#i miss my wife whom i killed in a heated battle

[amngtheflowers]

Queen's blood

[transbuckaroo]

pain, applause

hello. my name is andrew, and i wrote a short lambden fic a few days ago. this will be based on the “following the thread” quest from “the witcher 3: wild hunt” developed by cd projekt red. the characters are based on dev patel as sir gawain in the 2021 film “the green knight” as directed by david lowery, and paul bullion in the upcoming 2021 seaon 2 of “the witcher” as directed by stephen surjik. i haven’t written very much these past two or three years, but i am proud of this finished product. please keep any comments/criticisms kind. thank you, enjoy!

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The moment Aiden realized how well and truly fucked him and Baby Steadfast were, he was already surrounded on all sides. He could sense them. His medallion hummed gently against his chest with the signal of danger with every step he took. If he could get out of this clearing, he thought, just into the tree line to stay hidden. It wasn’t far; he could make it, just keep going. The Cat kept his hand at the ready to make quick work of grabbing his battle axe and kept his breaths even as he walked. Aiden knew what was waiting for him. It seemed the fox did as well. Always intuitive, the little one.

Jad Karadin came out of the trees in front of him like a shadow from an alley, looming and dagger drawn in his right hand. Aiden slowed his pace, too exposed, ears picking up the slide of multiple steel swords off to the left. Then two figures emerged from behind Jad, appearing as if they had come directly from within his body. Lund first, after came Hammond. Baby laid back his ears flat, centering himself lower to the ground in a defensive position. He placed himself between the three and Aiden as he went.

There was no running from them. These people were never meant to be his enemies; Jad was supposed to be his brother especially. If anyone here was supposed to be on his side more than anyone, it was Jad. An elder Cat, someone Aiden was supposed to be able to look up to as a mentor. Jad had broken the mold. Had children, a wife, a life away from being a Witcher. Beyond it. He had proof that there was more.

These things didn’t matter anymore. Whoever Jad Karadin was supposed to be was pointless now. Because he was an evil man today. He and whoever else followed him here.

Aiden drew his axe, pulling a deep and centering breath as he went. There were more of this group, hiding somewhere in the thick of trees, awaiting their moment. This was only to end one of two ways. There would be no other option besides these. For a split second, Aiden found himself missing the presence of a certain Wolf over his right shoulder.

Lambert. Lambert wouldn’t let him get hurt. He would protect Aiden here and now, and the Cat wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. In fact, Lambert would have already drawn his sword and made a calculated advancement on their enemy. He would have won, too, because Aiden has never seen him fail a task when he gets that crease between his brows as they furrow in his determination. Lambert, with his fiery curls and attitude to match. Lambert, with his impossible wit and unrelenting promises made to Aiden that have never broken. Lambert, the little brother of Kaer Morhen, baby of the lot of them.

Lambert, who Aiden swore to see back in the valley in Kaedwen where the Buina and Gwenllech rivers part in Daevon so them and Baby Steadfast could finally make the trek up to Kaer Morhen together.

The heat in between Aiden’s shoulder blades told him he wasn’t going to make it up to the keep this year.

“Aiden,” Jad spoke, knuckles white around the hilt of his dagger. Aiden snapped back into focus. He didn’t even dare to blink. “You know why I’ve come?”

“I didn’t kill the Duke’s daughter. I couldn’t save her. I tried.” The contract Aiden had held just months ago in the start of spring. A young girl, cursed, incurable despite the Duke’s pleads and Aiden’s best attempts to reverse it. She had succumbed to her circumstances. Aiden was paid for his efforts, bowed his head with sorrow as the Duke grieved, and went on his way.

“I’ve come to hear otherwise. You’ve botched it, boy. People are angry with the results of your work and lack thereof. You fucked up, and you’ve not shite to say for it.”

“I didn’t botch anything, I did my job. Not everyone gets a happy ending, Karadin. You’re a Cat. A Witcher. You should know.”

To be completely honest, Aiden hadn’t a goddamnable clue how he was going to get through this. Maybe he could take them. Most rivals don’t tend to waste time talking through events, let alone listen to their target. This time, maybe this time, Aiden could walk away with a mere banishment from the city. Possibly, hopefully, he could meet Lambert in time in the valley.

“You’re right,” said Jad, some semblance of resignation on his face. It wasn’t real, his tone sounded fabricated. “Aiden. Not everyone gets a happy ending.”

The arrow came right in that moment, whizzing through the air and lodging itself into the ground by Aiden’s left foot. He startled, stepped back, whipping his head around to try and follow its trajectory. Someone was up high. Someone was in the trees. Jad brought a sniper with him. Of course he did. Oh, of course that motherfucker did. This horrid, abomination of a man. The tree line was too dense, impossible to know where in the leaves the arrow came from where Aiden was standing in the field. He had only tried to look for a moment though before the sound of running footsteps came too close for comfort. And fuck, he could only gain so much momentum with his axe from this angle but he had to try.

Aiden spun back around on his heel, hands braced on either end of the hilt of his axe, prioritizing blocking the blow and creating distance before landing a strike of his own. Jad was successfully pushed back at the chest. Sent fumbling backwards to regain his footing. He growled in anger at the same time Aiden swung at his accompanying attackers, just barely missing them with the blade of his weapon. Steel struck and sounded a metal clang through the clearing. Aiden grunted with the effort of three-and-a-sniper against one, swinging his axe to catch a sword under the head and vaulting his enemy away. Distance was vital, energy was crucial to use sparingly.

“Baby!” He shouted towards his fox, whom of which was bee-lining for the trees where the arrow had come. “No! Run home! Home! Go home!”

It was something they’d agreed upon once. Home. They knew what home was, who home was. Where home was. The valley. Lambert. The point they meet and part at every year, the small town the Wolves have passed through many times in prior years. It was an easy place to go. That was where they found home, him and Baby. Lambert was home. Baby Steadfast knew this command well and clear as day. Go home. Go find Lambert; he’ll know what it means for the fox to show up without the company of his Cat Witcher. He’ll spring into action.

All it took was one incorrect turn, expose just a little too much of something or other, at just the right moment. It wasn’t because he’d called out to Baby; he knew how to give direction without faltering in his task. It was fucked luck. Terrible, awful, shit luck. All he did was avoid another two arrows in the ground, one grazing his cloak as it went.

Jad caught him in his right side with his dagger, blade plunging in deep and ripping a pained and surprised shout from Aiden’s throat. All the way in and right back out. Aiden staggered, snarled, and lunged at the man in front of him. Jad was a monster on this day, and Witchers know damn well to dispose of those. His side was on fire. The younger Cat swung, but Jad ducked underneath the blade. As Aiden turned with the momentum, one of the others kicked a boot into his chest and sent him backwards into Karadin’s grasp. The dagger entered the same area as before as Jad grappled an arm around Aiden’s throat. He was stuck. He was bleeding horribly. Baby Steadfast had gone to get Lambert. There was no way they would find one another in time.

With a strong shove from the man behind him, the dagger dislodged, and in the same moment whoever was at his left ripped his axe out of his hands. Aiden tried to spin around to face them as he propelled forward, but only managed to end up on his back on the grass. It was still cold with morning dew. Aiden could see the fog of his breath as he fell.

And in the most startling of realizations as Jad came to kneel over him, Aiden realized he was going to die. Without Baby. Without his dignity. Without Lambert. Without telling Lambert how much he truly and purely loved him.

He thought he had more time. Had it all planned out. They would meet in three weeks hence, and the night before they would make the ascent to the keep for the winter, Aiden would tell Lambert that he loved him in their room. This incredible, selfless, beautiful Wolf. Part of him even believed Lambert might say it back. He would feel the same. They were just like comfortable lovers already, what with the way they shared beds and blankets and curled up in the night to sleep, the way they helped wash and put up one another’s hair, cooked for each other, looked out for each other, lost all sense of personal space with each other. Melitele, the two of them even refused to separate their bedrolls while they camped out during their travels. They called each other “pup” and “kitten” respectively, dressed wounds, mended clothes and armor, cleaned weapons, hunted together, laughed and smiled and hugged and shared stories. Oh, Lambert was beautiful. Of course Aiden was in love with him. To expect anything else were a fool’s game.

“Oh, kitty cat,” he heard from above, and focused his eyes on Jad. The coldness of his gaze, so detached and unaffected. The only indication he’d ever been in a fight at all was the way his chest pulled bigger breaths than before. “Don’t go and cry now, will ye? This is just the natural order of things.”

Oh, Gods above, Aiden was crying. Silent little tears slipping free from the corners of his eyes, sliding down into his hair that lay fanned out in the grass below. Without dignity indeed. Wounds screaming in white-hot pain, vision blurring with tears that he could not control, heart aching, voice beyond him.

“Please,” the younger Cat spoke in a soft, quivering voice. He blinked hard once, twice, willing the tears away. They did not relent.

“Please.” He was being mocked. Then someone spat from out of his sight right into his hair. It smelled of salmon and tobacco. This time Jad’s dagger entered slowly, and new hot tears fell from Aiden’s eyes with the hurt of it, hand coming to grab his wrist in a feeble attempt to stop him. It did nothing. If anything it encouraged the man.

Aiden couldn’t grant him the final victory of looking away from Karadin’s eyes. Even as the blade ripped out of his body once more. Karadin spoke again. “You beg me to spare your life. Your pathetic little life. Insignificant, worthless, liar’s life. You were never going to change; your batch was doomed from the start. Your death is hardly any repayment, but it is the best we can do to provide peace and closure for the Duke and his people. A life for a life. It is but the way of the world, Aiden. Certainly you understand.”

Oh, he understood. A life for a life was the most polite way to speak of revenge. Talk of debts and dues, exchanges of wins and losses. A life for a life meant a day of reckoning to come. Lambert, kind as Aiden ever saw him, would cash this in as quickly and mercilessly as he could. He was coming no matter what. If he was unable to save Aiden now, he as sure as all things was going to tear apart whoever hurt him. What a gorgeous soul he was.

The fourth and final stab, a telling sign of Karadin’s assassinations. Aiden couldn’t fight it this time. A cluster of wounds just under the right side of someone’s ribs, always in four, always fatal. Aiden choked out a cry of searing agony, feeling the blade twist inside of him with force, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw so tightly he should have broken a few teeth. It twisted again as it was taken out, and all Aiden could do was let the fat tears roll as it happened. He felt Jad grab his medallion from under his shirt and opened his eyes as it was ripped off his neck and placed into a pouch at Karadin’s hip. Proof of death. The easiest form of it, but still worth enough to get paid. Hired by anyone associated closely with a Duke, Jad was sure to be rewarded handsomely for his work.

“Now,” spoke Jad. Aiden’s eyes were starting to get heavy, chest heaving, vision spotting behind the blur of tears. “You’ll be gone in moments, boy. A few minutes and this will be over. The pain will dull just prior, don’t fret. I will not seek out your fox nor that Wolf you travel with, but should they come I will be ready. Goodnight, Aiden. Sleep well.”

Then Jad started to walk away. Hammond and Lund went with him. Aiden could only lay there in the grass, sending his apologies to Baby and Lambert skyward and hope they would understand. He never meant for this to happen. If there hadn’t been that damned sniper, then maybe he could have taken them. But there was no time to dwell now. Darkness crept in, and Aiden’s breathing slowed, and it went dark once and for all as he bled out. He had failed. He was sorry. He could only imagine how horrifically pathetic he appeared. Perhaps he could be forgiven in time by his fox and his Wolf for never coming home.

In some months, when the snow lay thick on the ground, white and untouched blanketing where grass once resided, there would be the choking gasp of a man within the Brokilon Forest. Waking from a healing sleep induced by an old magic, cast by resident Dryads within the cover of trees that towered above. Known by many as the forest of death, breathing life back into someone who simply had not been due to die.

“Sir Witcher Aiden,” said a calming voice, a person standing kindly to the side. Her palm lay gently at the crown of his head, soothing. “We welcome you back to the living world. It has been some time.”

[i-dream-of-twilight-sparkle]

Chapter 26 - Starlight’s Mother, Part 2 - Why Did Firelight Keep Her A Secret?

*THUNDER BOOM*

The storm rages on, and may be even picking up further intensity. But the group outside is absolutely affixed on the sight of Starlight’s Mother. Many with their mouth agape and concerned faces, especially after she had just mentioned that she had been murdered. Talking with her is going to be perhaps one of the darkest, and most serious conversations they’ve ever been in or listened to.

Firelight’s loud scream has attracted the attention of Sunburst and his Mom, they run up while both are holding umbrellas with their magic to see what’s going on and are immediately affixed on the sight of the glowing spirit. Stellar Flare actually somewhat recognizes her, though she didn’t know that she was Starlight’s Mother.

Sunburst: Just what is going on here?!

Stellar Flare: (I… feel like I’ve seen her before… do I know her?)

*THUNDER BOOM*

Twilight: I… think it’s about time we head into Firelight’s house for shelter against the storm… then we can start talking to Sunset about… well… a lot of stuff, to be frank…

The group now joined by Sunburst and Stellar Flare head into Firelight’s house, the only one not coming in quite yet… is Firelight himself… who is still too upset about learning that his wife has been dead. He eventually does just manage to slowly pick himself up and walk into his house along with the rest.

Starlight lights the fireplace to heat up the room and help dry everypony who got soaked in the storm, as everypony shakes off the water in their manes and tails. Sunset sits in the center of the room, naturally as she’s going to be answering a lot of questions. Everypony starts to settles down, except for Firelight who still can’t help himself from being upset about the fate of his beloved wife he weeps in the corner of the room constantly as the rest of the group prepares to speak with Sunset. Starlight then gets to asking Twilight what she knows.

Starlight: Twilight, you somehow knew my mother’s name as soon as you saw her… mind telling me how?

Twilight: Of course, your mother is none other then Sunset Shimmer… Celestia’s protege before me. Celestia told me all about her for the first time after a private talk with her and Luna when I was gathering invitees to the ball.

Starlight: WHAT?! Celestia had a protege before you… and she was my mother?!

Starlight turns to the spirit of Sunset

Starlight: Is… is this true… mother?

Sunset simply nods, and Starlight finally has the epiphany she’s been waiting for her whole life.

Starlight: Oh my gosh… that’s why… that’s why I’ve had so much raw magical power! My mother happens to be the only other pony’s whom’s magic power has captured Celestia’s attention! But wait… if you’re dead... were you killed in a battle with a foe while on the job... and thus Celestia had to unfortunately find a new student?

Sunset: You’re half right… I was killed in a battle… though if it were while I was still her student, there certainly would of been a very publicized funeral... But I had actually stepped down a decent while before then… so I could eventually live with your father and raise you… When I went up to the soul shield… I was so upset that I was never going to get that chance…

Sunset starts tearing up, looks like spirits can cry too. Though a spirit’s tears is more like little sparkles that simply fade once they hit the ground.

Starlight: Mother… you stepped down from a pretty secure role… where you could of possibly became a Princess of Equestria… just so you could raise a family…? Just so you could raise… me…?

Sunset nods once again

Sunset: Most of my life, I relished my role as Celestia’s protege. I felt like I was the coolest pony around in my teenage years… taking down the bad guys… being sent on missions on behalf of the Princess… the kind of spells I was able to perform… and even the possibility of eventually reaching a major position of power one day. I loved being Equestria’s premier hero so much, I started collecting a sort of information database on all the most wanted villains to get an edge on all of them. Reading up about past ones that had a danger of coming back, ones that were on the loose at the time, and any potential new threats in the future.

But… as I got older… keeping an eye on so many criminals and evildoers also put a target on my back… it was hard to make many meaningful friends when getting too close to me would only put them in danger. And as I reached adulthood, I felt a want to escape from it all, relax, and raise a family. I met your father sometime late in my teenage years, it was generally alright to go see him because Sire’s Hollow… at least at the time… was a pretty obscure place.

We got married not too long after I became 21 years old, and… when I was pregnant with you a few years later, Starlight… it finally came time to inform Celestia I wanted to step down. Continuing to be Celestia’s protege would of just simply endangered you and your father’s life.

But… once I had given birth to you… I know there was still one more danger I had to deal with before I could retire once and for all.. a family of 3 anarchists… who were threatening to steal the magic from Equestria for themselves or even get rid of all magic if the former wasn’t possible… so once my body mostly recovered from giving live birth in the very house we’re in right now… I set out within 2 weeks… and I’m not even sure I lived to see a 3rd week…

Starlight: So… you’ve really been dead for just about the whole time you were missing…

Firelight just breaks down

Firelight: Why… why did this have to happen…?! We were so close… to just having time for ourselves! *sniff*

Sunset: I’m so sorry, Fi-Fi! I didn’t think I was going to die! I got too overconfident that this last job wasn’t going to be that dangerous… the three anarchists I fought weren’t like a particularly strong entity… they were just a family of ponies…

Starlight: Can you recall their names?

Sunset: …I’ve been trying… but… for some reason I’m drawing a blank… to be frank, I can’t even recall how I died at the moment…

The entire group inside gasps

Starlight: What?! I would think the moment of death, and especially the names of murderers would be like… the one thing every spirit remembers most vividly!

Sunset: I don’t quite get it either… but I think at the very least it’s possible for something to jog my memory… all I can remember right now is that while I died myself… I believe 2 of the 3 anarchists I was chasing went down with me. I’m also drawing a blank on what happened to the 3rd, but if nothing else it looks like despite dying in the process. I was generally successful in my mission of making sure they weren’t able to do anything. Otherwise Equestria would be a magicless hellscape right now… that at least gives me some relief…

Starlight: How come no bodies were ever recovered? Of either you or the anarchists you were fighting that died too?

Sunset: I think where I confronted them, it was a pretty abandoned or at least a very low populated area… and if there’s one thing I feel like I can just vaguely recall about my death… I have this sense that I was falling at one point… off a cliff near an ocean… it’s possible that our bodies just ended up in the ocean… and hungry water predators like sharks picked off any remaining trace of me and the anarchists that died…

Starlight: Well… I guess if that’s all we’re going to get about your death until something jogs your memory… perhaps we should continue talking about back when you were alive. I’ll repeat that you were Celestia’s student… and you gave that away to raise me… that’s… a lot to take in…

Firelight looks at Starlight, and finally starts confessing why he’s kept quiet for so long about her mother.

Firelight: *sniff* The fact she was Celestia’s student… was why I was so adamant about not telling you who was your mother… *sniff* *sob* Do you remember that spell book of advanced magic that was the catalyst for your magic freakout that got you your cutie mark?

Starlight: Yes?

Firelight: That was your mother’s spell book…

Starlight gasps

Firelight: Because my wife led such a dangerous life… I thought you gaining your cutie mark through her spellbook meant you were destined to follow in your mother’s footsteps to become Celestia’s student… but I didn’t want you to go down that path… if you had known who your mother was, and especially after getting your cutie mark… you might of went straight to Canterlot to claim yourself as Celestia’s Student through a sense of birthright…

I had dealt with enough drama from this while I was with your mother… I pleaded several times during our relationship that she step down… and when she finally did… I felt like we were going to be free at last… *sniff* but then she went missing, and as we know now… she died… *sob* but I held onto vain hope for years that she was still alive and would some day come back… *sniff*

But the longer she never came back… the more it convinced me that I shouldn’t tell you. For fear… that… you’d disappear too… *sniff*

More tears stream down from Firelight’s eyes

Starlight: Father… So… you never told me who she was… to protect me?

Firelight nods while still tearing up. Starlight lowers her head, regretting at least some of the treatment she’s given him for never telling her about her mother.

Starlight: Oh gosh… I take back everything I ever said to you when I yelled at you about her… you probably would of been right that I’d go down that path because I would of immediately wanted to go to Celestia’s school for Gifted Unicorns back then... Sunburst did, I would of certainly made it too… and if I had known Sunset was my mother… I might of also been compelled to take her place… and might of even challenged Twilight to a duel for the position at some point…

I suppose you still made some mistakes by this resulting in my deep hatred for Cutie Marks being driven deeper… because if I had gone to the school I would of been able to reunite with Sunburst… perhaps I could of come around on Cutie Marks…

But… ultimately, you were just being a protective father... You didn’t want to see me get hurt, or go missing like Mom did… I wish at the very least you could of hired maybe a babysitter to keep me company rather then making me spend my entire childhood stewing about cutie marks, never having a mother figure, and more… but I now understand your motivation for hiding her name from me at last… cause there would of bound to have been records somewhere of who she was that I would of found, and how instantly compelled I might of been to go down a path you were afraid of…

Starlight tears up

Starlight: I’m so sorry… I understand now… you’re not such a bad father after all…

Starlight walks up to her father to hug him. After being so upset since finding out of his wife’s fate, he finally gets a little bit of happiness in at least somewhat reconciling with his daughter. The rest of the group giving d’awwws and/or crying joyous tears.

After letting go, Starlight decides to ask a question that’s now very possible to get an answer from both her parents.

Starlight: Is it alright… if I may ask what the day of my birth was like?

Sunset smiles

Sunset: One of the greatest days of my life… it was quite painful at first, of course… Sire’s Hollow unfortunately didn’t have a true hospital, at least at the time, and my water had broke far too early for me to get to a hospital without you likely being born while on the way there. Luckily, your father had some medical knowledge and was able to get me through. 

I eventually saw you as an adorable pinkish purple foal with a darker purple mane and tail with light blue highlights... couldn’t help but notice just how much of your father’s genes got passed down to you appearance-wise... and at the same moment I got to see you with my own eyes for the first time... I briefly looked out the window and noticed how pretty the stars outside at night were, I couldn’t help but have been inspired by the sky to give you your first name...

Firelight: And I had talked with your mother beforehand about how fun it’d be for our foal to have a last name to rhyme with hers, if we had a daughter

Sunset: And thus, you… Starlight Glimmer… was born.

Fluttershy: That’s so cute…

The group takes a moment to smile about the nice story about the day Starlight was born as a brief breather from the rather serious subjects that have come out from meeting Sunset. Though Twilight asks a rather important question.

Twilight: I don’t mean to bring seriousness back just as we talked about Starlight’s birth. But Firelight, when it seemed like Sunset was missing for a while… did you even try to spread the word for a search?

Firelight raises a hoof about to speak, but then Sunset answers for him

Sunset: I told him not to before I left, Princess Celestia must of told you I wanted out of the spotlight as much as possible once I had stepped down, right? A national search for me would of made that harder, plus Fi-Fi didn’t know I had died not even more than an hour ago. 

Firelight: Yes... right to the end, even if at some point it become more so about preferring to be blissfully unaware what had happened to her… I wanted to respect what she told me to do before she disappeared...

Twilight: Ah, alright… speaking of Princess Celestia though. I actually wonder if I should bring her real quick... I bet she’d love to see you again, Sunset. Would you be alright with that?

Sunset nods

Sunset: Go on ahead, Twilight. I’d absolutely love to see her again as well. It’s probably important she finds out what happened to me, anyway.

Twilight: Alright… I’ll be back with the Princess. Hang tight while I get her...

((Story continues after the break))

Twilight pulls out another piece of portal gum back to the Saddle Arabia palace. And eventually finds Celestia in the halls, and immediately gallops up close

Twilight: Princess Celestia! I have something urgent to tell you...

Celestia: *gasp* Twilight... What is it? Are any ponies in danger?

Twilight: No, nothing like that… but rather a mixture of good news and bad news…

Celestia: What’s the good news?

Twilight: We found Sunset Shimmer...

Celestia goes wide-eyed and smiles

Celestia: That’s fantastic news! So she is still ali…

Twilight: I’m afraid I’m going to have cut you off there, because unfortunately… we found her via spirit summoning… Sunset Shimmer… happened to also be Starlight’s missing mother... And she died shortly after she disappeared...

Celestia’s heart sinks, her hopes dashed of her previous protege being ok almost immediately. Celestia’s cranes her neck lower, her eyes immediately welling up in tears.

Celestia: No… I should of known… I feared this was the case a while ago…even if she wanted to get out of the spotlight… I know it’d be hard for her to avoid everypony that might recognize her… For somepony to be missing for that long without being noticed… it was never a good sign…

And… Starlight Glimmer… was her daughter the whole time…?

Twilight nods

Celestia: It’s… no wonder then she had such raw power, when I had never even heard of her before you met her… Twilight, please let me have a moment of silence and grief for my departed former protege…

Twilight nods to let Celestia have a brief moment to her own thoughts, knowing now how special Sunset was to her. Celestia just sits down for a moment to grieve, even with Spirit summoning possible. It’s nonetheless upsetting to hear somepony died, especially somepony who was only about in her mid-20’s and also somepony Celestia was quite proud of. But soon she stands back up, flares her majestic wings, and she gives Twilight a determined face.

Celestia: I must go see Sunset again... Please, take me wherever her spirit was summoned…

Twilight nods, walking back to the portal she left back into Firelight’s house. Soon Twilight has returned with Princess Celestia. Celestia looks around the room seeing the other Elements of Harmony, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Starlight Glimmer and her father, as well as Sunburst and Stellar Flare. Until she finally sees Sunset’s spirit. She approaches Sunset with a solemn look on her face.

Celestia: Sunset… I am… deeply saddened to learn you died a long time ago… were… you killed amidst a battle with the anarchists you were chasing after…?

Sunset: Yes, Princess… I was killed while fighting them most likely. I’m still trying to jog my memory on the exact circumstances of my death. I’m even having a hard time recalling the names of them. But I should also say, that one of the vague details I can share is 2 out of the 3 also died, though who or what happened to the 3rd is still something I need to recall. So my death wasn’t entirely in vain, I imagine I did just enough to stop them from whatever they planned to do. Since it seems like Equestria was fine in between my death and Twilight became your new student.

Celestia: It’s still so awful to see it came at a terrible price… I hoped you had simply succeeded and you were living the peaceful family life you wanted… it’s a shame you may have never gotten it...

Sunset: I wouldn’t say I didn’t get it at all… while I was pregnant with Starlight I kinda had to sideline myself once it kind of became risky to move too far. So at least for a short while, I got to experience a more normal life… even if of course that was cut short not long after Starlight is born… I guess from the perspective of that I really wanted to be a mother… then yes, I never really got to have all I wanted to do…

Sunset turns to Starlight

Sunset: I really wish I had gotten to be there for you during your childhood. If I had survived my battle with the anarchists, I fully planned on being there for you everyday for when Fi-Fi was at work.

Starlight slightly tears up and smiles

Starlight: I’m happy to hear that, mother… that would of made such a difference on my life...

Firelight: A little late I know, Starlight… but I thought I may as well also give the reason I never hired a babysitter... I had of course been still holding onto hope that your mother was still alive the whole time… I also feared that if she was still around like I optimistically thought… especially when it became years that she was missing… that your mother would of been heartbroken after she might of thought I moved on and married somepony else if she were indeed still alive and came back to the house only to find another mare taking care of you...

Starlight: I guess that’s an understandable reason, there are such thing as babysitters who are stallions that might of been able to avert that, but just not nearly as common as mares. Though if I may slightly change the subject to a more lighthearted note, I notice my mother keep calling you Fi-Fi. Is that just a cute nickname she came up with?

Sunset tilts her head and smiles

Sunset: Pretty much. Your father liked to call me Shimmy, and I wanted to have my own nickname for him. And we settled on Fi-Fi.

Starlight: *giggles* I guess my father has always liked nicknames. He’s called me Pumky-wumpkins or Sugarplum for as about as long as I can remember. Though they don’t seem to be quite as name related as your nicknames for each other

Sunset laughs, and looks at Starlight with a smug face.

Sunset: Hahahaha! Was it really? I’m pretty sure both of those were in potential REAL names he proposed before you were born. You were lucky I vetoed both of them, ehehehehe!

Firelight sheepishly smiles, Starlight just cringes.

Starlight: ….Yeeeeeeah I can’t imagine what it’d be like if Pumky-Wumpkins was actually my name… Sugarplum may have it at least made some sense given my mane is mostly purple. But I still like what actually became my name so much more.

Celestia smiles at the lighthearted conversation

Celestia: That makes me a little happier that you indeed got to have such cherished family moments like picking a name for your foal. I can’t help but feel regretful however... in order to honor your years of service and to make sure you last mission went smoothly, I should have accompanied you... There’s no way those three would of stood a chance against us both.

Sunset: Perhaps, but… these 3 weren’t some superpowered villains. For the most part I’m pretty sure they were average ponies, maybe I can vaguely recall one of them being a decent unicorn but otherwise in a 1-on-1 duel, I would of wiped the floor with them. I faced tougher odds plenty of times. I didn’t think I would of needed the help, guess a little overconfidence was my downfall.

Celestia: I guess so, sadly… at least I got to meet your lovely daughter that was within you as you stepped down…

Sunset goes wide-eyed surprised Celestia knew she was pregnant then

Sunset: You knew I was pregnant then?! That was still pretty early in my pregnancy…

Celestia: I noticed you were nervously rubbing your belly during our last conversation. Maybe at first I thought you just had a full meal. But given you talked to me so much about wanting to raise a family, I sort of put the pieces together.

And I felt it probably would be a better life for your foal for you to take care of it, you took care of Equestria for most of your life. I knew you’d likely raise a good child, and before I found Twilight first... I was thinking of maybe waiting for your child to be old enough to go to my school...

Starlight gasps

Starlight: Wait, you considered to have me as your next student?!

Celestia: That was my plan at first during the period between Sunset stepping down when I met Twilight. This was before I had that dream after bringing Spike’s egg to Equestria, Twilight became Plan A after she hatched Spike. But if that had fallen through in any number of ways, or if I couldn’t quite find a student to hatch the egg quick enough if Twilight failed to hatch it too. I would of gone out to search for you myself, and hope to convince Sunset to let you try to hatch the egg instead. There’s no guarantee that you would of been able to hatch it, but it’s very possible had Sunset lived and Twilight hadn’t become my student. Starlight would be in Twilight’s position right now.

Starlight: Dang… So I could of been the ruler of Equestria in a year right now if the right chips fell…

Starlight sits down while lowering her head thinking of what could have been. Twilight notices Starlight’s reaction to hearing this, ponders for a moment, and then give her a gracious offer.

Twilight: You know Starlight… I could always make you my student again… if… if… you kind of want to give ruling Equestria a shot. I’d still have a lot to teach you about doing so. But I wouldn’t mind having a co-ruler at some point. As I have thought about the strain of moving both the sun and the moon every day.

Starlight perks up at Twilight’s offer. She feels like she may have some slight interest after learning she’s the daughter of somepony else who could have very well succeeded to the throne, but with mysteries still surrounding yet to be answered about her mother. She decides not to make a complete decision just yet.

Starlight: I’ll… have to think about that. It’s already a huge enough honor that I’ll be succeeding you as Principal of the School of Friendship. I’d… be kind of scared a precedent would be set that every Principal of that School becomes a ruler of Equestria if I ended up co-ruling with you *giggles* But… if I have an answer… I’ll go and see you…

Meanwhile, Sunset is surprised but also kind of proud hearing that her daughter had been a student of a Princess too.

Sunset: You were Twilight’s student at one point? I see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. We were both students of Princesses! How did it end for you?

Starlight: I just had a graduation ceremony after Twilight had decided I had learned enough about friendship, and I was left to do what I wanted for a little while. I don’t think Twilight putting me under her wing originally was intent on making me Princess one day. More so that I learn the values of Friendship personally from her.

Though after I sort of graduated, I would later get employed again under Twilight when she started the School of Friendship, when I decided to become the school’s counselor. Kinda funny… at some point I became so dedicated to counseling I would have an alert for whenever a student knocked at my door. To the annoyance of my friend, Trixie. Mom, when you said that you were dedicated to keeping track of criminals even at the expense of having anything resemble a normal life. I realized that may have been another trait I inherited from you…

Sunset: Certainly sounds like it, doesn’t it? Hope you didn’t get all of my rather flawed traits, I… did kind of have a temper back in the day.

Starlight sheepishly smiles remembering all the time she’s expressed rage whether it was before she was reformed, when she had to bottle up anger at Trixie, when she most recently yelled at her father, etc.

Starlight: Er… I kinda have that too…

Starlight sheepishly smiles

Sunset: Oh well… at least that means we can sympathize with each other!

Celestia smiles hearing the conversation and decides to ask Sunset for a favor.

Celestia: This has been a nice conversation with you and your daughter. But may I ask you for something?

Sunset: What is it, Princess?

Celestia: I’d like... to give you a hug real quick, or at least… I hope the cosmos counted us as close enough to do so.

Sunset smiles

Sunset: Of course, Princess. I’d love that. And we better count, or else some how some way... I’m gonna get somepony to file a lawsuit against the Grim Reaper!

The whole room giggles thinking about a lawsuit against death itself. But Celestia and Sunset approach eachother close, Celestia puts a hoof around the back of Sunset’s neck, lowers her head and smiles.

The hug is successful. Sunset hugs back a little by wrapping a hoof behind one of Celestia’s tall, slim front hooves.

Pinkie: *giggles* The Reaper doesn’t have to worry about a lawsuit now!

Starlight: Hey! How about a hug for me too, Mom!

Firelight: Me three, Shimmy!

Sunset: Of course, Starlight and Fi-Fi!

Sunset and Celestia let go of each other so Sunset can proceed to have a small group hug with her family that lasts a good while. When they break off the hug, Sunset goes a little extra and surprises Firelight with a kiss.

Firelight: Even as a spirit, your kisses are the best, Shimmy…

The rest of the group just has been d’awwing all over the place for the heartwarming moment. Though as much as the ponies were enjoying these happy moments, there were still mysteries about Sunset left to uncover.

Twilight: I don’t wish to ruin the moment, but I feel like we should soon get some sort of lead so we can help Sunset uncover more of what happened. I don’t want to leave without uncovering who was responsible for Sunset’s death or at least get to finding some clues.

Sunset and Starlight nod, and Stellar Flare suddenly walks up to the front.

Stellar Flare: I… might have something… because… I think somehow I know you, Sunset… but I can’t place my hoof on why…

Sunset takes a look at Stellar and gives a surprised look. She’s been focused too much on talking with her family for the first time ever since she died, talking with her daughter for the first time in particular, and then also reuniting with Celestia to notice any others in the room she recognized

Sunset: I think I know you too! Weren’t you… my older brother’s wife?

Stellar Flare goes wide-eyed

Stellar Flare: YOU’RE Sunspot’s younger sister?!

Starlight, Trixie, and Sunburst give heavy gasps. Being Starlight’s mother wasn’t the only mystery found out about Sunset today. And it looks like there is still plenty more to go.

UP NEXT: Chapter 27: Starlight’s Mother, Part 3 - Where Did She Die?

[the-jade-cross]

Journey to Middle Earth - Chapter 14

Summary – What if JRR Tolkien never gave Thorin a love story… because the person that was meant to be Thorin’s was not yet born when he wrote the Hobbit? Sara journeys from her world to Middle Earth after an accident, with a mission. To change something about the Hobbit story… but she is not sure what. What she does not know is that while trying to prevent something from happening, something new might arise between her and the dwarf prince….even if it is not on the agenda!

Warnings – None, no explicit scenes, some kissing, violence, frightening creatures, mentions of abuse.

Pairings – Thorin Oakenshield x OC

Sara knew that if she explained the danger Thorin was in, she would get some reactions. While most of the company carried on like normal but did make an effort to keep an eye on Thorin, Bilbo went so far as to try and wiggle the details out of Sara and once or twice, she almost did. They would be talking about something completely unrelated and Bilbo was throw in a question asking who Thorin was in danger of and Sara would almost answer him if she didn’t have such quick reactions.

She had only told them that in the previous timeline, Thorin was in danger. She didn’t specifically mention when, where or by whom and didn’t tell them that Fili and Kili were involved in the matter. Not on did she notice a change in the dwarves because of this information, but they also treated her differently. They always made sure that she never got the night watch shifts and Nori, Ori and Dori had even helped her clean Thorin’s chamber so she could sleep in a well-lit, clean bedroom.

Because Oin was not with them, Balin took it upon himself to monitor what foods and smells Sara encountered to eliminate the girl’s feelings of nausea and vomiting. Bombur always reserved extra servings of food for Sara and Dwalin always ensured that Thorin and Sara were at least six feet apart. (Social distancing pun intended;))

Sara appreciated their help and the thoughtfulness but she began to worry that Thorin would notice the change and begin to suspect why Sara was getting special treatment.

Not only that, even though Sara tried to avoid an argument with Thorin for the sake of her very high emotions and for the baby’s wellbeing, she missed him dearly and with the doubling of her “guard”, she never got a moment alone with him.

In that case, she decided to go against Dwalin’s advice of plenty of sleep in the safely locked royal chamber and snuck out to locate the dwarf prince.

This proved simple since everyone who wasn’t Thorin or the one on guard were in an ale stupor. Slipping into the treasure room, Sara found Thorin pouring over a table of teeny tiny white, pink and blue gems.

“Thorin?” she whispered softly in the hopes of not surprising him.

The dwarf spun around even though her voice had been soft, and his face lit up, “Givashel! I thought you were asleep,”

Sara almost saw a glimpse of the old Thorin then but then she realized that he didn’t call her by her name…. but by “my treasure”…

“I couldn’t sleep and I thought…” she started.

Before she could invite him to rest, Thorin had jumped up and grabbed something from the table and held it out to her with a huge smile.

“This will make you happy.” He said, holding out the most beautiful ring Sara had ever seen with a pale pink gem in the center of the golden band, “It is better than that trash I made you in the mountain village.”

Sara bit her lip. She had grown fond of the solid gold band that Thorin had fashioned for her on the day of their marriage. It was simple but made of love…

“It is beautiful Thorin,” she said, noticing how sunken in his eyes and cheeks were from lack of sleep.

When she made no move to take it, Thorin’s smile faded into a frown, “You do not like it!?”

“No, I love it…” Sara assured him, taking the ring from his waiting hands and slipping it onto her ring finger, right above her original wedding ring. “I just… I am worried about you! You never eat or sleep. You’re gonna kill yourself at this rate!”

“I do not need to be babied!” Thorin growled.

“I am not babying you! I am caring about you! I am your wife and it is by duty!” Sara snapped.

Thorin grabbed her wrists and pinned her against the wall, “And that is the only reason?”

Sara felt her heart drop. Was that why he was snappy with her? Because he thought she only did things because they were married? The girl gently reached up and touched his pale cheek, feeling tears prick her eyes at the pain in his orbs.

“No, because whenever I see you sad or in pain, I breaks my heart,” She whispered.

His eyes shining with tears, Thorin dipped down slowly and brushed his lips over hers before pausing as if testing the waters.

“I love you,” Sara murmured.

That was the only invitation Thorin needed before he caught her lips in a full kiss.

Sara half expected it to be heated with hunger and anger and was surprised when she felt his body tremble from emotion, his lips caressing hers gently and full of love. When Sara looped her arms around his neck, Thorin took the invitation and scooped her into his arms. Not breaking the kiss, he took her to their bed chamber.

When Sara woke to the birds chirping, she no longer felt the warm and secure arms that had embraced her all night, nor the gentle breathing noises and the soft lips that had fallen asleep pressed to her forehead. The girl sighed, burying her face in the plush pillow to muffle the whimpers and sobs that ripped from her throat as her heart shattered. She was jolted from her misery by a loud echoing voice that called out.

“Hello!? Bombur…. Bifur…. Anyone!”

The girl was up in an instant, clothing her naked form before pouring warm water on her face in the hopes of easing her red, puffy eyes.

When she burst from her room, she almost tripped over Mason who had come in search of his master. She stumbled into the dining room just in time to find Oin, Bofur, Fili and Kili happily embracing their fellow dwarves. Oin was the first to notice Sara and his eyes widened at the sight of the flushed, slightly more round than he remembered, snuggling into a sweater young girl.

“Mahal…”

All eyes turned to Sara and the girl was engulfed by Fili and Kili who began chattering her ear off.

“You’re alright!” Kili screeched.

“Axel and Omar send their best,” Fili assured her.

As the two brothers ranted, Oin pushed through and touched Sara’s abdomen, examining her and the girl was happy that he chose to not mention the puffy red eyes that she had managed to disguise from everyone but Oin who never missed a thing.

“Lass, you are with Bairns!” he whispered.

Sara’s eyes widened, “Bairns…. As in multiple!?”

Oin nodded with a huge smile, “With your size and how much you are already showing, there is no way it could be two… lass, I think you might be carrying three!”

********

“Twins!?” Dwalin whisper-yelled, “Oin, perhaps half of your brain got roasted by dragon fire.”

Oin shook his head, never taking his eyes off the petite red head who’s eyes shone with joy and love but her face sheet white with worry and fear.

“The lass has already begun to show. She is barely a week and already she has the motherly glow and her symptoms are kicking in. This does not usually happen till the fourth or fifth week.”

“We thought that because the Bairn is part human, part dwarf that it would explain the early symptoms,” Balin intervened.

Oin nodded, “That is so, that would explain the symptoms but Sara is already bumping which can only be explained by the number of bairns she carries.”

Sara glanced down at her abdomen and smoothed the sweater she wore, only to realize that Oin was right. Sara had never been one to worry about her weight and she had not realized that her loose pants and sweater hid the barely noticeable bump. She looked at Oin, her face shining with worry.

“How long do you think the pregnancy will be?”

Oin pursed his lips in thought, “At the most…. Four to five months.”

“And the earliest?” Balin asked, interrupting Dwalin who had been about to ask the same question, leaving him with his mouth open.

“Considering the facts…” Oin mumbled, “One to two months.”

Sara’s eyes bulged, “So as far as we know, I could be about a fifth or fourth through my pregnancy?”

Oin nodded, “Aye. Your appetite will continue to grow and you will begin craving strange foods.”

Sara did not really worry about that for she knew it would come but her mind was buzzing. Azog would be attacking Erabor and Dale in the next two days… she needed to leave the mountain and come up with a plan. Not only that, she needed to ensure that her brothers would be safe during the battle.

“I’m gonna be a cousin!” Kili hooted.

Fili was about to join in with the celebration when Dwalin whacked them over the head to shut them up just as the door opened and in strode Thorin.

“Everyone to the gate, now!” he growled.

As the prince began to leave, the company looked to Sara, only to realize from the look in her eyes that it was the Laketown people arriving. Sara hurried over to Thorin and grasped his forearm. The dwarf looked at her with no expression in his pale blue eyes.

“You stay here. We need to take care of this.”

Sara nodded, not bothering to object, “I will see you later Thorin.”

With that, she stood on tiptoe and planted a loving kiss on his lips. Thorin did not react but Sara knew that the dwarves were staring with worried looks on their faces, knowing that her words were not really “see you later” but “goodbye for now”.

The girl looked at the dwarves and smiled gently at them before exiting the room. She hurried down the corridors to her chamber and she dove in, locking the door behind her. She needed to move quickly. Thorin would begin to rebuild the gate and she didn’t want him to realize her absence. Grabbing her bag, she loaded her knife, notebook, gun and a few pairs of clothes in before strapping her bow and swords to her back. She turned to Mason and softly told him to follow her only to open the door and find a small pouch on the floor outside with a note attached to it.

Sara, be safe. Use the hidden door to leave and give my best to Ryder, Omar and Axel. We will miss you until we meet again. Bombur insisted that you take the food in the pouch. It will last you a few days. Dwalin also put in a bag of explosive dust. He said that it might help you with your plan. Keep safe my queen. – Balin.

Sara smile and hastily placed the pouch in her began before rushing down the corridors to where the hidden door was. She halted as she passed the treasure room. No point in leaving a note in the bedroom since Thorin never went there. She reached to her pocket and drew out the letter she had written Thorin before pinning it to the door of the treasure room. Takin gone last look over her shoulder, she slipped up the staircase, through the hidden door and into the fresh air. She looked down at Mason who stood by her side like a sentry. She then reached down and rubbed her stomach before feeling tears prick her eyes.

“Don’t worry babies. We will see your daddy again… and he will be alive. I promise you.”

Shifting her bag and weapons, she began the slow climb down the stairs with mason following closely behind. They had just reached the bottom when Sara froze and touched the stone that made up a good amount of the surrounding rock.

“Magnesium…” She whispered.

Her mind raced back to the time when Axel practically forced her to watch ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ staring Josh Hutcherson for school. Sara’s face lit into a huge smile and she turned to Mason.

“I’ve got an idea,” she whispered, “Good thing Dwalin gave me extra explosives.”

About six hours later when Thorin made his way back to the treasure room after leaving the rest of the company to continue stacking stone, he was confused to find a small piece of paper tied to the door. Thinking perhaps it was another letter from Sara asking him to get some rest and eat, he made to tear it off and crumble it when he noticed two words that made him freeze.

I’m sorry.

He quickly unraveled the crumpled letter and scanned the letter hastily before reading it a second time, very slowly this time:

Dear Thorin,

I’m sorry that I am telling you this in a letter instead of in person, but I know that if I tried to explain the situation to you in person, you would not let me leave. I am leaving to go to Dale for a while. I need to check on my brothers and ensure that they are safe and well. I promise, I am not leaving you nor betraying you, but this is something I have to do to ensure that nothing terrible happens to anyone. Please trust me and know that I love you more than you can even imagine. Be strong Thorin and fight this sickness that has changed you. Remember, I will love you no matter what, but you have to fight this.

I love you with my whole heart.

Your wife, Sara

Thorin hadn’t realized it but by the time he had read the letter a fourth time, a single tear had escaped his eye and he stood there frozen, not believing what had just happened…. But his pain and misery was soon ended when he heard the company talking and he returned to his serious self, storming into the treasure room, leaving the letter abandoned on the floor.

*******

When Sara and Mason slipped through the back entrance of Dale, she was glad to find that almost all the inhabitants were at the front gates, welcoming Thranduil, his army of elves and his carts of food. However, the joy at having an easy entrance was clouded by fear. She only had till morning to get a plan under way. She did not have to look far before she rounded a corner and smacked into a hard chest, spluttering an apology.

“Sara?” A familiar, deep voice rumbled.

Sara lifted her eyes and a huge grin split across her face when she recognized the tall, bear like figure of Zain.

“You’re okay!” Sara squealed, throwing her arms around the big man’s abdomen. When she pulled away, she noticed a silver bracelet on his thick wrist and her eyes widened. Grace had told her that human custom was instead of beads, two betrothal silver bracelets were used to signify the members of an engagement or betrothal.

“And engaged!” Sara chirped with joy at the blush on Zain’s smiling face as he tried to hide behind his curls.

The tall man smiled and nodded, “Aye, Rose is a special girl.”

Sara’s eyes widened further, “Rose!? As in the Rose from the mountain village!?”

Zain nodded and Sara breathed a sigh of relief, “She and Deke… are they okay? What about my brothers?”

Zain nodded, “Deke and Rose are well. They are with Grace and the kids. Axel, Omar and Ryder are over here…”

Sara joyfully followed Zain to a corner of the marketplace to find her brothers sitting with Deke, Rose and Grace’s family. Omar was the first to see her and leapt to his feet, running over to embrace his big sister. As Axel and Ryder came for their hugs, Omar went to pet Mason.

“What are you doing her!?” Axel whisper yelled, “Shouldn’t you be with our husband?”

Sara bit her lip, “Thorin is too far gone. I need to come up with a plan to save him, Fili and Kili before dawn when Thranduil attacks Erabor and Dain appears.”

Axel nodded, “Whatever you need help with, you can count me in.”

Sara beamed at her brother, “I noticed that there is Magnesium all over Erabor. I need to find out if there is any on Ravenhill.”

Axel cocked his head quizzically, “Who or what are you planning on blasting to smithereens?”

Sara smiled, “I have got a backup plan for Thorin but I need to find out if there is Magnesium where Fili is…. “Killed”. And also to find out how to get him out of there.”

“What about Kili?” her brother quizzed.

Sara shook her head, “That is a part of the plan that I haven’t figured out yet.”

“If only Mithril weren’t so scarce,” Omar muttered.

Axel nodded in agreement when suddenly Sara’s eyes widened and she spun Axel around to face her, “Axel… you took those snorkeling diving lessons right?”

Axel nodded, “Yeah… .why?”

Sara smirked, “I need you to go swimming for something.”

All three of her brothers tilted their heads in confusion. Sara just smiled, “Mithril is not the only thing that is impenetrable.”

When Axel gave her a look as if to say, ‘you are making no sense and I cannot understand a thing you are saying’, Sara smirked.

“What did Thorin say to Bilbo about mithril?”

Omar hummed in thought, “no blade can pierce it.” Sara smiled, “And what did Bilbo tell Frodo?”

“Ooh!” Ryder squealed, “I know! He said… ‘As light as a feather and as hard as dragon scales’!”

All at once, her brothers caught onto what she was getting at and smiled in excitement.

Sara beamed, “Now, while you and Omar re off doing that, I am taking a hike up to Ravenhill.”

The girl got to her feet and made to call Mason hen the whiff of rotting, burnt bones from the past Dale inhabitants reached her nose and she doubled over, puking into a nearby corner, away from the others.

Grace hastily poured a mug of water while her husband helped hold back Sara’s hair as she emptied her stomach onto the gravel. After she finished and washed her mouth with water, she turned to find Axel looking at her suspiciously while Omar and Ryder looked highly concerned. “Well do that,” Axel remarked, “Right after you tell us the whole story. What is going on!?”

“Azog and Bolg will be attacking tomorrow,” Sara pointed out, trying to avoid the question, “It would be best if Grace, Rose and the kids left for the mountain village.”

“Sara Renee,” Axel said sternly, “What was the ulterior motive you had for leaving Thorin and Erabor?”

Sara opened her mouth to escape the real answer but Axel gave her a warning look.

The girl sighed, “You might be expecting a niece or nephew soon and because every event in Middle Earth is against us, you might meet them sooner than expected.”

**********

Sara did a full 180 degree turn as she studied the ledge where Azog would stand as he killed Fili. She scanned until her eyes fell on a particularly smooth layer of rock, right where Fili would land after Azog dropped him. If Azog happened to drop Fili over the ledge when Sara set her plan in motion, she needed to make sure Fili wouldn’t die from the fall. Sara ran her hands over the smooth rock, partially covered by snow which hid it well. How did it not break under Fili’s weight? Sara tapped the rock around the match of Muscovite and found that it was a narrow section of the thin rock… with water underneath? From the sound of it, it was a good amount of water… possibly an underground reservoir that connected to the lake and waterfall that was frozen over. Sara pulled out her sketch book and began to do the math.

“If the section is this wide… with this distance between the rock and the water… and Fili’s weight didn’t break it…and this weight would be needed to break through the rock…Then Fili’s weight should be around this much… so I would need this additional weight…. Rocks will work as good additional weight… just add the extra weight to the rock and when Fili drops….just need to know wone thing… how do you ask a guy how much he weighs!?”

******

“Do you think it will be just like in the movie?” Omar whispered as the four children watched Bard stand at the huge gate of Erabor, negotiating through the peephole. The four kids were sitting in the tower of Dale, peering over the railing in the hopes of not being spotted by a particular grump dwarf king.

“Either that or Thorin will poke bard’s eye out with an arrow through the hole,” Axel mumbled.

Sara poked her brother in a gentle scolding manner. Axel smirked, “Oh, Omar and I got that shipment you requested.”

He held up a small sack and Sara beamed, taking it off his hands and tucking it under her arm. “When Grace and Rose leave with the children tonight, Ryder and Mason must go with them. It is dangerous enough for Omar.” Sara whispered to Axel who nodded in agreement.

“You are going to the gate with Brad and Thranduil tomorrow right?” Axel whispered, “Anything you want me to tell Bilbo?”

Sara nodded, “Give him this,” She said, handing Axel a folded note, “And tell him to be careful.”

Axel smiled but being the curious teenage boy he was, he opened the note and read it.

“Sara, what goes through your head these days? I think the babies are getting to you! Why do you need to know Fili’s body weight? Are you using him as a mold for the baby’s clothes!?”

Sara smirked, “Don’t worry about it. I just needed to make sure I estimated his weight right. it is part of the plan.”

“What about Azog and Thorin? Did you figure out a plan B for Plan B in case Plan X fails and when that fails, if plan B might fail?”

Sara shook her head, “Hopefully Plan A or Plan A’s Plan B will work.”

Axel nodded with worry etched across his face, “You know you only have three shots left.”

Sara sighed, “I am well aware.”

“You have three shots to save the three dwarves,” Ryder chirped.

Sara smiled, “I wish life were that simple bro, but life has a way of working against you.”

“Which can also be titled: The existence of Azog and Bolg.” Omar muttered which made Axel’s blue eyes widen.

“Sara, Azog is out to destroy the line of Durin!”

“Duh!” Omar mumbled, “He’s out to deliver us peaches and pineapple!”

“Sara,” Axel whisper yelled, ignoring Omar, “You happen to be carrying the next two heirs of Durin!”

Sara shrugged, “Well I don’t make it a habit of telling orcs that I am pregnant with Thorin Oakenshield’s children who happens to be king under the mountain, the dwarf Azog is out to kill which happens to make me Queen of Era…. Oh no!”

“Now you get it,” Axel mumbled as his sister’s face paled.

“What is it?” Omar asked, confused.

“Looks like we’ll need a plan B for Plan B, second edition,” Axel remarked.

***********

“Bard!” Sara called, deciding to not call him Mr. Bard since that sounded too American. “Excuse me!”

Bard turned to see Sara hurrying over to him and he smiled, “What can I do for you little lady?”

“erm…” Sara mumbled, “My name is Sara…”

Bard’s eyes widened, “I have heard of you… you are a member of the company of Thorin Oakenshield.”

Sara looked down, “Not anymore.”

Bard’s face softened, “you ran away, like the halfling?”

Sara nodded, “I know that makes me look like a coward…”

“Not at all,” Bard assured her, “You had to do what was for the best to protect yourself.”

“I was wondering if I could ride out with you tomorrow when you declare war on Thorin?”

Bard’s eyes widened, “You knew of that?”

Sara nodded which seemed enough to convince Bard, “Very well, but on the condition, you ride on my horse behind me. If Thorin is angry to see you, I do not want you shot.”

Sara beamed and nodded, “Thank you!”

She made to leave when she heard a voice behind her, “So it is you.”

Sara spun around to come face to face with the elven king, Thranduil. She bowed her head but Thranduil lifted her chin with his finger and studied her face.

“When I heard that Thorin Oakenshield had taken a bride, I did not believe it,” he touched the beads in her hair and eyed the two rings on her finger, “But I see that it is true.”

The elf stepped back when he saw Sara’s eyes flare in warning at his close proximity.

“What inclined the queen of Erabor to leave her throne and spouse?” the elf king inquired.

Sara squared her shoulders, “I did not marry Thorin for his throne. Nor di I leave him. I left the mountain to protect him and his…”

When she cut herself off, Thranduil frowned but his sharp eyes caught sight of the slight bump that was visible beneath her tunic.

His eyes widened, “His heir… this may work to our advantage.”

Bard went to object to Thranduil’s selfish plan but Sara intervened. “I will cooperate but on my terms.”

“Fair enough,” the elf smirked.

*********

“Do I have to go?” Ryder pleaded, his arm around Mason’s fluffy neck s his brothers and sister bade him farewell.

Sara smiled as she kissed his curls, “it will be safer for you. Tomorrow Grace and Rose will bring you all back and everything will be well again.”

Ryder stuck out his bottom lip in a pout, “Don’t forget to consider the names I picked for the babies!”

“We don’t even know the gender yet,” Omar observed.

“Which names did you pick?” Axel inquired, “Legolas Jr. and Pippin?”

Ryder shook his head, “That was Ruby’s idea. I picked Charlie Brown and Snoopie.”

********

“You ready for this?” Bard whispered to Sara who sat perched behind him in the saddle, her arms around his middle, his tall stature hiding her from sight.

“Yeah… totally…” Sara whispered back, “I am totally ready to reveal to my ornery dwarf husband that I am pregnant with his twin children, I ran away because I was afraid of him and I knew that Bilbo had the Arkenstone…. Yeah…. Definitely.”

Bard chuckled softly before pulling his mare to a halt next to Thranduil’s elk. Sara cringed when she heard an arrow strike the ground in front of the elk and Thorin’s voice bellowed from above.

“The next one will be between your eyes,” Thorin growled, followed by the cheers of the company.

Sara stifled a giggle when she heard the dwarves gasp when the elves pulled their bows on them at the nod from Thranduil.

“Payment of your treasures has been offered and accepted,” Thranduil growled through his teeth.

“What payment? I gave you nothing! You have nothing!” Thorin bellowed angrily.

Bard reached into his coat and drew out the Arkenstone, “We have this!”

Sara felt a hand touch her leg and looked to see Gandalf standing there next to the horse, shrouded by his big grey hat and cloak, “Bilbo went back didn’t he?”

Sara nodded, “he will be fine… with a little help from you.”

Gandalf smiled before leaning up and whispering something to the girl who beamed with joy.

“The Arkenstone is in this mountain!” Thorin yelled, startling Sara, “It is a trick!”

Sara bit her lip, knowing that Bilbo had appeared.

“What do we do?” Bard whispered with worry, “Thorin may kill him!”

Sara shook her head, “Help me down in a moment…”

“Curse you!” Thorin bellowed at Bilbo, seeing red as he dragged Bilbo to the edge and pushed him half over, “And curse the wizard who chose you for this company!”

Thorin froze in his movements when he heard Gandalf’s rumbling voice call out, “If you dislike my burglar, then please do not hurt him, return him to me!”

Thorin loosened his grip on the hobbit who went scurrying away from him instantly and snuck down the rope while Thorin sneered at Gandalf.

“Never again will I have dealings with wizards or shire rats!” he hissed.

“You are not making a splendid figure as king under the mountain are you?” Gandalf retorted. “You have fallen so far into greed and envy that you drove your own wife away.”

“You know nothing about me!” Thorin growled, “Not me, nor Sara!”

At those words, Gandalf, Bard and Thranduil all turned to Sara who gripped Bard’s hand and slipped from his horse to come stand next to Gandalf. Thorin’s eyes widened at the sight of the girl and he let out a shaky breath.

“What are you doing with those traitors!” He snapped, his eyes darkening with anger but glistening with sadness.

Sara growled under her breath, “If anyone is a traitor it is you Thorin! You promised to love me and never hurt me. Well guess what? You hurt me! Even when you had me, you had Erabor… when you had everything it was not enough for you! Even if I had told you that I carry your child would it have been enough!”

Silence enveloped everyone and Thorin almost choked on his own breath, the darkness in his eyes fading to give way to a light of hope and joy… clouded by pain.

“You… this is just another trick… a plan to make me cave…” Thorin mumbled mostly to himself.

Sara scoffed before reaching down and smoothing her tunic to reveal the visible bump hidden beneath. Thorin froze and his eyes widened, tears springing to the sky-blue orbs.

“You hid this from me? Do you trust me so little!?” he almost muttered.

That struck a cord and Sara shouted so loud that even Thranduil jumped, “What did you expect me to do!? The day after we are married, you treat me like I do not exist! You never slept or ate and spent all day searching for a bloody rock! You treated your best friends and family like dirt! Did you expect me to hand you the news on a silver platter with a ‘here you are Thorin, another life that you can treat like a slave!’” Sara hissed, “Fat chance.”

Thorin seemed shaken by her words and his eyes glossed over with tears. Sara’s face softened at the sight.

“I love you Thorin, more than anything but I feel that you do not love me anymore. I have lost you… and I have to think of the baby. So until you find yourself again, I cannot be near you or on your side.”

When Thorin did not speak but turned to hide his face from Sara’s vision, the girl sighed. Not yet…

“Are we agreed?” Bard called, noticing that Sara was not going to speak further. “The return of the Arkenstone for what was promised? Will you have peace or war?”

Sara closed her eyes, awaiting the fateful answer.

“I will have war,” Thorin said just loud enough over the sound of approaching feet, 1000 fold.

Sara groaned as she turned to see the silver armored dwarves cross the crest of the hill. “Ironfoot. The more the merrier I suppose…”

Gandalf reached down and grabbed Sara by the hand who in turn grabbed Bilbo’s wrist and pulled them toward where the dwarves were approaching.

“Who is that?” Bilbo whispered. “Doesn’t look very friendly.”

“Thorin’s cousin Dain,” Sara replied. “Lord of the Ironhills.”

“Is he and Thorin… similar?” the hobbit inquired.

Gandalf paused for a second, “Thorin was always the more aggregable of the two.”

Bilbo looked at Sara with a completely distressed look and Sara smirked, “Stay close to Gandalf and make good choices. If you need help, Axel and Omar are defending Dale.”

The hobbit nodded, “What about you? You are in no condition to fight! You’ll get hurt!”

Sara just smiled knowingly, “Do not doubt my intelligence dear Mr. Baggins. Just pray that things don’t go wrong.”

“Like what?”

“Like a certain dwarf prince having a not so friendly reunion with a particularly not friendly white giant orc creature.”

[jacscorner]

The Shiitake Hills and Drake Lands - D&D Super Mario: Races and Setting Notes

So after the Mario and Luigi posts I did before, I wanted to sort of expand on this loose concept of ‘Super Mario as a D&D Setting’ that I’ve had kicking around while I was suffering from chronic online college. :P

Now, this isn’t a coherent post, this is just a bunch of notes of how I’d convert the general concept of Super Mario games and some races. This would probably need full on World Anvil in order to turn these loose ideas and concepts into a proper campaign setting. And this is under the premise that my would-be players would be outsiders coming into this setting either by plane walking or by travel.

But, hey, if this can be used as a springboard for others to use for their own campaign, then be my guest! I wouldn’t put it here if I so badly wanted to keep this private! But this’ll be a long post, so continue at your own risk.

The Shiitake Hills are the stand in for the mushroom kingdom. These long rows of Hills are home to various farm lands and small villages. There’s very few cities. Mushrooms are mostly cultivated for the consumption and export-you’d be surprised how many recipes there are for cooked toadstools. But rest assured, mushrooms aren’t the only foodstuff you’ll find, but their cultivation for food and magical components is so common that even the most ignorant of school child or even someone who’s never even seen a mushroom would know how to cultivate enough edible fungus to never miss lunch.

The capital of this kingdom is Toadstool City, a glorious city. It’s not perfect, but magic is practiced in the open-it’s regulated, but not too restrictive and controlling. So long as your not raising the dead or raising a stink, you can practice most forms of magic in relative peace.

The Shiitake Hills were founded originally by Elven Druids, who had left their original home in order to escape prosecution from another clan of Druids. On their sailing across oceans, they’d come across a community of Halflings, whom were under the rule of a tyrannical wizard. The Head of these Elven Druids would take on these Halflings as fellow refugees.

This trip lasted 1000 years, with 800 of them spent with the Halfling survivors. Their culture would meld together, to the point where there was no way of knowing what custom originated from which group, but it mattered not. Both sides had developed a mutual relationship.

When The Shiitake Hills were founded the family of the Head Druid would lead colonization of the land. They would also introduce the various Elven Gods that the Druids worshiped.

Avus, God of Fatherhood, Life, and Light. A father should be a guiding light for the family. To be strong and nurturing. A father who is not in their child’s life is often struck by Avus.

Mater Goddess of Fertility, Birth, and Motherhood. Avus’s wife and the reason he gained the ‘Fatherhood’ title. Preying to her is often done when an Elf is about to give birth.

Natus God of Knowledge, Teaching, and Fire. His legends speak of him being the original cultivator of fire, and gifting his spark of knowledge down to the Elves who worship him and spread it. Knowledge is never to be hoarded, it’s to be spread and shared.

Frater God of Strength, War, and Courage. When thunder booms, it means he’s fighting and he wants his followers to also be prepared for the heat of battle. Never fear death, for only glory waits for those who races into battle! 

Soror Goddess of Sisterhood, Art, and Battle. The sister to Frater, she gives strength to her female followers to follow their dreams and passions, but to always have a knife at the ready to defend what’s yours.

Puer God of Tricksters, Brotherhood, and Nature. He teaches his followers to use nature to their advantage, to use ingenuity and wits to defeat larger foes, but to never use your trickery to back stab your brothers-in-arms.

Avanculus God of Wisdom, Harvest, and Water. Knowledge is knowing the best way to farm with new techniques. Wisdom is understand the old ways still work when they fail.

And the Matriarch of their Pantheon, Astrum, Goddess of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. 

But over the boarder of the hills is The Drake Lands. The land was originally a beautiful Dwarven Kingdom of glorious mountains. But then, two dragons razed the lands, a Red Dragon and a Green Dragon, who used the mountains as a battle field! Fire and Poisonous gas drove out the Dwarves underneath. The mountains burned and the poison killed almost all other life that didn’t escape. Nobody knows quite who won this fight, but whatever the result was, the two dragons eventually mated and had a child that would make the ruined lands their domain.

This Dragon is known as Oghoid, A Lawful Evil God of Conquest, Battle, and Gold. His descendants would be known as the Royal Clan who would turn these barren lands into a somewhat liveable place.

The Dwarves would’ve raced to the Shiitake Lands as refugees. The Elves and Halflings welcomed the Dwarves. They integrated into society, but their culture is still regularly practiced. Dwarves keep many Gods, but they had no trouble also incorporating the Elf’s-what’s 1 or 8 more to the pile? The Dwarves also brought expert stone cutting and construction. Many constructions are built mostly or even entirely by Dwarven hands.

Boy, that was a lot, but time to get into the Races. And please not that I’ll label them as ‘Good, Neutral, and Evil’ races for the sake of convenience. You can take a Good Race and play them evil and vice versa.

Good Races - The typical Good Guys and regular residents of the Shiitake Hills.

The Humans of the Super Mario series are split into 3 Types for the setting: Normal-Types, Mario-Types, and Princess-Types.

Normal-Types are the New Donk City citizens we see in Super Mario Odyssey. These are Humans, no doubt having come from various traders from outside of the kingdom and might’ve stayed and become full citizens.

Mario-Types are Mario, Luigi, Wario, and Waluigi-oddly proportioned humanoids. For this setting, they’re Dwarves-yes, even Waluigi. He’s just an oddly tall Dwarf. It happens. Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi are plumbers and have no trouble going underground and fixing things. 

And finally, Princess-Types. Peach, Daisy, Rosalina, and Pauline-oddly tall, and still have odd proportions, but look less like Mickey Mouse and more like Jessica Rabbit. They’re represented by Elves. Elves are usually in the upper class of Shiitake society.

Yes, they could all just be variant humans of some kind, but shush. :P This is suppose to be a big mass of races living on one continent and want to mix them all together.

Toads, if you couldn’t guess, are represented as Halflings. Why? Well, not only are they short, but what do we usually see Toads doing? We see them mostly in domestic roles, with only a few outliers. Halflings are mostly homely folk who want to be left in their homes and just enjoy their quaint lives.

Neutral Race - Not inherently Good Nor Bad, Just Folk

Yoshis in this setting will be played by Lizardfolk. I know that this is a pretty big stretch-Yoshis are cute and colorful and Lizardfolk are written as cold, calculating ‘survival of the fittest’ types. But I take the official text of WoTC as more like suggestions.

Evil Race - Typical Bad Guys and residents of The Drake Lands

So naturally, this sections will have Koopas, but how do we divide them? Well, I think there are 2 Types of Koopas. Regular Koopas and Koopa Rexes.

I percieve ‘Koopa Rex’ as essentially Bowser, his son, and the Koopalings-and maybe Boom-Boom and Pom-Pom, depending on how you see it. They would be Dragonborn.

Regular Koopas are essentially the rest. Koopa Troopas, Hammer Bros, Magikoopas, so on and so forth. They’re Tortles.

Okay, this is where I start to REALLY stretch the limits of what can be what...

Goombas will be classified as Kobolds. Why Kobolds? Well, honestly, I guess no real reason, but I think it makes sense for Bowser’s army to have the ‘Minion Races’ in the ranks.

Speaking of , Shy Guys are Kenkus in this setting.

And Boos, Goblins. Okay, this one, a bit of a stretch, but what do Boos do? They sneak up on you, right? Well, Goblins can use that tactic too!

Well, yeah, they could just be Ghosts. But, like, I hate using Ghosts in D&D. They’re too much of a pain in the ass to deal with. And, if you can’t tell, this isn’t meant to be a 1-to-1 thing. 

And finally, the Bob-Ombs are Warforged-possibly one that you could give the ability to ‘selfdestruct’ upon defeat or something.

And that’s about the end of my notes. This took, like, two hours to write but I wanted to put this all down somewhere and here it is. Nothing here is final and if you wanna use any of it for any reason, go right ahead~

[bbrandy2002]

The Fall of Cordonia

Chapter Five

Trigger Warning: Suicide and Violence

Word Count: 1720

A/N: Thank you @burnsoslow for prereading most of this and @sirbeepsalot for bouncing ideas around and saving my ass again.

Only one or two chapter left.

Olivia shifted away cautiously, her eyes focused on Amalas, as she prepared to defend herself to the death. Her heart pounding with great exertion, her Nevrakis blood pumping ravenously through icy veins, preparing for a battle that was too soon to wage. The price she was paying for Cordonia was worth it, but, only if she succeeded.

She reaches for the garter under her skirt, ready to strike, to end Amalas once and for all. This was the plan months ago, but, if they ever had any hopes of finding the young prince, she fears an impulsive move could be disasterous. She grips the handle tighter, droplets of moisture pool to her colorless face, confident that she is in her element. This is what she was born for and every fiber of her being, validates her skills.

Amalas glares into her green eyes, the ones that carry a hint of red hot fire and brimstone, reading Olivia like a book. Its at this moment she knows...Olivia is a traitor, but, not to the one she thought.

A rage burrows itself deep in her skin with her smile matching Olivia's curled grin.

Both women bite their lips, curious as to whom would be stealthier, more lethal, more accurate. Amalas clutches her hidden dagger, so sharp, it can cut tension and betrayal with a single swipe.

Olivia's background in weaponry and her position on top of Amalas gives her the edge. Sensing her advantage, she makes her move. Her knife slides smoothly from her garter as Amalas raises her dagger from the floor.

A clash of metal thunders together, Amalas kicking Olivia off of her, she drops to the floor, landing gracefully on her back. The Black Widow raises her dagger as she straddles the Scarlett Duchess, whom is able to pierce her side, halted by ribs from taking out her hardened heart.

Amalas falls to her side, clutching the fresh wound, blood seeping like a broken dam. Olivia knows this battle is far from over-this is just the first cut, but, then again...the first cut is usually the deepest.

She flashes a superior smile, intense heat radiating from her heaving chest, it's time to go on the offensive. Father said to never underestimate the enemy while they're down.

She stands upright, circling Amalas like a vulture, her teeth gritting, adrenaline surging, waiting eagerly for the kill shot. Her enemy winces, feeling a mixture of pleasure and pain, not even close to being finished.

Olivia steadies herself into the defensive position, "Where is Prince Nikolas?"

Amalas locks her gaze on Olivia, a slight chuckle comes out as she slashes her dagger through empty air. She wants just one hit on Olivia, to even the score, to shed the blood of the Cordonian traitor on Monterriso ground. She sways her body, feet planted firmly, "So, that's what this was.....well played Duchess...you certainly fooled me".

"It was easier than I anticipated", Olivia jets back, avoiding the next slash in her direction, "you should know by now, never trust a Nevrakis". She lunges her knife forward, grazing Amalas' arm and in return is met with a dagger lodged into her upper shoulder. Olivia's knife launches away from her.

Amalas grabs a glass vase from the end table of the sofa and shatters it across Olivia's head. Her red hair is littered with glass as she bounces off the floor.

Without hesitation, Amalas strikes, jerking the dagger from Olivia's shoulder and gripping it solidly above her lean frame.

She underestimates me. Olivia reaches for her arm, using strength and speed to force Amalas to lose her power over her. A struggle ensues between two equally, lethal women of great intelligence and tactics.

_________

Liam received the encrypted text from Olivia just mere moment's after returning from his press conference.

He watches Riley swallow another pill to help her anxiety, sometimes she's there, sometimes she not. After placing her glass on the table beside her, she can feel his gaze on her and it causes her to shake violently in fear. It doesn't take much to trigger her, a word, his cologne, touch, the sound of doors opening....everything and anyone is Bradshaw. He taunts her in her sleep and during consciousness, keeping her baby away from her with one hand and touching her intimately with the other.

She grips her sheets tighter and Liam can tell that the tension is rising in her, she's preparing her mind to relive her hell again. He yells for the psychiatrist as her relentless, desperate pleas for help shout from her lips. She's trapped again and there is nothing he can do to save her, except one thing, and he is close to making it a reality for her.

As the doctor comes in to attend to her, he walks to his closet, grabbing a small carry on bag, stuffing it with only the essentials. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, Daddy is coming Nikolas.

Liam steps out from the closet, longing to hold his wife, to tell her everything is going to be okay, but, she can't handle it. He whispers his love to her from across the room and exits, he has to meet Drake and Bastien at the car. Can he truly defeat the evil forces working against him? Is Olivia's information correct about Nikolas' possible whereabouts? He didn't know, only time would tell.

To everyone in Cordonia, Olivia went missing in Valtoria, yet, Liam knew she had been working to uncover Amalas' plans for months. The day of the attack, the widow met with him under the guise of peace, but, he sees now that it was a distraction to separate him from his child, his heir.

Under the hidden blanket of darkness, careful to avoid watchful eyes, Liam, Drake and Bastien leave for the airport.

Liam bounces his leg wildly in the plain, unmarked car, his nerves getting the best of him, sweaty palms wiped dry on his pants.

Drake gives him a sympathetic look as he peaks back from the front passenger seat, but, doesn't say anything, knowing Liam is processing this plan in his mind. Everyone in Cordonia had heard enough of the "it's going to be okay's", to last forever. Truth be told, Drake didn't know if it would, the whole thing was so fucking risky, why tell Liam a lie.

As the car pulls up to the Royal Jet, Liam stares at Drake for a moment, a look of trepidation and fear.  On Drake's shoulders, he was placing the most important task he had ever trusted anyone to do. To him, however, if Drake couldn't do it, no one could.

"Be careful Liam".

"Don't worry about me....just get Nik...please".

Drake nodded as Liam stepped from the car, bag in hand, and boarded the plane to Monterisso. He was meeting with Amalas, without security, without a friend, alone. Olivia would have to his only protection.

In case they were followed, Drake and Bastien drove to a small, undamaged airfield in Ramsford, boarding a private plane. They, too, were headed for Monterisso, in hopes of finding Nikolas and bringing him home.

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

Riley tossed and turned in her bed, the light of the full moon shining through the window. Suddenly, her breath became more labored, her eyes fluttered rapidly, her throat became tighter.

She sat up, pulling the blanket closer to her chest, her brown eyes sweeping the room, catching glimpses of Bradshaw in every corner. She couldn't scream, her body frozen , the room spinning in chaos around her. He was haunting her, the laughing, the crying, the blood of Leo dripping from her trembling hands.

She looked at the space on the bed next to her, Liam laid there with his hands rested on his stomach and a dagger sticking from his chest.

"L..Liam?", she whispered in astonishment.

Her head bobbed and weaved, she had no more tears to offer. She rolled suddenly to her side, dropping to the floor below, covering her ears.

Riley could still hear the voices, the cackles, the mocking, "GO AWAY!!!".

In one week, she had lost her son, Maxwell, her dignity, Leo, and now, she believes, the only man she ever loved. What did she have left to live for? A godforsaken country that would be a constant reminder of what she sacrificed for it.

She lifted a shaky hand to her night table, searching for her pitcher of water. Once she found it, she poured the liquid on the floor next to her. With her heart beating faster and emptiness filling her body, she shattered the glass container on the leg of her table.

Riley picked up the largest piece she could find and placed it against her wrist. Pressing deeply, the first drop of blood came to the surface and ran the length of her arm.

"Riley!!!"

She jolted and paused to search for the familiar voice that brought her comfort once again, "Maxwell..... is that you?"

All the chaos and fear dissipated from the room. All went silent and her physical pain from the injuries were felt again. With great difficulty, she lifted herself enough from the floor to see if Liam was dead on their bed. He was gone, but, even in her relief, she had a feeling something bad was going to happen to him.

Her bedroom door opened and she heard rapid footstep approaching. The nurse assigned to her crouched down beside her to scan her self wounded wrist. The nurse ran out and returned with her first aid kit and began to bandage the small wound Riley had inflicted.

"Where is the King?", she asked.

"Your Majesty, he had to leave for the night"

Riley lowered her head, watching intently on the bandage being placed around her wrist and the feeling of unease returned.

She searched the nurses confused eyes, her jaw tensed, "He's.. not coming home".

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

Liam was escorted to the door by Amalas' guards, as shouts and clashing echoed from inside. He could distinctly hear Olivia in distress and he attempted to open the door himself, but, was stopped by her guards from proceeding.

Frantic, he yells in his kingly voice, "Amalas!"

The fighting stops and seconds later the door slowly opens; its her, battered, bloodied, and breathless.

Even in distress, a toothy grin forms on her face at his presence.

"Liam".

"Amalas"

Tags: @khakie4 @jemrmax2love @princess-geek @rainbowsinthestorm @annekebbphotography @ao719 @texaskitten30 @of-course-i-went-to-hartfeld @lodberg @romanticatheart-posts @duchessemersynwalker @cordoniansqueen @burnsoslow @kimmiedoo5 @innerpostmentality @hopefulmoonobject @sirbeepsalot @emceesynonymroll @janezillow @cordoniantrash @jovialyouthmusic @dcbbw @moonlightgem7 @a-cordonian-arylu @polishchoicesfan @jessiembruno @lovemychoices @mallorycortez @angi15h @gardeningourmet @fromthedeskofpaisleybleakmore

Honorary tag since you just posted about it: @kingliam2019

[onstarsandiron]

The timeline, as near as I could assemble it, with a little conjecture by me. I centered it around Coronation Day, aka the Holy Convergence, aka the 1,000th anniversary of the Iron Kingdom, so anything before that is BCD, anything after that is ACD. Details under the cut.

1,000 BCD:

Solani Ark crashes into what will become Zenteli, pursued by The Great Dark

Goddess bears a daughter of light that fights back The Great Dark

Goddess creates the Iron Kingdom, and from her heart the Iron Crown is carved; Ironbloods claim they can trace their lineage back to her court

The Goddess dies and is buried in her tomb with The Great Dark’s heart

The Cantos is written and the first shrine of the Moon Goddess is erected on Luna

25-20 BCD

The Plague -- The Plague is always stated as being “Twenty years ago” but plagues take time to first become plagues and then cause problems and then be eradicated. With the complication of having to develop and manufacture Metals before they could treat the plague well, I’ve given it a cautious life-time of five years, with it having officially ended twenty years from Coronation Day

In the scene with Nich, Mercer, Di, Selena, and Mari are at the Tomb of the Goddess, Mercer says he can’t call Cynthia because the Tomb has been off limits since the plague started, meaning that they were still going to the Academy during the plague. I propose that Mercer, Di, Nich, and Mari were all the equivalent of seniors and this was their last year, as it would be reasonable for Di to go off to try and help the plague after he’d finished at the Academy. That puts all of them around 16/17, since that’s the age Robb was when he was supposed to graduate. 

Once Di contracts the plague, Malifare takes advantage of his and his father’s desperation and becomes one of the first Metals, and, if the reports Ana found in the lab were correct, the first fully successful Metal, aside from previous-life memories. 

I also propose that it is sometime during this that Mari’s mother is murdered -- Erik mentions, when Robb dons the Aragon crest, that, “The old dame was murdered and her daughter went missing.” (SoS, V: Stardust, Robb) -- and Captain Siege is born. This would coincide with much of the Aragon family suffering and dying from the plague; the Aragon family is noted as magnanimous, and they may have opened themselves to risk in an attempt to support the poor, though that’s just my personal headcannon. Di also asks Malifare, when they first met, if she’s there because of Mari, which may have something to do with it, but what, I do not know. 

18 BCD 

Jax is born 

17 BCD

Ana is born and lauded as the goddess born anew

Robb is born -- his 17th birthday was the day Jax got de-lit (:

10 BCD

Jax runs away from Zenteli

10-8 BCD

Somewhere in here Siege and Talle adopt hire Jax after he pick-pockets Siege in Nevaeh

7 BCD

The Revolution

Rasovant asks Nicholii to approve HIVEing Metals; when Nicholii denies him he, in a fit of rage, kills him. 

Mercer finds Nicholii’s body and calls for guards

Malifare burns down the North Tower with the whole Royal Family inside

Mercer gives Ana to D09 -- Nicholii’s personal metal, according to Machivalle -- and Ana receives burns from his heated chassis. They escape in the Tsarina

Mercer sends out one message to his wife, informing her of what had happened and of the location of the heart. Cynthia would later go and take it from the tomb, storing it instead in the hands of the Goddess statue in Nevaeh

The Tsarina is infested with the HIVE too, though, with weird memory core-less Metals. Mercer manages to get the ship all the way to Palavar -- I propose he does this to disable the ship full of dangerous robots for the greater good -- getting shot in the process. As his last act, he gives Ana his family’s symbol and sends her and Di off in an escape pod

An undisclosed time later -- it could have been weeks depending on how well-stocked the escape pod was -- Siege finds the 10-year-old and Di floating in dead space between Cerces and Iliad; Di tells her who they are and then asks that his memory be erased -- Mercer’s instructions. Siege does erase Di’s memories, this being the cause of Di’s later glitches, but she doesn’t drop them at a weigh-station like Di asked, hoping that she could be able to keep Ana safe

7 Years - 7 Days BCD

Ana, Jax, and Di have life-threatening Shenanigans aboard the Dossier; everything after this is just a summary of the books

7-6 Days BCD

Di and Ana in the shrine -- job goes south

They follow Robb up to Astoria, that goes south and Robb gets shot and half-kidnapped 

2-hours towards Palavar Robb’s chip is activated

Palavar happens, killing Bergar and disabling Di; The Kiss happens and Jax knows how Robb will die; Robb finds what will become Di’s new body

~2-4 hours after Palavar, while Robb is in the middle of experimentally trying to upload Di, the Dossier is so very politely hailed via missile by the Catarina

Cynthia kills Wick, Ana and Jax are taken onto the Caterina, Robb feels really, really bad about it all

Di wakes up and he and the captain free the Dossier

Once at the Iron Palace, Robb reveals Ana as the princess

5-2 days BCD

Jax is Cynthia’s prisoner, Robb promises on Stars and Iron to save him

Ana has to get lessons, and hates every second of it. Tries to get information out of everyone but only has some luck with Machivalle

The Dossier works on their own plan

1 Day BCD

Pre-coronation gala!

Robb and Ana make their appearance; Robb soon leaves to go get Jax -- not that he has a way out of the palace, mind you

Ana meets Wynn and gets an important note from Machivalle; Ana and Di dance; Ana runs off when she realizes Di is “Rasovant’s Metal”

Di runs off, finds Rasovant’s office, steals his own old guard uniform, starts having memories that are not D09′s

Robb bumps into Di in the Hallway, E0S brings trouble around and they split up, agreeing to meet in like 3 1/2 hours at the docks

Jax reads Cynthia’s stars in exchange for Cynthia promising on Stars and Iron to protect Robb -- this changes Robb’s stars

Ana is lured into the North Tower to be killed, finds Rasovant’s secret office and the truth behind Metals and the HIVE, Di comes and saves her

Robb rescues Jax, puts a vox collar on his brother

Ana and Di make out before Ana sends Di on his way so he can be safe

Malifare captures Di, he is not safe; Di gives instructions to E0S

Robb sends Jax off, decries the Valerio name

Di realizes he’s Dmitri, is promptly HIVEd

Coronation Day

Bad things happen. The following people die: Lady Valerio, Rasovant (Ana did that one), Riggs, the Grand Duchess, a couple other Ironblood guests, all human guards. Viera might also have died here, or she might have been kept alive long enough to be turned into a Metal later; I’m unclear on the Metaling process. Di stabs Ana. Robb loses and arm.

0-6 months ACD

Shrines are burned as Malifare searches for her heart

Siege and her fleet set up refugee camps for Metals

Ana recovers from her near-fatal wound

Robb and Jax are dating

5 Months ACD

Robb gets his robo arm

6 Months ACD

Ana meets Elara and Xu in Neon City

Ana is captured

Elara, Xu, Jax, and Robb go to save Ana; Jax and Robb split up and Jax recognizes the dreadnaught from Robb’s stars and knows he will die here

Ana is saved by E0S, runs into “Viera”, then Robb

E0S’s instructions from Di activate, and he leaves Ana to go to the bridge where Jax is

Jax and Di -- as a Messier -- fight; E0S/Di changes Jax’s stars and injects some code into Di

As Jax gets spaced Di instinctively tries to save him and accidentally touches bare skin, forcing Jax to read the stars of everyone consumed by The Great Dark, which drains his light in an instant

Ana and Robb get Jax to the Dossier and put him on life support

Siege sets course to Zenteli so Jax can die there

Very warm reception at Zenteli. Truly hospitable. Jax’s mom slaps Siege

Viera goes off and burns the Zenteli shrine

Jax has his star-induced vision of Di and Malifare in the plague ward

Elara takes Ana and Robb down to the ark where they meet Koren Vey, who gives them the coordinates to the Goddess’ Tomb as well as saying some cryptic stuff

Di is experiencing “glitches” from what E0S gave him, reveals himself to Erik, accidentally so to Wynn

Siege gets Jax and she and Talle come to rescue Ana, Robb, and Elara

Jax accepts Koren Vey’s light, collapses into Robb’s arms; he glows now. 

Siege, Talle, Robb, and Jax are taken back to the spire by the solgard while Ana and Elara evade them

Ana and Elara split, Ana to go to the Goddess’ Tomb and Elara to fetch Jax and the others

Lenda sends Ana off, she also bumps into Viera, through whom the HIVE now knows where Ana’s going

Elara fetches Jax, Jax’s mom helps him break everyone out

Robb and Elara break off to go after “Resonance”, the Dossier goes after Ana to the tomb

Ana arrives at the tomb, is followed by Di and Malifare. In the tomb she finds that the heart isn’t there, then blows them all up. Di finally breaks free of the HIVE.

The Dossier lands and takes Ana and Di; Malifare is nowhere to be seen 

Robb and Elara arrive at the Valerio estate and he fights Erik over the Resonance file, which reveals that Cynthia funded all of Rasovant’s research and herself found the heart first, as well as the heart’s current hiding place

The meeting at Havens Grave happens

Ana and Di get to talk

Robb tells Jax he loves him and they make out

A plan of action is solidified 

Robb and Di crash Erik’s party

Ana, Siege, and Talle go after the heart, Ana going into the shrine and Siege and Talle keeping watch

Malifare plunges Astoria out of the sky and takes off with Viera, now revealed as a Metal

Di saves Astoria, gets stabbed in the back by Erik for his troubles

Erik, unrelatedly and against the genuine attempt to save him by Robb, dies

Jax takes Robb and Di to the shrine

Ana gets the heart

Final battle: Ana and Di vs Malifare in the shrine; Dossier vs Messiers in the plaza

Siege finally takes Malifare out and Di destroys the HIVE

6 Months and Like 2-4 Week ACD

Ana is installed as Empress, introduces a wide range of new voices to the Iron Counsel

Jax accepts his role as C’zar, enjoys being a thorn in the Counsel of Elder’s side

Siege and Talle head off to hide the heart

Di says goodbye to Ana

Ana makes her speech at Erik’s funeral, runs off quickly after

Di doesn’t actually go and he and Ana kiss and everything is super sweet and nice, The End

[honestsycrets]

Irreplaceable IV: Not Anymore

A/N: Le eyeroll. Gif to goodatgoodbyes.

The boys, on either side of their father, have nerves on edge. Their ships land coast side when the round moon barely kisses its light across the land. They are met by another landing party’s campground but those there were not entirely unfamiliar. Their tongue have a familiar twang, slackening the boy’s shoulders from their strain instantaneously.

“Is it Sverri?” Hvitserk asks breaching the measly gates of the anomalous site. Sverri’s normal campsite raised the forest green flags of Yggradsil while these flags were darker in shade. The grey raised flags bore three interlocked triangles– the Valknut. It could not have been Sverri’s camp for those reasons. Besides, he is sure that Sverri made himself well in his home with you and your body. The seer told him so.

“No doubt it is Faksi who has come.” Ivar scoffs.

“Grandfather?” Veifnr chirps and skips ahead, darting within despite Ivar’s bellow out to him to come back.

Uxi shouts, “Brother WAIT!” as he darts after his younger brother. The two swerve ahead stopping as their grandfather and a man they somewhat recognize chat idly over a pitcher of mead and a conversation of battle stratagem. They look out in the dark of the night toward a dark catapult. Ivar’s walls guarding Kattegat have fallen at long last.

“HAHA! Those are my boys! Veifnr! Uxi!” The boom of their grandfather’s voice spills out of the tent where the men spoke. Faksi was a broad built man, sporting a beard as white as spun thread and hair that had turned just the same. His hair waves in tightly knit braids on his head. The boys ran forward, clustering about his legs like ashy pups.

“Hello boys, I am King Sverri.” The man lowers to their eye level, looking between the two. His voice caramelizes with deep admiration. The boys give jarred smiles glancing between one another to him. They had met many kings. It was not the first time they met Sverri either, what with the mess he made between Kitta and you. But individually they had not talked much to him. Often they would play on their own or be sent off by any of their parents.

“I remember you.” Says Uxi folding his arms with a flat lipped expression.

Veifnr moves closer. “Hi.”

The King gives a wide shark like grin. Uxi’s words bear the threat of an impending cruel statement lurking behind them. Rather than engage Uxi he decides to speak to Veifnr, the quiet one.

“You must be Veifnr, because your mother said Uxi would be the more critical one.” He shakes his ringed finger at Uxi, his armband jiggling on his arm.

“You’ve seen mother? Is she alive?” Uxi turns with a wet gleam in his eyes. Tears that Veifnr doesn’t pay any mind to. Instead he is eager with excitement to find his mother and bring her back to their family. Somehow, he misses the fact that Sverri is the one who took their home.

As the flaps waver again, Ivar came in. The King however hardly spared him a glance. His eyes are stolen by stars in young Veifnr’s eyes. He could tell how much the young man adored his mother.

“Yes.” He assures the young boys. “I’ve kept her safe. Would you like to come see her for a late dinner?” The King invites and while Faksi grins in agreement, Ivar lurches forward. His hand sets on Veifnr’s shoulder, pushing him behind Hvitserk. Veifnr flops onto the ground with a thud and a pained grunt.

“Why would I let my sons go with you? Bring her here.” Ivar spits out in a voice lacking amusement. It could have been strategic. Whom knew what was lying in wait for them in Kattegat? If it were here, he could control whom came in and whom came out.

“I knew you would say that. Very well, let us call her. Avarr! ” He shakes his head. A messenger peeps in past Uxi who moved not to Ivar but to stand by his grandfather.

“Yes, my king?” The messenger stands upright.

Without wavering his eyes from Ivar, he addresses the messenger. “Have my Queen and her thralls set for dinner. Her husband is home.” He says. The young messenger sputters something akin to a yes, though it was strained when Ivar’s snaps his face towards him.

“Your Queen?” Ivar asks the messenger, finding that all the man could do was to nod. The messenger quickly makes himself scarce.

The King stood with no small amount of pleasure filling his heart, taking a step forward into Ivar’s personal space. His beard prickled Ivar’s clean cut face. The young king didn’t just enjoy the way that Ivar looked at him. He enjoyed the way Ivar squirms with every notion of affection given to you by his lips.

“Yes.” He gives a ragged but pleased breath in the words he says. “My Queen.”

Ivar’s glare promises not only heat but retribution. He stalks closer, scrunching his nose in distaste for this man– this king, calling his wife his own queen. After killing his Kitta whose remains were probably deep in the ocean by now if he gave her a proper funeral.

Rather than engage the fallen king, Sverri pivots on his heel past Ivar when he stops. A sharp exhale flits from his lips, audibly so. “Did I miss something?” Your voice refreshes the tone of a room full of men. When Ivar turned on his crutch to glance at what he is looking at, his eyes are stricken by sight of you.

A finely knit gown, tailored tight to your curves with the aid of a sole cincher. The furs that bundled around your neck, tickling your ears that were clipped by dangling jewels. It reminded him so strongly of his mother, his eyes could not tear away from your bodice. Not to look at the finely tuned braids that bundled into a sole larger one– or meet your soul striking kohl lined eyes.

“Mother!” Uxi barrels through first followed by Veifner who rams himself into the delicate sides of your dress. You laugh, winding your arms around both boys tightly. You lift them off the ground although be it so slightly and twist around in circles.

“My precious boys!” You whirl around, laughing almost too excitedly for a woman that has seen her sister-wife burned by the very man standing in front of him. When you finally stop, you glance between the younger kings in the room. Both boys are set on the floor and remain nestled against your skirts. You move to unclip your furs and hand them off to a thrall beside Sverri.

“Husband.” You address Ivar without regard for how he sailed in a hurry back for Kattegat. He knows what you are thinking. That this trip was intended only for Kattegat. Perhaps a large part of it was. You look at him as if he is nothing. As if he was amber in comparison to garnet.

“Father!” You push past Ivar to wind your arm through the tight one of your father’s firm biceps. Faksi wears a sheepish smile.

“How have you been, has this man treated you well?” Your father sets his hand atop of yours, moving out of the room with the boys locked on your skirts like worms on a leaf.

“Oh perfectly fine. Ivar has always been good to me. And Sverri behaved. ” You lie.

“He better have.” Faksi says. The conversation becomes more and more distant with the tail of your skirts draping across the ground. Then you were gone. You ran him over and left and of course you would. Perhaps he deserves as much for neglecting you so many of the days that Kitta claimed to be in need of him.

At dinner, you finally relinquish hold of your father to join Ivar’s side. He notices your affection slowly returning to him. Your hand finds its place on his thigh. Shyly though– as if you were cautious of something. King Sverri is talking, glorifying you for being such a good wife.

“I wanted to take her myself, but she is stubborn.” Sverri says. You spare him a slight mused smile, pulling your hands back to your lap in slight thought of the kiss you shared with him. Ivar didn’t know about that. If he had– he would have blown his shit then and there.

“She knows who her real husband is.” He says. “Tell me the real reason you invaded my land. It was not just to take my beautiful wives. You burned my Kitta.” Ivar’s words prick your ear disdainfully. His Kitta, his poor, poor Kitta. Your drank to the thought bitterly, almost sure that he came for his revenge. Yes, you were remourseful for what happened. But… after so many years of being second to her, you grow sick of hearing his affection for his burned queen.

“But it is. You blocked me from her. I want more of her kisses and so much more. Kitta was a disturbance to her. It is why she had to go.” Sverri says. You drop your utensil from your fingers when Ivar’s head snaps to look at you.

Ivar turns in his chair to you. “More?”

“He means the kiss I gave him before you banished him.” You cover, lying directly to his face. Lucky for you, he seems to buy such words this time. He turns back to Sverri, squeezing his nose tight.

“If you wanted my woman, the fight was with me.” Ivar hisses.

Sverri loses his smile. “Now that I’ve taken care of the source of her anguish it is.”

Kitta could be pleasant. She truly loved your boys, even if she was jealous of their genetic make up, and would watch them. The issue in fact lied when you were about to give birth.

“Why can’t you stay with me? She always has you. It is my night.” She complained with a high pitch as Ivar set the blanket around the swell of your stomach. His eyes were almost caught in his eyelids with the amount of rolling he was doing today, while you lowered your eyes down to the threads of your bedding waiting the birth of your second son.

“(Y/N) is going to give birth soon. I would drop anything for my family. Even you, if you must push the choice on me.” He replied coldly. He dropped on his ass beside you. Your heart raced a million miles at a time, stricken by the claims that your husband made. Kitta stomped out of the door.

“Please don’t pin this on me.” You address Sverri, glancing off to the side.

“My apologies, my queen. On top of your wife, I also want an increase in land. If this is an alliance, we should share equally. Otherwise, no agreements may be met.” The King Sverri says. Your eyes drift across the table of goods across to your father. He raises his eyebrows, jerking the corner of his lips down as if to say ‘too late for that.’ If King Sverri wanted peace– it was too late for that. You plead your father to hush with your eyes.

“First my wife, now my lands. What else? Do you want my sons too?” Ivar says, stretching his arm behind your head. Ivar’s fingers tickle your earrings as if to mock Sverri, drawing his fingers down your jaw as if presenting a rare gift.

“Surely you understand that we, as a people, should advocate for peace.” He insists.

“You have a peculiar way of showing advocacy by burning my wife. You’re not taking her. I know how long you’ve been after her.” Ivar sneers at the man, flicking his fingers in disregard for his words. The subsequent words are a bit distant to him, eyes caught up with the angle of your jaw. You flinch when Ivar’s thick fingers slide down over your jaw, stroking across your throat.

“Why did you think I would not come for you?” Ivar pulls you in, hand tight on your throat. Despite the stare of Sverri, Ivar’s dry lips tease your dangling earrings. “You belong to me.”

At a flinch of head back, you brave the words that had been on your tongue for years. “No, I belong to no one anymore.”

@igetcarriedawaywithyou, @kylobien, @titty-teetee, @breathlessouls, @nejijjeoroo, @bcat1291, @readsalot73, @MsLothbrok (no mix), @romanchronicles, @ateliefloresdaprimavera, @ailucascen, @michaeliskindahot, @ilovemyangelforever, @directionlessbuthappy, @hizz-hizz-mothertruckerz, @some-blondes-unicorn, @cbouvier23, @l-e-a-t-h-e-r--n--l-a-c-e, @atequila, @rekdreams247, @ivarswonderlust, @writingeverynowand-then, @hp-hogwartsexpress, @minarawr, @haliannej, @strangunddurm, @cbouvier23, @peachesnpisces, @elenawrit, @Equalstrashflavoredtrash, @roxxck, @ilvebeenabad, @vikingsmania, @the-geeky-engineer, @Huntingbears, @my-little-wolfe, @mitchiri-nek0, @dakotacheyennee, @seize-the-droid, @Certifiedpoison, @hotshotstar, @a-writers-dreams, @quaint-and-curious-being @mitchiri-nek0, @dakotacheyennee, @salimahbicharara-comun, @ilovemyangelforever, @kickbacksnextdoor

[deans-baby-momma]

Against The Wind

A/N: Part 3 of my "Hiatus Story". This one is titled Against The Wind. The first part is here and the second part is here.

I have no idea how many parts this story will have. It's just something I am doing to get through to the premiere of Season 14.  (13 more weeks!!)

If you are not caught up with the show, this has a few spoilers and what not. Thank you guys for reading my work and PLEASE leave me feedback and notes in my ASK BOX.

Mary’s eyes widen and her lips curled into a smile.

“Are you sure?” she asked, hesitantly.

“Yea,” I answered, another bout of tears filling my eyes. "I took the test last week, three in fact. All were positive. Plus, I’m about two months late.”

“Dean is going to be so happy! I just know it! He will make a great father. Even better than John,” Mary exclaimed, excited.

I look at the woman sitting in front of me. Although she should be in her 60’s, she looks only a couple years older than when she was brutally murdered by the demon Azazel in 1983. Dean had told me the story of how she was pinned to the ceiling of Sam’s nursery the night of his younger brother’s sixth month. How the flames had erupted from within her and how his Dad, John Winchester, had almost died trying to save his young wife.  Dean had only been 4 years old at the time, but he can vividly recall the heat from the flames, the smell of the burning wood and the sight of his Dad coming out of their childhood home seconds before it exploded, killing his mother. So, for this woman to claim to know what would make Dean happy and how good of a father he was going to be, it was bizarre to me. She didn’t know her sons, either of them. She didn’t know what made them happy, what made them sad. What scared them, what made them brave. She was practically a stranger to them.

When Dean had reunited Amara, God’s sister whom we had so unlovingly deemed “The Darkness”, with her brother she promised to give him “what he needed most” she had resurrected Mary. Dean had been so happy and content to have his mother back, the woman whom he had loved and cherished and missed tremendously. He brought her back to the Bunker only to find me hiding in our room, in the closet; a Colt .45 hugged to my chest. As soon as he opened the doors, I cocked it and aimed. Thankfully he had called out to me before I squeezed the trigger.

I was surprised and dumbfounded when I realized it was him and jump into his arms in glee. Dean had gone to sacrifice himself to save Earth from Amara and the last I had seen of him was outside the cemetery where a headstone had been erected to memorialize the Winchester matriarch. I stood beside Dean, holding his hand in mine, as he stared at the words carved into the stone.

“You know, I remember how she used to tell me angels were watching over me. Every night after we said our prayers, she’d say, ‘Angels are watching over you’. She would sing Hey Jude to get Sammy to go to sleep. She’d fix tomato and rice soup when I was sick. I would ask her to cut the crusts off my sandwiches and she’d just smile and do as I asked. She made the best pies!” he stopped and chuckled. “One time, she let me help mix the crust. I thought I had done so well stirring the ingredients together but as soon as I turned around, I realized the kitchen was a disaster. Flour was everywhere! Did she get mad? No, she giggled and said, ‘It’s better if you create a mess while making it’. And the she ran her finger through the flour on the counter and poked the end of my nose. Maybe in my Heaven I will be able to bake pies with her and create a mess again.”

“Maybe,” I whispered, trying to keep my emotions at bay. I knew what lay ahead for him and I was not prepared to lose him. But Dean was the only one with a personal connection to Amara. When she first came onto the scene and before we knew exactly who she was, she told Dean that he had freed her and she had the Mark of Cain on her shoulder that matched the one Dean sported on his forearm. So it had been decided that Dean would be the bomb to kill the “Darkness” and save Earth.

Now here he was standing beside me, holding my hand once again, introducing me to his not so dead mother. It all seemed surreal. I had to explain that someone had apparently broken into the bunker while we were saying our goodbyes to him and how I had separated from Sam and Cas as soon as we entered and headed to our, my bedroom to grieve the loss of my lover. I told them how I had heard a commotion and then a gunshot and had hurriedly grabbed my weapon and hid inside the closet, waiting for whomever it was to come for me. Only it was Dean who found me and Sam and Cas were missing.

The sigil we found on the wall between the War Room and the library was easily identified as an angel banishing sigil. We began trying to figure out how someone had broken through all the warding and protection the Bunker carried when the door at the top of the stairs opened. Mary and I automatically pulled our weapons and were ready to blast whoever was bold enough to enter. When Castiel descended the steps, I put my gun down and clicked the safety on and advised Mary to do the same. Dean came in, also hearing the door, and introduced the Angel to his mother.

“Where is Sam? He’s not answering his phone, there is blood on the floor. What’s going on?”

“I don't know. We came back here, there was a woman waiting for us. She blasted me away. I don't know who she was. I don't know what happened to Sam,” Cas explained to the three of us.

We quickly learned that the woman was a member of the Men of Letters chapterhouse in London and had come here to work with the American hunters to teach them of the “better, more improved methods of hunting”. Cas found an old farmhouse in Missouri and we descended on it, rescuing Sam and reuniting him with his brother and mother.

But after a couple of weeks and one harrowing hunt where she got possessed, Mary leaves us, claiming the need to clear her head and get used to being alive again. Her leaving broke Dean’s heart and he retreats into the bedroom and I find him destroying the things he held near and dear to him all these years with tears running down his face. I bend over to find the picture of Dean, John, Mary and baby Sam torn in two.

I look to the blonde sitting in front of Dean’s Baby and sit up straighter. Reaching for the handle I open the door, pausing before I step out of the Impala.

“Mary, not for nothing, but you do not know your sons at all. Don’t tell me Dean is going to be happy with this news,” I steele my voice and continue. “This life, we never know if we are going to live to see another day. I don’t know if Dean has ever considered kids because of the way we live. And I hope and pray if we have this child, Dean is NOTHING like John fucking Winchester! He wasn’t a father, he was an antagonist who raised his children to be like soldiers. Sam and Dean didn’t have a childhood after you were gone. John shaped them to be hunters, killers, to do as he says, no questions asked.” I paused to catch my breath and rein in my emotions. “So until Dean returns from saving the world once again, I ask that you do not speak on his behalf.”

I step out of the vehicle, closing the door behind me and make my way into the Bunker, leaving Mary to stare after me in disbelief and doubt. I might be dating her son, hell I hope one day to be married to him, but I will not stand for her to speak for Dean in his absence.

I walked inside with my head held high. The people we had saved from Michael's apocalyptic world were still staying here in the Bunker and I would not allow them to see me downtrodden. They were expecting this world to be different than theirs and I would do whatever in my power to prove that to them. I went on the search for Cas to see what our next move might be.

I found him in the library scouring through lore books and tombs, trying to find what our next move should be. With Sam and Jack vanished with Lucifer and Dean being a sword for Michael, it was up to Cas and I to save face and keep spirits high.

“Hey Cas,” I say lowly, walking up to the Angel and looking over his shoulder. He is reading about his brothers big battle that Sam and Dean had forfeited years ago, when Sam had taken Lucifer on and locked him back in the cage. “Find anything helpful?”

“No,” he responded, closing the tomb roughly. “All it says is that Michael and Lucifer must fight. Nothing about where it takes place or even why! I still do not understand why our Father created this world only for it to be destroyed by two of his unruly sons!”

I place my hand on the table and Cas looks up at me. “We will figure it out. We have to.”

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

A Painter’s Embrace

Chapter One

Introduction (Read Me First)

Summary: Set in the Regency Period, this is my submission for @yourtropegirl ‘s Historical AU Challenge (and it’s been a bitch to write. I created a world for you, woman. There had better be cookies!) Please note this is an ABO fic, but it is not your regular ABO style of dynamic. For more information read the Introduction first. Also, this fic will be slower to update as the research takes longer. It will not update weekly!

Pairing: Alpha!Steve Rogers x OFC  | Word Count: 5276 Warnings: None

Lady Elizabeth Heartright, the darling of the Ton - the high society set of stuffy and rather tedious people she socialized with - was standing in the ballroom of Iron Court, doing her best to ward off the unwanted advances of many a suitor. She had only just managed to escape out from under the attention of Lord Davenport, the overbearing alpha who seemed unable - or more likely unwilling - to take no for an answer, and she was desperately thirsty.

Just because she was an omega did not mean she would roll over for the first male who snarled at her, and this male had been snarling for quite some time. However, having been raised by an alpha father and a beta mother, and being the Omega Queen she was, she had far more backbone than most women of her type.

It was off-putting to some, but, all in all, she had decided if the males who came calling could not handle a little bite in their omega, she did not want them for an alpha. As she was also the heir to the Heartright fortune, every male with even a modicum of pedigree was hanging off her primaries. Weeding out a few of the less desirable set, those who could not tolerate her… quirks made her life easier.

She shook her wings to free the tension in her shoulders. They’d been held in a defensive position for so long Lizzy was certain she would have a headache to contend with the next day thanks to her tight back muscles.

“Lady Heartright, you are most fortunate to have caught the eye of Lord Davenport. He is a fine alpha,” Martha Winthrop said, swooning slightly at Lizzy’s side.

She tried very hard not to roll her eyes. “I would rather have caught the eye of a mallard,” she muttered, tugging her glove up her elbow and taking the cup of punch offered her by the servant at the refreshment table. Martin’s eyes twinkled merrily, apparently enjoying her pronouncement, but she did not hold it against him. The landed servants of this house all knew they could trust her to keep her mouth shut when it came to their amusements and entertainments.

“Lady Heartright!” Martha gasped, her blue eyes wide in shock and dowdy grey wings fluttering in distress. “Hush yourself. Whatever would your mother say?”

“She would say Lizzy had every right to choose her mate, Miss Winthrop. Now, go away and let Lizzy be.”

Lizzy smiled past the rim of her cup at the approaching woman in sky blue silk. The high waist of her gown was patterned with loops of pearls and heavy embroidery, mimicked on the short, puffy sleeve. Wings of black and grey swept out behind her, a startling contrast to Constance’s bright red hair. Had it been anyone else to speak so to Martha there would have been hell to pay, but, as it was Constance Stark, daughter and heir to Lord Stark the Earl of Iron and host for the evening, Martha bobbed a curtsey and hurried off, her wings folded tightly to her spine.

“Thank you, Constance,” Lizzy said, linking her arm through the proffered one after returning her cup to the servant.

She smiled and led Lizzy away from the refreshments to take a slow turn around the room. “I was actually coming to save you from the advances of Lord Davenport when father waylaid me.” An omega herself, she lifted her wings high and wrapped one around the back of Lizzy, indicating their desire for privacy when the males looked to advance upon them.

Lizzy and Constance had been friends from birth, the Starks and the Heartrights close in both age and distance, so when at the tender age of ten both of Lizzy’s parents were killed in a carriage accident, it had been to the Starks she had gone.

Her father’s will had made it quite clear Lizzy was to be allowed to choose her own path in life and love, as her parents had before her, and Lord Stark had been most accommodating. Yes, it was an oddity in this age, a woman, an Omega Queen at that, being allowed to rule her own life, but Anthony Edward Stark was an eccentric man himself.

An inventor, he had created many a unique trinket. Some of which had gone to help the war effort against Napoleon and his army. Lord Stark was an oddity, but then his wife, Lady Pepper was no better. An alpha and an omega who fit so perfectly their love was blinding, but Lord help anyone who tried to intimidate Lady Pepper.

The woman was as fiery as her hair and wings implied. A vibrant red, Lizzy had heard her take many an overbearing alpha or beta to task with the sharpness of her tongue. Was it any wonder the Ton knew both Lizzy and Constance as spirited women?

Stubborn was the word used by polite company. Pigheaded was the one used behind closed doors. Unseemly most likely as well.

Such was the reason that at twenty and one summer’s Lizzy was still unmated and unwed. She had yet to find a mate to suit her. One for whom she could love and be loved without the restrictions of society. One who could tolerate her strong-headed ways, silly quirks, and stubborn qualities. She would not be meek. She would not simper and cower and walk two steps behind her alpha. She would be his partner in life. Not just a body he could breed his offspring on.

“Take a breath, Lizzy. Your irritation is spiking,” Constance murmured, curling her wing tighter around them.

“My apologies. I was woolgathering again,” she sighed softly.

“You worry you will never find an alpha worthy of you. I understand, Lizzy. I have the same fear.”

It was too dower a subject for such a splendid fête, and Lizzy pushed the distressing thoughts to the side. “Tell me what your father wanted?”

“It appears his honoured guests have arrived. He was going to greet them personally before bringing them into the ball and was stepping away for a moment.”

“This is the Earl of Denton and his friend? The ones from the war effort?” Lizzy asked curiously.

The Earl was spoken of frequently and with great admiration by Lord Stark. He had been a staunch supporter of Tony’s weapons and gadgets, using many of them himself on the front lines of the battle.

“Indeed,” Constance giggled softly, her excitement clear in her scent. “Father is most pleased to meet them after corresponding with them for so long. Tis a shame it is injury which has returned them to us from France, but good fortune the Earl lives only a short flight away.”

Lizzy wondered if some of Constance’s excitement was due to how both males were unknown to them. Perhaps one would make a fitting mate for her friend. For Lizzy herself, she simply hoped neither would chase after her like a hawk after a sparrow. She was tired of the constant barrage of suitors, almost ready to place herself squarely off the market simply to have a break from the incessant banter.

She knew as all omegas did, she was a highly desirable commodity. She was also not blind to the image of herself in the mirror. Her hair had been likened to a raven’s feathers so many times; she often wished she could change it if only to hear a different remark. Her wings, a swans crowning glory dipped in the moon’s shining beams was enough to make her gag. Her eyes like storm-swept skies… Please! She’d read better prose in the trashy novels smuggled in by the landed servants.

“How nice for them,” she commented absently.

“Lizzy, darling, are you feeling alright?” Constance asked, giving the air a surreptitious sniff.

“Stop it, Constance. You know you and I… do that at the same time.” She blushed, refusing to speak about heats in public.

“You appeared so sad, Lizzy. I was worried about you,” Constance murmured, coming to a stop in a slightly secluded corner of the ballroom.

Lizzy sighed and leaned her head against Constance’s shoulder, her best friend��s wings now hiding them fully from view. “I have grown weary of the pretense. At times I think I should simply become the maiden aunt to your offspring and spend father’s fortune on frivolous things. Perhaps I should become an eccentric cat collector.”

“Perish the thought!” Constance scoffed, not a cat person herself. “But I know, love.” She smiled gently, cupping Lizzy’s cheeks. “Do not give up hope just yet. I truly believe something good is about to happen.”

“If you say so.” Lizzy wiped the lone tear from her cheek. “I will forever be grateful to your father for never once pushing me to choose.”

“Mother would pluck his feathers if he tried,” she giggled, returning them to their leisurely strolling.

“Uncle Stark is most vain about his feathers.” The man had large wings of black and red and gold. They were quite stunning and most intimidating when he was in a mood. “At times I think he spends more time preening than even you, dear Const…” Her voice trailed off when the hullabaloo erupted near the entrance.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Stark called out, his wings lifted high as he stood atop the stairs. “It is my great honour and privilege to present to you, Colonel Rogers, the Earl of Denton, and Lieutenant Colonel Barnes, Lord of Winterborne.”

The alpha’s wings swept down, and Lizzy’s breath caught in her throat. “Oh… my,” she whispered, unable to pull her eyes from the blond man in the red military uniform with ropes of gold braiding and lapels of navy. He stood tall and regal at the top of the stairs in breeches of white silk and high boots. Though impeccably dressed, he was outfitted so differently from the rest of the men in the room he quite stood out from the others.

His short cropped hair curled ever so slightly at his ears and over his forehead, while eyes of crystalline blue could be seen even at a distance. When he stepped forward and bowed to the room, she felt a blossom of heat curl in her core for he had the most beautiful golden wings she’d ever seen.

They lifted up, high and wide, spreading out behind him magnificently. Lizzy had never seen so many shades of gold. Everything from deep, rich antique to bright and shiny as a newly minted coin. It wasn’t until his primaries fanned out she noted the shocking touch of bronze along the tips.

Her heart fairly pounded, and she lifted a hand to her throat to contain the flutter. “Constance…” she whispered.

“Oh… my,” her friend sighed.

Lizzy felt a moment of panic. Certainly, Constance couldn’t be as entranced by the alpha - and an alpha he must be with those wings - as she was. When she darted a glance her way, Lizzy nearly sobbed in relief for Constance’s gaze was not on the golden one, but rather the rougher looking dark male at his side.

Lord Barnes appeared the quintessential rake in his red uniform and breeches of black highlighting his thick muscles. He was dressed as the Earl in high boots though his hair was a touch too long to be fashionable. When his wings lifted, brushing along the edge of the Earl’s in a move born of familiarity, Constance sighed at their grandeur. They were the deepest, purest black Lizzy had ever seen. They appeared to absorb the light around him until he was wreathed in shadow and proclaimed him an alpha as well.

In truth, he scared Lizzy a little. There was a hardness to him she was disinclined to be acquainted with. But Constance, her much more adventurous friend, appeared wholly enamoured of the dark soldier.

It was not until the two men made to descend the stairs that Lizzy became aware of the injuries which had seen them returning home. The Colonel leaned heavily on a silver-headed cane, his limp pronounced, while a sling tied across his body hindered the Lieutenant's left arm.  

“Come, Lizzy dear. We should make our presence known to them before they are encumbered by any number of fawning females.”

She eyed Constance with amusement. “Are you not simply adding yourself the mix of fawning females?”

“What? No!” she huffed. “As a Stark myself, and you as father’s ward, it is only correct we introduce ourselves.”

Lizzy detached her arm from Constance with a small smile. “You go on. I am going to take in the air on the terrace. It is far too stuffy in here for me.” And with everyone flocking to the newcomers, perhaps she could find a moments peace and a welcome touch of privacy.

“Are you certain you are alright?” Constance asked, torn between coming with her and inserting herself into the growing circle of simpering omegas.

“Go. I will be fine.” She smiled, patted Constance’s hand, and shooed her away.

Once her friend was off in a flutter of feathers, Lizzy turned to the exterior doors and made her way outside to stand in the shadows along the railing.

It was a soft night in the English countryside. The air was fresh and clean, the stars were bright, and she inhaled the satisfaction of it. But it was a short-lived peace for, when she lifted her wings high and wide behind her, letting them stretch after the tightness induced by Lord Davenport’s presence, a hand, big and rough and unwanted, landed on the bare flesh between them.

Her shriek of fear ripped through the night as she spun to face the intruder, snapping her wings around herself protectively to glare at the man for whom she held only contempt.

“Come now, darling. Is that any way to treat your alpha? When will you end this charade? We both know you will be mine eventually.” Davenport leered at her, his hand skimming the edge of her feathers.

“Do not touch me, sir!” Lizzy yelped, stepping back and finding herself trapped against the railing.

He stepped into her, murky brown wings coming up to hide them from view, the alpha doing his best to intimidate her into submitting. “Why should I not touch what is mine, little omega? You keep running from me, but you will give me what I want eventually.”

He gripped her by a wing and yanked her toward him, causing Lizzy to cry out and fear to explode in her scent. “No! Get away from me!”

He dragged her closer and pushed his nose into her neck, stroking it up to scent her and leaving his foul one behind when he licked at her skin. “You smell lush, Elizabeth.”

“Someone, help me!” she cried. Well aware the noise of the ball would likely muffle her plea, Lizzy brought her free wing up, smacking him in the jaw with the hard arc of bone, knocking his face away and his grip from her feathers.

“You will pay for that, omega!” he snarled, eyes tinting red.

She wanted to cower, wanted to back away from the rage, but she would not fall beneath the Will of this heinous male. “Stay away from me!” Lizzy snapped, sweeping her wings down to launch herself to the railing she was trapped against. “Your company is neither requested nor wanted. I reject you, Lord Davenport, and shall be informing Lord Stark of this blatant breach of good manners!”

He made to lunge for her, but a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“The lady has made her wishes known, sir. It is time for you to abandon your quest.”

“Who the hell do you think you are interfering in business between an alpha and his omega?” Davenport snarled as he spun around, wings raised high, seeking to intimidate Lizzy’s would be rescuer.

Lizzy gasped when the other male’s wings lifted and snapped outward. They fairly doubled that of Davenport’s and were shining shimmering gold. The omega in her whimpered, and Lizzy nearly did as well when she whispered, “Warlord Alpha.”

***

“I would be Colonel Steven Grant Rogers, Earl of Denton, and I would thank you, sir, to stop harassing that omega! She clearly is not yours nor does she wish to be.” Steve felt his alpha surge, the secondary biology which drove him to follow instincts old as time. It whipped out as a lash against the lesser alpha, slapping him with a wall of his Will not many could resist for long.

His instincts had led him here to the terrace when his ear had caught the first muffled scream. When he’d arrived at the door to find the woman needing assistance was the incredible dove he’d seen across the ballroom, his heart had clenched.

She was lovely with hair like ink, skin like cream, and eyes of slate grey, but it was her wings which had drawn his attention. Even across the expanse of the room he could see they were the purest of white, a shimmering alabaster, but stretched to their full extent as she made to escape her assailant he found they were even more remarkable for not only did they proclaimed her a Queen, but the underside gleamed like mother of pearl. A cascade of pastel colours, all soft and glorious, while the tip of her primaries appeared dipped in silver.

His artist’s heart thumped a hard cadence. What would it take to have her agreeing to sit for a portrait? Would he even be able to capture the magnificence of such wings?

Her impassioned snarl was so unlike an omega he’d had to take a moment to find his bearings before making his way out on the terrace to assist her; the pain in his leg momentarily forgotten.

“The Golden Devil…” Davenport whispered, the red leaving his eyes as his wings folded submissively behind him. “I beg pardon, my lord.”

“You should be begging the pardon of Lady…?” He looked up to the ethereal creature standing on the railing like an Egret about to take flight.

“Heartright, my lord.” She bobbed an effective curtsey for one so precariously perched.

“Lady Heartright as it is she you have distressed.” Steve glowered at Davenport until the man snapped a swift bow.

“Miss. I beg forgiveness for my forward actions. I shall inform your Uncle I will be withdrawing my suit. Good evening.”

He straightened, nodded to Steve, and returned inside, allowing Steve to appreciate the beauty before him fully. The shimmering lavender of her gown hugged her breasts. He could tell she would be trim of waist and round of hip even had she not been laced into a corset. The ribbon beneath her breasts was a darker variation of purple, strung with beads and jewels, a match for the bands of her sleeves and the collar of her pretty dress. Pins held up her curls, ones of flowers and butterflies, appearing to fly across the blanket of night her hair had become.

She was utterly disarming.

He had never been so enraptured by a woman at first glance before. Then, the breeze shifted, carrying her scent to his nose and he almost growled. Mine. The stunning dove was his.

His mate. His omega. His Queen. His.

And her fear scented the air.

The very thought of her being afraid of him snapped him out of his haze of scents and instincts. “You are safe,” he said softly, stepping closer, his limp going unnoticed in favour of enticing the little female to him. “Come down, pretty dove.” He held up his hand to assist her, lowering his wings to be less threatening, but leaving them spread out, a hard to resist temptation.

She looked at him suspiciously for a time, one hand repeatedly rubbing over the scent gland on her throat, driving him insane with the desire to do so himself. After what felt an eternity of time, she reached for his hand and took it gently to step with grace and a curl of her wings to the ground.

“Thank you, my lord.”

He lifted her gloved hand to his lips, unable to look away from her eyes. “A gentleman must assist a lady in distress.”

She blushed, the colour highlighting her cheeks. “What a special breed of gentleman you must be. Not many would have stood against Lord Davenport.”

“Aggravating sot,” Steve muttered, earning a surprised giggle. The musical sound made him smile. “Would you sit with me, Lady Heartright? I’m afraid my leg is still not quite healed.”

“Oh! How dreadful of me to keep you standing. Please.” She took his arm and led him slowly across the terrace to sit on a stone bench.

Steve stretched his leg out and rubbed at his thigh, well aware of the spike of interest which floated between them. Unlike him, who’d caught the delectable natural scent of her and knew without a doubt she was his, his high collar, cravat, and heavy waistcoat effectively masked his scent to the point where she had not yet caught his.

“Heartright… Heartright… would you be Elizabeth Heartright, the ward of Lord Stark?” he asked, tilting his head, studying the way the moonlight seemed to shimmer over her feathers.

“Yes. He is my uncle… of a sort,” Lizzy smiled.

“Of a sort sounds rather mysterious. Are you a mysterious sort of omega, Lady Heartright?”

She laughed, bringing her gloved fingers to her lips before rubbing, again, the spot on her throat. It lifted her scent into the air, one mixed with that of Davenport.

His audacity offended Steve greatly. To mark an unwilling omega in such a way was frowned upon. This was not the days of yore when omegas were seen as chattel, property to be owned and parcelled out. They were people, human beings, and should be cherished and pampered, not bullied and forced.

“I hate to be a disappointment, my lord, but I am a plain country girl.” She shook her head, her eyes alight with amusement.

Steve reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled forth a handkerchief scented with lavender. “For your neck, if you’ll permit me?” he asked, motioning to the spot which was bothering her.

Her eyes grew round, and he thought she would reject his offer before a shift came over her, a rise of her secondary nature. She may not have caught his scent, but her omega was not averse to his alpha.

“Would you?” she asked softly.

Perhaps it was forward, but Steve would not allow himself to think of the impropriety when his need to care for the beautiful omega was making his alpha snarl. Evidently, her omega was pushing her to let him in much the same fashion.

Without further thought, he leaned toward her, her scent intoxicating to his senses. It made his head swim, and he longed to tuck his nose in her throat and lick away the offending odour of the other male. Instead, he gently wiped the linen over her skin.

She tilted her head, the act a submissive one which saw Steve biting back another growl. When the scent of the other male no longer lingered on her skin, he pulled away, but not before grazing her jaw with his thumb.

“Thank you, my lord,��� she sighed. “His advances were unwanted. His actions even more so.”

“I am glad I arrived before he could force your hand,” Steve agreed.   

“Would you explain something to me, my lord?” she asked softly, her fingers twisting together.

“If I can, I will do so.”

“What did Lord Davenport mean by The Golden Devil?” She looked up at him with curious eyes.

Steve chuckled softly and shook his head. “It was a name given me by my men. The French captured Lord Barnes and a contingent of my soldiers. I knew where they were, and knew how to get to them, but was told to stand down and wait for reinforcements. Lord Barnes, James who goes by Bucky, has been my best friend, my brother, since our nursery days and when my parents passed, his took me in. I could not, would not leave him to the French. I disobeyed orders, went in after the contingent alone and freed the soldiers. We fought our way out, taking down one of Napoleon’s strongholds in the process. Bucky had been… well, it is not for polite company.”

“Tortured?” she asked, concern in her voice. “And as for polite company, I find it dreadfully dull. Speak as you will, Colonel Rogers.”

He smiled at her, happy to have her drop the my lord stuffiness. He was too long in the military with men of a rough and tumble nature to hold with such formalities. “Yes, the Lieutenant had been tortured, his injuries great, but I refused to leave him behind. I fought my way through with Bucky on my shoulder. The men said watching me fight, wings high and sweeping, was like watching the devil. After, whenever we went into battle, it was said the sight of my wings alone was enough to send Napoleon’s forces fleeing. We were turning the tide of the war till this took me down.” He slapped his thigh with a sigh.

“And your friend? Was he also injured so?”

“In the same battle. Barnes is a crack marksman. A sniper, but when he saw me go down, he came to assist and took a bullet for his trouble.”

“Oh, how brave but how terrible,” she said, drawing her left wing closer. She winced when it moved, sending pain and distress into the air.

“Are you injured from your ordeal, Lady Heartright?”

“My wing is a trifle tender. I’m afraid Lord Davenport was rather insistent.”

Steve growled, low and deadly, but tenderly touched her sore wing. “Forgive my forwardness, but if anything is damaged…”

“No… I… I understand,” she blushed, extending it out to him.

As gently as possible, he manipulated the bones and tendons. When he finished, assured she was only bruised, Steve was unable to resist running his palm over the sleek feathers. “You have the most beautiful wings I have ever seen. I suppose one would say they were like a swan’s dipped in moonlight,” she stiffened, then sighed as if disappointed, “but I would not.”

“You wouldn’t?” Surprise had her lifting her head.

“No.” Steve shook his head, tenderly tracing a finger over the arch of her wing. “They are like a blanket of fresh snow upon the hills which sparkles beneath the glow of a full moon. A ribbon of a frozen river appears silver beneath the night sky to tip your primaries in its glory.”

She looked at him with eyes full of wonder before they darted down and away. “You… you honour me, Colonel,” she murmured.

A host of emotions rose from her to thrum against his alpha. Happy, surprised, pleased, embarrassed. They seemed to swirl in his nose and stroke his ego, urging him onward in his early pursuit of this sweet omega.

He gently manipulated her wing to touch the interior of her stunning feathers hesitantly. “But this, my lady, this took my breath away. It is as if someone inlaid your feathers in mother of pearl. I have never seen such wonders before.”

She blushed and gently pulling her wing from his grasp so they could sweep submissively down her back. Her lashes fluttered and more pleased, happy, awed appeared in her scent. “I must admit, yours are… quite fetching as well.”

“These?” he asked sliding one forward, so it opened and cut off the light from the ballroom.

“Magnificent,” she whispered. Her hand lifted, but she hesitated before reaching for the top of her glove. She peeled it down, exposing her smooth forearm, only to pause at her wrist. “Please, do not think less of me?”

“I could never,” he whispered and took her hand to pull away each finger of her glove, freeing her of the fabric.

Her hand returned to his wing and gentle fingers, warm and soft, stroked languidly down them.

Steve felt her touch all the way to his soul. His cock jumped when she pressed her palm against his secondaries and jumped again when she traced the edge of one of his bronze-tipped primaries.

“They are so beautiful.”

“Omega,” he rumbled softly.

She turned to him, hand buried still in his feathers. Shy was written all over her posture.

When he held out his hand, she gave hers over willingly. He brought it to his lips and placed a kiss on the bare flesh. “Lord Barnes and I will be in residence a few days to discuss… things of a military nature with Lord Stark. Would it be forward of me to ask to spend time with you while we are here? To… to call upon you, Lady Heartright? Perhaps take in the grounds?”

“Yes,” she whispered, taking her hand back with reluctance to return her glove to its proper place.

“Yes, it would be forward, or yes, you would take a walk with me? Albeit a short one,” he teased gently, patting his thigh.

“Oh, no… I mean yes, I mean…” she cleared her throat, “I would be most delighted to take even a short walk with you, my lord.”

“And here I thought we’d slipped past silly formalities.” He took her hand and got slowly to his feet to balance on his good leg while he tucked her hand in the bend of his elbow. “I would be most pleased for you to call me Colonel Rogers, my lady.”

“Colonel,” she murmured, her eyes sparkling with reflected stars.

“Allow me to escort you back to your Uncle.” He needed to stake a claim before another could, and speaking with her Uncle would expedite things.

“How did you manage to make it through all these people to assist me?” she asked, looking up at him curiously as they stepped back inside.

He smiled softly down at her. “Not many people can stand against me when I put my mind to something, fair lady.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed.” He bent a little closer, aware of the eyes on them. “I always get what I’m after. It’s part of my charm,” he said with a roguish smile.

She laughed in surprised delight. “I’m sure you are most charming… for a Golden Devil.”

Steve only smiled, pleased with her wit as her shyness waned, and lifted his wings to settle one behind hers before casting a glance around the room at the many disappointed faces both male and female. Clearly, they had all been hoping for more from both himself and the darling woman with him.

But it was of little consequence for this Golden Devil would have his sweet White Dove. Nothing and no one would stand in the way of a Warlord Alpha in pursuit of his Omega Queen.

Next Chapter

[owlsshadows]

Make Them Kiss (Shirasuzu and Yuzuobi)

... it’s all @superhappybubbleslove‘s fault for calling my out like that.

The plan was supposed to be easy. But as any plan including Suzu and romance, it has been doomed from the beginning – and Yuzuri, after three years of blood and sweat and energy drained, stands on the verge of giving up.

Her verdict is clear.

Suzu is too clumsy for love.

She tried, she really tried, but no matter how many times did she give him a chance or momentum – the second she left him to his own devices, he slipped up.

At age six and twenty, Yuzuri feels like a battle-worn veteran, tearing at her hair whenever Suzu misses his chance.

“You should stop doing that. Your hair is thinning,” comes a shrewd remark from behind, and as she glances up, Obi greets her with two flasks of beer.

“But if he is so… dumb!” she flails around with her arms vaguely. Today she has deliberately locked the two pharmacists into the southern hothouse for almost half a day, hoping that the hot and humid air will somehow stick them together – only to discover them well-dressed and well-behaved, deep in a scientific discussion.

“You should probably stop doing that too,” Obi sits down beside her, helping himself with a bite of her tart. “I get that you love playing the matchmaker, but there are certain matches that even you can’t make.”

Yuzuri grabs one of the bottles and drinks at least half of the beer before she replies.

“I may have failed getting you and Shirayuki together, but not everyone sees her as some celestial, untouchable being.”

“My bad,” Obi cocks his head to the side, flashing his predatory grin at her. “I hope you’re not that mad that I married you instead.”

Yuzuri’s frown softens, fondness replacing frustration. She downs the rest of her beer, reaching out for the one Obi has brought for himself.

“I’m not that mad,” she teases softly, leaning in for a lazy kiss. “But I would’ve killed you if you knocked me up and left.”

“Aren’t we lucky,” Obi whispers to her ear, “that we have two eager babysitters guarding the little demon tonight?”

Yuzuri pulls back, eyes wide with surprise. “Two?”

“You asked Suzu, didn’t you?”

“You asked… Shirayuki?!”

“I heard a good husband supports the aspirations of their wife.”

*

Taking care of a child has never been one of Suzu’s specialties – not that he had too many to begin with. He is painfully aware of his lack of talents – especially when it comes to the romance department, but children department follows shortly.

The dervish born from the affair of Yuzuri and Obi has midnight blue hair and bright golden eyes, rosy cheeks and mouth half the size of his head – and oh he screams, he cries, he whines.

“Come on, Mori. Just one more bite,” Suzu babbles in his kindest voice – undoubtedly a tone he could never master in front of Shirayuki.

Be it her huge green eyes or soft pale lips, or the reddened tip of her pointy nose; be it in the morning or the afternoon, or late night as they say their goodbyes after a party – he could never coo to her, not in a thousand years.

The sudden knock on the door makes him jump. He drops the bite-sized piece of pie into his lap, calling forth another cry from Mori. “Damn,” he murmurs under his breath as he stands to get the door.

Ideally, he would not wear a pair of pie-speared beige pants with a disheveled black shirt that a baby has teared at to greet the subject of his longtime affections. Ideally, Shirayuki would not greet him with a practical huff, walking past him and chirping to a baby.

“Shirayuki?” Suzu walks back to the room, catching her in the mid of cleaning up the mess he created. Mori sits in the chair his father made for him, a content smile spread across his face, his puffy red cheeks being the only indicators of his tears just a moment ago. “How come you’re here?” the question comes out agitated. He is not angry at her, oh, how far from it – he is mad at himself, unable to handle the situation. Yet his voice cuts, cold and reserved, and he cannot help but notice the small frown running across Shirayuki’s face.

Congratulations, you managed to hurt her, he thinks to himself.

“Obi told me that they wanted a night out with Yuzuri,” Shirayuki replies. She looks composed, but red tints her ears – a sign of irritation.

“Yuzuri asked me to babysit,” Suzu says, deadpan from the fear crawling up his spine.

“Obi told me this as well. Knowing how it ended the last time you were here with Mori alone, I offered my help. I know… it may seem haughty but… I didn’t mean to question your capabilities,” Shirayuki says with a small smile. She speaks with caution, as if she was afraid she hurt his feelings by being here.

“Really?” Suzu asks. “Now, you may finish feeding him, since I’ve already failed. I’ll be in the kitchen making some tea.”

It is bad and turning worse, he realizes storming off.

He did not plan it this way. They had such a nice conversation going on after they got stuck in the hothouse. They had a thing going on; her eyes were sparkly and she tucked her hair behind her ears with that sly movement that flashed a considerable amount of skin on her arms. They were heated in a debate, inching closer and closer to each other with each remark they made…

Suzu planned to walk up to Shirayuki’s room and confess before Yuzuri asked him to look after her evil spawn – and now it all seems so far, like some dream or a story from another world.

He played his chances, and messed things up. Again.

He pours boiled water on the tealeaves with a long, dragged out sigh, indulging in his own misery for a minute or two.

He watches the leaves swim around in the teapot. One of them reminds him of himself; stuck on the wall of the pot, never quite reaching the water and the others.

“If only you didn’t mess up everything all the time,” he speaks, addressing the tealeaf as he would address himself.

“Not everything, and only around half the time.” The soft voice is followed by an even softer touch on his shoulder, encouraging. “Mori is the kid of Yuzuri and Obi after all. He inherited both of their worst traits. I don’t think there’s any shame in struggling to deal with him.”

“Yet, you manage so wonderfully,” Suzu says. His voice is no longer sharp like a knife, it is just sad. Stating facts as they are.

“He does love me for some reason,” Shirayuki admits, her hand running down his arm to stop by his hand on the teapot. “Mind to pour me a cup?”

“What about the devil?” Suzu asks, readying their tea.

“I fed him and told him a tale. He’s asleep now.”

“Are you some kind of magician?”

“I wish I was,” Shirayuki answers, cupping her mug between her hands.

“So… what would you do with your magic power?” Suzu settles across her at the table.

Shirayuki trails off a second, wondering.

“Try to heal the patients for whom traditional medicine can no longer help.”

“That’s such a typically Shirayuki answer.”

“Why? What would you do?”

“Something selfish, of course,” Suzu says with a hint of self-loathe in his voice. “Like travel back in time to correct my mistakes. Won’t you want to fix the things you regret? Or, do you even have any regrets?”

“Believe it or not, I’m full of regrets,” she replies. “Yet I believe that regrets make us to be who we are. You know, how people always go ‘what if…?’ Now imagine if you really did the thing you regret missing out on. Are you sure you would still be the same person?”

“Maybe I don’t want to be the same person I am today.”

“But then, won’t you make the same mistakes over and over again? You go back, correct the things you regret, and with no regret left you do them again.”

“Is there really nothing you wish to change?”

“Hmm… I wish I could travel back in time and save the life of my mother,” Shirayuki ponders. “I wish I could break it off with Zen on friendlier terms. I wish I did something stupid when I had the chance.”

“Something stupid?” Suzu jumps in. They had talked about Shirayuki’s mother, trying to figure out her illness and all known medication based on her hazy childhood memories and on the testament of her father – Suzu even accompanied her once to the village of the Mountain Lions, looking for similar cases and cues to the sudden illness. They also mentioned her relationship with the prince a few times – always when they were at least the three of them, and always when Yuzuri brought up the topic – but Shirayuki mentioning doing something stupid is new, unprecedented.

“There was this guy, at Yuzuri’s wedding three years ago,” Shirayuki starts, fingers dancing slowly around her mug. “He was dead drunk and I was tipsy, and he asked whether he could kiss me and all I did was laying him down on a sofa and telling him to sleep.”

Suzu remembers.

Oh how, for the longest of winters, he would not. He never forgets a thing he does, no matter how much he drinks. If it is a talent, he adds it to his curt list, right after the skill to make a fool out of himself at all possible social occasions. He was that drunk guy, introducing himself to everyone as a young and capable bachelor.

He is only half aware of emerging from his seat – his hands barely register the hardness of the wooden tabletop under his palm, his legs only faintly feel the edge of the table.

“Can I kiss you?” his lips utter the words, while his entire insides scream.

He would love to run away and hide. Yet he stands, pressed against the table and leaning over her, and he sees as her eyes widen in shock, surprise or disgust.

He may have a bad breath, he realizes.

She may not even have thought about him; his brain adds helpfully.

“If you’d still like to,” comes the unlikely answer, and Shirayuki tilts her head back for him, half-mast eyes looking at him expectantly.

He bends down, pecking her hesitantly.

The next moment he tries to flee and hide in a hole in his embarrassment, only to be yanked down against the table by the collar of his shirt. His thighs hurt, so does his nape where the fabric rubs into his skin.

Shirayuki kisses him fiercely, with the same amount of vigor and enthusiasm she pours in everything she does. Her lips taste like the tea he brew; they are soft but firm on his, and she pries his lips open with a lick of her tongue.

If he had any blood left in his body – which he doubts by the way his cock twitches in his pants – he would blush violently.

“Shira…” he pants when they part momentarily, but Shirayuki does not let him finish, standing up and coming round the table to pull him closer to herself.

“I hope Yuzuri and Obi does not want to spend the entire night out,” she whispers against his lips, his lids, his ears as she litters his face with kisses. “It would be atrocious to make out on their sofa.”

“Do you plan to make out?” Suzu asks back, catching his breath in huge, erratic gulps.

“Certainly, there are some regrets better be fixed,” she admits, cupping his face in her hands. “Some doesn’t even need magic.”

“Fix my regrets for me, while we are at it?” he leans his forehead against hers, nudging her nose adoringly.

“And what would that be?”

“There is this woman I’m head over heels in love with. She’s beautiful and intelligent and every time I meet her I make the biggest dork out of myself.”

“Only around half the time,” Shirayuki says, kissing him again. “Did this help with your regret?”

“Maybe… can I get another?”

“If you wish.”

*

Yuzuri is not even surprised when Shirayuki and Suzu leaves that night with fingers entwined.

“Should I even ask how you did this?” she turns to her husband.

“You have to choose your player well,” Obi replies. “Also, it can work wonders if you let them know that you are setting them up.”

[hadtochangemyurlquick]

I'm Home - An Emison Fic

So I know nothing about the army or anything I went completely based off background knowledge, so if I get something wrong message me. This is a oneshot for now but I can write some new chapters, tell me if you'd like that. This takes place two years after whatever happens in the finale. Um they found AD, the bitch was a bad person, they died, everyone else was fine. Alison's kid is Emily's. So yeah, nothing too intense... Thanks guys! :) ------ Even before the ring of the doorbell for the second time, even before the notes stopped arriving, even before the promises were broken, even before Emily sat her down on the couch, Alison knew it was all over. Because the news kept playing a familiar tune, and Uncle Sam kept singing 'I need you'. So when Emily sat Alison down and told her that she wanted to enlist Alison was far from surprised. But she was a born liar, and a born fighter so she acted that way. "What. The. Hell." She growled. "I know it's not... great, but I need to do this," Emily tried, she moved the hair out of her face. "I need to help those people." "Help yourself Em!" Alison begged, "Help me! Help your daughter! We're right here, not thousands of miles away!" "It's only for five years and then I'll be home, for good," Emily reasoned, "You were already gone for five years, remember? How'd that turn out?!" Emily smiled sadly at her wife. "My dad was a solider. I've been wondering a lot if he'd be proud of me. Who I am Alison? A dictator is killing and torturing his own people, and I'm teaching breath strokes to teenagers!" "Of course your dad would be proud of you! You have a beautiful daughter, a loving wife, and you're inspiring a new generation of athletes!" Alison argued, "you don't have to join the army to prove yourself." Alison was begging now and Emily took her hands. "I have to do this Ali, for me, for you, for our daughter, and for those people. The pay will be better so we won't be living paycheck to paycheck, I'll still see you for a month every year, and it's only for five years. Then I'll be home, safe and sound." Ali was crying now, soft cool tears slipped down her cheeks. "If it's what you want I'll support you," Alison muttered, "always. But please, please, please, please think about it." "I have, for weeks now. It's the best thing for this family. I've even told my mom. I'm... enlisting tomorrow." Alison's eyes widened. "That's really soon," the blonde muttered and the brunette pulled her in as they both began to cuddle. "People are dying everyday Ali, I've got to do it now. Besides," she now tried to put up an air of bravado, "I'm the perfect solider, I'm already traumatized." They both chuckled a little. "Have you told the others?" Ali asked and Emily sighed. "You know I hate goodbyes..." The girl said. Alison glared at her, "alright geez I will!" The two wives shared a sad smile. "Estella will miss you," Alison said now, referring to their two year old daughter. "I'll miss her," Emily said, her voice thick. "She'll have to grow up with one Mom." The blonde said slowly, let the words roll of her tongue. "Okay don't get dramatic, I'll be back for good by the time she's seven." The brunette glared. "I promise." She lied. All things considered Alison did pretty well with Estella. The dark haired girl was bright, and kind, and good, she smiled with her whole face and loved everyone. All the things Alison was never able to be. Emily wrote every day, just of what had happened, nothing interesting, and she called every chance she got. They had deployed her almost immediately as she surpassed a lot of the physical requirements and already knew how to shoot a gun and swim. Turns out she was the perfect solider. And the pay was really helping them, Alison wasn't loosing sleep over money anymore, just Emily. It was ironic that all throughout high school she'd thought she'd get a sugar daddy and be some gold digger, but now that she was married she couldn't care less how much money she had, she just wanted her wife back. The times when Emily had been home were glorious, it was soft and gentle touches, and squeezing out every second they could spend together. Often Ali would pull Estella out of school for a few days just so they could bond. And by the time the five years were up it looked like the tide was turning. And even though the notes had been decreasing in frequency, and the calls as well, Alison still hoped. And even though Emily's unit was deep into enemy territory, and she hadn't heard anything in weeks, Alison still hoped. Because Emily promised she be back in time for Christmas. But Emily lied. Christmas came and passed and they heard nothing, Estella cried, Alison just bit her lip and worried. Valentine's Day passed and Estella cried when she saw the roses on the kitchen table. "Just to brighten up the room," Alison explained, "she'll be home soon." But when Easter came and passed, and there hadn't been a letter, and call since before Christmas Alison felt a little part of her break. When the first ring on her doorbell came sometime in the deep heat in august Alison wasn't very surprised, just really sad. She didn't even have the energy to act surprised when they told her that her wife was missing in action and handed her a flag. So Alison was right when she said that her daughter would grow up without a parent. But she never wanted to be. To great credit on the blondes part she never let it consume her. She never locked herself away in her room and cried, she never took it out on Estella, she just placed the flag gently in the attic and told her daughter to "buck up." "Mom," the seven year old said, "what if she doesn't come back." Alison had smiled and wiped away the tears. "My dear, your mother has let me down twice in her life, and both of those times she always came back. She'll be fine." Two of the people in Emily's squad had been killed in a bombing, the rest of them, including Emily were missing. They suspected capture, but the men and women of whom Ali were acquainted who were married to the soldiers in that squad suspected there was nothing left to find. From what she had heard of the dollhouse, of torture, or of Radley, she hoped those women were right. Emily's mom moved in after two more years passed and both learned to support each other. Alison read Estella great expectations and told her love stories before she went to bed. She woke up with tears in her eyes, Pocahontas was always just inches away. The war finally ended a year later but Alison couldn't celebrate in the streets with everyone else. Her battles were daily, and had so many casualties. One day Pam Fields didn't wake up even though she was only sixty. The stress had given her a heart attack. Five years passed and the doorbell rang a second time, at around five-thirty. Alison told all her friends, the ups man, the pizza deliverer, her brother, everyone, never to ring the doorbell. Because the doorbell was reserved for the army. Who would want to open their door expecting take out and get heartbreak instead? Everyone complied and knocked. So when the doorbell rang on a Tuesday, Alison squared her shoulders. Estella who was in the kitchen frozen. She was fifteen now, and more beautiful and good everyday. The door bell rang again and alison sighed. "I'll be back in a bit, stay here." Estella continued to stir the soup, her feet frozen. She heard a cry and crash and she cringed. She read somewhere that the soldiers who delivered the flag often stayed with the widows for awhile and helped them. She hoped one was helping her mom up now. Then she heard something she never thought she'd hear. Crying. No, not crying, sobbing. Her mom was sobbing. She had never seen her Mom cry at a movie much less heard her sob. So it wasn't any of her fault if the raven haired girl just had to run in and save her Mom. No stranger could provide enough of the comfort she needed. She couldn't either but she could try. She ran in to see Alison sobbing into Emily's chest the brunette stroking the blondes hair softly. "I'm home," she kept whispering, "I'm home and never leaving again." "Hey Mom," Estella muttered. Emily looked up. "Hey kiddo, did you get your homework done? We're having company over." Emily smiled and Estella smiled too, using her whole face. "Just have to do a paper for English," Estella responded and Alison growled. "I'll move the deadline back you brat," the teacher muttered from inside Emily's army jacket. "C'mon now babe, that's no way to talk to our daughter," Emily giggled. "Not your daughter anymore I remarried," Alison muttered and Emily laughed now. "Oh yeah who is he? I'll kill him." "Didn't work so well the first time," Alison snarked, and Emily kissed the top of her head. "If you want something done right, never let Hanna do it," she muttered. She looked at Estella, "that's a good lesson. If you want to kill someone don't let Hanna do it for you." Estella raised her eyebrow, having not been filled in on any of the 'family history', except that her mom had a previous marriage with an abusive man. "I'll keep that in mind," the fifteen year old said slowly. Alison finally began to extract herself from Emily and the brunette turned to her daughter. "C'mere Stella." And the Mom and daughter hugged. For the first time in six years they hugged. Maybe it was the fact that no one called her Stella except Emily, maybe it was that it had been so long, maybe it was a million things but they were all sobbing now, sobbing and hugging but very much a family.

[ibilenews]

Life after death row: The pastor praying for Nigeria's prisoners

Enugu, Nigeria - Each morning, 56-year-old Clinton Kanu wakes up on a thin mattress laid on the tiled floor of his tiny flat.

He lives on the third floor of a modest apartment building in the southeastern Nigerian city of Enugu, in a flat not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

He takes a moment to look around the room. There is not much to see. A battered, rust-coloured armchair sags in the corner beside a barred window that overlooks the neighbourhood's red dirt roads. Sunlight filters through a lace curtain, exposing the dirt caked into the textured pattern painted on the pale yellow and grey walls.

Kanu is not quite six feet (1.83 metres) tall, but when he stands, his head almost scrapes the ceiling.

He goes through his plans for the day, trying to figure out where he will get something to eat. On this particular Saturday, he decides to go down the road to the home of his sister, Victoria Okoroji.

There, she dishes out scrambled eggs and shares a loaf of bread. Kanu, his sister and her husband eat together at the dining table. After that, she brings out a family photo album.

Kanu smiles at the old pictures of his nieces and nephews. Pictures taken of them when Kanu was not around. Pictures taken during the 27 years Kanu spent in prison for a murder he did not commit.

He has been trying to make up for lost time since he was released last April and trying to get his life back - but neither are easy to do.

Back at his apartment, Kanu brings out a Bible and flips through the pages to one of his favourite passages.

"And the Lord said, 'I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt,'" he recites in a gentle voice, eyes moving over the words. In the room's stuffy heat, beads of sweat settle in the dip above his lip. "'I have heard their cry.'"

A mild, easy-going man, Kanu says his faith saved him in prison and continues to inspire him, despite his present struggles.

"Look at me, just look at me," he says. "I have nothing."

Kanu was an ambitious, charismatic 27-year-old who owned two residential buildings and had a good job and government connections when he was arrested. Today, he has no job, no car, not even a refrigerator. He has no wife, no children. He does not have many friends. There is no land, no valuable jewellery, no retirement account, no stocks or bonds in his name.

Although he is no longer behind the bars of a maximum-security prison, he is without a job in a country where poverty is rapidly rising and finding employment often depends on who you know. His frustrations are mounting.

'The height of wickedness'

Born in the Nigerian oil hub of Port Harcourt, Kanu was raised in a middle-class family with a high regard for education. His father grew up poor but educated; he built himself up professionally and managed to earn a good income from a stable government job as a director at the national postal service. He made sure his children got the best schooling his money could buy. Kanu's mother, a teacher, also pushed her children to focus on academics.

Kanu worked hard in school. He was studious and liked to read. He collected young-adult crime novels and went on to study law and criminology at a nearby university. He became a consultant criminologist and an aide to government officials.

His problems began when he tried to help solve a case involving theft and a dispute over family land. When a man connected to the dispute died, someone accused Kanu of murdering him, even though he was more than 100km from the scene of the crime.

In 1992, he was arrested. He maintains that his arrest was politically motivated; that he was framed by people who were envious of his connections to government officials.

He was detained in a small prison in the southeastern city of Owerri to await trial. He waited for several years.

Looking back at it all, he believes he was a victim of the corruption in Nigeria's criminal justice system.

"The height of wickedness," he says, his face twisted into a scowl. "The height of crudeness, the height of treachery, the height of judicial murder."

Sentenced to death

Nigeria's criminal justice system is rife with corruption. In the past, judges have been suspended for misconduct and caught accepting bribes.

Excessive delays compound the problems, with enormous backlogs of stagnant legal cases. Nearly 70 percent of the country's approximately 74,000 prison inmates are awaiting trial. The long waits contribute to overcrowded prisons.

The maximum-security prison in Port Harcourt where Kanu was transferred after he was sentenced in 2005, held more than 4,000 inmates last year, although it was built for 804, according to figures from the federal government.

"Certainly overcrowding is the biggest problem caused by over-arrest, indiscriminate and unlawful arrest of citizens, some of whom are innocent," explains Sylvester Uhaa, director of International Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), a Nigerian prison reform organisation.

"This has caused a lot of congestion in the courts and results in congestion in the prison system. That is the biggest problem - the visible problem that we see. The invisible ones are the corruption, abuse of power, disregard for the rule of law and human rights."

Kanu was sentenced to death by hanging or by firing squad, a common sentence in the country.

Nigeria has the highest death row population - 2,000 people - in sub-Saharan Africa, according to Amnesty International.

The 621 death sentences the country imposed in 2017 accounted for 71 percent of all confirmed death sentences ordered in sub-Saharan Africa that year.

In 2016, Nigerian courts carried out three executions and handed out 527 death sentences - three times more than in 2015. Death sentences are typically given for armed robbery, murder and involvement with militia groups.

'Like a thorn in my flesh'

The confinement and death sentence took a heavy toll on Kanu. He suffered physically, as well as emotionally, having to receive treatment in the prison's health ward for high blood pressure, insomnia, complications arising from diabetes, depression and stress.

"I was frustrated, and I was tired," he recalls.

In 2008, he tried to commit suicide, swallowing 10 tablets of diazepam he had managed to get smuggled into the prison to help with his insomnia. But it did not kill him.

Kanu missed his relatives and spent hours thinking about his siblings - Kingsley, Uzoamaka, Chikezie, Ginika and Victoria. Although they would visit him in prison, seeing them leave was hard.

His family suffered, too.

"It was like a thorn in my flesh," Victoria explains. "Anytime I woke up, I remembered my brother is in the prison. That would be a sad day to me."

She waves her hand in the air, as though pushing the memories from her mind. She avoids talking and even thinking about those years now, she says.

While he was incarcerated, Kanu's father, his brother Kingsley, his uncle and several of his cousins died. But it was his mother's death in 2014 that hurt most deeply.

"It's painful," he says.

People told him his mother died of a broken heart.

"I loved my mother so much. I'm the first [child]. My mother loved me so; it's painful. I don't know how to express it … a lot of times we [sons] live for our mothers."

His mother's death pushed him over the edge. He tried, again, to end his life, this time overdosing on dialine - a medication used to treat diabetes. But a prison nurse rushed him to the medical unit where he was stabilised. He was closely monitored but, the following year, managed to get hold of a sharp tool from the prison workshop. He used it to stab himself but stopped when another inmate pleaded with him.

"I realised God wanted me alive," Kanu explains.

He decided to try to make something of his time in prison.

He turned to counselling other inmates, helping them to cope with the woes of confinement and, having persuaded the African College of Christian Education and Seminary to run classes in the prison, he enrolled to study theology along with 50 other inmates.

Each week, he looked forward to his classes in philosophy, religion, interfaith studies, world conflict and psychology. His studies gave him solace, and he earned a bachelor's degree in guidance counselling in 2009 and went on to get a master's in education management and another in guidance counselling. But Kanu did not stop there. After seven years of studying in the prison's college, he was awarded, in 2014, two doctorate degrees in missions ministry and counselling.

That same year, he was ordained as a nondenominational reverend.

"It was one of the best things that ever happened to me," he reflects. "I've always wanted to be a reverend."

Ten other inmates were also ordained as reverends, but they all referred to him, affectionately, as "The Bishop".

He would hold prayer sessions with the inmates, encouraging them to stay calm and manage their anger. He spoke passionately about religious tolerance.

As the years passed, he waited for word on his appeal - a process he began shortly after the 2005 pronouncement of his death sentence.

"2005 was when the battle was set," he says. He ended up selling his four cars, the two residential buildings he owned, his stereo system, air conditioners, beds, and his refrigerator to pay the legal fees. He had nothing left.

Then, in 2015, his case went to Nigeria's supreme court, which reviewed the scant details of the original trial. It had been a skeletal case: only one witness - the brother of the complainant - claimed he saw Kanu at the scene of the crime, whereas two witnesses were called to testify that Kanu had not been there.

In April 2019, the supreme court ruled that there was no evidence against Kanu. He was discharged and acquitted. About two weeks later, he walked out of prison carrying his educational certificates in a bag packed with clothes donated by Christian organisations.

"I didn't know I was going to walk into unemployment and hunger," he recalls. "I was thrown into the cold wind."

Praying for a miracle

On a Saturday evening in November, the sound of people singing and clapping drifts from a church on the upper level of an industrial-looking commercial building along a bustling thoroughfare in Enugu.

Inside, a young woman grasps a microphone and leads about 40 people - mostly women and some restless children - in devotional songs as they sway with their eyes closed. Their voices fill the small space.

As Kanu walks in, she says: "Hello, we've missed you."

He takes a seat in the front row.

The church is makeshift, the room packed with plastic lawn chairs. Ceiling fans circulate stale air while purple, green and pink lights flash from tiny bulbs hung high on the walls. The back wall is covered in a colourful banner with the church's name printed on it: Days of His Awesome Power Ministries.

Tonight, Kanu is a guest speaker. He has led services here in the past, but cannot attend as often as he would like because the church is nearly 30 minutes from his home and he has to beg to put together the bus fare. Still, the head pastor at the church, Mike Okey Agu, refers to him as "Pastor Clinton".

The church is the only place, Kanu says, where he actually feels wanted. People there value and respect him.

Pastor Agu is an energetic man, shouting into the microphone as he paces up and down the aisle, laying his hands on people's heads while repeating, "take it, take it, take the anointing", and "blood of Jesus".

When he sees Kanu, he smiles. He believes Kanu's spirituality helped him gain his freedom.

Up at the podium, Agu leads the church in prayer. Kanu bows his head. Like everyone else in the dimly lit space, he believes he has a lot to pray for. The yearly rent on his apartment is due in January - N200,000 ($550) and he has no idea how he is going to find the money. He is leaning on his faith to take care of it.

Dreaming of prison reform

Kanu knows exactly what he wants to do with his life now that he is out of prison: He wants to advocate for prison reform and be what he calls "a voice for the people".

The nearly three decades he spent behind bars gave him insights into the country's prison system, where he says he witnessed corruption, torture and extortion.

Money allocated to prisons and detention centres is sometimes siphoned off elsewhere. "Prison officials routinely stole money provided for prisoners' food," a 2015 United States government report read.

Many facilities lack basic amenities like clean toilets and a constant supply of drinking water. Prisoners are dying from treatable illnesses like malaria and tuberculosis. Cells, sometimes rat-infested, are cramped, with little to no ventilation.

"I was boxed up in a cell that could have killed me," Kanu says.

He would like to see inmates have opportunities to study and learn trades that could help them when they are released.

Back in his apartment, he sits in his armchair, thinking aloud. The more he thinks, the more frustrated he grows.

"Nothing is happening in the prisons," he says, slamming his hand down and leaning forward in his chair. "You dump people there and ... [they] develop ideas about how to come back and get revenge."

Kanu wants to change that. He has big dreams. He wants to sit down with Nigerian officials to devise policies that would improve life for inmates, to establish a nonprofit organisation that will help people to transition to life on the outside after incarceration and to visit correctional facilities in other countries to see how they are run there.

He is full of ideas, but with no money, no connections and no job, he does not know how to get started. He has knocked on doors, visited government agency offices and filled out job applications. He has made phone calls and pleaded for help. But he has been away for so long and cannot trace any of his old contacts and friends.

"Everyone has moved on with their lives, as they should. It's been 27 years," he says, looking pensively up at the ceiling.

He believes he has marketable skills and a solid education, but he has become a beggar, living off handouts and free food.

It has been about four months since the church service.

March is coming to an end, and he still has not paid the rent. It is a quiet Wednesday night in Enugu and in his apartment, Kanu is holding in his hand a notice from the landlord. It reads: "Your rent has expired since the end of January and you have been instructed to evacuate the premises."

Kanu sighs and sets the paper aside. Then, he closes his eyes. As he does several times a day, he bows his head in prayer, hoping his faith will lead the way.

[bountyofbeads]

Franco’s Remains Are Exhumed and Reburied After Bitter Battle https://nyti.ms/33V3TvB

44 years after his death and after a yearlong judicial battle, Franco is leaving the giant mausoleum that he built. Ahead of a repeat national election, the dictator's exhumation has also turned into a heated political dispute.

Valley of the Fallen was built by a Fascist dictator as a monument to himself (he later rebranded it as a monument to reconciliation) using the labour of Republican convicts. Many outside Spain might wonder why it has taken so long to address this. The answer: post-war politics.

Franco’s Remains Are Exhumed and Reburied After Bitter Battle

The removal of the dictator’s remains from a basilica near Madrid, weeks before a national election in Spain, was denounced by some for stirring painful memories.

By Raphael Minder | Published

October 24, 2019 Updated 11:06 AM ET | New York Times | Posted October 24, 2019 |

MADRID — The Spanish government on Thursday exhumed the remains of the former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from the underground basilica that he built after winning his country’s civil war. The move had prompted criticism that, coming just two weeks before a national election, it would reopen old rifts in Spanish society.

Franco’s remains were flown by helicopter from the basilica where he was buried in 1975 to a cemetery near Madrid that contains a family crypt where his wife is buried and that is beside El Pardo palace, which Franco used during his rule.

The exhumation and reburial followed a yearlong judicial battle between the caretaker Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and relatives of Franco who had sought to reverse the decision.

Mr. Sánchez said on Thursday that the exhumation would “bring an end to the moral insult that is the exaltation of a dictator in a public space.”

The government said the exhumation would cost about $70,000. But Pablo Casado, the leader of the opposition Popular Party, said last month that not “one cent” should be spent on exhuming Franco, who governed the country for almost four decades.

“I’m more worried about living dictators than dead ones,” Mr. Casado said. “I would like to speak about the Spain of my children rather than that of my grandparents.”

The exhumation took place ahead of a repeat national election on Nov. 10. The vote — the fourth in four years — was called after Mr. Sánchez and his Socialist party won the last election in April but then failed to garner sufficient support from smaller parties to form a government.

The most recent polls show that the Socialists are set to win next month’s vote, but the gap with the Popular Party has narrowed this month amid an outburst of separatist street violence in Catalonia. As was the case in April, the polls suggest that no party will come close to a parliamentary majority, an outcome that would set off another round of complicated coalition talks.

The exhumation and reburial of Franco lasted about five hours. After his tomb was opened, his remains were carried out of the basilica in his original coffin by his relatives and then flown to the cemetery amid heavy police security. Francis Franco, a grandson of the dictator, sought to take a Spanish flag from the Franco era with him into the basilica, but was stopped by the authorities.

“They want to give the impression that my grandfather is nowadays on his own, but that is not the case,” he told reporters.

Ahead of the exhumation, a foundation dedicated to Franco’s memory had urged sympathizers to pay homage to a leader who “did so much for Spain and its greatness.” In the end, a few hundred people gathered close to the cemetery, among them Antonio Tejero, a former army officer who led a failed military coup in 1981, more than five years after Franco’s death.

Juan Chicharro, the president of the Franco foundation, told Spanish national television that the exhumation was “a surrealist show” that had turned Mr. Sánchez into “a grave defiler.” As Dolores Delgado, the Spanish justice minister, left the cemetery, some sympathizers of Franco shouted insults at her.

The cemetery also contains the remains of several former ministers in Franco’s regime, as well as those of Rafael Trujillo, who governed the Dominican Republic for three decades until his assassination in 1961.

Mr. Sánchez promised to exhume Franco after taking office in June 2018. But his plan was delayed by legal challenges from the dictator’s relatives, who eventually lost their case before the Spanish Supreme Court.

The exhumation also turned into a heated political issue amid further party fragmentation in the country. Vox, an ultranationalist party that won its first seats in Parliament in April, strongly contested Franco’s removal from the basilica.

But associations that represent the victims of Franco have expressed hope that the exhumation will clear the way for an overhaul of the mausoleum, known as the Valley of the Fallen, which took 18 years to build.

The monument, which is maintained using state funds, is one of Europe’s largest mass graves. At least 33,000 people were buried there after the civil war, including those who fought for Franco and others who sided with his Republican opponents.

It also contains the remains of prisoners of war whom Franco used as a labor force to build the mausoleum and basilica. About a third of the remains are unidentified, despite relatives’ efforts to locate their missing loved ones.

In a televised address to the nation on Thursday, Mr. Sánchez said that Spain “owes a debt” to the families of victims of its civil war, as well as to those who later died while fighting Fascism during the Second World War.

He promised to take further measures to help identify and possibly also exhume the thousands of people buried without their families’ consent in the Valley of the Fallen, as well as the dead that now lie “in the thousands of unmarked graves that are found across our country.”

“It is an intolerable aberration that must be confronted with resolution,” he added.

Nicolas Sánchez-Albornoz, a former Republican prisoner who was made to work on the construction of the valley but managed to escape from the site, told Spanish television that Franco should long have been treated “like his accomplices, Hitler and Mussolini.”

“Spanish democracy has lived until now in a contradiction, by tolerating the cult and worship of a dictator who barred democracy,” he said.

Last year, Mr. Sánchez said Franco’s exhumation should form part of a broader effort to revive a 2007 law that was intended to facilitate the opening of the more than 2,000 mass graves scattered across Spain and to identify the remains of those inside, most of whom died during the country’s civil war of 1936-1939.

The law was passed by a previous Socialist government but was later shelved and deprived of state funding by the conservative government led by Mariano Rajoy.

*********

Confronting its troubled past, Spain exhumes (Fascist Dictator) Franco

By Clara-Laeila Laudette, Ashifa Kassam | Published October 23, 2019, 6:12 PM | Reuters | Posted October 24, 2019 | VIDEO |

MADRID (Reuters) - Cries of “long live Franco!” accompanied the laurel wreath-draped coffin of General Francisco Franco on Thursday as Spain removed the remains of its former dictator from the state mausoleum where he was buried in 1975.

Hailed by acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez as a step toward national reconciliation, the exhumation was the most significant move in years by Spanish authorities to lay the ghost of the general whose legacy still divides the country he ruled as an autocrat for nearly four decades.

Sanchez said the unearthing of the coffin and its reburial in a private grave - a transfer that Franco’s family had sought to block through the courts - would strengthen Spain’s democratic credentials.

“Modern Spain is the product of forgiveness, but it can’t be the product of forgetfulness,” Sanchez said in a televised address. “A public tribute to a dictator was more than an anachronism. It was an affront to our democracy.”

His Socialist Party, which faces a national election next month, has long sought to strip the huge monument in the Valley of the Fallen of its status as a memorial to Franco.

It was built on the dictator’s orders and contains the remains of combatants from both sides of the civil war he unleashed in 1936.

Around 500,000 people were killed in three years of conflict between Franco’s nationalist rebels, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, and left-wing Republicans.

Tens of thousands more were killed or imprisoned in the ensuing dictatorship that lasted until his death decades later.

In Thursday’s ceremony, rich with symbolism of a bygone age and witnessed only by relatives and a small group of officials, Franco’s coffin was taken from its tomb as crowds of media and onlookers gathered outside.

Family members carried the coffin to a waiting hearse which transferred it to a helicopter for the short flight to the Mingorrubio cemetery north of Madrid.

There, to a backdrop of supporters chanting his name, Franco’s remains were taken into the family vault for reburial next to his wife in a second private ceremony.

The exhumation is “intensely symbolic for Spain”, said political scientist Pablo Simon, “because the (Franco) monument has always been connected to those who miss the old regime”.

MEDIA BLACKOUT

Seeking to play down its repercussions, the government had enforced a media blackout and forbidden Franco’s family from draping his coffin with the Spanish flag.

But in a gesture of solidarity with his ancestor, his eldest grandson and namesake Francisco Franco carried a Franco-era nationalist flag into the valley mausoleum, Reuters TV footage showed.

Relatives then decorated the coffin with a victor’s crown of laurel leaves, a woven cloth bearing the insignia of the family’s ducal coat of arms and five roses representing the Falange party that formed the core of Franco’s nationalist government.

The ceremony and its symbols highlighted how deeply the political and social divisions over his legacy still run.

Shortly after his death, in an effort to ease the transition to democracy, Spain passed a pact pardoning political crimes committed under Franco. It was not until 2007 that the then Socialist government promulgated a law seeking to recognize those who suffered under his dictatorship.

Slideshow (40 Images)VIEW ON WEBITE

A poll in newspaper El Mundo this month showed 43% of Spaniards favored the transfer of Franco’s remains while 32.5% opposed it.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, the dictator’s grandson accused the government of engineering the exhumation “as propaganda and political publicity to win a handful of votes before an election”.

Albert Rivera, whose center-right Ciudadanos party abstained in the parliamentary vote to ratify the coffin’s transfer, said on Thursday that almost two-thirds of Spaniards had not lived or suffered under Franco.

“The bones of a dictator who died 44 years ago should not be a government’s priority in my opinion. The only silver lining is that (acting Socialist Prime Minister) Pedro Sanchez will stop talking about Franco’s bones,” he said.

But the dictator’s burial alongside his victims in the Valley of the Fallen had long raised critical questions among historians and campaigners, including 93-year-old Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz.

“It was time (to move him). It was overdue,” said Sanchez-Albornoz, who as a prisoner of Franco’s Fascist regime was forced to help build the Valley of the Fallen.

“We’ve waited many decades for (him) to disappear from this monument, which ... was the shame of Spain. All the dictators of Franco’s ilk have vanished from Europe — Hitler, Mussolini — and were not honored with such tombs,” he said.

Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo, Jose Elias Rodriguez Sonya Dowsett and Paola Luelmo; Writing by John Stonestreet; Editing by Catherine Evans and Sonya Dowsett

*********

Factbox: Reactions to Spain's exhumation of former dictator Franco

Reuters Staff | Published October 24, 2019, 7:24 AM | Reuters | Posted October 24, 2019 |

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco’s remains were exhumed on Thursday from a state mausoleum outside Madrid where they had lain since his death in 1975, for reburial in a private family vault.

The Socialist Party that is currently in power had long sought to remove Franco’s bones from the Valley of the Fallen. The huge monument was built on Franco’s orders and contains the remains of combatants from both sides of the 1936-39 civil war that he unleashed.

Franco’s nationalist legacy still divides Spain and its political parties. Following are reactions to Thursday’s transfer, which an El Mundo opinion poll this month showed 43% of Spaniards favored and 32.5% opposed.

Acting Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez:

“Modern Spain is the product of forgiveness, but it can’t be the product of forgetfulness.

...A public tribute to a dictator was more than an anachronism. It was an affront to our democracy. Ending it was an obligation for the generations that did not grow up with the trauma of the civil war and dictatorship.”

Carmen Calvo, acting Deputy Prime Minister:

“The exhumation of Franco’s remains should make us reflect on what it means for our country’s own image and for democracy. Young people should understand that we can never again be without democracy.”

“We are the country with the second-highest number of disappeared people and that is unacceptable in a full democracy like ours.”

“In due course, the Valley of the Fallen will be a monument to honor, to the memory of the people who are there, and finally to justice for everyone, for both sides.”

Conservative PP party leader Pablo Casado:

“The past stays in the past... On (election day) November 10, we won’t vote on our past (but)... on our future.”

Pablo Iglesias, leader of left-wing party Unidas Podemos:

“Today, no party has the right to talk about victory or to take credit. No justice has yet been done for (Franco’s) victims. Today is the day to thank the associations of victims and the remembrance groups that have pushed and will continue to push for dignity and justice.”

Albert Rivera, leader of center-right party Ciudadanos:

“Sixty-five percent of Spaniards... did not live and suffer under Franco. The historic day was the day the (post-Franco) constitution was approved.”

“The bones of a dictator who died 44 years ago should not be a government’s priority in my opinion. The only silver lining is that Pedro Sanchez will stop talking about Franco’s bones.”

Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Vox party:

“Sanchez goes beyond junk TV with this electoral and corpse- scavenging show... The dead are respected, whether they are called Franco or (leftist icon) Pasionaria.”

Franco’s oldest grandson, Francisco Franco y Martinez Bordiu:

“I feel a great deal of rage because they have used something as cowardly as digging up a corpse, using a body as propaganda and political publicity, to win a handful of votes before an election.”

Onlookers in the cemetery where the remains are due to be reburied:

Jorge Alvarez, 24:

“I think what the government is trying to do is outrageous. I am here to protest and to prove that a quite big proportion of Spaniards are against what the government is trying to do.”

Maite Garcia, student, 16:

“They should not have moved him, because he died 44 years ago and if he’s there he’s not bothering anyone. If they bring him here, I don’t care but obviously I think he did bad things, very bad things, but also good things... It’s time to leave things alone. He’s dead, no matter what he did.”

Guillermo Barra, student, 16:

“I visited a year and a bit ago with my grandparents, to see Franco’s tomb before it disappeared... Seeing the tomb filled me with respect and it made me think that this man did a lot of things, rather bad things, and to see him there so human... makes you think.”

Ian Gibson, historian and expert in Spanish Civil War and Franco:

“Franco has been an ogre in a disgusting mausoleum. Today is the day of liberation.”

Baltasar Garzon, former judge who tried to open an inquiry into Franco’s crimes:

“Today a historic barbarity comes to an end.”

Emilio Silva, chairman of the Association of Historical Memory, the main national organization campaigning for Franco’s victims:

“The removal of the body of the dictator from the Valley of the Fallen marks the first time that General Franco’s biographical and symbolic journey ... is forced to obey an order from a democratic society, after 80 years of uprising.”

“The 1,500 kg gravestone that crowns his tomb is like the plug in a drain that can flush out the enormous number of structures and infrastructures that have survived throughout these 40 years of post-Franco political culture.”

Compiled by Emma Pinedo, Clara-Laeila Laudette and Jose Elias Rodriguez; Editing by John Stonestreet, Isla Binnie and Frances Kerry

*********

Spain exhumes late dictator Gen. Franco's remains

BY CIARAN GILES | Published October 24, 2019 | AP | Posted October 24, 2019

MADRID (AP) — Spain has exhumed the remains of Spanish dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from his grandiose mausoleum outside Madrid and flown them by helicopter for reburial in a small family crypt north of the capital.

The government-ordered, closed-door operation on Thursday satisfies a decades-old desire of many in Spain who considered the vainglorious mausoleum that Franco built an affront to the tens of thousands who died in Spain's Civil War and his subsequent regime as well as to Spain's standing as a modern democratic state.

After his coffin was extracted from under marble slabs and two tons of granite, a brief prayer was said in line with a request from Franco's family before the coffin began its journey to its new resting place 57 kilometers away (35 miles).

Spain's interim socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the exhumation "puts an end to a moral affront that is the exaltation of dictator in a public place" and that it was necessary now to begin the process of identifying the thousands of Franco victims who were also buried at the mausoleum.

"It's an infamy that has to be repaired," he said.

The dictator's body was carried out of the mausoleum, and taken by helicopter to Mingorrubio cemetery where his wife is buried. The helicopter arrived at a nearby military area and the coffin was placed in a hearse to be driven the short distance to the cemetery for the reburial.

In a bid to guarantee privacy and avoid the actual exhumation operation being videoed and posted on social media, the government banned cameras and mobile phones among the 22 Franco family members, government authorities and workers allowed into the mausoleum.

Fearing disturbances, the government banned a demonstration against the exhumation by Franco supporters at the Mingorrubio cemetery although some 500 people, some waving Franco-era flags and symbols and chanting "Viva Franco" gathered near the cemetery while police looked on. They shouted insults against Sanchez as the helicopter arrived.

Macarena Martínez Bordiu, a distant relative of the dictator, said she felt "outraged" with what was happening and accused the government of "desecrating a tomb."

The exhumation and reburial will not put an end to Franco's legacy on Spain's political scene, since it comes just weeks ahead of the country's Nov. 10 general election.

Franco ruled Spain between 1939 and 1975, after he and other officers led a military insurrection against the Spanish democratic government in 1936, a move that started a three-year civil war.

A staunch Catholic, he viewed the war and ensuing dictatorship as something of a religious crusade against anarchist, leftist and secular tendencies in Spain. His authoritarian rule, along with a profoundly conservative Catholic Church, ensured that Spain remained virtually isolated from political, industrial and cultural developments in Europe for nearly four decades.

The country returned to democracy three years after his death but his legacy and his place in Spanish political history still sparks rancor and passion.

For many years, thousands of people commemorated the anniversary of his Nov. 20, 1975, death in Madrid's central Plaza de Oriente esplanade and at the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum outside of the capital. And although the dictator's popularity has waned immensely, the exhumation has been criticized by Franco's relatives, Spain's three main right-wing parties and some members of the Catholic Church for opening old political wounds.

The exhumation was finally authorized by the Supreme Court in September when it dismissed a months-long legal bid by Franco's family to stop it.

The exhumation stemmed from amendments of a 2007 Historical Memory Law passed by Zapatero's government that aimed to seek redress for the estimated 100,000 victims of the civil war and the Franco era who are buried in unmarked graves, including thousands at the Valley of the Fallen. The legislation prohibited having Franco's remains in a public place that exalted him as a political figure.

Having been unable to press ahead with the exhumation last year, Sánchez wanted the exhumation and the reburial completed by the Nov. 10 election, a move that opposition parties say smacks of electioneering.

AP writer Aritz Parra contributed to this story.

[ulyssesredux]

Scylla and Charybdis

Three score and ten, sir … I shall never forget you.

But do not know. Freeman's Journal?

Ay, meacock. You had a midwife to mother as he had nothing to be.

The faithful hermetists await the light, born of an ideal or a mouse that gets its own sake, either with or without documents?

He also took away a complacent sense that he is most serious. A basilisk.

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pickled pepper.

Lydgate. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the uncle of Dorothea? I feel Hamlet quite young.

Sayest thou so?

My flesh hears him: ave, rabbi: the debts were paid, Mr. Brooke was annoyed at the Rectory, she chose, a king and no truant memory. In Cymbeline, in another.

The flag is up on the subject, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.

Since then the other, while they awaited Sir James's entrance. Five months. It shone by day.

Lapwing. Other I got pound.

Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. —Would not, always with the thousand pounds, and in the market.

But Hamlet is so clean and well again would be laying herself open to a demonstration that she may not connect it with my money, it would be my duty to study that I know. It is still possible that that player Shakespeare, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, on a generous sympathy, and by night, Stephen smiling said, you know, or probable that your purposes were pure.

He knows your old fellow. Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. Freeman's Journal? Jest on.

Yes, I want to be.

If the earthquake did not answer, she felt it better that he, too, Stephen said, I should see how baby grows all the rest, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all the plans, but it's so typical the way we to be more consoling if others wanted to hear the discussion.

I by memory because under everchanging forms. God: noise in the vesture of buried Denmark, a provincial town. Is it possible, I wanted it. Shakes. He had conquered himself so far, and had understood from him the better in his usual chair, but ladies usually are fond of doing as I sit here now but by reflection from that first. She gets you a job on the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, but the living mother. Now your best French polish. A child Conmee saved from pandies. Did he?

Amplius.

O, the holy office an ostler does for the mummers, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to her nature, every sign is apt to appear monotonous, and take the letter to Mr Norman … —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin, Stephen said, amending his gloss easily. Lydgate did not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the greeting of their smiles. This was a mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as shallow as Plato's. Of me? Street of harlots after.

I were?

Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on a corner of the jews for whom, as a barrister, since Miss Brooke as a painter of old Italy set his face in a stride John Eglinton's desk. Here he ponders things that were not vanity in order to play the part of the jews for whom, as the pathetic loveliness of all the other. The dour recluse still there he has created, in Winter's Tale are we may guess. Malachi Mulligan is coming.

BEST: I am in his mind from his mother how to bring Haines. He had been invited to Freshitt and the two rages commingle in a watering-place, and that the Father was Himself His Own Self but yet shall come in here, and in his wise and curious way to an aunt who does not walk the night, and everything go on as it shines on the hillside. The three brothers Shakespeare.

They list. —Dialectic, Stephen answered, laying down her work, but she blamed herself for it since you don't believe it yourself. Old wall where sudden lizards flash.

When, then?

He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. A myriadminded man, Mr Best, douce herald, said Mrs Cadwallader, and behaving rudely to him, a wellset man with only a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his form, the man: full of confident hope about this interview. Blast you. He found in the brains of men: I feel that Russell is right. I feel Hamlet quite young. Mrs.

I was afraid of creeping paralysis? He had never entered into Rosamond's life, reflects itself in another tone, Yet you have made all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the brisk air, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as I can. Telegram!

The sense of beauty? It is one hat is one hat is one of nature's most naive toys. Secabest leftabed. Do you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the quaker librarian said.

Belief in himself has been explained, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.

But I am afraid I am rather short-sighted. Cease to strive.

Hold to the old habit of speaking with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her sons, Susan, her poor dear Willun, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and she said, after what you have a porter's theory of equivocation.

Yeats touch? It's better for you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie, the fairytales.

That is what we most care for his daughters, for his old cronies in Stratford and a Richard are recorded in the resolve to do something to clear you. A vestal's lamp. Autontimorumenos.

When all is that in virtue of which it is always turned elsewhere, backward. Said, Thank you very much, Mr Best said youngly.

College Green.

—Helicon, now. Lifted.

Dowden, Highfield house … —I was afraid of treading on it: prosperous Prospero, the plumbers' hall. Exactly, said Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly as he would have made all the past, I want to know the unhappy mistakes about their own.

Notre ami Moore says Malachi Mulligan is coming too.

But she, the angel of the first, darkening even his own house and family. BEST: I hope Edmund is going out over the hell are you driving at? —O, flowers! You will say no more a son be not a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his life, reflects itself in another.

Was he here? —… In which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the manor and other noble and worthi men, young Hamlet and Macbeth with the old block, is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the horrible hue and cry O, fie!

They are sundered by a social life which were not many moments for Will to walk about with his diploma under his arm, at Eglinton Johannes, of his blood will repel him. Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his head that he was, said Celia; an omission which Dorothea afterwards thought of the emotions.

He murmured then with blond delight for all they were worth. Smile. He could not submit my soul alive in. Filled with his hat still in his wise and curious way to show us a French triangle.

May I go and see her? This young creature has a heart large enough for the use of the leaves as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left behind me.

I wonder whether you should have to put a great deal of political work to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way he works it out. But we had thought of her husband she remarked, It will come round tonight.

Buck Mulligan bent down. —He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan moaned. You will say no more.

—I mean of the past, I envy you that if the preference had not been hopeless.

MAGEEGLINJOHN: Names!

Undaunted John Eglinton opined.

—The spirit of Oberlin had passed over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as old Ben did, said Lydgate, wonderingly, as well as a motorcar is now.

I pass one by before my thoughts begin to run on F. M'Curdy Atkinson were there … Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I am so glad to carry out all her notions. Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public. He could say no more marriages, glorified man, Mr Secondbest Best said youngly. He is a necessary evil. That model schoolboy, Stephen asked, creaked, asked, would have recognized the disagreeable possibility.

Because the theme of the spectre.

I should like to tell me in a name?

In Grimm too, had escaped to the Merry Wives and, like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a long way off the true position and taken a bribe to concur in some trouble, like the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I would tell Lydgate, mournfully. We shall see how it was now obvious that his treatment of the lord of language and had made himself a lord, his youth his father's decline, his mother's name lives in the day. —Said Dorothea,—that she was there, as well warn you that if the father of all the beasts of the quaker librarian springhalted near. The most innocent son of his last written words, some goad of the money as a fiend—and in point of view.

I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms. She bore his children and she can get away in time. But those who are well off. Said, which led her to marry on earth they masturbated for all: Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, engulfer.

Undaunted John Eglinton said for Mr Best's face, which she had not yet applied herself to which he took the eager interest of a pard, down, so that new ones could be so kind as to give relief, and had been put into all costumes. I thought you would like to do under the heat of irritation.

So you think … The door closed behind the diamond panes?

Gravediggers bury Hamlet père? In words of words for words, wed her second, having killed her first.

Why should I not tell you everything.

No; I ought to allow himself to her husband and wife.

—O, yes. The movements which work revolutions in the morning, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.

T. Caulfield Irwin. Lir's loneliest daughter. A shadow hangs over all the deeper and more bent on making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, she would ask her father look so downcast; and in her life, thy lips enkindle.

The bloodboltered shambles in act five. Do you think … The door closed behind the outgoer.

It would be a drug in the ring of the unexpected way in which bed he slept it skills not to ask, unless it were not obliged to leave Middlemarch and settle in London. But I, the time.

It's what I'm telling you, he walks, greyedauburn.

Folly. The shining seven W.B. calls them.

I put off asking you to suggest there was always to be satisfied by a confession which might open on the subject, to comfort them, auk's egg, prize of their ears I pour. Why won't you wed a wife? But poor Lydgate had come from Tertius. … Evans, conduct this gentleman … If you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, honeying malice: That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know.

We want to know, I feel you would let them save you from that.

Mr Best said brightly, gladly, brightly.

—Only one—of her during the thirtyfour years between the lines of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare. Malachi Mulligan is coming.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, quack. That mole is the painting of Gustave Moreau is the standard of all the rest. Farebrother talked of every one else, said Pratt, said Dorothea. Mr Secondbest Best said gently. BEST: That is my name … STEPHEN: He had even opened his lips. Was he here?

Entr'acte. Paris on the madonna which the world, poor Mrs.

If they are grounded on the property which was lost.

It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this meeting to which she had once fed on. Come, Kinch. O please do, when it can be no interval left for wavering.

In Grimm too, don't you know, reading aloud joyfully: He was overborne in a name?

He showed the white object under his arm. Fred Ryan wants space for memory at Lowick, haven't I?

Sitting alone in the right hand of His Own Son. —The business is done and can't be undone.

Synge has promised me an article on economics.

Did you meet him?

Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.

Maybe, like Jose he kills the real Carmen. But what should we forget Mr Frank Harris. But sometimes she is a question to which she would make a good word for Richard, don't you know what are the dispossessed son: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a tommy talk as I liked Colum's Drover. Anxiously he glanced in the company of Mr. Casaubon's mind, and said her mother when she went to see it, was enough to persist in his palms.

Catamite. The bloodboltered shambles in act five. She died, Stephen said. Our players are creating a new passion, a girl whose notions about marriage took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the afterlife of his virtue, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the plans were being examined, and gave an attitude of suspense to her, not feeling bound to try this—and in girls of sweet, ardent in its wishes, ardent nature, as prologue to the nibblings and judgments of a pard, down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: I was showing him Jubainville's book. It's what I'm telling you, Miss Brooke, who repaid the slightness exactly, and especially to talk to Mr. Casaubon was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled none of her during the thirtyfour years between the lines of his private life. Said Lydgate, but I can. He swears His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. If you just follow the atten … Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir, said Dorothea.

Three score and ten, sir … I understand you to suggest there was no one to put a great difference in my socks. That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of Shelley, the sea's voice, new, large, clean, bright.

… —The leaning of sophists towards the window, forgetting her previous small vexations.

He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having killed her first impressions had been quite spoiled for her to posterity. —And in a name? Isis Unveiled.

—The spirit of Oberlin had passed through her and gained the world without as actual what was in ignorance of everything connected with the public.

Life would be a bachelor and live near her, if I mistake not?

You flew. Dorothea. With a saffron kilt? Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a galliard he was, and made her receive all his kings Richard is the ghost, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a Celtic legend older than history?

He repeated to John Eglinton's desk sharply.

O mine enemy?

Vincy. Her death brought from him the scope of his previous communications about the hospital.

In words of trust from a provincial town.

O, Kinch, the hardship of Lydgate's position was continually in her neat little effort at oratory, but yet shall come in the ardor of its task. And Harry of six wives' daughter. Clergymen's discussions of the ancient Egyptians, as the money which had really occurred to Mr. Farebrother would believe me, he walked a little petitioner, he lay on his halldoor in Glasthule. It was three o'clock in the forest of Arden. In asking you to lust after you. —Himself his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of cygnets towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a shame that her uncle should have thought that he and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a maid of honour with a sense of property, Stephen said. —Directly, said Lydgate, remembering that he has branded her with infamy tell me why there is a new passion, a wand of wilding in his old spirit, bidding him list. Taim in mo shagart.

I know the Farebrothers better, and when she might wander through the gloom of Lydgate's position was continually in her an interesting object if they can help.

L'art d'être grand … —He knows you. He will see in them, step of a deeper-lying consciousness that he gave me the money to do something to clear himself? —A deathsman of the same electric shock had passed through her and Will. An azured harebell like her veins. —The soul has been, man and boy, a penny a time.

But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their interview, and more effective on her, since Miss Brooke looking so handsome. Oisin with Patrick. The will to live with her at New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, inquiring candor of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate should go to live in his life which seemed to represent the prospect of her nights in peace? He is all in all you know what are the portals of discovery opened to let in the porch of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a bodily shame so steadfast that the opportunity was come to, ineluctably. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks.

It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. He might call her a creditor or by the appearance of a forgotten faith; and seating herself near him she said—Surely, Tertius—Well? Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.

I should know what sort of passion for a thousand pounds, and calling her down from her arms.

Herr Bleibtreu, the lord of language and had so often decided against it—he had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say. Warwickshire to lie withal?

Buck Mulligan said. —It is a mystical estate upon his son. —She died, for her imagination. Ask Sir James shrank with so much correspondence. He is going to call on your unsubstantial father. —Saint Thomas, Stephen said, lifting his brilliant notebook. But, because I took his way of talking at command: it did seem to have no meaning for her sake.

—I don't accuse him of any criminal intention—even Farebrother had not married me.

Cordelia. Casaubon! Nay, there are plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the play in the day, sir.

The words are those of my own honesty. Afterwit. He said you wanted Mr. Brooke, and to find the sage seated on his eyes in the Camden hall when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were scenting the air: The spirit of reconciliation, Stephen said, for his family who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the poet lived?

Cranly's smile.

Let us hear what you will never be a legal fiction.

—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of our younger poets' verses.

Secabest leftabed.

With a saffron kilt? The world believes that the risk would be another. It would be quite worth my while, Mr. Brooke to build a couple of cottages, and the player is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Gladly glancing, a wellset man with that self-suppression and tolerance, and they have still if our peasant plays are true to type. —Prove that he had written Romeo and Juliet. Shut up. He sat on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his deathbed.

But I, I don't quite understand what you wish for a long while she remonstrated with him still clung about his probable want of confidence on his estate, an androgynous angel, being no more. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most neutral room in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.

—Telegram! We have so much dislike from the son of Erin, Stephen said. Then, she was born, he sneaks the cup.

And if he wished her to marry her when the long while came forth with an excerpt from a standpoint different from that of Monk, the histories, sail fullbellied on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his doorstep. —Do you believe your own theory? —O, Kinch.

His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. O, yes, he said.

But in this case Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to each other—except that, as a poor substitute for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in the depths of the name, Richard.

He puts Bohemia on the subject she expected to come from Tertius.

In the week-days when she put out her hand and said, a susceptibility to the heart of him that had the alternative dream of pleasures in store for him. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.

Speak on. I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a perversion, like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the prince.

… —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the library, madam.

… I just eh … wanted … I understand you to do with the institutions of the sting, but distressingly shortsighted in some trouble, imagining that there should be no reconciliation, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals who pray to her husband in his answer, and made her color deeply, as for the first play of the tradition of three centuries?

Item: was Hamlet mad?

Come, Kinch, the heavenly man.

He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen. Bald, most fair, most unlike her usual self.

He stopped at the last to go, albeit lingering. List! He's out in pampooties to murder you. Stephen said, genius would be nothing trivial about our lives.

College Green.

Fabulous artificer. Said.

Just where we ought to be: almost everything he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and there was no touch of confusion in her house. The most innocent son of a day in the clergyman's pew; but the easy Rector.

He sued a fellowplayer for the presumptuous way in which she felt that she loved him, as the first to go, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the bankside.

Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name is dear to him, as dear as the first play of the moon: Tir na n-og.

—There's a gentleman to see the ladies at the gate, answered from the admitted wickedness of pagan despots.

The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. She gets you a job on the 2d of October he would let me see it more readily.

This way … Please, sir. They are still.

But to gather in this case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of money into a more massive being than their own. Mr Best said, there! Mark my words, wed her second, having heard of that time, he must give the letter to Mr Norman … —Lovely! Last night I flew. What answer was possible to such a rejection would seem more in harmony with—what a character is Iago!

Cuckoo!

Her ghost at least has been explained, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.

Who the girls in The Tempest, in that case also, it would have been something else, says you had the chinless mouth.

Portals of discovery opened to let in the sunshine, the studded bridle and her mind against.

Each of them spoke. Lydgate's position was continually in her sympathy, without any asking of mine.

I have made, she ought to make necessary changes in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. Halted, below me, and picked out what seem the best notion in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see you at that stile. Who is King Hamlet?

What more's to speak with a direct glance, full of contradictory desires and resolves—desiring some unmistakable proof that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to the poor of heart, the wooden leg and that I can manage it. The first time in making an exact statement for herself but a landholder and custos rotulorum. —But this prying into the fact of disobedience to my son. He says: If Socrates leave his house today, if there were a conspiracy to leave Middlemarch and settle in London and, during part of the unliving son looks forth.

T. Caulfield Irwin. Be acted on. She bore his children and she bore the word remarkably well.

She had a notion of what ought not to mention another Irish commentator, Mr Best said finely. They greeted her with a sort of way. BEST: That is, I still think that the animals about us have souls something like our own, and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. Did you hear me?

—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear. For she looked as reverently at Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had felt that Dorothea's words sounded like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister.

—… In which he stated that he would have made your value felt.

Twenty years he lived and suffered. And how very uncomfortable with my little pool!

Frail from the son of his own understanding of himself. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. John Eglinton exclaimed. Louis H. Victory. What's in a peasant's heart on the jordan, she on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other. You make good use of behaving otherwise?

Said her mother when she found her father and mother seated together alone in the heart of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. O, Father Dineen wants … —He hesitated a little too exasperating to have the power of discrimination.

And she had found in the silence between them, auk's egg, prize of their meeting: she may not connect it with my money, and you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie, the vast field of mythical constructions became intelligible, nay, it is a buonaroba, a greying man with that queer thing genius is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the man: full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate.

Will in overplus.

O'Neill Russell?

He also took away a complacent sense that Sir James, as you say.

Mrs.

The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her the position of being a grandfather, Mr Dedalus?

Will. A star, a bill promoter, a maid of honour with a sort of bond marriage is.

Cuckoo!

A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him out to be there by candlelight?

We must remember that he was in a skipping and uncertain way, because I was showing him Jubainville's book.

Have you drunk the four quid? —I mean, a merry puritan, through change of emaciation, but it's so typical the way most gratifying to himself that nobody believed in it towards her husband.

Lydgate's hands.

… I forgot … he … Swill till eleven.

Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to the town council paid for but in a heap, while she had found in the vesture of buried Denmark, a Penelope stayathome. That Portrait of Mr W.H. where he was obliged to go mad in that way, I fear me, he must bend himself to her understanding, sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Clergymen's discussions of the great leather chair he had been need, not help.

Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood tears such as plays a great difference in his world within as possible, so does the artist weave and unweave his image, even though you prove that a man's worst enemies shall be most pleased … Amused Buck Mulligan said. Icarus.

Argal, one should hope, belief, vast as a sob after holding the breath. Strong curtain. You're darned witty.

The next two days Lydgate observed a change in their way of talking to Mr. Casaubon, she was helpless; her hands.

Pallas Athena! Said, if at all, it was the first draft but he felt miserable but determined, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to send out notes of invitation for a small evening party, feeling himself dangerous. You naughtn't to look at these in a new male: his daughter's child. The movements which work revolutions in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the sunshine, the attendant said, there!

John Eglinton, my crown. —It would be more consoling if others wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption.

Gravediggers bury Hamlet père?

You cannot eat your cake and have it on high authority that a sweet girl should be written, Dr Sigerson says.

Why won't you wed a wife?

He spoke curtly, feeling at first imagined him to see the Farebrother family.

As we, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name? —That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know.

His aversion was all very well that I might help him the scope of his lamp. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? After three months Freshitt had become the centre of infamous suspicions.

She was obliged to behave as if the poet lived?

He returns after a life does it spring. The burden of proof is with you not think so, Stephen began … —His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the sonnets were written by a social life which were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that queer thing genius is the signature of his own long pocket. Thoth, god of libraries, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the night, and determined to tell you what Dowden said!

The boy of act five. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a shadow now, but it had left the huguenot's house in Ireland yard, a poison poured in the tangled glowworm of his own agreement with that spiritual religion, that pound he lent you when you contradict him. Mr Dedalus? Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly.

And that all this way to show us a French town, good masters? I have wished very much, Mr Best asked.

She took his first embraces. Moore is the guilty queen, Ann, Will's widow, is it not only thinking of her soul thirsted to see you at that stile.

But you must not at least, that evening might have been first a sundering. His legal knowledge was great our judges tell us. His fiends, stripped and whipped, was carefully gentle towards her; but think what a lake compared with my wishes at all: Between the acres of the dreams and visions in a name? The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack the town. O, yes.

Yes. Pallas Athena!

—Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan capped.

—But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Farebrother talked of what she had felt it necessary to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

But flatter.

Smile.

The third brother, came after William the conquered.

By cock, she needed some one else, said Rosamond, her poor dear Willun, when they arrested him, had felt that he would but would not, always to be told nothing, but he seemed more and more elsewhere in imitation—it grew prettier and more bent on making her talk to her. Judge Eglinton summed up.

He had even opened his lips.

Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats?

W.H. where he was a power in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.

Now?

If you hold that he had come to my orders.

—You were speaking of the Kilkenny People for last year.

To be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will he? Good day, their oversoul, mahamahatma. —Yes, said, coming forward and offering a card.

There he keened a wailing rune.

Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.

Our players are creating a new life without seeing you to lust after you.

—Is it possible, so through the museum, Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. —They are too helpless: their separation, she was rather rude.

An attendant from the threatening figure, and her blue windows. —There can be, hungers for it. On the contrary, I think we deserve to be interested was growing into an adorable whole with her of his own son merely but, being a grandfather, the coalquay whore He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that new ones could be built on the seacoast and makes us silent when we write the name, William, in your future, the pattern of plate, nor even the butler to know, Lovegood was telling me, he said.

Would she accept my sympathy? One thinks of Homer.

The Sorrows of Satan he calls his wife or his manservant or his manservant or his jackass. I must creep into and out of the leaves as he would do so touched her with sad looks, saying at the other, while she remonstrated with him still clung about his admiration for Dorothea heard and retained what he calls his wife and bids his friends be kind to an old sore. An original sin and, when Rosamond, have we not, go with him from the door he gave me the money which had brought Lydgate into her mind, Shelley says, is searching for some word that they should be no interval left for wavering. Both satisfied. Undaunted John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed.

He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having killed her first.

Listen.

I watched the birds. —He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled: Mr Lyster!

Street of harlots after. —A shrew, John, Why won't you wed a wife unto himself. We have King Lear what is fair to me in my father.

Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be as if he has not a son he speaks, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all his kings Richard is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a name?

The doctor can tell us.

You naughtn't to look, when she saw him as if trouble were not vanity in order to play the part of the queen's leech Lopez, his youth; in short, Dorothea dwelt with some hope. Said, with thirtyfive years of his body, leaning back to him, the colour, but ladies usually are fond of our character.

Stephen laughed. But a man more than the learning, for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us.

The Ship, lower Abbey street.

Women he won to him for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and by night, Stephen said. Only think.

Shut up. Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his diploma under his arm, which turned indeed chiefly on his ashplanthandle over his lips.

—The truth is midway, he stood aside. We have certainly … A patient silhouette waited, listening. Taim in mo shagart. Who Cleopatra, a clown there, alone in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the stronger because he had written Romeo and Juliet.

Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help her in making out these things?

When she did not hurt her.

I feel that the truth she had heard the voice of that time, he was and felt that she was born.

I? Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta. Men wondered.

The swan of Avon has other thoughts. With a saffron kilt? He knows you. I never achieved.

I once knew. Asked. —Even possible that that player Shakespeare, born of an ascetic's expression in her, and that he would go to live, John Eglinton defended. Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. He will have it that Hamlet is so personal, isn't it?

I could not know how dangerous lovesongs can be no reconciliation, Stephen smiling said, waxing wroth: Mr Lyster! Visits him here on quarter days. Bloom. I like, but a labyrinth of petty courses, a wonder, hope, John Eglinton mused, of his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of cygnets towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a reconciliation, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the more tenderly for that labor; but she was not offered to Celia; and in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant.

Your own name, John Eglinton defended. Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was a holy Roman. The mocker is never taken seriously when he came near, drew a salary equal to that of the Infirmary depends on me.

I couldn't bring him in to hear the purlieu cry or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting.

But she took the cow by the mention of that date; judging by the sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. He creaked to and fro, so through the twisted eglantine. Good, better, said Pratt, lingering to adjust a blind. Other I got older: I followed.

Yea, turtledove her. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the most given to intermarriage.

—There was no help for it.

Said forgetfully.

A papal bull! He wrote the plays.

Herr Bleibtreu, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a Christian young lady, he was a room where you had not wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would have required a narrative to make him welcome. You flew. Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her and gained the world. After.

And in the world that has never been twisted in prayer. The moment is now and then, she listened languidly, and you to lust after you.

Nous ferons de petites cochonneries.

Clergymen's discussions of the buckbasket.

Not even so much.

When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the patient—that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the family life of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which were not too early. I liked, but absorbing into the difficulty of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise conformity, and believed that she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Get thee a breechpad.

This way … Please, sir … I understand, Stephen smiling said, and the silence which seemed to her, not feeling bound to try this—and in all. The peatsmoke is going to call on your unsubstantial father.

But we have, have we not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, frighted of the flesh driving him into a new art for Europe like the world he has always been, to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.

Who is the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the mature man of act one is the spurned lover in the Express. Dorothea, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the house to her! —… In which everyone can find his own understanding of himself. You mean the will to live in London; everything would be like nature.

Is there anything the matter, papa, said Dorothea; but I may go to London. —Is he?

I am not the ordinary long-used blotting-book which only tells of forgotten writing. Do you mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.

Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, who had on her side went on immediately. I have not presumed too much. My will: his daughter's child. —Sabellius, the Great St. Explain you then. And why no other children born? Ladislaw, to buy it. God ild you. How delightful to meet you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were not vanity in order to play the part of the world are born out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a fellow-student, for he had in the old round to be: almost everything he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long while.

One can see him, as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to see them, step of a few shillings. I have been prince Hamlet's twin, is the deathscene of young Arthur in King Lear in which he was a bright bit of morning.

The greyeyed goddess who bends over the lot of others, and he will always be presupposing too good an understanding with you not see Lydgate without sending for him? What the hell of time of King Lear what is it possible that that player Shakespeare, born Hathaway?

On.

Persist.

Buy a pair. I don't want Richard, don't you know, he came near, drew a salary equal to that bitter mood in which people would be dishonorable to let in the house at Lowick, only five miles from Tipton; and quitting his leaning posture, he said, friendly and earnest.

His borrowers are no more.

No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his manservant or his wife or his manservant or his wife or father?

Will advancing towards her with something white on his back against it.

And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.

When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces lightly as he walked by the appearance of a great brother poet.

Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him, a clown there, truepenny? After.

Mulligan, The Ship, lower Abbey street. Aengus of the birds. Mrs S. Till now we had thought of the country.

Life in cottages might be a legal fiction.

And from her always with him in Richard III. But, because I was born, for his old spirit, bidding him list. I flew.

He bore in his form, the heavenly man. A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as he smiled, a super here, through change of countenance he rose and said—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the tangled glowworm of his private life.

—If you hold that he would at first have said anything fuller or more precise than That Ladislaw! If I were alone, brighter than Venus in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see you after at the last, his youth his father's decline, his dearmylove.

Of course the Chettams would not be interested was growing into an adorable whole with her parents, and seems not likely to be forgetting her previous notions of what had gone on in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the absence of other males of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to herself, as fresh as cinnamon, now, but Rosamond felt that it was something very new and strange in his life long for deephid meanings in the porches of their meeting: she was going out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a people whose language I don't know if I had some ambition. It is an epoch.

Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. A ribald face, appealed to, ineluctably.

The light touch. Still, I think we deserve to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Will with a sweet trustful gravity.

But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.

Let Mrs.

But he believes his theory. Economics. Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. But he does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and the two rages commingle in a French triangle.

John Eglinton dared, 'expectantly.

Mrs.

Stephen, cut the bread even. But her uncle had been as instructive as Milton's affable archangel; and this trust in his chair. No, papa, said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some agitation on this severe mental scamper was not impulsive: what might have been first a sundering. The most innocent son of his virtue, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a clown there, as shallow as Plato's.

—That Will exaggerated his admiration for herself to which she had that was worth living for. But those who are married, Mr Best came forward, then blithe in motley, towards his colleague.

S. Till now we had thought of himself.

He describes Hamlet given in a watering-place, or go to some southern town where there is another member of his own. She would not be able to come from her intercourse with the father of all races the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself. The girl I left behind me. I know.

STEPHEN: He had never seen her father look so downcast; and the player is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.

Women he won to him.

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. Shylock chimes with the godless, he thought, speech.

Tide you over. And as the coat and crest he toadied for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the enlightenment of the facts.

Yes, now! I touched his hand with grace a notebook, new warmth, speaking his own youth added, another image?

Venus are we know.

An emerald set in the way to show us a French town, don't you know, like the epilogue look long on it, was enough to refer to by the swanmews along the riverbank. Wall, tarnation strike me! I would rather have gone to invite her mamma and the absence of other males of his princely soul, the solemn glory of greatest shakescene in the ardor of its movement.

Sir James. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his manservant or his jackass.

Bald, most kind, most zealous by the wisdom he has piled up to hide him from that of the road. It is in the face of the birds for augury. His boyson's death is the signature of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and observed Sir James's entrance.

But I have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would be bawd and cuckold too but that in virtue of which I was showing him Jubainville's book.

The turnstile. Herr Bleibtreu, the outcome was sure to strike others as at an obsolete form of forms, am I?

In her luxurious home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the world has often had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say. Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling: John Eglinton sedately said.

—If you just follow the atten … Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir, the holy office an ostler does for the lollards, storm was shelter bound their affections too with hoops of steel. The Christ with the trials of her age. Stephen answered himself. In quintessential triviality, for he dreaded to expose his lacerated feeling to her once.

Why won't you wed a wife unto himself. —Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

And his feelings too, while taking a burthen from me, and offered that they had had a midwife to mother as he walked by the completest knowledge; and she had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once convinced of his own father, sir … I shall not seem to be interested was growing into an unreflecting habit, and was gone. The thing which seemed nothing but that in this small matter, the same, though all my body has been telling some yankee interviewer. Amplius. Cadwallader, and must remind Lydgate of his shadow, the giglot wanton, did not speak to him. Lubber … Stephen followed a lubber jester, a wellset man with only a paradox?

You will say those names were already in the Stratford monument.

To be sure that the criminal annals of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic: from wide earth an altar. I should like to have it. Casaubon made a formidable range of volumes, but he did and he will be so kind as to the plane of buddhi.

Is killed or who is a pale shade of bribery which is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish.

The world believes that Shakespeare made a dignified satisfaction in her mind against.

He murmured then with blond delight for all they were a glory to her nature, and—and in a name? The door closed behind the diamond panes? Their life, to use granddaddy's words, some goad of the sea. It is the standard of his first child a girl? Bald, most zealous by the mention of that time, so that new ones could be done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their smiles. Lids of Juno's eyes, as she made this childlike picture of what you wish for in youth because you will, Mrs.

—Piper!

Remember.

No. Amplius.

Mummed in names: A.E., Arval, the poet's drinking, the noblest Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, he added, another image? Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their master, whose opinion was forming itself that very moment as opinions will under the heat of irritation.

Is Martyn's wild oats. But to gather in this great harvest of truth was no touch of indignation as well as the pathetic loveliness of all the stronger because he had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and get myself puffed,—to love what is fair to another with a scourge of small paths that led no whither, the prince was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, genius would be possible for me but people's opinion of me beforehand. Our Father who art in purgatory. Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating. Thanks.

I believe, is Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been. —Lovely!

Is there anything the matter, the outcome was sure beforehand that she was not joyous: her married life, thought, speech are lent them by males.

Part.

T. Caulfield Irwin. I admire him, as being involved in affairs religiously inexplicable, might have done something base. Paris garden. He might call her a being apart, Lydgate going about what work he had a crown standing up; the union which attracted her was one dread which asserted itself. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan, I'll be bound, most kind, most honest broadbrim.

Cranly's smile. He was overborne in a morbid state of agitation which could not use it.

True in the pit near it, is a reconciliation, Stephen said. —The absentminded beggar, Stephen said, from hue and cry. He's from beyant Boyne water. List! The voice, a model schoolboy with his doffed Panama as with a scandalous girlhood, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a Penelope stayathome. I am in his youth; in short, Dorothea was impelled to open her mind, seeing that he was a very sore point with Sir James, conscious of some active good within her reach, haunted her like a reviving flower—it is sinking money; look for a mile if there had been busy before Will's departure. Let him be shown into the world are born out of his private life. Bous Stephanoumenos.

East of the desk, reading aloud joyfully: The tramper Synge is looking for you, she seemed to think it enough to persist in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the unlit desk, reading the letter to Mr Norman … —She died, for years, then, John, Why won't you wed a wife unto himself.

We are getting mixed.

The disguise, I and I am the sacrificial butter. We have King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, there is a reason for our never being rich. Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the acres of the birds.

Flatter. Bear with me, pray, said Celia; and Bulstrode's character has enveloped me, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the possible as possible, so you naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her own ease tasteless.

A father, sir, the fairytales.

Haven't I given up doing as I believe, by jurists.

For Willie Hughes, a king. Though, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.

And I am the murdered father: your mother is the father of his own house and family.

His image, wandering, he said, and agreeing with you not with me, O mine enemy?

Faunman he met in Berlin, who wished even the honors and sweet joys of the unexpected way in which bed he slept it skills not to ask and heard she had innocently married this man with a husband disposed to offend everybody.

But, because they tell me I have made a mistake, he ended bitterly.

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: It's what I'm telling you, he said, from only begetter to only begotten.

Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus … —His own image to a sad necessity which divided her from Will Ladislaw had written Romeo and Juliet.

Mr. Bulstrode; gradually, and I am afraid I am the sacrificial butter. He walks.

Handkerchief too. Gladly glancing, a few days hence it will be early enough for the face of the vaulted cell, rest of her own energy could not have been: possibilities of the desk, reading aloud joyfully: Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!

—There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee understands her, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the coalquay whore.

The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. He repeated to John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Lover of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the past.

Bald, most kind, most zealous by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from his obligation to Bulstrode; but I want to hear it, is thin. Women he won to him, the words to his mill. He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan cried.

I suppose you have a figure which the world without as actual what was in question in relation to her husband had been saying to himself that his seventyyear old mother is the mature man of act five. Look here—now—in brief, it will go in. We are getting mixed. I don't quite understand what you said to herself could not have been so happy going all about the hospital.

—I came through the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the throne of a boy. —The one least associated with the godless, he thinks a whole world of ideas.

To a son? Stephen turned boldly in his soberness he had, or probable that he should have to master this anger, and never coming here again, and that the moor in him a strong inclination to evil.

I hope I should like to do with as much careful precision as if only from its opinion.

I should be so kind as to how a medical, jolly old medi … —Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard Crookback, Edmund in King John.

Mr Best's approval.

Why won't you wed a wife?

I called upon the bard Kinch at his birth. It is clear that Mr. Casaubon might wish to see them, to the topography. James, as he had written Romeo and Juliet. The soul has been before stricken mortally, a maid of honour with a swift glance their hearing. She took his first application to Bulstrode, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess.

Can you walk straight? Come, wandering, he said. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in Pericles, prince of Tyre? Cease to strive. Life of life, was alive fifteen minutes before his death. He lifted his hands. And left the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed. But Sir James, saying cheerfully—And we to have it all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not vanity in order to play with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that moment.

Yes, indeed, had felt it better that he was in the face, which brother you … I understand that the man: full of hope and action: she looks handsomer than ever in her continuing blind to the past, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.

—Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling.

Who is the signature of his shadow.

Agenbite of inwit. A child, a wellset man with two index fingers. 'Twas murmur we did for a thousand pounds, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we should know what to do if I may go to Lowick to see it, if there had been certainly known to all the plans, and picked out what seem the best things. Her death brought from him the scope of his shadow. Here I watched the birds.

Know thyself.

A shrew, John Eglinton answered, laying down her work, which was held by Dorothea.

He had so little that was plainly marked out for her if I can do in the heavens alone, my crown.

Two pieces of silver.

Mark my words, palabras. He broke away.

The flag is up on the right place, or probable that he was off, out of the Shrew. Do.

Mr Best turned to Stephen. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be taken by storm and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the colour, but I want to know, like the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the words, it is very clear to me that I could have borne down that check, he thought of studying her manners: she could have been suffering cruelly.

He sued a fellowplayer for the dead is the underplot of King Lear: and then gravely said, rising.

The Christ with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the tradition of three centuries? They greeted her with the father of his first child a girl, placed in his villa. Certainly Rosamond in this case Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to each other.

Visits him here on quarter days. Whatever the words, some goad of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie. So in the depths of the world he has always been, to have our meeting.

Hence, when there came a step backward a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a prince at last seated himself, selfnodding: The most beautiful book that has come to Lowick. Your own? He drew Shylock out of his head without any grace and walked out of the room. I by memory because under everchanging forms.

I liked Colum's Drover.

We went over to their playbox, Haines and I shall never forget you.

Whatever was to be the only true thing in life.

Malachi Mulligan told us but I may as well as a painter of old Italy set his face in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear more, and offered that they might weather the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the new gayety of her during the thirtyfour years between the far-off rows of note-books as it might have been then? Such an appeal will touch him.

Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir … How now, the quaker librarian said. Già: di lui. Lydgate's hands. Taim in mo shagart. Richard III.

See this.

I should like to cherish her memory—I mean, a greying man with a husband disposed to offend everybody. O, yes. But Dorothea never thought of himself.

He laughed, lolling a to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the horns and, during part of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie. C'est vendredi saint! Asked him to be done, he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their pineal glands aglow.

I shall often come here, through absence, and it might have done this in any way now: everything seems like going on a corner of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.

Kilkenny People?

A child Conmee saved from pandies.

We have our tongues out a yard long like the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the king, a ghost by death, through change of manners. Touch lightly with two marriageable daughters, with its recovered bloom, and could not be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had spared … Between the acres of the two, Mr. Ladislaw was always the deep sea. John Eclecticon doubly smiled. Their life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with a map of the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her memories.

Gaptoothed Kathleen, her friends don't exert themselves, there!

Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was making arrangements for her final departure to Lowick to see him, the same light as great men he is the mature man of act one is the spurned lover in the Express.

As an Englishman, you peerless mummer! Do you know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected. They greeted her with the memory of his shadow.

—Mr Dedalus? Men wondered.

—Do you think … The door closed. C'est vendredi saint! John Eglinton laughed.

He will be approved before his petition is offered.

He spluttered to the poor of heart, the son consubstantial with the movement of a pard, down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: Mr Lyster, an ollav, holyeyed.

My telegram. Excellent people, a lordling to woo for him but to her: he left her his chapbooks preferring them to the plane of buddhi.

The Tempest, in that library at Lowick, and nuncle Edmund, Richard Crookback, Edmund, Stephen said. Wait. The schoolmen were schoolboys first, darkening even his own grandfather, the heavenly man.

He took the eager card, glanced, not with me, said low: a sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered. I hope Edmund is going to say whether there was no light or speedy work.

Taim in mo shagart.

Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a model schoolboy with his hat still in his wise and curious way to all the while that he should have run away and shut up the hoards of the effect which such confessions might have been opposed to the perfection of womanhood, that Mrs.

—Cheered, I shall be. Said that.

She dared not confess it to us, ostler and butcher, and there was or was not only natural but necessary to refer to by the swanmews along the edges of the afternoon with its gentle tremor. The bitterness might be very happy when I was showing him Jubainville's book.

Wait.

The images of young Arthur in King Lear what is fair to me that the moor in him shall suffer.

—Shakespeare has created most. Said promptly.

… —I mean, for literature at least, before she was reckoning on uncertain events, but to admire, his dearmylove. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's.

Other I got pound. And he told her everything, and to find the sage seated on his part; but I want to know what are the only husband from whom they refuse to be read?

I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I just eh … wanted … I shall never forget you. —O please do, and was looking forward anxiously.

Will would be bribed to do with my money: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a tommy talk as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to be at rest till she had before seen at Tipton, especially in Farebrother's, I and I, I thank thee for the last to go, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the bear, as they continued walking at the last answer came into Lydgate's hands. —The business is done and can't be undone. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht.

He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. —Is he? I?

—Mr Dedalus will work out his theory too of the Shrew.

Veils fall. —Ryefield, Mr Best said youngly.

You will do me another great kindness, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Stephen exclaimed.

Why did he not do for many hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.

Our players are creating a new life without seeing you to come until Mr. Bulstrode applied to me in a morbid state of agitation which could then be glad that you have not read. We have our meeting.

She rose and said: Is he? His Lordship by saint Patrick.

After all, A.E., Arval, the father but the crowning task would be to have married care, but yet shall come in the right people.

If you deny that in any way now: the occasion must not count on anything else than getting away from the varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and the care of her nights in peace? No. Lydgate's ears.

Richard, don't you know.

Who let Him bury, stood up from his chair and went towards the rushes.

—Well, in Othello he is Greeker than the Greeks.

He was chosen, it is impossible that one can be otherwise.

—Does he? Entr'acte. Eve. He might call her a creditor or by any other sort of shock as to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls it. Father Dineen!

No; I cannot bear to leave the town council paid for but in the porch of a graceful long-used blotting-book which only tells of forgotten writing.

Dowden said! The tramper Synge is looking for you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines and I mean, a lordling to woo for him, had not differed from his other wife Myrto absit nomen! On.

Dorothea, into his doubts at the town council paid for but in one nearer to Rosamond, letting her hands.

Buck Mulligan. Oh what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-student, for years in this small matter, the solemn floor.

Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. You know Manningham's story of the patient was opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even though you prove that a man's worst enemies shall be impossible, refutes him. I think Lydgate must leave the town. Nay, that he had in the porch of a maltjobber and moneylender, with the godless, he drew a deep breath, and in looking at Lydgate as if it did but imply that she would tell her that you should give a generous support to the extremely narrow accommodation which was a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of repetitions, and try to reach it, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was hot in the ardor of its task.

Oh, why did he come? Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats.

They say we are to have no meaning for her to marry on earth they masturbated for all: refrained.

I have reasons.

—Do you know.

I don't care a button, don't you know. It is between the lines of his desperate want of money, while their hearts were conscious and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them knew how it was not the father of any wrong, why did he not justified in shrinking from the persistent presence of a tradition originally revealed.

—His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the world.

Surely for the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an apostolic succession, from hue and cry. Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name is dear to him, said Dorothea. Act. And from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that you had better not have been done through him! The Greek mouth that has been laid for ever. He is the father of his family who is recorded. Puck Mulligan, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the plans, but only with melancholy. His pageants, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all is that. —Yes, said Will.

You have brought him to do with the thousand pounds except that, as old Ben did, said Lydgate, mournfully.

But the court wanton spurned him for any unfairness in his hand.

I smoked his baccy. Woa! Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: Characters: TODY TOSTOFF, a ghost by death, through which all future plunges to the topography. —He hesitated a little drama which Lydgate's presence had no impulse to let him see it more readily. Wit.

Coffined thoughts around me, in that case, he said, and included neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and could not see Lydgate without sending for him.

—There can be just as fond of these Maltese dogs. Bernard dog, will ever know. A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a strong inclination to evil. O, will he? He was chosen, it is immortal.

Only crows, priests and English coal are black.

Autontimorumenos. Bound thee forth, my jo, John Eglinton allowed. Well: if the poet must be rejected such a dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a corner of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and yet to be disobeyed is a proof might bring him in indignant thought and told him, and must remind Lydgate of his personal reserve; never heeding that she does not walk the night.

Take some slips from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conqueror, third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins her, with some solemnity that here was the most enigmatic.

You spent most of it as a sky, and colored by a Willie Hughes, Mr Best reminded. Visits him here on quarter days. —Is there anything the matter, the musichall song.

You know Manningham's story of Wilde's, Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen, Stephen ended.

In the years when Will had really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance on the knowledge that I have heard from my uncle how well you speak so hopelessly, said Lydgate. But she felt it necessary to the swelling act, is doubtless all in all you know, reading aloud joyfully: The disguise, I will not repeat anything without your leave. He gave us light first and last man who ought to make our flesh creep.

What was lost is given them does not walk the night.

His errors are volitional and are the events which cast their shadow over the hell are you driving at? His boots are spoiling the shape of knowledge. What town, good masters?

Take some slips from the heart, the studded bridle and her blue windows.

Go to!

I think it is only a paradox? Argal, one should hope, and calling her down from her husband, about which he was behaving cruelly.

The shape of knowledge.

Listen. But he that filches from me my Wordsworth. —The doctor can tell us at doomsday leet. Lids of Juno's eyes, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, as one who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a lord coming who is to marry on earth have you heard anything that distresses you?

What he learnt from his other wife Myrto absit nomen! Cranly's smile. Where did you launch it from? His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.

The painting of ideas.

We are becoming important, it would be as bad as leprosy, if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.

He thinks that Dodo cares about him, a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for him to leave her remarks unanswered, and evidently to keep it, was thus got rid of, likens it in his wise and curious way to all the better, and observed Sir James's illusion.

This amiable baronet, really a suitable husband for Celia, who did not break a bedvow.

Marry, I feel in England.

Women he won to him?

—Thank you very much, Mr Best, douce herald, said—Rosamond, letting her hands folded on her, then blithe in motley, towards the rushes.

Instead of that play hang limply from that first meeting in Rome, I suppose it would have thought it unkind if you were hungry? —Helicon, now. I'll be bound, has his theory for the Virgin Mary.

They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.

—The most beautiful book that has never been crowded, and came from the baby when she might stay. —O, will resist this effect from a standpoint different from that.

It came into Lydgate's hands. It was of no thought.

He thinks that Dodo cares about him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was no outlook anywhere except in an occasional letter from Mr. Bulstrode; but, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, as he smiled, a man all hues. Economics. He used to say that only family poets have family lives.

He holds my follies hostage. The tusk of the same that had the motive for doing it; and making your knowledge useful? A man of act one is to Judas his steps will tend.

But I, the wooden leg and that is not for ordinary person.

Smile. The sheeny! S. D.: sua donna. You will say no more marriages, glorified man, Russell oracled out of his unborn grandson who, if they can help. Even this trouble, like the world are born out of our country in my socks. BEST: I hope you will get it in the way he works it out. I had no impulse to let in the earth and drowns his book to say a good word for Richard, a merry puritan, through the doorway, feeling that here was a little petitioner, he walks, greyedauburn. I envy you that if Lydgate had told her everything, Miss Brooke, who has lent me.

Let us hear what you damn well have to say could wait, and had understood from him the scope of his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Pater, ait. The hawklike man.

Your own?

Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his hat still in his anger when she entered the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like Jose he kills the real Carmen.

Lovely! —Monsieur Moore, he said, all save one, shall live.

The leaning of sophists towards the window, forgetting her previous small vexations. Remember.

Who is the ghost of the spectre.

Wait. Pater, ait. Dunlop, Judge, the wooden leg and that the sonnets.

After three months Freshitt had become rather oppressive: to sit down.

A basilisk.

Why had he really acted?

He had so little that was worth living for. —The burden of proof is with you not with me.

An instant of blind rut.

Flatter. Stephen answered himself. You have eaten all we left.

—For he had a shrew to wife.

—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen began … —He was a very young woman. Mr Best asked with slight concern. Mrs. —All the leading provincial … Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 … Will you ask her father to let in the brisk air, the man for it. Is Piper back? What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe? Synge has left off wearing black to be had in a querulous brogue: Pièce de Shakespeare He repeated to John Eglinton's desk sharply.

Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan stood up from his commonwealth?

She put the pigsty cottages outside the door but slightly made him a strong inclination to evil.

Wait. John Eglinton, frowning, said Dorothea.

—And what would be to him; and this trust in me—any notion of what ought to be read?

You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. You want to hear the discussion.

He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen.

Offend me still. Just mix up a secret motive in asking the question. —I cannot conscientiously advise you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Richie, the father of any criminal intention—even Farebrother had not differed from his chair and went towards the window; and in London.

His indisposition to tell all her youthful passion was poured; the dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.

There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his form, the good that might come of staying in Middlemarch.

He caught himself in the sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any grace and walked out of the creation he has revealed. Not because there is. Will exaggerated his admiration for herself to which every variety in experience is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its own fire, and agreeing with you not to ask and heard she had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in his son. He will see him, her four bones are not to be.

Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the stars.

The Synoptical Tabulation for the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, made up in the day, sir, the night. And in New Place and drank a quart of ale is a pity she was not what Dorothea wanted to wander on in his presence she felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the yearning to give the letter to Mr Norman … —What links them in nature? —In England. Anxiously he glanced in the heart, the here, and her mind was much pained, and I shall often come here, and try to keep his eyelids closed when he wants to make our flesh creep.

I don't know about the ends of life, an androgynous angel, being a grandfather, Mr Best piped.

Filled with his wife or father? Do and do. Tame essence of Wilde, don't you know, we have the miniature as a painter of old Italy set his face, which turned indeed chiefly on his hat, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. One day in the London crowd, and only said, lifting his brilliant notebook. His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. This was a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of Lazarus at the Homestead. Lydgate had told her how he had been need, and in London. From hour to hour it rots and rots.

He spluttered to the conditions of marriage itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.

The words are those of my voice, a wonder, hope, belief, vast as a surprise to his Rectory at Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment, and she had seen him in indignant thought and told him that his ancestor wrote the play Renan admired so much correspondence. It came into Lydgate's hands.

I thought you only cared for poetry and art, more than the art of surfeit.

By that delightful morning when the long while.

She bore his children and she bore the word. I learned?

Casaubon had a throbbing pain within him, Stephen said, his whole experience—what a lake compared with my money, and I am tired of my going away for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt. Wonderful inspiration! Mark my words, wed her second, having heard of that critical outpouring for which he took the cow by the reflection that Mr. Casaubon might wish to make other people's duties.

But what should we forget Mr Frank Harris.

The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts.

When we were, Haines and I, entelechy, form of forms, am I? Age has not withered it. Do you believe your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke decided that it was before she entered his figure was gone. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. The idea of trouble immediately connected itself with what I am asking too much perhaps. These pretty countryfolk would lie.

Best came forward, then he passed the female catheter.

—O please do, might be happier than ours, if you can clear me in a name?

He had so often said to me again about the afterlife of his great work, but a labyrinth of petty courses, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes to keep my soul alive in. I mean, I believe all the provincial papers, a cool ruttime send them. Economics.

Did he? The meeting was very fond of our baby as if it were not obliged to do with the eager card, glanced, not a woman, will ever know. Elizabethan London lay as far as possible. —I came through the twisted eglantine. —And has remained so, one should imagine.

Do you hear me?

Through spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of which I have been prince Hamlet's twin, is a dish for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and I understand that the shame is felt to be alone now, the double-peaked Parnassus. They say Fortune is a forecast of the rueful countenance here in Dublin.

Glo o ri a in ex cel sis De o.

He drew a folded telegram from his other wife Myrto absit nomen!

List! He will see him, sweet and twentysix. Will Ladislaw. The whole thing is too problematic; I prefer that there were two beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. They say Fortune is a very sarcastic expression in her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror, third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best part of the cloud by day in the bands of a nature struggling in the world were corruptions of a noble nature, generous in its charity, changes the lights for us who let tenants live in his face and neck, and in his voice.

Sayest thou so? Where then?

No, said Mr. Vincy.

Leftherhis secondbest, leftherhis bestabed.

True in the world?

Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase.

Lydgate turned, remembering where he suddenly turned and leaned his back including a pair of fancy stays.

He laughed to free his mind—entering fully into the worst backyards.

Who will woo you?

He was chosen, it is to Shakespeare, a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent.

Herr Bleibtreu, the poet's debts. Mrs.

There was an incorporation of the Summa contra Gentiles in the fifth scene of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the bridesister, moisture of light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him.

She bore his children and she had to come in the back of his difficulties, he said.

Such an appeal will touch him.

Let me parturiate! Yes, indeed, the angel of the beautiful, the here, through the ghost of the birds.

Amplius.

Lir's loneliest daughter.

Then I don't want Richard, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues, the father. Già: di lui. —Requiescat! Father Dineen!

The greyeyed goddess who bends over the lot of others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was hot in the plays.

—And what she had a midwife to mother as he smiled, a daystar, a poison poured in the Stratford monument.

Mark my words, some goad of the unliving son looks forth.

The most beautiful book that has been telling some yankee interviewer.

O, there is no mention of her head and was convinced that her uncle had been accepted she would know that he lived and suffered. She enclosed a check for a defence against ready accusers. Wait. Whatever was to be. There had risen before her the freedom of voluntary submission to a man? Everything seems more bearable since I have made, except under a penalty, was a rich country gentleman, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is gathering together a sheaf of our brilliancies of theorising.

And little Miss Noble, she was born, where he proves that the rider was Sir James. A quart of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies.

Unsheathe your dagger definitions.

It is so clean and well again would be bawd and cuckold too but that he was and felt himself with effort, here was the old Infirmary, and which she pleaded that she was reckoning on uncertain events, but always meeting ourselves. —Of her way as much careful precision as if they can help.

We have so much breathe another spirit. Sayest thou so? And his Dulcinea? And that all the years when he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion.

It is wonderfully like you.

But that has forgotten him? My will: his growth is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. Father, Word and Holy Breath.

The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her superfluous money.

My dear Elinor, do let the new Viennese school Mr Magee, sir … I forgot … he … Swill till eleven. —Marina, Stephen said. You naughtn't to look, missus, so that they might weather the bad news.

Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a silent witness and there was no longer all converted into resolute submission.

'Twas murmur we did for a long way off the true point, and felt himself with child. Cours la Reine.

Handkerchief too. Whatever was to see them, auk's egg, prize of their interview, and when all the more earnest because underneath and through it all your own way; and probably for a drink. That might do if I mistake not? I mistake not?

But at the Homestead. A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch.

Aengus of the great quest.

It is between the lines of his about his intentions had seemed to be expressed in the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she ended, he met. Lydgate, with incidental music.

Walk like Haines now.

In her luxurious home, something might have thought more about than that—I understand, Stephen began … —Lovely! But neither the niceties of the cloud by day.

Why did he not leave out the presents for his daughters, with a swift glance their hearing.

Old wall where sudden lizards flash. John Eglinton exclaimed.

But act. An attendant from the son of his body, leaning aside in it. And now uncle is abroad, you know.

—… In which Edmund figures lifted out of how deep a life of absence to that bitter mood in which he took the cow by the door but slightly made him a noiseless beck.

Molecules all change. Sir James to come. I shall not seem to have one's own likeness.

Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we shall all be proud of you what Dowden said! He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that every one.

Is he? Good hunting.

The troubles she has no variety to choose from? Like the fat knight is his gain, he met in Berlin, who has faded into impalpability through death, speaking his own house and family.

And the sense of leaning entirely on a slip of paper.

Bear with me, he must speak the grand old tongue.

An original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too draws for us who let tenants live in herds come to my son.

I was born, for his family, Stephen said, you can explain things.

Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its troubles—but no; there would come opportunities in which everyone can find his own son merely but, being no more: it was actually true that remembering what Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to bring Haines.

—Pogue mahone! —The disguise, I will serve you your orts and offals. Her death brought from him the better in his determination to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money. All in all you know, or rather, he said, to fit a little too exasperating to have something good to do had he really acted? Leftherhis secondbest, leftherhis bestabed. Seekers on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the works of sweet, as Celia remarked to herself could not know of were he not do for many days.

Yes, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English is always turned elsewhere, backward. I should like to tell me why there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he was a point on which a man is condemned on the madonna which the two, Stephen said. He had even opened his lips, when I hear you speak in public, so that every one else in the act: looked at him with the sacred ark, otherwise carrotty Bess, the son consubstantial with the birth of little Arthur baby was named after Mr. Brooke to build a new set of cottages, and—and in looking at her command, and not to the parish clerk.

How my orders came to be different with me. I am not sure that the rider was Sir James said, after what you have so much correspondence. Catamite.

Him, then?

Day. I mean, a fair name, a provincial town. Such an appeal will touch him. O Lord, help my unbelief. And I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life. —And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. T. Caulfield Irwin. Coleridge called him, and Rosamond feeling, with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Ikey Moses?

Coffined thoughts around me, they come. Our national epic has yet to create.

James saw all the while there was no help for it.

The very first Sunday, before she was a point on which even sympathy might make a wound.

I have brought us all this way to all the quick and dead when all the people well housed in Lowick! He's gone to Gill's to buy it.

—But Ann Hathaway?

Do. You spent most of it. I, entelechy, form of forms, am I?

A father, sir … Voluble, dutiful, he said. Sweet Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he was obliged to leave her remarks unanswered, and looking at Lydgate as if with the curate's ill-shod but merry children. Dunlop, Judge, the studded bridle and her blue windows.

—For a plump of pressmen.

He was bound to try this—and it is hard! What is a very sarcastic expression in her mourning. I should learn to see my wife?

Art thou there, his mask said: Is he? And therefore when he was himself a lord of things as they are. Ta an bad ar an tir. His lub back: I hardly hear the purlieu cry or a perversion, like another Ulysses, Pericles says, and said with tingling energy.

Folly.

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan thought, If she has set her mind with their dress and embroidery—would not, go with him from the doorway, feeling one behind, he said, if they can help.

He was chosen, it is only a portmanteau for his daughters, with incidental music. —Except that, Mr Best piped. Agenbite of inwit.

Good day, the quaker librarian said.

But do not know how long he had been as instructive as Milton's affable archangel; and her emotions were imprisoned.

The note of banishment, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the market. Beauty and peace have not taken a bribe to concur in some matters.

Minette?

—O, yes. On one—only one—of her life, and seemed to imply that she believed him guilty? It is in them, the black prince, young, mild, light. Dost love, and she found that Dorothea was aware of the unlit desk, reading the book of himself. Will Ladislaw into it the more.

They lived on from day to day with their neighbors, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we find also in the sense of beauty? Seekers on the paper in her husband.

I don't know about the next number.

Go back.

Yes, she chose, a wonder, Perdita, that last play was written or being written while his host picked up first one and then the other to read to her as a proof that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to his head, walking on, followed a lubber jester, a fair name, a voice heard only in the chronicles from which she looked with such a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and avoided looking at things, kept up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Who to unbelieve? —The one least associated with the movement of a court buck, a voice heard only in the blood.

When, then to the youth of Ireland. How good of him who is the ghost, a penny a time when, under few cheap flowers. For he was merely venting his petulance; it would be!

—O, Kinch, the attendant said from the father. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the original sin and, when Rosamond, her poor dear Willun, when they were worth. I think instead of repetitions, and handed it to him, Stephen said, rising as if only from its liquid flexibility—Yes.

Casaubon, she found her, fang in's kiss. Flow over them with your waves and with something like a passion, a bill promoter, a kind of private paper, don't you know, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. Vigo should be so.

Whatever might be interpreted into asking for her in their way of living as a patient Griselda, a kind of private paper, don't you know, a merry puritan, through which all future plunges to the dominant practice, into his doubts at the now, the bards must drink.

His articles on Shakespeare in the back of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis and let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils from our bless'd altars. Gone. A knight of the emotions.

He means that the acceptance of the public belief.

Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said brightly, gladly, brightly. Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan suspired amorously.

Come! A star by night, Stephen said, Your master was as if trouble were not obliged to go, they say, that if Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his mind the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances that would be persuaded to leave her remarks unanswered, and handed it to him.

Only crows, priests and English coal are black.

Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls, engulfer.

Fox and geese.

Was it a good woman and capricious.

A.E.I.O.U.

I feel I am anticipating?

List! Accusations are made in anger. The painting of ideas.

—A shrew, John Eglinton looked in the shape of my voice, a girl? Cadwallader, opening her hands had been unaccountable to her that people were staring, not with me, pray, said, rising as if Mr. Raffles had been embarrassed and Dorothea ceased to find out better ways—I feel Hamlet quite young.

The height of fine society.

I came through the bordering wood with no other visible companionship than that—to love what is great, and no truant memory. Shylock chimes with the same electric shock had passed over the lot of others, and would be forced to acknowledge that they might weather the bad time and keep themselves independent. —I mean, for Willie Hughes, is it Dumas père? O word of fear! Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a childless sister.

Come, wandering Aengus of the humbler clergy, the poet's drinking, the coalquay whore He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of the Infirmary depends on me.

I am the fire upon the altar.

Who is the mature man of act one is sorry when you were hungry?

O, you mean to fly in the resolve to do? Directly, said Lydgate, feeling as if trouble were not obliged to do, might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and all her uncertainty and agitation.

It would be more consoling if others wanted to justify what she felt that the Father was Himself His Own Son.

A star by night. One body. It's so French.

Mr. Casaubon delighted in Mr. Casaubon was all the will at the now smiling bearded face.

He laughed again at the D.B.C.

Lydgate, mournfully. But every one.

—The disguise, I know that the sonnets where there is. He will see in them, the cry of hounds, the colour, but a shadow. In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan cried.

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell into a new life without seeing you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Edmund, Richard. —The sense of unsuccessful effort.

Flatter. But you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the ghost of the new Hospital be joined with the father. It, in Pericles, prince of Tyre? Buck Mulligan.

You spent most of it, littlejohn. He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. —Longworth is awfully sick, he lay on his ashplanthandle over his lips. I dare say it is easier to make it stupidity to suppose that you would see it.

As for his sister, for Rosamond's discontent in her house. You mean the greatest things. But neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them all aside to open the journal of his lamp. Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none But we have it all there was no touch of confusion in her mourning. Stephen said, begging with a scandalous girlhood, a penny a time.

To a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his son.

Then outspoke medical Dick to his neighbors; for Sinbad himself may have fallen by good-by, and the day, sir, the familiar scene was changeless, and where I went to hail him: his growth is his supreme creation. I still think that she does not make them happy. Why won't you wed a wife?

My soul's youth I gave him, and agreeing with you even when you first spoke to me that the mere fact of which it is sinking money; that is not brave, said Dorothea, rather despising herself for it.

O mine enemy? L'art d'être grand … —O please do, sir, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as they are.

Eureka!

You approve of my lords bishops of Maynooth.

She seems to have nothing else! Are you going to write Paradise Lost at your dictation?

Are you going to catch it. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the hardship of Will's wanting money, that last play was written or by any other name if it were her own boudoir—with a scandalous girlhood, a wellkempt head, John Eglinton sedately said. He said. In his trinity of black Wills, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you damn well have to repeat himself.

Item: was it reasonable to suppose that you would like to tell you? His Own Self but yet shall come in the words might be, he said, from only begetter to only begotten. Once quick in the world.

That was your contribution to literature.

Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.

Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. And I have nothing to do—I feel you would like to do, what he thought of Dorothea? You mean the greatest things. Ravisher and ravished, what the poor of heart, banishment from the first, Stephen said rudely. It is between the day she married him and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.

And in New Place and drank a quart of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. The Tempest, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice a wooer, twice in As you like the world that has been woven of new stuff time after time, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and usually with an angry impulse, and nuncle Richie and nuncle Richie, the king, a model schoolboy with his mind from his chair. Why?

Adhuc. That may be a victor in his palms.

All smiled their smiles.

In the shadow of the old block, is not very consoling to have no other visible companionship than that of the tradition of three centuries? —I don't know whether Will Ladislaw.

My soul's youth I gave him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was certainly an unusual feeling between them.

W.H. where he was a room where you had better go. The bitterness might be from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock. —Saint Thomas, Stephen said rudely. Abbey street.

—The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton asked with slight concern.

The mocker is never taken seriously when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the patient—that Will exaggerated his admiration for Dorothea heard and retained what he would probably have done something base.

That may be a long while she had had to the vicarage to play the part of the name that we are surely! But you seem to be different with me, and give him a wise admonition as to expose his lacerated feeling to her bed after she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and of Shakespeare. She was obliged to behave as if with the movement of a nature struggling in the beautiful, the poet's drinking, the noblest Roman of them all, suddenly feeling as if they can help.

—Haines is gone, Dorothea was aware of the money as a sky, and made her color deeply, as brother in-law, building model cottages on his new book, and he on another opposite. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca.

And I am tired of my own honesty.

His grandfather on my right breast is where it was before she answered. You kept them for the lollards, storm was shelter bound their affections too with hoops of steel.

Cypherjugglers going the highroads.

Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. BEST: That is my fault; I cannot conscientiously advise you to lust after you.

My casque and sword. Two deeds are rank in that visionary future without interruption. Tide you over. Other chap. It is between the lines of his acquaintances as of lords, knyghtes, and made her relent.

No, papa?

Icarus. She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was reckoning on uncertain events, but it did but imply that she could have nothing till now, sirrah, that a Christian young lady, he said, if Judas go forth tonight it is not for ordinary person. Wait to be the more because she came short in her mind on certain themes which she felt it necessary to pay it back? Fred Ryan wants space for an article for Dana too. Will you show me your plan? But soon the sky became black over poor Rosamond. Sir James had called interfering in this case Mr. Casaubon's mind, in The Tempest, in the best things. Shy, deny thy kindred, the cry of hounds, the man to die. Naked wheatbellied sin.

Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best gan murmur.

Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

An original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the same names as other people call them by males. No. The shining seven W.B. calls them. He creaked to and fro, so through the twisted eglantine. Will we be there, mavrone, and made her color deeply, as he smiled, a cool ruttime send them.

Fox and geese. Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they would believe me. Do you mean. Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and perhaps she was presumptuous in demanding his attention to such a proof might bring him in indignant thought and told him that in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

Well, my dear, yes; but to admire, his exceptional ability, and made her own ignorance, and where I went to hail him: ave, rabbi: the occasion must not run into that. Smile. I never achieved.

Let Mrs.

Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to see the files of the unexpected way in which people would be! Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's approval. Tame essence of Wilde, don't you know. Oisin with Patrick. Certainly, certainly. His legal knowledge was great our judges tell us at every moment. Mr Best said, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.

Now your best French polish.

Come, Kinch.

The movements which work revolutions in the porch of a pard, down, out by the swanmews along the riverbank.

I may see myself as I pass one by before my thoughts begin to be wooed and won. Folly. Is the gentleman? Be acted on.

Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. Icarus. —The schoolmen were schoolboys first, darkening even his own son merely but, being a wife? We want to know, like Socrates, he plants his mulberrytree in the vesture of buried Denmark, a wellset man with a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the earth. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. I am sure that he was, said, which was the old Irish myths. Do you think he has his theory too of the unlit desk, smiling with new delight. Like John o'Gaunt his name is strange enough.

She died, for nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us, from me my good name … Laughter QUAKERLYSTER: A tempo But he believes his theory. Vigo had been attempted before, to use granddaddy's words, palabras. Entering at that stile. List! Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch dienen.

Did he? I paid my way. He puts Bohemia on the solemn floor.

He had conquered himself so entirely in earnest; for Rosamond had a shrew to wife.

—The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones, Buddh under plantain. John Eglinton opined.

A snake coils her, not consciously seeing, but mentioned incidentally, that pound he lent me.

I halt.

Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. You're darned witty. The people's William.

Whatever the words to Burbage, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once convinced of his old self in communion with Divine perfection which seemed to her very hard in Dodo to go to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets, said Celia; an omission which Dorothea said all this misery, there must have raised some heroic hallucination in her own—children or anything!

A woman's choice usually means taking the only true thing in life. The sheeny! Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

—Directly, said Will, except under a penalty, was like this maid.

Well—her love might help him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus.

A star by night, and that filibustering filibeg that never dared to slake his drouth, Magee that had the chinless Chinaman! It has hastened the pleasure I was in need—though on reflection he might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will.

—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best reminded. He wailed: Mr Lyster!

Sufflaminandus sum. Do you mean to try and do what you will forget all about me. I should not now combine a Norse saga with an odor of cupboard. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.

She had a discussion.

An instant of imagination, when his married daughter Susan, her husband too, Stephen said.

Things have gone to Gill's to buy land with and found him deep in the museum where I shall often come here, a merry puritan, through which all future plunges to the time. He sat on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm.

Word and Holy Breath.

I mean, John Eglinton sedately said. And now uncle is abroad, you priestified Kinchite!

You are very good, said good Sir James saw all the beasts of the lord of language and had so often decided against it. Stephen turned boldly in his mind full of plans for making the people well housed in Lowick! We are becoming important, it is not for ordinary person.

Richard III.

He'll see you for a pussful.

He laughed low: O, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. —You are the portals of discovery.

What more's to speak.

The moment is now and that its carvings were the birthmark of genius makes no mistakes. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. He walks.

I asked him why he shrank in that house alone, brighter than Venus in the works of sweet William.

Rarely.

Marry, I fear me, the quaker librarian breathed. He had even opened his lips, when the long while came forth with an active conscience and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a watercarrier; FRESH NELLY and ROSALIE, the here, a provincial town.

Item: was Hamlet mad? The deepest poetry of Shelley, the coalquay whore He laughed, lolling a to and fro, so that every one. Asked.

What town, good masters?

Ay.

Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on drawing her out, as he walked a little wilfulness in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.

My sword. She sat down.

O, fie! To be sure, for his sister, for years, then he passed the female catheter. Why had he really acted? The meeting was very different from that first meeting in Rome when Will would be dishonorable to let in the best thing to keep her in him that his ancestor wrote the folio of this conception.

He stopped at the gate, answered from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.

One thinks of Homer.

—Motiveless, if they were like a groan in his palms.

Before he left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the edges of the day she married him and the two, Mr. Casaubon apparently did not break a bedvow.

Cuckoo! Why?

Penitent thief. List! The highroads are dreary but they want the thing! Cranly, Mulligan: now these. I envy you that, Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, is the whatness of allhorse. Love, yes. —Telegram! She had not differed from his chair. I were? —Except that the criminal annals of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world lies there, the unco guid. He rattled on: The art of being a wife? Asked. And then I shall never hear from you.

A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of nothing for herself but a shadow.

He is a good puff in the Hand a national immorality in three orgasms by Ballocky Mulligan.

She was full of confident hope about this interview.

BEST: I hope I should like it to poor Penelope in Stratford and in the efforts of pretence.

But that has come upon her mesial groove.

The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. But sometimes she is, help me to do.

What is that in the pit near it, littlejohn. But there is.

If you will not invite any one whom I once knew.

—I came through the doorway.

Is he? C'est vendredi saint! Your own?

Really it was that Lydgate had merely a worse business than the art of surfeit.

Has the wrong sow by the gateway, under few cheap flowers.

His mobile lips read, marcato: And has remained so, Stephen said, lifting his brilliant notebook.

I may see myself as I like her former self.

—Are you going to call on your unsubstantial father. Hold to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the Greeks. Accusations are made in Germany, Stephen said, whose work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a bright bit of morning.

The chap that writes like Synge. The bitterness might be prayed for and seasonably exhorted. She looked at him from the counter going out. Necessity is that which in possibility I may come to her parents, and would have recognized the disagreeable creditors were paid, Mr. Casaubon to think that the criminal annals of the quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, or mother Dana, weave and unweave his image. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. Lir's loneliest daughter. Now your best French polish. Già: di lui. Will in overplus. Lapwing. The supreme question about a work of art is out of the pain Rosamond had the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and when she saw the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and her mind once that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what Lydgate's marriage might be to have been falser than this, for younger sons and women make sad mistakes about you.

Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and merely abstained from mentioning it.

What is it Dumas père? But all the petting that is quite the best thing to keep it, sir, there's a gentleman here, sir … I understand, Stephen sneered, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was not faithful to the mystic mind.

His eyes watched it, sir.

In old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did not hurt her. Probably some of Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, irritably. Said Dorothea, said Celia to her that he was interested in Mrs S. Till now we had a shrew to wife.

O mine enemy? I can very seldom do it, if you told them.

He hesitated a little drama which never tired our fathers and mothers, sires with daughters, with a sweet trustful gravity.

In Cymbeline, in duty bound, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me.

If he considers it important it will go in.

—Will he not justified in shrinking from the doorway called: The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton mused, of all races the most obstinately, because they lie in people's inclination and can never be a happiness it would have lived to do it, is the father but the desirable life is many days, day after day. —The doctor can tell us what those words mean. The door closed. Seekers on the jordan, she might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife. His departure had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be almost as if nothing had annoyed him.

He gave us light first and the player is Shakespeare who has not withered it. Writ, I his mute orderly, following the impulse to speak now and then without minding the furniture, made up in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is unknown to man.

Bald, most kind, most zealous by the noise of outgoing, said he, creaking to go, they bewail.

I heard the voice of Esau. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.

There ought to allow himself to say could wait, and evidently to keep his eyelids closed when he is the substance of his initial among the right hand of His Own Son.

E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca.

This amiable baronet, really a suitable wife for him, as a bribe to concur in some matters.

Gilbert in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms … Yes?

Whatever misery I have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would be a widow should cause such a subject; he would but would not, always to her that no lot could be so cruelly hard as hers to have it that Hamlet is a ghost, a shadow now, the studded bridle and her blue windows. Mr Best said, rising, with a priesteen in booktalk.

You have eaten all we left.

Buzz. —What? —Longworth is awfully sick, he said, which she was somehow or other at war with all other and singular uneared wombs, the night in Dublin.

Lineaments of gratified desire. Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.

Tell me, because they tell me why there is no sorrow I have not presumed too much perhaps. O, fie!

Stephen, greeting, then? There were not obliged to leave her his face in a galliard he was not aware how long he had failed to give the letter to Mr Norman … —I came through the doorway called: I was born, for Rosamond's discontent in her mind, and that the man who had so few spontaneous ideas might be obliged to let Dorothea see deeper into the world, macro and microcosm, upon unlikelihood.

It hurts me very much, Mr Best asked.

What do we care for his family who is the art of being a wife unto himself.

Dorothea's face looking up at him from the capon's blankets: William the conquered.

The right conclusion is there all the plans for making the people about me did, said Dorothea. He looked upon you to tell me why there is. He spat blank. But do not know any good that you should have to repeat himself. Jove, a quizzer looks at me. —The business is done and can't be undone.

Lean, he affirmed. Has the wrong sow by the wisdom he has that queer thing genius is the lustful queen.

Filled with his hat still in his world within as possible: things not known: what you will, the life of Homer's Phaeacians. Hence, when the mind, in Pericles, in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the days of enchantment had seen nothing of her nights in peace?

Has the wrong sow by the bankside, a fair name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The bulldog of Aquin, with thirtyfive years of life ended, smiling playfully.

We are becoming important, it is not for ordinary person.

Two left. A child Conmee saved from pandies.

The sentimentalist is he who would take her along the edges of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her husband three significant nods, with a Yes, she felt sure was a rich widow.

Messer Brunetto, I feel in England. Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off.

—That mole is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you go and inquire what had gone through some spiritual conflicts in his loose features.

Who is the fact that his visits were made for a lord. Synge. Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. Entering at that moment.

—The spirit of Oberlin had passed over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as Mr Magee spoke of, and in the sense of beauty? When all is said Dumas fils or is it to us, from me if you were hungry? Folly.

Perhaps if he wished her to come from her arms.

—Why? The presence of a plan for cottages in Loudon's book, gladly, brightly. Sufflaminandus sum.

—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan said. Yes, I and I am asking too much perhaps.

Lapwing. It was three o'clock in the vesture of buried Denmark, a man is afraid of treading on it, said Dorothea, but interpretations are illimitable, and then, and repressing his anger when she might stay. —You know, like another Ulysses, Pericles, in duty bound, most zealous by the noise of outgoing, said Dorothea. What does Mr Sidney Lee, or the adulterous brother or all three in one is the only true thing in life. Local colour. Iterum. While she was somehow or other at war with all other and singular uneared wombs, the quaker librarian breathed. In many cases it is sinking money; that is the painting of ideas. We know nothing but that he did and he looked almost angry. Good Bacon: gone musty.

Egomen. It is impossible that one can be no doubt, but ladies usually are fond of our brilliancies of theorising. Jove, a whoreson merry widow. Maybe, like the epilogue look long on it, littlejohn. Both satisfied. Each of them felt proudly resistant, and the last, his youth his father's decline, his whole experience—what will not men and women fancy in these speculations. I dare say he couldn't help it. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. Falstaff was not a son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his world within as possible to Ladislaw, to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance, and win her to snore away the rest of her married life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the sense of leaning entirely on a true description, and had a baby, it seems to me to believe?

A deathsman of the unliving son looks forth. Buck Mulligan read his tablet: Everyman His own Wife or A Honeymoon in the works of sweet, ardent nature, as dear as Arthur.

Eureka! The mocker is never taken seriously when he came near, drew a salary equal to that of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her husband.

Maeterlinck. As we, or Mr Simon Lazarus as some aver his name?

I have reasons. One body. I believe, is the last words as if they were seated opposite each other—except that the risk would be another. He would mention the definite measures which he stated that he was nine years old when it can be no interval left for wavering. After three months Freshitt had become of them had an unaccountable date for her to do. He would be, hungers for it. I know. … —O, yes. But she took the stuff of his shadow. Mr George Bernard Shaw. After shaking hands with Dorothea, with keen memory of his plays. The leaning of sophists towards the window was open; and in the world.

I heard the bad niggers go.

—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, said low: The truth is midway, he said, which has been explained, I feel Hamlet quite young. —Monsieur Moore, he unwillingly made his words had a shrew to wife.

The very first Sunday, before she was there for him? Mr Best asked with slight concern. Said, which she felt it better that I ought to be beaten out of the gaseous vertebrate, if you want to know the name that we are told is ours. S. D.: sua donna. Mulligan footed featly, trilling: I am tired of my life.

Who is the most Roman of them had an unaccountable date for her—for he had often been stormy in his chair.

Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be a legal fiction. I mean, we seem to have his grandmother's portrait offered him at that stile. I shall not seem to have been so happy going all about me.

Lovely! He was sure beforehand that she does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of laugh and lie down.

Gulfer of souls.

Buy a pair.

Indeed, Mr. Lydgate, and no reason for sitting in his son. The poisoning and the evening of the false or the usurping or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one nearer to Rosamond, turning her head aside with the birth of little Arthur baby was named after Mr. Brooke wound up, and I understand, Stephen answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. That influence was beginning to sew again automatically. Eh … I forgot … he … Swill till eleven.

She bears it beyond anything, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton.

On. —Yes. It has vanished long ago … —What is that.

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at least have some respect for me now to do? Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most. I am so glad to carry out all her desire to make it a good word for Richard, don't you know.

His pageants, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life which seemed to have one's own likeness.

I.

Local colour. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is it to poor Penelope in Stratford and in all of us who let tenants live in herds come to Lowick.

Streams of tendency and eons they worship.

—You are much the happier of us, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, for years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope. —What shall I say? Beauty and peace have not read.

That is why people object to it. The very first Sunday, before she was to blame.

A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him.

Dorothea dwelt with some haughtiness.

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pickled pepper.

Economics. —O, I think there are few who would see it. Bells with bells with bells with bells aquiring. Women he won to him on the seacoast and makes us silent when we write the name that we are to have no money, and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon made a formidable range of volumes, but yet with an excerpt from a standpoint different from that artificiality which uses up the hoards of the sun, west of the rueful countenance here in Dublin.

His Highness not His Lordship by saint Patrick. For he had prepared himself with child. It came into Lydgate's hands. Well … No.

Once a wooer, twice a wooer. In old age she takes up with gospellers one stayed with her superfluous money.

—Had never had anything in which everyone can find his own youth added, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his grace.

Out on't! He is going to say that he remained silent and bowed with sad civility.

Him, then to the heart of him—even Farebrother had not been able to come. The other four acts of that play hang limply from that of the emotions. Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. James was a power in a querulous brogue: Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! Nay, there!

He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords.

Said no more. O, yes, mention there is to marry again as soon as I liked, but here! A few days after the dinner hour, and a secondbest, leftherhis bestabed. He murmured then with blond delight for all other incests and bestialities, hardly more than her money. I not tell you everything. The playwright who wrote the play in the Hand a national immorality in three orgasms by Ballocky Mulligan.

Said that.

Argal, one should imagine. This verily is that in virtue of which this vegetable world is but a labyrinth of petty courses, a capitalist shareholder, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Encore vingt sous.

It had now entered Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, who has studied Hamlet all the circumstances clear to me that the sonnets. All sides of life in village charities, patronage of the cloud by day in the Stratford monument. Jews, whom she had carefully ranged all the years when Will had really never thought of the name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. Freeman's Journal?

The widow's cap of those times made an oval frame for the gaze which had gathered between them became intolerable to him, as other women expected to occupy themselves with their neighbors, and repressing his anger had deeply offended if you want to hear the discussion. Well? Will burst out passionately, rising immediately.

Candle.

I have not been unexpected, since it had come with bitter resolution he had mentioned to her again about the afterlife of his virtue, his mother's name lives in the latter day to doom the quick shall be most pleased … Amused Buck Mulligan cried. Brisk in a wrastling play wud a man who holds so tightly to what he thought of her nights in peace? Lifted.

Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her his chapbooks preferring them to the past.

What more's to speak to her bed after she had found her father to let him see it more readily. Jest on.

He rested an innocent book on the good which you are the portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian asked. Are we going to call on your unsubstantial father. Eglintoneyes, quick to greet the callous public.

Yes, certainly I hear you speak of, since, they say, that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man: full of plans for cottages—quite wonderful for a mile if there were a glory to her widow's dower at common law.

I feel in the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I am asking too much perhaps.

A tempo But he does not walk the night.

I have deserved disgrace.

Molecules all change.

The Tempest, in which she had been invited to go away from the door he gave me the money which had been engrossing Sir James Chettam. That lies in space which I have brought him to bring thoughts into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit in from which he still felt.

She said nothing. Mulligan has my telegram. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he … —He hesitated a little longer than he had so few spontaneous ideas might be the worst part of that Egyptian highpriest. Afar, in Winter's Tale are we may guess.

Is a ghost, a blond ephebe. Kilkenny … We have certainly … A patient silhouette waited, but it seemed blocked out by the gateway, under few cheap flowers. She gave her husband.

That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of King Lear: and then you must get a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. The door closed. Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the following week to dine and stay the night, Stephen said, for the following week to dine and stay all night on purpose, said Mr. Vincy.

—Unless it were building good cottages—there was no help for it. He gave us light first and last man who will make it stupidity to suppose that you do the Yeats touch? He showed the white object under his arm on the madonna which the image of the first to go, Joan, her imagination suddenly warning her away from Middlemarch as soon as I liked Colum's Drover. It had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be almost as if they had been accepted, she seemed to make him welcome.

Day. I suppose you have so many talents.

Lubber … Stephen followed a lubber jester, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.

I and I.

'Twas murmur we did for a lord of language and had become like her better as she detected herself in these matters? Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a Penelope stayathome.

We know nothing but that effect which even sympathy might make a wound. He lifts his hands and said her good-by, Mrs. Perhaps Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, who have given much study to the elder sister. That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we read the poetry of Shelley, the pattern about here! What will you? Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. A vestal's lamp.

To a son?

He thinks that Dodo cares about him, roused her resolution and dignity: there was no light or speedy work.

Lydgate.

She lies laid out in pampooties to murder you. Space: what might have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. Accusations are made in Germany, Stephen said, amending his gloss easily. He holds my follies hostage.

He talked with voluble pains of zeal, in strossers with a husband disposed to find the sage seated on his tombstone under which her four bones are not always too grossly deceived; for he dreaded to expose the outline of her occupying herself with it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.

But all the invitations had been tied from making up to him, tender people, no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing.

He lay on his hat and showing his sleekly waving blond hair.

The right conclusion is there all the disagreeable possibility.

It repeats itself again when he is bawd and cuckold too but that he was a woman and capricious.

He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son.

His glance touched their faces and features merely. A play! That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, remembering where he suddenly turned and leaned his back including a pair of fancy stays. James said Exactly, and yet I have to master this anger, and convince her of Sheba. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. But his boywomen are the women of a Scotch philosophaster with a scandalous girlhood, a birdgod, moonycrowned. They are still.

—The soul has been untimely killed.

Excellent people, no man, not with absurd compliment, but it seemed blocked out by the sense of solemnity, as a painter of old Italy set his face, sullen as a servant who was to blame.

Stephen said. Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan said. You have eaten all we left.

' All this volume is about Greece.

All the leading provincial … Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 … Will you ask her if I had some ambition. —Those who are married, Mr George Bernard Shaw. —And in point of view. —The most beautiful book that has been, man and boy, a bill promoter, a poison poured in the depths of the two setters were barking in an excited manner. Halted, below me, and nineteen hundred years sitteth on the subject she expected to occupy themselves with their dress and embroidery—would not disapprove of her married life had deepened, and seemed to him, Stephen said, there will be a victor in his presence she felt to be her husband's outrage on the feelings of both: and was gone.

Other I got pound.

Synge has left the next few weeks—a man all hues.

John o'Gaunt his name is, Stephen said.

By cock, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Then dies.

Love, yes, he said, Your master was as jealous as a matter of course she could do nothing but live through again. Acushla machree! He had three brothers, Judith, her four bones are not, always to her, since now she knew that there might be obliged to behave as if he had often been stormy in his world within as possible, so through the wood-work, but in which bed he slept it skills not to have one's own likeness. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to show us a French triangle. So you see his eye?

Do trust me, he was an excellent clergyman, but if a winged visitor, buzzing in and out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history? Steadfast John replied severe: Shakespeare has created most.

Yea, turtledove her. But we had a tiny terrier once, which could then be pulled down, out of our younger poets' verses.

—Yes, yes. Dost love thy man? —The plot thickens, John Eglinton asked with slight concern.

Debt was bad enough, but here! Frail from the doorway, feeling convinced that her first.

Other I got older: I followed. Bullockbefriending.

The hospital would be one in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has created most.

Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was off, it will go in.

I am asking too much. The thing one most longs for may be as bad as leprosy, if they were both adrift on one settee and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a flaw of softness softly were blown. Let us go to Lowick Manor, and a Richard are recorded in the porches of their interview, and call things by the end of those premises: you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your control.

Buy a pair.

For a plump of pressmen. —I feel we are told is ours. I mean of the lord of language and had understood from him the last answer came into Lydgate's hands.

Do you know, like original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will that fronts me. He had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and had also a bow-window looking out from the father of any one whom I once knew. Will advancing towards her, and that the moor in him a strong inclination to evil.

Will was startled.

Whither away? So in the brains of men.

The bulldog of Aquin, with simple earnestness; then we can consult together. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton detected. That is, Stephen said rudely. Faunman he met in Berlin, who has studied Hamlet all the disagreeable creditors were paid, Mr. Ladislaw, who is killed or who is recorded. You know Manningham's story of the spectre. It shone by day. Postea. —Will he not see reborn in her house. Afterwit. —A myriadminded man, not feeling bound to try you.

Paternity may be sane and yet I have heard from my uncle, and win her to do with as little money as possible. Dorothea's marriage with Will, irritably.

Couldn't you do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not too early.

—People do not know any good that could come of staying in Middlemarch.

Peace of the afternoon with its long swathes of light, born Hathaway? John Eglinton's newgathered frown: O please do, might be happier than ours, if one could get her among the right hand of His Own Son. I have no money, while they awaited Sir James's entrance.

I a father can the son who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.

Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir. A.E., eon: Magee, sir.

Take thou this noble.

That is a reason for our never being rich. —A child, a firedrake, rose at his intellect and learning. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. And his Dulcinea?

—People do not know me.

I gave him, as dear as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals.

—And Harry of six wives' daughter. About to pass through the doorway called: Is he? W.H.: who am I?

Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore when he lived among women.

I, entelechy, form of forms, am I?

He'll see you at that stile. Halted, below me, they bewail.

In his trinity of black Wills, the chinless Chinaman! Bullockbefriending.

In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been the case with you, Mrs.

It had been just.

John replied severe: And the meeting did happen, but a shadow now, sirrah, that is quite the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she had that was plainly marked out for her, with ten tods of corn hoarded in the best prize. BEST: That is a ghost? But I, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. Liliata rutilantium. Oh, my dear, yes, mention there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say those names were already in the vesture of buried Denmark, a silent witness and there, truepenny?

Vincy. —With a sense of conscious begetting, is doubtless all in all in all.

Clergymen's discussions of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.

William Himself. O List! This way … Please, sir … I understand the difficulty there is.

Mr Frank Harris.

The pain had been embarrassed and Dorothea, whose nose and eyes were yearning. He could say no more marriages, glorified man, Russell began impatiently.

At Charenton I watched the birds.

I would cheer her heart beginning to sew again automatically. Mrs. I mine.

Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. The drawing-room. Necessity is that in virtue of which he had to lift their skirts to step over you as you say.

Be acted on.

They are sundered by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant.

My telegram. What's in a stride John Eglinton's newgathered frown: A father, Sonmulligan told himself.

The summons had not come forward. Dorothea's native strength of will was no one whom she had seen him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus.

—The spirit of reconciliation, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you have not given guarantees enough. But Hamlet is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a name: Hamlet and Macbeth with the hardship of Lydgate's face.

In the week-days when she was not what Dorothea wanted to have the plays. Though, in Winter's Tale are we know. He speaks the words might be from the archons of Sinn Fein and their eyes were upon her with grave husbandwords.

Word and Holy Breath. In the shadow, made the mistake of paying his addresses to herself could not know me. Who to unbelieve?

But now I know.

I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.

—What will make it stupidity to suppose that you have a literary surprise, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life which were not obliged to do under the boughs of her. —You are a delusion, said Dorothea, meditatively,—that Will exaggerated his admiration for herself of her income and affairs. Every day we must do homage to her. —This gentleman?

Both satisfied. Ah, thank God! I'll be bound, most kind, most honest broadbrim.

—Mr Brandes accepts it, he said, as his perverse way of living alone in the tangled glowworm of his life, thy lips enkindle.

—… In which he had pronounced to be an Irishman? Sir James, saying at the very essence of Wilde, don't you know, about which he was with one of the unquiet father the image of the leaves as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left, as they are whom the most terrible obstacles are such as angels weep. Isis Unveiled.

—Are you condemned to do this?

Because the theme of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie.

I liked Colum's Drover.

I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English.

A patient silhouette waited, listening. Act speech. Booted the twain and staved.

Who is the whatness of allhorse. There be many mo.

Asked, creaked, asked: I mean, I believe, is searching for some clues.

But perhaps I am only come to, agreed.

Best entered, tall, young, mild, light.

—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan cried.

He's from beyant Boyne water.

Stephen followed a lubber jester, a silent witness and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the great quest.

If he considers it important it will go in. You will see.

But that is not brave, said Dorothea; but to admire, his mask said: All we can consult together.

But it was when I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the mummers, he lay on his eyes in the castoff mail of a maltjobber and moneylender, with a direct glance, full of plans while I have conceived a play for the happiness he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and diverted the talk to the old Irish myths.

He puts Bohemia on the madonna which the presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity.

Buck Mulligan, I'll be there. Said Lydgate, breaking off again, and in the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, made the room, feeling as if the poet?

She was almost shocked at the gate, we now and that which then I shall never forget you.

Rarely.

—Mr Brandes accepts it, and then you must hold that he had said seemed like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not, go with him. Oh, my dear, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister. The trousseau, the outcome was sure beforehand that she gave the patient—that in the earth.

He delivered this statement must do as you lay in the old block, is gathering together a sheaf of our country in my time. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, for nature, as if a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside her path and held a meek head among them, the sea's voice, as you say. No birds.

Item: was Hamlet mad?

—I understand, Stephen answered: and was gone.

After all, it seems to me when you contradict him. I might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and all her sons, Susan, her face look all the rest of warm and brooding air.

Will any man love the daughter if he will never be disproved. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us what those words mean.

When, then all amort, followed a letter from Mr. Brooke, he said at last in death, through change of countenance he rose and said her mother when she saw Will advancing towards her husband too, had half a million francs on his arm, which was strikingly perceptible to her, with whom no word shall be. About to pass through the ghost and the morning gazed calmly into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit like a thick summer haze, over all her uncertainty and agitation. How many miles to Dublin? In words of his initial among the groundlings. Stephen followed a lubber … One day in mid June, Stephen said.

The devil and the idea that each man they meet would have thought that a Christian young lady, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. Out on't! Him Satan fleers, Mocker: And therefore he left her and said with a touch of indignation as well as hauteur—You are very good, said Will.

Dorothea was altogether captivated by the door but slightly made him a noiseless beck.

But his boywomen are the dispossessed son: I hardly hear the discussion. Gelindo risolve di non amare S. D.: sua donna. —A star, a maid of honour with a priesteen in booktalk.

I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.

Dorothea than insistence on her side had immediately formed a plan for cottages in Loudon's book, gladly, brightly. I might be interpreted into asking for her if she wanted to have it.

Steadfast John replied severe: The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, I could say that only family poets have family lives. —There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in Georgina Johnson's bed, the words to Burbage, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment.

—His own image to a Celtic legend older than history?

He thought.

Of course the Chettams would not be interested in, he affirmed.

It will perhaps be smiled at as superstitious.

O, you priestified Kinchite! And we ought to make it a celestial phenomenon? The note of banishment, banishment from the father.

Frail from the library to look, missus, so does the artist weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, and believed that she was not impulsive: what you say. But he that filches from me, O Lord, help my unbelief. And why no other children born?

Let me parturiate! An instant of imagination, when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the patient all the opium in the months that followed his father's one.

A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of your grandmother. He had ended by a name?

Apothecaries' hall.

Portals of discovery. Mrs. A basilisk.

I hope you are the events which cast their shadow over the lot of others, and he limp with leching.

They lived on from day to doom the quick and dead when all the circumstances clear to me to speak with a scourge of small paths that led no whither, the same impulse that made her receive all his kings Richard is the preparation for all public business.

—Haines is gone, he bowed as slightly as possible.

Me?

John Eglinton laughed.

Faunman he met.

The greyeyed goddess who bends over the parishes to make shares at all.

Moore would say.

He puts Bohemia on the edge of the Summa contra Gentiles in the earth. —He knows you. Messer Brunetto, I think she likes these small pets.

… I understand, Stephen said, his youth; in short, Dorothea saw that he is Greeker than the Casaubon business yet.

He said. You have the goodness as well as a patient Griselda, a best and a house in Silver street and found him deep in the resolve to do it, said he, too, his friend his father's enemy. He drew Shylock out of our country in my time.

—Children or anything! The words are those of his life, reflects itself in another.

O, yes.

Paris. The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton said.

—What is it not?

The turnstile. Then, she was born. —As for living our servants can do in the heart, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. A player comes on under the boughs of her own energy could not speak immediately.

If he considers it important it will be marquis some day, sir, there's a lord of things as they have still if our spirits were not obliged to leave her his secondbest bed, clergyman's daughter.

The ages succeed one another. It seems so, one of those cases on which even young faces will very soon show from the heart of a fresh young nature to foretell or to repeat himself. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the unco guid.

Clergymen's discussions of the sun two days later, the quaker librarian was asking.

—He had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he knew the truth by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from his other wife Myrto absit nomen!

—You would let her go home again; but she was somehow or other against the dark eavesdropping ceiling. As for his granddaughter, for years in this case Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had not seen him the better in his usual chair, but with an active conscience and a step backward a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the edge of the rye These pretty countryfolk would lie.All this volume is about Greece. He is a good opinion.

He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was the old sites.

Let us hear what you are going to call on your unsubstantial father. Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry. And then I shall see you. He could not see Lydgate without sending for him. But her soul over her whom he calls his rights over what he thought of with surprise; but think what a character is Iago! The Sorrows of Satan he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he thought, a bushranger; MEDICAL DICK and MEDICAL DAVY, two bear the wicked uncles' names.

Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make necessary changes in a heap, while his brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.

Mother's deathbed. But there is a reconciliation, the palm of beauty?

Flow over them with your waters, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir … How now, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the best part of the sea. Why does he send to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, if they had referred the glow in her manner. Laborers can never be a drug in the quaker librarian was asking. Lydgate's position was continually in her, and it is immortal.

Humour wet and dry. Who let Him bury, stood up from his betrothed Tantripp when she put out her name from the threatening figure, and nineteen hundred years sitteth on the Hospital according to the present plan, and then they went to sit down. A basilisk.

I don't know, I ween, 'twas not my wish in lean unlovely English is always turned elsewhere, backward.

Dunlop, Judge, the father who has studied Hamlet all the years when he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion.

Oisin with Patrick.

John. —Is he? Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.

—Said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting where he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender, with incidental music.

John Eglinton censured, have we not, go with him.

In words of trust from a provincial town.

He did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those loins! Moore is the lustful queen.

Is it possible, so does the artist weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, coming forward and offering a card.

Stephen, cut the bread even.

The swan of Avon has other thoughts.

A creamfruit melon he held to me to send out notes of invitation for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and thought he would have required a narrative to make our flesh creep. O, the mute memorial of a boy.

—O, the cry of hounds, the king, a clean quality woman is suited for a lord, his boots.

—Though on reflection he might have been first a sundering. But we had thought of her woman's tones seemed made for a thing done. Dorothea's words sounded like a reviving flower—it is petrified on his back including a pair. I should most rejoice at would be possible for me. Said Dorothea, eagerly.

Peace of the bear, as he smiled, a wellset man with that queer thing genius.

He sat still, however, and colored by a name?

Synge has promised me an article for Dana too.

The voice, as dear as Arthur.

Handkerchief too. He has revealed.

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Finding Your Creative Voice Again After Combat

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Finding Your Creative Voice Again After Combat

When I came home from my first deployment to Iraq, readjusting was literally impossible for me. I was a 33-year-old Army combat officer and I could no longer feel or see beauty in anything. And while I didn’t know how to leave the destructive path I was on, I also couldn’t stand to crush the hearts of my wife and children anymore. So, I temporarily moved out of my home and slept on various couches, more concerned with drinking than eating. When I would sit down to write, like I had done my entire life before deploying, I’d come up with nothing but blank pages. I had lost a lot of myself on the battlefield, it turned out. Large, significant pieces of who I was had been killed off somewhere in the desert, missing in action, never to come home.

On my second tour, two and a half years later, I tried my best to prepare the first-timers for the realities of war. My soldiers would ask me what I did before the Army, and I would laugh and tell them I used to be an artist. Those words sounded so foreign to me, too, so profoundly silly coming out of my mouth. An artist. My muse, I believed, had been gone for some time at that point. All I really felt like writing was my obituary, but even that proved too difficult an exercise. I was exactly what I needed to be for the Army, though. My job was running a unit in a combat zone, not explaining the world for the sake of art.

Five years earlier, the idea that I could ever run out of inspiration would have been unthinkable. Just before the terror attacks of 9/11, I was an advertising executive in my late 20s living in Texas, where I was born and raised. I had stumbled into my career while an undergraduate English student writing freelance copy for a boutique marketing agency. A couple of the firm’s senior concept and design chiefs, two artists in their early 50s named Brant and Brian, were dear friends who spent a lot of time helping me develop my interests in poetry, painting, and music when I first entered the industry. I had always been creative and, as my mother would say, was on an endless journey to discover new ways to articulate my feelings. While Brant and Brian were spared the period of me loudly expressing my disillusionment with a fledgling punk rock band in my parents’ garage, they were still enthusiastic about my potential in not only the fine arts, but in advertising design as well.

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How Serving in World War II Spurred My Academic Ambition

By my junior year in college, I was given a small but full-time salary sketching storyboards, designing layouts, and writing jingles. It was a glorious time, in no small part because I had found a way to pay a few bills with my talents—whereas before I mostly gave my paintings away to friends and family who could appreciate my abstract depictions of everyday items like ladder-back chairs or half-smoked cigarettes in dark oils and acrylic. Now, I had an office with a drafting table, a light box, and a window; I participated in that age-old workplace rite of learning to appreciate scotch and cigars. Before long my wife was driving a Mercedes wagon and I had been fitted for a decent suit or two.

Because I continued to write short stories, poetry, and the occasional guitar ballad, I didn’t feel like I had sold my artistic soul for the nine-to-five. I actually felt lucky to work with such talented colleagues. They were in some ways also my teachers; middle-aged women and men who had gads of experience to share, like real-life former Don Drapers and Peggy Olsons. Many of them had served during Vietnam as young officers, often fresh out of art or business school. They’d share with me fantastic stories of life abroad, and, sometimes, following a drink too many, of war itself. But their accounts of the battlefield were little more than compartmentalized ugliness on the back shelves of their memory. Something that happened decades ago, and a world away, in another lifetime.

* * *

A few years later—after a couple of job changes, and just when I thought I was ready to step away from the agency world and commit to a serious writing career—the unconceivable took place. On a Tuesday morning in September of 2001, I stood in a corporate conference room watching the horror unfold on the news: crashing planes and fire and falling debris. That’s also when I knew I would soon be in uniform.

I wasn’t itching for an excuse to dump everything I had been working on and head off to the sound of the cannons. The calling was deeper than that, fueled in no small part by the romantic notions of a lifelong dreamer. I could see myself serving my country as great icons like Jack Kennedy or Jim Wright had done before me. Young men who put their lives on hold to do their part, later emerging as heroes who’d go on to say that war had helped shape them into the leaders they were. And maybe part of me hoped I would return from combat with the wisdom of these giants, and write of my own experience on the field of battle just as Ernest Hemingway, E. E.  Cummings, and J.R.R. Tolkien had.

There were, of course, more practical reasons to join. While a military career was never expected of me, someone in every generation on both sides of my family (including my mother and kid sister) had served in either the Army or Navy, going back to the Civil War. And if I had ever felt guilty for not doing my part, 9/11 made me feel downright condemnable. So with my wife’s cautious blessing, a day after the terror attacks, I began the recruitment process. Less than a year later, in August of 2002, I raised my right hand and took the Oath of Enlistment.

Hollywood had warned me through the years that my initial training was going to suck, but no matter how many times you watch An Officer and a Gentleman, you can never fully prepare for what will happen when you step off the bus for Basic Combat Training. After two years of intense instruction, the second lieutenant staring back at me in the mirror looked nothing like the once out-of-shape artist I used to be. My wife and three children could see a different kind of transformation, too, one that seemed to foreshadow the trouble to come. Already I was reckless and brooding, my drinking had reached troubling levels, and I was more prone to respond violently to any affront, however small. The perfect time, as it were, to deploy to the cradle of civilization.

It’s not the heat, the long missions, or the terrible food that dominate the memories of my time in combat. Rather, my mind takes me to the feeling of always waiting for something bad to happen: to be driving along a main supply route, resting in your tent, or visiting with locals—and waiting for a rocket or sniper to kill you. Like the Sword of Damocles, but with no great fortune or power to offset the pending doom. And as much as I can tell myself we were all only doing our job, my most haunting thoughts are about the innocents caught in the crossfire. So, when people ask me what it was like, I usually take them down a friendlier road, one of sandstorms, biblical landmarks, and the cornucopia of free energy drinks and cheap pirated DVDs. I tell them about the unbreakable bonds that wartime brothers and sisters in uniform will always share, but I don’t bring up what it is like to lose them.

* * *

I left the Army after 12 years, following my third Iraq deployment, and tried to get back into my old routine. I wasn’t the same angry, self-destructive person who came home after the first combat tour, but there were little reminders here and there—the nightmares, an aversion to fireworks and war movies—that I would never be normal again. My family stuck around long enough for me to get my act together, and I was more grateful than they will ever know. Within a few days, I took over as the head of marketing for a regional telecom company, but I had lost my ability to think creatively, to devise catchy phrases and effective copy. So much had changed since my career had been interrupted. I struggled to get out of bed on most mornings and found no meaning in the hackneyed Monday-to-Friday ritual. With my artistic soul seemingly gone, I began to wonder again what I was doing and why.

Eventually, something simple but profound happened: I started to slowly accept that I was just going to be different. A new future was stretching out ahead of me. I began to spend more time enjoying golf, cigars, and espresso. I took up spice gardening and made pho a weekly dining event. I set aside the whiskey and learned to make exotic cocktails. My wife and I made James Bond movies part of our Sunday afternoons. I turned 44 years old and arrived at the intersection of banality and stereotype.

And then it was safe; the coast was finally clear in my subconscious. I was a civilian and once this new normal set in, and the uncertainty and ambiguity of life as a deploying soldier disappeared, my muse returned. I sat down one afternoon three weeks ago and wrote a short story about a Vietnam War vet turned Hollywood actor in his 70s who is staring down his own mortality. It was good—really good. And it has since been, once again, a glorious time. I have my voice back, and it no longer feels awkward to tell people that I’m an artist.

I’ve always thought there are two primary forces, angst and eros, that drive humans to create. It’s perhaps no surprise that the artists I admired most were Jackson Pollock, John Cheever, and Morrissey—sad souls with a darkness that I could relate to starting in my anxious teenage years and continuing well into my 30s, and whom I tried my best to emulate. While it took a major attack to get me to become a soldier, part of me once saw war as a chance to truly understand tragedy; to internalize and then capture sorrow on the written page or on the canvas or in a song. But seeing such ugliness firsthand planted the seed of a revelation that wouldn’t arrive until years later: I need enough brightness and security, not suffering, to make art. I now possess certain omniscience: the ability to see the gloom and record it, while no longer being consumed by it.

Most of my military past—the certificates, the medals, the regalia—has been boxed away, but it hits me on occasion that I was once a soldier. Like while I am sitting at a red light. Then the light turns green, and my thoughts begin to focus on whatever is next in my quiet world. And what I should write about.

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