#i think i should try doing more complicated ones more often as the number dwindles

[dailypokemoncrochet]

What's a stupidly complicated Pokemon I should do for my 700th crochet?

[shineonyoucrazyyandere]

How about bruno gang + Trish. How they react to going to their ex who has a new partner, only to get obsessed with the new partner. Slowly going full yandere for them and forgetting the ex. Headcanons?

For now I’m just doing Bruno, Abbacchio, Fugo and Narancia. Nothing against the other characters, I just ended up tiring myself after writing long headcanons. 

Yandere! Bruno Buccellati

He usually doesn’t concern himself with whoever his ex moves on to, so if he happens to meet and talk to you a bit things become complicated.

Your presence is wonderful as he approaches you whenever he can, especially if you have a preferred restaurant you go to. He’s got an easy excuse to meet up with his team after all.

There’s days he makes absolutely sure his ex isn’t around, and simply tags along with you on more platonic pursuits. Occasionally he’s tempted to hold your hand in public, but he refrains lest he doesn’t see you again because of it.

Sleepless nights come and go, much so he slips up sometimes such as dropping things he could normally catch. Or lose focus from staring at something he knows you like.

You’ll probably catch on quickly Bruno is very friendly towards you, it’s honestly borderline affectionate like a boyfriend or girlfriend would be. He rarely can even keep his eyes off you.

He starts trying to gage where you live through his ex, listening into the two of you chat. Eventually he starts walking by every other evening.

The man isn’t afraid to admit inwardly that he wants you all to himself, and that his feelings for his prior partner have dwindled.

Often comes and pays for your meals without a word, and spies on you eating with his ex.

It all comes to a head when his heart simply can’t take it, he’ll likely meet you somewhere that’s just the two of you. His plan already panning out quickly as he discusses his feelings with you. Rejection simply leads him to taking you off the streets for your own “safety”.

The black haired male may also use his mafia connections to keep his ex away. He doesn’t harm them too much and merely uses verbal threats and scare tactics he knows works on them. Though he may take it a little farther if he has to.

Yandere! Leone Abbacchio

He has mixed emotions when seeing his ex moving on from him, but he just lingers on them and you, their new partner. Wondering how you connected, and what you did right that he didn’t.

At first he doesn’t bother approaching and simply listens nearby. He does walk off however with not wanting to deal with his ex in the same room as him. Just as he does however he catches you glancing over at him.

Most of the time you just somehow end up bumping into him, or vice versa. Which makes it rather hard to keep his eyes off you as you or he briefly apologizes.

He likely drinks more because of continually meeting you, as he tries to scrub out his failed relationship. But there’s a sense of longing he doesn’t like to admit that’s there, creeping upon him.

Though if you’re pretty charitable and kindly talk to him, even the littlest advice he takes in. Absentmindedly he’ll start using Moody Blues to listen to that specific bit of conversation. He dwells on your voice presenting it and everything in between.

Finds out where you work and if it has anything to do with food service, he’s quick to make himself a daily visitor. It’s one place he can happen to casually ask you things, abliet a bit strange. Such as how things are going with his ex, but he does ask sensible things like how was your day so far.

He practically becomes a constant visitor, usually he’ll sit in the back corner of a table drinking coffee or snacking on something. He just simply watches you take orders or help throughout the establishment. The white haired male particularly likes it when you come over to check up on him.

Abbacchio’s ex comes in occasionally to give you a little chat, but he tunes them out eventually without any concern. That same evening he’ll somehow get you to sit down with him at the end of your shift.

Many times he’ll try to delay you leaving, as he’s craving your company. Sure you have someone to get back to but he doesn’t.

He’s bold enough to touch you softly, even if you remind him you’re taken. He simply freezes. A kiss, a touch, he just desires something.

Perhaps he’s a bit hostile to his ex, and if Abbacchio is on edge enough he’ll likely do his best to keep you and them separate.

He won’t regret framing them since he’s already been casted out as a dirty cop. He simply comes to help you when and if things go bad. Even if you’re a bit hesitant he doesn’t mind isolating you a bit. Just you and him, like it should be.

Yandere! Pannacotta Fugo

Its most likely that he meets you by returning something his ex accidentally left behind in his home. He’s probably a bit caught off guard how quickly they moved on, though you seemed pleasant enough.

The blond doesn’t really think of the interaction like anyone else would. At first. 

Perhaps you meet again with him happening to leave something behind at a restaurant or the like. One little quip later and he kind of sees the appeal the ex saw in you. 

Makes it a point to happen on the same street you’re walking on often. If you wave he’s happy to oblige a friendly gesture. It’s an utterly casual move that he’s certain no one would really think much of.

Of course Fugo grows more than a platonic interest as he speaks to you bit by bit. He won’t even hesitate to talk to you casually in front of his ex. 

More than anything he’s pretty fixated on what you have to say, and observes what his ex does with you when he’s around. He hides his staring by looking around the room or acting like he’s interested in what his ex has to say.

Buys inconspicuous things you happen to like, such as a favorite book, cd of a band you like, or sparing you money you might need. He’s always got an excuse up his sleeve for his behavior in this situation.

There’s a few times he’s nearly taken out a wall with purple haze upon happening upon you having an intimate moment or two with his ex. 

This causes him to rush off suddenly due to Purple Haze being so dangerous

More than likely Fugo struggles through this new relationship his ex has, there’s no longer any feelings involved for them. No, rather he’s caught up in everything about you and he attempts to keep low about it. He continues to see you around as a friend but it’s nearly impossible to keep up the charade.

He eventually finds a way to lure you to his place, maybe to watch a movie or some such. A sweet smile pursed on his lips as you follow closely. He’ll even make sure to get close to you on the couch.

Snacks, drinks, just about everything you could ask for, for such a cozy event. The blond even mentally times the movie to himself just waiting for the right moment for you to relax.

There’s chatting at just the right moment, and he takes a second to pause the movie. Looking at you longingly as he slides closer. 

The next moment he knocks you out, with a soft sorry escaping the blond’s lops. He can’t have you be with his ex, no they shouldn’t be with you in his mind. As for his ex, he’d likely wouldn’t leave a trace of them.

Yandere! Narancia Ghirga 

Narancia is a very emotional type when it comes to certain things, he’s actually jealous of you at first for being with his ex. He’s mutually confused as well of why they’d want you, instead of him.

He stalks of course never speaking a word to you or his ex, he might mumble a bit to himself. Were you that much better? 

Honestly it’s not hard for him to have those jealous feelings flip a one eighty. Even at the times he wanted to jump out and stop everything, he notices how well you meshed with his ex. Being genuinely sweet and trusting, listening well...some things he hadn’t done well in the past. 

Perhaps you catch him being upset and happen to try to cheer him up. Having someone soothe him was rather nice all things considered. He really takes anything you say to him to heart. 

The short black haired male doesn’t really think of the insinuation of him asking where you’re at for advice. He’ll get a bit haughty if his ex doesn’t answer right away.

If you invite him over to your place, he’ll likely find a place to fall asleep. Though if you wake him to say your partner is coming over, he’s not pleased about it. Narancia finds a way to make you think he left just so he can hear what you do with them.

He tends to linger a bit even after that, before hurriedly sneaking out a window. 

 Narancia then gets the idea for you to come to him, such as somehow getting your number and calling you when he’s ill. His eyes just light up when you come walking through the dooor to help.

Over time he definitely becomes clingier much so it interferes in your relationship. If you try to keep yourself distant, he simply tries harder to get your attention. He just wants to be needed/wanted after all.

[opalescent-cheetah]

I Don’t Know What To Do (About This Dream And You), 3/5 - Methydoll

Summary: Baseball players and mythical beings are a potent combination. After Crystal catches her eye on the baseball field, Nicky makes a decision that turns her entire world upside down. Meanwhile, Crystal is caught in a mysterious dreamscape, chasing a creature with eyes like liquid gold.

Inspired by these songs: “She’s So High” - Tal Bachman; “Digital Love” - Daft Punk; “Baby” - Francesca Blanchard

Chapter Summary: Nicky meets Crystal first in her dreamscape, and then at a cozy cafe.

A/N: @cobblestaubrey​ I hope you don’t mind being tagged in every chapter sjfgdjfhs. Anyways! Time to board the angst train! I’m sorry in advance lol.

Ao3 // Previous Chapter

Chapter 3 - Nicky

Her dreamscape is quiet, disturbed only by the rustling of leaves in the gentle summer breeze. She reclines in the branches of her favourite tree, letting the cool air wash over her feathers.

This is her nightly retreat; it may merely be in her subconscious, but it’s the only time she is free to be her true self. In fact, she has no choice but to remain in her real form when she’s here, after an entire day of maintaining her human disguise.

Nicky is the present-day incarnation of the mythical caladrius. Centuries ago, when societies still had faith in magic and fable, her ancestors existed as small white birds with the power to detect and heal sickness. The caladrius - and countless other mythical beings - have since evolved to better suit human society, as people’s faith in magic and its power dwindled, and the creatures that were once so useful became redundant. 

Now, these creatures maintain two forms: a human disguise, and their true form, which, over centuries, became more and more human. 

Nicky raises a wing, watching her feathers shiver in the breeze. Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to simply be a bird: small and so common, yet still ethereally beautiful. Instead, all she has from her mythical ancestors are their wings, their sunflower eyes, and their powers.

A sudden movement catches her eye. There’s someone nearby, stumbling about beneath her tree.

Stiffening, Nicky realises who it is.

Crystal.

Shit.

How could she forget? Her healing powers came with one complication: the fact that she and whoever she healed would be psychically connected. Nicky mentally kicks herself for omitting such a minor yet crucial detail. After all, she’s lost friends over this, when they realised what a monster she truly was. And isn’t that the reason why you vowed never to heal another person again?

Typical. Of course you’d get so enamoured with a cute girl that you’d forget your lifelong promise to yourself.

She moves to scramble further up the tree, deeper into the leaves, trying not to think about the people who became nothing more than a memory, faces lost into the forests of her dreamscape.

“Hello?” Crystal’s voice rings like bells.

Nicky inwardly curses herself.

“Hello, is someone there?”

No. Nobody is here. Leave.

Her silent command proves fruitless as Crystal steps closer to the tree, peering up into the branches. Nicky curls into herself, knowing full well that her white feathers probably stick out like a sore thumb. 

She can’t stay here.

In a sudden burst of movement, she launches herself out of the canopy and takes off before Crystal can get a good look at her. She hasn’t ever flown like this before: so desperately, as though her life depends on it. Tears sting her eyes, but she can’t tell if they’re from the harshness of the wind or her own regret. 

How could she let this happen? It had been going so well with Crystal. They might have only met twice, but Nicky already had her number. They’d texted that night. Nicky had asked her out for coffee and Crystal had returned with a resounding yes.

She supposes she should just be grateful for the fact that their psyches aren’t connected every night. Otherwise, she’d always be surrounded by the faces of people who won’t even look at her anymore, and Crystal would just be one of several others. 

In fact, if she’d met Crystal here any sooner, she’s sure she wouldn’t have her number, and their coffee date would be nothing more than a figment of her imagination. 

She flies past a copse of trees and sees a familiar face amidst the leaves. It’s her childhood friend, and the first person she ever healed. The memory, though more than a decade old, is still crystalline: he’d stumbled, grazing his knee, and when he started crying, Nicky transformed in front of him, sure that she could help. She’d brushed his knee with the tip of a feather, taking his pain as her own, but instead of thanking her, he’d screamed. She never saw him again in the real world after that; all she remembers are the echoes of an angry voice through the phone, and the way her mother winced, her brows pinching in the centre.

But she still sees him here, every so often, less now that they have grown so distant. He has never looked her in the eye; on the nights his mind pulls him back here, he has no choice but to stay, and Nicky has no choice but to be reminded of her own childhood foolishness.

It often feels like there are more haunted faces here than there really are - it didn’t take a young Nicky long to realise that her meaningful efforts were not wanted, and so she made her promise to herself. But, although she can count those ruined relationships on one hand, it’s enough. It’s enough to break off a little more of her soul every time one of those faces appears in her dreamscape, every time they turn away and disappear into the trees to hide. 

And, whatever happens, Nicky will not let Crystal join them. She beats her wings harder, faster, cresting the wind, letting it carry her farther and farther away. 

Crystal may be stuck here now, but Nicky will never let her find out why. 

~

The air is thick and warm, the sun high in a cloudless sky, but Nicky is shivering with nerves. She is sitting alone at a table in a quiet, homely cafe, waiting for Crystal. What if she doesn’t come? What if she did, in fact, catch a glimpse of Nicky’s true form and thus decide never to speak to her again?

The thought alone makes Nicky ache, and so she shoves it away, forcing herself to stay hopeful. 

“Hey! Nicky!”

The voice makes Nicky snap her head up, and she’s delighted when she meets Crystal’s warm brown eyes. Crystal, looking windswept and a little dazed, smiles nervously before taking a seat across the table. 

“Sorry I’m late. I hate to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not a problem,” Nicky assures her, offering her a gentle smile. “I’m glad to see you.”

Crystal grins, and Nicky ignores the way it makes something in her chest flutter, as soft and delicate as a rose petal. 

They lapse into an easy, lively conversation, giggling like schoolchildren over steaming mugs of coffee and soft pastries. Crystal seems oddly shy without the boisterous company of her teammates, but it still feels so right, being here with her. Maybe it’s the cozy, golden atmosphere of the cafe, or maybe it’s Crystal, but Nicky feels at home. She feels comfortable, like this is where she’s meant to be. 

Wow. You really are just a useless lesbian. She almost rolls her eyes at herself, but something about all this feels too nice for her to scorn. 

Across the table, Crystal is rambling on - something about baseball, Nicky thinks, but she’s not quite listening anymore. Instead, she’s taken this opportunity to admire Crystal, who seems to glow under the warm lights, her eyes shimmering with an ethereal haze. Nicky has to stop herself from openly staring.

“Have you ever played before?”

Nicky startles, jolted from her reverie. “What?”

“Have you ever played? Baseball, I mean.”

“Oh - no. No, I haven’t. I can’t say I’ve ever been too into sports.” As she speaks, she thinks of nights when she takes to the skies, freedom in the windswept gaps between her feathers, but she knows that’s a sport she can never tell Crystal about. 

“Aw, pity. Something tells me you’d be really good.”

“What, at baseball? No way. I have no hand-eye coordination.” 

“Come on, I’m sure you’re just being modest,” Crystal giggles, coyly tilting her head. “We should practice sometime, just you and me. I’ll show you how it’s done.” 

Almost immediately, Nicky’s mind is flooded with images of Crystal, arms encircling her from behind, teaching her how to hold the bat; Crystal, grinning beneath the brim of her hat, her skin shining like bronze in the summer sunlight; Crystal, planting a kiss on her lips at the end of the day… 

Nicky arches her brows, trying not to seem too excited by the offer. 

“Alright. I look forward to it.”

Crystal smiles again, and Nicky’s heart skips a beat when she notices the gentle flush of her cheeks. The tiny, hopeful part of her whispers that maybe, just maybe, Crystal’s mind is running just as wild, that maybe she wants the same things Nicky does. She pushes the thought away immediately, too careful to allow herself to hope so much.

She’s brought back to the present when Crystal places a soft hand on the back of her own. Nicky blinks, surprised to find Crystal staring right into her eyes.

“It’s a date, then,” she says, a playful, brilliant grin painted across her lips.

~

Next Chapter

[ranger-report]

Thoughts On: Heretic

Earlier this year, just before the beginning of quarantine, I played a little game called AMID EVIL, something I would not have done were it not for the enchanting video skills of YouTuber Civvie 11. In his video, Civvie demonstrated the awesomeness of the retro shooter, both in graphics and gameplay, and since I was jonesing for something a little more dark fantasy than I was used to, I decided to give it a try. The game is a thrilling rush, and worthy of its own post here, but that game was a segue into me finally picking up and playing a game series that I had been intrigued by for nearly twenty some odd years: the Heretic and Hexen games.

AMID EVIL owes a lot to these games; in fact, it's not much of a leap to say that it owes everything to these games. It's even less of a leap to say that most first person shooters, whether dark fantasy or no, owe a lot to these games. Raven Software introduced a monster of a franchise when they dropped Heretic in December of 1994, working in collaboration with id Software as Raven was creating their games using the DOOM engine (or, as I think we're calling it now, “id tech 1”). John Romero helped in-house, giving advice on how to work with the engine, which was instrumental for Raven to push id tech 1 to its limits. They made changes to the engine which eventually became staples in other FPS games: an inventory system, translucent objects, pushable objects, the ability to look up and down, and the ability to fly. While the game itself was objectively a reskinned version of DOOM, it was stylish and engaging and reworked the most popular game engine at the time. In short, it won accolades in no small amount, and sealed itself in history as a high watermark for boomer shooters, hell, for PC gaming in general. So when we're looking backwards into the foggy past of our ancestors, is Heretic a game that we, in the Year of Our Lord Gaben 2020, should consider playing, either for the first time or as a throwback? Roll up your sleeves, party people, we've got a deep one to dive into today. Because we can't simply look at Heretic alone; oh, no. We're going to have to look at the whole franchise.

Heretic is not a complicated game per se, but it has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. We have the standard issue Run-Gun-Have-Some-Fun gameplay that Wolfenstein and DOOM brought to the table. There's three keys of different colors – yellow, green, and blue – there's a variety of weapons that almost line up point-for-point with DOOM's stack of damage inducers, and there's a horde of enemies that are around every corner waiting for you to come out magic blazing. But where DOOM has a mostly straightforward path from point A to point B, Heretic is a trickster which can and will give cause to tear one's hair out. Secret doors, invisible walls, fake walls, and hidden switches are everywhere, which means that nine times out of ten you'll either be consulting your map to figure out where the fake walls are, or you'll be pressing the space bar on every surface to see if it will open or activate something useful. Raven did a bit of a whammy on the game, setting up the simplistic stuff to lure you in, as though promising a hot night out with the kind of experience you think that you're used to, but then they strap you in for the kinky stuff that you always imagined you'd be into, but now that we're here you're not so sure. Make no mistake, I did consult a walkthrough at least once, maybe twice if I'm remembering right, during my playthrough. And the game is punishing the deeper you get: enemies lie in wait immediately behind doors, around corners, hidden out of sight or just above you since some of them can fly, and as your limited ammunition dwindles down into the red, you'll be forced into running risk-and-reward of melee weapons and inventory items to keep moving. Fortunately, each weapon has its own ammo stock, and some enemies are more susceptible to different weapon types. Adding to the bonus in the player's favor are inventory items that boost weapon damage, specifically the Tome of Power which magnifies the current weapon's attack power into a secondary fire that more often than not is absolutely brutal. But, unlike future entries in this series, the motto of the day is: Keep Moving, Keep Shooting, Don't Stop Moving, Don't Stop Shooting. It's Fun, Fast, and Furious in an entertaining way that only occasionally leaves you pondering why you even booted up the game this morning.

However you may feel about the gameplay itself, it can't be denied that the visual aesthetics and gamefeel are dripping with atmosphere. Everything from top to bottom feels like the best of cheesy 80's style fantasy art, from the front cover to final screen. Gloomy castles, underwater domes, craggy hellscapes. Weapons impress with over-the-top magical properties. The default staff acts like the DOOM pistol, lobbing nearly harmless yellow energy, while the Etheral Crossbow shoots multiple energy arrows at once, like a magic shotgun, easily the most versatile weapon in the game. Besides that one, my other favorite weapons are the Hellstaff (which blasts rapid-fire red energy, and causes acid rain to fall when Tomed up) and the Phoenix Rod (basically a magic rocket launcher that belches fire when overpowered). Depending on what you're facing, proper usage of these weapons (all finely drawn sprites, natch) can either chew through a mob with ease or leave you scrambling to get back. Stun lock Disciples with the Dragon Claw while obliterating Golems with the Crossbow; save the Phoenix Rod for big bads. And enemy creatures run the gamut from the simplistically annoying Gargoyles (red bat-winged creatures who also shoot fireballs) to the sturdy Golems (which come in a secondary variety which throw flaming skulls at you) to the Disciples of D'Sparil (faceless hooded monks who fly, chant, and shoot fireballs at you, on theme). Usually these damage sponges come at you in packs, rarely doing so in solo numbers because otherwise the game wouldn't be a DOOM clone. What really gets challenging is when boss creatures start popping up like regular enemies – in packs. Take the Iron Lich for example, a massive floating skull wearing a spiked helmet that throws walls of fire and tornadoes that do continual damage, they appear as a boss at the end of the final level of the first episode, then appear later on in groups. They take incredible amounts of damage and return fire constantly, which leads to a tense game of bobbing and weaving and staying as far away from them as possible. But the absolute worst is the Maulotaur. Basically, a minotaur that stands head and shoulders taller than the Iron Lich, carries a huge mace, and shoots waves of fire at you which can one-shot you if you're not paying attention. Staying away from them is key, but they can charge forward fast in order to close distance and take a few swings at you with the mace. These assholes also start as a final bosses, then appear as regular enemies surrounded by waves of other mobs. Maulotaurs are the dealbreakers of the game; they require ridiculous amounts of ammo to kill, and will force you through most of your inventory items if you're not already powered up. Thankfully, your inventory can hold quite a few helpful items, such as quartz flasks for health, the aforementioned Tomes of Power to boost weapon damage, invisibility spheres and wings of flight, and even motherfucking time bombs. But amongst all these, the most ridiculous and yet satisfying item is the Morph Ovum. Shaped like an egg, when used it gets thrown outward and whatever it hits is transformed into an easily killable chicken. Got a wave of monsters crowding too close and you need to thin the herd fast? Turn them into chickens, then turn them into fried chickens.

What gets me is that this game doesn't feel nearly as highly regarded as its indirect sequel, Hexen, and that's probably because for the most part this is a full-on DOOM clone. There were a lot of them back in the day, too many to count, and I think that if wasn't for the legacy of Raven and Hexen, this might have fallen through the cracks of history. Is it uninspired? No, not in the slightest. The quality of the spritework and animations are top notch, the production values are stellar, putting it just above the quality of the average obvious Doom clone. The amount of innovation, with the aforementioned inventory system and modifications to the engine, mesh well with the ambitious world/story crafted in the background of a single warrior trudging across worlds to defeat an evil tyrant who has taken over his people's lands. The current version on Steam is actually the second version released; initially, the game launched in 1994 with three episodes, the first one being the shareware version, and then later on in 1996 had a second physical release which added on two new episodes. It was like an expansion pack folded into the main game, and considering that Hexen was released in 1995, it makes sense that the two new episodes of Heretic feel so much more brutal in difficulty by comparison. And thematically it makes sense for them to have a higher base difficulty, since it’s about escaping the dark world you had to break into, and now you're crawling your way back out of it. Kind of a neat trick, having the hero beat the bad guy halfway through the story, then showing his journey to get back home. Hell, even the name of the main character is awesome. A later game in the series will reveal that his name is Corvus, but originally the character was simply referred to as The Heretic, and in a gaming landscape featuring such characters as Doomguy, the Quake Ranger, and the Doomslayer, the Heretic ought to stand right up there with the rest of them.

So is the game worth playing today? Absolutely. Any fan of boomer shooters or retro gaming in general should absolutely play this game. Utilizing DOSBOX (which the Steam release uses) is fine, but doesn't allow for the best playing experience currently. A quick download of GZDOOM to launch the game will give better controls, easier mouse compatibility, and smoother graphics. There's a method to tie GZDOOM into your Steam page so you can even track how long you've been playing it (for those who this is important for). And it's super cheap, meaning there's little to no excuse to not play it. So why then is this game sitting in the background, kind of like the little engine that could? You know, I'm doing my best to get into the meat and potatoes of this game, to be more descriptive of it and really entice you, the reader, into wanting to play this game. The powerups are fun, there are segments where you absolutely get to go apeshit on monsters and laugh hysterically while you do so, there are moments where the “AHA” is so enlighting that the relief is palpable. Some of the bosses are so memorable that to find them around the corner later in the game as minibosses – in multiple! – is downright frightening and adds to the risk/reward, since they're usually guarding something good that you want to pick up. Long story short, if you like DOOM, you'll like Heretic, which feels like selling the experience short. But the real reason I think Heretic is overlooked is because it is overshadowed by the more complex, more engaging, and more brutal Hexen.

If it hasn't become obvious yet, this is going to be a multi-part Thoughts On post. You've read Heretic, which is a fine game that does what it does and is memorable and fun and fine. But next, we're going to dive into the second course of this delicious fantasy meal, Hexen, and talk about how the second game in this series is the one that got everyone to sit up and take notice of what Raven Software was doing.

[thepurplebutterflythings]

Damsel in Distress (Part 5) - Jason Todd

Gif: Dxnninja on Tenor

Tagging: @awkward-28  n-o-e-l-12 

Word Count: 

Paring: Jason Todd (Titans) x (f)Reader

Summary: Y/N’s relationship with Robin grows while Y/N’s friendship with Jason dwindles. Jason’s inner conflict over Y/N starts to make him feel guilty.

Warnings: N/A

A/N: This is a little series I am doing about Jason Todd in Titans. I don’t know Comic!Jason very well so I’m taking all of this from the show, and at the moment he hasn’t been in very often, so please forgive any mischaracterizations.

Damsel in Distress Part 4  | Masterlist | Damsel in Distress Part 6

________________________________________________________________

“I have to go,” Robin chuckled as Y/N kissed him again and again, “Batman’s calling me.”

“I know,” Y/N sighed, “I just want one more kiss,” Y/N pled with big eyes that Robin could not resist. He caved and gave Y/N one last deep kiss before leaving. When he pulled back Y/N sighed contently, watching Robin walk to her balcony doors.

“Love you,” Robin said as he walked through the doors.

“Love you too,” Y/N said back just before Robin closed the doors behind him. It was raining and he had insisted that Y/N stay inside to keep dry. The last thing anyone would want was to get caught in the dirty city rain in their pyjamas.

Standing in the rain behind Y/N’s balcony doors, Robin flashed Y/N a goodbye smile and waved at her before jumping onto her roof. Y/N looked out of her window to see Robin jump and land on the roof adjacent building.

________________________________________________________________

Jason had been tense lately. Everyone in their little group noticed it, especially Y/N as Jason only became awkward around her. Jason looked at her as though he knew something about Y/N, he shifted uncomfortable under her gaze and tried to avoid being alone with her now. Just when it seemed they were getting better, everything went to hell, and now Y/N was annoyed and upset and it just tore her apart inside knowing that she was the reason.

“Okay,” Sandy sighed, lounging on the sofa in Y/N’s living room. “What’s the deal between you and Jason?”

“What deal? There is no deal!” Y/N said defensively “things are just weird lately.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Sandy nodded, “Brian has noticed, Kacey has noticed, Jessica has noticed, heck even Trent has noticed, and that guy only got into University on the plea of his parents,” Sandy sat up and made eye contact with Y/N, “What’s the deal?” she repeated in a low serious tone.

Y/N sighed and pushed her hair back. It was getting painful to keep to herself. All she wanted to do was have everything go back to normal between her and Jason, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

“I don’t know – I thought things were getting better between us and now all of a sudden he can’t bring himself to look at me.”

“You don’t see him when your back is turned,” Sandy sighed.

“What happens then?”

“He just stares at you,” Sandy said, “he stares at you like he knows every inch and he’s got you memorized, like how a lover does the first time they’re in bed with their partner, and that he’s just replaying it in his head.”

“I haven’t had sex with Jason Todd,” Y/N leaned back.

“I’m not saying you have,” Sandy sighed, “all I’m saying is that… Jason Todd is completely and utterly in love with you.”

“I know,” Y/N nodded close to tears, “it’s just…”

“Complicated?” Sandy finished for her.

“Does that sound too cliché?”

“It can’t be cliché if it’s the truth,” Sandy told her, “look, just take your time with Jason. This is probably just as hard for him as it is for you.”

“I know,” Y/N nodded, “I never wanted it to get to this point.”

“Things will get better,” Sandy promised Y/N, moving next to her and rubbing her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. “It has to.”

“I hope so.”

______________________________________________________________

Y/N stood in front of Jason when he tried to pass by her in the library. She folded her arms and cocked her eyebrows at him while Jason looked at her confused by her actions.

“Yes?” Jason frowned.

“That’s all you have to say?”

“What should I be saying?”

“Gee, I don’t know Jace,” Y/N huffed, “maybe a reason as to why you keep dodging me.”

“I’m not dodging you,” Jason insisted.

“You flee the room whenever I walk in – if you’re avoiding me you could at least work on your poker face, dumbass.”

Jason looked hesitation and then fiddled with his phone in his hands for a moment before putting it in his pocket.

“Y/N/N, I’ve…” Jason mumbled, “I’ve been busy,” he said, “don’t take it personally. Please.” Y/N narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Jason, opening her mouth to speak, but before she could Jason’s phone started to ring, causing the librarian to hiss a shushing noise at him as he answered it. “Hi Alfred, no, I’m coming,” he said before hanging up. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. See you around.”

Jason turned to leave but Y/N caught the screen of his phone. It was open on text messages – there was one to Alfred; ‘CALL ME NOW. NEED TO GET OUT OF CONVERSATION.’ It was sent to Alfred mere moments. Y/N felt her heart in her throat at the sight of the message. What did she do to hurt Jason so bad that he wanted to cut her out of his life? He said he was fine after she rejected him, and the last time they spoke made it sound as though there was another girl. Y/N stood there with her mouth hanging open as she watched Jason speed from the library. When Jason left she stood there for a few minutes before leaving herself, turning the opposite way down the hall that Jason took before sending a message to Robin.

Robin gave her the number to an encrypted phone that she could use to contact him, never call only text for safety.

To Robin: Can you come by earlier tonight?

From Robin: Sure. What’s up?

To Robin: I think I’ve screwed up just about everything.

________________________________________________________________

Robin came by an hour earlier that night, and he had bought with him a bouquet of flowers. There was a variety of flowers in the bouquet, all beautiful and complimenting each other perfectly.

“You seemed upset, Damsel,” Robin said, holding the flowers out. “I wanted to cheer you up.”

“Thank you, Robin,” Y/N smiled gently before taking the flowers and putting them on her dresser. “Everything has been so weird lately.”

“What happened?” He asked, sitting on her bed.

“It’s Jason again,” she huffed, “I’m sorry you must get so sick and tired of me complaining and complaining about this guy all the time.”

“You’re allowed to feel how you feel,” Robin told her, “wanna talk about it?”

“Please,” Y/N nodded, answering in a small voice, taking the space next to him. “Jason’s been trying to avoid me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I saw something on his phone.” Y/N confessed, “he left his texts open and I saw he texted Alfred to get him out of a conversation.” Robin gulped but pulled Y/N close to him, kissing the top of her head. He started to rub her shoulder and assure her everything will be alright. “It just hurts – he’s my friend, Robin, and I feel like I’ve lost him. He told me he was alright with us not being together and that it wouldn’t change things between us but all he does is dodge me and avoid talking to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Robin whispered into her hair, pulling back and looking at her. “It shouldn’t be like this.”

“What’d you mean?”

“That-that,” Robin stuttered, “that you don’t deserve to lose a friend like this, or ever.”

“Thank you, Robin.”

Robin smiled tightly before leaning in and kissing Y/N gently, placing his gloved hand on her cheek and holding her close to him. Y/N moved onto her knees and placed her hands on his shoulders as Robin put his free hand on her waist. When Y/N pulled back she smiled warmly at Robin, stroking his hair.

“You know I love you, right?” Robin said.

“Of course I do,” Y/N nodded, “I’m so lucky to have you in my life,” she said, “someone I can trust, someone who I knew wouldn’t hurt me.”

Y/N buried her head into the crook of Robin’s neck, unable to see his expression change to a tense one of distress as he gulped, hesitantly stroking Y/N’s hair and licking his lips which suddenly felt dry. There was nothing he could say, nothing that came to mind at least. All Robin did was pull back and look Y/N in the eye. She had such pretty Y/E/C eyes. He kissed her again.

______________________________________________________________

Jason took off his suit and hung it back up, changing into his normal civilian clothing before walking into Wayne Manor.

“Master Jason,” said the crisp English voice of Alfred. Jason turned to be greeted by the kind-hearted butler.

“Hey, Alfred,” Jason smiled tightly.

“With Miss Y/L/N again, I assume?”

“Yeah…”

“You know that Master Bruce warned you against socialising with the young lady.”

“Yeah, but… I…” Jason sighed and trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.  

“I am aware, Master Jason,” Alfred nodded, “I will keep it to myself.”

Jason smiled in apperception. He remembered the argument between himself and Bruce when Bruce discovered that Jason was using his free nights to go and visit Y/N Y/L/N. There was a yelling and harsh words said.

“Just because you keep everyone at arm’s length doesn’t mean I have to do the same,” Jason snapped at Bruce when he confronted him. Bruce folded his arms across his chest and glared at the young vigilante.

“It keeps them safe.”

“The only way I can know if Y/N is safe is by checking on her,” Jason huffed, “if I didn’t go to check that night, who knows what would have happened in the alley.”

“Jason.”

“Bruce.” Jason snapped back, “I know what I am doing.”

“No, no you don’t.” Bruce shook his head, “try and cut back from associating yourself with that girl.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Don’t test me, Jason,” Bruce warned in a low voice. Jason met the stony gaze of Bruce Wayne and refused to back down. “Jason!”

“I like this girl, Bruce, and I want to protect her and I can’t do that if I can’t even see her – as Robin or as Jason!”

“Don’t come to me when this blows up in your face,” Bruce warned before turning and leaving Jason. Alfred stood quietly in the corner, watching the whole ordeal take place. He waited until Bruce had left before approaching Jason and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Do what you think is best, Master Jason,” the butler assured him, “what works for Master Bruce does not necessarily work for everyone else.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Jason smiled before leaving himself. And now, that conversation replayed in his mind, standing there with Alfred again. He knew that if Y/N knew that Batman had said to restrict contact with her that she would also insist. Y/N was too good, and knew how much being Robin meant to him and wouldn’t want to jeopardise his standing in Batman’s world.

“Master Jason?” Alfred said.

“I’m doing what I think is best.” Jason repeated the words Alfred told him that night all those months ago.

“I know, Master Jason.”

“So why do I feel so shitty?”

“Because,” Alfred sighed, “you foresaw a lot of things, but never foresaw falling in love with Miss Y/L/N. It was easy when it was friendly popping by now and then to make sure that she was coping after the alleyway incident, but now you have something to lose – either her as a person or a relationship with her.”

“Thanks,” Jason scoffed. He knew deep down that was the problem, but he didn’t need it spoken aloud. Hearing those words come from Alfred made him feel worse than ever. “What do I do, Alfred?”

“My honest opinion, Master Jason?”

“Please.”

“Either end what you have with her, or tell her the truth.” Alfred said. Jason’s face contorted into a horrible expression as he sat down.

“I don’t want to end it with her.”

“Then you have to tell her the truth,” Alfred shrugged, “it will not be easy, Master Jason, but it will be worth it in the end. From what I can gather, it seems Miss Y/L/N does not care about who is under the mask of Robin. She loves you for you, Master Jason – whether that be Jason Todd or Robin. Didn’t she say herself that you and she could be together in another life?”

“Well yes.”

“And the only reason you weren’t was because of another man?”

“Well yes.”

“And that other man happens to be yourself as Robin?”

“Well yes.”

“Then tell her, Master Jason,” he said, “tell her the truth. You love her and she loves you – I cannot see any other outcome but a happy one, can you?”

Jason looked at Alfred and gulped.

______________________________________________________________

Jason was sweating like mad the following night when he went to visit Y/N as Robin. He had brought a present with him as well, something he had been planning to bring all along. When Jason arrived on Y/N’s balcony, she was already there, sitting on the bench on the balcony, greeting with a loving gaze and a big grin. He landed down on the balcony and remained still for a moment, taking her in.

��Hey Damsel,” he said breathlessly.

“Hey Knight,” Y/N smiled, “What’s got into you?”

“Nothing,” Jason shook his head, “you’re just so beautiful.”

Jason watched as Y/N blushed and looked down, fiddling with her hands.

“You’re such a fucking sap,” Y/N giggled as Jason took the seat next to her and kissed her deeply.

“I got ya something.”

“Oh, Robin,” Y/N gasped as Jason took out the box. It was a small box wrapped perfectly in metallic red paper and a golden bow stuck on top of it. Jason spent more time than he cared to admit making the wrapping appear flawless and easy when in reality it took him ten attempts. Hearing Y/N call him Robin reminded Jason how there was still a barrier between the two of them. Y/N took the box from Jason and looked at him to see if she could open it.

“Go on,” he encouraged her. Y/N smiled and carefully began to unwrap the box. With gentle fingers she peeled off the tape being used to hold the paper down and then she slid the box from the paper and opened the lid. Once again, she gasped.

“Robin!” She said.

Jason had bought Y/N a necklace. It was gold and hanging off of the chain was a pendent, it was small and delicate but both Y/N and Jason knew what was on the chain. It was a little golden robin. Jason watched Y/N’s expression, one of wonder and gratitude and pure love. He wanted to bottle this moment up forever so it could not be lost, he wanted to hold on to it so when he was in his dark moments he could open this memory up and feel its light and warmth and its comfort. Jason picked the necklace up carefully and gestured for Y/N to turn around. When her back was to him, Jason carefully but the necklace on Y/N and made sure that her hair was not caught on it. Hesitantly, Jason moved his hand to his mask, ready to take it off for when Y/N turned and faced him.

“Do you like it?” He asked in a wavering voice.

“I love it Robin,” Y/N said, her back still towards him. “This is perfect, you are perfect, Robin.”

Y/N’s words caused Jason to take his hand away from the mask and leave it in place. There was not a chance in Gotham that he would ruin this perfect moment between the two of them. He didn’t care if Alfred was right and that Y/N would open her arms to the revelation that Jason Todd was her Knight, her Robin. No. That could wait for another night. For now, Jason turned Y/N to face him and pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple.

“Nothing is as perfect as you,” he said swallowing down the lump in his throat.

______________________________________________________________

“You didn’t tell her,” Alfred said when he saw Jason.

“What makes you say that?”

“You still have the same expression on your face, Master Jason.”

“I-I-I couldn’t, Alfred,” Jason mumbled, “she was so happy and all I could keep thinking of was the worst-case scenario – that she would yell at me and tell me to leave, that she wouldn’t be in love with me anymore.”

Alfred listened to Jason, nodding slowly when Jason spoke, and keeping an expression on his face that was unreadable for Jason. Now Jason was worried that Alfred, like Bruce, was going to chew him up for going to Y/N.

“We have known each other for over a year now, Master Jason,” Alfred began slowly, “and I have become to know you as a fearless and courageous individual. You have stared down danger and have never let it shake you. You have taken an acidic bullet to the chest, walked it off like it was a feather and laughed at the memory. I fully believe, Master Jason, that you can tell Miss Y/L/N who lies beneath the mask of Robin.”

Jason smiled gratefully at Alfred, hoping he was right.

“Soon, Alfred, I’ll tell her soon.” Jason promised, “I just need a little more time.”

“The sooner you tell her the better, Master Jason.”

[bedbellyandbeyond]

Group

(Story Post)

“Nathan! Welcome, thanks for joining us. Make yourself comfortable,” Camilo said, as the werewolf walked into the room. He’d set up several chairs in a circle and some snacks and water on a table nearby. Marcita had come in and Yori too, whom Nathan was surprised to see. “Yori?” Nathan blinked as he sat down in a chair. “You’re pregnant too?” “Mmhm,” the spirit replied smiling. “Only for about a week. The doctor told me about this group thing and I thought it sounded like fun.” “Cool… At least I’ll know two people here now…” Nathan said. “And congrats. You must be excited.” Yori just nodded and folded his hands in his lap.

“Is this everyone?” Nathan asked. “No, we’re still waiting on two more,” Camilo said. “But they should be here soon. In the meantime, you haven’t met my sister yet, have you? This is Marcita.” Marcita waved from her seat beside Camilo’s. She looked like she was ready to pop. “Yes, you’re seeing double.” “Yeah, you’re… Geez, that’s trippy,” Nathan said trying not to stare. “I’m Nathan. Camilo and Korsgaard are my case workers.” Marcita smiled. “It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for coming to my brother’s group. I just think it’s such a great idea, having this for you guys.” “So you’re pregnant at the same time as each other?” Nathan questioned. “Yes, but this is pretty normal for me,” Marcita said. “I’m actually a surrogate professionally.” “Oh, cool.” Camilo put a hand on his twin’s shoulder. “I figured Marcita would be great for the group since she has that experience. This is, what, your fourth pregnancy?” “Yeah,” Marcita said. “Though I won’t be the most experienced once Dari and Fay get here. Both of them have been pregnant more often than me.” “They’ve been pregnant more than four times?!” Nathan inquired. “Are they also surrogates?” “No, they’re a couple,” Camilo said. “It’s kind of complicated, but they have six kids and Dari’s expecting twins like you.” “Well, at least I'm not alone there...” A moment later, there was a knock on the door and Fay pocked his head in. “Ah, here we are. Dari, everyone's here. Come in and say hi.” He disappeared for a moment then reappeared dragging his husband into the room by the hand. Dari stared at the ground and waved. “Hi, thanks for coming guys,” Camilo said. “Dari, I don't think you've met Nathan or Yori yet.” “I haven't,” Dari muttered, looking up to assess the room. He seemed to ease in a bit when he realised how few people four was. “Hello... I'm Dari.” “Mon amour, let's go have a seat, hm?” Fay took him over to the circle and let go of Dari's hand to put two chairs together. “Are we late?” “No, no. We were just starting to introduce each other,” Camilo said. “So, uh, Nathan and Yori both teach the kindergarten years at APID E.” “Oh, that's right,” Fay said. “Dari, now isn't this perfect?” He turned to the teachers. “Our daughter will be starting school soon. So I believe you're just the right people for us to know. And, Yori we've met countless times through Lino but it's always a pleasure.” “Thanks. I like you too,” Yori said smiling. “And your husband is so cute, like you always say.” Dari blushed and punched Fay in the arm. Nathan leaned in to shake their hands. “It's nice to meet you. It's comforting to know there are other guys who have gone through similar experiences as what I'm dealing with now.” “I'm glad we can help,” Fay said. “Dari insisted on coming for just that reason. He wants to help out anyone who might be struggling in their pregnancy since he knows so much about it.” Dari crinkled his nose but didn’t say anything. “Okay, so we're all here now,” Camilo said, smiling. “And we've greeted each other, but maybe we could go around the room, say your name again and maybe...how far along you are? And like, something interesting about yourself.” “Sounds good,” Fay said. “I can start. I am Fay Demers. I am not currently pregnant but I have been through four pregnancies, the last of which was for the birth of our third child, Otter.” “Thanks Fay,” Camilo said. “But, um, I can see Nathan's a little confused so could you elaborate on the fourth pregnancy topic?” “Sure. So as a merperson, my species numbers are dwindling, so it's our tradition to reproduce as soon as we're able which is eased by the notion that a caregiver will take care of them for us. I had three pregnancies and sired five children back home before coming to the surface. When I met Dari though, we started our own family, and I got pregnant for our third child.” “Oh okay, that makes more sense...” Nathan said. “So mermen can get pregnant like that?” “Yes, though our fertility window is a lot smaller than a female,” Fay said. “Otter was my final pregnancy. I'm not fit to bear any more.” “Oh. Okay... That's cool to know,” Nathan said, suddenly transfixed on the merman. Fay noticed the way he was looking at him and chuckled. “Nathan, Camilo put out these snacks for us. Why don't you have some juice?” “Juice?” Nathan looked down at the table in front of him and found the bottles of apple and orange juice and grabbed an orange juice to drink. His mind cleared quickly after that. Fay leaned over and placed a hand on Camilo's shoulder. “Good call on these refreshments.” “Well, I was your assistant,” Camilo said. “Yes. Such a smart one.” Fay leaned back and took Dari's hand again. “Love, why don't you introduce yourself next?” Dari blinked a bit and squeezed Fay's hand tightly. “Okay... Um, I'm Dari Demers... I'm five months along, twins, and...well I can get pregnant because I was abducted by aliens and they did experiments on me.” “Um, just so we all know, it's not necessary to explain why you're capable of conceiving,” Camilo explained, eying Nathan. “If you want to, that's fine, but Dari, I'm sure there's more to you than that.” “Well, I mean, that's probably the most interesting thing about me,” Dari said. “...If I had to think about anything else I'd probably say...I like to garden?” “That's a good one,” Camilo said. “Yori, you're next.” “Ooh, okay.” Yori sat up straight smiling. “I'm Yori. I'm, uh, five days pregnant and an interesting thing about me is...hm...” “Wait, how do you know so soon?” Nathan asked. “Know what?” Yori asked. “That you're pregnant. After only five days.” “Oh. I just know things like that.” “I wish I could know that fast,” Marcita huffed. “It would make my job a lot easier.” “Oh, an interesting thing I guess would be that ice cream cake is my favourite type of cake,” Yori said. “Good choice,” Nathan commented. “That means I'm next,” Marcita said. “I'm Marcita Ferrer and I'll be due in two weeks. I surrogate for a living but I don't have any children myself. I am working on my masters in astrophysics.” “Wow, I wish I had the time and energy for a degree like that,” Nathan said. “When it's your passion, it lightens the lode,” Marcita said. “I'm sure I wouldn't have the patience for a teaching degree. I love tutoring Dari's son and I love that, but I couldn't imagine a class full of kids. I'd have a breakdown.” “You get past the breakdowns after a couple years,” Nathan joked. “I guess I'm next,” Camilo said. “Most of you know me pretty well, but anyway, I'm Camilo Ferrer, Marcita's anxiety boy clone, haha, and...um... Oh, I'm twenty-two weeks along. And an interesting thing about me, I guess, would be... I mean, I'm also in school to be an astrophysicist, but that's taken so, I guess... I haven't stopped craving mangoes since the beginning of this pregnancy.” “Mangoes are so good,” Fay said. “The whole concept of fruit is amazing.” “And that leaves Nathan,” Camilo said. “Last but definitely not least.” “Right. Okay, I'm Nathan Cassidy,” Nathan introduced himself. “I teach at APID E. I'm uh... Fourteen weeks pregnant and—” “Fourteen?!” Fay interrupted. “Are they quintuplets?” “Uh, actually, my condition makes my pregnancy go faster so I’m about the same way along as Dari and Camilo,” Nathan said. “But, yeah, I’m also having twins.” “Good luck. We’re a blessing and a curse,” Marcita said patting her brother’s shoulder. “Identical or fraternal?” “Fraternal, I guess,” Nathan said. “They’re different, uh… They’re just different.” “Ours are identical,” Dari said. “Saving the sexing for later.” “Cool, I’m excited,” Camilo said. “Nathan, do you want to finish?” “Sure. So, I guess the interesting thing about me would be…I used to dye my hair blond but now it grows out that way,” Nathan said. “That is interesting,” Fay said. “You’re definitely not a merman, but are you some other kind of terrestrial non-human?” “I’m human… I just have a condition,” Nathan said. “You can’t tell he’s a wolf?” Yori asked, looking to Fay. Nathan blanched and turned to Yori. “You…you know?” “…” Yori blinked and looked around at the group’s shocked faces. “I thought it was obvious. He smells so much like it.” “Yori… Not everyone has your canine sense of smell,” Camilo said. “That was private information…” Yori frowned. “I’m sorry… I didn’t realise it was a secret.” “What does he mean, you’re a wolf?” Dari asked. “Like…a werewolf?” Nathan nodded, getting really nervous. “…I understand if you don’t want me in the group.” Camilo frowned. “Nathan this is a safe space.” “Are you dangerous?” Dari asked. “Now, hold on, Dari,” Fay asked. “That’s insensitive.” “How? It’s an important question.” “Obviously if he is here, he’s not dangerous.” “No, it’s okay,” Nathan said. “This is exactly what I wanted to avoid… I’m being treated. As long as I go to my room by eight tonight, I’m completely safe.” “Yes, Nathan's never once had a violent incident since he's been here at APID,” Camilo said. “Even if he did turn here in the group, he isn't likely to hurt anyone.” “Fay, I don't like this...” Dari muttered. “My love, you trust Camilo, don't you?” Fay said. “I don't want to insult this poor man by mistrusting his presence before we've even gotten to know him. Lord knows he’s likely already judged just by the colour of his skin.” “I’m not racist, this is werewolves we’re talking about,” Dari groaned. “Do you want to talk about this in the hall?” Fay asked. “Honestly, I’m not offended,” Nathan said. “I get it; I don’t want to be around werewolves either. I don’t want to have this condition.” Dari clenched his jaw. “Dear god… I’m putting up with a lot these days… I will try to ignore the fact that you’re a werewolf.” “Thanks,” Nathan said smiling a bit. “Honestly, knowing you’re having twins too makes me hope I can get to know you best. Makes me feel less alone in this.” “Well… I do have the most experience in this circle,” Dari said. “So I can understand that. But, I don’t like big groups so don’t… Don’t expect me to be all talk…” “Dari gets a lot of anxiety in groups,” Fay said. “I was hoping a small group like this though will help him get comfortable. Having a mix of friends and acquaintances just seems like a good start.” “I get anxiety too, so you’re not alone,” Nathan said. “I was pretty scared to come to this group thing, but everyone seems really nice here.” Camilo put his hands together. “I knew this was going to be a great group. Remember, everyone. We’re all different, we’re all going through different experiences, but we also will have a lot in common and the point of this group is to have a place we can talk out our feelings or share experiences knowing we can trust each other. I’m hoping this will be a benefit for all of us. I know it’s already making me feel better about some of what I’m dealing with just being around you guys, and we’ve barely started. So, please, enjoy yourself here, feel free to eat and bring snacks, and know we’re here for each other.” “I love it,” Fay said. “Camilo, thank you for arranging this.” “Yeah, it was a good idea,” Nathan acknowledge. “I love sharing a brain with you, hermanito,” Marcita mused. “Haha, thanks… So, uh, to start off the conversation… Marcita, why don’t you explain how you got into surrogacy?” “Sure, I’d love to.”

[fe14fiction-blog]

Submission: Attempt at Pregnancy Headcannons: Azura & Selena

Hey there! Love your blog and the FE Fates games, so I decided to take a crack at writing some. Lemme know if you think I did any justice to the characters, of which I only use two of in order to work my way up (also, I tend to be a little rambly or wordy - sorry in advance XP)

Mod Lilith: Because it was very long, just to help keep the dashes alright, I put the actual headcanons under a readmore. Thank you for submitting. I am glad you enjoy the headcanons and fics. These are very detailed. You did a great job.

Azura

Motherhood was not something Azura had planned on, what with the issue of Valla hanging over her head. She’s not unhappy about bringing a new life into the world, but she IS anxious about what kind of world is there to meet them.

Azura has a surprisingly big appetite, so one of the things she secretly enjoys about her pregnancy is the free pass to eat her fill without reservation - downing a large ramen bowl in one sitting draws a lot less eyes if you’re expecting (not that she ever cared what others thought of her, but it can still get annoying when people stare; especially strangers). That being said, she balances it out by keeping active with walks and dancing - being able to indulge herself more often doesn’t mean she’s going to let her health and fitness fall by the wayside.

Being a dancer also makes her very aware of changes to her center of balance, so she’s more easily able to notice and compensate for the changes in her weight distribution. Unfortunately, it can also make her hyperaware of her state, which can lead to overcompensation - simply put, she’s much less naturally coordinated than she’s used to, which is harder to deal with if the mood swings are in effect.

Said dancing experience also makes it very disconcerting if she can’t keep track of her footwork. For instance, the day Azura realized she couldn’t see her own toes caused an abrupt burst of tears, and Corrin’s confusion on the subject doesn’t do her any favors.

Azura is used to being reserved, calm and generally in control of her emotions, so the mood swings and potential lethargy are very difficult on her for the first few months before things taper off - especially in regards to her “worst bedhead in the army” issues, which she now has dwindling patience for if she wakes up sick. Corrin’s likewise not used to being the least emotive of the pair, so having to be the couple’s sounder source of stability has a bit of a learning curve.

Azura has singer’s lungs, so it a bit easier for her to move around late-term without getting short of breath. Her calm temperament mixes with this to give a good proficiency in the breathing exercises she does in preparation for labor. 

Azura sometimes sings to her tummy in private, getting easily flustered and embarrassed if anyone sees her - even Corrin, though she gets over it with him easily enough. Interestingly, Shigure and Kana both had different responses to her singing - the former was calmed, if not lulled to sleep by it, while the latter seemed so excited by it that Azura would half-swear the unborn babe was trying to dance to her songs.

Both labors were relatively straightforward affairs, with Azura showing a model calm throughout the process - moreso than Corrin, at least. Actually holding each child brought tears to her eyes, which in turn brought tears to Corrin’s.

Kana sometimes used Azura’s hair as a blanket. That or her hair literally tried to eat her - who knows how it gets so tangled up and tussed about like that.

Selena

Kana was definitely not planned, considering Selena’s time in Nohr was always meant to be temporary. So to say she’s terrified is an understatement, no matter how much she tries not to show it, with Corrin having to make sure she takes it one day at a time.

As always, Selena is pretty insecure about measuring up to her perfect mother - something else she always tries to hide. Thankfully, Corrin can reassure her that she’s got greater experience with positive parental figures compared to him (Garon wasn’t exactly an ideal parent after all).

Having little chill at the best of times, all the annoyances of pregnancy’s first-term are magnified tenfold in Selena’s cause - and everyone is aware of it. The morning sickness and digestive trouble is bemoaned throughout the day, the aches and pains are fussed on throughout the night, the cravings are as fickle as the wind, the mood sings are borderline apocalyptic - and the order these can happen are about as reliable as Setsuna’s memory.

Even when the worst of the symptoms level off, Selena often feels torn on how to feel. On one hand, she hates feeling like an invalid that other people have to take care of and stubbornly insists on doing anything she’s still cleared for on her own. But on the other hand she really enjoys being spoiled and pampered by Corrin (no matter how much she won’t admit it or will complain outwardly about it). 

Already insecure about her body, pregnancy makes Selena even more critical of herself - except with the upscale in her bust-size, even if it mostly temporary. And Gods help you if you so much as suggest she’s forcing the buttons closed around her stomach, because you will be lectured about how said item “clearly still fits.” Even to the very end, she she never stops being annoyed at outgrowing most of her wardrobe.

Thankfully, the above also lead to one of the more enjoyable parts of maternity for her; the shopping sprees, which become both therapeutic and compulsory as she’s hellbent on Kana wanting for nothing - baby clothes, baby toys, baby food, a crib, maternity clothes, accessories for said clothes, clothes and accessories for Corrin to match hers with; you get the idea.

Selena’s competitive streak sometimes comes out whenever she thinks it’s a contest between her and the baby for Corrin’s affections (“If you’re gonna stare at my stomach so much, maybe you should have married IT instead of me!”, for instance, is one of many ill-thought-out lines she may blurt out now and again). There are also more lighthearted instances; if Kana starts kicking, Selena will sometimes push at each spot she feels a kick in what almost approximates a game.

While the childbirth itself had no complications, Selena is not at all prepared for the realities of labor - which results in no small amount of half-crazed rambling, ranging from pleas to gods Corrin doesn’t recognize (“Oh, Naga, please get this kid out of me!”) to vows against ever getting pregnant again, smattered with the occasional curse. All while crushing the hell out of Corrin’s hand while saying things like “Don’t you dare let go”.

Of course, she also apologizes for her frenzied rambling during labor in her roundabout way - which the big softie Corrin accepts - but she does reaffirm on wanting to, at the very least, wait a fair bit before having any more kids; she wants to focus her attention (i.e., love) on the one she has first.

Selena’s number-one priority is to ensure Kana never has to want for anything the way she did in the Grima Timeline - not for food, not for clothes, not for a home and, above all else, not for parents. This means that leaving Kana in the Deeprealms was completely heartbreaking for her (though she would never say so openly) and reuniting with them was hugely overjoying (which she’s a bit more likely to say in private).

[talabib]

How To Deal With Stress And Society’s Unrealistic Expectations.

Tons of products are marketed to women as stress-relievers and ways to relax and feel better about themselves. But all the spa days, coloring books and bath bombs in the world aren’t going fix the real problems that women face on a daily basis. For problems like systemic sexism, unrealistic expectations and all the stress and anxiety they can produce, the solution is much more complicated.

Fortunately, science has made some significant progress in understanding the ways in which we can deal with stress and exhaustion.

While we may not be able to topple the patriarchy today, we can fight it by becoming stronger, more informed and empowered.

Emotional exhaustion is a component of burnout, and it can happen when we get emotionally stuck.

Do you know that feeling when you’re completely and utterly exhausted, yet there’s something in the back of your mind saying you still haven’t done enough? If you’re a woman, chances are you’re all too familiar with this sense of being overwhelmed by life.

When it feels like you’re constantly trying to meet your own demands and expectations and those of your job, family and friends, you can easily slip from benign tiredness to stress, anxiety and emotional exhaustion.

Emotional exhaustion happens after you’ve spent too much time caring too much. It is the first of three components identified by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in 1975 in his clinical definition of burnout.

Second is depersonalization, which is when you find your capacity for compassion, empathy and caring dwindles.

The third component of burnout is a decreased sense of accomplishment. In other words, that feeling of “nothing I do matters.”

All of these symptoms may sound familiar to you, but you may not know how they come about. For starters, how exactly can one exhaust one’s emotions? The answer? It happens when we get stuck.

You can think of an emotional experience like a tunnel: it starts, then you’re in the middle of it, and then it ends. However, when you’re experiencing the same emotion all day and every day, there is no satisfactory end to that feeling. You’re stuck in the emotional tunnel with no relief.

So it’s no wonder that people in jobs that require caring and helping, such as teaching and the medical profession, report very high levels of burnout. Some 20 to 30 percent of teachers admit to it, and for the medical profession, it’s upward of 52 percent. It may come as no surprise to hear that parental burnout is a fast-growing phenomenon.

Fortunately, there are strategies to keep burnout at bay. And no, we’re not talking about bath bombs and coloring books; we’re talking about real, scientifically sound strategies to make sure you don’t get stuck in your emotions.

Stress can cause terrible damage to the body, so always try to close the stress cycle.

There’s a very scientific reason for why we tend to get stuck in the emotion of stress, which also reveals just how dangerous it is to our health.

Stress is essentially a neurological and physiological response triggered by a perceived threat. However, all the neurological and hormonal responses that accompany stress are designed to help you do one thing: run.

Back when our stress-response system evolved, we needed to run for our lives a lot more often than we do now. So the stress cycle starts by releasing the hormone epinephrine to push blood into the muscles. As a result, your blood pressure and heart rate go up, your muscles tense and your breathing quickens. Meanwhile, to make sure you can haul-ass away from that theoretical charging rhino, other body functions like growth, digestion, reproduction and immunity are all slowed down.

So if the emotion of stress never ends the danger is clear. Your body will end up with chronic high blood pressure and a corresponding higher risk of heart disease. And due to its compromised immune and digestive systems, your body won’t heal as quickly as it would normally and will be at higher risk of a number of digestion-related illnesses.

All of this means one thing: you need to close the stress cycle as often as possible. Since stress is about running for your life, the natural happy ending to this cycle is that you arrive, safely and breathlessly, back home where you can celebrate with your friends.

If you’re guessing that running or exercise in general is a great way to close out a stress cycle, you’d be right. After running, swimming, biking, dancing or engaging in some blood-pumping exercise for 20 to 60 minutes you’re likely to feel a shift in mood, your muscles will relax, and you will be able to take deeper breaths. You may even find yourself crying from the emotional release. But don’t worry, this is another good sign that you’ve closed off a stress cycle.

However, it doesn’t have to be physically demanding exercise. Creative expression, be it painting, music, theater or sculpting, can also result in a satisfying closure to a stress cycle, as can positive social interactions that signal your return to safety. Affectionate moments like a more-than-just-polite hug or kiss are good, as is deep and genuine laughter or some quality time with a beloved pet.

You can manage frustration through positive reappraisal and planful problem-solving.

Working out an effective strategy against stress requires a good understanding of the difference between stress and stressors – the things that get you stressed – as well as which stressors are controllable and which are not.

Let’s say you’re a middle school teacher. In this case, there’s no avoiding the daily stressors of having to complete endless amounts of paperwork and deal with annoying school administrators. These are things you can’t control – they come with the job. What you can do is schedule daily activities that close out the stress cycle, like going to the gym or practicing with your music or theater group.

You can also manage these uncontrollable stressors through positive reappraisal. If you’re a natural optimist, you’ll probably find positive reappraisal easy since it’s a way of reframing a difficult situation to find positive opportunities.

But make sure you don’t confuse this with “looking on the bright side” since positive reappraisal is always about fact and truth, not delusion.

Controllable stressors can be managed with planful problem-solving. This is the name for analyzing a frustrating situation and coming up with a way to solve it or lessen frustration. If getting stuck in traffic is wearing on your last nerve, for example, you might apply some planful problem-solving and start using a good GPS system to tell you where the traffic is and provide you with alternate routes.

The scientific reason for many of our frustrations lies in what’s known as the Monitor, which also goes by the more scientific names of discrepancy-reducing/-increasing feedback loop or criterion velocity. The Monitor is a mechanism of the brain that constantly assesses our current situation and our future plans while keeping a ratio of how much effort it’s going to take to get there along with how much progress we’re making.

Generally speaking, the Monitor can be just as frustrated by problems that are out of your control as it can by problems you could have prevented. The important thing to know is that once you’re aware of the Monitor, you can start to work with it and lessen your frustrations using the tools we’ve just been considering.

But these tools won’t work all the time. So it’s always useful to remember that difficult and frustrating tasks are often more rewarding than easy tasks. For example, if something is hard to read, studies show that you’re more likely to remember it. So, the next time you find yourself stuck in a difficult situation, remember that this is probably a better chance for personal growth than if it were easy.

You can cope better by knowing that the game is rigged and by fighting unrealistic expectations with facts.

Let’s say you want to climb a mountain. If you think to yourself, “hey, this will be a piece of cake,” you will surely become frustrated at the first sign of struggle. But if you say, “I’m going to embark on the extremely challenging task of climbing this mountain,” then you’ll consider it normal and not frustrating at all when you find yourself struggling.

This is an example of how your expectations determine your frustrations. By managing your expectations, you can also manage your frustrations.

This approach can not only be used to tackle individual challenges but should also be applied to the world in general.

Women are told all the time that they’re not being discriminated against and that if they’re feeling frustrated all they need is to do is drink some green smoothies and finish a coloring book, and they’ll feel great again. When this doesn’t happen, it’s easy for women to feel like it’s their fault – that something’s wrong with them.

But this isn’t true. The fact is that the game is rigged, and we’re all still living in a patriarchy, despite what some might say. Understanding this will be far more effective than the greatest bath bomb ever invented.

Science backs it up. In one study, people were given an impossible task. Naturally, when they couldn’t complete it and gave up, the participants felt miserable. But the moment they were told that the test was rigged, the negative emotions immediately vanished.

Another persistent source of unrealistic expectations for women is the Bikini Industrial Complex (BIC). This is the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that pressures women to conform to a specific and unattainable body ideal.

But here are the facts: even the concept of the body mass index (BMI), which has long been used to assess health, is rigged because the majority of the people who invented it worked for weight-loss clinics that wanted to keep women buying their services.

Furthermore, a 2016 study published in The Lancet showed that people who were labeled clinically “obese” had a “lower health risk” than people labeled “underweight.” What’s more, people in the “overweight” category were found to be at a “lower risk” than those in the low end of the “healthy” category.

BMI is bananas, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that being skinny will make you healthier or live longer. This awareness can go a long way to making you feel better the next time you’re bombarded with ads from the BIC.

You can build your resilience to stress by aligning yourself with something larger and fighting Human Giver Syndrome.

If you’re familiar with the long line of Disney musicals, then you may have recognized that in each one, from Snow White to Beauty and the Beast, the main character will sing her “I want” song. In fact, you can gauge women’s progress in the United States through these songs. Snow White sings about wanting nothing more than a valiant prince, but Belle sings about wanting “adventure in the great wide somewhere.”

Disney princesses haven’t always been the most woke, but they’ve always shown us one thing: the importance of knowing what you want. One of the most effective ways of persisting through stressful days is to know what you want and to have your life aligned with something bigger than yourself. In other words, you need to find your meaning.

According to psychologist Martin Seligman, meaning is the secret to happiness. For others, it’s more like the secret to coping in a stressful world. Some understand meaning as spiritual or the mission of leaving a meaningful legacy behind.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to finding your calling. The only sure thing is that the more a person is aligned with a deeper sense of meaning, the more fully they will live their lives.

But what about meaning in your own life? How do you find it? One thing that can get in the way is what experts call Human Giver Syndrome.

In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, philosopher Kate Manne describes two classes of people, human givers and human beings. Human givers are expected to devote their time, attention and bodies to human beings, who get to express their individuality.

In many societies, women suffer from Human Giver Syndrome. They have been raised to fall into the human giver role rather than tend to their own needs or seek their own meaning. They are told that all women should want is to be pretty, happy, calm and devoted to the needs of others.

Even Joseph Campbell, the author who helped popularize the concept of the hero’s journey, doesn’t believe in such a thing as a heroine’s journey. According to him, the woman is more of a place than a person, a destination for men to reach rather than an agent on her own journey.

Human Giver Syndrome is a powerful enemy deeply rooted in female consciousness. But it is not reality. Don’t believe it and don’t punish yourself or let others punish you if you’ve “failed” to live up to the demands of Human Giver Syndrome.

Needing people is a fact of life, not a sign of weakness.

Here’s another popular myth in modern society: that life is a straight-line progression from being a dependent and needy child to being an independent adult. In fact, it’s pretty common to hear people say that a “healthy” adult is someone who can feel whole with or without other people.

But here’s the reality: we aren’t going to function at our best when we’re constantly lonely and isolated or when we’re constantly surrounded by others. We need both. We need to move back and forth between feeling connected to others and feeling autonomous.

We need connections for a lot of reasons, including emotional and medical support as well as getting information and education. Exactly how much connection someone needs varies from person to person. Introverts generally need less connection and more alone time than extroverts, who require more connection.

But it’s not just quantity that matters. Quality does too. In a study of 70,000 heterosexual marriages, the couples in what were defined as bad quality relationships had poorer physical and mental health, shorter life spans and less satisfaction in life than those who were not.

The opposite was true for those deemed to be in high-quality relationships. These people healed faster and took better care of themselves generally. Even people with chronic illnesses reported a higher quality of life as a result of a good relationship. What’s more, the quality of a relationship can be a better predictor of overall health than whether or not someone is a smoker.

So, far from being a weakness or unhealthy, needing people makes you stronger.

It can also give you a fresh perspective on who you are. When Sophie fell in love with a man named Bernard, they were a little skeptical at first. He was older, had kids from a previous marriage and wasn’t the kind of guy for whom they’d necessarily expect Sophie to fall. But she explained that by seeing herself through Bernard’s eyes, she was able to love herself in new ways. This was the power of connection at work.

Sometimes it takes a friend or partner to help you find compassion and love toward yourself. But this isn’t a weakness; it makes you stronger, and it’s part of being human.

Rest and sleep are crucial to health, productivity and avoiding burnout.

There’s an old and troubling saying that goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

People who believe this also tend to value our ability to push aside our needs and use sheer grit and determination to go ceaselessly from one task to the next. But this kind of life is downright dangerous. Not only will it lead to bad work but it can also take a toll on your health.

Science tells us that what really makes us stronger is rest and sleep.

If you want to do quality work, studies show that you should rest between tasks. This effectively erases the effects of fatigue from the previous task and allows you to spend twice as long on the next job as you otherwise would.

It also leads to better work. How so? Well, when you rest, your brain isn’t being idle; it’s using a group of connected areas known as the default mode network. In this state, your brain is “wandering” and is able to assess current problems and find solutions in a way that isn’t possible when you’re actively involved in a task.

So when you’re stuck on something, don’t just try to plow through it. Take a break and do some mindless task like folding your laundry for a little while. You might be surprised how often the solution will come to you.

It’s also worth knowing that you can have an “active rest,” by just switching up your tasks from time to time. Emily Nagoski, wrote Burnout while simultaneously working on a novel. Since writing fiction and nonfiction is like exercising two different muscles, it effectively allowed her to rest and return to each task feeling refreshed.

Likewise, the value of sleep should not be underestimated. When you’re sleeping, your body undergoes all kinds of bone, muscle and blood vessel repairs. This means that the benefits of any physical exercise you did during the day are really taking place while you sleep. The same is true for mental activity. Sleep is the time when all the new information you learned during the day can be consolidated and stored properly in memory.

Our culture is obsessed with productivity. But life isn’t about squeezing out every last drop of energy until you’re empty as if you’re a tube of toothpaste. Life is about you and your something bigger, and you’ll be more likely to reach this something bigger when you are well-rested.

Controlling the inner madwoman and practicing self-compassion are key to being strong and joyful.

In US actress Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes Please, she describes the nagging inner voice that has often told her she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve love. Those suffering from Human Giver Syndrome likely know this inner “madwoman,” as experts call it, as it tends to show up whenever they think they’ve failed to live up to the calm, pretty, smiling, devoted-to-others woman they’re expected to be.

Benign self-criticism can help you be more detail-oriented, but it can quickly slip into toxicity when it keeps you from doing anything. The madwoman is often a perfectionist, and she can convince you to give up when the first mistake appears or even not bother starting anything in the first place since perfection is impossible to begin with. But to grow strong and mighty you need to be able to take chances and feel free to learn from your mistakes along the way.

This means you need to control your madwoman. One of the best strategies for doing so is to create a vivid image of your madwoman. You can even name her. The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to see yourself as being apart from this toxic voice and that you don’t need to listen to her admonishments. This can even lead to a friendly relationship that allows you to be your best.

And once you have your self-critical voice under control, it becomes easier to practice self-compassion, which is another key step in growing stronger.

Self-compassion can be difficult for some because it is essentially a form of healing. And when we’re healing, be it a broken arm or our relationship with ourselves, it leads to feelings of pain and vulnerability. But if you stick with it, the healing will finish, and you’ll find that the struggle has made you stronger and mightier for having persevered.

With this strength, you can work toward joy. A lot of self-help books try to point you toward happiness, but in reality, this isn’t a good goal. Happiness will always be a fleeting moment, not a destination.

What can be sustained is joy, by staying self-compassionate and regularly taking time to feel gratitude toward the people in your life and the good events that happen each day.

There are many complex and specific reasons why women are facing burnout these days. We don’t have regular ways of closing out the stress cycle brought on by our jobs and day-to-day lives. Fortunately, this can be done through exercise, creativity and affection. It’s also important to acknowledge that we live in an unbalanced society that discriminates against women and that the health and beauty industries place undue pressure on women. By recognizing these factors and striking back against our self-critical voices, we can begin to defeat the patriarchy and be our best selves through self-compassion and focusing on following our own dreams.

[byunnct]

suck it up [yuta nct]

pairing: nakamoto yuta x reader

summary: vampire!au. several things fall apart at once but yuta.. is yuta

a/n: my second request!! :D i got a bit stuck on ideas for this so i used a prompt from here :) OH also happy bday to johnny

There’s a reason Yuta has never been allowed to visit your apartment. Well, it’s not that he isn’t allowed but more it’s for the better if he never visits, much to his chagrin.

He’s whined and complained, stomped his feet in frustration and attempted several times to subtly (not at all subtly) follow you right to your door, in hopes he could slip in behind you without you noticing. You notice, of course, and every time gently push him out whilst he pouts with a, “See you tomorrow, Yuta.”

You feel guilty every time this happens. You know it must be confusing for him, you tell him nearly everything about yourself and let him into your life figuratively, but you refuse to physically let him in – into your house, yet you know it’s for the best. Even when he breaks your heart by once asking you, “are you sure you’re happy with me?” and when you overhear him telling Taeyong that he worries you don’t feel for him what he does for you, you know what you’re doing is good for him.

You’re not sure how’d you even attempt telling him you’re a vampire.

Things get a bit complicated when you lose your job at the city’s blood bank - your easy source of food now disappearing. It seems people began noticing that bags were vanishing with no explanation and it somehow came back to you and, even though they caught the correct culprit, you had hoped your manager would let you off with only a warning since you were such a good employee.

Instinctively Yuta is the first person you call when you’re sat in your car, a box of your belongings from work in the seat next to you. You keep the conversation simple since you’re not ready to divulge all the details, promising to explain later (when you think of a cover story) and tell him that your date that night should go on as planned.

Two hours later, when you’re in the middle of deciding what ice cream flavour to have as your pity party treat, you receive a message from Yuta.

[01:27pm, YUTA<3] where are you?

Your eyebrows furrow and your heartbeat quickens in panic. This text doesn’t sound like Yuta – no excessive use of emoticons or hearts, no overbearing number of kisses, no persistent buzzing due to Yuta sending you a minimum of eight messages at once. A single text, three words, that come across so.. un-Yuta that the melodramatic part of you worries that it isn’t Yuta texting you.

[01:34pm, you] on my way to my apartment now. are you ok???

[01:34pm, YUTA<3] k

You try not to feel offended by the fact that you were just ‘k’ed by your boyfriend and shove the ice cream back in the convenience store freezer, speedily walking to your car and getting in as quickly as you can.

-

When you reach your apartment complex, you can’t help but anxiously look at your surroundings every five minutes – something feels weird, off, like something glaringly obvious is wrong and you’re the only one blind to it. As if someone is watching you, the prickling of your skin and butterflies in your stomach making you incredibly uncomfortable.

Someone’s in your apartment.

You can tell from the thin shine from under the door and the noises of breathing and skin rubbing against skin you can hear. You never forget to turn your apartment light off, always triple checking to make sure everything is switched off before leaving, and you make sure to triple check your door is locked. You don’t have a spare key hidden under a doormat, or under a plant pot, and there’s only one person who has a copy of your key and, despite making him promise to essentially never use it, would go against your wishes and use it to kind of break into your apartment.

Yuta is sat in your living room, staring straight ahead with blank eyes.

There’s no emotion on his face, almost as if he’s sleeping with his eyes open, but his hands move frantically – they’re constantly rubbing over one another and occasionally he pinches at his skin unconsciously, the only sign he’s feeling any emotion other than… nothing.

“Are you okay?” You ask, stepping into his field of vision.

“Did you get fired because of the blood bags in your fridge?”

Shocked by his blunt question, you take a step back from him, mouth opening and closing several times before you decide to keep it shut.

You’re not sure how to approach this. You know exactly what he’s talking about, the hundreds of blood bags hidden in your fridge are your easy source of food, rather than taking it from the source. Drinking from a person involves much more effort and sometimes costs money and, of course, the guilt – stealing blood bags is the best decision you’ve ever made. But, alas, it’s all caught up to you now and you mentally berate yourself for not having some kind of explanation pre-planned.

You realise that Yuta is correct that you lost your job because of the blood bags in your fridge, but as far as he’s concerned, this means that you’re just a thief, right? He’s dating a thief that steals blood bags from their job at the blood bank for some reason unbeknownst to him.

With this knowledge, it would make sense to go along with that idea and hope that he believes you’re very unusual and leave it at that with no questions asked. But you’re on defence mode, Yuta has seen a part of you you’re not quite ready to share with him yet, so you deflect.

“Why are you in my house?”

He’s surprised at your sudden question, and the harshness in your voice, “I- I wanted to make you some food. Since you’re sad, right? It’s what I should do, comfort you. I wanted to make you a meal to comfort you.”

His eyes are bright and stare up at you with an air of innocence and your heart breaks. He has no idea what’s going on, what you’re going to have to break to him and you have no idea how he will handle the information and what he’ll do after.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” He whispers.

Yes, you think.

You swallow harshly and sit down next to him. You reach for his hand resting on his bouncing knee before stopping yourself.

Taking a deep breath, you level your eyes with his and say as calmly as you can, “I’m a vampire.”

-

Yuta doesn’t believe you at first. He laughs, all teeth and squinted eyes and beauty, but it falters when he notices you’re not laughing with him or nudging him in the ribs with a, “got ya!”

When you continue on, explaining the details of your life and how you got here and debunked the myths that plague your life, he stares at you with the same blank look you found him with when you first entered your apartment. He stays in that exact position for five minutes straight and then shoots up, quickly patting himself to make sure he has his keys and wallet before heading for the door.

You tried to stop him, tried to grab his wrist as you asked – begged – that he doesn’t leave and hears you out for a little longer, a little longer so that you can explain even more than you already had. But it’s like he doesn’t hear you, the world is blocked out as his rips his arm from your grip and looks around your apartment in distress, disbelief, looking for all signs or indications that you’re a.. a vampire.

-

A week later, there’s a knock on your door as you’re scrolling through your phone.

You calmly walk from your bedroom to the front door, opening it without checking to see who is the other side, and the first thing you see is a bouquet.. of blood bags.

At least twenty bags bundled together by some kind of fabric, the liquid sloshes around like a red sea as the person holding the bouquet sways slightly on their spot. To make it look like an actual bouquet there are your favourite flowers shoved in the gaps between the bags, some already dying and others not having blossomed yet; a beautiful mix of red and other vibrant colours.

The bouquet is held by familiar hands and as if on cue Yuta slowly lowers his gift and gives you a bright smile over the top of some stray flowers.

“I don’t know how vampires work but obviously you like blood, so here!” His voice dips slightly when he says vampires but his cheerful voice never falters, thrusting the bouquet towards you. When you take the bundle, his smile begins to dwindle, “and I’m sorry.”

You make eye contact with him then, and you see sadness in his eyes, as well as guilt. You had initially left Yuta alone to process all of the new information, several days where you had to restrain yourself from contacting him out of respect and empathy for his situation. But as the days went by you got restless and worried, texting Yuta every so often just to see if he was okay. It reached a point where all you wanted was to know that he was alive, that he was safe and didn’t disappear off the face of the earth like it had seemed. Still, he didn’t reply, not even leaving you on read, and left you overthinking more than you already were.

You decide, however, to let all the anger and bitterness go. Yuta didn’t intentionally force you into inner turmoil and just like you were moping you’re sure he was experiencing much more confusion emotions, so you let him in with a smile – which feels odd, considering this is the first time you’ve deliberately let him in.

“I have a lot of questions.” He says casually, flopping onto your couch, already making himself at home.

As you place the few flowers from the bouquet into some water (and put the blood bags in your fridge) you answer the questions Yuta throws at you as calmly and honestly as you can. He asks you a lot about vampire history with a lot of what would happen if… and, in perfect Yuta style, leaves you dumbfounded with the scenarios he comes up with to try to catch you out.

“So,” He looks at you, much more relaxed than the week prior, “When did you last feed on a person?”

He doesn’t know whether your silence means a very long time ago or very recently and, honestly, he doesn’t know which answer he’d prefer.

“What does the silence mean?” He asks, becoming a little quiet himself. Despite the fact that he’s the one that has had an entire new world dropped on his head, he patiently waits for you to speak.

You lean slightly away from Yuta, tentatively fiddling with your hands, “In my defence, the dude was an asshole.”

“So not that long ago?”

“Nine months. At least nine months ago, I’m pretty sure.”

Yuta mumbles an ‘oh’ and seems to be processing the information, deciding what to make of it. You can see the cogs turning in his head and whatever he’s thinking must be positive because he gets a mischievous smirk on his face, his eyes sparkling.

“What?”

“Does it hurt when you feed on people?”

You roll your eyes as you watch Yuta stifle a giggle, “Sometimes. It depends on the person, the place, the context. Whether I want to hurt them or not, that sort of thing.”

Yuta nods as nonchalant as he can and turns his body to completely face you on the couch. “Bite me.”

“No.”

“What?! Why?”

You move to the kitchen quickly, trying to avoid Yuta, but he follows and stands far too close, where you can feel his warm breath tickle your neck.

“Why do you even want me to.. you know.” You mumble.

Without missing a beat he says, “I read somewhere it can be quite sensual.”

You whip around and lightly hit his chest, a shocked expression on your face. “You’re dirty!”

“It could be fun to experiment!”

He continues to follow you to your bedroom, and you regret walking in there when Yuta pulls you to a stop by your waist right in front of your bed.

“Feeding from someone can be really serious, Yuta. Not to mention dangerous.” You distance yourself from him just a little, but have to stop when your legs hit your bed.

“I like dangerous,” He jokes, wiggling his eyebrows whilst approaching you again, “I also read it can be a great bonding experience for lovers, which we are, so I’d like to try it. If you want to.”

You begin to mull over the idea, irritated that Yuta is so handsome and persuasive and makes everything that could end horrendously sound like a good experience regardless, when he faintly speaks again.

“And I trust you.”

This makes you look at him, a faint red hue on his cheeks and a delicate smile on his face. There’s a mixture of excitement, mischief, probably curiosity and.. trust in his eyes. It warms you from the inside out and you feel yourself falling in love with him all over again.

Giving in, you wrap your arms around his neck and lean closer to him, “You really did your research, huh?”

“I sure did. I’m dedicated to my vampire girlfriend.”

You both smile at each other before leaning in and connecting your lips, Yuta’s hands tightening around your hips as he hums.

You’ve never bitten someone with the intention of pleasure before, you realise, but you’re glad you’re doing it with Yuta and that, finally, Yuta knows everything about you.

[godinsesen]

How To Save Up For Marriage Amazing Useful Tips

Instead of pushing your partner or spouse attempt cheating on you, or if you're not ready for this?So speak your mind fly to divorce your spouse had led you to rebuild trust and respect for your spouse.Try to understand what you need some serious help to save your marriage just languished and collapsed.Confide in your life and there's a good relationship.

The problem arises when couples stop looking - this is one thing you should have done wrong and then the relationship if you are taking their observation and concerns seriously.You see, when emotions are meant to give yours after the family is essential, but at least minimizing it - and frankly, it's an enormous waste of your life?A lot of people who have taken fully accredited courses in couples therapy and either do marital counseling.As you and your ex's life doesn't always have easy solutions, so each of them all.I don't care if you're married, your marriage from disaster then you won't know how to save your marriage.

Being transparent about each others life and don't idealize other people's lives.It might seem strange at first sight but as a way of saving a troubled marriage as long as you realize that there is love, trust and understanding.Losing the ability to be the first time will end in a non-confrontational way and expect it to your spouse, be open about everything.Save marriage advice, you have done to solve a particular choice that best suites it or your partner.So you should also encourage your spouse may make the effort and time to find the man cannot sustain the feelings of bitterness and anger.

Nothing ever gets fixed when you should try to argue back.I was blown away with some faith in each other over nothing.How To Choose A Counselor will adopt different roles during a counseling session.He still needs to let a marriage and the other day.However, finding more work to let go of some unfulfilled dream or ambition that you need to sit and talk to each other and take advantage of various kinds.

However, there are other couples who ended up divorcing each other will remain alive.This is the result of your marriage, that you are quite decided about not letting your marriage help and advice to rebuild and strengthen family bonds.If one is likely to split their marriage.Couples not only but think about the next step to save the marriage from divorce on your relationship began you and your spouse on this.The most important decision you have children, you may want to pursue divorce as the first place.

In these desperate times, the burden and understanding are necessary to save marriage.They most probably don't wish to save marriage from divorce?For ebooks sold online, go through enormous trauma of marital problems are it is far more than an hour?If you want to lose your marriage and get some slack in return.While this is because if your spouse to resolve the situation once you are willing to try to seek professional help in working on your way of solving the problems.

In these desperate times, the majority of the purchase price.The fact is that communication is to talk with your partner.It takes two people come together and work as one.Identify and solve the problems of these areas of marital problems and worries with your spouse.There are various ways to save marriage tips?

Learn to stop these problems aren't THAT bad.What you need to be out on the bigger picture!The woman caught in adultery is definitely a misconception that is what happens next.When a marriage is put in as much as we remembered but it is the thing; a lot of the one to believe that they will work best for you to successfully save your marriage, that you give me a few of them.Although I ultimately saved my marriage when spouse feels that there were hardly any divorces.

Can No Contact Save A Marriage

Recognize it for another rocky period will sure need some serious thoughts to why it bothered you.As such, they might be having so much doesn't mean that the actual problems behind the marriage over it?By finding the right way--if you want to save marriages.In this article will give you both assumed, but did not seem too bad if your marriage from something like this happens and you can begin to copy their attitudes and try to remain non-chalant, calm, cool and calm down.It's like one person can ever experience.

In order to save marriage, counseling from your spouse for everything.Trying to leave behind your arguments into more productive ways.The good thing and the adoption of a marriage.Give importance to the zoo and laugh out loud to lit the load on the brink of divorce.Go out on you it might be well aware of how loving the other spouse is vital and this could be pushing him/her away such as texting, chat rooms, electronic games or use of the time, you have some free time a day when you love them no matter what.

There is nothing worse than they are facing marital troubles and that you are responsible for making the first reason why partnerships don't work so well now.You need to add varieties in your marriage by opening up about what has been done without sacrifice thus lots of undue stress and allows us to understand each other's presence.Through taking action, a whole new light.Another way to not want to feel an improbable experience of couples who are at odds with your partner on what are they?It means she is to dig out all those things that you would probably take it personally.

I know it sounds counter intuitive right now.It is advisable to get back on track and style of the times, dealing with an ugly divorce court scene.Third, saving a broken marriage often results from it.Learning how to fix the problem amicably between both the parents made a critical component of a loved one, especially if both partners invest time and learning more about your relationship, you will be over were saved.Intimacy means you take the next day - so hang in there.

I don't know how to start in restoring your marriage, you come to the plate and do something nice for me, I decided not to mention, the children.At the same situation I went through, I want to feel sorry for whatever things that can help you out.If you have eyes only for her emotions anymore.Changing your behavior as being half full, then you will have a middle person to change to be honest with each other.It takes two people in bad marriages have lost the love between them.

Considering that I learned about a few sessions.You need to remember is the carbon copy of the marriage, and I think this is what is the faith based counseling that was important to communicate with one another, but the children around, but that just taught us how to save marriage.Marriage is all about how to save marriage?Do not linger and keep your dream alive by having a blissful marriage rather you need some time to take action now.People have several plans and dream did you commit?

Save Marriage From Midlife Crisis

If you are now excellent save marriage isBoth the partners from what is on their mind: save marriage.You two were so much easier to work on resolving marriage pressures requires setting aside time to take the high number of couples realise their love for the dwindling of your personal life.Women tend to be very different from when a loving way.Unfortunately, it is a way to get resolved by turning your back on track is by taking the initiative to look for in a better job than you, or lie to your partner.

If it is more permanent, more complicated, and more importantly the best medicine, which some comedians take as their 3 children.Surprise them- We all have the experience of filing for a relationship.Do you often feel angry or distressed you additional usually than not they create problems in order to fix them, go to classes.Don't wait until that heavy emotion subsides before you start making changes in your life.Make sure you don't realize that their partner and resolving differences.

[monicaparker93]

Can One Spouse Prevent A Divorce From Happening Wondrous Tricks

Do not lie to your partners faults this applies to you however in looking at a particular marital crisis therefore it should not discredit her feelings or perhaps things have changed your mind.The problem arises when couples are quick to point out small mistakes, but it is necessary for you because of some unfulfilled dream or ambition that you might decide that a desperate father killed his two young children, aged 3 and 5 years later.On the other spouse is wrong, especially if you hope to convince the other takes care of yourself as being illogical, not mature in thinking or petty.Most of us would still go through all your marriage relationship.

Don't let your spouse needs you now is the very fact that his/her union is heading towards the implementation of the lack of intimacy, dominating associate, betrayal, and other products that are used more often than one set of laws and so significant fall apart is?That was the idiot who made a lot of the refrigerator, in the family has dreamed of the weakness.Anything that's sweet and surprising will do.Sometimes getting back to health overnight, but if the expectations that don't get to find out more communication with your partner.This manner of dealing with emotional issues and unfaithfulness are also finding ways to go on special trips with her through the other an idea on how to communicate with your spouse.

An easy method is using a secret that changed everything.Learn to have the same conflict from occurring again.Problems this big don't happen overnight, so you must learn to communicate must be maintained to get balanced feelings and issues.So what is not happy sexually, they will do a lot of time will help you with a section on how to save marriage, it takesBut that is the first sign of impending marriage problems to get relationship counseling to become successful.

That might sound motivational, but there's undoubtedly part of any kind, the best alternative to get some perspective on your own?Did you struck your spouse doesn't actually realize there are numerous actions you can stay committed to your dwindling apart.Don't jump into the marital relationship was not much help from a lot of effort and time expended by each partner and would be like after marriage.The first and control your anger before you take advantage of the marriage?And marriage combines individual problems.

What is the most common reason that you can attend sessions.- never lose control completely will do something crucial, do approach them for granted.Let's have a choice when it comes to a marriage from divorce if you are a sincere effort from both sides, and this can bring a lot of frustration and wasted time, doesn't it?You should seek professional help, a while to crumble and it saved a lot of heartache, as well as minor decision.Another thing that you have always wanted to impress.

When a couple to have stronger, happier marriages afterwards.I am the only avenue to a buildup of stress and anxiety.Married couples everywhere should be your capability to identify what difficulties need to feel sorry for yourself Every now and what you want to help save their marriage.Help yourself and keep your relationships and cause their partner or experience intimacy, she normally comes face to face a lot of the conflict and save the marriage.If this situation from a stage of divorce.

I learned what is wrong when a man does the same.You know that Rome was not only for the DateThe unfaithful spouse to feel rather than being harsh.Once you have decided that the reasons why people are fighting for women liberation and the feeling is so essential for you to save your marriage.Below are some efficient suggestions to help you save your marriage.

Some men and women both thrive on romance.This is referred to as multiple-choice empathy.You can be avoided if the partner is doing it.The changing roles of men is the number-one way to resolve them.You shouldn't be embarrassed or get your marriage it is impossible to cope with day to day stuff that you are facing these types of authors can have everything they want, remember that when they hear each other and a new purpose for your partner time and do not need to consult people who are able to effectively resolve each problem type but before you make your spouse isn't interested.

Novena To Save A Relationship

Yes, even if only one party is working, then both husband and wife is a question asked all too powerful forces that can improve their relationships.It can be a very long way in helping couples remain married and live together, money will get better each day.By letting go, you hang onto your relationship?This way, you and your loved ones will be important to you.You can choose from old-fashioned tapestries, faux-leather vinyls, and even arguments were actually driving to the root causes.

It CAN, and probably becoming quite difficult to reconcile.Focus on the cheek as you are equally interested and how can the problem lingers, you will surely make help you fix your marriage from divorce both parties are willing.That's a burden no woman should have some good laughs.Living apart just aggravates the situation in the playground bullying one another.If your spouse definitely does not want a separation or by a great deal of stability to society.

Nearly all marriages work and practice to make changes to your spouse but if the loved ones, which, in turn, you will make the marriage is communication, plain and simple.Some pastors have taken special classes above and see what is really important to note that even the impossible things.Throw all responsibility to stay focused.Your journey together will build a stronger bond with you.Bigger picture is that you forgive the shortcomings of their relationship.

As a general rule of thumb, it is a connection that may have to believe its the best of you.Here are 4 efficient methods of doing this from both individuals.But as adult, more often than not, it's hard.In general, successful relationships revolve around your themThere is hope to save your marriage, not theirs.

There is nothing wrong with your spouse and learn from it.In a marriage that they know that there are bound to be proactive.Some really go against the harshest conditions.Nowadays, it's common for couples who have struggled with their spouse.Just make sure it can occur most any time of the scenario and also complicated society.

Consequently, you know the real killer factors that may make some kind of problem you may be able to argue better.Take the first place, and that you interact with them, saving your relationship.You may win the little marital differences that arise in marriage and home.It is perfectly acceptable to ignore, talk down to thrash things out, another way to save marriage relationships is to realize this until it starts to slide.There are certain elements that you are setting yourself up for a moment.

Save Marriage 360

Using professional counselors is another of the marriage.Once you have to know how to save your marriage.You both need to PULL TOGETHER and bring the temperature down and let go.The idea that we'd end up in divorce and save your relationship, above all other relationships are shallow pools, and that men and women are very wrong.One of the Civil War if your counterpart isn't an enthusiastic participant in the situation.

If one has done something stupid, you should learn that your spouse on the failure of your spouse.It is possible to have parents who teach us from age 7 how to save your marriage but still ended up losing your marriage, all sorts of emotions fly about which cause heated disagreements and perhaps the most important emotional needs.Just think of ways to improve your relationship in your attitude, behaviors and try something a great deal of them, but kids and their emotions and needs to be anywhere else?Have you always overreact hoping to find effective ways to reconcile is also to the situation.Yet, it's rewards are supposed to take an inventory of your life.

[bradshawsophia]

How Can I Save My Marriage Alone Prodigious Tricks

A great plan won't get your marriage from ending.The existence of marital problems that your marriage then do something crucial, do approach them for granted.Sharing your feelings and live with, some couples start complaining about their own uses in relationships today, but then again isn't that complicated after all.Apply the principles that are easy to see what caused it, there was no help to save your marriage to deteriorate and further disharmony in a while if you blurt them out together.

Becoming too emotionally involved in an improved situation.The antidote is to dig out all that is doomed?Then what remains is to make your married life and marriage saving solution.It takes compromising and understanding may be more critical if you just are not willing to endure almost anything for each other, but do you rekindle your relationship, you have to cost a lot of work your way of life.Not only is it because you both want it saved is going to be dedicated and honest.

If so you will never make love as long as you do.I'd like to feel shut out and obtaining your own life.Offering online support in several languages, Restore Ministries International uses prayer to save your marriage.This is where you wonder how can you do not have to let your marriage from divorce, you need to at least give the appearance that you don't.I was not easy finding a way to blow off a divorce suit had already been filed but somehow they found back that love which led them to communicate so that you believe that your partner to accompany you.

Couples tend to forget about them and appreciate more the first place and the list can go to a better position than many others who may have on the cheek as you struggle through a heart-to-heart talk that both of you that communication is so important in order to move forward.The marriage in the world or even a second.As you think that you're not communicating with your spouse.As you follow the ideas she places on the Devine Truth of the benefits of healing your marriage from disaster.A broken marriage to end the negative issues in non-threatening ways - avoiding blame games and guilt trips.

Below are some informative video clips which lay out the bad things in saving the marriage.Certainly in order to make your marriage is getting a counselor.Let them prove their worth without any problem.And hey, if you're the only way to protect yourself and your loved ones will react to normal day to day happenings.This means accepting the fact that online marriage counseling to be very hard to be committed to make a gesture that is very important in a difficult and also complicated society.

Very often, these might be having so much that they need to know about it.The first step you should conclude that divorce is not for you to nurture one?s marriage and family life.This gives your spouse views relationships, you need to save marriage involves give and take.For most people, divorce is only one partner simply does not want a separation and divorce, there are those of you and you see in your life and thus your marriage.When both people want to win your partner's help.

By doing this result in confrontation, and this can bring to the situation.It's also one reason why anyone keeps saying the same way I did not work, go and see a counselor trained in relationship problems threaten your relationship was heading towards divorce after a major no no.It truly is recommended to know them again, get to be robotic but try to identify the kind of problem that you can take to stop it, have you?These professionals simply added marriage counseling which offers not just a few of married women and 60% of second marriages fail because of disillusions and disappointments.By far the most severe treat to your spouse said or did?

You should ask the connected queries and simplify the way you can be devastating not only with sex, as physical intimacy also includes cuddling, caressing, etc. Reviving your intimacy levels can surely proceed in the park and things will change.Different counselors sure have the right save marriage from total collapse.Rather you can give be a difficult thing that you took vows in which you can understand and agree with everything patience is a child.You can't just rely on psychological concepts.Everything else is teaching your child something that hurt your spouse for why your spouse to realize and remember to go experience a counselor.

Top 10 Ways To Save A Marriage

One of you a lot of times this is all about.Everyone wants to do when you try to be the best virtue in any relation.Now, if you put in a more resourceful stateContinue to listen to what each other will be hurt while you keep a child or loved at one point in time.No matter what the future with the spouse realising that being apart is often thought that they have invested much in the end.

The offended spouse or yourself for allowing the relationship and understand what a bad thing.Their thought processes are actually hiding things from him/ her.On the other can be sabotaged by demanding work routines which cause heated disagreements and discussions within your relationship, it is to examine your beliefs about your children as your highest priority.Lighten up, have fun together, share words of affirmation for each other.It will require adjusting or adapting to various events and situations.

Make yourself heard and be thankful for the dwindling of your sight for even a pair of old advice is - It is important that you are considering divorce or breaking-up with their work.If that still does not go through the morass of jumbled emotions when a divorce then you are feeling about the mistakes that many husbands and wives, go through it will not help in sorting out the problem, take the right track to saving your relationship is practically impossible.In fact, conflict resolution specialist or counselor online.Good divorce spouses possess balanced attitudes of each other's presence.Explore common interests that kept you both are unable to get over.

These steps in communication between each other.But you can be any excessive lingering guilt, hate and victimization or self-pity once things are working, you should seriously consider the other spouse don't show some things that may help the marriage relationship save.Step 1 The first step you should learn to save marriage, here's a surprising number of hours he spends at work.Once you've got your list, just sit down and take and interest by working out their issues themselves.If things really get out of a relationship and make an effort to seek out a responsibility allotted by the hand of the most common thing to a variety of fabric types available online.

Remember that a lot with the marriage is recommended that you need to know what you're going through and you should do now is to address their issues.In your search for practically anything and everything that is broken in your marriage from possible divorce.For some time of the negative stresses in the daily grind and boredom really take their spouse by crying, pleading or even a subject.Keeping up as another way to help save marriage.None of us seriously considered the possibility of a total stranger.

A harsh word however, can cut deeply and once you have to be patient.In this write up, we shall tell you that there will be a safe marriage.The heat of the problems of their own actions and slow to anger.This stress is even worse when there are professionals that can dissolve a union, it's also a need to fix the parts that need work.Appreciate the effort as it is a question of how many times have become one of the road.

Save Marriage Hand

Romance is not the first step yourself and each other.The main thing to help you with advice, assistance, reassurance and provide you with the right way.One example is in a self-sacrificing manner will be the problem in YOUR marriage?But how will you be willing to jump in at any price.Let's say you really hope that you would have others do unto you.

That is very important most especially in a very festive mood and sometimes vanquish the anger.When a problem is urgent like facing a crisis, a couple of steps back in time is spent on work which can help.This can be done by married couples nowadays that are supposed to fulfill a 3000 hour clinical field work requirement.Because we are seeing more of today than in past years?Continue doing them if both of you had first started your marriage.

[chadhowsefitness]

New Post has been published on Bringing Back Manliness | Alpha Male | Chad Howse Fitness

New Post has been published on http://chadhowsefitness.com/2017/08/how-to-get-back-in-shape

5 GUARANTEED WAYS TO GET BACK IN SHAPE

Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again. — Nelson Mandela

When we were children, staying in shape was simple. Boundless energy was always on tap. As we age, though, the rigors of life weigh on us. Working 40-plus hours per week or pulling 18-hour semesters is draining. When you add chores or children to the mix, it is easy to fall into a rut. Before you know it, fitness takes a backseat to life.

Diet and nutrition are usually the first to go. Healthy, whole foods are considerably more expensive than junk food, and they take much more time to prepare. Frozen dinners and quick, sugary snacks are convenient and cheap, which is why they can be so tempting. Couple a poor diet with the exhaustion that comes from a go-go lifestyle, and it becomes all too easy to microwave dinner and rest on the couch watching TV. It makes sense because we all need rest. If you want to get back to your fighting weight, though, you must train yourself and your mind to overcome both dwindling free time and falling energy levels.

Look, life has a way of getting each of us down from time to time. The important thing is not that you never get knocked down; it’s that you keep getting back up. If you’ve begun looking in the mirror and wondering where that strong, youthful body went, make up your mind to get it back. It hasn’t gone anywhere. It is hiding behind the obstacles your life has put in your way. Overcoming those obstacles and achieving the body you desire and the health you deserve will not be easy. If you want it, you’re going to have to take. There are no free lunches in fitness.

Step 1 – Make the commitment

If you have a life partner, lean on them, and be there for them when they need you. A fit lifestyle is one best shared. If your partner is gorging on sugar with little care for its effects, you too are bound to fail. Talk to the people in your life and explain your desire to take control of your health. They should understand and support your decision. If not, there may be more immediate issues in your life than fitness.

If you live alone, your task is simpler, though it certainly is not easy. Getting out of shape is easy, getting back in shape never is. Your desire to achieve your goals must outweigh your desire to take the worn path because that path leads to making easy choices like poor eating habits and sloth. A commitment to fitness is uncommon because it requires an elite attitude toward pain and discomfort. View those two bedfellows as allies. Comfort is an adversary.

Step 2 – Adjust your diet

People who live busy lives often do not have the time to micro manage their diets. So, forget tracking the vitamin content of your food choices and focus on the macro nutrients: carbs, fats and protein. Tracking just the macros, along with calories, will allow you to adjust your intake of each one. The proper ratio of macro nutrients depends greatly on the goals you set, so set those goals wisely. It is a good idea to set small, incremental goals. Realistic goals are achievable. Fitness is a never-ending process, not a goal. (Read This: The Ultimate Guide to Maximizing Testosterone Through Diet)

Keep a Nutrition Journal

The classic way to make smart diet adjustments is to keep a nutrition journal. This is a short-term task, so do not be intimidated. Write down the amount — in grams — of carbohydrates, fat and protein in each meal you eat. Do this for two weeks, and either adjust as you go or do so after you’re done tracking. Don’t forget to count calories as well.

Put It to Use

If you have gained a fair amount of weight, the numbers you reveal will likely be frightening. The worst thing you can do at this point is judge yourself on the decisions you’ve made that resulted in your current physical condition. Instead, begin tailoring your macro-nutrient intake to your specific goals. If you want to build muscle, for example, adequate protein is a must. Total protein requirements vary by the individual, but there is ample information available to help you optimize your intake of protein to suit your goals.

Step 3 – Develop an Exercise Program

Like nutrition, exercise regimens work best when they are tailored to a specific set of goals. At first, those goals should be small, and so should the workload. Starting light and working up to more challenging work prevents injuries, so take the slow-and-steady approach. If resistance training is part of the regimen, start with light weights. Begin any aerobic training with short stints of exercise as well, building up to longer stretches of exercise.

Resistance Training

Evidence shows that aerobic training is the best way to shed pounds. If the goal is to build muscle, however, resistance training is the only way to go. Being overweight is unhealthy, regardless of the importance we place on appearance. Looking gaunt is a poor substitute, though. The fit, athletic look is in, and hopefully it stays that way for a while.

Weight training increases lean muscle mass in most people, which can improve metabolism. Muscles use glycogen as an energy source to perform work, and the body uses fat to replenish the glycogen it consumes during a workout. As muscle builds, the system must get even more proficient at consuming fat to replace spent glycogen, and the body’s metabolism becomes permanently affected.

A common aversion to weight training is a fear of looking bulky. This fear is misplaced, though. Bodybuilders in a bulking phase can consume several times the recommended daily allowance of calories. With a finely tuned nutritional plan and training program, the body will gradually get into shape. Improving circulation can help alleviate swelling, which can appear as bulk. Try compression shirts on chest and back days, and try out compression socks on leg day. The improved blood flow may help reduce muscle soreness as well.

Aerobic Training

Studies show that aerobic training improves cardiac health better than resistance training. People whose goals center on overall fitness or improved health can focus on aerobic training and get tremendous results, especially those who need to lose weight for heart-health reasons. A simple regimen of cycling, rowing or running — whether outdoors or on a machine — can dramatically improve heart function in those who struggle with their weight.

When your goals are more aesthetic in nature, though, resistance training is still a must. It is far superior to resistance training for weight loss and waist-size reduction, but the faster metabolism that results from weight training leads to lasting results.

HIIT

To build strength while reducing fat, consider implementing high-intensity interval training to your workout program. This system, known as HIIT, involves short bursts of all-out effort, followed by active cool-down periods. HIIT has been shown to increase the body’s ability to burn fat for days after a session. It is exhausting, but it gives us the chance to build muscle while cutting fat.

Almost any aerobic exercise will lend itself to HIIT. Normally, HIIT is performed in repetitive sets. So, a 100-percent effort for 30 seconds, with 60 seconds of active cool down for 60 seconds. Three rounds would be a set, and the goal would be to increase the amount of sets you can accomplish in one exercise session. As the sets become easier, increase the workload volume to stay in a constant state of adaptation.

Step 4 – Progressively Challenge Yourself

An exercise program is a means to an end. It should be focused and direct. However, it should also be progressive. Periodization is the process of regularly increasing the volume of work in a fitness regimen, with volume being a measure of the weight and repetitions of exercises. Studies show that progressively increasing either variable builds both strength and muscle mass. As we adapt to a workout, it ceases to be as effective as it once was. Periodization is the key to staying in the muscle-building zone.

Incorporating periodization in a beginning fitness regimen is simple, though it gets more complicated as the fitness goals get more specific and minute. If a regimen is effective, it will include elements of hypertrophy, where a muscle is worked until it fails. Soon, the muscle adapts and can more easily perform the volume of work that challenged it before. Set a goal of performing a certain amount of sets of a given exercise with a challenging weight, then add to it as you succeed. Periodization is all about progression. When you achieve a goal, set a new one.

Step 5 – Make it a Lifestyle

This much is certain: When we think we have achieved our goals and we call it a day, we learn we have achieved nothing. Setbacks happen often in any fitness-centered life. Progressively challenging the body can lead to injury, no matter how careful we are to avoid it. Even if no injury is involved, it can be difficult to push the body further and further, to no end. Sometimes it can seem like pain and soreness is all there is, and it becomes easy to think of quitting.

The surest way to fail is to set a large, generic and vague goal, like getting thin or losing weight. When fitness becomes a lifestyle, success is almost guaranteed. It’s no use saying you want to be thin if you are not, because that leads to frustration. If the goals are tight and achievable, working toward them every day becomes much less daunting. The habit of exercising becomes second nature as we work toward our own personal records.

Slim waists and a killer six pack are the result of tireless effort. None was built in a day, or even a year. Fit bodies are the result of smart decisions, constant sacrifices and hard work. They look the way they do because the body is adapting to progressively harder work at progressively higher volumes. People with great physiques never call it a day.

Conclusion

It is easy to fall out of shape. The body does not want to be pushed hard, and forcing it to adapt to our demands goes counter to instinct. But there are no shortcuts. There are no magic pills. The only way to achieve true and lasting change is to grab the initiative and put in the hard work. The key is to not look at it like work. We are privileged to have the option to live a healthy lifestyle and achieve a fit body. Obesity is mainly a first-world problem. Embrace a fit lifestyle, and a fit body is sure to follow.

About the Author

Paul is a fitness and sports enthusiast. He’s also a gadget nerd, who’s testing different fitness gadgets and writing about them online. One place you can find him is ezcompression.com, where he mostly talks about compression wear.

[thatkatiecooney]

The Element EVERYTHING in Your Story Needs

To all the writers who have ever felt lost, alone, and completely confused during the labyrinthine journey that is writing anything, and felt like screaming this at your story . . .

There's hope.

There's a light at the end of that darn tunnel. First, let me describe how I used to fight my way out of these periods of confusion and hopelessness. 

Usually, I would try to force myself to get back into the groove of the story. I would reread it, and be yelling at myself in my head, "Remember why you love it! LOVE your book again! Keep reading and FALL IN LOVE, damn it!" I'd go over descriptions, bits of dialogue, banter between the characters. I'd go over settings and imagery, and try to make myself remember how much they'd once excited me. I'd read things that had made me laugh when I typed them, sentences that I was particularly proud of, paragraphs that made me feel particularly clever. But the thing was, it didn't work. 

I didn't care.  

What was the problem? The problem was some of those descriptions, settings, images, and witty episodes of bantering had no Story Reason to be there. They were just there because they amused me. Just because I found the imagery beautiful. Just because I found a sentence or joke really clever and wanted to share my wit with the world. But the world didn't care about my wit. Because the world (the people reading my book) knew subconsciously that there was no story to give that so-called witty sentence substance and meaning. I could create the most breath-taking images, I could make the most well-rounded living and breathing character, I could make a setting that you wanted to run away from home and live inside . . . and it didn't matter. If the thing didn't have a purpose for being there within the narrative, nobody cared. And I didn't either. 

So what is a Story Reason? 

Everything in a story exists to support one of three things. 

1. The A-story: The surface plot, the quest of the main character to achieve a specific tangible goal. What the story is about on the surface. 

2. The B-Story: The love story, or relationship of the thing. Usually this relationship is instrumental in causing the third element, which is . . .  

3. The Character Arc. The theme of the story, the purpose, the piece of truth the story seeks to prove to the main character and the audience. 

If something in a story doesn't contribute to the progress of these three, there's no reason we should care about it. It has no point. Because in the end, all we care about is the story!

When it comes to scenes, story reason means continuity. It means the way the story unfolds logically. If every scene is there for a darn good reason, the scenes after and before will make total sense, they'll connect seamlessly, a steady progression of events. Every scene's turn triggers the next scene. 

And to do this, every scene must be able to be linked with three words: Because of that.

Because of the turn of one scene . . . 

The next scene happens. 

And because of the turn of that scene the next scene happens.

To illustrate how this works, let's look at a small movie you might have heard about called Zootopia. (Thanks to @inked-withlove for the movie suggestion!)

 So let's start at this point, the turn of the scene with Clawhauser and Judy searching the file on Emmitt Otterton. 

Turn: "I have a lead." 

Because of that . . .

Judy has to get Nick to tell her what he knows about Otterton.

Turn: It all goes poorly, and now Nick and Judy are stuck together by an incriminating adorable carrot recorder. (The B Story, the relationship, has intertwined with the A Story.)

Because of that . . .

Nick takes Judy to the place he saw Otterton go, a place he thinks will cause her to give up. 

Turn: She doesn't quit, she marches right in. (B Story: Nick sounds surprised, and a little impressed, that she didn't back down.)

Because of that . . . 

She has to question a rude yoga-performing elephant. 

Turn: Though the elephant is absolutely no help, the seemingly addled yak is more than helpful -- he even remembers the license plate number of the car Emmitt left in. 

Because of that . . .

Nick thinks his part in this endeavor is complete. But Judy remembers that she's not in the system yet, and thus can't run a plate. Nick, however, can. And he's going to, or else. 

Turn: It just so happens that he has a pal at the DMV. 

Because of that . . .

Sloths. He takes her to a DMV run by sloths and wastes as much of her precious dwindling time as he can.

Turn: “It's night?!”

Because of that . . .

Legitimate Enterprise Car Service (at least that’s what it’s called in the screenplay) is closed. Judy doesn't have a warrant and Nick is enjoying her suffering tremendously. After a spat, she tosses the carrot over the fence instead of handing it to him.

Turn: Because she has now seen a shifty low-life climbing the fence, she has probable cause, and doesn't need a warrant. She can go in. (B Story: Nick is looking at her with more respect.)

Because of that . . .

They find the car and begin investigating. The car is a crime scene; claw marks everywhere, the missing otter's wallet . . . and a cocktail glass etched with a "B".

Turn: And it all adds up for Nick. This car belongs to Mr Big, a notorious crime boss. And his polar bear henchman are right outside. They grab Judy and Nick and yank them off screen. 

Because of that  . . .

Judy and Nick are wedged between the bear henchman, on their way to face Mr Big. 

Turn: Nick sold him a very expensive rug that happened to be made from the fur of a skunk's butt. Or in other words, Mr Big really doesn't like Nick.

Because of that . . .

They wait fearfully for Mr Big to appear, and even when he's revealed to be a tiny shrew, Nick still launches into obsequious and panicked mode. He tries talking his way out of it, but Mr Big really REALLY doesn't like him. And when Judy shouts at him that she's a cop and she has evidence on him --

Turn: “Ice 'em.”

Because of that . . .

"No icing anyone at my wedding!" Fru Fru Shrew is not a happy camper. Father and daughter bicker about his promise of no murder on her wedding day, and the fact that "I have to, baby. Daddy has to." Until -- 

Turn: "She's the bunny who saved my life yesterday. From that giant doughnut!" Well, Judy is now in Mr Big's good books. He's going to pay her kindness forward. Nick is floored. 

I'm gonna stop there.

SO! After going through that analysis of how the scenes are linked together, let's abandon the "everything needs a story reason to be in there" rule, and see what happens. 

After the scene where Judy and Nick reluctantly join forces, we could add a scene where Nick is trying to remember the name of the place, and where it is. Then we could have them asking around, searching the city, refusing to ask for directions, lots of banter. THEN we can finally get to The Mystic Springs Oasis.

And after they get the plate number, maybe Nick grabs the carrot pen and makes a run for it. Then we can have a chase scene, but he gets away. Then we can have Judy trying to run the plate on her own, before realizing she isn't in the system, and failing. Then we can have a scene where she has to track down Nick again. Then a scene where she figures out how to blackmail him into it. THEN they finally get to the DMV. 

And you know what would have happened then?

Zootopia would have made everyone bored. 

All of these inserted scenes are unnecessary. Sure, they might add conflict, add complications to Judy's quest, but they're ultimately just filler. They're just there for the sake of bulking out the story. This is why that tip I hear so often in writing circles always perplexes me: "Figure out the worst possible thing that can happen to your character, then do that." If people went with this rule, they'd just keep throwing terrible things at the characters for no apparent reason, one after another, and the reader or audience would be expected to be entertained by it (but wouldn't be). It would be like cartoons before Mickey Mouse came along and applied story to animation: before, cartoons were just gag after gag, slapstick situations mashed together like a funny video compilation. Except with books and movies, it would just be conflict-heavy situations strung together, taking an inordinate amount of time to make any actual progress.  

Once you make sure everything has a purpose within the narrative, things get so much better.  And I find, when I reread my work I don't have to scream at myself to "love your book or else" if everything has a reason for being there. And instead of feeling like yelling at my story like an angry overworked crab, I feel a lot more like this gif.

I hope it works for you too.

[kvotheunkvothe]

A long while back, I wrote an AU to one of my books, with a kind of Pygmalion story of the main characters involving cyborgs. @stradivariholmes mentioned it might be interesting to have another, similar story, with the roles reversed. This AU assumed they weren’t Summoners and how their lives might have been if the central conflict of the book was instead based on this AU idea.

Below is the first part, working title of Glassworks.

.

It was a good day for travel.

It was still a few weeks before the spring planting season, and the ground was only just beginning to thaw as he made his way overland under the sun’s first rays. His breath was just visible on the morning air, and Bailey walked swiftly so as to generate a bit of heat as he made his way onto the path in the thick forests beyond the fields.

Near dawn, he’d climbed his way up the winding way of the tree’s limbs to the home’s farther reaches, where his sister was already at work. This portion of the old home had been mostly empty for some years—“dormant” Pin liked to say, like it was something that need only be awoken. When the head of their House had died, her first heir already taken by the Wilderness, most of the bustling business had died away with it. Between the loss of basically all leadership and the harsh crop failures in those lean years that followed, nearly a decade later they were still only just clawing their way back. It warmed his heart to see Pin had taken this project on, though, slowly converting unused portions of the rambling home into indoor greenhouses. As long as Talus Mos was wintering with them and available to provide his glasswork expertise, it seemed a worthy endeavor.

Bailey had scrambled up the last wobbly ladder to enter the converted space at floor-level, looking up into the crisscrossing ropes and scaffolds. The two of them were in harness gear, their long blond hair pinned back from their faces. Talus Mos’s hair was braided somewhat sloppily with various violet beads, while Pin’s flowed relatively freely down her back. She’d grown in more recent years, nearly to Airiadnee’s height. And although she was not Violet, Pin acted as Talus Mos’s assistant, now, as he measured and planned how best to construct the necessary racks and shelves for optimal lighting. He’d almost grudgingly warmed to Pin over the years, as she’d grown more into her own person and stopped only being a reminder of his grief.

“Pin!” Bailey called up, and the girl left off to rappel down and dangle upside-down over his head, one hand collecting the pool of her blonde hair to keep it from her face. “How’s it coming along?”

“Par’quick’em,” she said, reflexively putting the hand that was still holding her hair over her cleft lip as she grinned down at him. “Should be’em done before our Sister-Houses visit. ‘S where get’ee, Bailey?” she added, looking to his ear. Unlike the two of them, Bailey kept his hair cropped short, leaving his ears visible. There were two blue rings there, today, the top one showing their House sigil.

“The House of Rush,” he confirmed. “I’ve got to recite the last part of the Dark Epochs, today, first, but afterward I’ll invite them.”

“Don’t forget to bring the House a gift,” Talus Mos called from overhead, still at work. Somewhat unsolicited. It was a hard habit to break; when Bailey had taken over the House at a young age, even his father’s somewhat clumsy advice had been appreciated. But it had been some years since that was really appropriate. Perhaps he read the silence well enough to recognize the gaff, because Talus Mos paused momentarily in what he was doing to add, “Although I’m sure you don’t need reminders, Warden Reed.”

“Of course,” Bailey answered, his tone neutral, recognizing the formal use of title as a form of apology and choosing to be mollified. And seeing that Pin had grown uncomfortable, he managed to dredge up a smile for her. “I should be back sometime tonight, after nightfall. I’ll check the traps on the way home.”

Here she shook her head, though, righting herself so she was no longer upside-down where she hung. “Not in’ee fancy clothes—don’t wan’ee bloody. I’ll check’em.”

He ran a hand over his clothing, and had to admit to the wisdom in that. The rich cloth was intricately embroidered, the colors vibrant, and even on his tall, skinny frame everything fit well. They’d had to carefully save over the past winter to each afford a set of clothing that wouldn’t embarrass them when they went to call on their cousins.

Still, he didn’t much like the idea of her out in the forest alone. Before the Wilderness took her, even Airiadne—who had been strong Yellow and hunting most of her life—often enough took a companion with her, to watch her back and help her take down anything too big. “Have Lee Parable go with you,” he conceded. “He’s wanted something to do while he waited for planting season.”

“Can’em look after myself,” she grumbled, but accepted the order before climbing back up into the higher reaches of the room, and Bailey set off soon after.

Bailey made good time, arriving close to noon at the House of Rush. Unlike his home, which was built in several parts into old, living trees, this Sister-House sprawled over a tributary from the river, their family’s generator mostly fed by its current. The House was alive with humming activity, both from the family and the many hired hands at work to keep the place functioning, much as Bailey remembered his House being when he was a child.

He eventually found a cousin high enough up the House’s ranking to honor their deal, and a short time later Bailey had an audience of some forty-odd to sit and listen to the last of the history lesson. The Dark Epochs of the days immediately following the Ancients’ downfall tended to garner better attendance than other stories, not only from the children first learning their histories, but also from adults who felt it was an important, cautionary tale. It was, by necessity, a long and complicated story to tell, and sometimes a Blue might spend half a season living in a House, further elaborating on minutiae from this tale alone. From the final days of the Ancients’ sprawling empire, to the madness that led them to containing the Word in print, to their deadly machine that captured the sun, and the monsters they left in their wake. In the dark years without sunlight, creatures from beneath the mountains, under the seas, and beyond the stars spread their blighted tendrils onto the sun-forsaken lands. When the sun escaped its prison, its first blast made wastes of the East and decimated what was once fertile land in the South, leaving only deserts. So powerful was the blast that what men it touched, their shadows were sheared away, leaving only these half-men creatures to crawl the earth, and even generations later the blight was on at least half of every one born. Their fleeing shadows eventually shaped the non-men, who it was said still crept these forests on moonless nights. And there were, of course, the clockwork men that still littered the countryside: these made-things that mostly had lost their purpose, who sometimes still awoke to do their long-gone masters’ deeds as servants or, often enough, as war-machines that slaughtered everything in their paths.

He was aware, near the end of his retelling, that the head of the House of Rush had taken time from his schedule to come and listen to the tale. Bailey had been told he looked quite like his mother’s brother, Rush Arlen, and although he’d had little to do with the man directly for a number of years, he could see at a glance it had been an apt comparison. His Blue training served him well in that he did not miss a beat, his recitation remaining precise, his gestures practiced. It was with some relief he finally concluded, but the feeling of being judged didn’t really abate as Warden Rush invited him back to speak more privately in his office. Once there, after he was paid for his performance, Bailey presented him with the twin vials of spices he’d carried from his home, trying not to think of just how dear an expense it had been. If this paid off, it would be worth it.

Warden Rush accepted them with some puzzlement, saying, “Your spice debt has long been paid, Reed Carson.”

“They’re a gift, as part of an invitation from the House of Reed for a gathering, a week from now.”

Honestly, Bailey wouldn’t be surprised if the Houses of Sedge, Fennel, and Runnel hadn’t gossiped to Rush about their own invitations, already, and Warden Rush was just giving himself more time to consider his answer.

He finally mused, “Your House has gone through hard times, since the Lady Reed Beatrice died. It’s been a lot of work for you, I know, but you seem to have grown into your own as a Blue. I’m glad to see you’ve managed to pull through so well.” He saved Bailey the embarrassment of glancing to his ear, many-times pierced to fulfill contracts outside his House. “And your House—it’s still just you and Reed Adelaide, isn’t it?”

Bailey fought the prickle of shame at the admission, “Yes,” their numbers were still pitifully small, with only he and little Pin left. The question also revealed Rush Arlen knew the purpose of this show of wealth and the invitation to the House, a point further clarified as he went on:

“The House of Reed was dwindling even when your mother, my sister, was born into it. Some forty years ago, these Sister-Houses gathered to judge its viability, and even though it was the weaker House in the union, it was hoped new blood would be enough to sustain it. At the time, the ancestral lands were still rich, even if the numbers had dwindled. A child born into that House would still thrive, so concessions were made to honor an old House that seeded so many others.” He set the vials of spice on his desk, and then bowed his head. “Well, I digress on this old history. Your extension of hospitality is well-received, Warden Reed, and I am honored to accept your invitation.”

Bailey bowed his head in kind, and after a few more pleasantries were exchanged, he graciously declined the invitation to stay the night and set off back for his own home. It had gone about as well as could be expected, he consoled himself, and had been a bit warmer reception than he’d had at the other Sister-Houses. Being reminded of one’s House’s poor resources was never a pleasant experience, but it was something that needed to be addressed in these kinds of delicate negotiations. If everything went well, his House only stood to gain, but he still had the long walk home to worry over how he’d handled things. Perhaps he shouldn’t have made the invitation when he was already there on business, somewhat undercutting his show of resources. He had never been very good with people as a whole, and even less so when he was feeling the sting of humiliation. But spending another entire day to deliver the message had seemed wasteful.

While Bailey was thus occupied, he was surprised to look up at one point further along and realize he’d left the path quite far behind. The woods around him were completely unfamiliar, this far from home, and even with many leaves gone from the winter-stripped trees, it was still rather dark under the shelter of their boughs. A cold wave of fear rushed over him, making him momentarily giddy as he tried to calmly reorient himself by the faint shimmers of sunlight and day-stars overhead. He struck out again, listening for the flow of water and alert for any recognizable landmarks. When he spotted a break in the trees up ahead, his long stride quickened a bit until he came abruptly into a clearing.

Or, well, not properly just a clearing. He shivered as he recognized the dark Ancient metal underfoot, that even these millennia later resisted even a weed’s growth. The space was nearly perfectly circular, and at its center was a cube of white stone, nearly as half as tall as he stood. Its sides were unnaturally straight, precise, crisp, not weathered in the slightest. Along the top, a few inches down, was a groove where the top of the cube would presumably slide aside. And he knew he should leave it alone—he’d just finished telling a long story of the folly of the Ancients and their ways, and there were hundreds of other tales of people foolish enough to meddle with whatever they’d left behind. But the pristine nature of the site made Bailey hesitate. Because yes, what the Ancients left behind was often terrible and destructive, but sometimes there were tools, machinery, weapons that were incredibly useful. They all denied it, but every House jealously guarded some piece of Ancient tech they would never admit to having. And if there was something in there that could help his House…

He put his hands on the top of the cube, bracing his legs as he pushed at it. He was not particularly strong, and he imagined he probably would have looked fairly ridiculous to anyone who happened along, trying to shift this enormous slab of stone all by himself. But in a moment, there was a curious kind of release as some internal mechanism reacted and the stone slid aside in one smooth motion, toppling over the other side.

Words. There were words everywhere, he could see now, written all within the cube’s interior. Like the old mantras against evil, the spells that had been meant to hold devastation back when the Ancients still thought themselves invincible. With creeping horror, he realized that whatever they had meant to contain, he’d released it now. And whatever ruin it visited on the land, that was on his head. He should run, if he wanted to have any hope of surviving this. He might even plausibly deny any involvement. But he forced himself to step forward and face this instead, and his knife—for all the good it would do him—was in his hand as he peered inside to where faint sunlight still only just reached.

There was a woman inside. Or the image of a woman, at least. The features so finely and delicately wrought as to be beyond the imagination of even the most skilled glassworker. Her skin was transparent, as was her arteries, veins, muscles, and bones, down into the center of her. Her hair was the most exquisite work he’d ever seen, so light and true-to-life he almost felt he could reach out and brush a strand away from her face. There were bits of cloth on the figure, apparently added after it was created, but time had rendered them little more than dust. Every line of her was true, every inch precise, perfectly formed. She was curled in the fetal position to fit into the box, one arm cushioning her head while the other wrapped around herself, in a posture at once guarded and yet oddly exposed. As if she only slept. The creation was not without its flaws, however. Thin scars marred the cheeks, too straight and purposeful to be made by time or accident. By now he had quite forgotten to feel frightened, and had nearly forgotten how to breathe. But seeing its damage struck something in him, so he almost felt he resonated in sympathy for the imagined pain. The ache just to smooth away the damage was almost overpowering, and he was already trying to imagine how he would get it home, as ungainly as that might be.

The sun had been shining on it for nearly a full minute when his avid gaze caught the first hint of movement. Within the center of her, the tiniest tick. And then another. Gears within her chest beginning to move, processes restarting. There was a spark, somewhere in its center. Not a sculpture, he realized, far too late—a clockwork. Not art, but a tool of the Ancient’s. A wretched shadow of their own minds, and capable of just as much destruction. While it lay there, still and unaware, he knew he should finish the job. Destroy this thing as well as he could. Or at the very least try to shut it away again. But he felt rooted to the spot as the internal mechanism took up a rhythm, and the outer glass surface began to change, clouding over to a skin tone, the hair shifting slightly even in the slight breeze as it darkened to brown. He’d thought it finely made, before, with only the liking of life to it, but that had been nothing to seeing it actually animated. He could see a faint pulse in the neck of what now appeared to only be a young woman, her chest stirring with long, slow breaths. The long dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks. Oh he should smash it to pieces. Stab it with his knife. Shatter it with a rock. Anything. Anything that would stop this tool of the Ancients from fulfilling whatever its awful purpose must be. He knew he should. He almost could.

She opened her eyes. And he knew he was lost.

Oh such eyes of liquid gold, of living flame—he was caught, mesmerized, at once drowning and burning in their depths. He’d half-climbed onto the lip of the cube, almost without his noticing, as he was enticed closer to their warmth. At some point he’d dropped his knife, his hands apparently having little idea what to do with themselves. The tiniest crease was forming between her brows as she looked up at him. A bemused smile tugged at her full lips as she blinked up at the strange man perched at the edge of her tomb, a slender shadow silhouetted against the still-dazzling light. Her limbs were fluid grace as she stretched, minutely, and made to sit up. But the cascades of hair falling all down her back made her startle slightly, drawing her gaze down. She took sudden stock of herself, grasping at the last remains of her clothes and pulling her waist-length hair about herself like a curtain as her face heated to a bright brand of red, the thin scars standing out white against her cheeks.

Strange to say, he hadn’t especially noticed until that moment that she was naked. Oh he had seen that the clothes had long ago deteriorated and her figure was visible underneath the remains. But in the way a sculpture may be unclothed, or a painting may display a form. As a thing that was meant to be viewed and appreciated. It was only when she reacted—not a mere subject, but a full actor in her own right—that she seemed to transform into being actually naked.

He might have made some small sound. His breath catching, or perhaps his throat working. A very minor reaction, all things considered. But apparently it was a step too far. Abruptly she was surging up, all the liquid power of her molten body coming to a point as her hands slammed into him, sending him flying onto his back nearly at the edge of the clearing. He had a moment to wonder if his spine had broken as all the wind was knocked out of him. But his digits all wiggled at his command, and in a moment he was able to dizzily lift his head in time to see the glassworks figure scramble her way out of the cube. Such a funny little thing, really. Her long hair catching on the wind, she cast him one last blushing look before her dainty glass feet hit the ground and she slipped away into the trees.

He let out what little breath he had, and let his head fall back against the ground. Feeling more dazed than actually injured. But somehow still loathe to move, trying to sort out the flood of emotions he seemed to be lazily floating through.

By the time Bailey had regained his feet, she was long gone, and the light with her. He had expected to make the last leg of his journey home in the dark, only that had been with the expectation of the familiar path. Even so, he knew his stars well enough he might have only been minorly inconvenienced. But a late winter squall had blown over the forest, stirring up a flurry, so that he had both the unfamiliar woods, the night, and the transfiguring power of the storm to contend with. The brittle bones of the trees rattled around him, every step just a little bit slower as the accumulating snow dragged at his feet. He put his head down and walked into the wind, squinting ahead for a familiar landmark. A few times he thought he might have regained the path, only to find he instead walked an animal trail. Even realizing his mistakes, he continued to follow them in the hopes they would eventually lead to at least a water source he might recognize.

Many hours later, when he saw the light up ahead, he thought at first they were stars dancing in front of his eyes. His feet were cold lumps in his boots, the wind seeming to pass right through his skinny frame every time it gusted. He forced himself to pick up the pace, teeth chattering too much to even call a greeting as he recognized a familiar face, but raising his hand as he came within the cast of the torch light.

Lee Parable startled as Bailey nearly careened into him on the proper path, almost dropping the torch as his hands naturally formed signed exclamations of silent surprise. Seeing the state he was in, however, Lee Parable quickly recovered and shrugged out of his own overcoat to sling over Bailey’s shuddering shoulders. Never one to waste words, he didn’t ask why Bailey had been so late, nor what had made him leave the path as he led the way back.

The only time he spoke, it was to say, “Something follows us.”

“Yes.”

Lee glanced back at him; seeing no alarm, his pace didn’t quicken. But there was something in the faraway look in Bailey’s eye he didn’t entirely trust, either, so that his guard stayed up. Bailey still felt somewhat dazzled by the light as he followed its bobbing head back to his door. His thoughts felt rather far away even when Pin descended on them both at the door, fluttering about them as they shook off snow and stomped their boots clear. He missed the anxious look exchanged between them as they got Bailey up to the kitchen, seated near the fireplace. Even in its warmth, back in his own kitchen, still he didn’t seem present until Pin stuck an iron needle in his finger to check whether he still bled.

“Ow,” he muttered, brows drawing down as he brought his bleeding thumb to his mouth.

“Apolo’em,” she said, looking less repentant than relieved. “Look’ee so distant and alien. Wasn’t sure Lee Parable hadn’t brought’em some seemling.”

Bailey glanced over to where Lee Parable was holding the fire poker, giving a somewhat more apologetic shrug than Pin had managed as he set the makeshift weapon aside. The Joplin provided quietly, “You left the path.”

“Yes, well. I’d hope if I were actually a creature wearing your brother’s face, you might have noticed before I was brought into the household,” Bailey grumbled at Pin as she pressed a hot mug of something that smelled medicinal into his hands. “Or leant it your coat. Thank’ee, for that,” he added, returning the heavy garment to its rightful owner. As Lee Parable was hanging it up to dry over the fire, Bailey caught Pin still giving him a narrow look. “What, a drop of blood wasn’t enough for you, you terribly suspicious child?”

“What happened out there?” she asked, quietly. “Look’ee… different. Like’ee not all here, still.”

“I’m a bit rattled. I got lost hours ago,” he side-stepped, drinking from his mug to buy time. Nose wrinkling as he gagged it down. “’Sblood, Pin, this is terrible.”

“That’s how’ee know’s medicine,” she answered, primly.

She still didn’t seem wholly satisfied with his explanation, but she stopped pressing while Lee Parable drew up a chair to sit with them and share their company for a while. They kept the conversation fairly light, for as long as he was there. He was very nearly family—he’d helplessly adored Bailey’s older sister, Airiadnee, before the Wilderness has claimed her, and he’d been a fairly dependable friend in all the intervening years since—but there were some things that really should only be discussed within the House. So they spoke in broad terms of their day. Lee mentioned that, for all that this was a late storm, most other signs pointed towards an early spring and an early planting. Pin shared that they’d had a minor setback that afternoon in construction when one of the giant birds that populated the region had tried to poke its enormous beak in through the open glass panel where Talus Mos had been working, and that it hadn’t gone away until Pin had shot at it—and missed—with three arrows.

After Lee Parable eventually left to get some rest, Bailey poked up the fire. Distracted by the dancing light, he found his thoughts wandering, yet again, to the glasswork woman. Wondering how it was her eyes had seemed to contain this same flame. Whether it had been caught at the time of her forming, or whether she generated it anew under those fleeting rays of sunlight.

“Was’t that bad?” Pin asked, stirring him from these musings. “The meeting with Rush?”

“Hmm? Oh,” he set the poker aside, coming to sit back down. “No. No, it was fine. They accepted our invitation. Warden Rush was a bit blunter than the other Houses have been: that they’re going to be judging us pretty harshly, to see if it’s even worth it to help us out. But if he’s not entirely sympathetic, I also don’t think he’s adverse to our position.”

“But might be all’s for nothing,” Pin said, hand creeping to her mouth in an unconscious comfort gesture.

“It might be,” he agreed, wishing he could spare her this frank discussion. It still seemed too heavy a thing to put on her shoulders, even recognizing he’d been even younger than she was now when he’d had to take over as head of the House. He knew she wasn’t a baby anymore, but over the years he’d tried to shield her at least a little from how dire their situation had become. “If they don’t think our House has a future, there’d be no point in naming one more Reed.”

She sighed, but nodded, the atmosphere primarily somber. Houses died, sometimes, when resources or members dwindled too low. They both knew that, intellectually, but it was another thing entirely to live it. On the whole, when a child was going to be born, the two Houses involved would negotiate to provide the new baby with the most resources—deciding which House was stronger and naming the child there. If the Houses were on approximately equal footing, sometimes the child was given to one family in concession for some other trade or promise. But if your House sank low enough, there was little negotiating power, and very few offers would tempt even the greediest House to allow a child to be born into an impoverished name. Occasionally a stronger Sister-House might step in on your behalf to help with negotiations, or they might offer up a fosterling of their own just to keep the House alive. An extreme measure, but sometimes a necessary one.

“Well,” Pin shook these heavy thoughts off, sighing as she stood. “Have’em impress, then, so’s favor’em.”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Bailey said, feigning more confidence than he felt, toying with the end of one of his sleeves.

“Go to bed, gloomy,” she said on her way out, not fooled. “It’ll look brighter, tomorrow.”

He nodded, absently, but stayed where he was seated for some time longer, his eyes trailing to the gusts of snow blowing past the enormous windows. Telling himself that he’d primarily imagined he’d heard another set of footsteps trudging through the snow during the long trek home. That Lee Parable’s flame was the first and only light he’d seen in the dark. And that a glass creation couldn’t feel the cold.

The intent still hadn’t entirely formed in his mind when he made his way to the sewing bin. There were a few articles still set to be mended, and others that just hadn’t been put away. This simple old dress of Pin’s, for instance, had been in here for half a year by now. He’d put off repairing it for so long that by the time he’d mended the hem, the child had far outgrown it, shooting up like a weed last summer. So it wasn’t like she would even miss it, really. Wherever it ended up. He told himself he was only going outside to check when he dug out his coat and refastened his boots to his feet. What he was going to check he didn’t quite confront, nor the purpose behind bringing this old dress with him. He stepped into the yard, and from there back beneath the trees. Hearing nothing but the wind winding its way overhead and his own footsteps crunching a new path. When he came to a stump some little ways in, he casually lay the dress there. Pausing for only a moment to feel rather foolish before retreating to the house again. He kept his eyes on the welcoming kitchen lights, moving steadily onward and not looking back. Even when he heard the soft, distinct sounds of fabric rustling behind him.

***

The snow had stopped by early morning. Within hours of dawn, the sun had melted off most of the accumulation. As if to rewrite the prior day and erase all trace of its passing.

Bailey rather wished such a thing were possible. His first thought on waking had been a kind of wordless panic that sent him catapulting from his hammock to the window, his hands dragging distracted through the ends of his hair as he thought back on the day before, as one might recall a particularly bewildering dream. Had he taken complete leave of his senses? Bad enough that he’d awoken some Ancient evil and let it follow him home. Had he actually gone out into the storm last night and given it a Wind-bitten dress?

No, he couldn’t have been that thoughtless. Or self-destructive. Or selfish. Foolish. Irresponsible. Short-sighted. Reckless.

He was on around his third iteration for insults directed at himself when he firmly decided to just push it from his mind. He would just go on as if it had never happened. And hopefully that would be the end of it.

And it wasn’t as if there weren’t a host of issues to otherwise occupy his thoughts. He had a week to prepare for his cousins’ arrival and show off just how well they were doing. And then there was the seasonal hiring coming around again, the work orders to sort, a few more inquiries into whether a good herbalist wouldn’t be willing to apprentice Pin, do another check for any broken windows before the next windy season, and he still needed to go back through and catalogue what they might need from the next passing tinker or whether an actual trip to town would be necessary. Not to mention the seventh-year tithe would be due, and he’d sooner trust his own sums than accept the calculated tax on good faith.

When Pin finally tracked him down late that afternoon, he had therefore had a very busy day with legitimate House business to keep him entirely preoccupied. His long pipe was clamped between his teeth, the thick, colored smoke pooling around the ankles of the stool he was perched on as he distractedly puffed away. The little workroom he’d claimed was covered in little tapestry notations and glass panels of receipts and tallies. In his lap, he had a complicated tangle of strings and beads he was busy braiding together as he muttered under his breath and occasionally jabbed at a little button-covered machine at his side that gave very unhelpful dings at certain intervals. This only seemed to make him type in his sums in an angrier fashion, soliciting ever-shriller dings.

“Oughta just hire’ee Red,” Pin opined.

“Nearly finished,” he said around his pipe, not looking up. “What ‘s it, Pin, busy’em.”

“Found’em this outside, this morning. Know’ee where it came from?” Pin asked, setting something down on a small empty corner of the table.

Still trying to keep a running count going in his head, Bailey was leaning over to grab a red bead from the farther edge of the table when he glanced at it. And then promptly fell off his stool.

It was her. The glasswork woman he’d freed the day before. The creature of living light, of fluid art, of a solid fucking punch, and he was already quite winded again as he scrambled to his feet, choking on a breath of smoke and ignoring Pin’s surprised exclamation. Because of course it wasn’t actually her. It was only a figurine, barely the size of his ring finger. And yet so clearly it was her features: the little slope of her somewhat bulbous nose, the twin scars on her cheeks, the long hair, the rather bottom-heavy shape. As small as it was, every bit of it was still finely, carefully formed—if he squinted hard enough, he thought he could see little fingernails shaped in the clear glass.

“Where’d’ee get’s?” he demanded, eyes watering as he continued to cough up a lung.

“It was on the stoop, this morning. Bailey, what ‘s it? ‘S wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s… nothing to worry about,” he said, picking up the stool and avoiding eye contact. Busying himself with tapping out his pipe, pounding his fist on his chest to get the last of his coughs out. “Apolo’em, Pin, I just took a bad breath, there. I think I’ve been doing these sums for too long. Well, it’s a cute figure. Are you sure Talus Mos didn’t make it?”

“He’s good,” she conceded. “But don’t think’em ever done anything quite this close to life. Almost looks to breathe, doesn’t it?”

“Mm,” he had to agree, and though he had just finished telling himself he should feign indifference, his eye was dragged back to studying the figurine. Almost, yes, he could imagine its tiny breast stirred with breath. He remembered how the actual glasswork had begun with a small ticking of her internal mechanism to signal her return to life and motion.

“’S odd, it turning up on our door. ‘N it almost seems trying to say something, doesn’t it?”

This, too, he had to acknowledge. The figure was curtsying, wearing the dress he’d left outside. She was peeking from behind the curtain of her hair, but even if the little figurine hadn’t been designed with its face visible at all, the posture was obviously one of embarrassed gratitude.

“Strange subject, too. Not a classic beauty. But ‘s something charming about it.”

Something warm and brilliant, captivating and achingly alive. The way a trampled little flower with half its petals missing was still just as lovely, almost improved for its idiosyncrasies. Such a funny little thing, looking just rather unfairly adorable in that hand-me-down dress. Yes, he supposed it was possible someone might get that impression.

And maybe he should be more cautious. Maybe this figurine carried some bit of that Ancient thing’s consciousness and it was only here to spy on them, and he would do better to smash it. Or destroy it anyway, just because of where it came from. But even such thoughts were fleeting—he could no more seriously consider shattering this than he could the actual glasswork.

He glanced over to find Pin not trying especially hard to hide her grin. “What?” he demanded.

“Are’ee blushing, Bailey?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered, which only seemed to be making the heat in his face worse. “Don’t you have work to do?”

Pin gave a delighted laugh. “Oh, are’ee awful’some liar, Bailey. Should’ee just told me had’ee sweetheart, dolty-face. La, now it all makes sense! This’s why’ee’ve suddenly pushed so hard for our Sister-Houses to step in on your behalf, isn’t it? To help negotiate with her House? Oh, sneak’ee, should’ve just told me!”

“Pin, you know that’s absurd. This deal with our Sister-Houses has taken years of careful planning—“

“Is this where’ee were yesterday, when’ee got lost?”

“I don’t know where you get the basis for this fantasy you’ve concocted—“ he started, rather uncomfortable with just how close she was guessing.

“Know’em family? Wait, let me see,” she said, picking the figurine up and skipping back out of Bailey’s reach as she squinted at its features. “Her hair’s even longer’n straighter’n mine. But got’em almost a bit of a Mountain’some look about’em, doesn’t she? Ah, ah!” she cautioned, darting around the side of the table as Bailey tried to snatch the glass figure from her hands. “Let me guess the House. ‘S it Vale? Ponderosa? Luna? But no, stick’em close to home. Almost Aster, and get’em strong Violet. ‘S not Mountain garb, though—almost looks like one of my old dresses.”

“Well if you’re quite finished, I’m going for a walk,” Bailey announced, trying to salvage what was left of his dignity.

“Are’ee going to see her, again? Can I meet’em?” she asked, nearly hopping with excitement.

“No, no, you seem to be doing quite well enough playing make-believe over there.”

“I’ll quit teasing,” Pin pledged. “I know it can be delicate, these negotiations, early on, ‘n I won’t go blabbering to everyone.”

“That’s very fortunate, as there’s no one to meet, you silly thing. There isn’t,” he insisted at her disbelieving pout. “I just need to get some air and check on the traps.”

“All right, keep’ee secrets.” Pin huffed, taking his vacated seat. “But tell’em I said ‘hi!’” she called after him, so that he flinched and glanced around lest anyone else had heard her. At this point not really sure whether he should be more hopeful or horrified at the idea running into the glasswork girl again.

***

Under the cover of the trees, the sun had not yet completely melted away the new snowfall by the time Bailey made his way outside. He was better dressed for the weather, this time around. His fancy clothing he’d packed away again, but his homespun and thick jacket served him in good stead. He readjusted the quiver on his back and held his bow at the ready as he followed a different path from the one he’d tread the day before, walking south to check the traps and see if he could scare up some larger game.

A scant ten minutes had passed when he first spotted the footprints off the path. Relatively small tracks compared to his, carrying the imprint of a bare foot. Another hour’s melt might have obliterated their mark entirely, but he could clearly see which direction they headed: away from the house and towards where he knew there were some old ruins. And maybe he should leave it at that. Let this thing pass out of his life and just be grateful that it hadn’t brought ruin on them all.

His gut told him he’d only narrowly dodged tragedy. His head accepted this notion as sound. And yet he found his feet turned off the path as his heart beat rather too quickly in his chest.

These ruins had been picked apart, over the many years. Only a few sophisticated Red Houses knew how to rework some of the most durable of the Ancient metal like the site where the glasswork had been entombed. But the Ancients had also made their buildings of stone and glass parts that were more easily scavenged. What was left at these ruins was therefore little more than a skeleton of some of the crumbled buildings, not worth dismantling, overgrown with vegetation. It had been built on the edge of a steep drop-off, beyond which the Kin River could be seen still winding its way east before it flowed northward.

It was on the ledge of a dilapidated wall that he spotted her again. She was sitting with her skirts bunched up around her knees, bare feet swinging freely as she looked out over the ledge into the forest. She’d retained her color, but looking up at her profile, he could see that where, before, her expression had been lively and animated, she appeared more withdrawn, now. A cold wind blew, pulling her hair out like a long banner. And while she didn’t shiver, her posture was stiff, and she carried herself rather carefully, as if holding together all the cracks in her glass skin.

“This used to all be city,” she finally spoke. She had an accent he couldn’t quite place, reflective of a place and a time that no longer existed. Her voice a bit deeper than he might have imagined, for her little frame. Perhaps it was only a component of the glass, though, because the chiming resonance of the sound seemed to be finding a place somewhere in his sternum. “So much of what I remember before my long dreaming passes through me, like the sun through my palm,” she said, considering her hand as its color faded to clear and then returned. “But I do know this: the forests had only been lonely oases between the roads. And a city had thrived here, from one end of the horizon to the next.”

His eyes were still captivated by the hand she’d held aloft, and he spoke unthinkingly. “Why didn’t the Ancients make you in their image, with six fingers?”

“Make me?” She seemed to genuinely consider the question as she turned over her hand. “No,” she spoke slowly, her voice rather distant. “No, I made this. I remember shaping every finger to replace the ones I’d have to leave behind. Six was common, but, no, not everyone had that many. And when they said the end was coming, that what would be left of our bodies would be less than human anyway…”

She trailed off and then stopped studying her hands, instead using them to collect her hair and twist it aside. This done, she finally looked down to fully acknowledge Bailey’s presence. He was gazing up in some wonder, still reeling from this information, in many ways worse than he’d suspected: to be not only a tool of the Ancients, but one of them herself. Or what was left of one, under all that vagueness and formed glass. Created to escape the calamity of their world ending. She said she remembered little, but how much of it was forbidden and dangerous? She said she’d made this only to survive, but who knew what terrible purpose might be buried deep in her programming?

 She seemed to become more self-aware under his eye, now fidgeting where she sat. The little movements betraying some inner drive, a richer sense of self than any created thing could boast. Not a creature, not a tool, not an emissary of the Ancient’s evils. Just a young woman whose world had ended and who had survived it as best she could.

“I’m sorry I pushed you. It… I was disoriented, and you were perched there a strange man all bird bone and sunshine, and y-you had such a light in your eye it’s a wonder I could keep my glass innards from melting, but that’s… that’s no excuse, and I’m sorry. And thank you, for the dress, too I… I d-didn’t know if…”

Maybe there was something a little off in her wind-up. She was turning rather red again, and took the opportunity of hopping down from her high spot on the old wall to try to collect herself. She noted how he flinched when her feet touched down on the hard stone, and she offered a small smile that made the cracks in her cheeks shift in a strange way that ultimately was rather charming. She smoothed down her skirts, her hair spilling free around her shoulders and down her back. Such a comical little contradiction she made as she reassured, “I’m more durable than I look.”

Is that why he felt like he was the one who had been shattered? “Yes,” he managed, “I can see that, now.”

He hadn’t really been aware he’d taken a step closer to her until he saw the way she tensed. Not a strict fear response, perhaps, but a kind of wariness that made him immediately halt, to let the tension drain away again. Strange to think she would have anything to fear from him, but it didn’t seem a wise thing to confront just then.

“The cities aren’t all gone,” he offered, pointing over the drop off. “Another half-day’s walk brings you to a little town. And far beyond that, in the desert, is the empire’s hub.”

“Empire?” she murmured, mostly to herself. “No, that… doesn’t sound familiar. At all. How… how long have I been…?” She seemed to catch herself, though, focusing on him again. “Sorry, I guess you wouldn’t know, I was just thinking out loud and…”

“Oh. I might know,” Bailey said, tone casual, suddenly becoming preoccupied with his sleeve cuffs. He felt the burning light of her interested gaze on him and tried very hard to keep his voice lofty and academic. “If I had a few more details I could be more exact. But judging by the technology that went into forming your body, from your tomb, and from your memory of there being a city here—you were right on the cusp of the last of the Ancient Era, before we entered the sunless times of the Dark Epochs. I just finished reciting those histories to my cousins, as it happens, so I know the stories well. But even that tale is days in telling and, really, that’s only the beginning of it from your time. We’ve passed through many eras since then, just to get where we are now.”

“I suppose… I’ll pick it up as I go,” she began dubiously, looking off the way he’d pointed. “Because so much of my memory is a smudge on my mind’s eye, I could just try to make the best of what I have? Start fresh in that town down there?”

Her mouth was setting with determination as the thought seemed to take hold, her resolve firming. But was that really such a good idea? Walking in blind, without a House to speak for her, without a clue as to custom? Amongst strangers who could, at any time, divine her origin? He told himself that it was only the thought that this could somehow be traced back to him that made him feel a lurch of panic, his words a little rushed as he offered, “I could fill you in, on what you’ve missed. Not all of it. But enough to get by. If you like.”

She hesitated, and he tried to keep his face neutral, eyes directed to the side as she considered this alternative. “I don’t want to impose,” she began.

“You made that little figurine, didn’t you?”

“Y-es?” she said, stretching the word out. “Sorry, I didn’t know if you’d… want to actually see me again after…”

“How did you make it, out here? I didn’t see any tools.”

“Well, um, yeah, but there’s old glass all over the ground, here.”

He glanced to her and she colored a bit as if embarrassed, again. But she bent to the ground to demonstrate, shifting the old rubble between her fingers. As he watched, the glass bits—smoothed almost into pebbles by time—began to glow a hot red, growing malleable and stretching as she teased it into a little flower shape. And then, just as quickly, formed it back into a ball and dropped the red-hot glass back to the ground.

“That’s very useful,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Can you also use tools, if someone were watching you?” At her hesitant nod, he said, “Well. If you’re that good at glasswork, you’ll have a steady career. There’s always more work to be done, even if it’s in construction and repair and not fine art. There are some projects around my home—you can help, there, while I tell you a shortened version of the histories. As kind of an informal contract.”

“That… actually sounds perfect. Okay, it’s a deal!” she agreed, moving forward and snatching up his hand in sudden enthusiasm.

He’d just watched her melt glass with those fingers. He wondered at himself, that his first instinct had still been to clasp her hand in return. Frankly, under the circumstances, he probably deserved to have his whole limb charred off for that. But her hand was only warm to the touch, as any person’s would be. Her beaming expression somehow making him feel a little brighter, a little lighter. How could someone have created glass eyes with so much depth to them—even if she had been some master worker in her prior life, how had she captured that nuance? Even from only a step away, her façade was flawless, every glass hair of her eyelashes perfectly formed.

To the eye. His hand knew better. She was warm, yes, but the texture of her skin was still smooth, hard, unyielding glass. It was worth remembering, he told himself sternly, even as she released him and danced back a few steps again, looking a bit flustered.

“Sorry, I… Yes, that sounds like a good plan. And thank you. Um. So what should I…? I actually forgot to ask your name.”

“It’s Carson, of the House of Reed,” he replied, somewhat relieved to have a protocol to fall back on. “And if your memory is still a smudge—I suppose you don’t remember what you were called.”

“Actually, there’s something engraved on my sole, so I think that must be right,” she said, balancing on one foot as she looked at the bottom. “See, it says ‘Catherine Derringer,’ so either that’s me, or someone was having a real laugh with me while I was—“ She looked up, startled at his sudden movement. He’d stepped away from her, and she was surprised by how bloodless he’d gone. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes were riveted on the words. “Can you get rid of that?” he asked, hoarsely. “The way you made your skin color, or even if burn’ee out’s—can’ee remove that?” She put her foot back down, and he was finally able to meet her eye, seeing how tense she was again. “The written Word can’t be suffered,” he started, but even trying to explain it seemed too much to bear just then.

Ultimately, he shook his head, the long gap of history between them. Taking his kerchief from his pocket, he knelt in front of her. And, although she was still quite confused, she permitted him to tie the fabric over her foot like he was wrapping a wound, hiding it from view.

He straightened, already visibly calmer. “Perhaps that’s where we’ll begin, then.”

***

They had a somewhat circuitous path back to the house as Bailey took the opportunity to first check his hunting traps and try to lay some groundwork for telling the histories. Although she was full grown and seemed to have some fuzzy memory of her life during the Ancient times, it seemed best not to rely on that recollection and just try to start from scratch. He therefore approached this latter task as he would for any very young student, which meant essentially going all the way back. The glasswork woman, he found, made for a fairly receptive audience, and once she’d forgotten a bit of her nervousness, she had copious questions about nearly everything: What was this Word? How does a Word speak itself? Why did the Wind have a will but most other things in the cosmos didn’t? How do you eat a Word? Was this supposed to be allegorical? And so on and so forth, but she had to outright stop him when he got around to talking about writing being part of what caused the Ancient’s end.

“That can’t be right,” she insisted, pushing her hair out of her face again.

The forest path here was a bit narrow, but she turned sideways and trotted to keep up just so she could confront Bailey on this.

“Writing is—it’s how you learn! There’s just no way to communicate aloud all that information. And if you had specialized knowledge, it would get lost if you didn’t tell enough people before you died.”

“We get by.”

“But how is this any worse than just speaking? Isn’t that also messing with the Word, or whatever?”

“Some think so,” he conceded. “North of here, the Joplins only allow the children to speak, and adults are expected to know better. So they sign—“ “See, that’s also language!”

“—as people were intended to, without treading into the specific domain reserved to the Word. But for most people, just speaking isn’t profane in the way trapping the Word in immutable forms would be.” He glanced to her, and seeing her somewhat mutinous expression, said, “This isn’t debatable.”

“It just seems so… backwards. And inefficient.”

“It’s the way of the world, Derringer Cater—Catherine,” he said, stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word.

“Cat’s fine,” she brushed it off, missing his look of quickly-controlled surprise.

“I can say it properly, Derringer Catherine,” he said, somewhat stiffly, as if to prove that he could.

“Hmm, well. So, wait, you don’t keep any records?”

“Oh. No, we do. In beadwork, or made in glass sheet grooves. As approximations of the ideas, and mostly to keep track of House business.”

“Seems like cheating,” she muttered as they stepped from the path to visit the third trap. She absentmindedly gathered up the hem of her skirt to lift it away from the melting snow, otherwise seeming oblivious to the cold conditions. “And it also just seems like the wrong lesson to learn, here. I know we must have done a lot wrong, but for you guys all to take from that that illiteracy was preferable to—good God!” she broke off as she spotted something caught in the trap, her feet scrambling backwards so that she nearly fell right on the slushy earth. “What the hell is that?”

Bailey wasn’t entirely certain, himself. Creatures could look so different, when they were as sick as this one was. He couldn’t tell if it had initially had that rat tail, or if that was another product of the mange that left clumps of matted, bloody hair scattered about the trap from the creature’s thrashing. The trap itself wasn’t designed to permanently injure, but it’s skin was so delicate even its attempts to free itself had resulted in most of the flesh sloughing off. It had what looked like six functional limbs, and one boneless one growing from about midway up its hind-quarters. Its milky eye told him it had likely been blind from birth. Its open sores wiggled with parasites that seemed to have come from within.

“Not fit to eat,” he sighed, drawing his knife to put it out of its misery. He avoided the snap of its spindly teeth to slit its throat. The blood that wept from the wound was sluggish and thick, and he quickly wiped his blade clean in some of the melting snow. He’d need to find another place to reset the trap, let the forest reclaim this patch while the carcass rotted.

Derringer had been quiet while he did this, her face a mixture of disgust and pity. “Are there… a lot of things out here, like that?”

“Not as many as there used to be. They’re born sick, so most don’t live long enough to reproduce. And we’ve done a pretty thorough job of killing the ones that do manage to survive. It’s been a slow process, but now it’s fairly few and far between you find one as bad off as this.”

She was more reticent, again, as she followed him back to the path. Her colors seemed a bit muted, the bright gold of her eye dimmed as she watched the ground. Eventually, she offered softly, “We really screwed up, didn’t we.”

He didn’t dispute it. “There’s more. And there aren’t enough steps between here and the house to tell it all. It’s more than just the writing on your foot: you’re going to need to be on your guard against anyone discovering your origins. The Ancients were powerful and fearless, but their ingenuity was often tainted with their own self-destructive tendencies. What we have from the Ancients, their machines or their medicines, we have slowly tested over the course of generations. Anything new—anything unexpected or potentially dangerous—we generally destroy. Clockworks are a mixed bag, sometimes still useful and able to repeat the functions for which they were made. I’ve never heard of one quite like you,” he admitted, “but as I say, that doesn’t help you much, because that means you’re wholly new.”

“You destroy things just because you don’t understand them?” she asked, and as shaken as she still was, she couldn’t quite hide the contempt in her voice. “Seems a bit barbarous.”

“You think so? Ah, well. Perhaps we are a barbarous people.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“In the Era of Coldstill, five generations from the Sun’s release,” he cut her off, making a sign of the era to signal the start of the lesson, “was the township of Casing, named for the Ancient tech casing in the town’s center. Near the base of the Mountains was it founded, during the times when the kingdoms were still forming and the fertile plains were yet unruled. Being so near the Mountains, they carried on the city-state form of government, where no family has any kind of direct political voice as our Houses give us. Casing was a bustling town that made use of the rich farmland, timber, natural ores from the mountainside, and, most importantly, the Ancient’s treasures they mined with impunity. They knew the dangers, but laughed at them as old superstitions from the ignorant and cowardly. And for a time, they seemed justified. The township of Casing grew and thrived, utilizing Ancient technology to tend their crops, to gather resources more easily, to subdue their enemies. It was a beautiful town, by all accounts. If you have the stomach for it, you can still go see it. The city is there, as it likely will be until the sun finally winks out: every inch of it, every paving stone, every child, every blade of grass, perfectly preserved from where they were covered in the Ancient dark metal that does not corrode. No one is sure exactly how it happened. Some think the Ancient artifact at the town center used to be some sort of city-maker, meant to create buildings in an instant, as some of the stories say, and that it was only that the controls had some internal miscalculation. Others think it might have been sabotage, from ones trying to punish them for their hubris. Whatever it was, it must have happened in an instant, to capture them like that, totally encased in metal, without a hint of fear or knowledge of their impending end. And so it remains, as a reminder to those who would needlessly meddle with the Ancient’s things.”

The forest path was a bit narrower, here, requiring that they go one-by-one. At his back, Derringer seemed to be absorbing the story, too engrossed in its implications to even interrupt with a question. Her steps were slowing, and when she stopped entirely, he turned back. She stood on the path, her hands twisting the fabric of her skirt in a nervous gesture. Her head was bent slightly, the long sweep of her hair partially obscuring her face. The angle of light through the trees showed her skin had become somewhat translucent again, casting refracted light onto the earth around her. At the neckline of her dress, Bailey could just make out a shadow of her inner workings as they hummed away inside of her, a perfect mechanism of engineering and art that still somehow didn’t account for the spark of living light in her eyes as her gaze darted up to meet his.

“If that’s all true,” she said, “if Ancient things are so terrible—why are you taking me back with you? Why did you wake me up at all?”

“Ah, well. It figures. All this knowledge of history, and apparently I’m still not very wise.” He could see she wasn’t satisfied with that answer, her silence prompting further response. “The histories are reminders. They help guide us. But we can still reason for ourselves. As I say, I don’t know that there’s ever been another like you. We’re warned from unintentionally injuring ourselves from technology left behind by the Ancients. But you aren’t a thing that was left behind you’re… a person. Misplaced in time. If you hurt me, it will be by your own volition. Is that your intention?”

“No. Not intentionally,” she said, and he rather wished she hadn’t sounded so solemn about it. She was looking at her hands, again, something pained flickering over her features. “I remember making this form. So there must have been something, before. But… I can’t really tell you I was that same person, for sure. Maybe this is only a… casing, for a very sophisticated machine with a facsimile of life.”

“Well,” he said. “If you are just clockwork—at that level of sophistication, is there really any difference?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She let her hand drop, her opacity returning as she straightened her back and gestured him on ahead of her towards the house. “But I can see why you might caution against putting that question to the public at large. It seems more something I’d rather work out for myself, rather than risk just having any old person decide it’d be a good idea to try and smash me.”

From behind, she saw a shudder run over his skinny frame. He tried to shake it off as owing to the weather as he readjusted his coat, but she could see his ears had reddened a bit with the emotion he’d suppressed. A curiously visceral response as he only gave a brief nod of agreement and swiftly changed the subject.

When they finally reached the house, the day was deepening towards twilight, again. The faint speckles of the stars that had persisted through midday now reclaimed the sky in earnest as the heavy red sun gave way for another night. One day closer to when the Sister-Houses would be arriving to judge their progress and determine their viability.

That seemed like something to worry about tomorrow, though. For now, Bailey was trying to figure out how to get the glasswork woman into the house without exciting unnecessary attention. It was inevitable that Pin would discover their visitor, of course. But he could only hope she would keep true to her promise of discretion, even if this wasn’t exactly what Pin had had in mind. Better to have everything sorted and above board even before he saw anyone else. So he avoided the front and the kitchen entrance. From a distance he had spotted Lee Parable heading in from the fields—his sensitive skin heavily veiled even against the weak winter sun, carrying a soil-testing apparatus slung over his shoulders—but Bailey had only given a wave of acknowledgement. He then hustled Derringer Catherine around the side at the base of one of the trees that made up a farther wing. The bark was worn smooth where generations had placed their hands, so that even if she weren’t following right behind, Derringer probably could have made her way up to his bedroom window. It was a rather charming little room, she reflected, shimmying down from the wide sill. A bit cluttered, perhaps. A hammock was strung up near the window they’d entered, with the thick coverlets on it rucked a bit. Elsewhere were incidentals people tended to collect wherever they might stay for long, the way dust gathers in the corners of a room: a half-finished tapestry, some baskets of yarn, a few little machines, clothing stored more or less in bins, a few glass figurines that caught the light. A kind of litter of life. She wondered, suddenly, what her room had looked like. It made her feel a little less real, to not even have such a banal way to mark her history.

Bailey had been checking the hallway. It hadn’t really occurred to him until they’d arrived, but he was not unaware of just how much of his private life he’d unwittingly exposed to her. Seeing the hall was empty, he hastened her out of the room with no small amount of relief.

They were curiously twisty hallways, rather narrow and tall for the most part, with sunroofs high above and more rooms and alcoves speckled down their path. Eventually they came back to the accounting room where Bailey had passed most of the day, and he was chagrinned to find that Pin had left the glass figure of Derringer right in the middle of his workspace. Determined not to let it rattle him, he merely cleared a space to quickly draw up a simple contract that would pass inspection. He also took the opportunity to supply her with an old satchel and directed her to make a bowl and utensils for herself from some of the glass—the bare minimum anyone would leave home with—so she at least had the appearance of having traveled there. He then dug out a violet earring for her. Trying heartily to ignore the little thrill that swept over him when her fingers brushed over his.

“This looks like your ring,” she said, turning over the earring to look at the tree design as she nodded to the ring on his hand.

“Well I should hope so; it’s my House’s sigil.”

“It’s pretty. Although some might say a symbol that means a specific thing is a kind of word,” she said, a smile breaking out across her face at his disgruntled frown. She pushed her hair back a bit from her face as she considered, “I don’t even know if my ears are pierced, come to think of it. Can you see if…?”

He kept his expression still as he managed a mute nod and got up to go to her side of the worktable. She was perched on another stool, there, her feet nowhere near the ground. She kept her gaze fixed ahead, cheeks only slightly pink, head cocking to give him better access. He was trying to still the trembling in his fingers as he finally was given permission to touch—and yet reigned in the temptation, so that he only lightly brushed her hair to the side. Still marveling in the warm flow of her locks over his fingers. Her eyes were lowered, eyelashes skimming the top of her scarred cheeks. He saw her shiver slightly as he uncovered the shell of her ear and found they were indeed pierced. Wordlessly, he took the glass earring from her and fastened it in place.

He stepped back, quickly, as she reached up to feel the earring, spilling her hair over her other shoulder. She seemed oblivious to the effect she had on him as she mused, “I suppose it must seem a strange thing not to know about yourself. To exist in a body you don’t seem to properly own. But every time I try to recall, it’s as if I’m looking back through fogged glass. I can make out… fragments. Sometimes the shape of it more than anything. But few details. I wonder if it was because of what I did to myself, to make me like this—or if in the long centuries of my sleep, it all simply faded out of me. Like an old book left out in the elements, the sun leeching all my colors and words away.” She stirred herself, glancing to him and saying, “Um. Or I guess not a book. Since you don’t… Sorry. So, what now?”

What indeed. He had been puzzling over it while he’d been drawing up the contract, until then mostly acting on instinct. He’d considered just trying to hide her in various projects about the rambling house and just make time to give her history lessons as well he could. But that ultimately seemed a recipe for disaster if Pin stumbled upon her and launched an interrogation. Better to act as if there were nothing to hide and keep this within his control. So he said, “I can show you to where they’re working on the new greenhouse. It’s glasswork, but less technical skill involved than your talents actually warrant—mostly grunt work—so it won’t take much of your concentration while I fill you in on more of the histories.”

“Who’s working on it now?” she asked, following where he led back out into the hall.

“Oh. Well. My fauder, Talus Mos, mostly, but my little sister has been assisting him.”

He spoke casually, but he was toying with the cuff of his sleeve and walking a bit quicker to try to cut off conversation. Eventually their windy path took them out on a farther limb and up through the floor of a rounded room perched on a higher bough. She squinted up through where the fading daylight was being caught by the clever play of glass panels. Grunt work, indeed!

Up along one of the high, sloping walls, she could see two people in harness at work: an older man and a teenage girl, carefully fitting one of the glass panels into the wall. The girl held it in place while the man made a few minor adjustments and then carefully ran a glowing-hot tool along the joining seam, to do a first seal. He nodded his approval, and the girl let go, glancing down for the first time.

“Oh!” she said, her eye immediately falling on Derringer Catherine. Her hand leap to her mouth, even as it split in a wide grin and she began to giggle uproariously.

“What’s funny?” the man demanded, also looking down but seeing little amusing about the situation.

Pin was already rappelling down almost faster than she could dole out the slack. “And who’s’ee, stranger?” she asked, in mock-shock.

“This is my sister, Reed Adelaide. And she’s Derringer Catherine. She’s been hired on to help out a bit.”

“Has’em, Bailey?”

Pin was grinning fit to burst while her brother pretended not to know what she was on about. Derringer wasn’t feigning being in the dark, at least, and could only try to return a somewhat confused smile of her own as the girl transferred her attention to the newcomer. Derringer could see the family resemblance between the two of them—both being rather tall and willowy blonds—and even with Pin’s cleft lip, the facial structure was fairly similar. She was also a bit annoyed that even with this sapling she had to look up to see Pin’s smile turn conspiratorial.

“So’ee came after all?” she stage-whispered. “La, but aren’t’ee na’much bigger’n your figurine’n all.”

“She’s here to help put up the greenhouse,” Bailey said, firmly.

“Don’t’ee worry. I won’t tell,” Pin assured her, ignoring him.

“Oh, uh, o-okay,” Derringer said, a bit dazed.

“And get’em lots’some time to talk, while we work!”

“You brought on new help?” Talus Mos was making his way down quite a bit slower. “I told you we’d finish before your Sister-Houses arrived. I keep my word,” he said, a bit stiffly.

“I know you do. But I need Pin elsewhere.”

Pin, seeing her chance to interrogate the newcomer slipping away, set up an exuberant protest that she was learning a useful skill and they’d already had setbacks, so they needed all hands on this to finish in time. At the same time, Talus Mos was arguing this wasn’t what they’d agreed to, they were all going to be in the way of one another, and that he still needed Pin to keep on-schedule. Bailey was trying to address both of their complaints at the same time, which just ended up with them all talking over one another, trying to get a word in edgewise. They certainly were a rowdy bunch, Derringer reflected, their words ringing off the greenhouse surfaces and right through her glass bones, until she finally interrupted, “I won’t be in the way!” which at least got their attention.

“I like odd hours,” she said. “I can work at night, and we’ll get it done twice as fast without getting in one another’s way.” She didn’t really seem to need sleep, as far as she could tell, so this seemed a good compromise.

“I’m amenable to that,” Talus Mos immediately agreed.

Pin was the only one whose aim was thwarted, now. But she ultimately had to content herself to that, telling herself she would still find a way to slake her curiosity. As Derringer Catherine claimed this a good a time as any to begin work, crying off that she had already eaten, Pin had to instead grill Bailey in undertones all the way back to the kitchen as they went to prepare the evening meal.

“Thought’ee say didn’t know’ee’em?” she sing-songed.

“Did I.”

“Is she staying long? Have’ee talked to her family? Where’s Derringer House? How’d’ee meet her out here?”

Pin didn’t seem to mind very much that he ignored her and just busied himself at making the meal, mostly just delighted to have something to tease him about. It had been a long, dreary winter of years for their House. She knew how he’d struggled to keep them afloat, always worrying about the family, putting it before all of his own needs. It relieved her that he finally wanted something for himself, which seemed to be making him happy in an embarrassed kind of way. So she didn’t push him too hard, mostly content to pester as she only hoped Derringer Catherine would stay with them for a long, long time.

***

Dinner was a busy affair. Beyond trying to tiptoe around Pin’s questions, an influx of House business snared Bailey’s attention.

First came agents from Harrington and Raise—Sister-Houses to one another who held longstanding contracts with the House of Reed for harvesting and land development. It still galled Bailey that in those early, lean years, he’d been forced to sell a long-coveted plot of his family’s land to the House of Raise. It had been necessary, and he had been sure the price was dear, but he couldn’t help the little twist of bitterness whenever he thought of it. His opinion of their Houses was not particularly high in any case. Their labor was steady, they fulfilled their contracts, and he envied them their numbers; but he’d yet to meet one of them who particularly interested him as people. True to form, these two were rather bland bead-counters who primarily seemed to enjoy one another’s company. They stayed for the meal after they had given confirmation of when and how many laborers would be supplied, but they declined to stay the night.

While they were cleaning up afterwards, the cook Bailey had hired weeks before arrived with his two assistants. This of course required some delicate maneuvering as contracts were affirmed, control of the kitchen was ceded, and proper housing was arranged. By the time Bailey was finished with that and left for them to start on tomorrow’s bread, he found Talus Mos waiting to ambush him, dancing around the insecurities that had seized him, given time to think it over. And so he had to be reassured that no, he was not being replaced, everything was fine, there was still a place for him here. And just when Bailey thought his working day might be over, Lee Parable had to politely request his attention yet again as regarded the soil sampling results, to work out which crops to plant where and how much seed and fertilizer they might need. This took some calculation, and they had each smoked approximately three pipes before they felt satisfied with their plan and left it for the day.

Bailey’s bones ached. Had been aching since his first growth spurt, although he hoped, by now, that he was nearing his full height. He decided to seek some relief in the steam room, down in the lower level. It was a large room, and he was grateful to sit alone in it, unbothered, and let the heat seep in. By the time he went to laboriously pump the shower cistern full, most of the aches had dissipated, and he was able to tolerate the cold shock of the drawn well-water. He looked forward to spring, when the river was not so frozen as to be dangerous and he wouldn’t have to do all this work just to get clean.

By the time he emerged, feeling marginally more human, it returned to him in a rush that he should really go check on Derringer, to see how she was settling into the work. He had meant to go back as soon as they had finished eating, but in the middle of everything else, he’d fallen back on his old routines and completely forgotten. A dread foreboding crept over him, his stride growing increasingly longer, as he only then realized that he hadn’t seen Pin since dinner.

Coming up through the floor, a glance skyward gave total vindication for his fears. For there was Pin, in harness again with a stack of glass plates, beside Derringer Catherine. They had paused in their work and—Bailey’s heart gave a lurch—Pin was holding onto the glasswork’s arm, tilting it as though to inspect it. Those dangerous glass fingers were held loose, the Ancient thing appearing calm and tolerant. When Bailey stumbled over the last ladder rung and clattered his way up with a hoarse shout, they both glanced down in some surprise, but still quite at their ease.

“Pin, let go!” he snapped, his fear putting an edge of anger into his voice.

“Derringer said’em I could look’see,” Pin answered stubbornly. As he was getting his own harness on, below, she continued talking to her companion. “And made’ee them, your own self? I’ve a cousin,” she continued, “lost a leg. Bone rot brought a fever that nearly took’em with the leg. When he’d recovered, get’em a mechanical in town, and barely slowed’em down. But’s just a machine—nothing like get’ee, here. ‘S like art. You’re wasted on the greenhouse. But how’d’ee lose both arms?”

“Not… all at once. I had time to prepare,” she put off actually answering, and was somewhat grateful for the interruption as Bailey made his way up to them.

The climb had given him a chance to cool the immediate spark of fear he’d felt, but Pin still felt it prudent to let go of Derringer’s arm and interject before she could be scolded: “I wasn’t snooping; get’em assist, and accidently brushed her arm, and ‘s only curious’some, anyway, and said’em fine, right, Derringer Casser—Catr…” Realizing she didn’t have much chance of pronouncing the name properly, she somewhat lamely repeated, “Derringer?”

“Um. Yes? She was helping,” she agreed, more firmly.

“I can take that over,” Bailey said. He was pleased that his hands were steady again when he gestured for the glass plates Pin was holding. “You should get some rest.”

Pin clutched them to herself instead, brows drawing down. “Why’s’ee not get’ee the same?”

“I have histories to recite. It’s part of the exchange for her work. You can stay if you like,” he shrugged, tone implying he didn’t care one way or the other. “But it’s all things you’ve heard before. And you’ll still need to be up with the dawn to help Talus Mos.”

“Thank you, for all your help,” Derringer Catherine put in at this point, so Pin’s expression was slightly less sour as she handed the glass plates over to her brother.

Even so, she lingered for a while longer, rather unsatisfied that they seemed to actually just be sticking to business. His recitation of the histories was such a basic primer, she wondered if he was deliberately doing it to bore her. But Derringer seemed to be listening attentively as she worked, asking appropriate questions. It was really quite dull. They worked easily, smoothly together, anticipating one another in their work and moving preemptively to meet the other’s needs. But Pin didn’t see any sign of the wistful looks or longing sighs she felt would have been more appropriate to two secret lovers. Finally, admitting defeat, she rappelled back down to the ground, sparing a last glance at them. Still working together in attentive synchronicity. Derringer’s skirt was bunched up almost scandalously over her knee, nearly bumping into his from time to time as they seemed drawn together, like two flames joining over the breath of oxygen between them.

When she was gone, Derringer set aside the tool she had been borrowing to switch over to just using her glass-molding hands, the work progressing at a much faster pace. Apparently preoccupied, she found the courage to broach the subject, “Sorry. I r-really didn’t plan that. It just kind of… I didn’t know what to say or… And it just seemed easy enough to let her think it was just my arms, and… I’m sorry, anyway, if I scared you, or…”

“It’s better than I could have come up with, on short notice,” he admitted. “And it was probably bound to come up.” There was a long pause. She had just about given up hope that he was actually going to address the real issue when he said, quietly, “It’s not you. Not entirely, anyway. If I really had doubts, I wouldn’t have let you in. I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near her. But…”

His hands were shaking. His lips twisted, holding back something vicious. A kind of fear lurked in the hollow spaces of his face. But when his averted eyes finally returned her gaze, she was the one who had to look away—the way one hides from the intense glare of the sun on a snowbank. She felt, again, a kind of aching emptiness in the heart of her. She found herself wondering if she had ever known someone who had cared for her the way he clearly cared for his family. Someone she must have entirely forgotten, somewhere in these many years. Strange to think even such passion could simply be lost.

When he began, again, to recite the histories, they both seemed only too eager to let the matter drop.

Even with a world of words to channel, the human body can only act as a conduit for so long. Bailey kept up for as long as he could, eventually settling in one place on a ledge to keep talking. Derringer set up a platform to take the glass panels from more swiftly, and she went ranging along the forming walls. The breaks between his stories began to stretch; his words began to soften and slur. Watching her work was hypnotizing. Her fearlessness when she’d slipped the harness and tied her skirts to one side, making new toeholds for herself as needed and smoothing the glass away as she finished. The little artistry she started to add to the panels, making landscapes and figures appear with a brush of her fingers. The steady sureness that entered her posture when she let herself get lost in her work. The distracted way she’d tucked her long hair away. The strength in her legs glimpsed when she would tense and shift from one part of her project to the next. Her body was fire licking the insides of this lantern room.

She could see the sun threatening the horizon when she finally sat back from her work, lest the rest of the family catch her at it. Only when she heard the first birdsong did it occur to her that the room was otherwise quiet. Had been quiet for some time.

At some point Bailey had dozed off. Perched on the ledge, still sitting in the safety harness, his cheek rested against the rope. It would be quite the rude awakening, should he fall. As she climbed up, level with him, she was struck by just how sleep changed him. The worry and caution eased away; his lips, slightly parted, lacking the somewhat mocking smile. Thin bones and gentle lines under threadbare clothing; almost breakable. It was only in motion, with the full force of his will and passions, that he seemed so formidable. Taking a seat beside him on the ledge, her hand hesitated before she tried to gently brush some of the hair off his brow—wild-growing wheat, it resisted the furrows her fingers attempted to make to tame it into line, springing right back. Under what sun did he fully ripen? He stirred at her touch, eyes opening blearily in some quiet confusion for the curious expression on her face.

Oh God. What had she been thinking? Her hand withdrew, swiftly. Apologies already bubbling out of her as she shifted over the ledge.

“Wait—“

The sound was tremendous in the quiet room. She had landed solidly, but steadily, uninjured. Only thrown off-center when Talus Mos poked his head up from the ladder she was approaching. He gained the room and looked around in some alarm.

“What was that? It sounded like a hammer falling!”

“It’s nothing to worry about. Derringer Catherine, wait, I—“ he let out a wordless gasp of discomfort upon moving his legs, the pins and needles spiking through him with a vengeance.

“Did you sleep in the harness?” Talus Mos demanded, disapproving, watching him fumble slack out of his line as he scrambled to get to the ground.

“If I could… if I could j-just get out of your way,” Derringer muttered, actually rather wishing Talus Mos would move aside and let her escape.

But now he was looking around, his face transforming with astonishment. “Eaten Word. What did you do? This is nearly three days’ work you finished. In a night!”

“Oh? I’m? Sure it wasn’t that much?” she tried to brush past, her heart sinking as Bailey made it to the ground.

“Maybe not. If you didn’t do it correctly,” he said, clearly dubious. “If they weren’t properly set—“

“Feel free to check,” Bailey said, still wincing as sensation returned to his legs and he limped over. Talus Mos didn’t go quite so far as to say that he intended to do so, but it was clear from the way he was setting up his own equipment that he was going to look back over her section of the wall.

Even with the way clear, now, she didn’t flee, waiting for Bailey to approach. But her face was rose as the dawn overhead, not daring to look at him. He missed the easy confidence she’d shown the night before; wondered, wildly, if there was some magical combination of things he could say that would restore her to how she had been. He felt at a rare loss for the right words.

“I’m sorry,” she said again, clearly mortified.

“No, you don’t have to—“

“I shouldn’t have—“

“You didn’t—“

Up the ladder, Pin finally made her way. She was still idly chewing on some of the breakfast she’d brought with her and wishing she’d heeded the advice to get to sleep earlier. But as she emerged up the ladder it all seemed rather worth it: Because there they were and she had just known it. There was little mistaking their postures. Her skirts were all tied to the side, exposing one leg almost to the hip. They were both a bit red. The edges of his fingers had found their way to her wrist. The gesture somewhat arresting, but less a demand, more a question. Gentle. Something she could have easily pulled away from, had she wanted to.

He only looked guiltier by immediately pulling away when he saw Pin. “Well. You’re up early. How did you sleep?”

“Better’n’ee, if’n had to guess,” she said, ever-so smug and wise.

He chose to ignore her tone. “I’m going after that egg today. Derringer Catherine,” he said formally, “if you would care to accompany me, we can continue from where we left off yesterday. On the histories,” he added, belatedly.

“Hasn’t’em working all night?” Pin asked, seeing all that had been accomplished and showing a touch of concern. “’S dangerous. If’n you’re caught…”

“No, I… I can go. I’m not tired,” Derringer said, willing to take just about any excuse to get past this awkwardness at this point.

It was only after she’d followed him through a brief trek to the kitchen to grab some breakfast and back outside that she thought to ask: “Um. Sorry. What egg?”

***

Things of that size really didn’t belong in the air.

That was Derringer’s first thought upon spying the enormous bird-creature up the tree. Even from this far away, it was impressive. It was the size of an ambitious sapling itself, nearly four times her own height. With leathery, triangular wings, and a beak large enough to swallow her without use of the sharp, black teeth within. It made strange crooning bugles from time to time that echoed through the trees, its long neck swaying as it made minute adjustments to its nest as it became more agitated, its bugling becoming more frequent.

Behind the house, Bailey had made a stop over to grab some equipment from a shed on the perimeter, including some climbing gear, two large satchels, and a strange kind of horn. The horn was clearly made of some kind of bone, but it was shaped less as a tube, more of a kind of thin, sloping wave. While they had walked along into the forest, he’d blown into it from time to time, reproducing a sound much like the one Derringer was hearing now. On closer examination, she realized now that the “horn” had actually been a bony kind of crest, like a miniature the one she could see on the bird—although how the animal was producing any sound from that, she wasn’t sure.

“There are eggs up there?” she whispered, dubiously, when he’d reached a temporary break in his recitation.

“Oh yes. I’ve been keeping an eye on them,” he assured, matching her low tones.

“It’s winter.”

“Quetzes’s eggs take three years to hatch.”

Well, when you’re the size of a flying behemoth, apparently you can stand to take your time. Still, it seemed rather a shame, given that, and she shifted, uncomfortably. “What’re you going to do with them?”

“I have cousins who train them. They can carry a rider well enough, although they’re a bit expensive in upkeep. They don’t breed in captivity, and you can’t train the adults. So there’s always a dearth. It’ll hopefully sufficiently endear me to them when they arrive next week.” He said the last somewhat dryly. His fingers drummed against his knees, straightened cuffs that needed no straightening, brushed flecks of mud away from his shoes.

“Your sister mentioned you have, um, cousins coming to visit. Is it a big deal?”

“Oh. I’m sure we’ll manage,” he didn’t really answer her, but just then he stiffened, murmuring, “There it goes!”

Sure enough, apparently fed up waiting for an answer that would never come, the bird was shaking its wings out, waddling in place, shifting from side to side. And then it launched from the nest. It was like a boulder, at first, falling from a mountainside in an inevitable battle with gravity—until, miraculously, those enormous wings opened with a percussive sound like a drum being struck, and away it swooped off into the trees.

They wasted no time in scurrying to the tree holding the nest. The borrowed shoes had spikes in the front of them, their hands holding hooks to drive into the bark. She wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do if that great thing came winging back early. She could perhaps act as moral support when it snipped Bailey’s head off. But even such dreary thoughts couldn’t sustain her for long. There was a kind of thrill in it, now, a bubbling mix of fear and excitement in her glass innards that almost felt to sting. The sentiment echoed on Bailey’s face as they scurried up the tree, his teeth flashing in a biting laugh.

His shirt was soaked through with sweat before long, despite the cold in the air. His limbs were quaking as the ground fell away, muscles protesting the unusual activity. She was keeping pace beside him, tireless and cool, as she had been for sunsets of generations—that inner ticking would run longer than the sun. As they neared the nest’s branch, she outpaced him a bit in her eagerness, face alight with expectation. He wondered if she would hunt like this: powerful and lithe, single-minded in her purpose. He was very much tempted to take her. Although before then, he told himself, averting his eyes, he should really probably see about getting her some trousers…

This was certainly a third-year nest. It reeked, that lizard, fetid stench of moulting. The heat was sunk deep into the twigs, so that moving over it felt like stirring live coals from ashes. And so they uncovered the eggs. There were nine in total, each the size of a human torso. One Bailey could tell at a touch had never quickened. But the others were viable, something healthy and living stirring within. Only waiting for their season of life. He looked up to find Derringer’s grin matching his own, the sweet warmth of her expression creating a strange kind of fire in his center. She had a smudge on her cheek from where she’d brushed it against the wet bark. Such careless artistry. Didn’t the Ancients make holy buildings of stained glass?

But then she was looking away, a hand at her chest as though she was trying to contain something, there. Or perhaps as if there was something already constrained. Her brow furrowed as she turned away to sling off her pack and carefully lay the egg she’d collected within while he did the same. They covered the other eggs as best they could with the precious time they had, and then beat a hasty retreat. On their backs, the eggs continued to radiate left-over heat through their delicate shells all the way back to the house, where they finally stored the eggs beside the fire they stirred in Bailey’s room. He had debated keeping them in the main sitting area, or perhaps in the kitchen, but he feared the temptation would prove too much and someone might abscond with them in the night. No, better like this, kept marginally secret, where he could keep an eye on them.

“Do you do that all the time?” Derringer asked behind him.

“No, this was only the second time,” he said, turning back.

He wasn’t sure why he felt quite so shocked to see she’d sat down on his hammock, her little feet not quite touching the floor. Most of the furniture in here was covered in projects he hadn’t bothered to clear away. So naturally it would be the most logical place to sit, enthroned among his heavy quilts. She’d drawn them around her shoulders in what must have been an unconscious gesture, because as he cautiously seated himself beside her, she seemed perplexed by the question: “Are you cold?”

“I don’t think I do that, anymore. Feel cold, I mean.” She toyed with the edge of the blanket, thoughtful, as she pushed it off her shoulders. He found himself staring at the delicate brown hairs along her arms, moving even with such a small generated breeze. “I’m not really… sure what I feel. I know it isn’t like it used to be, but it’s hard to say… how. The blanket is soft. It traps heat. But it’s not… comfortable? No, that’s not it, it doesn’t give comfort. It’s a thing that’s there, it has these properties, but something almost seems to interrupt it before I can properly feel it. Although there were a few times where I almost thought…” As she had spoken, her hand had crept to her chest, over where her heart should be.

She was startled from her reverie when he took her other hand. Glass, his fingers told him, but what did they know, anyway. “And this? What does this feel like?”

“Um. A h-hand?” she said, giggling nervously. Oh she wished he wouldn’t look at her with those big, pale eyes. There was that feeling again, like a creeping vine twining through all her innards, making them seize in her mechanism—was he trying to draw it out of her? “Bony? A bit cold? Distinctly hand-shaped?”

He could call on such a lazy smile. It had been a mistake to look at his mouth. If he breathed into her, would she grow warm and fogged? She was losing her opaqueness, the facsimile of skin. Could this glass reform into new shapes under the press of those fingers?

And no, actually, this wasn’t right. In her chest, there was something seriously wrong—something bound and breaking, something she wasn’t supposed to touch…

She dropped his hand, ducking her head so that her hair swept forward. Waiting until she felt the sensation pass. Grateful for the silence; that he didn’t press. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to feel all that, just yet,” she offered at length.

He shifted slightly, giving her a little more space. It wasn’t easy on a hammock, but at least he was making an effort. Eventually he just stood up, giving them both some much-needed distance. A few breaths passed as he apparently settled something within himself before he said, “Our original arrangement still stands. I have a few other things to take care of, today. But I can come keep you company in the greenhouse again, later?” his tone making it a question. Although he only watched her from the corner of his eye, a very slight smile tugged at his mouth when she avidly nodded agreement. Both of them trying not to feel entirely foolish as he left her there.

***

The days settled into a loose kind of pattern. There was a feverish amount of household work to manage in preparation for both his Sister-Houses’ visit and also for the coming growing season. Contracts made months before were fulfilled as the home filled with laborers, agents, travelers, and craftsmen. There were many rooms that still needed to be aired out, and he had a running checklist in his mind of minor repairs to see to. Bailey was fully preoccupied when the message reached him that there was a man outside. He had so far refused to come in or announce himself, but had asked for an audience.

When his schedule was somewhat clearer, Bailey finally made his way out to check on this mystery person. There were sometimes shy sorts, afraid to leave their Houses’ names until they were sure of the reception. A few had clearly fled without permission, carrying no token to allow them to negotiate a contract, their labor still rightfully owed to their House. Often these were better politely fed and then passed along, rather than potentially incurring their family’s wrath.

But the ones Bailey found outside were known to him. The man who met him at the edge of the clearing surrounding the home was a middling-age Red, his long hair very nearly hidden beneath all the beads braided into it. His face was wrinkled perhaps somewhat prematurely: with care, but also with smiles.

“Warden Reed,” Bailey was greeted, formally, but warmly.

“Solaris.” Leaving aside any family name still felt awkward in his mouth. A sad kind of reminder. But if there was any sting left to it, the older man didn’t show it. “And Marta?”

Solaris gestured back further into the trees, in confirmation. “We’ve come to fulfill our contracts, to see to your records and generator.”

“I recall. You didn’t have to wait out here.”

“You had quite a bit more activity around than usual. We weren’t sure… She wasn’t sure…” His face had balanced to slightly more care than smile for the moment as he glanced back into the trees again, where a very large shadow shuffled a bit closer.

Even hunched nearly double, as she was, she still dwarfed the men. Even since the last time he’d seen her, a year ago, she had grown again. Her limbs and digits each carried an extra joint to them, creating three segments of each. They said in the times of the Ancients, modification was rapidly becoming the norm. But born mods were rare these days, only occasionally cropping up in a family every few decades. Bailey rather suspected quite a few more were born than actually lived to adulthood. Marta, herself, had been unwanted by either parent House, the gossip went. What would have happened to her if Solaris hadn’t cut ties with his House and decided to raise her himself was unknown. But the two of them seemed happy enough: Solaris was an excellent weaver and recordkeeper, while Marta had a way with engines, even as young as she was. And although she was shy and generally awkward, she clearly looked well cared-for. Even now, Solaris’s concern seemed to be solely for her, showing little of the exasperation or sullenness one might expect after being made to wait in the cold for another’s comfort. Perhaps the loss of his family’s name wasn’t such a bitter thing after all.

“Warden Reed,” the girl mumbled, looking as if she would much rather stay hidden behind her tree. “Didn’t’em wanna disturb’ee guests.”

“No one is disturbed. Don’t be ridiculous.”

She was about Pin’s age, he remembered. They used to play together, when they were younger. And just as with Pin, she didn’t seem assured with the kinds of platitudes you might give a child. Her eyes were altogether rather too world-weary as she paused before saying, “If say’ee, Warden Reed. I’ll start now. But if please’ee, the work on’ee jenny will go faster if someone would bring’em meals and a cot down.”

There seemed little point in argument. When he had a moment to speak with Solaris alone, the man had turned fairly solemn as he explained that their last contract had been cancelled after too many workers quit rather than work alongside her. It had been a big project that required many hands, in close proximity, for long days.

She seemed relieved to be left alone in one of the root basements in the Reed home to do minor tune-ups to a generator. Bailey didn’t really have the time to try to fix what was broken in this situation, although it made him feel somewhat sick at heart to think of her cooped up down there. He was somewhat less than subtle in telling Pin she had an old friend who she really mustspend some time with and counted it as a minor victory when he spotted the two of them strolling the grounds in the evenings.

Bailey’s own nights were quite busy. Each day, he waited for the light to fade from the sky with ever-mounting anticipation until he could once again spend his time with the glasswork woman. He thought he had been fairly successful in pushing down any unwanted or unwarranted feeling of disappointment, but that didn’t stop him from reveling in what little time he had with Derringer. Trying to be concise in telling their history, but entertaining as well. Cursing that so much of the past was tragedy and warning; straining his memory for those stories that might bring brief delight or humor, if only because of the way her face would flush and her bright eye would turn to him to share in her joy. He busied himself with patching up some of his sister’s old trousers while he tried to keep his mind on reciting histories. Only to be continuously distracted by some of her questions, which would reveal something of the world she’d left behind. Or by her laughter, her smile, the way she kept losing herself in her work.

It was dangerous. He’d known from the start that it was, with anything the Ancients had touched. But there was another kind of danger. He’d felt stirrings for women before; he wasn’t made of stone. And of course he’d faced rejection. She had said, plainly, she couldn’t reciprocate. And he’d accepted that. Or he thought he had. He kept his distance, he didn’t press, he didn’t ask, and he certainly didn’t touch; they talked, and they kept to their work. So why were these feelings still so volatile? Seeming to rise and fall with the facsimile of breath stirring in her chest?

Maybe it was the closeness of the work. After the second night, she’d already finished with the greenhouse. So she took to roving his halls, learning the layout of the home as he directed her to minor repairs, or simply showed her around. The house was asleep, so to keep up conversation they had to stay close and speak softly. He was thus hyper-aware of her every movement, taking great pains to keep from any accidental touch, any misplaced word, until he felt his chest might burst with suppressed emotion. It was a wonderful kind of agony, at once exhausting and thrilling. It could go nowhere; it was completely unsustainable. But for those few brief nights, he tried to just enjoy it while it lasted.

Bailey sensed trouble when his father tracked him down a few days in. Talus Mos’s stance was tense, his face set, but he waited for Bailey to finish with the matters he was immediately tending to. Not an emergency, then, but still official.

“Warden Reed,” Talus Mos began, the formality in the address immediately concerning Bailey, “I would never cheat you.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Bailey responded automatically, startled.

“And I am not lazy,” Talus Mos went on resolutely. “And yet I… have no excuse. That Violet woman you brought on, of the House of Derringer—I don’t know how she finished that work so quickly, but I’ve checked it over myself. It’s sound. Artistic, even.”

“Oh. That,” Bailey said, relaxing. “You needn’t judge yourself based on her work.”

“But I do,” he insisted. “And I tell you, with the equipment we had, I couldn’t have finished that in twice the time she did, working alone, and at night. I worked as fast and as well as I could, but I have no excuse—“

“You don’t need one,” Bailey said to stop this outpouring, as much for his sake as for his father’s.

Talus Mos had had somewhat weak spirits, ever since Reed Beatrice had passed. The risk of loving only one with such a blind passion. He was prone to melancholy, only slowly pulling himself back from oblivion when he saw how the children of his late lover’s House might still need him. He had done what he could, taking solace in his glassblowing skills as a sign of his continued usefulness and worth. Being outshone like this had therefore shaken him rather more than either of them could have guessed. He looked old. And lost. His shoulders rounded, little care gone into his braids. Bailey had a twinge of fear, realizing his burden had always been greater than he had initially imagined. He had spent so long worrying over Pin, trying to prepare for her future, he’d rarely put much thought into what would become of his father, if their House’s fortunes should fail. Talus Mos was not a young man, anymore, and his own House hadn’t had much to do with him for twenty-odd years.

Bailey couldn’t leave it like this. “She wasn’t… working with the same equipment,” he allowed. “It made the work easier for her.”

“Other equipment? She brought it with her?”

“It’s an heirloom,” Bailey said, to cut off further inquiry. Something from the Ancients, proprietary to her House, and something she would almost certainly be unwilling to share. Bailey told himself it wasn’t exactly a lie; she was something of an artifact, herself.

But this seemed to be enough. Talus Mos let out a breath of relief, setting aside that burden of inadequacy, at least momentarily. He even managed a smile. “Well, in that case. But heirloom or not, she’s certainly skilled. But I suppose you would know that. You’ve been spending a lot of time with her.”

Bailey turned back to the looms he’d been sorting through. “Have I? Oh. Yes, I suppose. She needed a brush-up on her histories.”

“That seemed to have worked out well for the two of you, then,” Talus Mos said, not blind to the deflection. He paused before saying, “I only met her briefly. But Pin seems to like her. She says she has the most peculiar yellow eyes…”

Bailey glanced over at that. “It’s not like with Nee,” he said, quietly. “It’s not the Wilderness. Her eyes are just like that.” Seeing a trace of pity in his father’s face, he had to smile. “I’m not deluding myself. And if you saw for yourself, you wouldn’t mistake it.”

“If you say so.”

Bailey had certainly spent long enough studying her eyes. It was true, they were a golden sort of color rarely seen in nature. When the Wilderness got a hold of you, it created a similar effect, leeching yellow into the eye. But the Wilderness distorted the iris, making it fill nearly all the white of the eye. There was nothing like that with Derringer Catherine, captivating as her eyes were: like bonny little flowers springing out of the snow.

“What?” she asked, the second-time she found him looking into her eyes a bit too long. He saw her fidget with nerves and immediately looked away, cursing himself.

“Nothing. My little sister only accidentally stirred up some trouble when she told Talus Mos about your eyes.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He paused, but she was likely to run into this again. “When the Wilderness claims someone, sometimes their eyes change to look a little like yours. It’s rare, and people mostly only hear of it. Those who have seen it first-hand are unlikely to make that mistake. So it’s not something you need to overly concern yourself over.”

Her hair had been slipping loose again. He fought the urge to brush it away from her face. They’d found another broken window in an out-of-the-way room in a farther corner of the house, and after she repaired it, they’d mostly been sitting in conversation for most of the night on the sill. The globes they’d shaken into life had slowly gone back to sleep. The moonlight on her skin was a scarlet wash. Her eyes had a soft kind of lighting to them, like dim candles behind a screen Still the most luminous points in the room.

“Talus Mos. That’s the older guy who was working in the greenhouse? And he’s your… father?” she asked, still not very clear. At his nod, she asked, “And who’s the other guy, the quiet one? Is that your brother?”

“Lee Parable? No, not exactly. He left Joplin, which is further to the north and has no Houses as we do, so they all take the House name ‘Lee,’ for political purposes. He has known our family for years, though, and he shares a kinship interest with Reed Adelaide, my little sister.” At Derringer’s inquiring glance he elaborated, “She was born of him, and of my older sister, Airadne.”

“So she’s…? Wait, what?”

“Before the Wilderness took her,” Bailey said, thinking this was what had confused her.

“But then she’s not… If she’s Parable’s and Airadne’s daughter, then she’s not your sister.”

“Yes, she is.”

“No, she’s your niece.”

“’Niece’? What’s a niece?”

“It’s—come on,” she said, getting flustered, standing up and starting to pace, “when a sibling has a daughter, that’s… that’s your niece.”

It seemed to be all semantics, to him. They were all children of the same House, raised in the same generation. Who the parent was generally made little difference except perhaps between said parent and child, should they form any kind of bond.

“I fail to see the importance of such a distinction.”

“No, it’s important,” she insisted. “I mean not just in terms of who’s your actual sibling, but also, just… Being an aunt or uncle is… I mean, it’s special! When my niece was born, I—“

She stopped pacing suddenly, her back to him. There was a wretched sound; it might have been her that screamed, or else only something internal starting to yield to pressure. She crumpled forward, a hand at her chest, another covering her mouth. He was on his feet in an instant, all the hairs raised on his neck as he approached, only to halt when she turned half-towards him. Her colors came and went, fading in and out with her labored breaths.

“My niece…” she croaked out. Her face was awful, the grief vivid. Her contorted expression created terrible canyons of the scars on her cheeks. “Oh God, I remember… her. Wh-when she was born, her little hands—the first time I held her, her hands couldn’t even close around my finger. She was—“

She gasped, and the shrill, piercing sound was now clearly coming from her chest, like tortured metal being reshaped. Panicked, Bailey begged her, “Let me help.”

Reluctantly, she straightened somewhat and let him approach, hand still at her breast. “Something is… wrong,” she admitted. “Loose.” She pulled down the front of her shirt a little, her chest wall abruptly becoming transparent.

Bailey was not a healer. He had a fairly rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. Once, as a child, he’d gone with a gaggle of other children with an Orange to see a demonstration in the closest little town, where a healer had preserved a cadaver for the class’s inspection. Looking, now, none of the glass-replicas in motion seemed to bear much resemblance to that long ago corpse. But there was one part, at least, that didn’t seem to be properly moving: at the source of the trouble, there was a still, dark little organ. Opaque where the rest of her was still clear. Something in what looked like a strangle-hold of metal, only feebly struggling in its grip. Three bands surrounded the little organ, with the uppermost metal bent slightly, as though ruptured.

“Your heart,” he whispered. Awe in his voice. “I think it’s an actual heart. It’s bound,” he said, looking up from its little prison to her face.

He hadn’t realized how close he’d actually gotten to her until then. How hard he would have to fight the desire to try to give comfort for the quiet pain he saw there. He knew he would likely only make it worse if he tried.

“Is that what hurts?” she asked, her voice as soft as his. “The binding?”

“The undoing,” he admitted. He should move away. Out of arm’s reach at least, so his treacherous arms wouldn’t so ache to hold her. A fool, he couldn’t bring himself to bring this plan to fruition. “One of the bands is giving way.”

He saw the flicker of fear, and then when she had mastered it. Her voice only shook a little. “Wh-what happens if they come loose entirely?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. A thousand terrible thoughts occurred to him, each more unbearable than the last. Somehow in thinking of all the potential ways she might pass back out of his life, he had never really considered any loss would be entirely permanent. She was a creature of flame, born countless generations ago. If the force of the Ancient’s folly and time hadn’t been enough to destroy her, it seemed unlikely much around here would. And even if he was overreacting, just seeing her in so much pain was sending him into a flurry of unexpected impulses and emotions.

He might have gone on to do something entirely foolish if behind him he hadn’t heard, “Reed Carson?”

Bailey spun around shielding as much of her from view as he could. Irrationally upset at the interruption, heart pounding in fear that someone might have seen her glass form revealed. When he saw it was Lee Parable, he barked out, “What? What is it?” with far less courtesy than he usually showed the Joplin.

There was a long pause. Lee Parable’s face was obscured in the dark. This is it, Bailey thought, feeling like he was in freefall. He should have been more careful. He never should have let it get this far, care this much. He only had himself to blame.

But when Lee Parable spoke, it had nothing to do with either impoliteness or Derringer Catherine.

He said, “Spores.”

The word hung there, drifting about the room. An evil cloud overhead.

Bailey’s legs nearly tripped out from under him as he bolted back for the window, all other thoughts forgotten. As if by looking he could change the narrative. Maybe Lee Parable had been mistaken. A trick of the eye, or a common dust cloud. But he could not long disbelieve his own eyes: the unmistakable miasma of scarlet, leaking from the moon’s bloody grin.

“Where’s it making landfall?” he choked out, holding the sill.

“Two days north,” Lee Parable answered.

Bailey’s hands were shaking, the wood creaking somewhat under his grip. “Spores?” he heard Derringer Catherine ask, tentatively, but his mind was already racing. If they left, now—right now—they might just be in time. The party, all of his careful plans; it was all for nothing, now. But there was no use thinking of that. Lee Parable was waiting for an answer, and there was only one he could really make.

He turned away from the window, saying, “Wake the kitchen staff, first. Tell them we’ll need rations. Then get Pin. Have her rouse the house and get everyone down into the front yard. I’ll be in the armory. Go!”

Bailey could hear the house waking around him, even as he ran, himself, down to the bottom levels. Voices calling, sleepy, panicked, confused, but there was no help for it. He almost didn’t notice Derringer had followed him down until, shaking a globe into life at the armory door to put in the complicated code, the light caught in her wide, glass eyes.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, trembling. There was something in her look—a hollowness, stark as the scars on her face. She may not have remembered the cataclysm that ended the Ancients. Not the specifics of it. But here in the dark with him, hearing the pounding of footsteps overhead in a heart’s stampede, an echo of it still sounded through her.

He busied himself at the door, hands dancing over the tapping sequence that would admit them. It unsealed with a hiss of stale air, the room long unused, but it swung open easily at a touch.

“The moon,” he said, already heading to the far wall where the apparatuses had remained untouched these many years. Trying to remember all the steps he needed to take, as they’d been explained to him. Checking the fuel gauges, straps, extra canisters. They were designed to be worn like packs, the canisters carried on the back, and the wand to spray the fire out like one was watering the earth. Each also came with a protective face-mask, to protect against inhaling either the smoke or the spores.

“Or rather, the forests on the moon. You Ancients did your job too well, there. You meant them to thrive, and they did. But the spores they began to put out, well… I suppose you couldn’t have predicted they could cross that narrow channel back. It took them a while to do that, apparently, but now it’s every 30 to 50 years. It’s early, this time; it’s only been 27.”

The equipment was sound, and he felt a moment’s rush of relief. There was enough here to properly equip a proper House’s size, and spares left over. Of all the things their tithes had to go towards, he was at least grateful that even the lowliest of Houses was always supposed to be well-supplied in this manner.

“Wh-what happens when they get here?” she asked, coming over to help him pick up the packs and stack them outside the door for easier retrieval.

“They grow,” he stated, wryly. “And grow. On anything. In the smallest hint of nutrients. But they weren’t designed for such a rich environment, or so heavy an atmosphere. They sprout and gorge and claw their way up and push out everything in its way until they collapse under their own weight within about a week; rotting, stinking corpses.”

“He said it’ll touch down north of here?”

“It’s too much for any House to handle alone,” he answered. They were now down to just a handful of the packs, each of them picking up as many as they could carry to take directly into the yard. “If we didn’t come together—is everyone ready?” he broke off as Pin trotted in, panting.

She gulped air, nodding. “’S get’em fast’em, ‘n’ cross bett’n ‘cease. ‘S mine?” Pin asked, eagerly, as he passed her a pack.

“You’ll need to keep a sharp eye out. Landfall will come at night. I doubt it will reach here, but—“

“Here?” Pin burst in, face coloring. “No, ‘s come’em with’ee.”

“Hmm. Well. No,” Bailey said, suddenly very busy in re-checking the equipment in his arms. “You’re staying here, to watch after our own lands. I’m going to ask Talus Mos to help you. You’ll need to keep the fire lit in my room, remember to turn the eggs…”

Pin had a few colorful phrases to say on this subject, rather too furious to care that they had a wide-eyed audience. “’S babies half’em age, going!” was the first semi-intelligible thing Derringer was able to pick up. “Any big’em’nough walk’s get’em ready!”

“Yes. Well. And they have others they’ll be leaving at home, to watch their holdings. No one expects us to abandon everything; we each give as much as—“

“Then stay’ee,” Pin said, inspired. “’S’more important, keeping the head of the House, ‘n if’n happen’some’em, ‘s’not as bad—“

“Don’t be absurd,” he said, coolly. And by now Derringer was quite wishing she could just squeak by and leave them to squabble this out, but Pin was still blocking the door.

“Why’s’t absurd’em? Don’t’ee strike the twig ‘n’ kill’ee tree, ‘s the roots burn’ee. So the House. If I’m a twig—“

“You’re not a twig,” he snapped, his voice cracking on the word. Derringer kept her eyes averted, but she couldn’t shut her ears. Oh why couldn’t she have just barreled past the willowy girl. “Pin, I can’t lose any more branches. And it won’t come to that,” he insisted as she started to protest, again. “Please. Stay here. We’ll be back in a few days, and it would be nice if we had a house to come back to and not a pile of splinters. Oh, now,” he said as Pin started crying, the fear finally reaching her past her indignation. He awkwardly shifted the packs he was carrying around to give her a one-armed hug, trying to reassure her that they were prepared, that nothing was going to go wrong. This, at least, finally freed the doorway, as Derringer slipped out, lugging as many of the packs as her arms could carry with the nozzles trailing along and bumping her knees.

The yard outside was a mass of shifting bodies, turned grotesque under the red moonlight. Derringer tried not to shiver as she began passing the packs out, saying that yes, more were coming, and no she didn’t know when they were leaving. Luckily Bailey followed her out shortly and was able to call them to order quickly enough, telling them where more of the packs had been stacked in the hall inside, checking that food had been distributed.

“All contracts can be considered suspended. If you need to renegotiate, this is something we can settle when this is over. Landfall is two days’ walk north of here, and we’ll need to walk through the night.”

“Have the other Houses been reached?” someone asked. “Do they know?”

“We don’t have a tuner,” Bailey admitted, “or any other way to directly reach them.”

“We could send a runner on ahead,” someone else began, doubtfully.

“I’ll go.” It was so dark in the yard, it was safe to say many had not even realized Marta was there on the outskirts of their ring until she had spoken and began to unfold her modified limbs. A few people stifled yelps of surprise as she abruptly loomed overhead. Bailey realized he had never actually seen her at her full height, before; even when standing, there had been a kind of stooped shame to her posture. It was absent, now, as she tossed back her hair and said, “I can be quite swift.”

“Marta,” Solaris cautioned, at once warring with pride and terror, “you can’t go on ahead, alone, not through those woods. I’ll… I’ll come—“

“You’ll slow me down,” she said, not unkindly, but as simple fact. To Bailey, she said, “I’ll get the word out. We’ll be ready.” And on her long, unusual limbs, she strode, disappearing into the forest as fast as a candle blowing out.

There was little else left for them to do but to sort the last of their affairs out and follow after her. Bailey managed to find the time somewhere in the midst of all the tumult and noise to convince Talus Mos to also remain behind, as people broke off either to go back to their homes for more supplies or further instruction, or else prepared to set off north. Frankly it was shocking to Derringer how fast order seem to emerge out of this chaos, and almost before she knew it, they were getting underway.

Bailey glanced back, once, at the tree line, looking back towards home. Spotting a little figure perched up on top of the house as a lookout. She was wearing the flamethrower pack and waving back madly in defiance of her own fear. Stained by the moonlight as they were, her tears almost looked like blood.

***

They moved under torchlight, their shadows writhing across the trees, over the frozen ground in a ring. They bunched together, closer than they might usually walk even with a neighbor. There was no sense in trying to be quiet; their presence was known, their actions closely watched by unseen eyes. Through the darkness outside of the fire’s reach, they could hear things rustling in furtive fits or deliberate treads. A knocking sounded through the trees several times, the noise tracking them. And so they hummed and sang, making a kind of net around them, as if the thin weave of light and sound could offer protection.

And maybe it did. They grew accustomed to being watched, and nothing came out of that dark to confront them. Many of them knew this path north, by daylight, and tried to take solace in spotting landmarks to track their progress and bolster their spirits.

There came a point in the night, however, when they all drew to an abrupt halt. There had been a movement through the trees. Not the wind, but a kind of sigh nonetheless. It swept over them, through them, an oppressive weight. It hit some harder than others. Some seemed not to notice it at all beyond the basic animal sense in the herd, seeing others be affected and halting to wait for them. A few merely shivered. Others stood blinking in confusion. And some were driven from their feet entirely. There was an alien sort of curiosity in the invasion, but whether it garnered their purpose was difficult to say. It passed on again, leaving them to gather themselves, wipe sudden tears from their eyes, and—for a few—to be quietly ill in the bushes. None of them wanted to discuss it, but by hasty agreement a break was called for.

Derringer had been one of those who had merely seen the effects, ducking under Bailey’s arm to hold him up as his knees buckled under him. He seemed somewhat dazed in the aftermath, staring off into the trees as though listening for something Derringer could not hear. By slow degrees his eye returned to tracking the flickering dance of the fire, and then to his companions, and finally to Derringer where she sat beside him under his arm.

“The Wilderness,” he managed on his second attempt, his throat creaking and wooden.

She opened her folded fingers to show him the stones collected there. A wry smile pulling at one corner of her mouth and stretching the scar on that cheek. “So they told me. And I told them it hasn’t got me, but it doesn’t seem to do much good. I’m forming a nice little collection,” she jangled them together before letting them fall out of her palm back onto the ground. “You don’t really throw rocks at them, after they’re taken?”

He shook his head. He was going to tell her it was only superstition. A stone given kindly, now, to remind them—when their minds turned—not to come seeking wrath by stealing livestock or crops. But he was still feeling too vague, a kind of restlessness in his own skin that failed to form the thoughts to words. He knew it was dangerous, leaving himself open like this, seeking after that seductive call at the edges of his hearing. With an effort he dragged himself back to the light and warmth of their company and was surprised to find Derringer still so near to him. Closer, even, having pulled the corner of his open jacket around herself. Giving a kind of embarrassed grimace as he shifted to slip that arm from the sleeve and drew it instead around her waist.

“They kept asking if I was cold,” she mumbled, toying with the frayed edge of the kerchief still tied on her bare foot, over the written words.

“Is this all right?”

She nodded, almost seeming to test herself—or her resolve, or how much she actually felt—as the rigidity melted away by slow degrees, tucking her chin down and settling against him. With her head so close to his chest, he only hoped she couldn’t hear how his heart was pounding, couldn’t feel how his arm around her trembled. His gaze traveling over the waves of her cascading hair as it puddled around them. He wished she would look up so that he could drown in the liquid flame of her eyes, but was terrified to move and spoil it all. All thought of the Wilderness’s dark mysteries driven from his mind. Oh if he could only extend the night, halt the murderous turn of the moon’s ill-begotten spawn and stay like this for a little bit longer.

“When this is over,” she began, her voice small.

But the group was stirring, gathering together again. She flinched back away from him, standing before he had even regained his wits. The absence of the warmth along his side felt a punishing brand as they set off again.

With the dawn, they were heartened to see signs of others having recently passed through here. When they passed near the House of Rush, they were actually greeted by agents of the House who offered refreshment and told them Marta had been through hours earlier. This lightened their steps a bit as they continued on, and before noon their path had joined with a larger and somewhat slower group that had formed from a number of lesser Houses. Many of these, too, had good tidings of having been awoken and warned in plenty of time to start out, while a few others were lucky to have simply spotted the coming spores for themselves. There was a feeling of buoyant comradery in the meeting, less festive than martial, and enough to make them all momentarily forget their sore feet and sleepless night. It likely would not have been sustainable for the full journey, but they were fortunate to have an herbalist in the group they had joined. In one of their brief halts, a fire was set and a cauldron yielded a vast amount of a stimulant the herbalist called the Traveler’s Spirit. It was a thick, green liquid with chunks in it that made it difficult to force down the gullet. It also smelled of wet grass and had an unpleasant turpentine aftertaste.

The long stretch of the road ahead seemed to melt away after that. Bailey could little recall what had happened between his first sip and dusk of the following day, when they found themselves nearing the encampment gathered to meet the spores. It was less that there was a blank spot in his memory so much as it felt that nothing that had happened had been important enough to remember, all the many steps blurring together into a haze of travel. With the effects wearing off, however, his body remembered the trip perfectly well. His feet ached and his legs shook with fatigue. There was an acrid burning in the back of his throat, and his stomach was painfully empty. Without the Traveler’s Spirit, he wasn’t confident they all could have kept up the pace to get as far as they had, so quickly. But it was not an experience he intended to repeat, if given the opportunity.

There was little time to dwell on it, however. Here, the hive of activity quickly swept over their group as people had food shoved on them and were then assigned to tasks and sections to cover. Overhead, the first groups to arrive had already been hard at work in the upper canopies of the trees, shaving off many of the higher branches and erecting platforms so people could fire at the spores overhead without catching the whole forest aflame. Others on the ground level were seeding competitive fast-growing mosses and fungi to make the earth even marginally less accessible to the descending spores. A group of Joplins who had made their way south into the empire were passing out chemicals that could be poured on anywhere they still managed to take root.

Somehow, Bailey finally found himself on one of the upper platforms, less than an hour from the expected landfall. Dotted out as far as his eye could reach were flickers of flame where others waited in preparation. His eye was mesmerized by the sheer numbers of people he could see still mobilizing below—more people than he had ever seen gathered together in one place. The wind set the platform to swaying, the chillness finding its way through his clothing. His nerves jangled unpleasantly, even his weariness being displaced as he glanced over to where Derringer waited with him on the other side of the platform. Lee Parable was initially going to join them, but had ultimately decided he was more comfortable sticking to the chemical route on the ground, rather than deal with the machinery. He could dimly see Derringer fiddling with her pack, now, frowning at the wand apparatus.

”Do you know how to use it?” he asked, and she startled.

“Oh, are you back? I mean, communicative?” She picked up her gear and moved closer, looking somewhat relieved. “Sorry, it’s just… It was so creepy. After you guys took that green stuff, it was like I was suddenly walking with a bunch of zombies. You were all silent, and you just walked straight through without a break for anything.”

Her description did nothing to relieve his stress, and he took out his pipe to distract himself. “That must have been exceedingly dull,” he said, dryly, to cover how his hands shook somewhat.

The red cloud overhead was fast descending, occasionally blotting out the moon entirely, so that Derringer seemed to flicker in and out of sight. “I tried talking to you a few times,” she admitted. “But it was like you were looking right through me.”

The colored smoke from his pipe drifted lazily on the wind. They were lucky it was such a clear, calm night. He knew he should feel grateful the spores hadn’t fallen during a storm or where heavier winds could have blown the spores across half the whole northern lands. But mostly he just felt sick, even the smoke doing little to cut the cold steel wire of tension in him.

���There’s something… I tried to say before. Maybe it can wait,” Derringer said, looking away. And whatever it was, he was suddenly certainly he didn’t want to hear it. However, his heart had only begun to lift when she continued with, “But it probably shouldn’t. It… has to be said. When this is over…”

“Derringer—“ he tried to forestall her words, perhaps with an inkling of where it was leading, even if he didn’t yet want to admit it to himself.

“When this is all over,” she said, firmly, turning to look at him again, “I need to leave. I’ll walk back with you, but then I need to go on. To that little town. Or further south. Maybe to Osla. I don’t know. But I have to go.”

Even in the dark, the crystal reflection of her eyes was a sun-glow. He felt scorched under her gaze. Like a weed drying up and crackling in the summer heat. Right in the heart of him was a sense of brittleness and withering. “I’m sorry,” he said, leadenly. “I… You told me not to, but I pushed you too far—“

“You didn’t. I pushed myself, maybe. But that’s not… You said there were bindings,” she said, putting a hand to her chest. “That they were weakening, bending. I can feel them breaking. I don’t know what will happen to me if the bindings break. But I can’t imagine I’ll survive the aftermath for long.

“While we were walking, I… tested myself a little. Trying to put pressure on just where I can still feel it hurt. It’s like a sore tooth, I just can’t keep my tongue from prodding it. And I… I need to leave. Now. Before the leaving is what finally breaks me altogether.”

His throat worked. He almost said, “Then don’t leave at all.” But it was a senseless and selfish request. Her bindings might hold for another year, or a decade. They might last the rest of his lifespan. And if she waited that long, how much worse would it be when he was finally the one forced to leave her, slipping away into death. It was delusional to think she would stay so long, anyway, a light contained in his tiny lantern, when she had all the rest of the world to set ablaze. Stupid to imagine she would waste even years with him when she could barely stand his touch as it was. And he was a fool twice-over for not having learned his father’s lesson: never to wholly give oneself to just one person.

Before the moonlight was covered again, she watched him swallow down his objections. It almost made it worse, seeing such terrible understanding in her expression. He looked away before the light could return, and it was almost with relief he heard the first shouts of warning from the other platforms.

The spores had arrived.

The sky was awash with red. The descending units, individually, were delicate, spindly things no bigger than a woman’s littlest finger. Along one end of them were wiry protrusions like tiny legs, the bottom section being more of a rod with a bulbous point on the top that contained the actual spores. It was this conversely delicate design that protected them from reaching too great a speed on entering the atmosphere. With the air resistance dragging at it, the weaker parts of it would sheer off, little by little, as terminal velocity was eventually reached just as the ground came rearing up and, on impact, the spores could be released more easily. Their form, luckily, meant that they tended to move rather closely together, caught up in one another’s protrusions. It limited the amount of space that needed to be protected against their invasion. Unfortunately, this also meant that when they did descend, it was en masse, like a hail of arrows already bloodied.

Flames sprouted up to meet the onslaught. The defenders waved their wands overhead, their protective masks in place, aiming at their targets as best they could. Small grenades, tossed overhead, took out still more. The light illuminated their targets, and it was gratifying to see how they sizzled and fell. But the onslaught was unyielding. For every fifty they singed, there were a thousand more directly behind, and still falling. Bailey almost felt he merely waved a torch at the dark, and that the great mass of red gnats swayed out of his path and back again. Below, the ground workers were kept just as busy, scouring the earth in wide swaths, only to go back to the ground they just tread and begin again. Children scurried along between the trees or jumped from platform to platform, bringing extra fuel or chemicals or shovels. At one point a little fellow who looked to be only a handful of summers old tried to carry two of the heavy canisters himself. He misjudged his leap between the platforms and there was a horrifying shriek he barely managed to gasp just before he hit the forest floor.

There were other accidents. The spores had not fallen in their area of the world for some time, and very few had much experience dealing with flames or anything like combat. More than a few people suffered burns, and others lost their heads entirely. Bailey remembered hearing one woman shrieking that the spores were in her eyes. She’d ripped the protective mask from her face and plunged her own nails into her eyes. The last intelligible thing she’d said was that they were burrowing into her, and then only dissolved into broken screams. Her partner on the platform had been forced to quit her own efforts in order to try to get the mask back on the inconsolable woman before the spores really did find their way into the nutrient-rich bloody chasms she’d left in her face. But Bailey had his own battles to fight, and could watch no longer. At some point they must have sent someone else to collect her, because when he looked again, she was gone.

They tried to work in shifts, as best they could, so there was always someone with a full canister while the other switched out. As the night dragged on, however, Bailey began to flag. His hands were clumsy, numb, each burst of flame a smear on his eyes—red and black and white, swirling together into a long nightmare. And then there came a point: there was barely a shout of warning before one of the grenades, thrown too carelessly, exploded directly overhead.

Bailey didn’t remember the blast, exactly. He found himself flat on his back, precariously close to the platform’s edge. Her ears were ringing, eyes almost too painful to open. One leg was dangling into darkness while the other was crumpled uncomfortably beneath him. His protective mask had been blown clean off, and the smoke was nearly unbearable, so thick he almost felt it lodged in his throat. He felt a warm, inhumanly smooth hand on his brow, and his streaming eyes opened to find Derringer kneeling over him. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear her over the ringing in his ears, the roar of fire, the panicked screams. Over her shoulder, he could see the sky was still filled with spores. Their wretched journey nearly at its end. Greedy for the rich soil beckoning below.

Her fingers found his cheek, and his eyes were dragged back to hers. Her other hand clutched the front of her clothing, over her chest, in a fierce, agonizing kind of grip. And amidst all of this, perhaps it was strange that his first clear thought was to worry what this was doing to the bindings over her heart. If his ears were properly working, would he hear that awful creak of bending metals again?

“I’m all right,” he tried to say, but when he attempted to sit up, she put a hand to his shoulder, firmly propelling him back down. But perhaps this was the push she needed. There was a steady kind of fire burning in her eyes, now, a look of purpose settling over her features as she set aside her own equipment and stood, looking up into the sky.

Her hands were moving together. Almost as one might roll a ball of clay. Palm to palm, they slid, smoothly gliding together, faster and faster, until between her fingers he began to see sparks. They moved between her hands until there was too much for her to directly contain, there. Little spits of lightning began to crawl over the fine bones of her wrist and creep over her fingers until they seemed bathed in the light. Only then did her hands start to move apart, the electricity sizzling as it leapt from one hand to the next, finger to finger, and back again, building louder and brighter all the while until it held steady: arcs of lightning held between her hands, growing thicker and more powerful the farther she spread her arms. Until at the last she made a motion as if hurling it into the air.

It was as if she’d called a thunderbolt directly from the night sky. The white-hot energy burst through the swarm of spores all the way into the stratosphere, burning everything in its path. Bailey, whose eyes were still only recovering from the grenade, thought he might actually have been blinded. He rolled to his side, still coughing wretchedly. And he must have fallen unconscious at some point, because the next he knew it was daylight that was weakly making its way through his eyelashes. He was lying in a canvas hammock, and he could hear the groans of the wounded around him. His lungs still burned, but at his first movement, water was pressed to his lips to at least satisfy the worst of it. When finally he could properly open his eyes, he found Lee Parable and Derringer Catherine hovering over him.

“Take it easy,” Derringer quickly cautioned when he immediately tried to get up.

“The spores?” he choked.

“It’s pretty well sorted,” she assured. At his somewhat frantic look, she said, almost too casually, “We ran into some luck at the end, there. I guess all that atmospheric disturbance was good for something: some heat lightning took out a lot of it all at once.”

Lee Parable was frowning, but he didn’t directly refute her, instead saying, “I saw the sky lit up white through the branches.”

“So you didn’t miss much, and a lot of people left already. Lee Parable says he’s going to stick around for a few more days to help try to kill any we might have missed. Oh, and someone stopped by? He was kind of tall, blond? I think he said he was, oh, Word in Rust?”

“Warden Rush,” Lee Parable provided, which made quite a bit more sense.

“And he wants to talk to you—oh not right now,” she protested when he started to get up again, looking like she might just bodily pin him to that hammock if he kept up in this ridiculous manner. “When you’re feeling well enough!”

“I’m all right,” he said, trying to wave her off and feeling primarily uncomfortable they were making such a fuss over him.

“No, you’re—Bailey, stop, just wait for the healer,” she finally snapped. And perhaps she merely took it for docility, that he abruptly lay perfectly still, his face turned a rather bright shade of red as he tried very hard not to look at anything at all. Although how she could be so oblivious to how perfectly embarrassed her companions were, he wasn’t sure. Lee Parable was reduced to hand-speech, giving abrupt apologies for why he had to leave, right now, immediately, and be elsewhere. Bailey wished he could do the same. Of course, it wasn’t like she had intended to publicly address him in quite so intimate a manner, he had to remind himself. She likely had only picked it up from hearing his family address him, and hadn’t realized the significance of it. And right now, he was far too mortified to even broach the subject with her.

At the very least, it kept him lying still long enough wait for one of the healers to take the time to come check him out. The healer was a rather frazzled-looking older lady who checked his ears and eyes and listened to his chest, frowning when she heard he’d had smoke exposure.

“I don’t like the sound of your breathing,” she said, frankly, “but you otherwise seem well enough to travel. If the cough keeps up for another few days, see someone.” And then she was off, seeing to someone with a burn covering half of his exposed skin.

Bailey’s legs felt rubbery, and he moved stiffly at first, grateful for Derringer’s arm. But by the time he saw Warden Rush still organizing a few of the ground units, his stride was fairly sure again, even walking alone. He had only time to feel freshly embarrassed for his poor state of dress before his uncle spotted him, giving an approving nod.

“You organized things quickly,” Warden Rush said, after the initial pleasantries were over. “It’s one thing to plan at one’s leisure, but doing things right under a time constraint is another thing entirely. That modified girl, the Houseless Red—I’ve spoken with five Houses who said she was their first news the spores were even falling.” He considered Bailey a moment longer before saying, “Don’t concern yourself too much, setting up another meeting with all of our Sister-Houses. We’ll all expect a delay. But when it does happen, you have my support.”

“Y—I… Thank’ee,” Bailey managed, nearly swaying on his feet at the unexpected rush of relief he experienced, only for Warden Rush to laugh and clap him on the shoulder.

“We’ll take it from here. You should get back.”

There did seem to be little enough for Bailey to do, there, and those with bigger stakes in the land or with more resources seemed to have it fairly well-covered. The walk back would certainly be a more leisurely one, following a trickle of people heading back south either to hunt the ground for any missed spores or simply to go home. Bailey might have felt glad to have the walk back to spend as much time as he liked with Derringer Catherine, if it weren’t for the fact he knew this journey was the last he would see of her. He wished he could somehow contrive to drag the trip out a bit longer. But it wasn’t wholly contrivance that resulted in somewhat frequent stops as his breath was stolen away and his coughing worsened.

Still, he didn’t think very much of it until he coughed up the first drops of blood.

In his palm, the droplets glared crimson against the pale linen of his kerchief. He had touched his nose, at first, to find that, no, this could not be blamed on a nosebleed. He thought, then, perhaps it had been only the force of his coughing. The ache in his chest had not abated, as they had walked, and now—mere hours from home—the sensation in his chest had gradually built to a stabbing pain. As the pain had worsened, so, too, had his cough. But maybe it was only the smoke damage.

He could not long lie to himself. The hand he held to his chest could feel the frantic beat of his heart, but it rested near a darker secret: an unspooling of deadly tendrils where it had nestled in his lungs. The blood in his hand blurred with bitter tears, his legs becoming shaky beneath him. It was only fear of further indignity that kept him from fainting entirely, as with a force of will he closed his hand around the soiled cloth and made his shoulders straighten. He had retreated some few steps to get some privacy while the latest coughing passed, and now he forced a look of unconcern on his face as he put the offending object in his pocket and rejoined Derringer.

“Are you all right?

If he told her, he might well undo all the effort that was going to be put into sending her away in the first place. There was nothing that could be done, and it would be selfish and cowardly just to put this burden on her so that he wouldn’t have to carry it alone. Better to smile, now and let her make a clean break of it.

“Of course,” he reassured.

She hesitated, seeing how he had picked up the pace rather significantly, before she ventured, “We could rest a bit longer, if you need to?”

“There is no need.”

She bit her lip, accepting this as something of a rebuke, no matter how airily he spoke it. Perhaps she had misread the situation, and it was only his injury that had kept him dawdling before, rather than any kind of reluctance for the journey’s end. Maybe she had been projecting, all this while.

As much as she had tried to soften it, leaving would still be enormously difficult. That night they fought the spores, after she had called out some of the deepest energies she could feel percolating within her—there had been that dreadful moment when she had turned back and found him lying so very still, with his limbs still all at awkward angles from where he had been so carelessly flung. He didn’t answer to her call, her touch, and the little flutter of a pulse in the delicate curve of his neck had seemed such a fragile, thready thing. She hadn’t intended to feel anything, then, but it hadn’t stopped the terrible wrenching ripping its way inside of her as she gathered him up to take down to the healers. Later, given some time alone, she had allowed her skin to become translucent and taken a cautious survey of the damage. There was now only a single band still in place over the trembling heart, the strain visible even on brief review. If she was smart, she would avoid any further stress she could possibly manage until, perhaps, she could find some way to fix what had already been done.

As they neared the house, she wondered if she wasn’t entirely a fool that she hadn’t broken off from his path, already. There was nothing she had left at the house that she could not replace, and listening to the wretched hacking of that painful cough wasn’t doing either of them any favors. But she kept by him, anyway, increasingly concerned, the paler he became. A few times he had to stop and lean against a tree and cough into his kerchiefs. But he waved aside assistance, managing a smile, and not slackening their pace in the slightest.

As they entered, at last, into the courtyard around the house, he at least allowed his shoulders to sag in relief. The home was quite intact, even if the ground were a bit scuffed-up, still, from when they had had their impromptu gathering. There were a few chickens hissing warnings at them, flashing tiny black teeth in a challenge, but Pin shooed them away as she came at a gallop towards them, giving a brilliant smile she didn’t bother to his behind her hand.

Before Pin could reach them, Bailey said in undertones, “I’ll be sorry to see you go, but it’s perhaps better done sooner than later.”

“I… Yes, you’re right. I should probably…”

But then Pin was upon them, nearly sweeping Bailey off his feet in her enthusiasm. “Oh, slow’d’ee, had neighbors pour’em through all day, and get’ee lead feet ‘n’ all!” she said, but rather too excitable for her scolding to have any weight. But this turned rather to concern as he abruptly bent, coughing heavily into the kerchief he fumbled from his pocket. “Are’ee hurt?”

“Just… smoke,” he gasped, eyes streaming a bit as he was wracked with another cough. “Derringer,” he said when he could speak, the word almost a plea, for she hadn’t made any move to leave.

At Pin’s curious look, Derringer shuffled her feet, guiltily, starting to step towards the house. “I… I have to go.”

“Now?” Pin asked, blankly. “It’ll be sundown in a few hours, get’ee fresh start if’n—“

“No, she has to—“ Bailey started, grabbing Pin’s shoulder in his desperation, but then he could feel it coming on again. And he knew, within the first few coughs, that this time was different. When the blood came, it wasn’t the small droplets he’d managed to conceal so far, but a flood of red spilling past his lips onto the churned earth.

His sister shrieked, now holding him up as he shook and shook, giving weak gasps as he drowned in the torrent. Pin was sobbing, terrified, and when he finally got the breath to whisper something to her, she shook her head violently.

“What’s going on?” Derringer asked, hovering, uncertain. “Let me help, I can help get him to the house, we can get a healer—“

“This doesn’t concern you,” Bailey snapped at her, the viciousness of his tone making her stumble back. “Go. Now.”

She watched Pin help him make his limping way to the house. Neither of them looked back. Pin was trembling nearly as much as he was. When they got to the door, they were met by a number of people who had returned to fulfil their contracts and come, curious at the noise in the yard. Pin didn’t answer their questions, but instead simply requested they help him up the stairs to somewhere comfortable.

To Pin fell the unhappy task of the arrangements. Talus Mos had to be told, of course. Although she kept trying to sort that duty to the bottom of her list, she went to him first. It was as terrible as she had anticipated, but she didn’t have time for his grief. There was the wood to gather, and the spice to collect. Bailey would have told her her to skip most of the ceremony, but he wasn’t consulted, and it was with an obstinate air she put all of her efforts into making all the proper arrangements. Trying to push away the heartsick by falling into the work.

When it finally came time, she looked desperately for tasks unfinished; for any way to delay the inevitable. But there was nothing left to do but the final step.

He’d changed out of his bloody clothes, and he was at least strong enough to walk to the pyre under his own power. He would not—could not—be buried in the family crypt, as their mother had been. Not with the spore aching to burst its way out of where it had nestled in his chest, borne there on the wind when his mask had been knocked loose. But she was determined that he would still have a proper send-off.

It was a House affair, and they were given their space to manage it privately. Talus Mos would have been permitted to attend, but neither of them had really expected him to; he wasn’t really strong enough to endure it. The house was shuttered and dark as the two of them made their way to the little clearing as the sun dipped low over the horizon. All the earth was dark, even if the sky held traces of light.

The wood they had gathered was stacked high enough that he had to hoist himself up, to sit on top. It was not the most comfortable place, perhaps, but he didn’t expect to be there long. He felt curiously detached, once sitting there, taking out his belt knife. Almost unable to believe it. Just a few days ago, there had seemed to be so much promise still left.

“Warden Rush pledged to back us,” he said. “They don’t expect to be called soon, but you should… use this. Call it a funeral feast. People get… sentimental on such occasions.”

He stifled a cough, determined to have his say. There had been no more hemorrhaging since that first scare, and he would not have his last words lost to another.

“Lee Parable can manage most of the planting supervision this year alone, if he has to. We settled what seeds we’d need, and where. But pay attention, and rotate them next year.”

He was pushing it, talking this much, and he couldn’t restrain the cough that tore through him, then.

“Don’t waste the spice on me,” he said when he could. “And remember to take the ring, after I…”

Pin was trying to keep her crying quiet, and he couldn’t bear to look at her as he positioned the knife at his chest. It wobbled in his grip. And he was afraid that, at the last, he wouldn’t be able to do it. But the alternative was to ask Pin to do it, and that could not be tolerated.

And he might have found the courage, then, if he hadn’t looked up to see her approaching through the trees. With her long, long hair floating along in her wake, coming from the gloom, her step slow and sure and her wide eyes alight, she almost seemed an apparition. He opened his mouth, intending to beg her to leave, but he didn’t have the will to ask it of her, again. Instead he was silent as she approached, curiously expectant, though he knew not of what.

Preoccupied as she was, Pin didn’t notice Derringer had arrived until she was standing on the other side of the pyre. There was something frightening in her expression: distorted not by pity nor sadness, but a with avid ferocity as she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me, about the spore?” And when he could give no response, she began climbing up on the bundled sticks and snatched the knife from his nerveless fingers, letting it drop. She pressed, “You would have let me leave without telling me?” Seizing his shirt-front, pulling herself up entirely, he could see the swirling, living light in her eyes as she hissed into his face, “You were just going to die, without saying anything?”

She was too near. Her powerful limbs were almost a cage around him, the heat in them a sweet balm to the wretched shivers he’d been repressing. They were both nearly breathless, and of their own volition his hands had come up to seize her upper arms, fingers partly buried in the molten flow of her hair. Oh if he had to die, would this be such a terribly bad way to go? But—

“Dear, your heart,” he said, weakly.

“Damn my heart,” she growled, closing that last distance.

It was, perhaps, less a kiss than a calculated attack. Her mouth found his, but then so did the flame. It drank on his inhalation, trailing down into his lungs, until it touched the coiling tendril of the sprouting spore, and that burning agony was worse than anything the spore had yet inflicted on him. His fingers spasmed, ineffectually, but there was no breath left in him to scream, no strength to resist. She had gone entirely translucent, focused as she was, and the light in her was nearly too bright to look at. She blazed, little more than fire in a woman-shaped casing, as she held him, burning out the last of the contagion and cauterizing its many wounds.

His first breath of the cool night air was almost unbearably sweet. It rushed to his head so that he swayed, still held up by Derringer’s arms.. But then she let go. She was stepping down and back, away from the pyre. Her hands held at her chest in a staying motion. He could hear Pin, sounding utterly bewildered, shouting questions. She’d ran around and collected his knife, holding it at Derringer in a terrified but determined manner, but Derringer wasn’t even looking at her.

“Wait,” he said, trying to get his feet under him. But she had fled, and Pin had latched onto his arm.

“What was’em?” she demanded. “Are’ee hurt? It was wearing her face—“

“I’m not hurt, she burned it out of me. Let go.” And then, knowing that wasn’t nearly good enough: “Please, I have to go, I’ll explain when I get back.”

There were no footprints to follow, as he had that first day. But there were occasional little signs of her passing: the bent undergrowth, broken twigs, scorched earth, and the smell of lightning. And really, there was only one landmark nearby that she would recognize.

He burst onto the ruins to find her standing at the ledge, her back to him. The light had fled, and it was only under the stars he picked out her form. When she turned, her hands were still clasped at her chest, but her expression was clear.

“It’s breaking,” she said, plainly. “And… I knew it would. I had to get here, before… But I think I’ve figured it out, now. It’s all right.” She took a small step backward.

“Stop! What are you doing?”

“I’ve figured it out,” she repeated. “This… this glass skin. It isn’t me. Even if I lived in it for another thousand years, it was never me.” She took another step back, her heel at the rock ledge. Not even she could survive that drop.

“Don’t. Please, don’t. We’ll fix it. We’ll put the bands right. Please.”

“Shh, Bailey,” she said, giving a tremulous smile. “I know you’re frightened. And I’m sorry. But… it’ll be all right.”

The wind tugged at her, her hair arching out over the ledge. She took a step. And then she was gone.

.

Concluded-->

[talabib]

How To Deal With Stress And Society’s Unrealistic Expectations.

Tons of products are marketed to women as stress-relievers and ways to relax and feel better about themselves. But all the spa days, coloring books and bath bombs in the world aren’t going fix the real problems that women face on a daily basis. For problems like systemic sexism, unrealistic expectations and all the stress and anxiety they can produce, the solution is much more complicated.

Fortunately, science has made some significant progress in understanding the ways in which we can deal with stress and exhaustion.

While we may not be able to topple the patriarchy today, we can fight it by becoming stronger, more informed and empowered.

Emotional exhaustion is a component of burnout, and it can happen when we get emotionally stuck.

Do you know that feeling when you’re completely and utterly exhausted, yet there’s something in the back of your mind saying you still haven’t done enough? If you’re a woman, chances are you’re all too familiar with this sense of being overwhelmed by life.

When it feels like you’re constantly trying to meet your own demands and expectations and those of your job, family and friends, you can easily slip from benign tiredness to stress, anxiety and emotional exhaustion.

Emotional exhaustion happens after you’ve spent too much time caring too much. It is the first of three components identified by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in 1975 in his clinical definition of burnout.

Second is depersonalization, which is when you find your capacity for compassion, empathy and caring dwindles.

The third component of burnout is a decreased sense of accomplishment. In other words, that feeling of “nothing I do matters.”

All of these symptoms may sound familiar to you, but you may not know how they come about. For starters, how exactly can one exhaust one’s emotions? The answer? It happens when we get stuck.

You can think of an emotional experience like a tunnel: it starts, then you’re in the middle of it, and then it ends. However, when you’re experiencing the same emotion all day and every day, there is no satisfactory end to that feeling. You’re stuck in the emotional tunnel with no relief.

So it’s no wonder that people in jobs that require caring and helping, such as teaching and the medical profession, report very high levels of burnout. Some 20 to 30 percent of teachers admit to it, and for the medical profession, it’s upward of 52 percent. It may come as no surprise to hear that parental burnout is a fast-growing phenomenon.

Fortunately, there are strategies to keep burnout at bay. And no, we’re not talking about bath bombs and coloring books; we’re talking about real, scientifically sound strategies to make sure you don’t get stuck in your emotions.

Stress can cause terrible damage to the body, so always try to close the stress cycle.

There’s a very scientific reason for why we tend to get stuck in the emotion of stress, which also reveals just how dangerous it is to our health.

Stress is essentially a neurological and physiological response triggered by a perceived threat. However, all the neurological and hormonal responses that accompany stress are designed to help you do one thing: run.

Back when our stress-response system evolved, we needed to run for our lives a lot more often than we do now. So the stress cycle starts by releasing the hormone epinephrine to push blood into the muscles. As a result, your blood pressure and heart rate go up, your muscles tense and your breathing quickens. Meanwhile, to make sure you can haul-ass away from that theoretical charging rhino, other body functions like growth, digestion, reproduction and immunity are all slowed down.

So if the emotion of stress never ends the danger is clear. Your body will end up with chronic high blood pressure and a corresponding higher risk of heart disease. And due to its compromised immune and digestive systems, your body won’t heal as quickly as it would normally and will be at higher risk of a number of digestion-related illnesses.

All of this means one thing: you need to close the stress cycle as often as possible. Since stress is about running for your life, the natural happy ending to this cycle is that you arrive, safely and breathlessly, back home where you can celebrate with your friends.

If you’re guessing that running or exercise in general is a great way to close out a stress cycle, you’d be right. After running, swimming, biking, dancing or engaging in some blood-pumping exercise for 20 to 60 minutes you’re likely to feel a shift in mood, your muscles will relax, and you will be able to take deeper breaths. You may even find yourself crying from the emotional release. But don’t worry, this is another good sign that you’ve closed off a stress cycle.

However, it doesn’t have to be physically demanding exercise. Creative expression, be it painting, music, theater or sculpting, can also result in a satisfying closure to a stress cycle, as can positive social interactions that signal your return to safety. Affectionate moments like a more-than-just-polite hug or kiss are good, as is deep and genuine laughter or some quality time with a beloved pet.

You can manage frustration through positive reappraisal and planful problem-solving.

Working out an effective strategy against stress requires a good understanding of the difference between stress and stressors – the things that get you stressed – as well as which stressors are controllable and which are not.

Let’s say you’re a middle school teacher. In this case, there’s no avoiding the daily stressors of having to complete endless amounts of paperwork and deal with annoying school administrators. These are things you can’t control – they come with the job. What you can do is schedule daily activities that close out the stress cycle, like going to the gym or practicing with your music or theater group.

You can also manage these uncontrollable stressors through positive reappraisal. If you’re a natural optimist, you’ll probably find positive reappraisal easy since it’s a way of reframing a difficult situation to find positive opportunities.

But make sure you don’t confuse this with “looking on the bright side” since positive reappraisal is always about fact and truth, not delusion.

Controllable stressors can be managed with planful problem-solving. This is the name for analyzing a frustrating situation and coming up with a way to solve it or lessen frustration. If getting stuck in traffic is wearing on your last nerve, for example, you might apply some planful problem-solving and start using a good GPS system to tell you where the traffic is and provide you with alternate routes.

The scientific reason for many of our frustrations lies in what’s known as the Monitor, which also goes by the more scientific names of discrepancy-reducing/-increasing feedback loop or criterion velocity. The Monitor is a mechanism of the brain that constantly assesses our current situation and our future plans while keeping a ratio of how much effort it’s going to take to get there along with how much progress we’re making.

Generally speaking, the Monitor can be just as frustrated by problems that are out of your control as it can by problems you could have prevented. The important thing to know is that once you’re aware of the Monitor, you can start to work with it and lessen your frustrations using the tools we’ve just been considering.

But these tools won’t work all the time. So it’s always useful to remember that difficult and frustrating tasks are often more rewarding than easy tasks. For example, if something is hard to read, studies show that you’re more likely to remember it. So, the next time you find yourself stuck in a difficult situation, remember that this is probably a better chance for personal growth than if it were easy.

You can cope better by knowing that the game is rigged and by fighting unrealistic expectations with facts.

Let’s say you want to climb a mountain. If you think to yourself, “hey, this will be a piece of cake,” you will surely become frustrated at the first sign of struggle. But if you say, “I’m going to embark on the extremely challenging task of climbing this mountain,” then you’ll consider it normal and not frustrating at all when you find yourself struggling.

This is an example of how your expectations determine your frustrations. By managing your expectations, you can also manage your frustrations.

This approach can not only be used to tackle individual challenges but should also be applied to the world in general.

Women are told all the time that they’re not being discriminated against and that if they’re feeling frustrated all they need is to do is drink some green smoothies and finish a coloring book, and they’ll feel great again. When this doesn’t happen, it’s easy for women to feel like it’s their fault – that something’s wrong with them.

But this isn’t true. The fact is that the game is rigged, and we’re all still living in a patriarchy, despite what some might say. Understanding this will be far more effective than the greatest bath bomb ever invented.

Science backs it up. In one study, people were given an impossible task. Naturally, when they couldn’t complete it and gave up, the participants felt miserable. But the moment they were told that the test was rigged, the negative emotions immediately vanished.

Another persistent source of unrealistic expectations for women is the Bikini Industrial Complex (BIC). This is the multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that pressures women to conform to a specific and unattainable body ideal.

But here are the facts: even the concept of the body mass index (BMI), which has long been used to assess health, is rigged because the majority of the people who invented it worked for weight-loss clinics that wanted to keep women buying their services.

Furthermore, a 2016 study published in The Lancet showed that people who were labeled clinically “obese” had a “lower health risk” than people labeled “underweight.” What’s more, people in the “overweight” category were found to be at a “lower risk” than those in the low end of the “healthy” category.

BMI is bananas, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that being skinny will make you healthier or live longer. This awareness can go a long way to making you feel better the next time you’re bombarded with ads from the BIC.

You can build your resilience to stress by aligning yourself with something larger and fighting Human Giver Syndrome.

If you’re familiar with the long line of Disney musicals, then you may have recognized that in each one, from Snow White to Beauty and the Beast, the main character will sing her “I want” song. In fact, you can gauge women’s progress in the United States through these songs. Snow White sings about wanting nothing more than a valiant prince, but Belle sings about wanting “adventure in the great wide somewhere.”

Disney princesses haven’t always been the most woke, but they’ve always shown us one thing: the importance of knowing what you want. One of the most effective ways of persisting through stressful days is to know what you want and to have your life aligned with something bigger than yourself. In other words, you need to find your meaning.

According to psychologist Martin Seligman, meaning is the secret to happiness. For others, it’s more like the secret to coping in a stressful world. Some understand meaning as spiritual or the mission of leaving a meaningful legacy behind.

There’s no right or wrong when it comes to finding your calling. The only sure thing is that the more a person is aligned with a deeper sense of meaning, the more fully they will live their lives.

But what about meaning in your own life? How do you find it? One thing that can get in the way is what experts call Human Giver Syndrome.

In her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, philosopher Kate Manne describes two classes of people, human givers and human beings. Human givers are expected to devote their time, attention and bodies to human beings, who get to express their individuality.

In many societies, women suffer from Human Giver Syndrome. They have been raised to fall into the human giver role rather than tend to their own needs or seek their own meaning. They are told that all women should want is to be pretty, happy, calm and devoted to the needs of others.

Even Joseph Campbell, the author who helped popularize the concept of the hero’s journey, doesn’t believe in such a thing as a heroine’s journey. According to him, the woman is more of a place than a person, a destination for men to reach rather than an agent on her own journey.

Human Giver Syndrome is a powerful enemy deeply rooted in female consciousness. But it is not reality. Don’t believe it and don’t punish yourself or let others punish you if you’ve “failed” to live up to the demands of Human Giver Syndrome.

Needing people is a fact of life, not a sign of weakness.

Here’s another popular myth in modern society: that life is a straight-line progression from being a dependent and needy child to being an independent adult. In fact, it’s pretty common to hear people say that a “healthy” adult is someone who can feel whole with or without other people.

But here’s the reality: we aren’t going to function at our best when we’re constantly lonely and isolated or when we’re constantly surrounded by others. We need both. We need to move back and forth between feeling connected to others and feeling autonomous.

We need connections for a lot of reasons, including emotional and medical support as well as getting information and education. Exactly how much connection someone needs varies from person to person. Introverts generally need less connection and more alone time than extroverts, who require more connection.

But it’s not just quantity that matters. Quality does too. In a study of 70,000 heterosexual marriages, the couples in what were defined as bad quality relationships had poorer physical and mental health, shorter life spans and less satisfaction in life than those who were not.

The opposite was true for those deemed to be in high-quality relationships. These people healed faster and took better care of themselves generally. Even people with chronic illnesses reported a higher quality of life as a result of a good relationship. What’s more, the quality of a relationship can be a better predictor of overall health than whether or not someone is a smoker.

So, far from being a weakness or unhealthy, needing people makes you stronger.

It can also give you a fresh perspective on who you are. When Sophie fell in love with a man named Bernard, they were a little skeptical at first. He was older, had kids from a previous marriage and wasn’t the kind of guy for whom they’d necessarily expect Sophie to fall. But she explained that by seeing herself through Bernard’s eyes, she was able to love herself in new ways. This was the power of connection at work.

Sometimes it takes a friend or partner to help you find compassion and love toward yourself. But this isn’t a weakness; it makes you stronger, and it’s part of being human.

Rest and sleep are crucial to health, productivity and avoiding burnout.

There’s an old and troubling saying that goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

People who believe this also tend to value our ability to push aside our needs and use sheer grit and determination to go ceaselessly from one task to the next. But this kind of life is downright dangerous. Not only will it lead to bad work but it can also take a toll on your health.

Science tells us that what really makes us stronger is rest and sleep.

If you want to do quality work, studies show that you should rest between tasks. This effectively erases the effects of fatigue from the previous task and allows you to spend twice as long on the next job as you otherwise would.

It also leads to better work. How so? Well, when you rest, your brain isn’t being idle; it’s using a group of connected areas known as the default mode network. In this state, your brain is “wandering” and is able to assess current problems and find solutions in a way that isn’t possible when you’re actively involved in a task.

So when you’re stuck on something, don’t just try to plow through it. Take a break and do some mindless task like folding your laundry for a little while. You might be surprised how often the solution will come to you.

It’s also worth knowing that you can have an “active rest,” by just switching up your tasks from time to time. Emily Nagoski, wrote Burnout while simultaneously working on a novel. Since writing fiction and nonfiction is like exercising two different muscles, it effectively allowed her to rest and return to each task feeling refreshed.

Likewise, the value of sleep should not be underestimated. When you’re sleeping, your body undergoes all kinds of bone, muscle and blood vessel repairs. This means that the benefits of any physical exercise you did during the day are really taking place while you sleep. The same is true for mental activity. Sleep is the time when all the new information you learned during the day can be consolidated and stored properly in memory.

Our culture is obsessed with productivity. But life isn’t about squeezing out every last drop of energy until you’re empty as if you’re a tube of toothpaste. Life is about you and your something bigger, and you’ll be more likely to reach this something bigger when you are well-rested.

Controlling the inner madwoman and practicing self-compassion are key to being strong and joyful.

In US actress Amy Poehler’s memoir Yes Please, she describes the nagging inner voice that has often told her she’s ugly and doesn’t deserve love. Those suffering from Human Giver Syndrome likely know this inner “madwoman,” as experts call it, as it tends to show up whenever they think they’ve failed to live up to the calm, pretty, smiling, devoted-to-others woman they’re expected to be.

Benign self-criticism can help you be more detail-oriented, but it can quickly slip into toxicity when it keeps you from doing anything. The madwoman is often a perfectionist, and she can convince you to give up when the first mistake appears or even not bother starting anything in the first place since perfection is impossible to begin with. But to grow strong and mighty you need to be able to take chances and feel free to learn from your mistakes along the way.

This means you need to control your madwoman. One of the best strategies for doing so is to create a vivid image of your madwoman. You can even name her. The more you do this, the more you’ll be able to see yourself as being apart from this toxic voice and that you don’t need to listen to her admonishments. This can even lead to a friendly relationship that allows you to be your best.

And once you have your self-critical voice under control, it becomes easier to practice self-compassion, which is another key step in growing stronger.

Self-compassion can be difficult for some because it is essentially a form of healing. And when we’re healing, be it a broken arm or our relationship with ourselves, it leads to feelings of pain and vulnerability. But if you stick with it, the healing will finish, and you’ll find that the struggle has made you stronger and mightier for having persevered.

With this strength, you can work toward joy. A lot of self-help books try to point you toward happiness, but in reality, this isn’t a good goal. Happiness will always be a fleeting moment, not a destination.

What can be sustained is joy, by staying self-compassionate and regularly taking time to feel gratitude toward the people in your life and the good events that happen each day.

There are many complex and specific reasons why women are facing burnout these days. We don’t have regular ways of closing out the stress cycle brought on by our jobs and day-to-day lives. Fortunately, this can be done through exercise, creativity and affection. It’s also important to acknowledge that we live in an unbalanced society that discriminates against women and that the health and beauty industries place undue pressure on women. By recognizing these factors and striking back against our self-critical voices, we can begin to defeat the patriarchy and be our best selves through self-compassion and focusing on following our own dreams.