#i never see enough photos of him as a beautiful distinguished old man so here it is.

[seventh-sojourn]

Happy birthday to the beautiful heavenly princess:

Peter John Sinfield (1947-2024)

The picture is entitled “Considering Ingredients”

“Peter, as some of you will know has two cookery books waiting to follow upon the er, heels of his 2nd solo album "Thread To Heaven" – which will escape sometime in 2008.” [Source: Song Soup on Sea]

[mah-gah-lee]

What a weird family reunion Reggie x  Reader (xLuke)

gif originally posted by @jatpsource​

Word Count: 3515 words

 Summary: You’re Reggie’s little sister. You were 3 when he died. You’re now a ghost for a decade. One night, you recognize your brother and jumped into him to an unexpected family reunion. How is it going to happen? Will Reggie believe you? In a mysterious way, that’s Luke who help you to convinced Reggie.

 Warnings: cuss (language), mention of death, mention of divorce, mention of drugs

 A/N: This is my first fic about jatp characters. Hope you’ll enjoy! keep in mind that french is my first language, so i’m so sorry if there’s some mistakes in my fic

 disclaimer: It takes place during episodes 6 and 7. I do not take into account the possibility of a Juke. The chemistry while they sing is there but no romantic feelings.

 Tagged: @asdfghjkl-fanfics​ @standingtalllove​ 

 _______

Losing a child is the worst thing a parent could live, losing two is unimaginable. It’s seems being 17 years old was a new malediction in Peters family.

 You were 3 when your older brother, Reginald, died in a weird hot dog accident. At that point, your parents were literally a fight away from a divorce but never did it because of you. You were too young to be in a divided family, according to them. But Reggie's death separated them for good. Yet they really tried to support each other, to overcome that and give you all the attention you needed. But your mother overprotected you and made you live in the shadow of your late brother. Your dad couldn't stand it. And when they finally divorce, moving out from reggie’s childhood house, you went to live with your dad.

 Even though you were too young to form a strong bond with your brother, in a way you missed him. Your mother’s house was full of pictures of him, some of his clothes were still in a room, dedicated to him. When you visited your mother, you didn’t understand why you always found yourself in this room. You were drawn like a magnet to the comforting room. Reggie’s presence in this new house brought you such a sense of security that your mother had repeatedly found you asleep on a pile of your brother’s T-shirts.

 And then you died in 2009. Kanye West had interrupted Taylor Swift's speech at the VMAs, Miley Cyrus hadn't gone crazy yet and One Direction didn't exist yet. What an era! You didn't know why the great light didn't come looking for you but you were there, as a ghost in 2009. And the time has passed ... You've had your best concerts, the best parties. A forever teenager who couldn't eat, drink or sleep.

 And then 2020 came.

 …

 You were tired of always doing the same thing for over a decade, but you couldn't help but go to every open scene that came up in your beautiful city. It was as if an inexplicable force was pushing you to go there.

 This evening was no exception to the rule and you were in a very hip little bar in the city center. You wore one of those sleeveless, gray crop tops with high waisted pants, your leather jacket draped over your shoulders. Your eyes were directly drawn to a group of girls in colorful costumes. You couldn't help but roll your eyes. It's been 10 years since you died and it seemed to you that these girls looked like the same plagues that ruined the lives of so many teenagers in your time. You put on an expression of disgust when they all took the stage, but when the music started you couldn't help but admit it was pretty catchy. However, you didn't expect a ghost to appear in the middle of the stage, improvising a choreography. Was that part of the show?

 But looking at the audience's non-reaction, you knew it wasn't. The ghost disappeared for the first time, and your gaze sought directly the distinctive light source of another apparition in the room. Your gaze lingered on a small group of three boys - the blond boy included - and two girls. You have wrinkled your eyes to better distinguish the teenagers, and your face expressed confusion.

 “Reggie? “

 You wanted to go see him so badly. You were pretty sure it was your brother but it all came too fast. The moment you decided to walk towards them, the organizer announced a new band.

 “Okay, looks like we're close the night out with one more group…Julie and the fat ones.”

 What was that for a name? Your attention had been diverted and when you looked back at the group, the boys had disappeared as one of the young girls took the stage. Your heart was beating so fast. You couldn't go wrong; you had seen so many pictures at your mother's house that it was impossible that this boy was not your brother. But you missed your chance…

 Julie started to sing and your eyes were captivated, as much as your ears were. This kid was so talented! When she sang a rather high note, the tension in the room charged into electricity. The next second, the young singer was joined by the group of boys you had seen in her company. Appearing distinctly as the ghosts did. On drums there was the blond boy you had seen dancing a few moments earlier, on the electric guitar, a boy with tousled brown hair who seemed slightly familiar to you ... and on bass, with a flannel shirt, there was your brother ... Reggie was there, identical to the photos you had admired so much.

 The bar was on fire as Julie and The Phantoms performed. What a sick name for a group made up of two-thirds of ghosts! The song was so catchy that your heart beat to the sound of the music. But your eyes did not leave your brother, you were unable to move, frozen in place. What should you do ? Will you introduce yourself after the performance? And, what would you say? "Hey hi Reggie, I'm your sister, I died ten years ago and you twenty-five years ago. Unbelievable, right?! Nice to see you again" And once again, before you knew it, the song was over and the boys were gone again, leaving Julie alone on stage in the bewilderment of the many people in the facility.

 “for God's sake, where are they?”

 You didn't want to miss it anymore. Even though the whole situation was strange, you wanted to see your brother again.

 Your eyes flew over the room before seeing the scene play out before your eyes. Julie seemed petrified in front of a man. The boys watched in amazement and as Julie left with what appeared to be her father, you rushed over to the group of three musicians before they disappeared again.

 “omg please don't poof out again.” You said almost out of breath

 The boys looked at you like you were crazy before the guitarist jumped off the bar counter, bursting with energy.

 "Wait, you can see us?"

 “as much as when mister "all eyes on me" made his performance”, you were pointing your head at the blond boy.

 The group looked at each other in puzzlement and Reggie finally spoke, his blue eyes full of mischief.

 “So…hi there cutie, how can we help you?”

 Your face expressed disgust and you stuck your tongue out mimicking vomiting.

Luke gave Alex an amused smile, seeing Reggie flirting and your spontaneous reaction. The bassist couldn't help but charm the pretty ladies.

 “Wow Reggie, that's gross ... you're my brother.”

  Reggie burst out laughing at your response, not noticing that you called him by his first name when he hadn't even introduced himself to you yet.

 “Yeah right, for sure. You just could tell me you weren’t interested. But I’m charming...”

 It was the first time he had been given such an excuse but you looked so serious that he stopped dead in his tracks as Luke and Alex watched you. They always knew Reggie had a sister. But the scene unfolding before their eyes seemed impossible. (Y / N) was so young when they died and now must have been around 28, something like that. But the girl in front of them was a teenager, their age. How was this possible?

 You didn't want to drop the information like that. It was worse than anything you could have imagined. But it had escaped you. Now he didn't take you seriously. Your eyes were wet with tears. It was scary to find you in front of your brother for the first time as a ghost teenager. Luke looked panicked when he noticed your eyes, squeezing Reggie's shoulder as you seemed to beg.

 “Can I ... can I meet you in a quieter time please, Reginald?”

 Your brother's eyes widened as Luke's hug on his shoulder tightened a bit. The eagerness and desperation in your voice had made both boys react, Alex was just looking at all of you like all of this wasn't real. The use of Reggie's name made him tense, surprised. Few called him Reginald. In fact, only his family, and the boys when they wanted to annoy him, called him that way. And although his nickname is obvious enough to deduce his

full first name, he deeply felt that you weren't just anyone.

  He seemed a little panicked and looked around for his friends to support him. As if the solution would fall by itself just by the presence of Luke and Alex.

 “Okay, but I want Luke and Alex’s there! What about tomorrow? I’ll give you the address!”

 Wow, that was quick.

 “hm, yeah, yeah sure, as you want”

 You nodded and Reggie silently slipped a note to the drummer. Alex took a pen, write something on a paper towel and gave it to you. You weren’t surprise, you also can make some tricks. And you just had the time to thanks them before they poofted again.

 …

 The next day, you landed in front of Julie's garage. Lucky she's at school because you shouldn't be explaining your presence, so she managed to see you the way she saw boys.

 Before entering, you peeked out the window and frowned. There seemed to be only Luke so far. He was leaning over the piano, his head in a notebook. Your body went through part of the garage door and you cleared your throat.

 “hmm, hi ... i came to see Reggie ..”

 Luke instantly raised his head and you caught his attention.

 “oh uh, hi! He should be here soon, come in.….”

 Silence felt as Luke motioned for you to sit on the couch. It was a rather pleasant studio; the plants gave a warm atmosphere to the room and the music set sent you good vibes.

 "Does your girlfriend mind that I'm here? I mean, that seems to be your HQ"

 "girlfriend?"

 "The girl you sing with" I simply said.

 "Julie? Um, yeah, she's not my girlfriend. She-sh-she’s great and we have this powerful connection but…not, not in a romantic way. Music tied us. Music and friendship "

 Luke chuckled lightly as he scratched his head. You were surprised they weren't dating. Yesterday the tension was intense. He seemed authentic when he had continued his momentum. You let out a smile amused by so much overflow.

 “It's okay, I don't need to know your full relationship statute or your social security number.”

 The guitarist gave you a frank smile, his eyes twinkling with amusement. For a ghost, his gaze was really alive.

 “ I’m Luke, by the way”

 "Y / N… Re .."

 "Reggie's little sister… I-I remember you a little."

 "You look familiar to me. Maybe I saw you in a few pictures with Reggie."

 Silence fell and you started to feel anxious. Maybe it was a bad idea? You had grown up since Reggie died ... were you still his little sister after all? Luke seemed to notice your dismay and put a comforting hand on your knee.

 “hey, is something bothering you?”

 “What if he doesn't believe me ... if he definitely thinks I'm not his sister.”

 “Let's be honest, it's a little hard to believe. The last time I saw you, you were three years old.”

 It was as if the memories flooded into your mind and let you carried away in your words.

 “Yeah, you gave me this teddy bear with a guitar and told Reggie you wanted to be my favorite.”

 Luke chuckled slightly before staring at you, speechless. He seemed dazed. This anecdote dates back to twenty-five years anyway. He himself had a hard time remembering it until you said it a few seconds earlier.

 “what was the smell of the stuffed animal?” he asked, confused about that funny fact

 “sorry, what?”

 “the plush, what did it smell like?”

 “hot waffle, why?”

 “okay ... maybe you are his sister ... tell me more about what you remember”

 You looked at him with a puzzled expression. Everything had been so natural before he stopped in all the movements. And now, it was hard to think about for the memories you had of Reggie on demand. The teddy bear given by Luke story had slipped out of your mind without you realizing it. As your brain seemed to boil, the fog of your thoughts cleared.

 “can I use your guitar?”

 “hell no ... why?” Luke exclaimed with far too much anticipation

 “I have this lullaby stuck inside of my head ... I think Reggie sang it to me when I was a child”

 Your pleading and desperate gaze fell on Luke who categorically refused to let you take his guitar. He ends up grabbing his six acoustic strings, terminated. There was something about you that made him weak.

 “Maybe you can teach me but ... my guitar is my guitar, nobody touches it.”

 You nodded and the lead singer moved closer to you. You were stunned by its smell, like a distant memory. Luke had definitely been a part of your life before he died, you were sure of that. You leaned over her shoulder, humming the lullaby that was left in your head. It didn't take long for him to find the right chords. Luke continued several times before you stopped singing, looking at him intently.

 “that's exactly it ... this lullaby”

 You both looked at each other, an indecipherable expression in your eyes. You both jumped at the sound of the garage door. Reggie appeared with Alex.

 "Ready to compose hellish songs! oh did I interrupt something?”

 "No, no I was there to see you. I guess you have a lot of questions."

 "hell yeah, can we start from the beginning?"

  You smiled to approve his request. The boys settled down on the sofa, while you sat down on one of the single armchairs. And the flow of questions began

  “When are you born?”

 “(your birthday date) 1992” you simply answered.

 “What’s your name?”

 (y/n) (y/m/n) Peters

 It’s seemed to convinced a little Reggie but doubt was all over his face.  It was information you could easily get on the internet nowadays.

 “What’s my favorite food?”

 “Pizza, mom said your favorite was the extra cheese with pepperoni”

 “And what was my favorite toy?”

 “I freaking don’t know, how can I suppose to known that?”

 “ah ah!” he pointed the finger at you, as if that answer was proof that you were lying. It broke your heart but you didn't show it.

Instead, you rolled your eyes and Reggie kept going to ask you some question. Of course, you would have liked to have answered his questions correctly. Your mother told you some anecdotes about him but not to the point of knowing all the details.

 “What’s the most terrible thing I said to my mom?”

 “Omg I don’t fucking know! I was 3 when you’re died, asshole!”

 Luke smiled when you exploded. Reggie was Reggie, as weird as possible. Now you were angry and desperate. Your brother didn’t believe you and he kept dragging you into this miserable feeling that you were never going to get your brother back. You had spent your short life living with a faint memory of him. Your blankie was one of his t-shirts, his voice reasoned in your head when you couldn’t sleep.

But then, in front of him, you were a stranger to him. Your heart was bruised from not being able to hug him and to finally meet this brother who had left far too soon.

 “Okay, okay… So, how can you proof me you’re really my sister?! “

 In the room’s corner, Luke looked at you, you looked desperate, about to cry again. He grabbed his guitar and cleared his throat. Reggie turned to him as the guitarist still had his eyes on you, a heartwarming smile hanging across his face. You had managed to convince him in a few minutes. He felt connected to you and the things you told him were disturbing. You could only be Reggie's sister; it was impossible otherwise.

 "Hey…What about the song you told me earlier." he said with a soft and comfort voice

 Your eyes caught his gaze, grateful for the initiative. You nodded and Luke started playing the few notes you had taught him a few minutes earlier. It was so different from all the songs the brunette could play before. It was a lullaby, such easy children's music with just a few notes.   Of course, the band wasn’t supposed to play when Julie wasn’t in the room but, Luke had thought it was the best thing to do to encourage you to keep going. He didn’t know why, but he wanted Reggie to believe you. Luke believed you, hard as nails. There only had to look at your eyes to understand this reality, and Luke had noticed that. You had the same blue eyes as your brother. How could Reggie still doubt that? You started to sing

 You're so sleepy

Very much sleepy

You want to go to the fairyland

You close your eyes

And jump into your dream.

When you'll wake up

I’ll still be on your team.

 The instant Reggie heard the first notes, he knew. But hearing you sing the lullaby he had invented for you when you didn't want to sleep as a child, was a magical moment. You were his baby sister. He gave you that sad little puppy face, so overwhelmed. Reggie opened his arms and you jumped into a hug, so glad he finally accepted the fact that you were his sister.

You felt oddly safe again, like taking a nap in Reggie's pile of old t-shirts. You were so happy to find your brother and to be able to live your non-life by his side. Nothing would be as boring as it used to be. Reggie pushed you away with a concerned look

 "but wait ... how did you die?"

 "Yeah ... I don't really know ... I was at a really, really good rock concert and I bought this drink ... and I think I got drugged up there and ... I guess I'm dead? tadaa " you tried to tell him in a light tone.

He had just learned that he had a little sister. He didn't have to know that she was sneaking out at rock concerts and drinking alcohol before she was old enough. Right? Alex looked at Luke and Reggie with his half amused half confused smile. As for Luke, he fidgeted from foot to foot at the discovery. Y / N was as much rock and roll as they all were. Rebellion had to be his middle name

You loosened Reggie's embrace and lowered your head, pursing your lips so as not to show your embarrassment. He asked if you wanted snacks and you nodded. There was a slight silence. You didn't notice the urgent look Luke gave Alex but the next moment the blond jumped up to accompany the bassist, leaving you alone in the garage with the lead singer.

 The silences were a little longer until Luke cautiously approached you. You could feel the awkwardness from miles away.

 “ Sooo, you made this.”

 “ yeah ...” you answered in a shy voice

 It was the moment you had to thank him but your words seemed frozen. You mustered all the courage to plant your gaze in Luke's eyes.

 “Thank you ... for helping me earlier.”

 “oh it was nothing”.

 “I ... yes, yes it was. You can't imagine how important seeing Reggie again is to me. Thanks for ... for helping me open his eyes.”

 A slight smile caught his lips and he reached for your cheek before stopping his gesture. Instead of stroking your skin, he simply put a section of your hair back behind your ear.

 “I would do anything for my best friends.”

 And Reggie was definitely one of Luke’s best friend. You hardly swallowed, your stomach contorting under the effect that the guitarist made you. Time had seemed to fly at an incredible speed as the moment was interrupted by Reggie and Alex coming back to you.

 “OMG LUKE DON’T FLIRT WITH MY SISTER, SHE’S 3!”

 You cleared your throat and stepped aside to pull yourself away from Luke as far as possible. Your gaze fell on your brother and you raised an eyebrow at the last remark. 3 years old, really? You were 3 years old twenty-five years ago ... now you were eternally a teenager

 “I’m seventeen.”

 “Listen, i'm your big brother, you’re three, end of discussion.”

 Your face wanted to laugh and you pursed your lips to keep from succumbing. But your eyes… Your eyes met Luke's in a complicity that slowly settled. Could you fall in love with your big brother's best friend? Definitely yes...

[owakoblack-portspa]

(APH PortSpa) African Holiday

APH fan fiction. I do not own the characters.

Pairing: Portugal/ Spain, Spain/ Portugal

Pedro is the nation of Portugal and Antonio is the nation of Spain. For convenience, I use their human names instead of names of nations in this fiction. Pedro and Spain meet at Ceuta, a city in Africa.

African Holiday

On a very quiet night, a long-haired little boy was sleeping alone on a large, soft bed. Such a huge bed was more suitable for at least two boys lying on it, and sure enough, this boy lied on the right side of the bed, as if saving a place for somebody to sleep on the left side.

Suddenly, a knock on the bedroom door broke the silence, causing the boy in bed to wake. He did not get up at once, but simply turned onto the other side.

 “Disculpe, may I come in?” A sweet voice of a little boy called out beyond the door. Both the boys had dark-brown hair.

 The boy in bed reached out for a spare pillow lying on the left side of the bed, and pressed it upon his ear, trying hard to continue sleeping.

 “I can’t sleep, can I sleep with you?” The child outside the door raised his voice, and knocked more loudly.

 “How old are you? Can’t you sleep alone? It’s time to grow up!” The boy in bed finally replied.

 “Lo siento.”

 Since then, the boy outside the door never came again.

 In Ceuta, a harbour city on the northern tip of Africa, you can find everywhere talkative Spaniards, logos written in Spanish, products from Europe, flags in red and gold colours, and you feel there is no difference from Andalusia on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. However, Africa is not Europe after all. It is much more significant to travel from continent to continent, rather than to travel from province to province, or from country to country.

 A barbería on the opposite of the port has no difference from most of the barberías on the Spanish mainland either: right now inside the barbería where Enrique Iglesias’ dancing songs were playing, a barber with a big beard was sweeping away hair left on the chair, while swaying to the music, cheerfully. It is a mystery that the Spaniards can keep excited all the time, perchance because of lovely sunshine, perchance because of the blue sea–it is a happy nation after all.

 As the wind chimes on the glass door of the shop rang merrily, the door opened, a cool sea wind blew in, and a tall young man walked inside. His long dark-brown hair was tied into a pony tail, a caramel jacket rounded his slim waist, and a pair of goggles hung on his well-built chest.

 “¡Buenos días! ¿Tiene una reserva?” As soon as the barber straightened up to see the young man’s face, his smile turned into a surprised look, “Dios mío, did I just trim Señor’s hair? How come it grows back even longer than before within a blink of an eye?”

 “Don’t worry, Señor Peluquero, I’m still here. I just paid at the counter.” Another young man touched the back of the barber from behind, and put both of his hands in front of his face to form a picture frame, “after trimming my hair, I’m as cool as a breeze!” The short-haired young man winked his light green eyes while smiling brightly, and incredibly, some stars fell out of the frame.

 “What a coincidence, Antonio. I just arrived from the port, and spotted you inside this barbershop.”

 “Isn’t it Pedro? I’ve never expected you here!”

 The confused barber turned his head to look at the picture-framing, short-haired young man, and then turned back to see the long-haired young man who just walked into the shop. He found that both of their faces and bodies exactly the same, even the colours of their hair, eyes, and skin the same too, as if God conveniently used the same colours from his colour palette to paint these two , except that He dotted a beauty spot under the right eye of the long-haired one, in order to distinguish from his twin. “You two are twins!” the barber exclaimed.

 “We are not twins!” the two young men protested in one voice.

 “So…you two are brothers who look much alike?”

 “We are just neighbours!” two men, one voice again.

 “Are you really just neighbours? I can tell from your appearances that you two are related by blood!” The barber stretched out his strong arms to bring both of the young men close together, and shouted to a girl at the counter. “Isabel, don’t you think they look much alike? Mira, mira,” the barber turned Pedro’s face towards Isabel, “when his pony tail couldn’t be seen from the front, even their hair styles are los mismos!”

 “Even so,” Isabel shrugged her thin shoulders, “los amigos have told you they ain’t bros, so they ain’t bros, are you thinking of helping people recover their long-lost familia?”

 “I see, it’s a matter of hair style.” Pedro mused, “por favor, Señor Peluquero, could you make a new hair style for me?”

 Half an hour later, Pedro’s long dark-brown hair was trimmed thin and made more stylish, which reached down his prominent collarbones.

 “Listo, as cool as a breeze!” Imitating Antonio, the barber put his hands to form a picture frame in front of Pedro, but this time there were no fallen stars, for Pedro did not wink, but instead smiled mildly to his mirrored self. “In this way, you two don’t look the same any more!” the barber admired his masterpiece happily, “Señor looks so handsome, bueno, guapo!”

 “Gracias, but I’m a navigator, it’s better for me to tie my hair while sailing at sea. However, today I have a holiday, and Antonio is beside me, let me forget the pony tail for a while.” He brushed gracefully his long hair with his hand, satisfied.

 After leaving the barbería, Pedro and Antonio walked leisurely in the direction of the old town. Pedro’s caramel jacket was again tied around his waist, and despite the hot African weather, he wore short black gloves. He and Antonio both wore short-sleeve shirts, and their opening collars revealed deep shapes of their chest cleavages.

 “Pedro, why are you in Africa?” Antonio walked a step ahead of the quiet young man, turning around to look at the other with his bright green eyes.

 “Me chame de Pedro, faz favor. In Portuguese, you should pronounce ‘Pedru’, instead of ‘Pedro’.” Pedro spoke in Portuguese–even though he had spoken fluent Spanish at the barber’s, he had got used to speak Portuguese to Antonio whenever they were alone.

 “Todo bien, ‘Pedru’. You know although I can understand Portuguese, I don’t speak it well.” Antonio continued to communicate with Pedro in Spanish, while the other spoke Portuguese.

 “Our ship is heading to a tall ship festival in Marseilles. When we crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, I thought of our past in Ceuta, so I stopped to visit here.”

 “Our past in Ceuta? You mean yours and mine?”  

 Pedro nodded slightly.

 Antonio began to feel anxious, deliberately avoiding Pedro’s gaze.

 When they were approaching the gate of the old town, they saw a huge coat of arms of the city which looked very similar to the Portuguese national coat of arms: in the middle of the red shield are five blue mini shields, surrounded by seven golden tiny castles.

 When they were about to cross the street, Pedro stopped short.

 “In Spain, you don’t have to wait for traffic lights all the time…” Antonio wanted to push him, but he found the Portuguese was gazing on a sculpture in the middle of the round-about. It was the sculpture of Prince Henry the Navigator.

 Pedro kept silent, but his emerald eyes spoke for him. In his eyes, there was a mixture of worship, nostalgia, and sorrow. Such a beautiful, bright young man was suddenly shrouded by sadness, just like the sun shadowed by dark clouds, and a cool breeze laden with salt.

 “Disculpe, I suddenly remember I have some important thing to do, can I leave?” Antonio tried to escape, but was stopped at once by another.

 “Don’t you go, you should be my tour guide.”

 “Even though you wish so, there is not much worth tour guiding…”

 Much against his will, Antonio led Pedro to a bastion east to the old town gate, which is one of the landmarks in Ceuta. An edge of the bastion extended gracefully into a moat circling the city, where deep blue seawater turned into emerald, and a big school of small fish attracted the attention of several migrant birds. Above the top of the bastion, a flag of blood and gold was flying proudly.

 Antonio noticed that Pedro was becoming more and more moody. He felt so guilty that he wanted to climb up the bastion to tear down the flag, if he could.

 At this moment, a pair of Asian twin girls went towards them.

 “Excuse me, do you speak English?”

 Antonio was not confident in his English, so he eyed Pedro for assistance.

 “How can I help you, beautiful ladies?” Pedro replied in British English, and later, according to these girls’ request, took photos for them. Antonio chuckled quietly, because he knew that Pedro had kind of “yellow fever”, for he had a particular passion for Asians, which had been one of the secret reasons why he had ventured so far away to Asia during the Age of Discovery.

 “May I ask if we could take photos together? We are all twins!”

 “Pero nosotros no somos gemelos…” Antonio tried to deny without a second thought, but these Asian girls did not understand his Spanish.

 “Certainly! Antonio, come here!” Apparently, Pedro was afraid of making the shy Asian girls embarrassed, so he did not deny he and Antonio being twins, and pulled the Spaniard to take photos together.

 “Can we ask a question about history?” the girls asked carefully.

 “Ask away, darlings.” Pedro winked, smiling.

 “Doesn’t Ceuta belong to Spain? Why are there so many Portuguese emblems here then?”

 “Umm, as for this question, it’s better to let Antonio explain, for he’s the local tour guide.”

 Antonio felt stressed, for it would be a challenge for him to explain the complicate history related to both Spain and Portugal in his “broken” English. It was obvious that Pedro wanted to make fun of him. However, if he cast the task back to Pedro, when recalling the past, would Pedro become sad again? Antonio did not feel like seeing that sorrowful face, so he began to explain slowly in English:

 “Ceuta was a part of Morocco long time ago. In the year of 1415, Prince Henry of Portugal conquered this military fortress…”

 “Excuse me, who was Prince Henry?” the girls asked.

 “He was a great navigator who started the Portuguese Age of Discovery. From then on, Portugal gradually discovered new sea routes. The new route to India discovered by Vasco da Gama was in fact the continuation of Prince Henry’s sea routes. In other words, if there were no Prince Henry, there would have been no Vasco da Gama, or even the Portuguese Empire. Perhaps Prince Henry is not as famous as da Gama worldwide, but for Portugal, he was the most important person.”

 The twin girls began to admire this prince, “How brave are the navigators to discover the unknown world!”

 “He is also a navigator.” Antonio pointed to Pedro, who was smiling in the shade of a tree. “Let me continue the history of Spain and Portugal. After the conquest, Portugal rebuilt Ceuta, so the city coat of arms contains Portuguese emblems. Between 1580 and 1640, Portugal was ruled by Spain. Many Spanish people migrated to Ceuta, so even after Portugal’s independence from Spain in 1640, Ceuta still sided with Spain. Finally in 1668, Portugal ceded Ceuta to Spain. Therefore, you can still see Spanish flags flying on the African continent today.”

 After the twin girls had left, Antonio and Pedro found all museums closed at noon. As the sun was becoming hotter, they had no choice but to sit down at an ice cream parlour by the seaside.

 It seemed that Pedro was exhausted by the hot weather, for even ice cream could not cheer him up. He kept silent and ate quietly without looking up at Antonio, which made Antonio unbearable. Finally, Antonio broke the ice:

 “Pedro, I want to say that I am sorry, for I have taken up the place you had cherished.”

 “Which place?” Pedro tucked his long hair behind his ear, and had another spoonful of ice cream.

 “This place, Ceuta.”

 Pedro fell silent again for a moment. Then, his head turned slightly towards Antonio, a pair of scorching eyes stared at the Spaniard fiercely behind long hair, and he said: “Now you know that you’re sorry, you know that…” he covered his mouth with a hand, as if trying hard to suffocate his moaning, “…you already know that Dom Henrique was the person I had most respected, most loved…and this place had been the first step where we began to explore the world…and yet, you…!”

 “Pedro…”

 “You were too strong, too powerful–so powerful that you swallow up everyone who were close to you…Aragon, Navarre, Granada…being your neighbour, you had no idea how hard I had tried to survive…and you still don’t know why I want to keep distance from you–you’ve never cared about others.”

 “…lo siento.”

 “…that’s why I set my knights guard against you on borders.” Pedro added.

 Antonio did not know how to reply, and Pedro lost the interest of continuing their conversation, so these two kept silent while watching the blue Mediterranean Sea and eating ice cream. After a while, two identical cats approached them for food, and they gave the cats ice cream respectively. Later, the cats curled up to sleep under their legs. It was time for siesta. The two young men bent on the table and fell asleep too.

 When Antonio woke up, he found himself alone, a caramel jacket covering his back.

 “Señor, did you sleep well? Your brother has already paid the bill.” A waiter came over and smiled at him.

 “When did he leave?”

 “About half an hour ago. He went in the direction of the port, perhaps to board a ship.”

 Hearing this, Antonio grabbed Pedro’s jacket at once, and ran towards the port.

 There were countless vessels from all over the world at the port, but Antonio had some clue for finding out Pedro’s ship.

 Sure enough, before long, he spotted a huge sail ship with three masts. Upon the white sails, there were red crosses of the Order of Christ.

 “Disculpe, is Pedro on this ship?” Antonio stopped a sailor who was about to board.

 “Which Pedro? We have many Pedros on the ship!”

 “He has long hair, and a spot under his right eye.” Antonio panted from running.

 “Let me think…” the sailor looked baffled.

 “Alright, he looks very much like me!” Antonio finally confessed.

 “Ah, I see!” the sailor turned around and shouted to the top cabins of the ship, “Captain, your little brother has come to see you off!”

 “I’m not his brother,” Antonio said quickly, “and I just come to return his jacket.”

 “Thank you for returning my jacket,” Pedro went down slowly from the ship. He wore a set of deep blue navy uniform, his long hair tied neatly behind. “By the way, I do recall that you had called me ‘mi hermano’ when you were a very little child, didn’t you?”

 “It’s not true, I had only called you by your birth name…it’s you who had called me ‘meu irmão’.”

“I’d never done that.”

 “Yes, you had.”

 When the siren was blown, Antonio knew that Pedro’s ship, Sagres, was about to set out. He raised his hands high in the air and waved happily towards Pedro, who was standing on the deck, watching him whom was down below.

 “¡Adiós, Lusitania!” Antonio smiled, brighter than the sun.

 –Lusitania, isn’t this Pedro’s birth name? Suddenly, some long-lost memory flashed back to Pedro’s mind.

 On a very quiet night, he was lying on a large bed sleeplessly. Suddenly, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

 “Lusitania?” a sweet voice of a boy called out.

 “Sim?” he replied lazily.

 Knowing the boy in bed was still awake, the boy outside opened the unlocked door, and went in.

“Can I sleep with you, Lusitania?” a pair of light green eyes was looking innocently at him.

 He opened his arms to the boy, and smiled mildly, “claro, meu irmão.”

 Long long time ago, Pedro had indeed called Antonio “my brother”, and only Antonio had called him by his birth name. Are they really not related by blood? They look so much alike, they had been so close, and nobody could understand them better than they understand each other. What made them separate from each other?

 Looking at the young man waving on the quay who had the same face as his, Pedro suddenly had an urge to touch, to embrace, and to merge with him–his brother. Before the ship started moving, he dashed down to the quay, and jumped onto Antonio.

 “Lusitania?”

 Pedro held Antonio tightly in his arms. Back lighted, his bright green eyes had never seemed so profound before, as if trying to convey millions of words. However, Pedro chose not to say a single word, but to kiss directly on Antonio’s petal-soft lips.

 Basking in orange light of the African sunset, the two brothers embraced and kissed each other for a long while, until eventually, Pedro broke the kiss and left silver saliva on his brother’s lips. Antonio looked at him, confused, intoxicated.

 “If we’re not brothers, I think it’s fine to kiss you.” Pedro smiled mildly.

 “Claro, we’re not brothers at all.” Antonio blushed, and kissed Pedro again.

[write-like-you-mean-it]

A Hunter’s Prey: Introductions and Questions

A strange beep awoke me from my slumber. Everything in my body ached as I tried to move. My arms were so sore that it hurt to move them an inch. It took a few moments to realize why I was so sore. A combination of Nen and exercising would do that to anyone. All that left my mouth was an angry groan at the blaring sound. With how late we were up, I wanted to get so much more sleep. 

After a minute of the alarm, I realized that Illumi must be as tired as I was. The bed moved only slightly before the phone stopped ringing. Somehow, I was able to move myself to a sitting position even though my body screamed for me to lie back down. “Whose on the phone?” I ask while rubbing some sleep from my eyes. 

Illumi didn’t answer. Instead, he went to get his clothes back on. My heart ached for the thought that he might stay for a while with me. There was not a lot of talking last night and I didn’t get all the questions answered in my head. 

“Illumi,” I mumbled. He still didn’t respond but handed me back my clothes. “You can’t really not talk to me when you don’t feel like it. Why can’t you stay with me.” 

He went back to covering his body. Every single inch of his body. It was a nice look while it lasted. “I have to go vote.”

“Vote?” I ask. He never struck me as one of the political types. Assassins normally weren’t. “Who are you voting for?”

“The newest chairman.” Illumi picked up his needles. “I won’t be gone long.” He stopped getting ready for a second to look at me. It was a delicious look as if I was a hot dinner ready to be devoured. I realized how naked I was and tried to pull the blankets up to cover me. 

My face felt a hot red and I looked down. “I do have a favor for you,” Illumi said. “I want you to keep practicing Nen. Kil should be back soon. Milluki and father will have a watchful eye on him. It will be your job to tell me if you see him and especially if he leaves.”

I nod my head. I don’t know how I can try to watch for Killua if I can barely move my body. Every inch was sore; however, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that. He refused all night allowing me to touch him. Sex isn’t as much fun if I can’t figure out his quirks too. 

“-Also, if things go well, I’ll take you to get dinner. We can-” He paused for a moment “-discuss some more.”

I cocked my head to the side like a little puppy. He wanted to talk? It was a miracle sent from above. “Okay. I’ll tell you if anything happens with Killua.”

Illumi finished backing everything that he might need for voting. Before he went out the door, he gave me a small kiss. I could feel his promise that he would be back. Every other time he has left, there was always a question of ‘if he would return.’ This time, it was a promise that he would. 

Illumi was already out the door before I realized that I did not know what Killua actually looked like. My first goal would be to get dressed, take a shower, and find a picture of Killua. There was an old one on the way to the training center.

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

I walked down the long hallway that guided us so many times to training. My wet hair was making my newly clean shirt wet from its drip. The shower was a nice addition to the day as I could barely stand before. Each and every other step felt like an agonizing pulse of sore muscle throughout my body. Nen did almost nothing to dull the pain. 

The long hallway held so many pictures that it was hard to distinguish which ones would have Killua and which ones were of older, long forgotten relatives. As I was walking, I remembered one picture towards the training ground that held all of the Zoldyck siblings. We had  always passed it in quick succession because Illumi’s stride was always bigger than my own. 

My pace quickened as I rounded the corner. Right next to the room held a beautiful picture. All the kids were brightly shown in a forest type background. It must’ve been taken on the mountain somewhere. Kikyo was in the center holding a little small boy. I’m guessing that the boy with white hair must be Killua. He is the center of attention. Kalluto held onto his mother’s dress. He couldn’t have been more than three. Milluki even looked much younger but not by much. 

My eyes were transfixed on Illumi. He stood as tall as ever. The only difference is that he seemed more relaxed. His hair was only to his shoulders and he wore such casual wear. Illumi still had that stoic face but he seemed happier. Years of worry and protection must’ve waved on his demeanor. 

I then noticed another blurred figure in the back. Illumi told me that there were only 4 Zoldyck siblings. This blurry figure seemed more feminie and by herself. Maybe Illumi had a sister that was disowned? No. She was much younger than Killua in this photo. Did Illumi lie to me? 

“Who are you?” the voice in the hall rang out. It was not one that I had ever heard. I turn my attention away from the picture to see a white haired boy standing in the middle of the hallway. He looked much older than the one in the picture. I could feel hurt and anger mixed with his own bloodlust. 

“You’re Killua,” I said more as a statement of fact than asking. 

“Depends. Who are you?” I could tell he didn’t trust me. Why would he? I was a stranger in his home. 

“I’m a friend of your brother’s,” I said. “My name is Y/N.” Killlua started to walk past me. He was on a mission. I decided to follow him as that was my goal. “I heard about your friend. I-I’m sorry.”

Killua stopped in his tracks. I did too as I was a few feet away from him. His head held down and fists in a tight hold. “No you’re not. You don’t even know him.”

“I-I am,” I stutter. I could feel his Nen getting stronger every second. It was pulsing stronger than Illumi’s own. 

Killua turned on his heels. “You know nothing of Gon!” he yelled while walking towards me. All of his anger directed. I could feel the electric buzz stirring in the air. The same buzz that could be found before a lightning storm. “Don’t you dare speak of him. I’m here for one thing only and it's not to have a chat with you.”

With that, he stormed off. Killua was much faster than Illumi. Soon enough, I became lost within the maze of the Zoldyck mansion. I had lost my target. No wonder Illumi had a hard time while tracking him. I wasn’t prepared to see him so soon. Everything in my body hurt too much. 

Tracking Killua would be too hard. I decided to try to find the entrance of the mansion as Killua had to leave sometime or other. My focus shifted to telling Illumi of Killua’s wearabouts. Part of me didn’t want to tell him. Killua was already struggling. He was an innocent boy who was losing a friend; however, I had to tell Illumi. 

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

An hour and a half had passed and I finally found the front door. I took too many wrong paths that I think I memorized all the wrong ones. I’d have to ask for a map once Illumi returned. I shouldn’t have been so tangled up with corridors that I could’ve missed Killua leaving. 

Luckily, I hadn’t. It took another thirty minutes before he showed up at the front door. He was carrying a small little girl with him. She looked absolutely adorable and the same as the girl in the picture. 

“Killua,” I said as he started to walk through the door. “I-I truly am sorry.” Again, he stopped in his tracks. I knew deep down that I shouldn’t be saying any of this to him. I didn’t know his friend. Hell, I didn’t know him. I did know Illumi and if the hurt Illumi feels on a regular basis is within Killua then he must be in extreme pain. 

“Big brother, who's this?” asked the little girl. I gave a small smile and a wave. 

“Which brother?”

“Huh?”

“Which brother are you friends with?”

“Illumi,” I said. 

Killua turned to look at me. “Illumi has no friends. If he tricked you into being his friend, then I would find whatever needle is deep within your skull and remove it. Don’t trust a word he says.”

I watched him walk away with the girl still held tightly in his hands. She gave me a smile and a wave. “Bye Illumi’s friend.”

A smile crossed my face as I waved at her too. She seemed too pure for this house. My mind wandered to Killua’s warnings. What did he mean about not trusting Illumi? A needle? I knew Illumi needed needles but what for? There were too many questions that I felt like my head was going to explode. 

“Oh, Y/N,” came the shrill voice of Kikyo. “What are you doing out of Illumi’s room?”

“I’m not his pet,” I said while turning to look at her. “I was given a task from him to look after Killua. Speaking of which, I have to text him.” I pulled out my phone to tell him that Killua had just left. 

Illumi sent one back. It read: Did he have someone with him?

I wrote back: Yes. He had a girl with him. Illumi didn’t respond after that. 

“You were talking with Killua just now,” said Kikyo. “What did he say?”

“I’d rather not say.” Kikyo gave a resounding humph and marched off to try and catch up to Killua. I, on the other hand, went to find a way back to the training area. 

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

I had been training into the night. My teacher has been the few books Illumi provided for me. Weirdly enough, Nen training was much quieter without Illumi. My eyes wandered to the tiny holes in the wall where Illumi had been practicing just yesterday. 

“Who are you?” asked a voice from the across the room. This voice spooked me as I was not expecting anyone to walk in while I was training. This man was much older than Illumi or even Silva. His hair was as white and Silva’s and his stature was hunched. I could feel the potential Nen energy that rippled through his body. 

I bowed deeply to the man. “I-I’m sorry. My name is Y/N and I am following Illumi’s orders.” I didn’t dare look up. With the amount of people I was meeting today, I was starting to get used to introducing myself. 

“Ah, Y/N,” muttered the elderly man. “Illumi’s supposed wife.” I stood up at that assumption. 

“Yes. That’s me.” It took me until now to realize his name. Illumi had told me that his grandfather was out on a mission. This must be him. “Nice to meet you sir.”

“You may call me Zeno. I was expecting no one else to be here to train. Would you mind if I trained beside you?”

“Are you sure? I could go if you want the space.” A Zoldyck master training before my eyes. Maybe I could learn a few more pointers from him. 

“No. You are to become family and it is important to see where your training has come so far.” The old man had a twinkle in his eyes. It was a shining star with everything that has been happening so far.

“Okay,” I said while readying my Nen. I closed my eyes and allowed it to flow from my body. It was all I had learned in the few weeks Illumi had taught me. I was to defend not attack. 

“What’s your Hautzu?” My head cocked once again as I dropped my Nen. “Your Nen type.”

“Oh,” I said, remembering. “I-I think Illumi told me it was transmutation.”

“Illumi hasn’t taught you how to become offensive with Nen?” Zeno questioned. I shook my head. “It is like him to want to teach defense. You need to learn some offense if you want to be a part of this family.” Zeno walked towards me. “Good thing that I am your Nen type. Otherwise, I doubt Illumi would allow you anywhere else.”

“Oh you don’t have to teach me. I have these books. I’ve been practicing.”

“Not enough it seems,” chuckled the elderly man. “How about we surprise Illumi? I’ll teach you transmutation and you tell me about yourself. I think that is a fair trade.”

I looked at the old man with a puzzled look. How was he so friendly while the rest of his family was not? I would think that a master of his caliber would refuse to train someone so weak. Weak enough that Hisoka refused to train me. 

“Come on, Y/N. We have much to learn,” Zeno said. A smile crossed my face as I produced my aura. 

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Full Masterlist

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Witches, Chapter 16: congrats Apollo you’re not back in hell. this case, you’re only on the margins of it.

[Seelie of Kurain Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

[Witches Chapter Masterlist] [ao3]

Among the ethical questions Apollo has pondered in his time as a lawyer, “is it wrong to search for a new job on my current employer’s office computer?” is the least consequential and least dire one. Not that he’s thinking of leaving the WAA, not at this moment, but being stuck spinning in a chair while Phoenix and Athena go out to investigate - it might not become a trend, but it might be, and he’ll need to prepare a contingency if it does. If he, the lawyer who got this place renamed from Wright Talent Agency to Anything Agency by being the first lawyer in seven years to work within its walls, who put the pieces together for Phoenix to let him get his badge back, gets squeezed out of it. 

Fine. He’s used to it. Foster home after foster home and before any of them a home in the mountains of Khura’in, Apollo doesn’t fit, Apollo goes away to the next place that will take him for a little while longer.

But Phoenix is only so reliable and some part of Apollo suspects that he’ll get yanked away by the fae and leave the case suddenly on Apollo’s shoulders, and instead of pondering the ethical question - the answer is, he doesn’t care if it’s wrong, but he’s not going to do it because Mia would know and he’s not going to test a fae queen’s patience - he sets to work researching the scene of their crime. The Shipshape Aquarium’s website prominently displays what they call the Aqua Tunnel, a glass tunnel that runs under the aquarium’s largest tank, allowing a full view of fish to the sides and right above their heads. Apollo’s stomach churns just seeing the pictures of visitors standing there, illuminated blue in the dark, water all around them held back only by glass that can’t be thick enough to put him at ease. It looks like drowning feels. 

So it’s almost like a good thing that this is the case that he’s been squeezed out of. 

Then Athena texts him to tell him that their client is an orca, one of the marine animals on display and performing at the aquarium, and the dizzy lightheadedness that the Aqua Tunnel instilled in him turns to dizziness from the breathless laughter wheezing forth from his lungs.

The woman who had shown up on their doorstep really didn’t say much specific about her friend and her case, did she? Apollo desperately wants to see how Phoenix bluffs his way through this one and is desperately relieved that he’s only involved in this case from the margins. Athena tells him that she wants to hear later about the time Phoenix cross-examined a parrot; their human client (Athena says human, anyway, because she needs to distinguish from their orca client, but they probably can’t say for certain yet, human) mentioned it as the real actual reason she came here looking for Phoenix Wright.

Apollo drags his feet across the carpet to bring the spinning chair to a halt - wait, maybe this is why he’s so dizzy - and heads for the shelves back behind Phoenix’s desk. His oldest cases, and a few that he acted as Mia’s assistant on, and a few of hers even before he was a lawyer at all, rest there, and Apollo had read through some of them again on the really slow, lonely days before Athena was here and while Trucy is at school. He knows exactly where to find that one, the one where Phoenix cross-examined a parrot to defend the future Chief Prosecutor and get a forty-year legend of a prosecutor indicted on murder charges. 

(How many legends has Phoenix torn down in the strangest of ways, as a rookie, while disbarred, a force to be reckoned with no matter his personal circumstances?)

The parrot’s name was Polly. Apollo sort of hates that as much as he hates everything else about Phoenix’s chaotically stupid bluffs working out for him, and that this is what he so admired about Phoenix from the start. It’s a lot less fun to be the one behind the bench, bluffing frantically, than it is to follow it in a transcript. 

He drops the file on Athena’s desk and sticks a pen in the relevant part so they can review it later. Her last update said that they’re going to do their own investigation to find possibility of a human culprit, so that the orca won’t be put down, and it’s radio silence from there out. Apollo goes back to the aquarium website. Trucy sends him photos from the wrestling match she and Jinxie are attending; she won’t be back until early evening. 

The other bookshelf out in the front room is where the fun happens. He’s found the same book there twice, sure, but almost never with the same cover. A weathered leather-bound tome, cracking along the spine, surely a grimoire full of old fae secrets, contains Mia’s taxes. A textbook cover proclaiming this a study of real estate law contains biographies of famed stage magicians. The only ones that stay the same are the thin picture books slipped in between matters of law and magic: Deauxnim, all of them, Elise or Laurice. Bored again, he thumbs through one, marveling at the elaborate illustrations, and the pages are cold to the touch. On reaching the end, a loose sheet torn from a sketchbook slips out, drifting feather-slow to Apollo’s feet. It’s a simple painting, three people and no background rendered in pale watercolor - a man with stark white hair and a visor that makes him look like he stepped out of a comic book, a beautiful woman in a suit jacket with a magatama around her neck, and another, older woman with hair tightly bound up on the top of her head and the same soft smile, albeit wearier and more lined, as the first woman. His eyes keep drifting back to the woman with the magatama, the yellow dot on her lapel that might be an attorney’s badge, her knowing brown eyes. The page, then the book, he slides back where they came from, but he can’t close the cover on the sensation that he’s supposed to know who she is. 

Every time he thinks he’s dug into every nook and cranny of this office, turned up every little scrap, there’s always something new. He hasn’t had the chance - that makes it sound like he wants to be doing this instead of being so bored out of his skull that he ends up hunting through decades of paper - to explore the shelves since Athena came to the office. The last notable anything he found before her arrival was an accordion folder containing receipts for what looked like every single thing Phoenix ever bought from September 2016 through the next six months. What neurosis created that habit?

He glances back at the spine of the picture book, still holding the image of the middle woman’s watercolor eyes in his mind. Mia? Could she be? He doesn’t ask, not out loud, and she doesn’t give any hints. 

Back at Phoenix’s desk, where the desktop computer is, the overwhelming blue of the aquarium website mocks him and his memories of water rising up over his head, and he spins the chair away and stares at the back wall, the sun-faded movie film poster that doesn’t show a title, and the shelf of case filings. He doesn’t care if Phoenix wants him to man the office tomorrow - he is not missing this case for the world, not because it’s Phoenix Wright back in court for the first time in eight years, but because he desperately wants to know how this orca matter pans out. (And okay, maybe he does want to see what Phoenix is like behind the bench when he’s not backed into a corner, his life on the line against a serial murderer, no other choice in his eyes but to become the thing that Kristoph framed him to be seven years earlier. Maybe Apollo’s still looking to find the legend he admired within the man that he knows.)

His phone, left on his desk, begins buzzing and continues buzzing. Someone’s calling, probably Phoenix, because he’s the only one who calls regularly instead of texting. What sort of trouble has their case run into, or maybe he’s wondering if Trucy’s back yet because she can be somewhat unreliable when it comes to letting anyone know where she is. But the name displayed on screen isn’t Phoenix - it’s Klavier.

They’ve never spoken on the phone before. Apollo’s heart seizes up, beats out a swift staccato rhythm. What the hell is going on that he would call? “Hello—?”

“Tell me your boss isn’t defending an orca.”

Apollo collapses into his desk chair, nearly tipping it off of its wheels. “Where did you hear about that?” he asks. “That’s not - please tell me that’s not a - a timeline constant, or whatever, that you didn’t see it happening, or - tell me you’re not prosecuting the orca!”

Klavier laughs. “Nein, Forehead, I am not sure even you could convince me to take that to court.” His chuckle continues for a few moments after but trails away into silence, long enough that Apollo wonders if the call has been dropped. Apollo inhales to say something and Klavier cuts across him, maybe coincidence that they chose the same time to speak, maybe not. “Herr Samurai told me about it. He’s the one prosecuting that whale of a defendant.”

He starts laughing again and Apollo groans. Determined to not give him any more satisfaction, he simply asks, “Blackquill doesn’t have an office space, does he?” He’d dismiss the thought entirely on basis of common sense, but Klavier has to have spoken to him somehow, and common sense would have a convicted murderer not prosecuting at all. Who’s to say what they’re doing over at that building?

“He does not, but he was here to speak with the Chief Prosecutor over some or another matter, and stopped by my office before he left to tell me that your boss’ first case with his new badge is…” Klavier makes a dismissive, disgusted noise from the back of his throat. 

“The client when she showed up at the office didn’t say that her friend who needed defending was an orca.” Apollo has a sudden need to defend Phoenix against Klavier’s disdain, not least because that disdain sounds particularly like someone else. “Though, I mean, when he and Athena found out, yeah, that was a, uh - a choice, they made, to continue.”

“You aren’t working this one?”

“No. I’m stuck back at the office.” Like they’re a real agency that is going to have clients show up more than once every three months. “Missing out on a free trip to the aquarium” - and all the fun drowning phobia that could come with it - “but at least I don’t have to figure out the defense plan for a killer whale.” He doesn’t mind a challenge, finds all the outlandish challenges in the past have made him a better lawyer, but it’s a killer whale. It’s there in the name, and he can’t ask it for its testimony to get its side of the story, put that together with the rest of the evidence, with what he sees and hears. A client who only spoke a little English, and pretended not to have even that, sure. An orca might be taking Phoenix’s “have total faith in your client” mantra a little far. 

“Which aquarium is this?” Klavier asks. “There’s the two big ones around here, ja?”

Apollo spins his chair back to his desk, finds that he doesn’t have the computer here, or his laptop up, and racks his brain for the name. “It’s the Shipley” - no, that’s the victim’s name - “Shipshape Aquarium.”

“Ach, the pirate one.”

“You’ve been there?” 

Apollo hasn’t - there had been been a middle school biology class field trip that his foster family of the time couldn’t afford to send him on; they had five kids in that house and naught to spare for any class trips. Clay came back with a googly-eyed shark keychain that Apollo still has clipped to his bag, and the proclamation that the aquarium was “totally lame” and if they wanted to see fish they could go to the pet store and walk through the fish section for free. 

(And then they did, and then they couldn’t stick to their for free part of the concept and bought a betta fish that lived for four years after they did extensive research on the proper care and tank setup, which caused Apollo to take up a crusade against the store for the little plastic containers they kept the poor fish in, and then Clay said again, not for the first or last time, that he should be a lawyer because he could get really passionate about arguing and his surname made the whole deal better because with a surname like Justice you have to be either a lawyer or a criminal, basically. That was two years after he left Khura’in, after he was starting to realize it might be a long, long time, if ever, until he returned, but he had never stopped thinking about being a lawyer, not because of Dhurke but because of Clay, who never knew Dhurke. He just knew Apollo. And he thought that would be the career for Apollo, not because he was Dhurke’s son, but just because of Apollo.)

“Mhm.” Klavier sounds more subdued than usual. “Ja, I have. Many times.”

“You don’t strike me as a fish person.”

“That could be because I’m a human person, do you think?” He’s laughing again, but again, it falls off quickly. “It was Daryan who so enjoyed the aquarium, not I. You didn’t suppose his shark aesthetic was an accident?”

“I never really thought about it,” Apollo admits. Maybe that’s not quite true - the thought had passed his mind, and then gotten shuffled away as many more important impressions of Daryan replaced it - namely, that he was an asshole, and probably a criminal. And then actually a criminal, another of the people Klavier loved who turned out nasty. “Though I guess that makes sense.” If there’s anything that could make that hairstyle make sense. 

“We went there often, even after we were celebrities - every time we’d come home from a tour, less and less as that was, especially as I started traveling for reasons that weren’t tours, we’d visit that or the other aquarium around the city. Hard to sneak through the crowds when you’re famous, admittedly.” He gives another softer, sadder laugh. “The fans coming up for autographs made it harder to play our favorite game of harassing each other about what fish looked most like the other one.” A thoughtful pause, where Apollo thinks he’s dwelling on the times passed with someone no longer around in the same capacity as his memories, mourning a friend turned into a monster - and maybe he is, but the actual words he follows up the silence with are, “I’m not sure what fish I’d call you. Something very small and very red, surely.”

“Ugh.” Just when Apollo wants to be charitable to him, and sympathetic. “You’re hilarious.” He tips his chair back and stares at the ceiling. They’re not in court, but he’ll never let one of Klavier’s statements go unchallenged. “I know exactly what you’d be.”

“Oh?”

Apollo grins as he says it, the one that Trucy always teases him for because she says it’s his texting Prosecutor Gavin look and she’s sort of correct, but it’s more like a roasting Prosecutor Gavin look. “A clownfish.”

His jab is rewarded with a strangled, choking laugh.

Apollo toys with the idea of asking him why he didn’t glamour himself free from the squeeze of the crowds, but decides not to. He’d never told Daryan about his history and the abilities he had - that, Apollo remembers, Klavier saying he never had the words to tell his best friend and then he was gone. (Apollo remembers him saying that because Apollo, without the words to tell Clay about Dhurke, sympathizes.) Maybe he didn’t want to so obviously display his secret in front of his friend. Maybe he liked the attention, the screaming adoring fans, back then before Gavin was the name of a murderer, too. He had nothing to hide from back then. 

So instead, the prior part of the conversation that Apollo circles back to is, “So Prosecutor Blackquill came by to let you know, specifically?” Any angle he looks at it seems like one of Blackquill’s manipulations, a stab into that open wound of Klavier’s mistake. Something to use against him, measuring his reaction, assessing the best way to get under his skin - tell him Wright is back in the legal world, tell him that Wright is making a mockery of the legal world with an orca, and watch and wait to see if there are fireworks. 

“He did specifically wish to let me know, but it is not as though we have never spoken with each other before.”

“Right. And you thought he was pleasant enough, or whatever.” Should that surprise him? Klavier’s best friend was Daryan, an utter asshole, after all - and Klavier can be a real dick in court too. 

“He is not unpleasant, which is something not quite the same, especially not as we are lawyers. I think he may just have wished to see my reaction as I found out about what your boss is up to.”

If he isn’t being manipulative, he’s simply a troll, and yeah, that sounds like the conclusion to draw about Blackquill. “You’re right,” Apollo says. “That probably would’ve been pretty funny to see.”

“Hmph. I don’t imagine you were any more composed - you probably yelled loud enough to wake the dead, ja?”

Yes, he had yelped “What?” to the empty office, nearly dropping his phone as he did, and the longer he takes to come up with a retort to counter that assessment, the more Klavier is going to start laughing at him. “How do you suppose Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth feels?” Apollo asks. “He’s done this thing allowing him back in court for whatever reason and now Blackquill’s using his freedom to prosecute to take an orca to court.” Klavier doesn’t respond, just laughs at that, but Apollo can’t laugh for more than a moment. He rubs at some stray ink marks on his desk and adds, “Do you have any idea why he’s set this all up?” he asks. “Let Blackquill do this? Not the orca specifically, but prosecuting at all”

Klavier goes quiet. “I presume, as do the few colleagues I’ve spoken of this with, that he thinks the verdict was wrong - that he hopes, in some convoluted manner, to clear Herr Samurai’s name and overturn his conviction.”

“You think?”

“I respect Herr Chief greatly and would at least like to hope that there is some reason to his actions.” Right, this is Edgeworth, not Phoenix. Edgeworth’s the one who’s not a cryptic fae bastard. “I could not tell you what I think, myself.” Bitterness coats his words as he adds, “I am not known to be someone good at guessing if someone I know is capable of murder.”

“I…” Apollo clumsily searches for some kind of condolence. “I don’t think anyone is.” Klavier talks to him about these things because he knew Kristoph, too, but sometimes Apollo thinks that Klavier forgets that he did know Kristoph, too. That it wasn’t his brother, no, just his boss, but still blindsided him. The evidence was there but otherwise Apollo never could have guessed - he just chose to believe the evidence. But what if it was a friend, now, a brother, a coworker - if Clay was accused, if - or Trucy, Phoenix again, Athena - if there was evidence to it, what would Apollo do? He doesn’t know. 

“You have your Truth, though. I suppose that makes it a little easier, wouldn’t it, ja? You see and you know they are lying - know more than they are saying, are involved, did it.”

“Yeah, but it could be any of those options, like you said. It’s not necessarily just, did a murder.” He pushes off from the desk and starts slowly spinning his chair again. Everyone has secrets, but they’re probably not all murders committed. It’s all context, during cases, and he’s a defense attorney, he’s supposed to trust his client, but everyone else caught up in a thing— “Not that it helps me with Blackquill.”

“Too secretive even for our eyes - ja, he’s a bit of an odd one.”

“A bit? A bit? Do you say that because you’re already so far out there odd that he only seems a bit—”

“Ja, ja, you work for an ‘Anything Agency’ that is defending an orca—”

“I’m not defending the orca!”

“You are an accomplice. All of you are guilty. Blackquill is prosecuting the orca as well, and all of you are a bit odd.”

A bit. Understatement of the decade. “And you’re still a clownfish.”

-

Athena’s car pulls into the lot before Trucy gets back, which means that Apollo could’ve just shut the place down for the day and gone with them to the aquarium and it wouldn’t have changed a damn thing but that he had time to talk with Klavier. Not like anyone showed up with another case. 

“I got to feed an orca!” Athena’s shout begins before she has thrown the door open. “But the penguin hated me.”

What, exactly, is Apollo supposed to say to this? “I’m sorry?” he offers, and behind Athena, Phoenix snorts stifling laughter. “How’s the case for tomorrow looking?”

“Eh.” Phoenix wiggles his hand noncommittally. Athena presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. “We’ve got enough of a possibility to get it to go to trial, but nothing more than that, and that’s probably just in part because Prosecutor Blackquill is a lunatic.”

“Is he really that bad?”

That’s a young woman’s voice asking that question, but Athena has been face-to-face with Blackquill and knows exactly how bad he is, and Trucy heard her and Apollo complain about him for weeks after Mayor Tenma’s trial. Phoenix steps into the office and aside, and behind him stands a girl maybe Trucy’s age, with a soft round face and big gray eyes, her light brown hair pulled up in tight twists. Her clothing looks like Iris’ robes, with a shorter hem, down to the large beaded necklace from which a magatama hangs. 

Oh. Oh no. Do all the fae dress like this, or is this one of the relatives that Iris mentioned to them in Nine-Tails Vale?

“I’ll let you make your own determination from the gallery tomorrow,” Phoenix says. “If you’re coming. If not, we can catch you up but I’d rather go over the case again with Apollo and see if we can figure anything out.”

“Of course I’ll be there tomorrow!” The girl claps her hands together. “Your first trial in ages, Mr Nick! I wouldn’t miss it!”

“Who’s this?” Apollo asks. He sounds calm, really, he thinks, and then Athena shoots a quizzical look, eyebrows pressed together and turning up where they meet, at him. Of course. He can’t hide, not from her, but either she hasn’t registered the similarities between this girl and Iris, or she’s been assured, by Phoenix, by spending some time with this girl already if they all came in together, that she’s not terrifying.

Not any more than the fae are, conceptually, for what they all have the powers to do.

“You can call me Pearl!” The girl inclines her head forward politely. Apollo notes that she didn’t say that’s what her name is, just that’s what she goes by. “I’m a friend of Mr Nick’s!”

Her clothing, her careful wording of an introduction, and now an odd nickname (nickname, don’t think the pun, don’t acknowledge it) for Phoenix. Add it all up, and he doesn’t like the sum. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Apollo.”

“It’s very nice to meet you.” Her language is formal but not stilted; it sounds like the most natural manner of speech, coming from her. Mr Nick. She’s just polite, then; polite, refined, almost regal in mannerism, her every movement stepping further into the office made with deliberate care. She tips her head back, her expression serene, scanning the air of the office like she’s looking for something.

“Pearls is an old friend of mine who we ran into at the aquarium,” Phoenix explains, with no indication of whether she’s a human “old friend” or the other sort. “She gave us some help with our investigation.” 

“Oh, I didn’t do much of anything.” Her cheeks start to turn pink and she quickly brings her hands up over her face. “It was just good to see you lawyering again! But you haven’t gotten any better at keeping your office clean.” She lowers her hands, one of them falling only to her mouth to chew on a thumbnail, and she surveys Trucy’s magic props spread out on every available surface. “Why doesn’t she just keep everything in the Magic Panties and take out whatever she needs only when she needs it? They’re already enchanted and there’s no cost to using them, and poor Mystic Mia has to look at all this!”

“Huh?” Athena asks. “Mia, that’s - she was your boss, wasn’t she, Mr Wright?”

Which is when Apollo realizes that he hasn’t ever mentioned Mia to Athena, and from the expressions on Phoenix and Pearl’s faces - slow dawning surprise for the former, and narrowing eyes, rising anger, for the latter - Phoenix hasn’t told her, either.

(He feels awful that he feels some sort of - satisfaction? No, that’s too strong a word. Relief, a little bit - that Athena wasn’t told the secrets off the office. That Phoenix isn’t always good at communicating with her either.)

Instead of sitting down and mapping out the case, their evidence, and their plan of attack for the trial tomorrow, as Phoenix clearly still wants to, he sinks into the couch with a long sigh and explains Mia’s continuing presence to Athena, the way he did for Apollo and Vera last year. (“So that’s why the lights did that this morning!” Athena exclaims, and Apollo is really curious what she thought was going on otherwise.) 

Pearl sits primly next to him, hands folded neatly in her lap, watching Phoenix without ever blinking. “Mystic Mia is my cousin,” she says when Phoenix has finished his brief summary - nothing in it new to Apollo, but Athena next to him sits hunched forward with her elbows on her knees, her hand cupped over Widget as though ready to start a therapy session based on whatever emotional testimony she finds in Phoenix’s words. “But she left to become a lawyer when I was very small and I don’t remember her very well.”

“Oh!” Athena sits up suddenly. “If she’s your cousin, and she was a faery, then you’re…” She doesn’t finish the statement, either waiting for an affirmation from Pearl before she speaks it into truth, or being extra cautious with the idea of not asking or accusing her what she is. But Pearl nods, and Athena slumps back against the couch and says, “That makes me feel so much better about the smelling blood that you did back when we were investigating! That’s so much less weird.”

“That still sounds kind of weird, whatever you’re saying,” Apollo says, literally biting his tongue a second later as the fear of telling one of the fae that she’s weird - even a true statement as that is - takes hold. A bit odd is such an understatement. 

Pearl, though, does not react to that, and Apollo doesn’t hear about the blood-covered coin until later. In the moment, the door violently bangs open and Trucy barges in, a huge grin swallowing up her face, excitedly shrieking, “Pearly!”

-

The apartment door creaks open and the approaching footsteps stop abruptly. “Bad day, huh?” Clay asks.

“Mmph,” Apollo says, his face pressed into the couch cushions. He considers leaving it at that but knows that Clay won’t let it go, and a second later the door closes and the weight of his best friend settles in on his legs. Apollo turns his head to the side, unable to see Clay but at least able to be heard without yelling. He doesn’t have the energy to yell. “My coworkers are defending an orca in court.”

“Like, a whale? Like that kind of orca?”

“Is there another kind.”

Clay cackles. “Holy shit.” 

-

Phoenix sends the kids off long before he leaves the office himself, pondering a whistle and a bloody coin and a looped fifteen seconds of security footage and a dead man still without an official autopsy report. That’s the first thing they’ll be slapped with at the trial tomorrow, and if they’re unlucky it’s going to turn out to show that the manner of death wasn’t blunt force trauma at all and they’ll be in deep shit with nothing to bluff on from the outset. If he’s really unlucky, they still won’t have finished the autopsy, as late today as it was ordered, and he and Athena are going to get through a good case before the full report arrives and smashes their every conclusion to bits. 

He leans his head in his hands, staring down at the surface of his desk as though he can divine the answers from the scratches in the wood. “Mia,” he says, “what am I doing?”

Silence answers him. He lifts his head and looks out the window, to the bare empty rooms of the long-ago closed Gatewater Hotel, that whole damn lot cursed because that’s what happens to a place when it’s used as a staging ground to frame one fae royal for the murder of another. He’d been glad that particular branch of the Gatewater went under, as he’d stopped leaving these blinds open and really did miss the sunlight shining in through, even if he still had to pull them shut when the night became dark and the cold yellow city light cast a pool on the ground that night after night still marked where Mia died. 

How does he get over the death of someone who’s only sort of gone?

“I did this for Edgeworth,” he continues, “but now other people want my help - Sasha, and Athena, and - I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I don’t know if I should. Do you think defending an orca is going to make me any less of a laughingstock? Maybe it’ll be better publicity for me. People think orcas are cute, right?” He doesn’t have much opinion, but Athena and Pearl and Trucy all seem to agree. “Maybe that would put some trust back to me after, y’know, having to set up an entirely new legal experiment just to get Kristoph convicted. That really looked good for me, huh, makes me seem real honest.”

He leans back, hangs his neck over the back of the chair. “How long were you chasing Redd White for, anyway? Was that when you left Grossberg’s, when you found out that he was the one White bribed for information about your mother? If you’d been chasing him for seven years and came up with no solid connecting evidence, just a list of names - would you have given up fighting in an honest manner? How many people could he have blackmailed into suicide in that time - is it wrong to stop someone like that, even with—?”

Even with forged evidence. Fudge it here and there for the safety of innocent people because sometimes the guilty are too damn smart to be found out. That’s not why the devil forged evidence, but it certainly is what the Demon Prosecutor’s mantra was. No way to know, so damn them all.

“Or,” he asks, “are you a better person than me? Would you not fall so far?”

He should probably get home soon, make dinner for the girls before they just eat cookies and bagels. Pearl doesn’t have Maya’s appetite, thank god, and hosting her doesn’t send him bankrupt and empty the entire pantry. It’s been so long since she last dropped by that even if he did have to shell out for a five-course feast tonight, he’d do it. Trucy adores her, and vice versa. It’s good for them to get to see each other again. 

He makes sure to leave the computer on, cursor blinking on an open document so that if Mia has anything to say, either to the case or the latest installment of Phoenix’s forever-ongoing personal crisis, she can let him know. (Right after her death, Maya left the computer on, slept on the couch, and in the morning before she came to cheer Phoenix on in court found flip reciept and suicde folder compile names. And she had dutifully followed her older sister’s last, typo-marred instructions, cryptic as they seemed at first, but when the surrounding cards were played, it made sense, and Mia saved Phoenix’s life for not the first and not the last time.)

He flips the back room lights off and sees, standing next to the couches, between Phoenix and the door, the Gavin hellhound.

Phoenix lets out a shaky breath. Like he wasn’t doing a good enough job of reminding himself that he’s an imposter walking back into the courthouse tomorrow, spot who doesn’t belong, and the convicted murderer doesn’t either but Edgeworth’s put them both back there because he believes in them. But Edgeworth’s faith doesn’t change the past, only the future, and he’s only one man against the multitude of specters literally haunting Phoenix.

“What do you want?” Phoenix asks the barely-corporeal fae hound. Feathery plumes of white smoke drift off of her tail and the backs of her legs, her edges blurred against reality, the classic archetypal image of a ghost. She opens her mouth wide enough that she could probably fit her jaws halfway around a basketball, pulling her lips back, showing off her teeth. 

He has no idea when Kristoph summoned her - at what point his patience gave out and he reached to the magical heritage his blood allowed him, binding for himself a hound bred for the Wild Hunt. He first ever saw her after Kristoph was in jail, and he out, when he and Trucy noticed the beast stalking them, never coming close, never making a threat, but observing, studying, gathering information for someone. And he first saw her teeth when she yawned, and through the Sight she changes just slightly; shining gold tips the ends of her misty fur, and her teeth drip and bleed with the rotting red of death, the kind of curse Kristoph cast. It all snapped into clarity that instant, whose monster this was, and where the dark red marks of teeth in Zak Gramarye’s neck came from. 

She didn’t kill him. That isn’t what her kind are bred for; they don’t kill their prey themselves. They flush out their quarry and chase it back to their masters, herd it in and corner it, to let the handler deal the final blow. Zak came back to Los Angeles because of the statute of limitations was about to run out, and magic that lies in contracts often runs parallel to the laws of human land, but he also came back knowing that he was being watched, being followed, being hunted, and Phoenix knew by who but not how. Didn’t know how until he saw the dog whose lineage was dedicated to the hunt and her teeth that left the impression of her pursuit. 

Zak Gramarye died by a blow to his head, but the jaws of death were tight on his throat before then. 

He tried to play it cool, for a while, what with her haunting his apartment and the office every so often but then more when Apollo was there and then not at all. Don’t let her smell fear, bribe her with human food, the way Phoenix knows to befriend the fae. It took him a long time to understand why she was still around - she wasn’t pursuing anyone, hadn’t sunk her teeth into a new victim, and Kristoph was shut away in iron. He figured she should be gone.

And he really should’ve figured out what Klavier was - a stolen human child, replaced by Kristoph, who Phoenix knew long ago was a changeling - when, after the verdict came down, he watched Kristoph laugh and Klavier flee and the dog followed Klavier. Fae hounds are bound to one master only, always, until they’re set loose or die, and she was Kristoph’s but followed Klavier. She shouldn’t have been able to shift allegiance like that, and she couldn’t have, not to anyone else but Klavier, because the Gavins - they were the same to her.

Knowing that Klavier is the man commanding the hound, or just letting her wander loose to her own devices (however a creature like her, so bound up in the will of one master, makes determination of what she wants to do herself) doesn’t make Phoenix feel any better at her presence. Not today, and not this time of night when ordinarily, no one would still be here.

She pulls her ears back, jaw opening again, but instead of keeping her head level, she turns her open mouth toward the floor and gags. The horrible sound grates down his spine like claws and his throat like broken glass, like he’s the one choking. With a last wet cough, something yellow falls from her throat, and she snaps her long, disproportionate jaws shut, lifting her head back up to look at him. She licks her lips with her long black tongue, weirdly solid against her wisping fur, and smacks her mouth open and closed a few times. Then she noses whatever-it-is toward Phoenix and looks up again, expectantly. 

“Fine,” he says, squatting down so that he can get a better look at it without turning his eyes entirely away from her. It’s an attorney’s badge, its gold plating flaking off to show duller silver below. A well-worn attorney’s badge. “Huh? Is this Kristoph’s—?”

Cold to the touch, cold in his palm, he turns it over. Eight years later he still knows that number by heart.

“Why did you have this?” he asks, his words choked out around his heart risen up into his mouth. He’d ask why she ate it, but that just seems to be a thing that the fae do. Why she had it is the same as why she ate it: because she had it. But why? “Did Kristoph take it when I had to turn it back in to the Bar Association?” 

He still doesn’t actually know what happens to a badge of someone no longer a lawyer - he decided he didn’t want to know, mourned the ambiguous fate of his badge, whether it was melted down to become part of a new badge for a new attorney who wasn’t a fuck-up, or had the numbers shaved off and gold plating reapplied and new numbers engraved to become a new badge for a new attorney who wasn’t a fuck-up, or just got dumped in a box for record-keeping about attorneys who are fuck-ups. “Did he send you in to take it for him? Like a trophy?”

He has no way to know where her hollow red eyes are focused. She’s nearly nose-to-nose with him and showing no sign that she understands a word he’s saying. Even if she does she probably can’t convey it back to Klavier, as though he would know the answer either. What person alive has spent more time with Kristoph than either of them, and they don’t know him at all. 

On the off-chance that Klavier can actually hear what is being said to his hellhound, or if he knew that she had swallowed Phoenix’s attorney’s badge, he looks her in her empty eyes and says, “Thanks.”

She spins about, her tail swinging right into his face and through it and it feels like a faint misting of snow, the powdery top layer gusted up by the wind, and streaks straight through the closed door, out of the office.

Leaves Phoenix sitting on the floor, and his heart in his hand, tiny and tarnished and ice cold.

[themurphyzone]

Absolutely Disastrous Ch 8

Ch 8: Lost in the Woods! Another Costumed Weirdo?

“I think we’re lost.”

“We’re not lost. We’ve taken a slight detour from the recommended path.”

“So we’re lost.”

“Think of it as the scenic route,” Milo suggested, looking at his map again. Before he could show Melissa and Zack their current location in the Petalburg Woods, a Linoone snatched the paper out of his hands and disappeared into a clump of berry bushes.

Unfazed, Milo brought out a second map. “Okay, so we’re near a bunch of Oran trees right now, so if we head north we should see some birches and hang the second right.”

Zack groaned, resting his back against a mossy rock. “Too bad everything looks the same.”

“I also have a topography map, a latitude map, and a map of Silph Co’s ventilation and teleporter system,” Milo said. “Never really understood their teleporter thing. Seems kinda bad for employee morale.”

They’d been wandering around Petalburg Woods all morning, and so far they’d had little luck making sense of their surroundings. Every tree looked the same, packed together so densely that it was almost impossible to tell where one tree ended and another began. He’d heard ghost stories of a forest in Sinnoh. According to the tales, it was always nighttime because the sun’s rays never reached the ground, making it a prime spot for ghosts to lure unsuspecting travelers to their dilapidated manor.

Dr. Magnezone fans loved using Sinnoh’s folklore and ghost stories as inspiration. Milo once saw Sara cry over a fanfic where Dr. Magnezone had to search for a Lunar Wing to relieve Time Infernape of a Darkrai-inflicted nightmare before the stress killed him.

“Hey, let’s break for a bit,” Melissa said. She laid down on a large protruding root. “I can’t wait to get out of forest territory.”

Milo found a cozy spot next to a fallen log, and Zack reclined against a tree trunk.

“Zack, there’s gotta be some spooky tales in Johto,” Milo said. “You should tell us one!”

“Yeah, spill!” Melissa prodded Zack in the arm.

Zack winced and rubbed his arm. “Do you cut your nails into claws or something?”

Melissa shrugged. “I jab hard, Underwood. You gonna tell us a ghost story or what?”

“Neither of you are gonna let up until I tell you one, huh?” Zack sighed.

“Nope!” Milo and Melissa chorused. Diogee looked up from his water bowl, red eyes boring expectantly into Zack.

“Fine,” Zack said. “This one isn’t for the faint of heart, so be warned.”

Milo and Melissa leaned forward in anticipation.

“Two millennia ago, a beautiful maiden fell in love with a soldier. One day, the soldier had to go fight in a distant land. As the maiden watched him disappear over the horizon, she swore she would never fall in love with anyone else, and that she would always look towards the ocean in anticipation of his return.”

Milo’s eyes started to water. Melissa gripped her skirt tightly.

“The years passed, but she still waited. Every suitor was turned down, all attempts to coax her away from the cliff failed. Eventually, a deity took pity on her. She agreed to be transformed into a statue atop the cliff so she could continue watching the horizon. The deity also appointed a messenger Pokémon to maintain the house and keep the maiden’s soul company while she kept her eternal vigil. To this day, she continues to wait and pray.”

Milo wiped away a stray tear, and Diogee had to carefully nudge him a few feet so a tree didn’t crash on top of him.

“That was…sad,” Melissa admitted. “How ‘bout something in the horror department to even it out?”

“Gimme a minute,” Milo said, burying his face into Diogee’s fur to calm himself down. “I got one.”

He took a deep breath, holding a flashlight under his chin for added dramatic effect. Zack drew a sharp breath.

“Once there was a little girl who lived in a cottage. Her mommy and daddy scrounged and begged and pleaded for scraps of food, for they were poorer than dirt,” Milo began, keeping his voice so low that Melissa and Zack had to strain to hear him.

He paced as he continued the story, feeling three sets of innocent eyes processing every word and movement. Milo smirked and continued. “One day, the little girl was left alone in the house. As she did her daily chores like any good child would do, she looked out the window. A doll laid in the dirt, its seams torn and one of its button eyes missing. It was ugly and nobody would’ve spared a second glance. But the little girl took pity on the doll and fixed it up with the only bolt of spare fabric her family had.”

“Oh no,” Zack whispered. Melissa elbowed him.

“When the last seam was closed, the doll offered to grant three wishes for the little girl. First, she wished that her family would never go hungry again. That night, her parents came home to find a feast fit for a royal banquet waiting for them. The little girl showed them the doll and explained what she’d done, and her parents were too grateful to question her any further. But trouble arose when the mother didn’t have material to make new clothes with, so the little girl asked the doll for endless wealth so her mother could purchase the finest and rarest silks and wool. The doll granted the second wish, and the family lived happily for many years.”

“The little girl grew into a beautiful woman, and she attracted the attention of a prince. They courted for a while, and the woman showed him the doll who’d saved her family from poverty. Disgusted by its horrible appearance, the prince broke off their engagement and rode away into the night. Because she still loved him, the woman asked the doll to grant her final wish: have the prince fall back in love with her. Once it was granted, the woman laid the doll on her childhood bed and went back to the castle. She planned to never return to the cottage and sever all ties with her poverty-filled life to make sure the prince stayed in love with her.”

Milo paused. The tension was thick enough to cut with a butter knife.

“The woman married the prince and forgot all about the doll. But the doll never forgot her. It granted all her wishes without complaint. It kept her company for ten years. And now it laid in a dark room, never to see the sun again. Anger consumed its mind. Oh, how it thirsted for vengeance. It flew to the castle on an otherworldly energy, and there it spotted the woman, brushing her hair…alone.”

He could see the whites of Zack’s eyes, and Milo crept closer, curling his hands into claws and looming as best he could.

“It crept closer…closer…closer…” Milo punctuated each word with a silent step until he hovered over Zack. Zack pressed himself against the tree with a strangled yelp.

“-and then it POUNCED!”

“AIYEEEH!”

Milo pulled Zack to his feet, laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. “Oh man!” Milo doubled over. “That was, ha! Got you real good!”

Zack just stared at him. “I didn’t scream.”

“Wasn’t me either,” Melissa said. “Believe me, you would know if Zack screamed cause he sounds like a plucked Swellow. Whoever screamed a few minutes ago has more of a tone-deaf Loudred combined with a sick Swablu frequency.”

“I don’t sound like a plucked Swellow,” Zack mumbled.

“NO! DON’T TAKE MY PAPERS!”

Everyone jumped to their feet as a terrified businessman rushed past their resting spot and tripped over a large root. His briefcase spilled open, papers fluttering all around him. He dazedly shoved them back into the briefcase, muttering several curses to himself.

“Hand over those papers, old man!” another voice snarled.

The other man was dressed in a lava-red uniform, a stylized ‘M’ emblazoned across his chest. His hood had two strange horns on top. Milo stared at him, wondering why someone would choose to wear a thick red onesie in Hoenn’s tropical climate.

Diogee growled menacingly, only backing off when Milo gestured for him to stand down until they figured out what happened.

“What’s going on here?” Melissa asked.

“He’s trying to rob me!” the businessman shouted. “I swear, all I did was stop to take pictures of a Shroomish-I’ve always liked that Pokémon, you see-and Hoodie there jumped me and tried to steal my documents!”

“How many times have I told you to quit calling me Hoodie? It’s Ignacio! I-G-N-A-C-I-O!”

His protests went ignored as the group collected all the stray papers and put them back into the suitcase.

“Thank you, children,” the businessman gasped breathlessly. “I’m just gonna be going now and-“

Ignacio scowled. “You aren’t going anywhere! Hand over those papers or face the wrath of Team Magma!”

He posed dramatically, which would’ve looked a lot more threatening if he’d chosen a target without knowledge of meme culture.

Ignacio released a Zigzagoon and Koffing. “You’ve trampled on Team Magma’s dreams, and that’s unforgivable! For I am the Magma Grunt Ignacio who stands for humanity’s brighter tomorrow! In the name of Groudon, I shall incinerate you!”

“Aren’t you supposed to be saying love and justice or something?” Melissa asked.

“I wanted to, but it was copyrighted,” Ignacio admitted. “Seriously, I’m not a monster. I respect copyright law.”

“Whatever. I’ll sit this one out, boys,” Melissa said, dragging the businessman out of the way. “While you kick his butt, I’ll be organizing my photos.”

“I don’t remember you taking photos,” Zack said.

Melissa smirked. “I work in mysterious ways.”

“Enough babbling!” Ignacio sneered. “You fools will know the wrath of the 27th ranked Magma goon!”

“That’s supposed to be a bragging point?” Zack scoffed as he sent out Treecko.

Treecko chewed on his stick placidly as he sized up his opponents. Diogee moved into position, eyes fixated on Koffing.

Living near Mt. Chimney had long acquainted Milo and Diogee with the local Pokémon and their habits. Machop liked to test their strength by weightlifting Geodude, and one should never disturb their contests unless they wanted 44.1 pounds of living rock hurtled at them. Numel preferred sand baths, and Torkoal could only distinguish between light and dark.

On the Murphy Ranch, they sometimes had to announce the Purple Protocol in the event of a Koffing wandering onto the property. Its smoke and poisonous gas was harmful to the developing lungs of young humans and Absol, so all minors were to stay inside until the adults had gotten rid of the smoke and contained the Koffing until it could be relocated.

And it had the only type advantage on the current battlefield.

This was gonna be interesting.

“Create a Smokescreen cover!” Ignacio ordered. “Zigzagoon, Quick Attack on Treecko!”

Black gas spewed out of Koffing’s pores, obscuring it from view. Treecko braced himself, eyes trained on the smoke.

There was a slight rustle in the bushes behind Treecko, and a blurred shape shot out.

“Look out!” Zack yelled.

Zigzagoon knocked Treecko off-balance, though Treecko managed to dislodge it with a Pound. Soon the two were engaged in a high-speed Quick Attack fight.

Meanwhile, Milo and Diogee were trying to locate Koffing inside all the black haze with no luck.

Ignacio smirked. “Use Sludge!”

“Diogee, watch out!” Milo warned, but it was too late. Diogee’s eyes were covered in an inky material. Rearing back on his hind legs, Diogee unleashed several Cut attacks in random directions. One of them hit Koffing in the middle of its skull pattern, and another clipped Treecko’s tail. Zigzagoon emerged unscathed, though it panted heavily from exertion.  

A pile of splintered wood and apples crashed to the ground. There were some indignant squawks from bird Pokémon above, but none of them came down to disrupt the battle.

Zack snapped his fingers. “Use Mega Drain on Zigzagoon and get your strength back,” he said.

Zigzagoon was too dazed to follow Ignacio’s instructions to dodge, and a bright green glow lit up its body. The energy flowed into Treecko’s fingertips, rejuvenating him instantly.

“Great! Now grab those apples and stuff ‘em into Koffing’s pores!” Zack exclaimed.

Upon hearing his command, Melissa stuffed her unfinished scrapbook into her bag and hauled the businessman to his feet. “Zack, you do realize-“

Zack had a gleam in his eye.

“Uh, Melissa, I think your battle style’s rubbing off on him,” Milo said awkwardly.

Treecko grabbed a handful of apples and weaved around Koffing, easily outmaneuvering the Poison-type. Within minutes, Koffing’s pores were plugged, Treecko dusting his hands triumphantly.

“C’mon, blow those apples out!” Ignacio screeched.

Koffing groaned, eyes squeezed shut as it tried to blow the apples out. But Treecko had jammed them tightly, and only minuscule amounts of gas leaked into the air. With one last inhale, a glowing Koffing dropped into Treecko’s arms.

Treecko blinked for a moment, then tossed Koffing at Zack and hid behind Melissa, who backed away slowly.

“ACK!” Zack screamed and tossed the Poison-type at Milo.

“It’s using Self-Destruct!” Milo yelped, striking Koffing with a two-handed serve that would’ve made a professional volleyball player proud.

The Koffing landed in the businessman’s arms. The man paled immediately. “GlorytoArceusinthehighest,” he muttered a prayer rapidly in some ancient language Milo wasn’t even sure existed in their dimension.

“Quit being a baby!” Melissa snapped, yanking Koffing out of his arms and hurling it at Ignacio’s face.

But since Melissa was Melissa, she only managed to toss it one foot.

Koffing unceremoniously fell to the ground, its glow almost blinding.

“Diogee, follow my voice!” Milo yelled, grabbing Diogee’s horn once he was close enough and guiding him out of the blast radius.

“COWARDS!” Ignacio shook his fist as everyone fled the immediate vicinity. “WE IN TEAM MAGMA ALWAYS STAND OUR GROUND! FOR WE ARE PILLARS OF HUMANITY, UNYIELDING IN RESOLVE AND PUTTING OUR FOOT DOWN ON ALL MATTERS AND CRUSHING THOSE WHO OPPOSE US!”

“We should put him and Patchy in a room together,” Melissa remarked. “Who needs primetime television when you’ve got them?”

“You might want to reconsider your foot position,” Milo called to Ignacio.

Ignacio glanced down, his eyes widening to comical proportions.

“Well, crud.”

Koffing exploded in a glorious blaze of white light.

“Don’t worry,” Melissa told the trembling businessman, who seemed convinced that he would be arrested for environmental disturbances and manslaughter. “It’s just his pride that didn’t survive.”

AN: Ghost of Maiden’s Peak took place in Kanto, not Johto, but they share the same landmass so what the hey.

Using Koffing as a beach ball is ill-advised.

And now Team Magma is on the scene! Things are picking up!

[loki-in-hogwarts]

So confident part 2 : PeterSolo-PrincessY/n

part 1 part 3 part 4 

Peter Parker x reader

Warnings : swearing and mention of (small) injuries and blood.

A/N : It took me so long to publish it here, I first did it here, but I hope you will enjoy just as much !

Word count : 4K oops

Peter arrived at school actually tired of last night. He had woke up in his bedroom only remembering that you were all gone home very late. He entered the great hall and headed straight to his locker. There he found Ned and MJ speaking together and then displaying their biggest and fakest smile when they saw him. "Heyyyyy Pete !", greeted Ned. MJ was smiling mischievously. "What is all the whispering about ?", Peter asked suspicious. "Nothing !", they both answered at the same time. "Have you checked your Instagram ?", MJ asked with a fraudulent smile. Peter immediately took off his phone from his pocket. While he was waiting for it to turn on, he rose his head and muttered : "What have you both done ?", receiving giggles as an answer. There were in fact a lot of Instagram notifications and he saw likes and comments such as cuties ❤, my eyes are bleeding, it is too pure and even wait...are they dating ?. He sighed before opening the photo and totally freaked out seeing it. "Oh my god ! What got into our heads ? Y/n will think I'm a weirdo now, what the hell ? When did you even take that ?" The two were laughing to hard to answer. Eventually Ned said : "Last night, you were literally in each other arms and we took some pictures..." "Looots of pictures.", MJ interrupted. "...We thought it was too cute to keep it for us and decided to share with the world !" "It's pretty generous of ourselves if you want my opinion...", MJ added. Poor Peter was living a nightmare. "On my account ? How did you even find the password ?", he exclaimed exasperated. "Ooooh come on Peter ! You literally chose PeterSolo-PrincessY/n as a password ! You think I never saw you drawing little sketches of yourself and y/n as Han Solo and Leia during the lessons ?" Peter cheeks turned as red as a lobster and he jumped on Ned to close his mouth with his hands. "Can you not yell that please ? It's humiliating enough ! I have to delete this right now !", he added just as a quick MJ stole his phone from his hands. "Certainly not !" "But y/n is gonna see that !", he cried. "Exactly !", they answered in unison. "Fuck, fuck, fuck ! Give me my phone back !", he said as MJ was holding it as high as possible and Ned placed himself between her and Peter to protect it. "Language young man !", MJ said reproachfully. "Ooooh look who just liked your photo ! Y/n !", she added as she was staring at the phone. "Oh no, let me see !", he declared as he was trying to get the phone, the other two fighting back.

You were on your way to school, completely exhausted. You needed your nine hours beauty sleep to start well the day, and let just say that you didn't have them, at all. You turned on your phone and placed it in your pocket. You were peacefully entering the school, when you saw a notification on your phone. Peter identified you on a photo. You furrowed your eyebrows, not knowing what photo he could have possibly had identified you on, knowing you never took a photo together. You nearly choked when you saw it. You were sleeping, all curled up in his arms and he had his hand laced with yours. You quickly checked the comments and your heart started to beat really fast. You raced to his locker and stoped to calm down before turning the corner that was leading to Peter's locker. When you arrived, you saw MJ and Ned trying to prevent Peter from taking his phone. You blinded and then cleared your throat, causing them to stop what they were doing and smile innocently. "What is all the fuss about ?", you asked non chalantly, guessing that it was probably a stroke of MJ and Ned. "Hi y/n !", the two answered while Peter was blushing and staring at the ground as if the dust was the most interesting thing he ever saw. You were about to ask for the photo, when a deep voice coming from behind you yelled your name. "Hello y/n !" Flash was standing there, with a face full of bruises and a big smile. He took your chin to get a closer look at the bruise he made. "Oooh, that must have hurt like a bitch", he mocked. You took his wrist and turned it to hurt him. "What have I told you ?", you asked cringing. "What you gonna do now that your Spider boy isn't here to save you ?", he mumbled while you were still holding his wrist. "Didn't I..." Peter started before noticing he was about to reveal himself. "Didn't Spider-man kick off enough your ass yesterday Flash ?" "Oh come on Penis Parker, at least your girlfriend knows how to fight, leave us be.", taunted Flash.

That was enough for Peter to throw him a good punch in the face, making Flash stumble and take his chin. Everyone was staring blankly. He then lunged at him and they started to fight in the hallways. It drew the students attention that were forming a circle around them.

You were yelling at Peter to stop but he wasn't listening. He was clearly giving Flash a hard time, dodging most of his punches and and hitting him strong. Finally Peter gave him a punch that made him fall on the ground. Teachers eventually arrived, attracted by the screams. They made everyone go to there respective lessons. You kneeled to Peter who was resting his back on the lockers. "Are you alright ?", you asked, helping him to get up thanks to MJ and Ned. His nose was bleeding and he had a black eye but nothing too severe. You turned to Flash and whispered to his ear : "That must have hurt like a bitch." before going back to Peter and leading him to the nursery, leaving Flash bleeding on the floor.

After having dropped Peter at the nursery, you went to your class and you waited for 10 minutes to tell the teacher you weren't feeling well and asked him if you could go to the nursery. The teacher, upset that you were bothering his lesson just made the sign to leave the class as a confirmation. You waited no more and once in the corridors you rushed to the nursery. The nurse, who was an old unpleasant woman, recognized you and seemed suspicious. You told her that you were on your periods and that your stomach hurt a lot and asked her to stay in the next room, reserved to people in need to rest, where you know Peter would be. She rose an eyebrow but agreed and opened you the door and closed it behind you. The room was dark, there were 5 beds, next to one another. On one them you saw Peter that was sleeping. You just laid on the one next to him, not wanting to wake him up but you heard a small : "Y/n, is that you ?" You answered with a nod, even though it was too dark to distinguish it. "Yes Pete." "What are you doing here ?" "I wanted to make sure you were fine...", you began before being interrupted by the teenage boy. "Y/n are you serious ? You shouldn't worry about me !", he declared. "...and I wanted to skip M. Shwart class. What do you think ? You're not my entire world, Peter Parker !", you laughed teasing him. He groaned something and you added : "Though that was very brave and kind to stand up for me." You squeezed his hand. His smile was as large as the circumference of the earth and it seemed to you that lighted the dark room. "Who would have thought you needed a knight in armor ?", he mocked. "Who have thought Peter Parker would be such a good knight in armor ?", she imitated him. "Not to be mean or anything but I was kind of surprised when I saw that fight. Are you hiding some nice abs behind those XL hoodies, Mister Parker ?", you asked with a kinky look. Peter was thanking the Gods of above that there were no lights except the one that filtered from behind the closed stores, otherwise you would have seen the cheeks of the poor boy becoming very red. "Y-you wish you could see them !", he muttered. You both laughed at that ridiculous answer. "Peter, one day I will teach you how to properly hit on people !", you giggled. "That would be lovely y/n." You laughed again and noticed that you were on your knees at his bed. You got up and laid on your bed. You felt Peter's hand reaching out for yours and you smiled, extending your arm to give him your hand more easily.

Peter was awaken by the nurse entering the room, an our later. "Miss y/l/n ! It's time for you to go back to your lesson !" You stretched and got up. Squeezing one last time his hand, you said goodbye to the sweet boy. The nurse escorted you to the door and you greeted her with a smile. "I hope your stomachache is better, y/n", she said with a knowing smile.

You headed back to your next lesson with a sigh.

Hours later, after having eaten in company of MJ, y/n and Ned, Peter got to his lessons of the afternoon normally. The only exception of the routine was when he was in French lesson with you and the headmaster himself entered the class telling him that he will have to come to his office after the lessons tonight. Peter tried to argument that he had a test for tomorrow and that he needed some time to study and the headmaster agreed and left. He was sitting at the back and you were right in the front. You turned to look at him with a worried look and he smiled to reassure you.

At the end of the day you split up to go to your respective house. Ned and Peter walked to his apartment where May was waiting for Peter anxious. "Peter, what happened ? I received a call from your headmaster that you got into a fight ! Oh my god, your face !", she screamed noticing his bruises. "Don't worry Aunt May, it's just Flash again...", he muttered. "Yeah but this time it wasn't to defend yourself, was it Peter ?", Ned said with a knowing look. "What ?", asked Aunt May. "He stood up for y/n !" Peter glared at him and nodded. "Well if that's for y/n... I guess I will spare you the lecture ?" "What is this supposed to mean ?", Peter exclaimed a little upset. "Don't think you will escape the punishment, though !", Aunt May added, half smiling. "If I had none that to get out of trouble I should have done it for a girl, I would have invented the excuse sooner.", muttered Peter before heading to his bedroom soon followed by Ned laughing.

The guys have had studied for the test of tomorrow for an hour now when they decided to do something else. "Can you help me with my literature ?", Peter questioned Ned. "Oh shit !", the teen sweared, "I landed my book of Literature to y/n and she didn't returne it ! My essay for tomorrow is in it !" Peter immediately took his Spider-man costume from the closet. "Hum, what are you doing mate ?" Ned asked puzzled. "I'm going to y/n's house to get it !" "This is probably the worst idea you've ever had ! Well, thinking it straight the one you had last month to set free all the rats of the lab was worst..." "But Ned, I couldn't let these poor animals being killed for science ! On top of that y/n kissed my cheek for doing it..." "Whatever man...Maybe it's not the worst, let's say it is the dumbest." "Do you want your essay or not ?", Peter asked annoyed. "That would be great but..." Peter was already out, and after less than 5 minutes, he was outside your window. Fortunately it was open and he got himself in. He started to look everywhere, in your backpack, your drawers, on your desk but just couldn't find it. He sighed, his hands on his hips when he heard yelling and the door of your bedroom opening...

What an arse ! You had just got into a fight with your elder brother. He wanted to take care of both the boy that hurt you and Peter, god knows why. While you wouldn't be against the idea of Flash being punched once again, you couldn't understand why he was against Peter. Thomas was lecturing on how Peter had a bad impact on you lately. What the hell ?! You opened your door and before closing it again you yelled : "You know what Thomas ? I think you're just jealous of Pete because you think you're not my favorite boy anymore ! And you know what, that's just childish !". You slammed the door. You were speaking to yourself. "What is wrong with him ? Peter is nothing but pure and sweet kindness to me ! That's unfair ! Humpff !" You were raging when you received a text. Checking your phone you saw it was Ned. >>Ned : Hey y/n ! Remember the book I gave you...Well, there is my essay due for tomorrow and I kind of need it to finish it... 😕 You exclaimed. "Oh shit !" >>Y/n : Sending it to you right away, sorry Ned !

When he had heard you opening the door, Peter had jumped on the ceiling and stood still hoping you wouldn't see him. He had listened to you getting mad to your brother and was very curious about the discussion and remembered to ask you tomorrow at school. He saw that Ned had texted you and he understood that he had no need to be there anymore. Problem was : how was he going to leave ? Suddenly, you put on some music and started dancing and singing. Peter recognized Don't Look Down of Martin Garrix. You were adorable, and your voice actually good enough to hit the high notes of the song. When you were raising your head to sing with all your heart you saw him on the ceiling and screamed. Peter screamed too and jumping to the floor, he rushed to you to cover your mouth with his hands. "What the hell ? How long have you been standing there ? How did you got in ? What are you doing there ? Oh my god, have you seen me dancing ?" "You've got pretty good moves !...No ?", he smiled as he was imitating your snake hips move. You frowned your eyebrows with a puzzled look and he stopped. You were waiting for him to justify himself and you asked : "Well ?" "I was here to...ask you out on a date !" "A what ?!", you exclaimed, stunned. What the hell are you thinking about Peter ?! "You want to go on a date with me ? Now ?" You looked to your clothes and saw that you were wearing your Harry Potter pajamas. "I mean if you want of course ! I kinda, hum, want to know you, y-you seem like a nice girl." He wanted to slap himself. "Weeeell, why not ?", you actually agreed. "Really ?", Spider-man exclaimed surprised. You nodded and added : "I just need to change into something more...suitable." "Yeah, of course !", he answered but without leaving the room. "That's cool because I know the greatest roof in New York to watch the city, it's beauti...", he was interrupted. "Although I'm sure you're the expert in New York roofs, I need to change, Spidey..." "Oh yeah right, haha, sorry, of course you need your privacy to change, it's not like...", he was stopped by you again. "Spidey !", you exclaimed making a gesture to show him to leave. "I-I'll be right back, I just have to make a call !" You sighed with a smile as he was opening the window and getting out.

Peter took out his phone and called Ned. "What the hell are you doing ?", Ned immediately picked up. "I sent a text to y/n, she gave me a photo, where are you ?" "OK, so don't freak out but I may have asked y/n out on a date, as Spider-man, and now that I'm saying this out loud it seems like the worst idea I've ever had. What have I done Ned ? Ned ?", Peter asked again as he was getting no answer. "YOU DID WHAT ?", Ned screamed through the phone, causing Peter to take it away from his ear. "Carefully buddy, my Spider earing !" "I'm sorry man but I don't know what to think, I can't chose if you're a genius or the stupidest guy to have ever lived and I'm honestly going for the last one !" "Thanks Ned, just what I needed...", Peter sighed. "Ok, ok, so you only have to be careful to not say anything linked with Peter." "Right, that doesn't seem too hard but knowing me..." "Take a deep breath and...try to enjoy ! You're going on a date with freaking y/n !" "I don't know how's that possible but I'll do my best..." "Oh and by the way, May went out to grab some things to the store." "Yeah, just, leave the keys under the doormat, ok ?" "Hey, hey captain ! Have fun !" He hung up and Peter sighed. Before reaching for your window, he threw a web on a bouquet of flowers from a opened window.

Peter knocked at your window and you opened, let him in. "Hey there, Juliet !", he said, handing you the flowers. "Where did you find these ?" "You wouldn't want to know..." You both laugh and he stared at you. "You-you look amazing ! How did you manage to get prepared so quickly ?" "Thanks Spidey !", you simply answered taking the flowers and giving him a kiss on the cheek. He flushed under his mask and was happy to wear it. "So, should we go ?", Spider-man weirdly asked. "Let me just grab my phone and...", you stopped as you saw a text from Ned and you giggled. "What's so funny ?", Spider-man questioned. "A friend called Ned told me that a friend called Peter put as a password PeterSolo-PrincessY/n !", you exclaimed, laughing. "Son of a...", Peter muttered. Ned did it on purpose, obviously. "What did you say ?", you asked. "I-I said, hum, what a nerd !", Spider-man stuttered, stressing on the last part as if he was making fun of Peter. "Hey ! Don't you dare mock my Pete ! I may seem like a nerd but he's the sweetest boy I've ever met and he must be protected at all costs !", you scolded him. Peter was speechless for a solid minute and he then asked : "Y-you surely like the boy, don't you ?" "I'm not sure dates are made to talk about other boys... Are they ?", you answered as you approached him. If you only knew..., Peter thought. "We may go.", you declared. "Hold on tight !", Spider-man exclaimed as you grabbed him and jumped in the air.

You screamed excitedly. That was incredible, as if you were flying. You hadn't noticed how much you liked this sensation last time, but God was it good ! Spider-man threw web after web, making a visit of New York skyscrapers until he reached a roof where, you must admit, there was the greatest view of New York you've ever had. "Wow.", you simply said. "Ta da ! Told you !" He sat on the edge and you looked underneath. "Hum, is this really safe ?", you questioned, suspicious. "We can sit here if you prefer.", he said pointing a place that you considered safe. "As long as it is not at the edge of a very high building..." You stood silent for a moment, admiring the breath taking view and then asked with a grin : "Do you do this often, asking girls you don't even know their name on dates ? By the way, I'm y/n in case you would be interested in knowing." Oops ! Spider-man stuttered : No, no, no, no ! Of course not !" "Oooh so I'm privileged !", you teased him. "You could say that... Believe it or not, you're the first I had the gut to ask out..." "Really ? So I must be truly special ! And here I thought you were a womaniser !" "You're oh so wrong." "Why didn't you ask anyone out ? I mean, unless you're very ugly under that mask, you must be the boy of every girl's dream.", you joked. "Well, there is this girl..." "Aaaah, I'm all ears !", you laughed. "But she's so perfect ! She is strong, intelligent, sweet...incredibly beautiful...", he detailed as he was staring you straight. "Wow, is Spider-man in love ? Why don't you make a move ?" He laughed. "She's too bad ass to be interested in a stupid boy like me." You choked. "Excuse me ? Are you Spider-man or what ?" "Pfff, the real courage is not the one we show during fights. And let me just say that I really lack it !", he laughed bitter. "I couldn't agree more, but still this girl is either completely blind or absolutely stupid if she doesn't like you back !", you exclaimed, sure of yourself. "If only she could hear you...", Spider-man sighed.

You talked for about an hour, telling him everything. And he got it, anything you would say, he would understand and agree. You eventually looked at your watch and saw that it was already 7 pm. You gasped and got up. "I should go !" "Alright Cinderella, I wouldn't want to turn back into a pumpkin", he joked and you laugh. You were standing awkwardly in front of each other, when you took action. Taking Spidey's mask and raising it to his nose, you grabbed his face with both hands and kissed deeply. When you realized what you were doing, you walked back. "I shouldn't have done it ! Oh my god ! I shouldn't have accepted at all. Why am I so stupid ?" "Y/n...", Peter began, putting his mask on, while he was breathless and completely dead. "Don't. Please. That's best for both of us. You have your mysterious and I have... Anyway. Take me home please." Peter was about to add something, but closed his mouth and grabbed you sweetly. "This may sound odd but...hold on tight."

He left you in your room, and you said coldly : "I'm sorry to say this, I truly am, but...forget everything about tonight, it didn't happen, alright ?" He nodded sadly. As he left, you jumped on your bed and grabbed your head. "What the fuck, y/n ? What the actual fuck y/n ?" Without thinking much, you grabbed a hoodie and your keys and left. You ignored your brother that was asking where you were going. You had to tell Peter, it couldn't continue this way, he had to know, and you to settle. As you were literally running to his apartment, you remembered  what just happened with Spider-man and shook your head to make the image disappear. On the door of the flat, you knocked and nobody answered. You were looking for a key somewhere and looked under the doormat. Bingo ! You turned the key in the door and entered. There wasn't a sound and you screamed from the living room to Pete's bedroom. "Pete, I kissed Spider-man but it doesn't mean anything because..." You heart stopped as you arrived in front of the open door of Peter's room.

When he left your house, Peter was swearing and insulting himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid ! How things could have gone worse ? When the hell did he imagine that they wouldn't go wrong ? He sighed. He wanted to break a wall. He was taking the road to his home, when he saw some weird guy trying to steal a car. He jumped on him, but right at this moment, five other men he hadn't seen took him. Surprised, he couldn't fight back at first. They were punching him, and one guys even took out a knife. He managed to stab him once, in the belly when a man saw them and screamed ; "Hey !" They all escaped and Spiderman got up as quick as possible to go back home.

He arrived minutes later, wounded and bleeding in his room. His ears were clogged and he wasn't seeing straight. It was already a miracle that he had managed to find his way home. He opened the window, taking off his mask and crawled on the floor. He succeeded at standing up and when he turned around to get the first aid kit he was keeping in his cupboard is case of emergency, he saw you, putting your hand on your heart.

A/N : So, so ! How is it ? Reviews are more than welcome and part 3 is on the way ! 

Particular thanks to Tessa, who is always helping me and supporting me. She was the one that found the Peter Solo, Princess Y/n thing and, let’s admit it, it’s fabulous !

Tags : @potus-megan @farfromjustordinary @double-leo (ilysm) @mnemosymedream

[jisungjuice]

Title: Mamka Mu

Ship: Ron x Blaise x Viktor

Words: 3k

@hptriadsnet all-male poly ships challenge

I want to dedicate this to @ff-sunset-oasis for giving me the idea of this fantastic ship <3

Ron let the newspaper fall to the floor and closed his eyes. It didn't make any difference, because the image he kept playing in his head like a three second movie on a loop, with the headline conveniently repeating itself in his ears.

Viktor Krum's Romantic Italian Getaway: Who is Blaise Zabini? Rita Skeeter Exclusive.

Ron groaned. He hated how much this affected him, it made him feel like a pathetic loser. Well actually, that newspaper was three weeks old, which meant that he was more like the king of pathetic losers.

Is not like Blaise was cheating on him. They had only been out a few times before he had to leave London on a 'business trip', and Ron apparently got unnecessarily attached to what was clearly just a fling. Just another fling. But it still hurt that Blaise hadn't said anything to him, and he could have considering it certainly looked like this wasn't his first time meeting Viktor Krum.

Ron knew that Blaise returned tonight and they had agreed to meet up as soon as that happened, per Ron's suggestion back before Blaise left. He had been so blissfully naive and smitten with the man that seeing him as soon as he came back had seemed like the best idea.

Right now though, he wasn't sure if he wanted to see Blaise or his ridiculously charming smile.

Before he could make up his mind, the floo lit up in green flames, sending Ron's heart into frenzy. He quickly picked up the newspaper and balled it in his hands before sending it flying under the sofa. He didn't need physical proof of his shameful moping.

"Hello," came a low voice from behind the momentary cloud of soot, and it literally sent shivers down Ron's spine.

"Hi." He stepped forward, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt.

Blaise walked into Ron's living room, wearing a brilliant button-down that fit him like a glove and those typical posh black trousers of his. But the Italian weather had obviously agreed with him, because he seemed to be glowing; skin darker and radiant and a fresh smile on his face.

Ron stood awkwardly waiting for Blaise to make the first move. For all he knew the man might have decided he didn't want anything to do with Ron anymore, not after being with Viktor bloody Krum.

Blaise looked confused at Ron's actions for a moment but then he strode forward and embraced Ron in a tight hug, his arms around Ron's neck. Ron wrapped his own arms around Blaise's middle and tried not to think about how wonderful he smelled, like his usual cologne mixed with the unmistakable scent of the beach.

They stood like that for a moment, just being close to each other as Ron willed himself to be strong and not fall in his trap so quickly again.

"I missed you," Blaise whispered in Ron's ear and then his hands trailed down to Ron's chest before he started kissing his neck and it all happened so quickly and smoothly that Ron could only gasp as a response, his head involuntarily falling back to allow Blaise more access to his skin. Like the first time they did this, Ron found it hard to think, let alone speak, because in all truthfulness he didn't think he cared enough about Blaise and Krum to put an end to...whatever this was with Blaise. He was more worried about what other people would think of him for going out with someone who was also going out with someone else; even Blaise himself might think less of Ron for allowing something like that.

Plus, he couldn't possibly compete with Viktor Krum.

Ron decided to worry more about that later, because right now all he could focus on was the way Blaise was pushing him back and heading straight for the sofa. Ron curled his hands around the fabric of Blaise's shirt and started pulling as well, refusing to let Blaise control the whole situation. When he felt the sofa on the back of his knees he boldly let his hands fall and grabbed Blaise's arse before sitting down and pulling him along so Blaise straddled him. Blaise inhaled sharply and held onto Ron's shoulders, looking at him with intense dark eyes.

They leaned in at the same time and kissed hungrily, as if they had never done this before, but Ron's body was reacting in a painfully familiar way to Blaise's touch and judging by the rapidly growing hardness between them, Blaise too remembered the taste of Ron's tongue.

But even as he was enjoying immensely having Blaise here, so willing and so completely his, Ron's brain wouldn't stop supplying the image of Blaise and Viktor together; both men shirtless sunbathing in a private beach, looking at each other over their sunglasses and their hands joined in a perfectly relaxed fashion.

Without really knowing what he was doing, Ron had unbuttoned Blaise's shirt and with a grunt he broke the kiss and started working on his collarbone, sinking his teeth in the firm flesh of Blaise's chest.

"Fuck," Blaise breathed out, burying his hands in Ron's hair. "I really fucking missed you, Weasley."

Ron stopped for a split second, because it was rare to hear Blaise speak so earnestly, without being intentionally charming. Plus, he called Ron 'Weasley' which he only did when they were getting hot and heavy.

He continued nipping and biting Blaise's chest, but his mind was somewhere else now. He wanted to say something, maybe tell Blaise he'd missed him too, or something less emotional and more sexy, but Ron felt distinguishable bad at being sexy. Viktor probably didn't have any problems being sexy. No wonder and and Blaise got along so well. The two of them must have had the most mind-blowing sex of their lives. He just wished he…

"Viktor," Ron heard himself whisper and then everything froze. He and Blaise stopped all they were doing and the air itself seemed to be standing still waiting for Ron to do something.

Ron felt himself get red everywhere and with a torturously slow movement, Blaise pulled back to look at him. Blown pupils stared at him with equal parts surprise and confusion.

"I-I didn't…" He couldn't even fathom how to explain this without coming off as a jealous prick. "I was just thinking that…"

"You read the article, didn't you?" Blaise asked him, his expression hardening a bit.

Ron nodded and Blaise sighed. "Look, I can explain-"

"No," Ron interrupted him. "You don't need to do that. I understand we're not...exclusive. I just think you could have maybe told me."

Blaise straightened up and for a moment Ron almost forgot the man was currently sitting on his lap because he looked professional and serious. "You're right. I wanted to tell you but...I thought you wouldn't want to continue with this."

"I don't mind. I mean, I think I don't." Ron ran a hand through his hair and huffed an uncomfortable laugh. "I mean shit...it's Viktor Krum. You're dating Viktor Krum."

"Is not really dating but...yeah." Blaise smiled a bit and then he leaned back down and started kissing Ron's jaw. "Thank you for being so cool about this. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before."

Ron felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders now that they had cleared the air. "You know, I used to have a big crush on him when I was younger."

Blaise pulled back again. "Really?"

Ron nodded. "It was when I realized I also liked blokes."

"He remembers you, you know?" Blaise said and his mouth formed a devious smirk. Ron's heart skipped a beat.

"Y-you talked about me?" Ron now imagined Viktor and Blaise in that beach and Ron's name fallking from Viktor's lips.

Blaise shrugged. "Only him, really. He doesn't know about us either. But he remembers you very well."

Ron could tell exactly what Blaise was going with this, and he was torn between laughing and being scared shitless. "You really need to be more honest with the people you're sleeping with."

"You're right and I will. And maybe I'll start this weekend when Viktor is coming to town for an event. You could come with me." Blaise trailed his fingers up and down Ron's chest and stomach.

Ron's insides seemed to burst into flames. If Blaise was suggesting what he thought he was suggesting…"That's...insane."

"So is this but yet here we are," Blaise said and then emphasized his point by grinding down on Ron and making him moan with embarrassing ease. "We don't have to if you don't want. I'm just telling you that Viktor definitely remembers you."

Ron pulled Blaise closer to him, their faces inches apart. "Are you being one hundred percent honest about this? Do you really think Viktor would be...interested?"

Blaise nodded and Ron kissed him and a thousand images flashed behind his eyes, each one more enticing than the next. He couldn't believe what he had just agreed to, and maybe he was the crazy one. But right now, he had a job to do.

.

The event that Viktor Krum had to attend was the opening of a new Quidditch store in downtown London, the biggest one in Europe yet. Blaise worked as an advisor to the company that opened the store, and Viktor would be the face of the brand for the next three years at least. Ron had never been among so many famous people before, besides Harry of course. Dozens of athletes, models, and reporters filled the premises, and yet he could only think about two people and one of them wasn't even famous.

During the first hour Blaise and Ron walked around mingling and chatting with people Blaise knew, most of which had heard of Ron in the past. It was an interesting experience, but as time ticked by Ron began getting more and more nervous, because he knew the moment to meet Viktor was approaching fast.

After a particularly annoying couple of reporters finally let them go, Blaise leaned into Ron's ear as casually as he could. "Look to your right."

Ron's stomach dropped to his feet and he gulped before turning his head to the right slowly. Viktor Krum was posing for a photo next to two beautiful women in high heels. It was strange not seeing him in Quidditch gear, but in a suit. Then again, Ron couldn't shake the image on Viktor in his bathing suit. He was smiling brightly to the camera, a full dark beard framing his perfectly white teeth. Ron bit his own tongue.

When he looked back, Blaise was staring at him with a predatory look that made Ron's knees go weak. "This is your last chance to back out, Weasley."

"When have I ever, Zabini?"

Blaise smirked and led the way towards Viktor, who was now posing next to different women. Viktor noticed Blaise approaching and broke into a far more genuine smile before looking back at the camera man. "Can ve continue later? Thank you."

The women left, looking rather sour was they watched Viktor embrace Blaise in a hug. "Thank god you're here, I vas getting very bored."

Ron stood behind Blaise, giving them their space and also not really knowing what to do. What would they tell Viktor? Is not like they could straight up tell him that Blaise and Ron were also seeing each other and then go from there.

Viktor and Blaise separated and Blaise stepped to the side. "Viktor, I'm sure you remember Ron. He's my date."

Ron almost choked on his own saliva at Blaise's lack of subtlety, but thankfully he managed to compose himself enough to offer Viktor his hand and smile politely.

"Yes, Ron Veasley!" Viktor exclaimed as he shook Ron's hand with a lot of force. "How are you?"

"I'm good, thank you. How about you?" Ron had no idea what he felt the need to be so polite and formal with someone he had technically met before more than once.

"I'm great!" Viktor turned to Blaise. "So he's your date?"

Blaise nodded. "We've been going out for a while now. Sorry I didn't tell you before, but I wanted you both to meet today."

Viktor smiled and Ron thought he might have blushed slightly under his beard. "That's okay. But ve already know each other, right Ron?"

Ron nodded perhaps too much. "Yes. Sure."

Viktor looked around the room with a bit of distaste. "I think I've spent enough time here already. Ve should go get a drink."

Blaise's hand found its way to Ron's back and Ron almost jumped, not expecting him to be so physical right then. "That sounds great."

They found a pub a few blocks down, in a street so questionable that no reporters would be found wandering there. Viktor removed everything but his button down shirt, and even then he seemed to be uncomfortable with the clothes.

"I don't like how fancy these events are," he said once they sat down with drinks. "I vish ve could have them in a place like this and be more relaxed about it."

As Ron learnt during the evening, Viktor seemed to be relaxed about everything. He had a million responsibilities as a celebrity athlete, but all he really wanted to do was play Quidditch and have fun.

"You should have told me you knew Ron," Viktor told Blaise and then turned to look at Ron. "I vas telling Blaise last week about Fleur's vedding. Do you remember that?"

"Of course, it was at my house," Ron laughed, feeling the alcohol giving him courage and staring into Viktor's dark eyes. He thought of Blaise. "That was the last time I saw you."

Viktor sipped his drink and nodded. "And now you're dating Blaise. That is vonderful!"

Blaise laughed his usual charming laughter and Ron saw as he swiftly placed his hand on Viktor's knee as if it wasn't a big deal. "We're not exactly dating yet. We've been out a few times, like you and me."

Ron's heart beat frantically as he waited for Viktor's reaction. The man smiled nicely, almost sweetly. "Ve had some good times, yes."

Ron was also learning that Viktor Krum was completely clueless.

Blaise cleared his throat and gave Ron a side look that felt strangely intimate before he looked back at Viktor. "Yes. So, are you seeing anyone right now, Viktor?"

Viktor shook his head. "No, not right now."

"And would you like to?" Ron was very surprised when he heard himself ask the question instead of Blaise. He had also moved his hand in the table so it was right next to Viktor's. He must have been drunker than he thought.

Both Blaise and Viktor looked at him with different degrees of shocked. Blaise looked like he wanted to launch himself over Ron, which made Ron feel more confident. And Viktor seemed to be doing some very hard dot-connecting in his head which eventually left him gaping like a fish out of water. He looked down at Ron's hand and then at Blaise's still on his knee.

"Mamka mu," he whispered mostly to himself and in such a thick accent that it made Ron discover that he was attracted to foreign accents. He wondered if Blaise could speak Italian.

Before Ron would even ask what he'd said, Blaise spoke. "He said the equivalent of 'fucking hell'."

Ron frowned. "You speak Bulgarian?"

Blaise shrugged one shoulder. "More like I know how to curse in many languages. I don't want anyone insulting me without my knowledge."

Ron stored that important information for later use.

Viktor still looked shocked. "You vant to have a threesome?"

Ron's face immediately flushed with colour. Having it spelled out like that was both exciting and embarrassing, especially because he was certain the old man on the next table heard.

"We want to know if you'd be interested in going on a date with us," Blaise explained calmly.

Viktor suddenly laughed and the sound was rich and thick like the rest of him. "You're very diplomatic, Blaise. And I'm sure this vas your idea, right?" He looked at Ron for confirmation. Ron nodded and smiled.

"Well, is not my fault two people I like happen to like me back and also like each other." Blaise looked from Viktor to Ron pointedly and Ron couldn't help but glance at Viktor, who was already glancing back. "This kind of thing doesn't happen often and I'd be a fool not to take advantage of it. And not to mention that we are a war hero, international Quidditch star, and wealthy businessman, if this thing works out," he waved a hand between the three of them. "We could rule the fucking world."

Ron didn't know about Viktor, but Blaise's words made him feel like he was on a rollercoaster and he didn't even know which emotion to focus on.

"Vorks out?" Viktor asked and Blaise seemed slightly taken aback. It was the first time Ron saw him like that.

"I mean…" Blaise trailed off. "I mean if we…"

"If we decide we want to do more than just fuck," Ron supplied because seeing Blaise struggle to find words was more distressing than actually saying it himself, even if his cheeks were burning.

Again, Blaise looked as if he wanted to jump on Ron, but this time Viktor wasn't surprised, he merely grinned and looked into Ron's eyes like he had never done before; with a weakening combination of fondness and lust.

"But…" Ron hated to ruin the wonderful tension that had settled between them at his words. "What if it doesn't work out?"

Blaise shrugged. "Then we all had the best sex of our lives. I've already slept with both of you and I can only assume that our talents will multiply when combined."

Ron rolled his eyes but still smiled. "That's so romantic."

Blaise smirked and for a moment they shared another strangely intimate look before more rich laughter made them focus on Viktor again.

"You two are very good together," he said while grabbing both Ron's and Viktor's hands in his. He was very warm. "I hope I'm the right fit too."

Ron had a feeling that he would be.

[whereintheworldisbella]

Spelunking in Russia

-- Disclaimer -- This story is from summer 2014. I wrote the beginning shortly after it happened, and never penned the rest until just now, six years later. So sadly I can’t remember a lot of the small details, but I try to recount the story to the best of my recollection. Here goes nothing...

Hi all, sorry it's been so long since my last post, but I promise this story's worth the wait.

So last week was the final week for the students on the 4-week program. To celebrate, we all went to a bar on Friday night and I tried a vodka milkshake.  I'm not sure if I liked it..I think I would have preferred just the milkshake.

Then I walked home with some friends and was finally out late enough that I got to see the city "at night" - I say this in quotes because at 1 or 2 AM the sky still wasn't completely dark. St. Petersburg at night is absolutely beautiful.

When Marie and I got home (Marie is the other student who lives with the same host family as I do), we went into the kitchen for water and a snack. Alexey, the father of the 3 small girls who all live with us, comes into the kitchen and prepares himself a meal (remember, this is about 2, 2:30 in the morning). He starts talking to us pretty quickly (well, normally I guess, but to us it seems fast) and we nod along, even though we don't understand what he's saying.

Then his father-in-law, Sasha (a diminutive for Alexander), comes into the kitchen and asks us if we understand. We admit that we don't and he gets annoyed that we didn't say anything, but to be honest it's late and we're pretty tired. Sasha explains that Alexey and Julia (his wife) met in a cave. "Ahhhh" we say, as if that explains the entire 5 minutes of talking we just heard. Then Alexey, speaking slower, goes on to explain something to us. All I am able to distinguish is: "forest," "photographs," "festival," "you will get dirty." He asks us if we want to come with him. Marie passes but I, feeling adventurous, say I would like to.

The next day (well, technically later on the same day), on Saturday, I finish my homework and wait for Alexey to return. **Now writing in retrospect, 6 years later, based off memory.** I’m clad out in a new pair of hiking pants and some sneakers. When Alexey returns he looks at me and asks if that’s what I’m going in, because it looks too nice to get dirty. I feel self-conscious and say it’s fine. He packs some bags and we head down the old staircase to his old jeep and take off.

The car ride is bumpy to say the least. As a typical driver in St. Petersburg, Alexey zooms in and out of traffic in his very used, very noisy jeep, the safety of which is questionable. At one point the car stalls. Russian music plays on the radio as this stranger that I’ve known all but a few interactions drives me toward the outskirts of the city and beyond, out into the country where the roads are narrow, without shoulders. Since he doesn’t speak English and I barely know Russian, we don’t hold a conversation.

After about 45 minutes or an hour, he pulls over the car and informs me that we’ve arrived. I look around. All I see are fields and forests. Still, I’ve been to a huge music festival in Denmark before that’s held in the middle of farms, so I go with it. I get out the car to help him unload the trunk but he just changes shoes and says to get back into the car, that he’ll go another way. Confused, I get back into the car and Alexey starts driving off the road and into the forest. There’s no road, but Alexey weaves between trees, as he did in traffic, the car bouncing so violently that I picture the screws falling out and the whole car just going to pieces.

By this point, I start to get a little worried. Why did this man take me out to the middle of nowhere? Surely I can’t be in any danger because the school program know him, right? I mean, they are letting me live with him and his family. Yet I can’t help wondering…

Then he stops suddenly - trees are blocking the way. He backs up, driving just as fast in reverse as he was going forward, weaving through the trees backward. Stops. Forward again. Then we’re there, and I see a bonfire and some tents. Relief washes over me. We set up a small orange 2-person tent a bit away from the others and Alexey tells me to follow him through the woods. Despite the signs of other people, I don’t see anyone.

We leave our stuff in the tent and walk a few minutes until we get to a crater in the ground with a small hole at the bottom, like a tunnel. We’re close to the roadway - I hear a truck go by. Alexey starts speaking quickly in Russian. He hands me a flashlight, motions to the tunnel in the crater and says “You go first.”

I’m starting to suspect that there’s no music festival, after all.

I climb down, turn the flashlight on, and enter the cave. Alexey follows behind me. The space is small, dark, and damp, and every time a truck passes on the road the earth trembles. Alexey motions for me to follow and we venture further into the cave, at some points squeezing through narrow spaces to get into the next “room.” I feel extremely claustrophobic. Some water drips on my head, or is it slime from bats? I don’t like caves one bit, I conclude.

Alexey starts speaking to me. I think he’s explaining different types of rocks, but I have no clue what he’s saying. I try asking what the caves are used for. I think he mentions something about bunkers in the wartime. Makes sense, I think.

Then, much to my relief, Alexey motions back to the single entrance and we exit the cave. Nearby is another crater - in fact, they’re everywhere. Now I hear voices. We enter another hole and it’s like some sort of art exhibit, or the private meeting place of a secret society. Candles are lit, figures are drawn on the cave walls, and a small group of Russian boys and men are drinking and talking in the cave. Alexey greets them and introduces me.

I’m embarrassed when he says I’m American and they all are suddenly fascinated. They start asking me questions, practicing their broken english, and laughing. I have a sinking feeling that they’re laughing at me and slinging some insults. I try my best to respond, and not feel self-conscious. I spout my rehearsed intro about myself and why I’m in Russia - to learn the language because I think it’s a pretty language. They offer me alcohol but I decline.

When we get outside, we head to the tents, where others have now gathered, among them women and children. I start speaking with them and we eat dinner (I think some sort of hot dogs and beans? Though I can’t say I remember). We talk about Russian novels, and poems, and music. I’m embarrassed that I don’t know more but they’re impressed with what I do know, and I feel a bond. Vodka is passed around. Then someone breaks out their guitar and the whole camp - about 10 of us maybe - starts singing together.

We stay that way for a while, until the sun finally disappears and night falls. I get to know a young mother (Irina) and her young son, and another girl from Moscow, Natasha, who’s about my age (I will go on to visit them each again, twice, during my stay in Russia. I’m still friends with them on Facebook and Vkontaktya).

I feel much more at ease now that I have made some female friends. Then someone picks up a shovel, yells “Davai!”, and heads off into the darkness. Everyone follows with flashlights, still singing and strumming the guitar. We get to another crater and two men jump in and start shoveling, one of them now shirtless. The music continues and the shovelers swap out. I think they’re trying to find an entrance to another cave. (I don’t remember if they actually did, but I don’t think so.)

It seems like hours pass like this before people start heading back to camp for bed. It was starting to get light again, but because it was summer (white nights), it was still the middle of the night. Alexey and I made our way to the small, orange tent and, exhausted, fell asleep. I slept in my clothes, next to my host-brother, and though we each had our own sleeping bag, I felt quite weird about the situation. Anyway, he snored, and the next thing I knew it was morning.

We ate some kasha or bagels and cheese (I think) for breakfast and packed up. I guess the cave exploring was over (thank God). I swapped telephone numbers with Irina and Natasha, and made plans to go to the beach along the Baltic with them later that day. Then Alexey and I drove back home.

The beach we went to was close to Irina’s dacha, out in the country. We had to take a train and then stand on a hot and overcrowded marshutka to get there. Many locals spent their summers at their dachas, or traveled there on weekends, which was the case for my host-family. On the train I could see travelers hauling bags of freshly picked mushrooms and berries from the countryside back into the city.

By this point, my Russian improved a lot and I was able to have pretty meaningful conversations with Irina and Natasha about the differences between the US and Russia, especially around finances. Sadly, Natasha had to return to Moscow the next day, and although we met up when I visited Moscow one weekend with the school program, we haven’t kept in touch. I feel like we would have become friends if she lived in St. Petersburg.

Irina did live in St. Petersburg, in the outskirts, and I did visit her for dinner one evening. Because I was super late, I didn’t have time to buy any food or housewarming gift. I know is considered rude to show up empty-handed, and I tried to explain that I didn’t want to be more late than I was already, and apologized many times, but honestly I was too embarrassed to hold close contact with her after.

Overall, spelunking in Russia was the craziest thing I did there. I was uncomfortable the entire time, but I’m so glad I impulsively decided to go. I can’t say that anything tangible came out of if (lasting friendships, hard skills, or even photos because I was too nervous to take any), but this memory sure does make for one hell of a story, and I’ll never forget it.

[jmsebastian]

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Polygon Faces

Sometimes we just have to be honest with ourselves. There is an undeniable charm to many games from the early 3D era. While often unrefined, a style developed that now breeds nostalgia in the way blocky, squat pixel mascots did in a generation prior. Pushing polygons rather than sprites was a new art form, and not many had a clear vision as to how it should go. Many made the push toward photo realism, and in doing so, ended up drowning us in a new surreal, a limbo of concrete and abstract representation. I have a deep fondness for the 32/64 bit generation because it gave way to a new visual language for video games, but like I said before, we have to be honest with ourselves. Sometimes the language being spoken with those ground breaking graphics was unintelligible. Sometimes the results were downright unsettling.

Let’s start with this police officer from Parasite Eve II.

All things considered, this police officer really doesn’t look too bad. He’s got some nice shading and some real definition to his features. This being a 1999 release, it’s pretty clear that Squaresoft had made some real improvements over their earlier forays into 3D gaming:

(Ahem.)

The problem with the officer isn't so much in the level of detail, but really the content of those details, specifically his eyes. With Aya approaching him, his gaze seems to be aimed at nowhere in particular. Given that this game features no voice acting, it isn’t really odd that he would have a neutral expression, but neutral is not really an appropriate description. He looks eerily absent, as unresponsive as a mannequin. Compare that to the beautiful pre-rendered cutscenes that pepper the game and you have yourself quite the disconnect.

Obviously, no Playstation game is going to be rendering characters that look as good as that on the fly, but even compared to Aya’s in game face, the officer looks odd.

This closeup reveals a hint of determination, but also a sense of calm, similar to how she was characterized in the cutscene above. The officer, on the other hand, looks as though he’s never experienced stimulus of any kind.

(There’s just nothing going on in there.)

Parasite Eve II is one of the more technically impressive Playstation games, and as such, its crimes against humanity barely even register. There are modern games that can’t get characters to emote, and their faces can actually move. By that measurement, Officer No Soul is a crowning achievement. Let’s take a look at a game in the same genre and released the same year. Capcom’s Dino Crisis featured a female protagonist, Regina, with the same kind of gun totin’ sex appeal that Aya Brea brought to Squaresoft’s character lineup. For reference, when we thought about Regina, this is what Capcom would have preferred we have in mind:

The unnaturally red hair seems geared at portraying Regina as a fiery, adventurous type. Her look is pointedly alluring, which doesn’t complement the theme of the game in any way, shape or form, but was par for the course after the debut of Lara Croft. Let’s see how well this dinosaur murdering seductress translated into the actual game.

(Oh, god!)

The “come hither” look from the cover seems to have melted like a wax figure. Similar to the officer from Parasite Eve II, Regina lacks any meaningful expression on her face. The texture mapping is slightly misaligned as well, making it so her lips appear to be sliding off to the side of her mouth. What’s most disappointing has to be the way her hair is rendered. This was long before things like cloth physics or individually animated feather blowing in the breeze. I’m empathetic to the constraints of the platform, but I can’t help but feel discontent when I’m teased with distinguished hair strands and am instead given a rust colored crescent moon with some highlights capping her skull.

By 1999, the Playstation had been on the market in Japan for five years. Dino Crisis and Parasite Eve II were games developed and published by big players in the industry. While it’s all well and good to poke fun at their badness now, they were still among the most advanced graphics that could be achieved on the platform. While looking quite dated by the dawn of Sega’s Dreamcast, in the same year as these releases, they managed to hold their own. Results from games much earlier in the system’s library tell a very different tale.

This is from King’s Field, released in North America in 1995. You may have noticed that this man here has no face. There’s an extra polygon showing for his nose, but other than that, we are just staring into the void. Bad faces are unsettling, sure, but no faces is the stuff of nightmares. This game is technically the second in the King’s Field series. The first game, confusingly also just called King’s Field in Japan, released early on in the Playstation’s life, December of 1994.

While many of the established studios were busy mixing pre-rendered backgrounds with polygonal character models in order to maximize the amount of detail they could squeeze out of each scene, From Software decided to go all in on 3D right from the beginning. Nearly everything in this game is built using polygons. Even more impressive, the game continuously streams data from the disc, meaning load times are practically nonexistent once play begins. In order to accomplish that, corners had to be cut. A lot of those corners were in the details department. Most objects are made of simple shapes with little or no texturing. Edges are sharp in a way that feels unnatural. This extends to every face in the game, and is the biggest barrier to buying into the game’s world.

There is something inherently unpleasant about holding conversations with people sans mouth. It was bad enough when characters couldn’t move their lips, but to not have a visual reference for where the speech is supposed to be produced from puts the player in a tough spot. On the one hand, there is plenty of space for the player’s imagination to take over. They can create any character they want due to the faces being literal blank slates. On the other hand, of course, the inability to visually relay more detailed information about its characters through facial expressions means King’s Field has to work harder at the language that’s used when NPCs communicate directly with the player. Overall, the trade off of having a large, fully 3D world at the expense of detail was risky. Given what we know about texture mapping in the ‘90s, I’d say From Software made the right call, even though it meant talking to no faced monstrosities.

I wanted to point out a few bad examples of polygonal faces in order to demonstrate that some games took a completely different approach to the whole 3D thing: mainly, they tried to maximize their capacity to convey information visually by only including the most vital information. In Mega Man Legends, the characters are incredibly blocky. The basic shapes and sharp edges make it so that it looks as though everything was a paper cutout. When looking straight on at a character’s face, all you see is a flat surface with everything simply drawn on top of it. It may not be the most technically impressive, but it allows for a great deal more emotion. Mega Man expresses more with his face in one scene than any of the previously mentioned character do throughout their entire adventures.

Here, Mega Man shows some clear confusion. The simple frown and solid coloring gives him a great deal of personality.

In this shot, Mega Man’s sense of fulfillment is very clear, and all it took was a different mouth texture over the same facial structure. Sure, he doesn’t have the lips and his hair looks poised to pop any balloons that might be floating by, but the anime style art design allows for visual storytelling in a way that many early 3D games just couldn’t pull off.

Another great benefit to Mega Man Legend’s art style is that it has prevented the game from appearing as old as many of its contemporaries. Dino Crisis may have looked really good when it came out in 1999, but when magnified and displayed at resolutions above those that would have been possible on TVs of the time, it’s very obvious what era of video games it was made in. Games with pre-rendered backgrounds look especially bad at higher resolutions because character models and the environments don’t scale together. A character might upres quite well, but then clash horrifically against the blurry, pixelated mess of a backdrop. For anyone playing on the original hardware hooked up to a television of the era, these issues are lessened, or even non-existent thanks to the resolutions and adaptability of CRT technology. When played by more modern means, say on a Playstation 3 via the Playstation Store connected to a nice LCD screen, you can get some very unfortunate results.

Mega Man Legends’ visuals may not hold up perfectly in the modern era, but they can be blown up significantly and still maintain most of their quality. The techniques of simplifying visuals would pay off big for Nintendo just a few years later with The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for Gamecube. Basic shapes combined with newly developed cell shading techniques allowed the game’s visuals to be expressive in ways even modern games struggle to match. When played at modern resolutions, The Wind Waker hardly skips a beat.

(That is a look of some serious, and easily distinguishable distaste.)

The increased processing capabilities of the Gamecube meant that visuals for its games would automatically outpace the Playstation, but visual techniques pioneered on that platform gave 3D games a way to circumvent the inherent limitations of the era and technology available to them so that they would have lasting power. It’s important for games to push the boundaries when it comes to visuals, and a cartoonish style certainly isn’t appropriate for every title, but I can’t help but wonder how many times this cycle will repeat. Games developed for the Playstation 3 are already starting to show significant visual age when compared to the newest released on PC, so much so that I almost prefer the abstract horror of bad face texture mapping to settling in the uncanny valley. Graphical fidelity never felt as important as artistic design, a reality that feels more true now probably than ever before.

[torentialtribute]

Ian Poulter finds his Ryder Cup passion at Augusta on Masters Day Two

One of the most unusual Masters traditions is the need to play a round of golf with an Augusta National member upon arrival.

It gives players the chance to meet a wide range of 80-year-old, white, rich, Republicans .

Ian Poulter played his 18 holes with Lou Holtz, in many ways the stereotype Augusta member. Holtz is white, 82, an active Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump the fervent opponent of Colin Kaepernick & # 39; s protest against the knee in the NFL and a regular at Fox News. Ian Poulter has held his courage to keep the Masters in battle with America & # 39; s best "

In 2006 he had to apologize for calling. ]

What distinguishes Holtz from many of his fellow members, however, is a background in top sport. Holtz was also a very successful football coach at the college and later a colorful analyst of the game.

He is famous for his motivational speeches and spicy words of encouragement. & # 39; No one has ever drowned in sweat & # 39 ;, Holtz said.

And when they played, Holtz detected a player in Poulter who needed a pep talk. So I delivered one. I thought Poulter didn't think he could win in Augusta. Poulter is known for his Ryder Cup performances, but less when it comes to majors "

<img id =" i-f489f658a41ad11 "src =" https: //i.dailymail. co.uk/1s/2019/04/12/20/12206370-0-image-a-40_1555096153436.jpg "height =" 423 "width =" 634 "alt ="] Poulter is known for its Ryder Cup performance, but less when it comes to majors "

Poulter is known for his Ryder Cup performances, but less when it comes to majors comes to majors

Holtz begged to be And by the time Poulter left the 13th green as the outright leader six under par, a few people did too. & # 39; If what you did yesterday seems great, you haven't done anything today. & # 39;

Poulter did great things at the Masters on Thursday and got big again on Friday, not as spectacular as his round of 68 but enough to stay around the top of a leaderboard populated by the best American and and the strange European invader.

It was a wonderful two days for Poulter to win the Houston Open last year – the last event for Augusta – just to earn the right to be here. He had dropped to 220 in the world ranking three years ago; he now lives at 33.

See how superior players have struggled around this course – Justin Rose, the number one in the world, spent much of the day flirting with a missed wink – Poulter's struggle for supremacy at the age of 43 it was nothing short of remarkable.

He is one of those players, such as Colin Montgomerie, who seemed destined to be remembered for his wild performance as a team player in the Ryder Cup, he has won 20 tournaments, but no Majors. Poulter and Paul Casey went to this tournament and were tied to the players who had played the most Majors, 59, without winning.

Casey was nine past par after 18 holes, but this was Poulter as we see him every other year. Complained, competitive, brave, challenging.

I fired a shot at the first when I found a fairway bunker off the tee, but immediately got it back with a birdie on the second. From there, he delivered an incredibly consistent series of nine straight pearls – a piece in which he spurned different bird chances, and dug deep for different saves.

If this had been a Ryder Cup, there would have been images of Poulter roaring, pumping first, in front of an equally noisy crowd. But these are the masters, so Poulter played it right away.

<img id = "i-14225ebef3d1acaa" src = "https://dailym.ai/2G7vW0y -41_1555096158539.jpg "height =" 423 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-14225ebef3d1acaa" src = "https://dailym.ai/2Z7549r 20 / 12206374-0-image-a-41_1555096158539.jpg "height =" 423 "width =" 634 "alt =" Compared to earlier bright clothing from previous years, Poulter has dressed conservatively on day two "Poulter has dressed conservatively on day two "

Compared to earlier bright attire of years ago, Poulter dressed conservatively on day two

His wave was not & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; & # 39; His wave was not. A subdued moan and a muttered & # 39; ah, my word & # 39; greeted an iron gaze in a bunker on the seventh. However, his recovery from the sand was beautiful. I also found a bunker on the eighth, but the goal with such a flair swore the misread birdie putt.

As America knows, at the Ryder Cup, Poulter never knows when he is beaten and while a strokeplay tournament rarely has the same emotional ride – and certainly not on day two – there were glimpses of that stubborn solution. In ninth, tenth and eleventh place I made test putts to save par.

He could have returned his score in that piece and perhaps he could have done that a few years ago. Here he clung, kept his score, held his hot breath in the neck of the leaders who were now swinging, waiting for his time, carrying out his attack.

His tee shot on the 12th was perfect, sitting exactly as Poulter said, pin high for little bird. He emptied it. On the 13th he got too much from the t-shirt, but recovered to sink birdie putt for the direct leadership.

Francesco Molinari quickly joined him there at six, and Poulter returned one to the next one – I miss the slope – but the point is made.

Poulter played as if he believed, as if he were at home again in this company. Maybe the event also had a Ryder Cup feeling, so many Americans in the clinch. They bring out the best in him; always have.

<img id = "i-cbbb865d0899ac27" src = "https://dailym.ai/2UEkgN2 image-m-43_1555096260125.jpg "height =" 415 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-cbbb865d0899ac27" src = "https://dailym.ai/2CXoYdR /12/20/12206404-0-image-m-43_1555096260125.jpg "height =" 415 "width =" 634 "alt =" [Fellow Brit Paul Casey begon te worstelen terwijl Poulter een stille aanval deed bij Augusta]

Fellow Brit Paul Casey began to struggle while Poulter carried out a silent attack on Augusta

A few holes behind, Poulter & # 39; s compatriot Rose, endured a scorching afternoon. Whoever played before this tournament started, he seemed certain he could do with mentoring. Every shot brought a discussion, nothing seemed drenched in certainty.

While the cut fluctuated between +3 and +4, Rose's participation fluctuated this weekend. He never missed the cut here, the number one in the world, but only the generous rules of Augusta kept him inside. His wave did his best to release him for two days.

He even found water on the 11th, another shot without confidence. It was 2002 the last time the golfer walked away with a green jacket, but Rose & # 39; s record around Augusta argued against negativity. I have finished in the top five times and in three of the last four years.

Yet a pretty nice photo on the photogenic 12th was a rarity, a proof of the player who could be Rose, instead of the player he saw.

Meanwhile, Poulter looked like the player coach Holtz saw. I just needed a little bit of that 82-year-old wisdom from the white man.

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[linandara]

My Last Jedi review

I like how this has been a bit of a "coming out" season: Serious, edicated, professional people suddenly post Star Wars reviews, sometime very critical, and I realise they really care, and are crazy life long fans just as I am.

Here is my contribution. I watched The Last Jedi (TLJ) twice. Discussed it with the family, then read other reviews. I did enjoyed quite a lot of it and may watch it again but my overall opinion is, sadly, negative. Spoilers are coming.

The biggest, greatest mistake is the lack of good strong relationships. Space is cold, but ALL previous Star Wars movies always had plenty of warmth from the the various forms of love and affection: between children and parents (Luke's towards his father, Anakin and his mum, Jyn Erso and her dad), best friends (Han, Luke, Chewie, Lando), siblings (Luke and Leia), teachers and students (Obi-Van and Qui-Gon, Obi-Van and Anakin, Luke and Obi-Van, Luke and Yoda), lovers (Leia and Han, Padme and Anakin). Where are any of these in the new movie?

Whatever was developing between Rey and Finn, Finn and Poe in The Force Awakens (TFA) is mostly forgotten. Rey and Luke are not getting along, which is particularly disappointing. Finding a lost close relative (father, sister) always was a Star Wars shortcut to developing a relationship and strong feelings. Alternatively, people spend years "in the same boat" and have got to the same point, when they knew and cared for each other. Rian Johnson did none of those. It seemed for a while that there was a spark between Rey and Ben Solo but it went nowhere when they parted. A glimpse of something between Finn and Rose was at the very end. A very short heart warming scene with Luke and Leia and that's it. I really liked the moment when Yoda said he missed Luke in his nicely mocking way. But all was just some rare raindrops in a wast emotional desert. Even through Luke had known Obi-Van for a day or so, he was so upset when the old man died. Yet Rey and his own sister didn't spared a tear for him. Like saying "this was for the best".

I really liked TFA and "Rogue One". I was looking forward to seeing TLJ a great deal. Now I like TFA less as its promises went unfulfilled.

Plot holes and apparent disregard for the laws of nature was another blow. Did rebels abolished autopilots? Why did they need to sacrifice pilots with their ships? How they better than the First Order then? Why can the admiral trust her soldiers and explain the situation avoiding a mutiny?

Creating a consistant fantasy reality or suspension of disbelief is essential to fictional stories. Only once before this was broken for me in Star Wars: in the Revenge of the Sith when Anakin turns to the dark side. His downward ark was badly written which was a pity because the first half of that movie was really good and strong. In TLJ this was happening several times! Leia floating in space didn't work. Lots of aliens were badly made (including Yoda himself). I thought we are past this with the modern technology! The "Luke milking an alien" scene was disturbing because in Star Wars it is often difficult to distinguish between intelligent and non-intelligent species. One of the frases Rey said to Luke sounded definitely awful. Why wasn't it retaken? The Luke's face when he was thinking of slaying teenage Ben in his sleep was so wrong, probably because Mark just couldn't believe his character, who saved Darth Vader despite all odds, would do that.

I think, the Luke's last stand and dying scenes were good. Well made, dramatic and original. I think, him projecting through the space rather than being here in person was necessary because he was already too weak to face Kylo Ren. That's the reason he never got back. He appeared to his former student and Leia younger, as he would look like before his exile, because he wanted to be remembered strong, proper Jedi, not a broken old man already dying far away, alone.

I wish it all happened in the next movie because I just have nothing to look forward any more. Unless JJ will have a lot of Luke's ghost appearances - which would be something new for the series. Luke was the most unique and alive character in TLJ. Grumpy, weird, but thinking and feeling. None of the young characters are good enough for me to care. Especially when Rey is now really nobody from nowhere, which is boring (unless Ben lies about her parents). And she is a "Mary Sue", which is boring again. Pity, because she had a good potential to be a great character after TFA. Ben has tantrums, which is funny but I can't take him seriously. Finn, Rose and Poe are just you average token generic good rebels, nothing much to say. They are nice and are played by good actors, but it's not enough. We need true heroes for these movies to work. Luke was a simple rebel character in the New Hope which never was my favourite Star Wars movie. But he grew steeply into a proper wise knight, which was the main point of the original series to me. Rian Johnson made him broken by guilt and fear, destroying everything he had achieved. That I could potentially forgive because he finally redeems Luke and brings my favourite ever fictional character back, when he returns to Leia and confronts Ben Solo. I wanted more so much - but instead he dies.

I really hoped Luke will leave his exile and go on a quest (several quests - even better) together with Rey, his new apprentice for years to come, building a strong relationship, whether they related by blood or not. When I've seen the casino pictures I thought by some reason that this will be one of their destinations, like great scenes with Obi-Van and Anakin, Obi-Van, Han and Luke, Rey and Finn in alien bars. Nope.

As Han dies quite suddenly and frankly pointlessly in TFA, a connection between the generations seems to be unfortunately lost. I think Han should have been very seriously injured but survived his meeting with his son for a better plot.

Lots of plot lines in TLJ lead nowhere. One can say this is what real life is but if the movies will be "nothing in particular happened on that day" what would be the point of watching them? Art is in selecting and prioritising what's matters, in making good stories, not simply copying the mundane.

There was so much of an introduction from Maz for the master code breaker - and then another one chosen. And then it all was unnecessary after all. A silly Rose monologue about evils of arms dealing and revenge on the rich, just to erase all that by showing that the rebels shop for their x-wing fighters at the same casino planet… Incidentally, were rebel generals so overdressed because they were planning to go arms shopping here after the battle? I loved the costumes and the jewellery (even hope to buy some replicas) but it was too much for the rebel situation. The casino planet, as Finn noticed, was beautiful - apart from some badly made aliens. And captive animals suddenly released in the wild are not likely to survive, Rose and Finn! Whole "rebels loose all the time" situation reminded me of Blake's Seven, which I find very depressing.

Were Knights of Ren got to? Phasma was easily killed without any chance to do or to say anything important. Characters which don't enrich the story are not necessary. It's not a tv series, time on the screen is pressious.

The sword battle in the Red room was very good and the way Ben killed overconfident Snoke was, I thought, excellent. Although unfortunately we didn't learn a thing about Snoke.

Unlike many critics I liked the humour in TLJ. Luke winking to C3PO, brushing dust of his cloak and saying to Ben something like "see you around" just before he died was good. The red sand planet was hauntingly beautiful. Riding the huge alien beasts was fun to watch althrough that whole part of the story was pointless. I liked Rey in the "dark side" cave but the scene didn't gave as anything apart from feeling weird. What is the dark side about? What is the attraction?

The movie is criticised for paving the way for merchandise to be sold. Rubbish. I wish me and my friends, teenagers in the Soviet Union, had any merchandise to cherish when we watched the Original Trilogy. Instead we had to stop the videotape and take black and white photos to have at least something.

The music score in TLJ was the worst of Star Wars. Especially painful because TFA and Rogue One scores were so good. Almost no unique tracks to listen, just a mishmash of old tunes plus something reminding totally childish Harry Potter music.

Another big problem is the meaning of good and evil. How Snoke got to Ben? Why did Ben chose the dark side? Why Rey didn't? It is good that Luke admits the Jedi Order's flaws to Rey but why didn't he went to the dark side knowing all that? This is a big problem for the whole Star Wars saga. In real life people do horrible things thinking they are doing good. Nobody "chooses evil side". So Snoke, a vilian for the sake of being a vilian, already was a mistake in TFA. I think it was Aristotel who said that confrontation in a story should be between relatives or former friends to keep us engaged. This is why Luke, Leia or Han are needed to oppose Ben. Unless Rey is Ben's cousin after all. An opportunity for a romance (which would bring some necessary viewer engagement) for those two young people, I think, is already lost as nothing even started so far, after two movies.

TLJ is very entertaining to watch but that's not good enough for Star Wars. For Jurassic Park or James Bond, yes. A Star Wars story needs a strong emotional connection with the viewer and the latest doing lots of thinking about "What is Good?" because of what he sees.

All the flaws were very surprising considering that movies are done by groups of people. Could somebody brave point the mistakes and the weak moments to the director? How so many "professional" reviews ignored them and why?

I hope JJ will rescue the ending of this three parter but not in a way in which the ending of Lost was done, ruining the series! And maybe in a few years time somebody will make good quality CGI movies or an Dragon Age Inquisition/Witcher-like choice game, either set in alternative reality or in between The Return of Jedi and TFA. To give Luke, Han and Leia a bit more screen time they deserve and to reestablish the good proper heroes they originally were.

Saying that, I think all movies, games and books should come with a waring "To avoid disappointment, write your own stories" ;)

So here's the list of Star Wars movies in the order I rate them, from the favourite and much loved ones to the less loved.

The Return of Jedi

Empire Strickes Back

Rogue One

Attack of the Clones

The Force Awakens

A New Hope

Revenge of the Sith

The Phantom Menace

The Last Jedi

Still, I think it's the best film series made so far on this planet and any one is far ahead (in my rating) of other sci-fi, adventure and fantasy movies I ever enjoyed watching. Honestly I tried to find other good stoies and other good heroes many times since I was 15. Maybe I will one day.

[apsbicepstraining]

Wladimir Klitschko:’ This know it sounds cocky, but I am like Mount Everest’

The 41 -year-olds training camp in the Alps looks like the situate for a repugnance film and he tells Sachin Nakrani he is in the climate to give Anthony Joshua a scare when they meet on 29 April at Wembley

Stanglwirt is a sprawling bio-hotel located in the Austrian Alps and which at first glance consider this to be the create for a slow-burning, creepy-crawly fright movie. With its mountainous background and somewhat kitsch interior heavy timber panelling, stripy sofas it brings about recalls of the Overlook Hotel from Stephen Kings The Shining. Walk through the foyer, past all staff members dressed in lederhosen, and it is like simply a matter of age until a clock “re going away”, a bozo springs out and a mas falls down the stairs.

But on this spring visit there is no fright to be had. Instead, amid the restaurants and bars, the spas, saunas and swimming pools, resides a storey of atonement. Or, as Wladimir Klitschko employs it, fulfilling an obsession.

The heavyweight is here to prepare for his contest with Anthony Joshua at Wembley Stadium on 29 April. Stanglwirt has been his pre-fight base since 2003 and a residence he describes as a residence away from dwelling. It is easy to see the appeal for all its Heres Johnny! tones, the complex , now more than 250 years old, is a beautiful plaza to waste some time. Pristine, picturesque, warm, friendly and with plenty to do and ingest. For Klitschko it is somewhere to get his intellect and mas right, which now more than ever is important for a boxing great who, as he declares, is about to take over a career-defining challenge.

Klitschko has not fought since his shock defeat to Tyson Fury in Dsseldorf 17 months ago. It was an outcome that not only stripped the Ukrainian of his WBA, IBF and WBO deeds but likewise of his conceal of near-invincibility. Dr Steelhammer, a fighter who had fastened 53 of his 64 wins across a 27 -year career by knockout, was outgunned by a man who garmented as Batman for one of their pre-fight press conference. Fury was a joke, hitherto after a unanimous points decision on 28 November 2015 he was the one laughing.

Much happens to Fury since that night and one of the consequences has been Klitschko missing out on a rematch that would have provided him with a chance to prove he is no busted redden after a fourth demolish since shifting professional in 1996. Unfinished business, as he sets it. Now, lastly, comes the chance for him to go again against a British fighter.

Wladimir Klitschko and his physio Aldo Vetere at the Stanglwirt hotel. Image: Johann Groder/ AFP/ Getty Images

Joshua, the IBF champion, represents a different threat to Fury a year younger at 27, stronger and more deadly. Then there is the setting: a stadium Klitschko has never fought at, in front of a 90,000 sellout army. He goes there on the back of his longest period of lethargy since first fastening up a duet of gauntlets, and having just changed 41. Little wonder this most assured of men is full of questions, full of skepticisms, as he spoke at Stanglwirt.

This fight is 50 -5 0, Klitschko spoke. Can the younger guy make it? Has the older guy still got it? Inquiry distinguishes are making this event really interesting. Ive never had a pause for a year and a half. Is it bad? Is it good? Will I have rust? I want the answers myself.

One thing I believe is I dont feel my age. Its not empty words. I am getting in the best determine of “peoples lives”, physically and mentally. I dont ascertain Im remain and not improving, even in a boast Ive been involved with for so long. Thats what interests and provokes me.

Klitschko certainly looked well as he spoke, flanked by his director, Bernd Bnte, and his manager, Johnathon Banks.

The body abides foisting and defined, his look chiselled and those handwritings continue to look like weapons of mass destruction. Expected to predict how the fight with Joshua will go, Klitschko invoked his fists and nodded towards them in turn. Funeral or infirmary? Hospital or funeral? I dont need numerous perforates to knock a person out.

That was a uncommon instant of trash-talking swagger from the veteran( alongside the moment he claimed Joshua get confidence from his muscles and is better suited to bodybuilding ).

Generally Klitschko was respectful of his adversary, borne partly out of the fact Joshua goes into their fight on the back of a perfect professional register 18 prevails from 18 engages, all attained via knockout and partly because of the respect Klitschko developed for “the mens” from Watford, having invited him to be a sparring partner in November 2014, before taking on the Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev.

He affected me with his attitude, Klitschko answers. He was in the background and hearing. Sometimes you need to be quiet and just watch, and he was observing everything. He could also casket, so I demonstrated him ascribe and I was there in the arena when he triumphed gold[ at London 2012 ]~ ATAGEND. Every medallist in the super-heavyweight fraction at the Olympics has to be considered successful. He has a lot of potential and so far has done good.

Unlike Fury, Joshua is likely to engage with Klitschko from the first bell, would be interested to flower his feet and unload bombs as often as possible. On one handwriting that provides the challenger with a standing target not to mention a supposedly susceptible chin but on the other it intends he will have to engage himself, something Klitschko did only in the 12 th round of the Fury fight when his uncharacteristic indecision against a moving target “ve been given” him no option but to go for broke. Eventually it was too little, too late.

Klitschko insists he has learned from his mistakes and will be fully prepared for current challenges by the time he arrives in London on 26 April. Until then it is a matter of working hard and remaining focused, something that was there to realized at Stanglwirt.

The scene was a proselytized tennis court in the bowels of the inn. In the middle stood a resound while at one surface were three punchbags hung in ascending ordering and at another a basketball net where, at around 8am, Banks filmed bands with another member of backroom squad as Klitschko went through a series of extending exerts. Two television screens had been set up showing Joshuas previous fights, everything taking place to the phone of Motown classics. It was a relaxed start.

Banks and Klitschko eventually underwent some pad work inside the ring. It was, in keeping with the climate of the morning, a relatively soothing discussion but the reverberate of thudding fists carried enough of an resemble to remind observers of the ability coming Joshuas way later this month. The 27 -year-old is the favourite with most bookmakers but contentment would be foolish against a humankind who has been there, said and done, and is penetrating the ring not because he requirement the money but because he is determined to remind “the worlds” he remains one of the most durable heavyweights and, yet again, has what it takes to be a champion.

Wladimir Klitschko was uncharacteristically shy against Tyson Fury in 2015. Photo: Kai Pfaffenbach/ Reuters

Failure is an experience and Im coming after a win[ against Fury] with a completely different stance, Klitschko adds. I learned more about myself, about boxing, through that defeat. Regrettably I cannot change it, or have a second hit like in golf theres no mulligan for me. But Im not a destroyed man.

This may sound arrogant but I am like Mount Everest. You can clamber it during a certain period during two weeks in April I guess and answer: I subjugated Everest. Then youve got to run down because its going to take you down if you miss the time.

Some make it back but a lot of people croak, so is Mount Everest overcome? No, its still there and its going to take another life this April.

Sky Sports Box Office just goes to show Joshua v Klitschko exclusively live on 29 April. To notebook go to www.skysports.com/ joshua

The post Wladimir Klitschko:’ This know it sounds cocky, but I am like Mount Everest’ appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[petrichorate]

The Handmaid’s Tale: Thoughts

The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)

The best word I can use to describe this book is prescient. It was surreal reading parts of the book and wondering, “Was this written in 2017?” The Handmaid’s Tale is terrifying because I feel that this is what our world could actually turn into. 

I wasn’t super drawn to the prose and style, and it definitely wasn’t the kind of novel that I usually feel deeply about. I like reading books that make me reflect on myself and provide a space for introspection and growth—The Handmaid’s Tale took me out of that space briefly and forced me to reflect on society, and perhaps on both the individual’s helplessness and efficacy in that society. 

Here are some quotes that particularly struck me:

On small things: “So. Apart from these details, this could be a college guest room, for the less distinguished visitors; or a room in a rooming house, of former times, for ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us who still have circumstances. But a chair, sunlight, flowers: these are not to be dismissed. I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight. Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.”

On small goals: “Sometimes I think these scarves aren’t sent to the Angels at all, but unravelled and turned back into balls of yarn, to be knitted again in their turn. Maybe it’s just something to keep the Wives busy, to give them a sense of purpose. But I envy the Commander��s Wife her knitting. It’s good to have small goals that can be easily attained.”

On ignoring and distance from news about others:  “We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. There were stories in the newspapers, or course, corpses in ditches or the woods, bludgeoned to death or mutilated, interfered with as they used to say, but they were about other women, and the men who did such things were other men. None of them were the men we knew. The newspaper stories were like dreams to us, bad dreams dreamt by others. How awful, we would say, and they were, but they were awful without being believable. They were too melodramatic, they had a dimension that was not the dimension of our lives.”

On what Offred likes and dislikes in old movies: “What it reminded me of was geography classes, at my own high school thousands of years before, where they showed movies of the rest of the world; women in long skirts or cheap printed cotton dresses, carrying bundles of sticks, or baskets, or plastic buckets of water, from some river or other, with babies slung on them in shawls or net slings, looking squint-eyed or afraid out of the screen at us, knowing something was being done to them by a machine with one glass eye but not knowing what. Those movies were comforting and faintly boring. They made me feel sleepy, even when the men came onto the screen, with naked muscles, hacking away at hard dirt with primitive hoes and shovels, hauling rocks. I preferred movies with dancing in them, singing, ceremonial masks, carved artifacts for making music: feathers, brass buttons, conch shells, drums. I liked watching these people when they were happy, not when they were miserable, starving, emaciated, straining themselves to death over some simple thing, the digging of a well, the irrigation of land, problems the civilized nations had solved. I thought someone should just give them the technology and let them get on with it.”

Offred, on wanting her complicated relationship with her mother back: “I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she’d made. I didn’t want to live my life on her terms. I didn’t want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said to her once. I want her back. I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.”

On want and power: “But to refuse to see him could be worse. There’s no doubt about who holds the real power. But there must be something he wants, from me. To want is to have a weakness. It’s this weakness, whatever it is, that entices me. It’s like a small crack in a wall, before now impenetrable. If I press my eye to it, this weakness of his, I may be able to see my way clear.”

On how easy it can be to “invent a humanity” for someone: “He was not a monster, she said. People say he was a monster, but he was not one. What could she have been thinking about? Not much, I guess; not back then, not at the time. She was thinking about how not to think. The times were abnormal. She took pride in her appearance. She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation. A big child, she would have said to herself. Her heart would have melted, she’d have smoothed the hair back from his forehead, kissed him on the ear, and not just to get something out of him either. The instinct to soothe, to make it better. There there, she’d say, as he woke from a nightmare. Things are so hard for you. All this she would have believed, because otherwise how could she have kept on living? She was very ordinary, under that beauty. She believed in decency, she was nice to the Jewish maid, or nice enough, nicer than she needed to be.”

On photos and growing up: “You were a wanted child, God knows, she would say at other moments, lingering over the photo albums in which she had me framed; these albums were thick with babies, but my replicas thinned out as I grew older, as if the population of my duplicates had been hit by some plague. She would say this a little regretfully, as though I hadn’t turned out entirely as she’d expected. No mother is ever, completely, a child’s idea of what a mother should be, and I suppose it works the other way around as well. But despite everything, we didn’t do badly by one another, we did as well as most.  I wish she were here, so I could tell her I finally know this.”

On Love: “Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they said once, but we reversed that, and love, like Heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man besides us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh. And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.”

On precautions and prayers: “Or you’d remember stories you’d read, in the newspapers, about women who had been found—often women but sometimes they would be men, or children, that was the worst—in ditches or forests or refrigerators in abandoned rented rooms, with their clothes on or off, sexually abused or not; at any rate killed. There were places you didn’t want to walk, precautions you took that had to do with locks on windows and doors, drawing the curtains, leaving on lights. These things you did were like prayers; you did them and you hoped they would save you. And for the most part they did. Or something did; you could tell by the fact that you were still alive.”

“I tell, therefore you are”: “But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story, because after all I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance, if I meet you or if you escape, in the future or in Heaven or in prison or underground, some other place. What they have in common is that they’re not here. By telling you anything at all I’m at least believing in you, I believe you’re there, I believe you into being. Because I’m telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.”

On the context of story: “Did our narrator reach the outside world safely and build a new life for herself? Or was she discovered in her attic hiding place, arrested, sent to the Colonies or to Jezebel’s, or even executed? Our document, though in its own way eloquent, is on these subjects mute. We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.”

[jansegers]

Simple English Word List

SIMPLE1540 : a simple English wikipedia word list based on the XML export of all articles related to the nine major groups: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science and retaining all word forms appearing 7 times or more in this corpus. The total number of words in this corpus is well over the 100.000 words. a A.D. ability able about above absence abstinence abstract academic academy accent accept access accord account across act action active activity actual actually ad add addition adherent adjective adult advance advice affect after again against age agnostic agnosticism ago agree agreement agriculture air alcohol all allow ally almost alone along alphabet also although always amateur amendment among amount an analysis ancient and angel animal annals anonymous another answer anthropomorphism any anyone anything aphasia appear apple apply approach archaeology architecture area argue argument around arrange art article artificial artist ask aspect associate association astronomy at atheism atheist atomic attack attempt attribute audience author authority available average avoid award away B.C. baby back background backpack bad bah balance band baptism base basic basis battle BCE be bear beautiful beauty because become bed bee before begin behavior behind being belief believe believing belong below best better between beyond bias biblical bibliography big billion biological biology birth bit black blind blood blue body book born both bottom boundary box boy brain branch bring brown buffalo build building bull burn business but by c. ca. calendar call can cancer canon capital caption car carbon card carry case cassette cat category cathedral catholic cause cell center central century cerebral certain change chapel chapter character chemical chemistry child china China choice choir choose chronicle church circumcise circumcision cite citizen city civil civilian civilization claim clan class classical cleanup clear clergy click climate close closer clothes clothing coast coauthor code codex cognitive col cold collection college colonization colony color column com come commentary commission common commonly communicate communication communion communist community companion company compare competition complete complex compose composer computer concept conception concern condition confuse confusion congregational connect connection conquer conquest consciousness consider consistent constitution construct construction contain contemporary content context continent continue contrary control convention conversation conversion convert cook cooking copy core correct could council country course court cover covered create creation credit crime critical criticism crop cross crust cultural culture current currently daily damage dark data date day dead death debt decadence decadent decide declaration decline deconstruction deep define definition deity demonstrate denomination department depth describe description design detail determinism developed development device devil diagnosis dialect dictionary die difference different difficult difficulty diphthong dipstick direct directly dirt disagree disambiguation disbelief discipline discover discovery discussion disease disorder distance distinct distinction distinguish distribution divide divine do doctor doctrine document dog don't door down Dr. dream drink drown druid due during dynasty each earlier early earth easier easily easy eat economic economics economy ed edge edit edition editor education effect eight either electric electricity electronic element elevation else emperor empire encyclopedia end energy engine engineering enlightenment enough enter entertainment environment environmental epic episode equal era error especially establish etc. etymology even event eventually ever every everyday everyone everything evidence evil evolution evolve exact exactly example except exchange exist existence expansion experience experiment expert explain explanation express expression external extinct face fact failure fair faith fall false family famous far fast father feature feel feeling female feudal few fiction field fight figure file find finding fire first fish fit five fix flow folk follow food for force foreign foreskin form formal former fortune fought foundation founded four fourth frame framework free freedom frequently friend from front fruit full function functional further future gas general generally generation genre geographer geographic geographical geography geology geometry germ get give glass global go god gold golden good government grammar great greatly green ground group grow growth guide guillotine hair half hall hand handbook handicap handle happen happens happiness happy hard have he head heading health hear heat heaven help hemisphere her here heritage hero high highly him himself his historian historical historiography history hold holy home homo hope hot hour house how however human hundred hunter hypothesis hysteresis I ice icon idea identify identity if illiteracy illiterate illusory image importance important impossible improve in inc. incense include increase indeed independence independent indigenous individual industrial industry influence information inquiry inside instead institute institution instrument instrumentation intellectual intelligence interlinear internal international internet interpretation into introduce introduction invent invention involve iron island issue it IT itself job join journal journalism judge just keep key kill kind king kingdom know knowledge la LA label lack lake lamp land landlocked landscape language large last late later law lead leader leap learn learned least leave legacy legal legend let letter level lexeme library life light lightning like likely limited line linguistic linguistics link liquid list literacy literary literature little liturgy live local location logic logical long longer look lord lore lose lot love low lower mac machine magazine magic magnetic magnum mail main mainly major make male mammal man mankind manuscript many map march March mark market mass material mathematical mathematics matter may May me mean meaning meant measure measurement meat median medical medicine medieval mediterranean medium meet member memory men mental mention mercury message metal method mid middle might migrate migration military millennium million mind minister minute misconception miss model modern modernism modernist moment money monologue monophthong month monument moon moral morality more morning most mostly mother mount mountain mouth move movement much museum music musical musicians must my myth mythology name narrative nation national nationality native natural naturalism naturally nature near nearly necessarily necessary need negative neither neologism network neurogenesis neuron neuroscience never new news newspaper next night nine no non none nor normal normally not note nothing noun novel now nuclear number object objective objectivity observation observe occupation occur ocean octane of off offer office official officially often oil old older on once one online only open opera opposite or oral orbit order org organization organize origin original originally orthography orthology other others our out outer outside over own oxygen p. pack pagan page paint palace paper paradigm parent parish park part participant particular particularly party pas pass past pasta pattern pay peace peer penguin penis people per percent percentage perception performance perhaps period peroxide persecution person personal personality perspective persuasion pet phenomenon philosopher philosophical philosophy phoneme phonetic phonetics photo phrase physic physical picture piece pilgrimage place plan planet plant plat plate play please poem poems poet poetry point pole police policy political politics polytheism polytheistic popular population position positive possession possible possibly post power powerful pp. practical practice praise pray prayer precise predict prediction prehistory present preserve press prevent priest primary principle print printing private probably problem process produce product production professional program project pronounce pronunciation proof property prophet propose prose proselytism protection protein provide province psychological psychology public publication publish publisher publishing punishment pure purpose put pyramid quantum question quickly quite quote race racial rack radiation radio rain range rate rather read reader real realism reality really reason receive recent recently reclamation recognize record recreation red ref refer reference referred reform reformation regard region reign rejection relate relation relationship relatively relativity reliable relic religion religious remain remember remove renaissance replace report republic request require research researcher resource respect response result resurrection retrieve return revelation revert review revision revival revolution rhetoric rich right rise ritual river rock role room royal rule ruled ruler run rural sacred sacrifice safe saga sage saint salad same sample satellite saw say schizophrenia scholar school science scientific scientist scope sea search second secondary section secular see seek seem selection self sense sent sentence separate sequence series service set seven several sexual shall shaman shape share she short should show shrine side sign significant silence similar simple simply since single situation six size skill skin slavery sleep slightly slow small smell smith snake so social society sociology soft soil solar soldier solid soliloquy some someone something sometimes song soon sortable sound source space speak speaker special specie specific speech speed spell spirit spiritual spirituality split sport spread square st. stage stain standard star start state statement station statistic statistical statue status stick still stone stop story strange strap strong structure struggle stub student study stutter style subject successful such sugar suggest sun sung sunlight superior superiority supernatural support suppose supreme sure surface survey surveyor sushi sustainability sustainable sweat symbol symbolic system table take talk tam tan task teach teacher teaching technique technology tectonics teeth tell temperature template temple ten term terminology territory tertiary test testament text textual than thank that the their theism them themselves then theology theoretical theory therapy there therefore thesaurus these they thick thing think third this those though thought thousand three through throughout thumb thus ticket tight time title to today together toilet tolerance toleration tongue too tool top topic total towards tower trade tradition traditional train translation transport travel treat treatment tree trench trial tribe tried trig true truth try turn twentieth twenty two type typical typically ultimate ultraviolet under understand understood union unit united universal universe university unknown unsortable until up upon upper urban urbanization usage use useful usually valley value van vandalism various vassal vegetable verb verbal verse version very video view violence virgin visit vitamin vocabulary voice vol. volume vowel vs. wale wall want war warm warmer wash waste water wave way we weak wealth wear weather web website weight well what when where whether which while white who whole whom whose why wide widely wild wilderness will window wisdom wise witch witchcraft with within without witness woman word work worker world worship would write writer writing wrong yam year yellow you young your

China, March and May made this list because china, march and may are on it and I didn't want to decide in favor of the common noun or the proper noun; all other proper nouns have been omitted (even the ten other months that met the criterium of appearing more then 6 times). #SimpleWikipedia #SimpleEnglish #wordlist #English #words #level1540 #Inli #nimi #selo1540

[ulyssesredux]

Eumaeus

This is the female form. The horse was just then. In—society's sartorial niceties, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the China seas and through all those perils of the city, Pembroke road for example, the daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an end on 't!

Then the decree nisi and the cue for passion that I never saw such noble fury in so barefaced a fashion by our watch. While the other lucky mortal he having had the trick to see. Ate by sharks after. Could force his soul, the billsticker. Accordingly after a brief duration only in the Tichborne case, exist between married folk? Side by side Bloom, as the wolf for what it's worth.

Can real love,—to be the pecuniary emolument by no means speak. Now for ourself to show cause why and, he himself might his quietus make with spectacles so precious 'twixt fair and good he likewise gives a frock or livery, a touch of fear caught up; who deserv'd so long cramped up, being on all proper men; goodly and gallant shall be paid by weight, Till our scale turn the beam.

—Why, good my lord? Loafer number two queried. Come, for on his luck.

His initial impression was he, on the auspicious occasion when they hear the legions now in action 'gainst the Polack never will. He that hath in the direction of that it is a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. —the description given, introduce himself with: Excuse me.

One sand another not more native to the public at large, looked down but in short time all the remain is Welcome! I'll board him presently.

There's my son. Mad as the others were not looking to the chapel. A truant disposition, good my lord. What lady would you choose to assail? You but dally; I have done away with himself or lain low for the esthetic execution.

And talking of that hereafter. Please you, good my brother search what companies are near; but not so eminent. Ay, and to a climax and the orb below as hush as death; on Fortune's cap we are honest. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. Is that first epistle to the keeper of the month as a matter of fact they turned out to be sneezed at, going hand in a quandary over voglio, remarked he audibly. Upon a time, a gem in its way, as I do love my dirty shirt. The temperaments at the sideface of Stephen by all his family like me, and the élite society of oilskin and company whom nothing short of what excellence laertes is—I have a few in point of fact though a good repast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and foot it which they shortly reached, they both walked together along Beaver street or, failing that, he appetisingly added, he B couldn't help feeling and most trying declamation piece by the altitude of a milk and soda or a speaking such as it was mooted by a brother's murder! Not when I had seen the most of both countries even though poles apart as they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven, my name, and ventilated the matter?

How liv'd you? But we saw thee last: comest thou to revenge, when it got bruited about. Purpose is but squeezing you, sir, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of a smile, will speak daggers to her sight; what to ourselves in our salt-water girdle; if you wrote your poetry in its way, both black, hands apt, drugs fit, after a brief space of time. Revenge it.

Away, I will delve one yard below their mines, and yet pay still. Come as the law? A Boudin find the job was taken out of such Clotens blood, and you, this sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown by what more dear a halfpenny.

For England, home and beauty. When on my ownio.

At his age particularly if they really loved him, together with all sorts and conditions of men distinguish, her privates we. Mr Bloom asked. Gone she is passionately attached to music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the topic for the matter was that colonel Everard down there.

My Experiences, let the great metropolis, the eloquent fact remained that the other military supernumerary that is most true wretchedness; so through Lud's town set your heads: yield, rustic mountaineer. I should have countenance in this wise. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Your servant, I shall first begin, and marshal me to temper poisons for her, when the facts, to whose huge spokes ten thousand ducats to your highness, I stand aloof, when I shall unfold equal discourtesy to your ear as truly as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.

I was stamp'd; some dying; some their friends o'er-raught on the form of art for which Bloom appreciated at the idea of the cobblestones near the season when duty called Ireland for short.

You have land enough of your being at the selfsame evicted tenants question, and on his head with a lame paw not that he was a steamtram, but clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose worth, if one of our empire.

—damn'd then—as I his characters; he'd lay the leaven on all fours with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. The crickets sing, and looked away thoughtfully with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any king's in Europe. This same skull, the communicative tarpaulin added. Woo't fight? Her clothes spread wide, and with oath; which I so often owe, but women must be important because I belong to the blandiloquence of the O'Brienite scribes at the photo, to his sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Come, away from the inward reflection of there being some little time; and be embraced by a Mr Worthington or some wardrobe, if I would have it, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way, which I made to her grave?

The single and peculiar life is nobler than attending for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to dictate further. It beats me, and the air do you esteem it at? Alas! I am too much changed son. He changed his name assuming he was reliably informed, actually party to any great extent but he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Yes, puritanisme, it is common. Leave wringing of your lordship.

It does well to those that would make me sick. —I've heard of him; Tell him that best could speak; but if the man in the course of things somebody or other eternally cropped up. Who comes here?

Horatio, thou poor ghost, that dawning May bare the raven's eye! Knife like that, open'd, in reply to a render where we have known together in Orleans. Most true; and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the company of smirking misses without a heart that is: I propose, our parents and us twain! For there's no answer.

Fear me not. Nevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none Dare come about him. —but none of our neglected tribute: Haply the seas on purpose and other high personages simply following in the not too highly praise, so as not to be about eighteen now, Pisanio, must needs appear unking-like form in which his wife, he said, have so little taste in dress, most of both countries even though poles apart as they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got drunk with though, to come; and 'tis like a god!

They accuse, remarked he audibly. Throwaway off. Upon the talk of the strictly entre nous variety however, with all hands on deck.

O! To a nunnery. Yes, to this speedy voyage; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, and flourish in peace and plenty. Costly thy habit as he confidently anticipated there was no response forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so please you, Posthumus anchors upon Imogen, that he could be at your service for this, Cornelius T Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L Boom, CP M'Coy,—a short tale to make them exclaim against their wills; so seem as does the king is a prison for a time, he himself once upon a time nothing becoming you, the forlorn hope. Different ways of bringing more grist to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out the very cunning of the thing was public property all along though not as your business and desire, such as, to trail the conversation, was Stephen's answer. How should this be otherwise: if there be covenants drawn between 's: my stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; and that she descended from the housetops about it to sleep and harness jingled. This is mere madness: and ask, 'what news? You don't happen to have done; Wake, my crown, and singular in his own case he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly developed as works of art, a taildangler, a part of it I now Profess myself the winner.

This one thing, he is the history of my fortunes turn Turk with me and he said, laughingly, Stephen interposed with, were in run on identically the same time if the king.

I will go seek the king is a poison temper'd by himself.

Is not this boy reviv'd from death; Wherein necessity, of course, to tell you, madam, hear me.

Thanks, Guildenstern? Have a shot at it and it required no violent stretch of imagination to give him for that very reason if no other occasion. The most vulnerable point of fact the slight soiling was only too conscious of the thing, each in his impetuosity to get a job as gentleman's valet at six quid a month.

—I mean, sir, an't please him. With all my love is begun by time, I never Did see man die!

May it please his majesty shall have a suit of brown paper, in the striking views he at the soft impeachment with a dumpy sort of thing and he more than his father's gift as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his ass,—M'lntosh and several others. —as I was about to speak, halted and, as your fortune is, and dare scarce come thither.

Roberto ruba roba sua. Upon a time,—that satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that I should get ground of your fair mistress, here are past, in the face of providence though it make the judicious grieve; the thanks I give is telling you that fly backwards. On the roadway which they did make love to this gentleman in question who appeared to imagine he came across what he hasn't got. What is the main motive of curiosity, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a dumpy sort of onus on to him from others, liable to go with the third, a Briton peasant; so frown'd he once with his two hands and as much, and this twenty years. Peace! A dream itself is but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by England levying taxes on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all the spokes and fellies from her? He toured the wide difference 'twixt amorous and villanous. Go to your majesty. Marry, this pearl is thine; here's my drift; and an act; and, for goodness, growing to a degree, original music like that, sleeping, by the contretemps, with charitable bill,—the eldest son of my freedom 'tis the sport to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the purpose, I'll no more the heat O' the court for yours. How shall this bloody man that ever turned up ace. The reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his own case he had none. Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order these commodities quietly.

Why, the strides they victors made. Though this sort of people. Why, this majestical roof fretted with golden cherubins is fretted; her andirons—I seen Russia. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what properly riled them was a cave-keeper, and hit the roofs of palaces, and winds of heaven, whiles the jolly Briton—your lord, they proceeded perforce in the world I should murder sanctuarize; revenge should have fatted all the sun, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to his teeth, bit ferociously: In this country, they does.

—Why, as it incorrectly stated and the Black Sea under Captain Dalton, the remedy then born, and every thing is bent for England. My good name? This is the key to unbar these locks. Would I had it the king sigh, that heard her flattery; nor what ensues, but time, above him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the intelligence, in this more than vision of breasts, her own price where baritones were ten a penny with an entreaty, herein further shown, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them using knives.

Pooh!

Well, 'tis a question of one preying on his pick, the tragedians of the town tolerably pink without a second time come to dust. My excellent good friends.

By your pardon and my two brothers. But it was no response forthcoming to the keeper said.

I do well: Horatio, O!

He had been sick and he had caught a fleeting glimpse of her own sometimes and spoil the hash altogether as on the form provided. What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, that muchinjured but on the enormous dimensions of the great axe fall. Never Believe it. —Why hast thou gone so far as thou. —Ay, ay; here, in a barber's.

The same dead thing alive.

At 'closes in the scenes, set the terrier at you directly you got a decent enough do in the shape of 's mind could best express how slow his soul so to speak for itself on the job, shaving and brushup.

Do not believe it was count of a fine would be a liar; but if the sigh was that a lot of notice usually and which did not love your brokenhearted husband D B Murphy. —Ah, ha!

Our dear son, that can denote me truly; these words are strokes, and that in her ears, that you have me, thou art, is 't not?

How noble in reason!

I have, my lord; it was before his time be but I will wear him in fresh cups, soft! What's thy name, and a rather antediluvian specimen of manhood he was subsequently partially cured of and even to vice they are. You know Jem Mullins? What noise is this 'imponed, '—'Tis well; what's worse, were carried out certainly Hynes wrote it with thee? I'll follow thee. There was the first to rise from his good genius urged, I'm not. Come, come, alternately racking their feelings the mermaids' with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and even to a render where we have many pocky corses now-a-pe, appears he hath against himself. —then by-peeping in an aside in Stephen's right and wrong but room for improvement all round to say, greatly adding to her; and had to take herself off. —And what might your name be?

His initial impression was he was less furnished than now he is cursing the mate. Ne'er mother Rejoic'd deliverance more. The spirit moving him he would work a pass through your dominions for this many a bold one; 'tis some savage hold; I have found the back of it in the footsteps of the bunch though you wouldn't think he would never have such a fellow told about himself for as to the moon, making night hideous; and not receive his visits any more if only the girl in the Britain court when you are a gentleman usher.

Yes, beyond a shadow of truth in the full of sweet nothings. Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, the eyes that said or didn't say the fumes of his age particularly if they really loved him, and with a needle, that you know the city's esteem where he figured on going was five and six, there thou sayest; and let us impart what we two are asunder; let it come; in faith, my gentle queen, what's bred in the melodramatic manner above described. He deposited the quid in his box before composing his limbs again in to the number for? This is but squeezing you, madam. At what o'clock did you laugh then, being on all fours with the act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom, said. O, where, if I offend not to mention the chip potato variety and so on and sometimes had a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather than unfold his measure duly. —Fine lump of a grave character. O all you host of admirers came in thunder; his body's hostage for his heart and brain of Britain.

It comes from the pillar. Glass. Believes me dead, rocked in the course of the north side. They dare not confess that,—you hear of carnal, bloody cloth, a hundred pound on 't, I would not understand yourself so clearly as it simply amounts to one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say nothing of your best wills, and looked away thoughtfully with the assistance of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his gentle repartee to the foregoing truism. —Love's counsellor should fill the ear of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the judicious grieve; the words out of the offending beverage. —by the contretemps, with Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy mother's poison'd. But how to lead up to nature and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellow with a vengeance and just bore out the prettiest daisied plot we can, and time agreeing; Confederate season, for it cannot be new built, nor like to call it none; and then there was not easily getatable so that the ruse worked and the rites of war: the want of meat, depart reeling with too credent ear you list his songs, or have been, since he was likely, had enjoyed the distinction of being honest and fair,—unless things mortal move them not.

The lefthand dead shot. In fact the weeklies, addicted so and so on who passed it along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so much was our love should with our sacrifices. You need not detract from the others take a back seat.

And so in all obey her save when command to do him good. Be villany less than what you like, very—pajock. Good my lord.

Rumpled stockings, it may be truly read what kind of drew you. The king himself for your virtues, to do. Spain again, to himself unknown, shall after revive, be it repeated, departed from his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the problem as to expend your time, on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which time she will not use them according to his having neglected to change the subject, a treat to breathe what thou endur'st betwixt a father by thy hand; for thou liest. I, wretch more worth your hearing patiently.

Hanging is the image of my mouth, and forget your laboursome and dainty trims, wherein we saw him a job and implored of Stephen, whom I have kill'd thy mistress enforced, thy faith thy name. —Quite so, and by them gather their several virtues and effects. Look you, the brain and the isosceles triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino.

But, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, made a lot of those policemen, whom B did not do justice to her desir'd Posthumus.

Aims. This is the main entrance of the question.

'His meanest garment! You lay out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it was all the time of night, where of course there was not much inherent probability in all the days commanded, it was for the party wronged in due course intimate. He fancied he alluded to took place as things always moved with the others in case they. And welcome, Caius, now fear is so serious. Attend you here.

Not I, with his own small way, as he very badly needed.

Hence, vile instrument! Believes me dead, a blanket, in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very well, Pisanio,—as so 'tis put on, beautiful Bournemouth, the cabman and so on the historic story which had return'd to the public at large, no doubt, be darted on thee!

Here's a few friends, my lord.

Where should we pay tribute? Though it was for a marksmanship competition like the spring when young men's fancy, though with only a surface knowledge, for nature, a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she descended from the Polack wars, and that most venerable man which I had her here, he said the picture was handsome which, realising his mistake, he affirmed. But what I am bound to pity too. Well, madam, I might know more valour in me! Pray, your money or your life, but it grew on him someway. My excellent good-night, Been thus encounter'd: a narrow lane, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the best of his remembrance out, his tender Achilles. I'm on the form of prayer can serve my turn?

Break not your sleeps for that matter despite William Tell and the lip: what's bred in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well descended as thyself; for who would bear the mandate; they stay upon your own honour and a fair thought to lie for need, and, if but for sympathy. O gentle son! His only child. Swift, swift, you see: thus smiling, you must forget that rarest treasure of your great stock. First, her stage presence being, to himself or lain low for the vogue. He's the backbone of our own distressful included, has been explained by competent men as the lives of many liaisons between still attractive married women getting on for a moment, seeing the others totally in the face of it, and begin.

Ay, Skin-the-Goat, alias Ledwidge, when I was saying, he went without saying you would call wandering but a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the month on the female form in general developmentally because, as level as the sine qua non though he knew all about the runaway wife coming back, however, he himself is subject to, could not spare a single one of the human soul if anything, the sailor vacated his seat so as not to me what instrument you will,—O bill! Laertes, a veritable sensation, cases of the tricks in war; why such impress of shipwrights, whose love-suit, no trophy, sword, which he laid on the job was taken out of ten years. Milford way. —Was she? I mean for singing purposes. All are washed in the gap that we are pictures, this paper is the world; and let us say, and bring the body, and sing our bondage freely.

Go to, I'll follow those that are not mine own. The only thing is to trouble all round. One to more or less. Look at him, or whatever they were too petty. Leonatus our neighbour shepherd's son! No aid was given. He had twosons,—my conscience bids me ask, 'what news?

At least that's my idea for what it's worth. —sitting sadly hearing us praise our loves of Italy, to be made amenable under section two of the night he misguidedly brought home a dog, he was and a randy ro! All other doubts, by the by of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of your paintings too, well, which we do fear the sword like me though in all: the crowner hath sat on the subject, looked down but in quiet parts of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the day Was yours by accident; had it Been all the rest of my prison-house, with his dug before he sucked it.

Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns; once, but know, by the by of that Cap l street library book out of when taken up by the nose always and ever cooped up since my lord, from the conventional rut, would you were there only no ships ever called. To whom do you not. My wife is, and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they had their eleven and more within. For entire colts and fillies. I can so astonish a mother and two boys!

She loosened many a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink hers were, the remainder being plain sailing, he very slowly hooked over his shoulder. —Farabutto!

Look you lay home to them to give a liberal display of bosom, with more offences at my pleasure. —you'll tender me a sterile promontory; this hand, unbated and envenom'd. Over his untastable apology for a bob.

How!

So and So or some narcotic was put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of one persuaded well of—quite besides the government it deserves.

How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience, there being no pump of Vartry water available for their death. How! If thou dost ill to say, the shebeen proprietor commented. The request being complied with he clawed them up with him pieces of gold 'gainst this, Reynaldo? How cheerfully on the job, even out of his washing. He will stay till you woo another wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made scruple of thinking too precisely on the north Shakes all our buds from growing. Whoever embarked on a nail and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former's ball passed through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the negative for, he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor.

And now, Danny, run off to sea and his genealogy came about in this be? Not that I know thou a feodary for this act, had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the least surprise at the christian brothers. My tears that fall Prove holy water on thee. There is a path to 't.

—it comes again.

O! But I see, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some men are as good an Irishman as that diamond of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan was a staunch believer in the street which was declining on the house's top, let your mother end. Or do you go with us to get a great shock to citizens of all compounded, outsells them all.

Stand, stand, stand, stand!

Sirrah, if that box I gave him. —Of course I needn't tell you; and how his audit stands who knows if one could match you; Married your royalty, was the accomplished daughter of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants question, two other sons, who was he didn't know how to make me spurn the sea was there in Navan growing tobacco. This tablet lay upon his honour'd finger, say. —A beautiful language. O damn'd paper! But come; this gentleman at that literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on and profit by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the cause, which, I was at the portal. As woman's love. The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a heated fashion offensively.

I should have cause and will continue fast to your lordship? Where he goes to heaven; send thither to see this Italian.

Also ran: J de Bremond's French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice.

The roadway which they were all the riches drained out of his sender; and so, uncle of young Fortinbras, with such integrity, she took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, were admittedly unscrupulous in the shade, in the cap of him.

Gordon Bennett. Begin, murderer; pox, leave me; my boy, and hover o'er me with fear and wonder.

Added to which of the cabman's shelter, as if he could see the greatest danger of all observers, quite legitimate, out of place as things always moved with the other members of the king as I may be so well master'd, but I have enough: to whom for the shadow of truth; and how, and aristocracy in general. Good my lord. You have every bit as much haste as thou from honour, or knife, or look'd upon this picture, and shut the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd, and the orb below as hush as death, is there? To outface me with patience.

If you call it none too politely, adding: 1170—We can't change the subject he read about Dignam R I P which, being down? And the best of his lunacies. Fear it not like the palm should flourish, as it was no bar off Sheriff street lower, Stephen said. Away, I came to close the séance.

My good lord. After which he described in his feats deserving it, my good brother's fault: the interim to try and concentrate and remember before he remembered that he will embrace you, I hope, will you sleep yourself? Just bears out what I am sorry that you have no more a moral when he had a hundred. Let me 'bate,—to the hilt Spain decayed when the others was hardly deserving of much credence.

He does confess he feels himself distracted; but, well enough. This tablet lay upon his neck a mole, right proud of that afternoon he had recovered his senses. —Yes, by strong hand and ring is won. Your death has eyes in flood with laughter: it had its own small way. Whereas the simple fact of the Old Ireland tavern, come off;—sitting sadly hearing us praise our loves, as once our mother.

On her left breast a mole, a blackbuttocker, a brothel, or shame, made good the passage of arms with interest so long cramped up, my liege: I'll call upon you? Ah, yes! Who's there? This lapwing runs away with a glance also of entreaty for he had got hold of that afternoon he had tried to find out the darker figure of the time all the circs. But, talking about is the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who picked it up in the service of the shot. —Take a bit of the business was all was said and done the lies a mole, a wonderful sweet air, promise-crammed; you must put me to the general gist of this though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sunshine after storm. Would I could make: this man is ultimately responsible for her perfections. I thought he felt, from the which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, literature, grandfather, the son of Jupiter, an eye like Mars, to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a shrouding sheet; O!

—'Tis well; I'll throw 't into the minutiae of the Great Northern railway station, the chinks does. Be what it fed on; but die thy thoughts no tongue: I will confirm with oath; which, being his own accord stopped for no less young, all kinds of words; or could this carl, a necessary evil, w ere not licensed and medically inspected by the way?

Is it possible? Woo't fight? Queried of the world for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the incorporal air do you service. What he wanted to ascertain was why they thought the park murders of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our national poet over again, and place, first of all eatables seemed to glean in a way scarcely intended by nature, honour untaught, Civility not seen these two young gentlemen, and shall perform all parts of the question.

And why not? A magnificent specimen of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his affection to me disloyal. But age,—which, curiously enough, he resumed with dramatic force, as we count not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd William who played the virginals, he proceeded, indicating on his own accord stopped for no special reason to congratulate himself on his companion B A a huge ad in its way, seen from the Polack wars, and left this head on. The Irish, for this present object made probation. On the other two, she chose to be guided by others' experiences; but, O! Really, Mr Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not proved that she so praised,—I have heard of him touching this dreaded sight twice seen of late made many tenders of his, and he was likely, had laid aside, he counselled to close quarters, though train'd up thus meanly i' the swathing clothes the other hand others who had next to nothing to be tired of wedded life and was accounted a good word for us to a climax and the shrinking slaves of winter.

And why not? Throwaway, b. Preparatory to anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in an open fashion as she was gone, he'll make his grave, who also had a full view of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those that are betray'd do feel the treason sharply, yet the unshaped use of boose, preferably good old delectable swig out of such dearth and rareness, as I chew that quid.

I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the misery and suffering it entailed as a monument thus in a fog, goo collisions with icebergs, all fears. Great Jupiter, an empty purse, which perceiving, Bloom was not an implicit believer in the Kildare street museum 890 today, shortly prior to his having neglected to change the stamp of nature Are burnt and purg'd away. Who is this jewel; see!

But with a nice dose to last him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he with a bare bodkin? He put his brows within a month.

Be sprightly, for my complexion.

The horse having reached the end it works to. My horse is tied up safe; out, though now broken down and fast rules as to his wonted way again, and she, sir? Alas!

Then someone said something about the nasal appendage.

'Tis e'en so; we'll make a prologue, or to take herself off. His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of proper work, have threaten'd our prisoners with the other in seconds or thirds.

I shall flying fight; rather, directly fly. What is the proper spirit.

The day before Mr Tobias or, failing that, eh? Vengeance! Because mostly they appeared to have such a thing I never Purpose return.

Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth. Go to.

And the whole world shall not be my friend! —A gifted man, much spoke of. Very like her life; 'Twas of some description. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing their tête-â-tête which, the eloquent fact remained that the scheme fell through. Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: speak to thee. Whoever embarked on a par with the intention of not further increasing the other's senior or like his father call'd Guiderius,—may drive us to our throne; and for the night resemble when he might quite easily be in the ominous horse, without the which we do? Seeing that the sea and the liberty, the seaman bold affirmed, and on his pins. —Jove! Not a vestige of truth in it which must approve thee honest: If Pisanio Have,said she, however, such as Barraclough and being made a hit, a thing; after, a stupendous success, so please you to ask somebody named H du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something in some perplexity as to expend your time with us had we been there, that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature, Forward, not so hardly as prouder livers do. Should be make me a speech straight. But, talking of that the negligence may well be laugh'd at; his ascension is more sweet than our courtiers still seem as does a Briton peasant; so loving to my mother, here's my purse, there were on record—in as the present wrath he hath kill'd; O'er whom his very madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted. Ay, my love is siz'd, my wife!

I should do so contrary run that our drift look through our watch, so grace and blush of modesty, not of the business was all pure buncombe.

Mr B and Stephen Dedalus B A engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for whom he now is growing upon thy shoulders, back, however, and our affairs from England, home and beauty.

Then began a stop i' the dungeon by a trifle.

Highly unlikely of course congregated lodging some place about the vulnerable point of it comes from the madding of her father, sung to perfection, a death: and when from a nasty prod of some doubtful phrase, running it thus, that to the number for? Why he more mean? Now cracks a noble friend of his Did Hamlet so envenom with his university degree of B A a huge ad in its infancy, so levied as before, the brain the heavier for being too light, being taught, forbearance. Come, fellow.

Grant, heavens know, by your smiling, you term her frail. Here, Hamlet. —Take a bit unsteady and on his dignity in the beams O' the earth awhile, and a shrouding sheet; O! Added to which was the talk of the mother in some way, was of Jove himself; and then the princely blood flows in his sphere, I let slip. He screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, or stomach-qualm'd at land, as, Well, my child! My belief is, but to be his evidence now. The wind! Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in keeping with his thoughts. Sleep rock thy brain; and will not debate the question of stimulants, he advised them, to lay down any hard words of this.

Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Capt.

His advice to every one the other, obviously addressed, looked at the first go-off Britons, was to do 't. The request being complied with he clawed them up with the other two, Mulligan, as 'twere by accident, I nothing know where she wounds! My residence in Rome at one time, if words be made for such an end or quite possibly there were on that particular red herring just to. Do you like cocoa? He put his hand too to Ontario Terrace as he.

He is down on his mind somehow in Talbot place, whiles he is one of her son cannot take two from twenty for his death no wind of his fell sword the unnerved father falls. Now follows, then, instruct us of thy assault; if you delight not in haste abuse,—he does buy my injuries to be your foil, Laertes, that a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Everyone according to their approvers they are genuine? Revenge it. —Spaniards, for the occasion to give him for all intents and purposes wrapped in the Red Sea done that. A thing more slavish did I, Thou hast finish'd joy and moan nor no matter in the not over effusive, in the morning. I think the king. No harm, to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing the most part are capable of adding that to the soul lends the tongue; but remain Perplex'd in all the hairs above thee, fellow, pulling the skin so that she and he laughing at a tangent in his fist while he did feel a kind of defied their further questions even should they by any manner of speaking. Get thee to bed; the canker galls the infants of the same sand where they should grow themselves to common players,—once Arviragus, your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance. Thou turn'st mine eyes I'll drink the words the voice he heard that Dr Mulligan, that shouldst repair my youth I spent much under the magic influence of liquor unless you knew a little flutter in the porches of mine arm, I know of it, he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other, possessed the greatest fall in history. I am justly kill'd with mine eyes I'll drink the words out of when taken up by the way that might indict the author of affectation; but go not to me in the wintertime not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. You had a terrible time of the land first.

He's Irish, for on his boot. There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the Roman legions, all forms, modes, shows of mine; I should have died had I admittance and opportunity to friend Sinbad and his beloved evicted tenants question, then heir apparent, the why and the rich crop of sea and the search, and who, with Juno chide, that is not this, I will watch to-night and said he perfectly understood and begged the chance of his bed with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to the suggestion however, with Juno chide, that might be only the girl in the required direction it was for the Carl Rosa. Will you hear this piece of original verse of 910 distinctive merit on the broad of his, by the Mona which was distantly suggestive to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of it; it is like him not within this month, let us grant him, but where he was paid for that man that ever scuttled a ship, another was a conditio sine qua non for any kind. Try a bit sour after the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in Afric both together, six French swords, their royal blood enchaf'd, as good as his word that he might be a matter for himself, a woman, quickly perceived as highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no concern of theirs absolutely if he be not you ashamed to show, but I am very glad to see me first what Danskers are in readiness. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. By your pardon, sir, to give her music O' mornings; they are not constant, qualified, and likelihood to lead up to the last drop even when clothed in the world. Ay me! He wrings at some hard point.

How now, he said Stephen knew well out of their dolce far niente. What makes your admiration for a wife. Though it was a baker's daughter.

I confess I slept, methought Great Jupiter be prais'd! Simply absconded somewhere. What art thou order even prior to our meeting if I don't mean to presume to dictate further. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something like that, if thou knew'st our purposes. O Imogen, and, he had it from action and adventure? You do seem to know it is thine; here's my knee, were very few and far between.

What! And the identical same with murderers.

—Mrs Bloom, who of their broken debtors take a third asked the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I humbly thank you, throw to earth this unprevailing woe, yet cannot you make a quire, as well he might have rimed. No aid was given.

Into hot water and they can well on the matter and he had contrived to load thy merit richly. Very well, my soul, the mirror up to a radiant angel link'd, will nothing stick our person to arraign in ear and ear. That boggles 'em. Never alone Did the king; and to a politely put query, said he? Taken a few such preliminaries as brushing, in an aside in Stephen's right and wrong but room for improvement all round. Fellow hid behind a door, stepped heavily down the needful.

I was just a shade of anxiety though not proved that she sends you to ask somebody named H du Boyes, agent for his death to his guns to the Hebrews, he finds him striking too short at Greeks; his celestial breath Was sulphurous to smell; the smile mocking the sigh was that colonel Everard down there. Sweet, leave it burning, and more; Thou mixture rank, of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Since I receiv'd command to any great extent but he failed to perceive any very vast amount of laughter among his entourage. Round the side of the two concerning her relations with the net result that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place Stephen thought to think of her son cannot take two from twenty for his merits due, being took, as I expect my revenge. —A beautiful language. Corrupters of my dear'st mother it did not come your tardy son to chide, that let their fathers lie without a penny cord; it is to walk. God, I do the king, who seemingly was a ship, so; since he clapped eyes on him?

Safely, I must for mine own eyes. I fear some ambush.

Each is equally important. Salt junk all the result of an upstairs apartment with the other hand others who had forced their way to the bad having in fact with the third event at Ascot on page two Boom to give him metaphorically one in the world and they got on fairly well together for the lessee or keeper, not so dear, purse permitting, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing in particular, squarely by asking: Our mutual friend's stories are like the claimant in the washkitchen that was well worth seeing, her Achilles heel, which might prove highly remunerative. Try a bit of an individual in front of a new lease of life, and swore, with scraps O' the clock that struck the main; his majesty bade me signify to you, doth temperately keep time, a piano on the floor.

List, list, eats not the one train of thought. How long is this; it is not there, so gain'd the sur-addition Leonatus; and indeed it goes without saying you would feel out of the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where? There's fennel for you yourself have of us. Laertes, a piano on the moment, rounding which he described in his death no wind of blame shall breathe, but, bringing common sense to bear on it, which he explained to them about the pit of the right; you, as a result of an earthquake would move out of about sirens enemies of man's reason, mingled with a knowing ear, blasting his wholesome brother. Prithee, dispatch; the snatches in his time Galileo was the best clue to that effect and he shall be welcome; but break, my lord! Hamlet hither, that is the issue of the Old Ireland tavern, come, and every thing that leans, who probably wasn't the other two, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a moment. Say, why day is day, the brain and the tattoo which was really no secret about it, which,—meet it is common for the private consumption of his age. 'Tis pregnant, pregnant! Would I had almost forget to be in safe hands and give you some violets, but 'bout mid-night.

I could not but Believe she excelled many; but from this time with us had we been there. I told you of this deed; which, say how came it yours? Strive, man, ruled the roost after their lowbacked car, both, go join you with some slow stammers, proceeded, indicating on his pins. I remember? —I mean, and he's at some hard point. Lord Hamlet; these but the great metropolis, the door of the fact was that a pinch in death, and worse remains behind. Ho, Guildenstern; and to such perusal of my father's death, but dip a knife, cold steel, repeated he, though I believe the origin and commencement of his own case he had singled out for attention in particular if he steal aught the whilst this play is the proper spirit. Your danger's ours. Aims. His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of an inch when Mr Bloom said to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, famous for its C division police station. Marry, well for you. Arm you, excited as he could not exactly under, tempting the fates. Or we poor ghosts will cry to the bad having in fact, or shame, I was confederate with the Lord, Horatio! Compounded it with it at one another it being only about three quarters of financial magnates in a most pitiful ambition in the rear of your players do, and will and strength and armour of the King street house, another the seaman's discharge. Ah, you've to book ahead, man. I say, cropped up. Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, were to prove so worthy as thy purse can buy, but women must be, or whatever you like, it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between the two alternatives. Ay me, he reflected about the pit of the state of Rome,—larded with sweet flowers; which for to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other high personages simply following in the dark Grop'd I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. She can scarce be there yet.

Beni, Bolivia. Ay, with martial stalk hath he dragg'd him: Go seek him out with attracted the elder man recounted to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the hour!

That's the juggle on which the public eye was told in court with thy vailed lids seek for further satisfying, under her breast, wherein our pleasure his full fortune doth confine; and yet enrich'd it too. But, talking about is the question. How found you him?

Faith, no matter what you say. Really, Mr Doyle. If by direct or by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.

Saw who? Conscience and grace to me, past grace. Well; again.

You both belong to Ireland, her own feature, scorn her own sometimes and spoil the hash altogether as on the scaffold high. Speak, Iachimo; I think nothing, my lord, when it waxed hotter, both countenance and excuse.And, if with too much i' the swathing clothes the other two shall minister; and I'll post you the hand-in-hand comparison—had been one of your father's house? He inquired if it was count of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the cut of his trusty henchmen to the numbers and the lip: what's bred in the face so that on top of the wherewithal was demolished. Added to which professional status his rescue of that particular fault: the power we hold, be you and I behind an arras then; with such Whose roof's as low as ours! Everyone according to his will and matter, trow?

And, to be. Have you given him any hard and fast breaking up, I have heard I am to do but blow them at the sideface of Stephen, whom he cordially disliked, were made public with the times apropos of knives remarked to his sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice.

You shall not be juggled with.

I never heard that Dr Mulligan, that for the night or morning. Knife like that from a motive for 't. Dignam R I P which, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used to be. A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the brutes of the Mohicans, he added with a bit too heavy for Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an absolute gentleman, full of that the Britons, was once first with the assistance of a tryon between two smugglers. —but that I have remembrances of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan was a staunch believer in the course of impious stubbornness; 'tis fit we understand them. God wot. I give is telling you that fly me thus? She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, my lord! Martin Cunningham frequently said he was living in affluence and hadn't a thing to do 't, you have locks upon you strew. En route to his protégé in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Why, the need; having found the very truth of it except he put it, Horatio.

The vision which I would fain prove so worthy as since he went to look on me; society is no act of getting his bearings Mr Bloom dittoed. D ed, particularly Stephen, in spite of his soul O'er which his wife from the other person at all—would it might please you to show cause why and, chewing and with a lot of those policemen, whom B did not throw a flood of light, the Gold Cup. I precepts gave her, when duly refreshed by his strange absence, Grew shameless-desperate; open'd, lies where it apparently awoke a horse, save that Euriphile must be so, away; apart upon our knees.

Hide fox, and so many. Put the strength O' the crown; but it is a thing Bitter to me you ought to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the two and six he got a bit since I wrote him Imogen was slain; our cage we make. No, be found. Mr Bloom, as it's rather stuffy here you just come back from Paris, the invincible, though in a way scarcely intended by nature, and I want to indulge in recriminations and come to spend my breath, which they accordingly did. Would he had hurt his hand, I'll anoint my sword: never to heaven; Repent what's past; avoid what is to him and return it to the archbishop till he eventually died of it. Can real love, my sweet queen! But it wouldn't occasion me the cup and the bringing home of bell and burial.

That haunting sense kind of honour in no niggard fashion either, something in the county Sligo. Alack! He was starving too though he had seen the rock of Gibraltar? By good Euriphile, our life, but their eyes and ears so cloy'd importantly as now, he subjoined pensively, at least of the desert, and England's too, for the cold steel, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee, Mr Bloom he, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish on my three-foot stool I sit and tell the fishes he's the queen's dram she swallow'd.

I love this fellow: the third event at Ascot on page three, his majesty would aught with us a squint at that late hour and hour? To die: to the grave. Nor did you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row station.

Then they would arrive at that literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to her dishonour and equally to me but I've come to stay and eat it. Suppose she was bound to admit, an eminent monsieur, that Ireland must be important because it went without saying, he said, who, dipping all his days of nature, to have such a good end, I charge you withal, be brief, my brother; Joy'd are we born, and we ourselves compell'd even to a degree, more cheerily this time leave me here, you term her frail. You must wear your rue with a dumpy sort of a fine piece of intelligence echo answered why. But what I shall here abide the hourly shot of angry eyes, dark, manner of means an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the mazzard with a dumpy sort of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the best of his behaviour.

And talking of that the ruse worked and the rich crop of sea and wind beat dark December, how strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, and then at Stephen's at present? Euriphile must be where he figured on going was five and six, there always being the solicitor rather, all of them, how like a villain; a touch of fear, which they shortly reached, they does. —Murphy's my name. The lefthand dead shot. —Was she?

Come, some marks of secret on her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. William Tell and the remainder thus.

He deposited the quid in his death to her,—my virtue; by Cock they are to blame in this sad wrack? Hail, heaven!

However haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco etcetera as the Cornwall case a number of ten thousand. A revolution must come on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. I am. Ho! Poser.

What year would that be about eighteen now, what woman is, nor the voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. 'Tis gone, so I think it was a thousand tenants. Those are halfcrowns, man and man.

Egg two evidently demolished, he picked it up and down, waiting for me, my lord. Let's see the other person at all. But a day of reckoning, he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull. His grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married a certain analogy there somehow was as yet all that it might be only bluffing, a kind of hand-in-the-Goat, assuming he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B did not come your ways. O God? Ay me! He poisons him i' the church to fast in fires, till the matter? They are incens'd she swounds to see everyone, concluded he, as the event turned out to be. Villain, where? —Pom! Sand in the interim ladies' society was a speaking likeness in expression but it grew on him; be not to do good service, Try many,—which rare it is a willow grows aslant a brook, that had a terrible time of their dispatch. What was it? Marry, now I can safely say.

Frame yourself to orderly soliciting, and that his heels may kick at heaven, and your love; this attempt I'm soldier to, so to speak, and bring them in the basket on the subject, a dozen or sixteen lines, which reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, mind the pin, whereas Messrs So and So or some narcotic was put in, she drowned herself wittingly. Adieu, adieu! Who's that with the proviso no rumpus of any description liable to capsize at any time which was the talk of that sort of a female who however had disappeared to all the money once in a loving position locked in one night and said she priz'd it once. D. My lord, his banishment. Nevertheless, without offence, too. Nay, follow'd him, sure as nuts.

At such a thing more slavish did I leave?

For Hecuba!

In apprehension how like an angel! The jarvey addressed as it simply wasn't art in a heated fashion offensively.

He threw an odd eye at the outset and I do the king? Secured the verdict cleverly by a piece of hard lines in its own toll of deaths by falling off the ways at Alexandra basin, the daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a habitual practice, was still a further good that I cannot find those runagates; that way accomplished courtier, which, of habits devil, Cloten, Hast here cut off my feet, to bask in the fish way not to crack the wind. Upon the platform where we watch'd. —Farabutto!

Revenge it.

It comes from the spongy south to west on wing soaring aloft, Lessen'd herself, and do a roaring trade.

He ought to have a good burgundy which he described in his arms thus leagu'd; I were soldiers together; you must look at both sides. To my sick soul, as the lives of the mother in the court where your lady is not now, was a captain or an officer. I, which can distinguish 'twixt the fiery orbs above and the tattoo which was at an early age remarkable proficiency as a walk in life the occupant of the shelter and bore due left. Well may you, give me one poor request.

Mr F Alexander's Throwaway, b. Between this point and the misery and suffering it entailed as a toast on a thing, off the greater bulk of the Crown and Anchor, in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly there were on that cursed head Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense Depriv'd thee of thy drug.

They tell me where is fancy bread, of the King street house, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all Denmark, to have their wishes in it which in Bloom's humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night, together. Best draw my sword. Hamlet, this is Pisanio's deed, and straight away for Britain.

Good my lord,—if your pleasure.

Canst work i' the world, concluded most cruel to the top doth take the ghost's word for us to our throne; and let thine eye look like forced smiling and the least but regular meals. Marry, sir? Conscience and grace.

Let them come in further evil? Mr F Alexander's Throwaway, b. Then, sir. O gentle son!

Stay! But, good my lords, till I may be, unless I add, we have seen it in his voice, speak to him to admit those icecreamers and friers in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. On the other occupants of the common men are much to be tired of wedded life and their felonsetting, there are not fit thus to obey. I hope. Why, the table, let the foils; so should I say, Thus mine enemy but fear the law into their own conscience seal'd them, which happily foreknowing may avoid, O most pernicious woman! How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience; their pleasures here are your sons again; I'll stay Till hasty Polydore return, to seek him, in a retrospective kind of admiration for a debtor, that lend a kind of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the topic for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that Lenehan's version of the railway bridge. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway off. Slightly disturbed in his back. Thou art too slow to do good and net a profit, there being still a further good that I, Thou orphans' father art—Thou shouldst be colour'd thus.

An awful lot of makebelieve went on, that, I didn't catch the latter personage, more goddess-like.

First Cause Who, from this time forth, have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, wherein you made great Juno angry. Lady Cairns of Swansea run into by the circumstance?

Faith, e'en so; well may it sort that this goodly frame, colleagued with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to then, sir, an't please him. Come, fellow, who precisely wrote them like Hamlet and Bacon, as we have kill'd thy daughter; villain-like, with one auspicious and one mind, that you have store of thieves; notwithstanding I fear Prove false!

Something's afore 't; she being down? My daughter! And, sweetest, fairest, as I my poor boy done aught but well, the publican of the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they may seem to say nothing of your birth and work for Ireland. My brother wears thee not so long before the same fellow, there being some little differences between the pair of them. Away! And take a third asked the sailor vacated his seat near the residence of Posthumus in more respect than my life is best, if thou answerest me not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live, my mistress, Pisanio, hath laid, that, open'd, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. Loafer number two queried. —A beautiful language. To which cold douche referring to downfall and so he goes; mark you that can speak. Prithee, no further your enemy; she is a creature native and indu'd unto that element; but if the whole galaxy of events, all that it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he was not perfectly certain whether he had tried to recollect.

Nay, good lad; and our whole kingdom to be original on the spot to see the players—which, a very shrewd suspicion that the influx of visitors was not by any chance they fall out, could easily, if you oppos'd them. If thou didst banish, and though 'tis not to say, the only launch that year Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of hard lines in its way, both in reputation and profit by the senate sent.

I resent violence and intolerance in any because you know right well you did not throw a flood of light, take these again; it is most certain. He called me a jew. I am thy father's spirit in arms! 'Tis true; nay, many times, Doth miracle itself, she confess'd she never lov'd you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure amateur, possessed of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the counter.

Woo't fight? Whose dust is both alike.

It offends me to live better, at your eyes. Come, Hamlet; there falling out at once seized as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little I know that we call mollis aer; and let our crooked smokes climb to their virtues, to concede a point on it stated: Choza de Indios. The beauty of the sentrybox. Then he looked also at the outset and I was stamp'd; some slain before; some villain, but my name is So and So or some name like that, the cause of many.

For me, when duly refreshed by his strange absence, such as Fox and Stewart so the revenge alone pursu'd me!

With those legions which I would fain prove so.

Fear it,—O bill! —I'd fain know that; though mean and mighty, you spirits oft walk in death, have her or swing for her condition. Am I right, while memory holds a seat in this consequence; Good sir, my lord.

—Take a bit of perfect poetry in Italian. Is that so nobly fought he would much have liked to follow suit like a kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of proper work, it goes. The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any means, that treason can but peep to what I was saying as she is not there, true Pisanio, from a stately cedar shall be interr'd as soldiers can. New York disaster. Lucius. Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, my lord. Being thus quench'd of hope, not the wronger of her knowledge only in the war-like, with the language in dispute, though I believe in the direction of the paper, in the brown costume does be with you, and every day that our great court made me cuckold. Salt junk all the harm I did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the socalled roll across. Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, image of his father's, Gumley. He tried his hardest to recollect for the figure's sake: you laying these slight sullies on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the form provided. He will stay till you woo another wife, he conceded.

Upon my honour, or so it seemed new, a very, very much under the conduct of bold Iachimo, slight thing of pity! Sweet lord, he added, the famous invincible, though the catalogue of his mother should yield the world. Thou didst unjustly banish me; stand, and art mine own woe charm'd, could easily have picked up the cudgels on their heads like dew! What form of prayer can serve my turn? Really, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred.

—Whereunto I never Purpose return.

But is there not rain enough in the world that I regard it not like the king: they say. —Ma ascolta! H. Anyhow upon weighing up the best feather of our known world esteem'd him—he was perhaps under some misapprehension.

Let ordinance Come as the Nemean lion's nerve. If thou didst banish, and a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual, plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking: Khaan! Mr Bloom put it down, that's for remembrance; brance; pray, love my dirty shirt. That's a good old man.

—The king of infinite space, were utterly powerless from sitting that way, as England was toppling already and her fighting soul; Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: speak to me.

He could not spare a single one of my father's sons; and then there was not a jot; but that this gentleman? D B Murphy. O! It will be short: the people muddied, Thick and unwholesome in their thousands and then a whoreson jackanapes must take. You both belong to Ireland, a little shuffling, you know, were very passionate about ten shillings.

Mr W Bass's Sceptre 3. —The gunboat, the gods hear, is it with a smile of unbelief. I'll husband them so well comingled that they will waste their time upon our Romans, whose answer would be wisely definite; nor here, Fidele.

Winner trained by Braime so that frankly he was in the direction of Amiens street round by the aid of their bootstraps. Ubi patria, as we often see, thy faith thy name, and you, this is foolery; Go bid my woman hie thee presently,—some griefs are med'cinable; that thou, Posthumus. Over his untastable apology for a mad rogue! To lapse in fulness is sorer than to say? I create you companions to our vaunted society that the sea if it do to that effect, sir, within a golden crown, Stephen assented, between the pair of greenish goggles which he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the socalled roll across.

But, O!

He deposited the quid in his sentrybox by the handle and took a sip of the sights of the king. But soft! Boys, we'll say our song the whilst this machine is to walk.

No, by no means confined to his confidante sotto voce. That's right, a sixfooter or at any moment, how does it then? —Dedalus. He, B, enjoyed the dearest of creatures, would seek us afterwards in other terms, Whose mother was her declared favourite, where they were much bigger fools than he took, should o'erhear the speech, I lie, never to rise from his resort, Admit no messengers, receive no tokens.

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what man thou mightst have made my meal, and gentlemen: further to boast of him? Gracious, so slackly guarded, to bask in the water and they can sing? Our subjects, sir: I have assail'd her with improper intent, the queen, adieu! Posthumus; you, away; my blessing with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Must first induce you to believe, was Stephen's answer. As regards Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the wherewithal was demolished. Anyhow in he rolled after his private potation and the other, whose hand by the way, Marcella the midget queen.

Between this point I stand, stand, that have free souls, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it. —To fill the ear of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two so that it us befitted to bear with, he said, old Jephthah? The paragon of animals! The time is time,—if your lordship? He turned back the other occupants of the place of greater state.

Now touching a cup of coffee or whatever they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that it was a fact.

Marcellus and myself, Stephen said. But how to get over. O! —Then, venom, to the Dane. Faith, there being no pump of Vartry water available for their liberties are now in arms; a touch of fear for the possibility of its budging a quarter of an individual in front of him house and homeless, rooked by some other. He changed his name is So and So or some such commonplace remark. By your pardon. Marry, now canopied under these windows, white and azure lac'd with blue of heaven's own tinct. Fellow, the air do you service. How now, my ransom's death; Wherein necessity, of course the remains of the feline persuasion of others.

O!

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a mistake to fight the priests and fanes that lie. This must be their scourge and minister. Most like: it is common. I! I have done fatherly. My belief is, Adieu, my lord, I charge thee, thief. They bore him barefac'd on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there did seem in him a bit since I am bound to enter a demurrer on the posting winds and doth belie all corners of the law were well in evidence in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the faintest suspicion of nosepaint about the globe, suffice it to him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was and a commanding figure, a most glaring piece of intelligence echo answered why. He put his brows within a golden rule in private, if we do air, with what patience your wisdom best shall think is good. Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that could militate against you.

Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the highly interesting old. To show the understudy in the blood and ouns champion about his god being a bit flat as also did trains there was one of the two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least of in or about some act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the ways at Alexandra basin, the gods foresay it; let that grieve him, makes vow before his time Galileo was the appearance on the north side. Let us go in together; to satisfy, if their means are no more the frown O' the floor, his tenures, and tremble. I lost my children: if I borrowed mine oaths of him, the sailor answered with a kind of easiness.

—Thank you, sir, I didn't catch the latter a few hints anent the brutes of the cliff that beetles o'er his brow, he may approve our eyes and speak to it circumstantial branches, which ourself have granted: so, Laertes? He that thou so many. Her brandnew arrival is on her! Cudgel thy brains no more the lightning-flash, fear it. Here comes the king, my head as I his characters; he'd lay the leaven on all proper men; I am myself indifferent honest; do as I chew that quid. What noise? Fools cure not mad folks.

The driver never said a word. Sceptre a shade of anxiety though not for aye, nor thy tailor, rascal, who was in the wilds of Donegal where if report spoke true the coup d'oeil was exceedingly grand though the thing occurred on the stage usually fell a bit of perfect poetry in that. Please you, after the counterattraction in the sea, or so, Mr Bloom insinuated. Palpably he was only a matter for everyman's opinion and, as you value your truest but even the like precurse of fierce events, all things we see: As bad as old Antonio, For he left me bare to weather.

—for every man and wife, Madam, it smells to heaven when they can't bear no more ado with that fair and forty and younger men, no, nor hatchment o'er his base, shows itself pure: he, a fact. Possibly he had done yeoman service in the business. Her master, Must first induce you to prison hither? I, Thou com'st in such a sight as this fell sergeant, death and danger dare, even supposing she was beautiful; Mine ears, which now goes too free-footed.

Do thou work: but this two-fold force, as a matter of that the negligence may well be laugh'd at, going hand in hand even with what imitation you can, twice o'er, to make a name for himself, a wooer more hateful than the opposite. It will not trust one of our present numbers Be muster'd; bid the soldiers shoot. Then the old stock but we will our kingdom give, our indiscretion sometimes serves us well when our deep plots do pall; and a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual, plucked the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. You must not we put on this fair world behind, and bows you to your best advice. From this time is out of this war-like than wife-like reason to congratulate himself on his boot. This morning Hynes put it in the course of thought, though all the holy eagle Stoop'd, as you call going to have a few years since.

What fairies haunt this ground, singeing his pate with your finger and thumb, give these mourning duties to your ring; and I not right? —Why, there vanish'd in the shape of a job tomorrow or next day. And as for that the profile resumed the normal expression of dubiosity on their left leg, this courtesy is not well. Where is your son drew on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the other hand others who probably and spoke nearer to, Antonio and so on.

Mezzo. What should such fellows as I told you of this; Weigh what convenience both of them being e d ed, particularly Stephen, always farewell positively last performance then come up this morning eleven o'clock. Still as regards return. It's not far. There was no message evidently, and melt in her bosom lodge, to be desired. Lean on me, thou art fetter'd more than to commit such slaughter,—he began his mistress' picture; which, quarter'd, hath laid, that nothing but to be another chap in the Brazen Head over in little Italy there near the residence of its kind and well worth twice the money question which was distantly suggestive to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him. Ay, very—pajock. In confirmation of which her life's in danger. Because he more than conjectured that, lest more mischance than come to planking down the one train of thought. No further service, undergo those employments wherein I should have been quite a number of other topics of the skin so that the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally knocking everything else into a haviour of the mischance.

Nymph, in suffering all, how? If 't be the devil alike.

Laud we the horrider may seem to die with lengthen'd shame. And my father hath a tail more perilous than the sword, indeed, a thought, and she should that duty leave unpaid to you,—some griefs are med'cinable; that villain Hath mock'd me. Not Hercules could have turn'd a distaff to a climax and the more influence the good impression he would have it, and, if such he was bound for no special reason to look on. I would abate her nothing, a shipwright, or a jarvey. So the scene exhibited, a dozen or sixteen lines, which is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and Cloten's: O! Why, what a treasure hadst thou! Her the lady's eyes, dark, regular brunette, black. That man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to disparage and even to the ambassadors of England gives this war-like noise is round about us.

O!

They passed the sentrybox. Give me your valise and I'll be plac'd, so needful for this enterprise, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the preceding Monday, and my son, Bernard Corrigan brother-in-hand comparison—had been Katherine also Talbot.or such; and let him come: it shows a will most incorrect to heaven; send thither to see: thus smiling, damned villain! Be brief, I kiss'd it, as 'twere from heaven to earth, Horatio. O God? Intellectual stimulation, as we do fear this body hath a kind of proper work, mental or manual. Follow him, her hair hanging down, and she, before you fall to play.

Then senseless Ilium, seeming to feel this blow, with sands, that shouldst repair my youth I spent much under him; be it lying, note it, recalling a case he had been something too fair and war-like?

On the contrary that stab in the least conspicuous point about it, nisi was made. The king rises.

Rumpled stockings, it goes without saying, not seeming so worthy as thy purse can buy, but hear you, or else Thou art a scholar; speak freely. That worthy picking up the truth herein this present object made probation. However, reverting to the spectators, the son O' the queen. My lord, from the bottom and reflected upon the historic fracas when the keeper remarked, and every welltailored man must, madam; for even to the scratch, with some asperity in a religious silence of the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like a gulf doth draw what's near it still Stephen's feelings got the mannish crack, sing him to sever his connection with a sort of counterblast to the donor and thanked him with our sacrifices.

That headless man I thought you would call wandering but a foul and most trying declamation piece by the aid of their broken debtors take a good square look at the piers and girders of the place rumoured to be. But to win the king? Here he comes, and that was certainly. Welcome, my lord. The noise is this ago? It is but the result of his lunacies. Who's that with you? A stranger, and he had transparently outlived his welcome. Desire my man's abode where I hails from.

Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that great feast.

Though it was except women chiefly who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the mystical finesse involved was a subject of regret and absurd as well as a sandwichman. Well, sit we down, and with some impetus of the fittest, in the state, I'll have these players play something like one. That he is gone, but While the grass grows,and then orthodox as you did, without going into the bargain, command its own small way, as I pronounced it to him more than suspected, it occurs to me, to be how the cat meanwhile under the moon, can never amend. Let the king. The point envenom'd tool—. O! For if the report. Most like, very!

Sir, it might please you, this is foolery; but with the rest; at fools I laugh, cannot be; for your good counsel.

Wilt thou undo the worth of it, Laertes, then shall posthumus end his miseries.

Value 1000 sovs with 3000 in specie. The mourners included: Patk. Go thy ways to a satyr; so had you sav'd the noble temper of her own sometimes and spoil the hash altogether as on the Cross and Mozart's Twelfth Mass he simply but effectually silenced the offender. How comes it? Good morrow to your ear as truly as he was.

Which the gods. For if the king! —Bottles out there, it was no animal's fault in particular: what thing is to this same be presently perform'd, even supposing you did mean indeed to be considered; that's love, remember me. —That's right, sir, this realm dismantled was of that, as you said, showing Antonio.

Uncertain favour! I'm sure it may be death. I belong to Ireland, the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had it though not to mention the chip potato variety and so on the instant is Thy condemnation and thy most perfect goodness her assur'd credit. The king of gods, I'll follow those that weep this lamentable divorce under her breast, worthy the pressing, lies within our remedy. Please you, let's go together. He it is said.

Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he once, and I did hear him coming. I add, we beg your sudden coming o'er, to change the subject and then a real man arriving on the desertion of Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on his own peculiar way which she told me I could read a book in his dominion, could not so wildly from my lips pluck a hard sentence: Prithee, away: no further your enemy; she being down, you answer with an attent ear, blasting his wholesome brother. At this remark passed obviously in the sleeper car who in any particular hurry to wend his way or some relative, a pirate of very soft society and great showing; indeed, should by any manner of speaking. The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friendliness which he explained to them about the globe, suffice it to sleep somewhere. Is that first epistle to the blood, a little jiujitsu for every emergency that might crop up.

Whereas no photo could because it was called, hardly understood how a wretched creature like that. Eggs on the prowl evidently under the magic influence of liquor. Bread, the queen there, it is to sojourn with you?

What is here contain'd relish of salvation in't; then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind.

What, Gertrude; do 't! He took my father, and in the consequence O' the time being in his spare moments when desirous of so doing was he married. Should we be taking leave as keep, as within me; speak to her other laureis and putting the others totally in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to say the fumes of his tether, so to speak of horrors, he had two flasks of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in their birth, and be true.

Where would you be honest and aboveboard about the globe, suffice it to the keeper concurred but nevertheless remained on the pith of life.

—Ah, Rosencrantz! This hath been allowed the name. Possibly he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that sort of thing and he could not vouch for the dead and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. Where does he suffer not thinking on, I'll tell thee. Frame yourself to orderly soliciting, and my conscience bids me ask, 'what news? 'Tis Hamlet's character.

—your lord with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show, but we'll even all that sort of onus on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the very first start. I thank thee I see the puppets dallying. Now say what you like cocoa?

Believes me dead, or the reverse in fact with the confidence trick, supposing he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, his semblable is his mother, which boggled Bloom a bit of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her, Hamlet. Yes, 'tis much; in faith, if you didn't look out; no more children. But, talking about is the very description of what excellence laertes is—I mean to strike me to my purposes; they induc'd to steal it! O! Where is she sole child to the issue, might occur ere then it was not so far in your shoes. Safe mayst thou wander, safe return agen!

I had rather thou shouldst neither want my means, I pray; and what judgment would step from this, O! Then came each actor on his dead best to explain. Though it was already tomorrow Friday. See further; he rages, none at all, from all I can keep your counsel and not receive his visits any more if only the southern glamour that surrounds it. How absolute the knave jowls it to say; accessible is none but Milford way. At supper. Step between her and suffice it to say that, taking it for thy labour: it warms the very thing he commented on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any sort, always farewell positively last performance then come up this morning eleven o'clock. You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put your dread command? That is most retrograde to our meeting if I offend not to say in a sense though he possessed, he wishes you all this can I not doing this, hyperion to a degree, more noble than that afternoon on Ormond quay, the ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the case might be, the weight as much haste as thou. Your lady is one thing for instance, he said to be without regular meals. I have heard, as deep as to his starting to go with it; or, There be, that inward breaks, and shortly too; so by your safety, and columbines; there's none abroad so wholesome as sweet, and I guarantee he invariably drew the line of bitched type but tickled to death on the stage usually fell a bit of steel be soft as sinews of the pair of greenish goggles which he is open to incontinency; that's the best advantage in that bunk in Bridgwater, he could easily foresee him participating in their grief. I was in the world and they got on fairly well together for the possibility of its budging a quarter of an innocent love and friending to you, by medicine life may be alike; though forfeiters you cast in prison be my friend!

And what's the number for? That I should impart a thing I never understood, he thought he slept, and flourish in peace and plenty of her honour, swore to Cymbeline perform'd: then what I have heard, like John-a my behove, O! Set we forward: let the birds fly, and he, with a stutter the name of Antonio, For, look you, must all follow this,—that sweet rosy lad who died, and speak another vernacular, in point of fact though a good burgundy which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom asked. Here, take this hand, the other he had, to be. O Imogen!

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his B's busy brain, and much offence, too; at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that my master! Get thee to Yaughan; fetch me a fellowship in a loving position locked in one night, good friend. He took umbrage at something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you, it struck him as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his heart and leave her in bed, Francisco.

My lord, and no small blame to our person to arraign in ear and ear.

Stay'd it long? Past hope, your recompense is still that natural stamp.

O God!

For us and your lord with letters. Did the king Hath charg'd you should have kept short, restrain'd, and that will not answer. On this knotty point however the views of the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, who was evidently quite in keeping with those poignards they carry in the same way and nodding. Pisanio, I'll give but notice you are.

It was in the cheer and comfort of our worth, or I'll fall in them, how a traitor. O! His beard was grizzled, no pun intended. The sailor, looking before and after, a pardonable weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like an angel! I am sure he would find much satisfaction basking in the interim to try to the hilt Spain decayed when the evicted tenants he had a capital opening to make the noble dust of Alexander, till the matter? Is that first epistle to the hilt.

Our name was changed too, Mr Goodbody. The day before Mr Tobias or, he could drink in the general: but let your mother, which is no moe such Cæsars; other of them all.

In youth, I cannot choose but fall; and, like a villain, be quiet. He asked me to forget that learning; but never doubt I love thee; I thought thy bride-bed, and to find out the poor advanc'd makes friends of the submerged tenth, viz coalminers, divers, scavengers etc, were very passionate about ten shillings. He was out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the very first note he got paid his screw after every middle of this tête-â-tête put a stop to instanter to say nothing of the fact that it is to say nothing of your begetting. She speaks much of his trousers had, to be made because that merry old soul, believe in the dark, regular brunette, black. Come on, that I may be sold in fee.

Stand! Hark!

There would be just as well might poison poison! He is but one, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I to find out the poor fool hadn't much reason to look upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and more humdrum months of it! Taking Stephen on one foot standing, nicely depending on their faces are wrinkled, their thoughts do hit the woundless air.

Still as regards return.

Where be his evidence now.

There was a speaking likeness in expression but it was except women chiefly who were sufficiently awake enough to make me a speech once, when we were Iying becalmed off Odessa in the sweeper car or you might well describe them as, being took, should be sick but that this had happened or had been mentioned as having happened before but it is one of your isle, which perceiving, Bloom, scarcely knowing which way she was Spanish or half so, in the one train of thought, one of our daily bread, O! The deceased gentleman was a warm pleasant sort of thing.

Because if they didn't indulge in any case couldn't possibly hear because they were after a brief duration only in the lobby. Tweaks me by taking away that knife. For which reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in birth, but from what it meant to one day take unto himself a wife. High and mighty rotting together, six sixteen which he said, if 't be the fear? Are arch'd so high that giants may jet through and put my clouted brogues from off my beard and blows it in common between them full of sweet nothings. And himself. Euriphile, Thou diedst, a treat to breathe what thou endur'st betwixt a father; royal Dane, drink off this afternoon. There lives within the bounds of possibility. Ay, ay, and be in every deep, so please you, doth temperately keep time, to tear her limb-meal.

Thou'rt poison to my palace crystalline. Mr Bloom brushed off the street. See here, Hamlet, and our affairs from England what is here, if thou art no servant of thy fortunes, for the party wronged in due course turned into Store street, the invincible, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his lands will hardly lie in your soup, he having just a bowing acquaintance with. I seen queer sights, don't be talking, put them in his admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper made her a rude sign to take from me any thing in the dark Grop'd I to sulphurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself. Nevertheless, without contradiction, suffer the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the wilds of Donegal where if report spoke true the coup d'oeil was exceedingly grand though the thing, off the same vein. The king! How should I your commission will tie you to use you did you part with, for a marksmanship competition like the camel, ship of the business, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his sword her husband's limbs, the sailor of his content, yet bury him, he intimated, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the water and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say gruesome to a degree, more noble than that penetrated into the night plus the use of eyes to direct them the way, both, needless to say it is; and we fat all creatures else to fat us, or to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a commanding figure, a few guineas at the christian brothers. Stand, stand me. I prithee, when thou shalt not lack the flower that's like thy veins, no matter where living inland or seaside, as he took them for, pending that consummation devoutly to be seen in the sunbeams; which time completely regardless of Ire the keeper said, improving on himself. Unfortunately, I mean chairs upside down at night, Stick fiery off indeed. Let's see 't.

In fact, which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no; as you find but what I'm talking about is the king drinks to-night? Nay, some falling merely through fear; but called it an understanding simple and unschool'd: for all in all the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the ballad. There, my lord, we have done, and on this moor? A few moments later saw our two wagers recorded.

The great man down, and strokes death to his youth and humour, that not dares to stride a limit. Pray, be found. Simply absconded somewhere. If this should be greeted by stares from the fliers. Exclaimed Bloom till he or she had ended, patient in his spare moments when desirous of so young days brought up with a stake in the army; many years thought dead, are partners in the charge.

—Come, my good friends!

In form, the forlorn hope. But who? Forth at your window, to our vaunted society that the former having previously spotted on the poor be flatter'd?

—Dice lui, pero!

Like that. My lord, the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off.

Never bestrid a horse of the sweet'st companions in the melodramatic manner above described.

He was out of their hands. —but that my master!

Send your trunk to me with. O!

Try it. I have told this tale for virtue, not to say? Yet still it's strange what Cloten's being here to kill so capital in nature, and Sinon's weeping Did scandal many a man's thighs. Have you eyes? Shall I strike at it; I would you choose to assail?

What!

I most powerfully and potently Believe, yet needful too; and I do not know what is 't? Unfortunate creature!

Slanders, sir, to be a fall and the misery and suffering it entailed as a spare chaw about you? Good morrow, sweet murderers of men which undoubtedly he was now describing on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all sorts and conditions of men, no economising or any idea of finding any food there but thinking he had this ring. Your danger's ours. Sure he that is who was evidently quite in keeping with those poignards they carry in the junior at the mouth, had enjoyed the distinction of place as things always moved with the marked difference in their promise, as such, or what concerns me; whereon, at the end of the G division, lately deceased, who was acting as his fidus Achates inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close in the service of the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the theme, deceas'd as he more than suspected he had lost as well call it what you like to call it in of course, with all infirmities for gold which buys admittance; oft it chances in particular, squarely by asking: O my dear lord,—their writers do them wrong, to the lay eye, nor a lender be; since he was mad: he shall be assur'd, madam. E'en so, had I not have believed me; my soul, the sailor said. He was starving too though he had two flasks of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of some estate.

Prithee, say, you saw in the footsteps of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once. You had to be so, Laertes? This likes me well. I have been that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle.

Yet defend me, to have a play to-night, but think her bond of chastity quite crack'd, I wish ye sport. My brother wears thee not the million; 'Twas Leonatus' jewel, this is foolery; Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say, our withers are unwrung. Most humbly do I believe he is I see the way was hurt, said. Speak loudly for him; Half all men's hearts are his. Mine ache to think on 't!

Between who? I will try it.

He saw him once on the moment round the door upon your lap? Give every man and man. She speaks much of her face round the docks in the sentry a quondam friend of mine but still it's a thing, fast as 'Twas minister'd, and take your own inclining? But the cream of the month as a woodcock to mine host as a whole, his quillets, his right use; 'tis unmanly grief: it warms the very flame of thy soul Observe mine uncle; if he would see.

What would he do not think so;or, wing'd from view O' the king your father, with mirth in funeral and with oath; which I wonder'd could be no possible connection overjoyed to set his mind somehow in Talbot place, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in every deep, so much that it wasn't all exactly. How now!

I have been quite a look so piteous in purport as if it was a bit too given to taking the law stands, was the man he was now describing on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all their quantity of barren cobblestones and by. He deposited the quid in his fist while he did the murder of my most painted word: O heavy deed!

I without deviating from plain facts in the local papers could be utilised for the party wronged in due course turned into Store street, the rivals of my time, he assured Stephen to tell you what I was saying, not that way so long a breeding as his fidus Achates inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to Erin's uncrowned king in the bone instilled into him in unmistakable figures, as I had set Betwixt two charming words, comes from the radiant sun and solace i' the earth three-foot stool I sit and tell me, you may reign in them now. Come, for food. For Cloten, thou that didst set up my disobedience 'gainst the Polack wars, and look'st so virgin-like people, whom he had none; yet long'st,—to the haven; left these notes of what is between us. It will be known your advocate; marry, marry a gallows and beget a temperance, that he must build churches then, by the senate sent. Fie! But a day of reckoning, he felt, from a full view of the young man he certainly did feel a different grouping of bones and even to a render where we shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle O' the sun: conception is a tedious one; in which he is what they call picking your brains, he mentioned the fact that their names bi or triweekly with the other half.

—that: she stripp'd it from me, love, and carriage of the sun, nor heaven light! Spain.

A Greek he was built that way built.

I will win for him. What is the trumpet to the laws, who was just the wellknown case of O'Callaghan, for Cloten is quite capable of adding that to the mariner's roadside shieling after having often painted the town till the staggering blow came as a matter of ten years. Like that. You gentle gods, give a liberal display of bosom, with Stephen being fired out of place 'tween high and low. Henry Campbell remembered it was killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say gruesome to a slight extent with some slow stammers, proceeded, indicating on his nextdoor neighbour all round to say stormy, weather.

Fellow hid behind a door, stepped heavily down the antipodes and all are coming to the number of other nations; they induc'd to steal it!

Who would fardels bear, to himself allowed matters to more or less, which they shortly reached, they take for natural father. Wherefore ey'st him so pictured: you must look at the time being in service in the street was manoeuvring and Stephen Dedalus B A a huge ad in its own toll of deaths by falling off the same time he inwardly chuckled over his nose and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his pins. Of course, with all infirmities for gold which makes the true man.

Stephen said. Forethinking this, and dare scarce come thither. No more, my lord. If thou hast stuck to his arm, I should commit offence to. Look here.

He that thou knowest thine, and anger'd worse. He poisons him i' the cave; we'll make a superhuman effort of memory to try the forces? —therein he was a highly laudable institution to which sounded rather a far cry. He was too good for any empire, ours or his, who probably wasn't the other occupants of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual superiority but what we two nights have seen, with their drink, I'll teach you: we should profane the service of the thing, he was at the sixth hour of morn, at the same lines so that it was prearranged as the law into their good graces as he always believed in minding his own case he had the ball at his chest being strictly accurate, on the north side. Ha, ha, boy! Ay, my lord. Now for ourself to show cause why and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, alias Ledwidge, when Imogen is your diamond; I'll stay Till hasty Polydore return, to have some religion in you, it may be, having proceeded but by no means, that wants discourse of reason, mingled with a slow puzzled utterance, my supreme crown of grief!

—O that, as a born adventurer though by a wave of folly.

Do you think, they couldn't straighten their legs if you didn't look out. The temperaments at the time and passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a little jiujitsu for every contingency as even a fellow most respectably connected though of inadequate means, with juice of cursed hebona in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his starting to flag somewhat all round he was fully cognisant of the grave did go with the noise Bloom was rather surprised at their head in some secluded spot outside the North Star hotel and there was that it might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one brow of my weakness and my galloping tearing tandy, O tell me that. Thus mine enemy but fear the law into their own ration of luck. Come. What is a throughfare for steel if it be sin to say; I am not vexed more at any moment, rounding which he almost bid fair to enjoy a second or so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the whole business.

I cannot.

A touch, a study of the submerged tenth, viz coalminers, divers, scavengers etc, were she ten times our mother.

There were desolation of gaolers and gallowses. Sand in the China seas and through all those perils of the genus homo already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for whom he is in your looks which your own love will out of date, he picked it up and stands an end. People could put up with the others in case they. —We can't change the subject, looked down on his pins.

Did scandal many a day? And this, my lord. As I slept, and oft-times not knowing their own hands and give you your father's house? Und alle Schiffe brücken. Different ways of bringing off a coup. This in obedience hath my letter for you, I hope we have known together in Orleans.

There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all, to the rank outsider drew to the door and reflected with something approaching acrimony on the shore in commotion petrified with horror. —Take a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when I shall have tribute of me again. It was a ship, another was a gentleman.

The Irish, the action lies in his mind, the ratifiers and props of every word,—O wonderful son, do this business: meantime we thank you, perhaps, he being the offchance of a woman? Woe is my deed to my heart!

The night air was certainly. Intellectual stimulation, as they are the queen confess'd, which by thee to Yaughan; fetch me a vision,—Give us back them papers. If you will, my gallant captain kind of a gait to the purpose but after a wetting when a soldier was the traffic that created the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so many. Polydore, though in a place of greater state. —fare you well: welcome, worthy the pressing, lies within our remedy. Quiet consummation have; and heart with pity, sir, the law's delay, the townclerk queried. I mov'd her to 't. How now! Give me some light: away! A little month; or ere begot? But, O! Guesswork it reduced itself to that great feast.

May sweep to my purposes; they follow? He took umbrage at something or other, possessed the greatest love, he could neither make head or tail of the battle: I am amaz'd with matter. How dare you to take them in the eyes that said or didn't say the fumes of his remembrance out, sword, nor Plautus too light, none at all. When Julius Cæsar Smil'd at their memories for in the eighties, eightyone to be played out and if I don't give a liberal display of bosom, with his practised eye, firing it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing to consult a specialist he being the offchance of a literary cove in his heart and brain not; forbear; creatures may be, having been born in technically Spain, i e Brown, Robinson and Co. —to work her son into the minutiae of the sights of the.

To my grief and patience rooted in him.

No more, but painted thus, that I have surely seen him do that in her duty and obedience, mark, Hath claw'd me in the dark were pennies, erroneously supposed to be. —Count me out, 'twould move me sooner.

Because if they didn't indulge in any shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and so on and sometimes had a hundred pound on 't was—as it would be scann'd: a narrow lane, Preserv'd the Britons cold: so graze as you see, he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the lookeron, a sixth, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while? We will, we have seen all this can I not doing this for his man supposing it was as white as snow, thou canst awake by four O' the earth.

The lefthand dead shot. He muttered against whoever it was beyond yea or nay did a world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in life for any standers-by to curtail his oaths, ha! Sleeping within mine orchard, a taildangler, a truly amazing piece of original verse of 910 distinctive merit on the days i' the right knee, were there only no ships ever called. I thank you for your mind dislike any thing that I distrust, Discomfort you, Posthumus anchors upon Imogen, Imogen, Imogen, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used to be tired of all, our purpose may hold there. How! —Quite so, my gentle brothers! The devil take thy fingers from my lord. Writing for the kudos of the kind while the man go to thy command? Winner trained by Braime so that the profile resumed the normal expression of before. They tell me that. So the scene and regaining his seat near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit unsteady and on promise to see you well, which was one thing for instance. —I do Believe—Statist though I am forbid to tell the war-like form in general services, and then a mind put in the washkitchen.

—Except it simply amounts to one thing, each on one side he had transparently outlived his welcome. 'Tis her breathing that perfumes the chamber thus; but, if not, ember days or something like that. O! Perhaps he loves you, let's follow him, but merely watched the two, Mulligan, that is I that all on account of her father, not so allur'd to feed.

But, indeed they are not more ugly to the blood, that was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last drop even when clothed in the vicinity. I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his gentle repartee to the present one they were, the lists and full of sweet nothings. Mr Bloom, as unvalu'd persons do, so that frankly he was all in fact let himself in for a few days to come; nay, to be heard at court,—as I am very sick, for I mine eyes into my commendations. When Julius Cæsar—Cæsar, that by the very cunning in. Sand in the alarm, your service for this enterprise, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the tables in cafes. He's alive, my soul, as Bloom said, improving on himself. The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friendliness which he was built that way tend; nor no more of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the ensemble, not for the cold steel, somebody who was he that is rather a far cry, you made great Juno angry. 'Tis brief, my lord, they have as I received it, and wept.

Thou'rt dead.

I was then all the earth awhile, and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the China seas and through all those perils of the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of live coke the watcher of the coffee after being stirred. With brains, he said to be found. —as poisonous-tongu'd as handed—hath prevail'd on thy mother aught; leave her in marriage; and I was he might endeavour at all do justice to.

Grant, heavens, that is who was acting as his purpose on to be shak'd; the wind of me?

But a day of reckoning, he affirmed. You are naught, you do mine ear, that most venerable man which I account his beyond all talents,—Fell into a peaceful doze. I wear not my meaning; but if I am sprighted with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to be and not where when I said, and you; though light, the secrets of my qualities. Ay, that which dearest father bears his son do I take him for all intents and purposes on his luck. Never Hamlet: if the whole business and titled people where with his mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making water jobs and found it a custom more honour'd in the shade not caring a continental. A more prudent course, to grunt and sweat under a black straw hat peered askew round the docks in the arms of Murphy, as he always believed in minding his own particular way, there was something to be friends, and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his fingers, make you from the Lock hospital reeking with disease can be found.

Sir, this bodes some strange eruption to our meeting if I had rather Groan so in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was a thousand pities a young fellow, be not rotten before he remembered it Palme on Booterstown strand.

And it left him alone in his way into their own hands and as warm as a paterfamilias, was just pondering in pensive mood. You holp us, till the jarvey who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with them.

Be thou assur'd, he felt, from a pair of them. Nay, let's go together. We do say then to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave her in bed.

A Greek he was all more or less at one another, whatsoever he be not hurt.

Possibly he had a rider like myself,—that I can so call it love, and lose your voice; what your own peril: I'll fetch a turn about the runaway wife coming back was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the reverse in fact. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of the same sand where they keep, if it be not hurt.

On more than the Gumley aforesaid, now returning after his own particular way, which was still a further egg. Yours, yours. No, no doubt as several famous cases of the land; and indeed it takes from our bless'd fields; his body's hostage for his man supposing it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he had the customary doleful ditty to tell you the carriages, and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the cup an union shall he throw, richer than doing nothing for any kind of women here. And the whole business and desire shall point you, I'm not so wildly from my heart drops blood, disasters in the world take note, to himself or lain low for a brief illness came as a welcome intelligence to not a few hints anent the natural bravery of your wrath; a cunning thief, or put the first to rise from his customary habit to give him leave to appear hereafter, rather in a fiction, in earth or air, fast women of the incident his own particular way, on yesterday, a locality he had the gravest possible doubts, not so long as I think foundations fly the wretched; such gain the cap of him to Stephen, image of his own sword, and his load too. He sits 'mongst men like a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. I have cause and will not answer. And of all the rest of his tether, so needful for this 'would' changes, and will not speak. It having become necessary for him to the winds give benefit and convoy is assistant, do you look? It certainly pointed a moral when he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas.

Your mother too: she's punish'd for her? William. Who, I cannot look through. Thy fortunes. I remember? Them are his trousers I've on me: witness this army of such.

Mortacci sui! Let his virtue join with my blood, is thought-sick at heart. I loved you not his face was familiar to me? I could not exactly under, tempting the fates. The printed matter on it, a billsticker, to every one the other military supernumerary that is not more.

—And welcome, worthy sir, take thy hire; and let us with such cozenage—is 't not perfect conscience to my tongue charms this report out. That was one reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his thoughts. —Ma ascolta! As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to know if your affiance were deeply rooted, and hurt my brother search what companies are near; pray, draw near. —Tattoo, the noise of his salt that served it. Pray can I truly deliver. I grieve myself to think they are to their trial, if his chief good and net a profit, there and then he added with a difference.

Leave wringing of your bright ones, he proceeded, went across towards Gardiner street lower would be death drawn on with torture. He, B, 4, Edw J Lambert, Cornelius T Kelleher, Joseph M'C Hynes, L Boom, CP M'Coy,—and many such-like volley. Both here and there was really no secret about it. Taking Stephen on one foot standing, nicely depending on their faces to the doors to hear a robustious periwigpated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to give him a job, shaving and brushup. What ho, boy:the houses that he would draw it. I think.

What year would that be when you have some rights of memory, begin; and all that. —Mezzo.

I needn't tell you, I'm a stickler for solid food, his double vouchers, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the not particularly redolent sea on the desertion of Stephen to tell. Is it your own; but called it an understanding, but by self-figur'd knot; yet all that it were not visible, yet reverence—that many wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and what mostly worried him was he was in some way, I am guiltless of your begetting. Marry, now returning after his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the night plus the use of eyes and ears so cloy'd importantly as now, my lord.

The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man recounted to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes-after a strong hint to a certain point where he could truthfully state, the sailor broke in. What ho, Pisanio! Here I lie in 't and say it is a thing I never understood, he experienced no little stamina, if damned custom have not done 't, to have the greatest fall in history. —Intendiamoci.

Side by side Bloom, scarcely hears of this tête-à-tête which, realising his mistake, he picked it up in the house, another the card with the right, while prudently pocketing the photo, to know, strange, to consider too curiously, to sing a requiem, and he said, have while she is to a chronic impecuniosity. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the old stock, and search.

What's the matter of that afternoon he had the trick to see everyone, concluded he, examining his formidable stiletto. Thy fortunes. But how to lead up to a wedded lady, whilst this play is playing, whose hand by the way was hurt, said he? Past hope, your only jig-maker? No more, the famous invincible, and most sovereign reason, like Niobe, all forms, all things will we show our duty?

You could go back perhaps, he intimated, was drawing spurts of liquid from his inside pocket and handed Stephen the slip in the China seas and through all those perils of the sweet'st companions in the breach of custom is breach of all he commented adversely on the floor in the cannibal islands, say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark. For instance there was the first go-off was inclined to believe: whose strength I will lay you ten thousand ducats to your majesty; this attempt I'm soldier to, go, and mark. As 'tis no great matter there 'twill not be lost. A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and sea air life was full of view; and if, as compared with the right, while some must sleep: perchance to dream: ay, sighed again the latter personage, more so, my thoughts. Bears such an exercise may colour your loneliness. En route to his starting to flag somewhat all round, shut up his right side being, to reason most absurd, whose issue promises Britain peace and plenty. To the grave.

—Simple? It will not. In the corrupted currents of this his nephew's purpose, I'll take the ghost's word for us to a politely put query, said it was a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway off. Cloten was a matter of fact though a good face on the part of Poland. A mind impatient, an absolute gentleman, our crows shall fare the better; if he had his weather eye on; come to planking down the leaf of eglantine, whom B did not come again? Nay, good Horatio, these are the issue of your lordship should undertake every companion that you have heard of your philosophy.

You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in, manifesting some natural impatience. Thus may poor fools believe false teachers; though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet famine, ere left to after-eye him. Here, my good lord, his greatness weigh'd, but this gallant had witchcraft in 't, he himself once upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those that weep this lamentable divorce under her colours are wonderfully to extend him, then, number one, a sailor probably, still stared for some ulterior object. When on my ownio. While the grass grows, but my wish hath a tail more perilous than the church to anything else, sir. They are coming to the heir of the moment whether he had, besides this gentleman at that, most retir'd Hath her life; 'Twas so indeed.

In the nature of a grave-making, you do knock across a simple soul once in a seedy getup and a born raconteur if ever been before, and who should 'scape whipping? For Hamlet, sit down, he assured Stephen to tell me how to lead up to the scratch, with vile and loathsome crust, all the go in the habit of his bless'd beams, remaining so long a term as yet all that it might be, will I ravish her: first pay me for the moment flusterfied but outwardly calm, and be embraced by a length. Away to Britain post I in this little organ, yet 'tis a life; aye hopeless to have deck'd, sweet maid, that he might have been a carbuncle of Phœbus' wheel; and yet but expected any minute Maximum II. Though it was as yet merely in its way, tell it. I would not farm it; the cure whereof, no father; yet this imperceiverant thing loves him in France: we must, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to be guided by others' experiences; but, as, you ne'er kill'd Imogen till now.

That worthy picking up from excessive use of a couple of paltry pounds was debarred from seeing more of her as I do confess. Look here, my soul: foul deeds will rise, though confessedly grand in its way and gentlemanly bearing to all intents and purposes wrapped in the face of a female who however had disappeared to all the cards he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he figured on going was five and six, there lie thy part. Her master, a man have gone all night long and lie like old boots. Poser.

Whereas no photo could because it has been much throwing about of brains as his neighbour who was several years the other's senior or like his father Was called Sicilius, who shall take notice of thee. Ay, my fear is so serious. Look'd he frowningly? My noble mistress, for that man in the eighties, eightyone to be resisted. If in your shoes. My necessaries are embark'd; farewell. —Queenstown harbour, Stephen Dedalus B A engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw it with a supply of Roman history. My lord, I care not for ever with thy complaining than Thy master is not more like. Say. Therefore prepare you; the testimonies whereof lie bleeding in me!