Tumgik
#i think you can guess who the giant is
cyncerity · 2 years
Text
HEY EVERYONE IM MAKING A NEW AU I HAVE THOUSANDS OF WORDS TYPED ALREADY SO IM GONNA SPLIT IT UP
have fun with this with absolutely no context, i’ll explain it once i post all the parts but you’re all free to guess until then!! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this au and i wanna talk about it hsksksjshj
anyway, here’s part 1!
tw: vore
“We have to cut our losses here. We don’t have enough to fund this any longer, and there’s no one we can reach out to for more money. We can’t risk this getting out.”
“Fine, I- I know, it’s just…this is a breakthrough. We can’t afford to give up now.”
“We won’t. We just need some time to get back on our feet is all. Besides, he knows what to do now…” the scientists turned their heads to the one way mirror they stood behind. A little boy, barely a teenager, sat behind it on his bed, his eyes glassy and unblinking, turned a glossy pearlescent white. Their project, practically their life’s work. Well, the container for it, anyway.
***
Wilbur heard the three scientists come into the room, and somehow registered one of them motion vaguely with their hand despite his eyes being effectively turned off, which meant they wanted him back in their world. Ugh. Still, he cut off his thoughts with his other half practically (given that it’d been almost a decade since they’d been separated), eyes beginning to function again and the scientists approaching him as they saw his eyes shift back to the colors they were supposed to be.
“Wilbur, what we’re going to tell you is very, very important, so you have to listen carefully. It’s your life at stake if this goes wrong. And his.” The one in blue said, gesturing to Wilbur’s torso. Well, that was certainly a way to get his attention. Wilbur didn’t say a word, though; the green one didn’t like it when he ‘sassed them,’ so he instead scooted back and placed both arms protectively around himself and his…what did they call him once, ‘cargo’? He was sure he heard Green call him a ‘parasite’ once, which was rude. Still, they must have noticed his panic, cause the orange one responded immediately. “It’ll all be ok, things will just have to change for a minute. You’re…youre not going to be able to stay here for a while.” “What?!” Wilbur said, unable to restrain himself. The green one went to speak up but was silenced by Blue, who just whispered something about him being ‘scared’ and how this was ‘probably a lot to handle.’ Yeah, no shit it was!
“I get this is a huge change, I do, but it’s necessary for now. We don’t have the necessary resources to keep taking care of you here. We need to find a way to keep you safe and healthy, both of you. You’ll be staying somewhere secure while we find somewhere more reclusive to hide you. We don’t want anyone finding out anything and putting the two of you in danger.” Orange said, sitting next to Wilbur and rubbing a thumb across his knuckles. Right. Right, he had a purpose. And if part of his purpose was to survive without his caretakers for a short while, he could do it. If it meant safety for his stowaway, he could do it.
“You doin ok, bud?” Orange asked, and Wilbur nodded slightly. Orange was his favorite of the main three. He was always nice, and even gave him extra treats and toys when he was behaving! “When do you think you can be ready to leave, Wil?” Green asked, crouching to be at level with where he sat. “Whenever you need me to be, sir.” Green smiled and ruffled his hair. Wil always tried to be extra good for Green. It’s not like he didn’t like him, it’s just that Green was more likely to yell at him if he messed up. “Good kid. We’ll leave tomorrow morning and introduce you to who you’ll be staying with. Try to get some rest.” He said, smiling before leaving and leading the other two out with him.
He pressed into his core, feeling cold scales slither against his insides. He pressed in harder a few times and they pressed back, signaling that they’d heard everything. Wilbur pat down a few times and released the pressure, lying back onto his bed carefully to not jostle the weight inside of him.
This was going to be interesting.
42 notes · View notes
iniziare · 3 months
Text
Re-tag drop: Yelan
#yelan: ic. [ that's a worst-case scenario. but all too often; the most pessimistic speculation turns out to be the closest to the truth. ]#yelan: inquiries. [ oh? you'd like to know more about me? what will you give in exchange then? ]#yelan: countenance. [ an old friend of mine once privately commented to me that yelan “is always smiling; but never with her eyes.” ]#yelan: introspection. [ like a phantom she appears in various guises at the center of events; and disappears before the storm stops. ]#yelan: meta. [ the chances are if i open this door; there can be no witnesses left alive. is that a sufficient reason for you? ]#yelan: little notes. [ how can things ever be the same again: knowing your life was saved when others weren't? salvation can be a burden. ]#yelan: wishes. [ that which hides inside her… that constant calling; it is the blood of heroes which has been howling for 500 years. ]#yelan: etc. [ every round of finger-guessing is a tiny adventure; and every roll of dice sends sporadic thrills down her spine. ]#yelan: home. [ i'm guessing you've fallen for the rumors about me being very wealthy; having high demands for my standards of living? ]#yelan: yanshang. [ the teahouse has really brightened up after the boss took over and kicked the fatui and gamblers out. ]#yelan: lantern rite. [ every year on this day; the lanterns light up the night. may the fire never die and may humanity endure. ]#yelan: chasm. [ perhaps she will plunge into that darkness one day; and the ill fate that once befell her ancestors shall find her too. ]#yelan: scope. [ i serve ningguang. the tianquan of the qixing. the scope of my work includes some of liyue's biggest secrets. ]#yelan: weaponry. [ water. divided it is as streams uncounted: close yet untangled. united it is as a giant wave: inexorable; unstoppable. ]#yelan: uncle tian. [ there's nothing wrong with wanting to win other people's respect. but when has uncle tian looked down on anyone? ]#yelan: ningguang. [ we both made a mistake: we shouldn't have involved ordinary folk in what we do. / ordinary folk? ]#yelan: xiao. [ you think you're oh-so cold and ruthless. i'm not buying it. - losing one of us so the rest can escape? some victory that is#yelan: keqing. [ if something happens that they didn't anticipate; it throws their plans into oblivion. but the yuheng is different. ]#yelan: ganyu. [ i could never work non-stop like she does. certainly not at that level of efficiency. i guess being half-adeptus has its pe#yelan: yanfei. [ when i help her out; i always get some invaluable leads in return. gotta say though: i think she respects me a little much#yelan: traveler. [ you don't have to be on guard around me. i never scheme against people who have my stamp of approval. ]#yelan: v youth. [ you're still young. be patient. believe in yourself; and don't look outside yourself to prove your value. ]#yelan: v. pre-qixing. [ i don't do these things to help the powerful or mighty get rid of dissident forces. but because water too has a sou#yelan: v. qixing. [ seeing isn't always believing. and if you can't trust your eyes; you certainly can't trust rumors. ]#yelan: liyue. [ liyue will never plunge into disaster without clue of the danger like it once did. she will see that it is not unprepared.#yelan: wriothesley. [ don't fight over fleeting gains or losses. focus on where your heart is leading you and move forward. ] delusionaid.#yelan. [ i can't change the facts. but if it's a choice between the cold; hard truth and blissful unawareness: i'll take the former. ]
2 notes · View notes
boy-armageddon · 4 months
Text
Personally I think the little phenomenon w/ Johnny Whitney writing a just genuinely sort of devastating song once per every record or so (or twice! take, well, Take Me to the Sea 4 example. actually three times maybe. talking about specifically georgia + my organ sounds like… here and also bonetrees and a broken heart a little. also also As Brass And Satin just feels utterly melancholic in its near entirety) is that he just wakes up face down covered in blood in the studio, his own or someone else’s he can’t tell, shaking and grasping some shoddily scrawled out lyrics on a rlly very old piece of paper. The rest of the band might be like “johnny what the fuck happened” and he just springs 2 his feet like “oh haha nothing :> im fine don’t worry. nothing happened!!!!!!! anyways i have this cool new idea 4 a song wanna hear” and any time anyone tries 2 ask about it he immediately dodges the question and moves on2 a diff topic. He can explain what it’s about, but any time someone asks about the inspiration he gets nervous and is like “ohhh ummm. I 4got! Any other song though lol” and doesn’t wait 4 an answer. that’s just a theory though a Seattle theory
#evil neighing compilation#only exceptions I can think of r like… March on electric children and the rlly early bbs stuff. not vade though that stuffs filled w/#inexplicable sadness#I can’t say much regarding hologram jams or soiled life since I haven’t lsitened 2 them in full#‘r you 4 real saying that this adultery has a devastating song on there’ yes I am in fact! im singling out time for tenderness here. what#the hell happened 2 them when they were like 17-19 (that’s my guess 4 the age range anywho) 2 write that. is it just me who feels like that#about time for tenderness or#crimes. doesn’t make me feel sad per se. but the title track and beautiful horses I just. understand So Much it gets 2 me rlly bad#bpib should be obvious. the shame. but also every breath is a bomb once you know the context of who it was partially written about#especially Jordan’s part :-(#young machetes… actually not giant swan or street wars/exotic foxholes 4 me though I suppose I get the sense that I’m supposed 2 feel sad#about them#it’s camouflage camouflage 4 me!#what else what else. oh yeah Johnnys solo stuff. that entire little acoustic mixtape thingy is very sad feeling 2 me in some way#but esepcially at the end of the road there’s a sapphire pit. genuinely made me bawl my eyes out the other night. jfc it’s gr8 but it makes#me feel a little sick 2 my stomach sad#OH MY GOD I 4GOT. NEON BLONDE LOL#that’s also a p obvious choice. chandeliers and vines#it’s a sort of sarcastic song one could suppose. that’s true 4 a lot of Whitney’s work (especially in tbb though Tbf)#still sort of gets 2 me#ya know#done tags rambling my bad
2 notes · View notes
blujayonthewing · 8 months
Text
justin, working from home, wordlessly coming into the room to knock me out with a big hammer* for Very Obviously Being Awake With Definitely Not Enough Sleep
me, giggling and cowering: why are you on tumblr, justin :'D
justin: why are YOU on tumblr, JESSICA
3 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
oh my god.. a job for me.. historical pierrot beach performer lol
#also I'm obsessed with shows like this#I always forget about like 'people live in a fully historical way as a sort of half documentary half educational reality-tv ish thing' as#a genre but then every once in a while I remember and watch something like this and am so enamored#There was also one called 'manor house' or something where it was like normal people who aren't actually historians or anything#trying to live like how they did a while ago in some big manor or whatever which was interesting#not the drama really (there wasnt much but a few of the people on there were kind of annoying whenever they did get their#few little interview bits among the otherwise mostly explanatory nature of the show just focusing on how things#worked in mainatining a giant manor house)#though there's a lot of focus on edwardian and victorian times in these sorts of things. which is cool!#but I wonder if they have them for different time periods too. and different locations. what about 1500s france#1250s china. etc. etc. I dont know because like I said I always forget I like this type of stuff so I never look it up#omg.... guess what... (whispering to you as if we're friends and I'm gosspiing).. you will NEVER believe this..#you know 'Edwardian Farm' right? well.. I just found........ 'VICTORIAN farm'!#it's literally the same people doing the same thing but a different time period. And you know what? I will still eagerly watch every moment#ghbhj.. They could do 'Victorian Farm 2' 'Victorian Farm 3: Yet Another Show About The Same Stuff' and I would watch them all#ANYWAY.. also I feel like that could be my niche. Like because I'm Very Mentally Ill And Have Very Much Problems and have difficulty managi#ng ''normal'' jobs. But I LOVE menial repetitive tasks epsecially ones I can do with my hands. Like I could peel carrots for hours. I love#sculpting. etc. If I were ever in a position to learn a historical trade I think that could be My Thing. on these shows they always have li#ke 'The One Single Guy In The Entirety Of England Who Still Weaves Baskets Like They Did In Shropshire In 1805' or whatever and they#call him on the show and he's like 'yeah this basket took me 16 hours to make and here's how I do it' and it's like.. god.. I could be that#guy.. Like old style jewelry making. shoe making. all of these little tedious tasks to do crafting sorts of things.#It's just that like... when am I ever going to be in a position to LEARN that? You'd have to know someone who already does it#and be like tutored by them or etc. Which my social issues are a barrier gghhj.. and lack of resources/money to buy supplies. etc#but.. THEORETICALLY.. the dream.. ANYWAY ghhjhj.. I've been very busy all week but will try to do new poll adventure and other#stuff soon. I've had like two appointments and More Things Than Usual so just.. zero social media posting energy whatsoever#I do HAVE posts though.. pictures.. cat things.. costumes.. polls.. it's just.. brain says I have to lay on the floor all day instead#but at least I can ponder the absolute glee of a theoretical life where I am That One Guy in england who can make old ass gloves or etc.#If anyone in the UK has a dying grandpa with a near-extinct skill and YOU yourself don't feel like picking up the trade to pass it to young#er generations.. hmu and help me get citizenship and I will do it for you. even if he's evil and mean. I will MAKE those shoes
14 notes · View notes
oldtestleper · 10 months
Text
all that shit would have never happened if they had followed OSHA guidelines
1 note · View note
neoluca · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
WIP!!! i decided to draw all of my pets in their anthro forms, and one of my resolutions this year is to learn how to draw chibis 🥰 i'm hoping tomorrow i'll be able to clean these up some more and maybe even colour them??
2 notes · View notes
phantomsaboteur · 2 months
Text
alright i'm done for now. the emotional whiplash of a big reveal being explained to me like a toddler when i thought we were supposed to put that together ourselves before now is just. really kicking my ass
1 note · View note
gender-trash · 5 months
Note
I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant
Tumblr media
by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat
so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.
meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)
with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this
(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)
i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).
even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.
oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!
or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.
also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.
tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?
also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!
8K notes · View notes
alexanderwales · 3 months
Text
I was worldbuilding two bog standard fantasy species, wise old tree dudes and impulsive little rat guys, when I realized it was far funnier if they had each other's personalities.
The rat guys think fast and talk fast, but they're incredibly conservative and like to cover all the angles before they take any action. This comes with being a prey species: their ancestral environment had lots of clever traps and devious hazards, so you get rat councils wisely working the problem.
The tree dudes speak and move slowly, but they will propose and then do the most insane things you can imagine. They can slot together a rocket in an afternoon and will then use it without so much as a test fire first. They test new potions by quaffing them down, sometimes not even waiting for it to cool (though they're tree dudes, so I guess quaffing a potion just means pouring it over their root legs). This comes from the ancestral selection process too: the tree dudes that won were the ones that took big risks, that grew faster, stronger, and tried new things without worrying about consequences. The tree dudes evolved in an era when they had no natural predators and their only competition was each other.
And this is, of course, initially confusing for any human who makes contact with them. If a giant bearded tree nods at you solemnly and tells you to go through a portal, your first thought is not that he's curious about what will happen to spacetime. And if a hyperactive little rat guy tells you with some urgency that you must accompany him into a ruined city, you won't immediately think that this is step 11 of his branching 27 step plan.
6K notes · View notes
sirfrogsworth · 2 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
I think in this new age of A.I. the general public is going to need to increase their photography and lighting literacy. The response to this photo has just been a shit show.
There are people pointing out perfectly normal edge lighting and misunderstanding how reflections work.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
First the plane is parked at an angle. The tail is farther back than the nose. But also that is a curved surface and it tapers. It's reflecting the area to the right of the photo.
And the bottom of the plane is reflecting what is directly underneath. Which is the tarmac, not the crowd.
It should also be noted that photo was shot with a very telephoto lens and everything is super compressed. The crowd appears much closer to the airplane than they actually are.
But then someone who should have good understanding of lighting said this...
Tumblr media
And now I'm worried for her clients. Because that's very... wrong.
Well, wrong-ish.
First, let's try to understand why this photo is setting off some alarm bells.
Tumblr media
The crowd toward the rear is in shadow, but they are still very well exposed. But then there is also a bright light source creating a strong edge light on them. Looking at this photo with just the context of what is in it, there are some things that seem uncanny.
The information we do not have is the people in the shadow area are inside a very brightly lit airplane hangar.
Tumblr media
So they have artificial light blasting them from the top.
But that light is still much dimmer than the sunlit areas outside so they appear in shade. But we are used to shade being much darker than areas in direct sun. So the balance seems off in our brain. We expect the people to be darker because we don't have the context of the bright hangar lights above them.
But the other issue is that the photo was post processed. It wasn't manipulated. The pixels weren't changed. But the exposure balance was altered.
If I were to guess, the original photo looked more like this...
Tumblr media
But newer digital cameras can have 13 to 15 stops of dynamic range. And if you shoot in RAW, you can easily lift shadows and bring down highlights. You can balance the exposure so the dark parts aren't as dark and the bright parts aren't as bright. This photographer might have overdone it a bit in this case, but this is a fairly standard edit used to bring balance to photos.
And lastly, where does the edge light come from?
Tumblr media
Edge lighting or backlighting or rim lighting (all the same) should probably be called wrap-around lighting if you want to be more accurate.
It comes from a homogenous light source that is larger than the subject being lit. So with my knife photo, I placed it on a large LED panel light.
Tumblr media
The light source was bigger than the subject so it wrapped around the edges.
And I'm afraid the airplane is not nearly large enough to create a light source to wrap around everyone in the crowd. It isn't even reflecting direct sunlight. So I'm sorry to say that lighting designer was mostly mistaken despite the confidence.
The light source is... everything.
Tumblr media
That entire red area I highlighted is the light source.
As well as everything above and everything to the sides.
And the biggest aspect of that light source would be the sky above. I think people always forget the sky is a light source. If you are seeing blue, you are seeing light. And I guess the plane is included in that, but that entire highlighted red area is so bright, and so filled with sunlight bouncing around, that it creates basically a giant softbox. It becomes a huge single light source for the people in the hangar.
If you look at footage taken from way inside the hangar, you can see the camera adjusting exposure for the crowd inside, but look at what happens to the sunlit area outside.
Tumblr media
What does that look like?
A giant softbox.
A single homogenous light source blasting light inside the hangar.
The sun is so incredibly bright that even when it is not directly lighting something, the light just bouncing around outside is enough to overpower the very bright hangar lights.
So, what have we learned from this?
Perhaps people should hire me to be their lighting designer.
Though I'm sure she is actually very talented. She seems to work with stage lights and this is more physics and photography.
Phystography.
4K notes · View notes
Text
caring about rotten tomatoes scores is so embarrassing. it's the praise kink of having movie opinions. you want to get a good grade in movies so bad
1 note · View note
lesbiansanemi · 1 year
Text
I truly do not get the spy x family hype….
1 note · View note
nonasuch · 8 months
Text
IT IS TIME: Miss Universe National Costume 2023
it's here! the Met Gala for people who actually understand what camp is!
yes I'm like 3 months late, but I sat down and watched the damn thing. I put up with the horrible little rhyming couplets for each contestant so you don't have to. and without further ado:
Tumblr media
Albania: Starting off very Victoria’s Secret this year! Apparently it’s gold for important symbolism reasons, not just because everything in this competition is blinged out to within an inch of its life. The wings do look nice in motion!
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Angola has a good balance of bling, actual cultural dress, and oh hey it has surprise bonus art on the back! That will be a theme this year.
Tumblr media
Argentina: Why is there a guy in a hat right down at the bottom edge of her cape. He looks like he’s staring at her butt. How does this represent their flag.
Tumblr media
Aruba: This is fine. I like the coral. She thinks climate change is bad. Her parrot is clearly way too heavy to hold up and it wobbles like crazy in motion.
Tumblr media
Australia: This is now multiple years in a row that Australia has just worn a fucking prom dress. It’s got native wildflowers on. You could have made this exact same dress with a Great Barrier Reef theme and I would have liked it 80% more.
Tumblr media
Bahamas: This costume is allegedly based on a 19th-century doll from the Bahamas “world famous straw market,” which is already bullshit; I googled “bahamas straw market antique doll” and like. they both have big skirts? I guess? Anyway now I’m too distracted by the way she has a hoop skirt awkwardly jammed under there and hiked up on one side. Minus ten for poor construction.
Tumblr media
Bahrain's theme is “Bahrain’s pearl heritage,” which like. I guess? The headdress and yoke are pretty. Put more pearls on the actual outfit. Kudos for getting to wear pants.
Tumblr media
Belgium: Girl. No. Why is your theme “Latin dance” and why are you wearing a spangly cocktail dress with a totally unrelated piece of fabric fluttering behind it? (Apparently the fabric was designed by a member of Belgium’s royal family? Who is a fashion designer? This is what nepotism gets you.)
Tumblr media
Bolivia saw Aruba’s parrot and was like, I can do that better. And she was right! It’s way less wobbly and the costume as a whole does work better. Also made from recycled materials, so we’ll see if that’s a theme again this year. The back of the cape is nice too.
Tumblr media
Sadly, Bolivia's parrot supremacy was short-lived, because Brazil was like, bitch please. I see your sad little parrots and raise you FOUR giant parrots, and also the shoulder parrots are articulated and can turn their heads back and forth. I think Brazil wins the parrot competition that only she knew she was in.
6K notes · View notes
simpjaes · 6 months
Text
BIG D*CK FOR DUMMIES (s.jy)
Tumblr media
The one where you find out that your boyfriend has a huge cock and you’re not entirely sure if you can take all of it. 
MDNI!!! | pls leave feedback and reblog your fave writers!
PAIRING ― jaeyun x afab reader  
WORDCOUNT ― 2.4k
CONTENT ―  first time, established relationship, top jaeyun, painful sex
NOTE ― this was originally written for a different idol on my other blog [ncteez] but i pictured jake in that one en o’clock episode doing this and went feral so……here’s ur giant package. 
smut tags― he’s a little cocky (lmao), i guess you could say size kink but it’s more like huge cock / tiny pussy size kink, theres some crying, praising, reader gets off like almost instantly and becomes incredibly cock drunk the second he’s able to actually fuck
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・
Things you knew about your boyfriend before dating: he’s very protective, super smart, has good taste in music, his hands are big and warm, and he’s very down to earth.
Things you didn’t know about your boyfriend until after dating and he’s on top of you during a moody and rainy night makeout session: his cock is huge and it’s very intimidating.
One might ask, how could you have not known? Well, that’s easy. It’s a fairly new relationship and a very shy relationship at that. It’s a bit embarrassing for you, actually, because it’s not like you don’t want to be intimate with him. You definitely do, and apparently so does he. 
It’s the first time in the three weeks you’ve been dating that you’ve gotten to be completely alone with him in an intimate setting. For one, you live with your parents, and secondly, he lives with three other dudes who like to be all up in his business. It’s not exactly easy to get alone time with him. Thankfully, your parents are out on a five-day holiday somewhere in the Bahamas and you’re here on your family couch with Jaeyun’s hands cradling your neck as you kiss him. 
It got heated very fast, presumably because the two of you haven’t really had the privacy to do more than a standing makeout session without someone listening in, or worse, walking in. It almost makes the air feel electric now, kind of like a breath of fresh air except the fresh air tastes like the fruity chewing gum he had in his mouth when he originally came over.
Here’s the thing though, and man, it’s a thing. Looking at Jaeyun you’d think he’s average at best and you’re not really the type to go around guessing dick sizes.  So, naturally, when he slots a leg between yours as he got on top of you and you fucking felt it against your leg, you were a little more shocked than anticipated. Maybe he let out a little snide chuckle at your reaction too, you wouldn’t know, you were kind of busy wondering when he was going to let you in on the secret. 
Now, here you are deep in thought of how the hell that thing is going to fit anywhere while simultaneously one hundred percent willing to make it fit because god, does he know how to makeout and feel someone up. 
The more he kisses you, the more his hands roam, the more you experience intimate touches with him, the more you feel like your skin is on fire and replacing that intimidation with extreme arousal and lust. All the way until the point that the presumed makeout playlist starts over and he finally pushes a bit further with you.
“Is this okay?” He asks, now slotting himself entirely between your legs and essentially pressing his length directly against the pool that is threatening to seep through your fucking denim shorts. 
You give him a half nod, trying to pretend that he’s definitely a normal man with a normal cock. He smiles though, knowing full well that this isn’t what you were expecting. No one ever expects it from him. 
“You seem occupied,” he comments, pressing himself against you a little more and leaning down on his arms to nip at your lips. “or shocked, maybe?”
You try to kiss him to shut him up, not wanting to expose yourself for being entirely inexperienced with a size like his. 
“Hm?” He encourages you, pulling back again and looking directly into your eyes with a confident smirk. 
“Well,” you shift your eyes away and sigh out, “you’re kind of huge…” 
He takes that compliment and runs with it. It’s not like the two of you have to finally have sex or anything, but you both knew what was happening and you both definitely knew what the other wanted. At least ten minutes ago that was the situation.
“Is it too much?” He asks, this time a bit more concerned that his own biology could ruin this for you. 
“Probably? no, maybe?” 
Jaeyun pulls away from you, moving himself to sit back against the couch and give you your space. Considering probably and maybe isn’t a yes, he feels no need to push or pressure you into doing something you don’t want to do. There have been times where he’s hurt another person while being intimate, though not intentionally, he’s not exactly willing to do that to you unless you’re like, you know, jumping his bones for it. 
“Still, i’d like to try–” You start, looking at him as you sit up and feel your entire body tingle at the cold air that replaces his warmth. “Maybe if we take it slow– like, really slow?”
He looks at you with shining eyes. He asked you to be his girlfriend because he genuinely likes you. He likes your voice, he likes the way you smell, likes when you talk about your favorite songs and favorite movies. He was definitely smitten from the moment he saw you trip on your own two feet down the front porch of a house party months ago. Taking it slow with you was pretty normal, and the fact that you want him too just makes him all the more willing to take his time. 
“I’ll take care of you, ” he hums, spreading his legs a bit across the couch to give himself more space to re-adjust himself. “Just tell me if I need to slow down?” 
You nod, staring directly between his legs and rubbing your own together on instinct. If anyone’s gonna split you open, it might as well be your boyfriend.
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・
When he said he would take it slow with you, he really meant it. The fact that he curled three fingers into you for a solid twenty minutes and you still feel like your legs will buckle on you at any moment knowing that this is just for prep– oh damn. 
 The fact that he even used his tongue on you for the first time, making sure you were more slippery than you already were for another twenty minutes? The fucking fact that you were on the verge of orgasm when he pulled it out and presented it to you like a cock you could totally sit on without issue? 
Fuck.
Reality washes over you far too quickly when you actually make that attempt. 
You’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel like you were being torn apart by him, but part of you loves the way his gentle hands hold you steady as you try to sink down. You can feel the wet heat between your legs coat his length inch by inch as you start to slide down.
He stops you only for a moment when he notices you wincing. 
“Breathe, baby, just a little more.” He encourages, getting a nod from you before guiding you down further.
You breathe, clenching around him and doing your best to stop doing that so you can relax. You can tell he’s struggling to actually take it slow by now too, only because you can feel his hands shake against you as he holds himself back from obliterating you, probably. You’d think it would be quite endearing to see, if it weren’t for the fact that your eyes are blurring from the tears threatening to fall. 
Feeling embarrassed, you wipe your eyes and focus on how he feels inside of you. The pain is still there, but as you “sit” here, that pain somehow does replace itself with a strange sensation of pleasure little by little. You’ve always wondered what it felt like to be full, and it appears that this is exactly it.
It’s overwhelming.
“Do you want to stop?” He asks after noticing your tears, a bit of panic in his voice despite the fact that you could have sworn hearing a moan come out alongside it, “Pull up, it’s okay, you can–”
You sink down further instead, now bottoming yourself out on him and releasing a broken whine of both pain and pleasure. He grunts in unison to your whine, gripping your hips even harder than he already was and squeezing his eyes shut. 
“Fuck,” he sighs out, lazily opening his eyes to look at the way you perch yourself on him so perfectly. “Such a tight fit.” 
You nod, mostly unable to hear a word he’s saying as you try to relax your body enough to get rid of that small hint of pain. The consistent clenching of your adjustments send your boyfriend spiraling a bit, unable to contain his sighs of pleasure as your tight and wet heat squeezes his cock.
“Tell me when I can move, please, tell me–” He groans out almost frantically, staring down at where you sit flush against him and wanting so badly to fuck into you.
 He’s wanted to do this to you since you started dating, now that it’s finally happening, and now that you’re quite literally jerking him off simply by adjusting to his size– you know, it’s not exactly easy to contain himself. 
You take a few more seconds to breathe before your body finally relaxes and you give him a reluctant nod. 
Instantly it’s like you’re seeing stars. He barely moves, all he does is flex his abs and press his hips up and it’s like he manages to fit another non-existent inch inside of you. 
You groan out, falling forward against his chest and gripping onto his shoulders as you feel your body adjust to even that small movement. To you, this is so fucking embarrassing, but to him? 
Hottest thing ever. Really. 
He can hear your whiny gasps against his neck when he moves and it’s driving him fucking wild, especially considering the fact that his cock is driven so deeply inside of you that he thinks you’d tell him to stop— but you don’t. 
You’re so good to him, and for what it’s worth, he wants to make sure this will be the best orgasm of your life.
Slowly, his hands fall to your ass and guide you up. You feel slight relief as a few inches leave you, and your stomach bubbles with that same sensation of both pleasure and pain when he slides you back down.
He moans out at you, almost like he’s cooing in pity at how much you’re trying to take for him. It’s incredibly sexy to hear now that your ears have stopped ringing and you’re beginning to believe that you’d never want anything smaller than him anyway.
This time, you lift on your own and sink back down just as fast, wincing again against his neck but releasing a moan that sounds more like pleasure than anything else. He sees this as a green light, gripping your ass and encouraging you to lift slightly again.
“Stay like this.” he mutters with a deep breath before kissing against your forehead and thrusting his hips up once, hard. 
The tight heat you’re offering sends him into a frenzy when paired with the wet slap of his pelvis hitting your pussy, and the sounds you’re making offer little in terms of stopping because by now, you’re both loving it. 
He thrusts into you with ease, the drag loud and slippery, the moans of pleasure you release only make him go faster, harder. Almost releasing a whimper of his own at how fucking perfect you are for taking all of it.
“Look.” he tries to let out, waiting for you to pull yourself up from his chest and look at him.
You do with ease, that broken face from before now replaced with lustful and blown out pupils. 
“Look how good you take it,” he praises with a groan, almost punctuating each word with a thrust, “knew you could take it.” 
Your broken smile that falls into a slack mouthed string of nonsense only continues to push him.  All the way until you can’t think straight at all, and you’re feeling your body tense up with such pressure that you can’t even warn him before your walls are clenching so tightly that it even hurts him. 
You grasp onto him for dear life as your orgasm washes over you, drenching his entire length as you hold your breath. Never have you gotten off while feeling so fucking full, and arguably, you don’t think you could ever feel an orgasm so intense without him being the one to split you open.
“There you go baby.” he hums, watching you breathlessly fall apart on top of him before picking up his rhythm again and chasing his own high.
By this point, you’re so well adjusted that even the searing pain of his restless thrusts feel good. Your brain is foggy but you can’t help but just fucking watch him.
This is your boyfriend and this is what it looks like when you’re making him feel good. 
“Are you close?” you start to bounce on him, meeting his rhythm and allowing him to rest his own hips. 
He nods as he looks at you, awestruck with how you’re already able to ride him as if you weren’t whining just moments before. Seeing you take him in full like this is enough to have his cock pulsing.
“Just a bit more, baby.” He closes his eyes and runs his hands up your waist. “Keep riding me, fuck.” 
And that, you do. Feeling proud of yourself for being able to actually take this literal monster, you focus on the twitch inside of you as he releases with a deep and breathy moan.
It’s entirely too sexy to ignore, and you continue to bounce even as he tries to hold you in place to subdue the sensitivity of his cock being fucking strangled by how tight you are. 
Once his body stops jerking and you feel the last twitching release inside of you, you fall forward and both of you groan from the sensitivity. 
“There are pros and cons to having a big dick, i guess.” he admits in a groan. 
Even when you laugh, there’s another wince from both of you followed by a groan.
“Pros: big dick.” he whispers, holding you still against him so you don’t move again before he can soften up and pull out. “Cons: big dick.” 
You still laugh, and it still hurts. 
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・
me and my lame ass endings lmfaooooooooooooooooo
4K notes · View notes
Text
Trial and Error
Tumblr media
Pairing: Azriel x Reader
Summary: Based on the request: "Azriel with single mom reader? I feel like being a single mom in ACOTAR would be tricky as hell… reader comes from autumn court and flees to night court because she got pregnant out of marriage? 😯 the shame"
Word count: 2.2k
Warnings: A little angst
a/n: Okay this has taken over my brain. I hope you enjoy it!! You can read the previous little part here and part three here
Main Masterlist ♡
~~
“And what would happen then?” 
“I suppose then we would have to turn into giants, wouldn’t we?” 
“Giants. Really?” Melanie deadpanned as if she hadn’t just unraveled the most incoherent line of questioning you’d ever heard. Her new favorite game was “what if,” and you were apparently awful at it. 
“Well—” you began, pretending to think as you leaned against the counter and tapped your chin. “I guess we could just learn how to fly instead. That way we could go collect the, um… bunnies from the tops of the clouds.” 
“It’s cats, mommy, not bunnies. Why would a bunny be on a cloud?” 
“You are so right.” 
You pushed off the counter and continued restocking the shelves of the small apothecary that had employed you for the past few years. You had started out in Velaris working at a few small bars, but that hadn’t lasted long when they discovered you were pregnant. You had earned enough money to get a small apartment at that point, and you just so happened to find one above an apothecary owned by a rather wicked old woman. 
Lucky for you, she was a wicked old woman who no longer wanted to run her apothecary or deal with the space above it. So, you got a job and a place to live without many questions asked—a two-for-one miracle. 
“Maybe we could ask Nyx to take us up to the clouds,” Melanie pondered as she fiddled with a bundle of cloves by the register. 
“Who’s Nyx, sweetie?” you mindlessly asked. 
“A boy in my class. He has wings. He told me he can’t fly very high yet, but soon he’ll be able to.” 
You inhaled sharply through your nose. 
There were probably several boys in her class who had wings and were unrelated to the Illyrian man occupying your thoughts, right? 
You hummed in contemplation. “I don’t know, Melanie. Maybe Nyx could take you, but I might be too big for him to bring me up to the clouds.” 
“Oh, good idea, mommy! Nyx’s daddy can fly too and he can bring you. Or he has two uncles that could.” Your daughter stuck two fingers in the air with pride. “I wish I had wings. Mommy, did my daddy have wings?” 
You shook your head and abandoned the box at your feet to brush your daughter’s hair back instead. Going to school had opened doors to many questions you had been dreading, and Melanie’s questions about her dad had been coming in waves. 
“Your daddy didn’t have wings,” you began, looping a finger around her red curls. “But he did have hair just like yours.” 
Melanie tilted her head to the side. “Did you love my daddy? Nyx drew a picture at school of his mommy and daddy and said they love each other very much. Like as much as you love me.” 
You fought back a sigh. Nyx was causing you a plethora of issues and you hadn’t even met the kid. “Sometimes families look different,” you explained, running your hands down to brush off the dust on Melanie’s clothes that she’d surely obtained from playing in the apothecary. “I didn’t love your daddy, but that’s just because I had so much love saved up for you.” 
“Hmm…I hope you can have someone to love like how Nyx’s mommy has his daddy,” Melanie said after a small pause. And then she swung off the counter and started trekking up the stairs to the apartment as if she hadn’t just aged ten years with her statement. 
You blinked at the space she left, baffled by your five-year-old’s abruptness. She had only been at school for a week and was making revelations about your life that even you struggled to come to terms with. You let out a small sound of disbelief and made to follow your daughter up the stairs when the bell above the front door chimed. 
“Sorry, we’re closed for the—”
A boot heel clicking silenced your call.
His shadows came in before him, dark swirls instantly sweeping along the walls and wrapping up around the front counter. They didn’t touch you, but there was a hesitance about them that suggested they wanted to. You tore your gaze from their behavior to meet the eyes of the Illyrian from the school—the one you hadn’t seen since and definitely not because you were avoiding all situations where he could spot you. 
“Hello,” Azriel greeted with a calmness that was not reciprocated. “Are you closed? I can come back another time.” 
Every thought tumbled out of your brain. You had forgotten—almost—how intimidating he was. Not just in sheer size, but in the way he held himself, in the sharp planes of his face that smoothed into softness in the exact places they should. 
His wings pressed in towards his back as he took another step forward. The floor groaned beneath his weight. 
“Oh, um—” you uttered along with the straining floor. “We are—technically. But I can help you find something. Or place an order for you. No big deal.” 
“I wouldn’t want to keep you if you’re closed,” Azriel stressed. 
“No, no, it’s okay,” you nervously laughed. Act more normal. Act like there’s nothing… abnormal about you. “Anything for someone from Melanie’s school. What are you looking for?” 
Azriel hummed, his eyes lightning. “Ah, so you do remember me. I was wondering.” 
Was he looking at you strangely? Azriel kept trailing his gaze around the room and letting it land on your face, evaluating you… profiling you? 
You were being ridiculous. 
“Of course I do. You gave me great intel on the teacher. I don’t come until the bell rings now.” You rocked back on your heels and shifted your fidgeting hands behind your back. “Was there something specific I could help you with?” 
Azriel ignored your question for the second time. “Is that why I haven’t seen you? You come later?” 
Was he looking for you? 
A strange combination of excitement and trepidation made your stomach drop. 
Another nervous laugh. Your palms were sweating. “I guess so. There’s a lot to be done here so I usually wait until the last minute to close up shop and pick her up. That’s why your tip was so helpful.” 
Azriel narrowed his eyes in a way that echoed concern, but you refused to read into it. You balanced up onto your toes and fell back onto the soles of your feet. 
You could tell he wanted to say more about something—to ask more questions unrelated to the apothecary. But he stopped himself and the restraint was clear in the tenseness of his shoulders. 
“I get headaches,” Azriel shared. “Awful ones. I’ve tried healing magic and a few medicinal remedies, but I was hoping to find something herbal. Could you help me with that?” 
You breathed a sigh of relief and began rifling through a cabinet to your left. “I may have just the thing. I had terrible migraines when I was pregnant and it took me six tries to get this recipe perfect, but I think it would do the trick for you. I almost hate to share it because I was the one that had to suffer through all the bad batches, but I guess that’s kind of my job.” 
You pulled back from the cabinet with a small bottle in hand, a tiny rendition of your handwriting scrawled along the side. You rolled it in your hands for a moment until you saw the shimmering nature of the liquid inside, and then you held it out over the counter and offered Azriel a smile. He replicated it, but it was smaller and looked forced. 
“You didn’t have anyone else to try it out on?” he asked. 
The question twisted something deep within your chest, but you only grinned and ignored the tightness of your jaw. “Who better than the one with the migraines herself?” 
Azriel breathed a laugh through his nose, his eyes not leaving yours. “I suppose that’s true.” 
The flecks in his eyes had you paralyzed, unable to move as his gaze held yours. You were breathless, fist tightening around the small tonic still held out in front of you as Azriel reached forward and grabbed it. His skin brushed yours. You shivered. 
Azriel’s lips parted to speak. “Where are you—”
A loud thump from upstairs cut him off. 
Azriel started, his chin clipping up and his body tensing. He quickly looked back down to you with a panicked question in his eyes. 
You fought for the words to say. If you revealed it was only Melanie, he would know where you lived—another piece of information you liked to keep close. But if you didn’t tell him, that could lead to something worse. He looked about ready to bolt up the stairs and battle your five-year-old. 
The decision was made for you when Melanie came bounding down the steps with a bowl in one hand and a large wooden spoon in the other. 
“Mommy,” she began with a lax posture that did not match the room. “Can I—Oh, hi, Mr. Azriel. What’re you doing at my house?” 
Melanie’s interpretation of his name included an extra syllable, and she was still working on pronouncing Zs, but the Illyrian ignored that. “Your house?” he asked. His attention was fully on Melanie, but he sent you a raised brow. 
“Um, yes. We live above the apothecary. Melanie sometimes forgets that it’s a business downstairs and not just a private playground,” you explained, rubbing your forearm in discomfort. Azriel tracked the movement. 
“Ah, well, it does seem rather fun down here. I can see the confusion.” 
Melanie perked up, waving the spoon in front of your face. “See, mommy? There’s lots to play with.” 
One of the tightly bound coils in your chest loosened as you shot Azriel a look. “Great. You’re encouraging her.” 
“I’ve been an uncle for a few years,” Azriel smiled, rolling the headache tonic between his hands. “I’ve gotten quite good at encouraging terrible things.” 
You laughed with a huff and placed a hand on Melanie’s head, bending down to meet her gaze. “Were you going to ask me for dinner? I’ll be up in just a few minutes. I was just putting a few things away.” 
“I know, mommy,” she nodded. Then, after a quick look at Azriel from the corner of her eye, she whispered, “Is Mr. Azriel having dinner with us? Nyx has been asking about when we have dinner and said to keep the question a secret, but maybe that’s why he’s here.” 
A few feelings barraged you at once. Confusion over your daughter's words; fear that the night court’s inner circle seemed to be asking questions about you; regret that you had given into Melanie’s pleas to go to school so readily. 
But Nyx was just a child—perhaps he asked everyone when they had dinner and Melanie was just connecting dots that weren’t there. 
But maybe that wasn’t the case. 
Maybe Azriel came to the apothecary specifically because you worked there and he was trying to gather intel for the Autumn Court. It had to be common knowledge that the daughter of one of Beron’s men had run away. But Night and Autumn weren’t on the best terms. That’s why you chose Velaris to—
You couldn’t do this right now. 
Not in front of Melanie and certainly not in front of Azriel. 
You pressed your lips into a firm line and whispered back, “No, he came to buy something from mommy’s shop. It’s just us for dinner, like always.” 
A sliver of disappointment fractured Melanie’s gaze. She hooked her chin over her shoulder and sent Azriel a small smile before disappearing into the apartment once more. You wiped your palms on the front of your pants as you stood, taking a breath to calm your raging anxiety. 
“Sorry, she…” 
“It’s alright,” Azriel dismissed. You looked at him for the first time in a few moments, his expression pinched and difficult to read. “I’m around Nyx a lot. You don’t have to apologize.” 
A beat of silence. 
The room was cloaked in unrealized tension. You weren’t sure if it was fueled by suspicion or something else. For you, it was, but the wistful way Azriel continued to linger on your figure was read as something else. Something older, more entrenched.
“It’s just two coppers.” You broke the silence, gesturing to the tonic still held between Azriel’s fingers—his scarred fingers, you then realized. You looked back up to his face.
“Only two? After all it took for you to make it?” 
You felt your mouth twist at the corner despite yourself. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this place, but it’s not exactly up to par with the rest of the apothecaries. I’m surprised you found it, to be honest. My customers are typically ancient fae with boils and warts.” 
“Sorry to disappoint,” Azriel teased. He searched through his pocket and placed a small sum of money on the counter between you. “Five coppers—for interrupting dinner.” 
“I hadn’t even—” 
“Goodbye, y/n.” 
You watched him go, not noticing the shadow that lingered in the corner. 
part three
1K notes · View notes