheat porridge with porcini and sour cream and a dish of polenta and cheese was brilliant with Hopsbrew Juicy IPA

And the Loo- Blah-Nah Porter was excellent with dishes of cheese, pumpkin and truffles, and a miniburger with Kranjska sausage.

It was a very impressive meal at this very smart hotel handily located just on the outskirts of the city and close to the airport.

I got the impression Four Points genuinely care about giving guests a real local experience and the staff very knowledgeable about the beer and food being served.

The next day, slightly the worse for wear, I savaged the hotel breakfast – so much good stuff to choose from with a chap cooking eggs, proper crispy bacon and actual, real, sausages and not those peculiar sausages that you only ever find in hotels.

Just a short flight away, Ljubljana offers a short-break experience that satisfies body and soul. The body can tuck away all the beers and the soul can soar with the breathataking scenery. Na zdravje! Or cheers as we say back here.

FlyWith Easy Jet or Wizz Air

Take a visual tour

  StayAt Four Points Ljubljana 

         Going out for a beer, or several, in Slovenia There’s a burgeoning beer scene in Slovenia and some wonderful scenery too. Nick sees if something can successfully be organised in a brewery.

[vowel-in-thug]

What vivid imaginations do you have about Silver and Flint grocery shopping?

sigh. i knew someone would call me out about that comment. I KNEW IT. 

“Why the fuck are these places always so cold?” Even as he says it, Silver starts lowering the zipper on his hoodie. He’s only got a thin t-shirt underneath, but at least he has his hair curling around his neck to keep himself a little warmer.

Flint tugs him further inward so the automatic doors can close. “Because of all the food,” he says, like he’s explaining to a child. “I told you to wear one of my sweatshirts. I’m very comfortable in mine.”

“What, and trip over one of your sleeves?” Silver says. “I’ll pass.” He’s a liar, of course. He only likes to wear Flint’s sweatshirts in bed.

Besides, he’s excellent at tripping. They used to go to another grocery store, closer to their apartment. Silver had slipped in a puddle of dish soap there and had threatened to sue if they didn’t get free groceries for life. The store manager, upon seeing Silver’s prosthetic leg and Flint’s cell phone recording the confrontation, agreed. They were able to keep that up for awhile before the manager reviewed the security tapes and saw that Silver had been the one who had spilt the soap in the first place.

Silver wanders over to a big display by the door – a mountain of Coca-Cola bottles that faintly resembled Darth Vader, if one was drunk and had the eyesight of a Picasso painting. He starts poking at the figure, tall enough to reach the ceiling and held up by some thin wires, while Flint grabs the trolley.

“C’mon,” he says, pulling Silver away again. “I don’t want to be here all day.”

They always start in the fruits and vegetables section, when they still feel ambitious about eating healthily, and haven’t seen any of the good stuff yet.

“Can you put that down?” Flint says for the second time. “Yes, I – I know what it looks like. You’re hilarious. Please put it down.”

Silver pouts, the cucumber in his hand wilting. “I wanted to get it.”

“You hate cucumber.”

“I don’t –”

“You like zucchini.”

“I –” Silver looks at what he’s holding. “Which is this?”

“A cucumber.” Flint takes it off him. Every time, Silver picks it up for the same joke, remembers at home he hates cucumber, and it rots in the cupboard for two months.

“Cucumbers are just pickles no one loves,” Silver says sourly, shoveling a handful of tomatoes into the cart without a plastic bag. “Like hell I’m putting one of those in me.”

Silver waits.

He keeps waiting.

Flint inspects an avocado thoroughly.

“In me, like to eat but –”

“I know.” Flint chucks the avocado at Silver, who catches it easily. “Shut up and tell me if this is ripe. I’m going to make guacamole tonight.” Which is shorthand for: I don’t have the energy to do anything but mash up a couple vegetables and eat a whole bag of tortilla chips, do you think I have the strength to deal with you right now? Do you really?

Silver flicks the brown nub at the end of the avocado, careless as to where it flies. He raises it to eye level. “Looks good to me.”

Flint’s eyeing the row of popcorn when Silver shuffles over with his arms full of chips. He tosses them into their trolley as Flint deliberates between Extra Butter and Movie Lovers.

He’s going for the latter when Silver says, “I used to work at a movie theater. The butter they put on the popcorn is just orange juice and soap.”

“That’s my favorite flavor,” Flint says, grabbing two more boxes.

“What film are we watching tonight?” Silver says, sticking a couple of the tomatoes he’d picked up earlier behind the stacks of pretzels.

“Guess,” says Flint, moving further down the aisle. They sidestep a tired-looking employee unloading a giant crate of Pringles.

“It’s your turn to pick.”

“I know.” Flint had read about this trick on the internet and Silver had yet to figure it out. “I’m just telling you to guess. You’ll never get it right.”

Silver hums, thinking about it, which thankfully distracts him from noticing the pasta aisle, or else they’d be there all night.

Finally, Silver asks, “Young Frankenstein?”

Flint barely manages to stop himself from wincing. He enjoys the movie, of course, but Silver never wants to make-out when a Mel Brooks movie is on.

“Damn,” says Flint. “How do you always know?”

“I can read your mind,” Silver says, and smiles.

“Can you please hurry up?” Silver has draped himself over the cart like he’s been waiting five days, not five minutes.

Flint doesn’t stop looking at the rows of multicolored bottles. “No.”

Silver sighs, slouching lower, the slick end of his prosthetic twisting on the linoleum. He sullenly sticks a bag of chips back on the shelf behind the shaving cream. “Flint. You’re bald.”

Flint picks up a bottle of shampoo to closer inspect the label, but puts it down when he reads Keratin-smooth. He doesn’t bother responding to Silver.

“Can’t I just use the kind that’s like… shampoo, conditioner, and body wash all in one?” Silver begs. “That’s what all my friends use.”

“Your friends are heathens,” Flint says. “And they all smell terrible.”

The last brand Silver had used had made his hair dull. Flint wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Silver sighs again, harder. He straightens up. “Fine. I’m going to look at the pasta.” He wheels the cart away.

“No – wait! Damn it.” Flint grabs two bottles that promise full bounce! and chases after him.

The cereal aisle is incredibly organized. Every box is aligned perfectly, each one half an inch from the edge of the shelf. Nothing backwards, nothing crumped. No gaps, no brand toppled like dominos. The sugary kids cereals line the bottom to tempt small fists, while the brans and the whole wheats loom on the top to shame passing adults into buying. This is a newly reshelved aisle, untouched yet by grubby human hands. Nothing in Flint’s life has ever been this well arranged.

Without a word, Silver grabs a box of Frosted Flakes and tosses it into the cart. They move on to the next aisle.

Silver shivers a little more in the frozen food aisle. His hoodie is zipped up a little higher now, but still not all the way.

“Can you just once,” he says, “please, just once – let me live?”

“I’m trying.” Flint shoves the red bag of frozen chicken nuggets back into the freezer, as Silver turns away with a huff. “This stuff will kill you. You want to eat hormonal shoe-leather wrapped in frozen breadcrumbs, and – and pieces of diseased cows no one should ever consumed, ground up and shoved into those disgusting – pocket things and –”

“‘Pocket things?’” Silver is laughing at him now. “Why are you acting like you just landed on this planet?”

“Why don’t you want real meat?”

“Oh, I eat plenty of real meat,” Silver says, smirking and leaning in close. Close enough to Flint to wrap on hand around the freezer door handle behind him. “I love eating your meat.”

“Stop.” Because Flint likes Silver close, but his hatred of processed meats is stronger. He nudges Silver away, so he can open the freezer door again. He sticks the remaining back of chips from their cart next to the chicken nuggets, saying, “I can make you a real chicken dinner, you know that.”

“God, that sounds exhausting,” Silver grumbles, rolling the cart back and forth petulantly.

Now it’s Flint’s turn to lean in close. “But I like making you a real chicken dinner.” And Silver ducks his head a little bit, ears pink, but he finally moves away from the fucking chicken nuggets.

There’s only one cashier at this time, and she looks incredibly bored.

She looks even more bored when they roll up with their cart, which has been emptied of everything except a single carton of milk.

“How do you bare with this chill?” Silver asks her, teeth chattering. His hoodie is zipped up all the way to his neck now. “I can’t take it.”

She says nothing at all, so Flint says to him, “Go wait outside, then. This’ll only take a second.”

Silver heads to the automatic doors without a word. The cashier says, “Debit or credit?”

Before Flint can respond, a thunderous crash resounds throughout the supermarket. Both Flint and the girl look over to the front entrance, where the giant Darth Vader Coca-Cola statue has toppled to the ground. The individual bottles all take some time fall, each thud loud and reverberating on top of one another. The noise is so tumultuous, the chaos so sudden, that no one notices when the alarm goes off as Silver walks out the door.

All the bottles, now on the ground, start to fizzle like dynamite, which is finally what gets the few supermarket employees working this time of night to stop staring at the carnage in disbelief and start running towards it.

The cashier stares blankly at it, mouth hanging open. Flint says, “Cash, please” slaps a couple bills on the counter, puts his milk carton into a plastic bag, and says, “Have a nice night.”

He heads towards the door, sidestepping the two-liter bottles now whizzing across the floor like rockets, soda creeping out onto the tile like an oil spill. Bottles are tumbling out the sliding doors with him, so no one bothers him when he walks out to the sound of alarms, too. Outside, a dog is tied to a nearby bicycle rack, and is helpfully barking at all the noise coming from inside, perfecting the din.

Silver is waiting by the car, removing the last item from his jacket – the cereal. Everything else is lined up on the roof of the car: tortilla chips, bread, a package of cheese, four different types of pasta, a can of grated parmesan, two brands of cookies, a guacamole seasoning mix, a fucking cucumber, and a fucking bag of frozen chicken nuggets.

“You have the keys,” Silver says, taking the bag of milk off Flint.

Flint opens the trunk and they put everything inside, along with the bottles of shampoo and conditioner, avocados, popcorn, tomatoes, onions, zucchini, a few tins of cat food, two chocolate bars, three packets of gum, a couple cans of soup, and a magazine Silver likes, that Flint had fit into his sweatshirt.

“Was it a big mess?” Silver asks. “I feel kind of bad.”

“It gave them something to do,” Flint says. “You can send them an apology note if you want.”

Silver grabs a pack of gum before shutting the trunk. “I’m driving,” he says, snatching the keys and moving around to the driver’s side. Flint doesn’t argue. Even with only one leg, Silver’s a better driver. He’s afraid to drive on the highway, never uses his turn signal, and has never parked inside the lines once in his entire goddamn life, but at least he doesn’t regularly endanger their lives.

Flint understands the need for speed limits, but feels they’re more for people who just can’t handle it.

When he slides into the passenger seat, he waits for Silver to turn on the car so he can slide the window open. The night air is cool on his face as Silver slowly backs out of the space, the smell of spearmint coming strong from Silver’s mouth. He can’t hear any sirens, any calls for them to come back right now. Only the faint sound of a dog continuing to bark fills the air.

Flint closes his eyes and smiles. “Werewolf.”

It only takes a second for Silver to respond, his voice lower. “There.”

“What?”

“There wolf,” says Silver, easing them out of the grocery store parking lot. He places his hand on Flint’s thigh. “There castle.”

[milsapfan29]

THE JOURNEY TO SALINA

The third time I saw Ronnie was in Salina, Kansas at the historic Stiefel Theatre.    

This one came very easy for me, and it came about because my husband made a remark that he wished he could have gone to Iowa with me. We were in the Walmart parking lot the day he picked me up at the bus stop when he said this.  I said, "well, in under two weeks, the nearest to us he'll be is Salina, Kansas. "   He said, "OK".    So I went home and bought tickets.  

I could not get two seats together but I did end up scoring a front row ticket!  I could not believe the luck.  I knew Richard wasn't going to like it that much if we didn't sit together but the way I looked at it was this:  he's a fan but not as an enthusiastic one as I am, because I am the one with the internet presence.   I would have been in the car with him all the way up and all the way back and even in the same hotel room with him.  It would be my only break from him and my superfan status would have meant he would need a break from me.    It didn't matter: there was a front row seat available and we flipped a coin to see who got it.  I won.  He said that was only fair since I was the photographer anyway.   We were going to do a swap but he didn't want to do that when all was said and done.  

Now something about my husband you must understand: he's a griper.   He'd gripe if he was hung with a new rope.   So all the way up to Salina, which is about 350 miles from home, all  I heard was him grumbling and grousing about how many miles we were putting on the car, slow tractors, and how much the trip was costing despite the fact that I was the one financing it all.  All he had to do was drive.   (I do not drive btw. I have epilepsy and even though my seizures are rare because my disorder is under control, my doctors feel it's best that I don't. If not for that, I have zero qualms about going to a concert alone. I've done it many times.)

Also there is a funny inside joke that my whole family and concert travel buddies tease me about: corn.  When I went to Iowa, my son remarked that when I did the sightseeing stuff that all I was posting photos of outside of the concert was corn.   Well, it's Iowa so....Kansas is just like Iowa in that regard.  It wasn't long before we saw corn, corn, corn, and more corn!    I asked, "good grief, doesn't Kansas grow wheat or sunflowers anymore?"    I noted that I saw it in Iowa and there is a  corn field belonging to the Quapaw tribe behind Downstream Casino so now when I go to a concert, it's a personal tradition to see corn in some capacity.   Kansas is also unremarkably flat.   (I was surprised Iowa was so hillyby comparison .)  We took a main highway going in but until we got outside of Wichita we barely saw any cars.   

We found the theatre easily and then went onto Abilene to relax at our hotel room a bit before the show.  We found this great restaurant that served a chicken fried pork sandwich, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy and more.  It was amazing.  I had plenty left over so I ate half and got a doggie bag and put it in the hotel room fridge for after the concert.   Fourteen dollars fed both of us, so the prices were awesome too.

  The people in there were friendly and noticed my Ronnie Milsap shirt I was wearing.  Several people in there said they were going there too and I said, "cool see you there!"  And THAT is one of the things it's all about right there.  Making fast friends with fellow fans on the road.  In Iowa I ran into a lady from Joplin, MO who came up for the show as well as a bunch of people who had been to the show the night before at the cafe where my friend Suzanne and I had breakfast, and I met several fellow "groupies" that I only knew through the Facebook groups.     This is one aspect I kind of enjoy despite the fact that I am more introverted in person than I am online.   Online I can just block somebody who is giving me grief, but in real life I have to deal with it.    I think I enjoy this because of the common ground bond. 

It came time to leave for the show.   We were freshly showered, primped and dressed.  Our one main concern from earlier when we found the theatre, was where we might have to park as it doesn't really have a parking lot except a few spaces in front of it that nowhere near cover its capacity.   So, Richard and I agreed that we could park in front of a business or somewhere like that and just walk the rest of the way.  

Richard whipped down an alley and I was fiddling with my camera which decided it was going to start acting up so I wasn't paying attention to what he was parking next to until I got out of the car and turned around.   I gasped.   He was already out of the car and waiting on me, and I hollered "Richard!  I don't think we're supposed to be back here!"  He went, "why not?   It is a public parking lot and I saw a parking hole. What's wrong with it?"  

I pointed and said, "that's Ronnie's BUS!!!!!"  He parked right next to the big, black, shining home on the road of the one and only Ronnie Milsap.    He goes, "well take a picture of it and come on!" He didn't have to tell me twice! I wondered if he was on it and heard my little freak out.  I'll never know.  (Since it was so close to show time, he probably wasn't.) 

We went through a little bit of a security detail and I was met by the theater manager who told me, "Mr. Milsap is completely OK with you taking photos."    I was pleased to hear this.  Previously I had emailed the theater manager and asked if my camera and photos were OK, since many theaters have a policy against pictures and many leave it up to the artist.   Ronnie is one who doesn't like a lot of restrictions on his fans, so I was given a personal blessing.  I decided to ask since after Iowa and that usher who made me put my camera away, I didn't want a repeat of that.   I was handed off to a very sweet usher named Linda and she led me to my seat.   She made me feel like a VIP.  She even told the lady she seated next to me, "This is my friend Beth and she's going to be photographing Mr. Milsap tonight."  

The lady did not seem impressed or even friendly to be honest.  There are two types of fans.  The first kind is "once is enough" and then the frequent flyers, that I was becoming.    Linda told her, "this is Beth's third time seeing him."   The lady asked me, "what do you do, follow him around or something?"    I said, "no, he just happens to coincidentally hold a concert wherever I travel  to!"  She kind of snorted and didn't say another word to me all evening.    The man to my right was a bit friendlier and told me he had seen Chicago 14 times.

 But man was my seat awesome!  I had a camera with 35X zoom AND was sitting just about seven feet from Ronnie. I could stretch my toe out and touch the stage edge!    His piano was all ready to go and I was just in front of it.  I said hello to Jamie, Marty, and other band members who were coming out and getting ready.  I asked Marty about the things that went in Ronnie's ears and he said they were just in ear monitors. He was untangling them and getting them ready. 

Then it was show time.  A DJ from a radio station came out and talked about how much he wished he could run his fingers through Ronnie's hair. I could hear his bellowing laugh as this was said and knew he was close.  Then Marty helped him to the piano and it was showtime.  Ronnie did joke, "hey do you know what food Kansas is famous for?"  I blurted out, "for the love of God Ronnie, please don't say corn."   I think he heard me  because he chuckled and then patted his belly and said, "STEAK!!!  And it was GOOOOOD too! 

And his show WAS. AWESOME.  I hate it when they end.   I didn't get a meet and greet but I was still too shy to ask for one. I probably would have gotten one if I had asked but I was happy just to be there.

 I went back to the hotel room that night and uploaded my pictures.  I took more than 200!   

The next morning we were homeward bound and took a wrong turn and ended up in Iowa.   We turned around and got going in the right direction and went back the way we came after we got through Topeka.   It was storming that morning and I saw some of the most amazing lightning I'd ever seen in my life and this is saying something because I was born and raised in Okahoma.  My camera however was acting up and I was unable to get any photos of this amazing lightning.   It looked more like sprite lightning.  I reveled in its beauty and had to commit it to my memory banks instead.

 Richard may have griped all the way to the concert about how crazy it was to drive 350 miles just for a concert but all the way home he was raving about how it was worth the drive.   

We stopped in the middle of nowhere for food and a bathroom break, and I went out to the car with my chili dogs and he was nowhere to be found.  I thought, "maybe he's still in the bathroom."   I went back in to look for him and found him chatting with a store employee about the show.  Not surprisingly, she was a Ronnie Milsap fan and then another person joined in the conversation.  "Where did you all see Ronnie Milsap at?"    Salina, Kansas. "Man I wish i had known he'd be there. I love him."  

Then somebody broke out a story about their past concerts.  I love to hear other peoples' Ronnie stories and so one of these ladies told me about the time the saw him at an outdoor concert in Kansas City that had to be abruptly halted due to  a pop up thunderstorm that would have shorted out their equipment.  So whlie they were waiting on the storm to pass, Ronnie joked around with people.   Suddenly a clap of thunder reverberated the whole place and Ronnie suddenly stood up and yelled, "wow! Did you see that?"     

I know somebody online said they thought this may have been the same show where they got to share a roller coaster car with him and a sudden dip got him to say, "well I didn't see that coming!" Gotta love that humor there. Anyway number three was a great experience and I am so happy that I got to  go to that one too.

<3   Beth 

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[spqrxfitzgerald-blog]

#01 - don’t look back

YOUR TASK BEGINS

         ⊰ – a message appears on the enchanted piece of paper all faithful members of the Cult of Romulus carry —

With growth, often comes adversity, Fergus Fitzgerald. Though we have several powerful players within the senate, we are still beset on all signs by non-believers and traitors to the true glory of Rome. One such traitor is the senator of the farming district, Marius Servillius. The senator has been a thorn in the cult’s side for far too long. It is time for you to do something about that. You can deal with with Marius in anyway that you please. Just ensure that it is clean and quiet. Complete this by the time the sun rises on the first of November, and we will know you are ready for the next step in your journey.

(TW: Drug abuse, paranoia, murder, stuff in general, nothing too explicit but still.)

When the piece of parchment goes from nothingness to the perfectly drawn-out calligraphy with the message, Fergus wasn’t even paying attention. He checks it three times a day - in the morning when he wakes up, during his lunch break and before he goes to bed. So he sees the message right before he goes to sleep - and then doesn’t sleep at all that night. He stares into the ceiling almost as if his eyes could pierce through it and as if the moon would give him the answers. He leaves his room at three in the morning and goes for a run around Camp Jupiter, sleep doesn’t come and the moon is crescent and high in the sky, a witness to his internal debate. He doesn’t pray for answers - not for Jupiter, not for Mars, not for any of the Gods and Goddesses because they won’t give him the answers.

He’s a tyrant to his Cohort all through the day and when they finish their working day, Fergus doesn’t. He works himself to the bone, goes back to the gym and punches a bag until it starts bleeding sand, to mix with his own bloody knuckles. He tries to ignore the small voice in the back of his head that grows louder by the minute, that same voice he drowned away with mental drilling, with focusing on the physical part of his day. He was a perfect soldier, he was a perfect soldier, he was a perfect soldier. He could train and train and train and if he counted to a thousand and then backwards, then he’d drown away that shrill voice of his consciousness. He’s learned how to keep it away because when he’s listened to it, he and everyone around him would suffer.

Because you’re a monster.

He tried to pay it no mind. Maybe it was his way out, his ticket to leave. But then you’re letting everyone down. Shut up. You’re already part monster anyway, what’s to start a headcount? He stares himself in the mirror - it’s Jax’ birthday, it’s all Hallows Eve, it’s so many things at once as he stares himself in the mirror and fails to recognize the person staring back. When did he become a known stranger? He was a familiar face in the crowd but not himself. It’s because you’re seeing what everyone sees, too. He can’t push the voice back any longer, it’s not a debate anymore. It’s an echo chamber taken by something cruel and sadistic inside himself - it’s the stranger’s voice in his own head. Look at yourself Fergus Fitzgerald, take a good look, you’re more monster than human and everyone knows it, you know it too. He can’t will the bad away, he was Sisyphus, pushing the boulder uphill to have it roll back where it started. Tired of pushing the dark and the anger away, he let it go. That’s what they wanted, right?

On one hand, he had the tempting freedom, the opportunity of leaving a situation he never wanted in the first place, the chance of leaving the Cult and not looking back. But on the other hand, he had the weight of the world on his shoulders - his family’s hopes and expectations. It was a True Roman’s duty to his people, to his city, wasn’t it? The very foundation of the Roman life, he had to fight for it, that’s what the Cult meant, right? Looking at himself on the mirror he could see his mother standing behind him and he felt as small as ever, he was seven years old again and she held his shoulders tight. I trust you to never fail me. So. A deep breath. Do it.

They think you’re stupid, Fergus. He fidgets with the enchanted paper piece, folds it, returns it to where it belongs in the false bottom of his last drawer in the desk he keeps in his room at the barracks. Do you realize how stupid they think you are? They’re trying to test you to see if you’re as dumb as you look. He goes back home early in the day, it’s mostly a day off for the Legion after all, they’re on call but not on active duty, Romans do love their festivities. The Fitzgerald Estate is swarming more than usual, if he were on a good day, he’d be ecstatic around his family but he’s a man on a mission. Be cornier, jackass.

He stays around, helps with lunch, helps with setting up the party. He goes to the Caninii house, he goes to the Karavadras - he checks in with family all day, it’s his alibi. When he goes back home, he doesn’t go straight to his old room, instead he finds his way into his moms’ room. He goes for their bathroom and straight to the medicine cabinet, the perks of having a doctor for a mother, indeed. He knows exactly what he needs. You’re not stupid at all, are you? Play dumb, let them think you’re a moron, they have another thing coming their way. It’s easier to break necks, Fergus thinks, as he goes back to his room, he takes a deep breath. The moon is almost full - three days, he knows it by heart but it’s close enough. He looks down at his hands, rough, marked and calloused from fighting, his arms covered in scars from burns, whips and blades. Violence is easy.

Violence is easy. That’s why they want you to do this, what’s the fun in doing something you’ve done a million times? But killing a human being wasn’t the same thing as killing a monster. I bet it feels the same when it comes to breaking necks. He frowned at his own hands and at that sweet poisonous voice that he no longer held any control over. What’s the difference, really? He has feelings, a family, he’s loved by someone, he’s loved someone, he is someone. And aren’t you? But you’re still a monster so what’s the difference there? If he kept arguing it in his head, he’d never get it done with and by the time the sun came up, he was going to be just another disappointment, just another failure in his mother’s eyes.

Don’t forget Murdoch or else you’re gonna be forgotten too.

He put on a cheap Spiderman costume over his clothes and left for the party in his own house, an hour and a half later he went for the Karavadras, then to the Forum, joining his cousins at the Pub - he’d have plenty of pictures drinking with his cousins, laughing and by the time midnight came around and the parties all over the city were roaring, Fergus disappeared into the catacombs of New Rome. Carefully he stripped off the cheap costume - then he wore a shade of black that was darkest than human eye could register. A courtesy of a cousin daughter of Trivia, it was a silly glamour spell on regular dye that did the trick, it was just a hoodie, jeans, gloves and boots getup but it worked like a charm. Then to top it off, he put on the blank mask. It wasn’t special or glamourized, he had picked from the floor two days ago, someone’s decoration that had been forgotten but it would work perfectly. He dry swallows a couple of pills he’s also taken from the medicine cabinet earlier - though he had never needed drugs, he needed them now, to keep himself from doing a sloppy job, to keep courage. It’s for energy, for attention and after five minutes of staying there, he feels like the entire world focused.

For so long he had the city’s catacombs memorized that it took him no time to get where he wanted to - the outskirts of the city zone and into the fields of the Servilius family. There was no reason for the outskirts of a farm to be heavily guarded so he easily made under the fence and into the darkness of the farm.

He was just another trick-or-treater then, a nameless masked face that made his silent way through the fields, the wheat and corn rows going well above his head. It was past one when he stepped out of the field and into a path that led to the house’s yard, the big estate sitting there in all its glorious Roman architecture, well-lit, sitting alone and silent. No, there was no Halloween parties there, it was a city’s thing. He also knew most of the family and most of the guards and workers of the farm would either be in the city at parties or already sound asleep. The days in the field started early and by now, it was too late for the good workers to be up. Still, he stood in the shadow for a long moment and looked up at the moon one last time.

Taking a deep breath, the words pour out of his mouth as he steps out of the darkness and into the dim-lit path towards the house. “We lay my love and I beneath the weeping willow, but now alone I lie and weep beside the tree.” A security guard is startled by his presence and curiously, cautiously even walks towards him but at each step he starts wavering like a drunken man. By the time he reaches Fergus, he holds the man’s arm as he collapses, soundly asleep. “Singing 'Oh willow waly' by the tree that weeps with me.” He sings the lullaby he’d heard from his mother, and his mother from her mother and from then on - he knows what he can do with that singing. It was a perfect charm as he put the guard to sleep and they would remember nothing, only wake up with a lullaby stuck in their mind. “Singing 'Oh willow waly' till my lover return to me.” It’s not a demigod’s ability he knows, it’s a Siren’s, he knows that too. But maybe being less human and more monster was exactly what he needed then. Four more guards he comes across as he makes to the house and puts all of them to sleep where they stand. There’s confidence in the way he sings, softly, melodic and entrancing. He wants them to sleep and so they will.

We lay my love and I beneath the weeping willow. A broken heart have I. Oh willow I die, oh willow I die.

He doesn’t need to break through the door, after all it wasn’t locked - how arrogant of this family, to believe no one would ever make past their guards and into their house. Though in a way, they’re just as arrogant as his own family, who sleep with their doors open as well, in the belief no one would come cause them harm in their own house. It’s silent as he finishes the last syllable of the song, you could hear a pin drop. But he doesn’t need to look, he finds the Senator asleep upstairs, alone. A widower, he could recall, though he had many children and relatives left he slept by himself. Fergus had gone to the man’s wife funeral.

“I knew you would come.” The senator doesn’t sit up or turns on the lights but his voice comes clearly from where he lays, Fergus stands there, a moment of panic he almost bolts out the door. But instead he faces it in the same way he’s faced monsters and war games before. Adrenalin running and a stone cold heart. Whatever may come, it’s the Gods will - it’s how the Fates worked. “Do you have any last words, then?” The words are cold and poisonous, they’re a mimic of the echoing darkness that’s taken over his mind. “You have a lovely voice.” The old man’s voice is shaken, he can hear it but it’s also as confident and firm as always, as he’d heard so many times in the senate. “Sing me to sleep, then, it’s the least you could do.” Fergus has a million questions - are you not afraid of death? Are you not going to fight? Are you just going to accept this as it is? It’s revolting and at the same time, he knows the man knows between the two of them, Marius cannot win. He knows the Cult would send someone, eventually and he knows that the one they’ve sent, whoever they’ve sent, would easily overpower him. This did his duty and now Fergus must do his, they both know this.

But he wants to apologize, to run away. If Marius Servilius would try to talk him out of it, maybe he could. But you’re not a coward and this isn’t a game. But he doesn’t, because he believes the Cult’s members faith is unshakable and that’s his own death sentence. Fergus doesn’t sit but he stands besides the man, droning out a lullaby he hasn’t heard in many years, that used to be sang by his grandfather. “Seoithín, seo hó, mo stór é, mo leanbh, mo sheoid gan cealg, mo chuid gan tsaoil mhór.” Singing in Gaelic is the most honorable goodbye he could give to this man that served New Rome for so long - maybe the Cult of Romulus didn’t take honor and respect in the same way Fergus did, but it was the least he could do. “A leanbh mo chléibh go n-eirí do chodhladh leat.” Not even many of his family know Gaelic, most people don’t even know what it sounds like but he does and it means to his own heart.

He stands there for a long silent moment after Marius falls asleep and then finally reaches into the hoodie’s pocket, pulling out a simple hypodermic needle. Watch them call you stupid now. Prussic Acid, a really nice name for Cyanide. Well more specifically hydrogen cyanide, used in the forges. When and if someone ever found out the senator died of non-natural causes, which he knew they probably wouldn’t unless they went looking for this specific poison, someone else would take the fall. Someone else with easy access to the forges - such as every other legionnaire, such as the forger workers. He’s done it so many times - with testosterone, his hands don’t even fumble. But instead of jabbing the senator in the stomach like he would do to himself, he injects it right in between his toes. He keeps singing so the senator is still asleep and would anyone else overhear, they’d be asleep too. It’s draining, to use that kind of power for so long, but the moon is high on the sky and he’s running high on drugs as well.

The way he came in, he leaves, closing the door behind his back, taking the needle with himself, it’s well past four when he steps back into Camp Jupiter. He doesn’t take his time, he puts back on the Spiderman costume behind the stables and waddles in a drunken fashion back to his room, taking off his clothes, the mask and the needle, putting it all into a black trash bag that he’ll eventually burn. And then with flying high comes the crash.

He’s killed a man. But he wasn’t innocent though. He had it coming. He killed a man. Well, might as well embrace the fact you’re a monster.