#i thought embarking on a volcano was cool enough

[ping1n]

i just sent my militia out on a raid i didn't expect them to capture a BREEDING PAIR OF CAVE DRAGONS

oh boy.

[pretty-prince-lulu]

The Fortress of Tathtatèrith (Plungedlaboured)

Is it finished? Nope, but I've done enough with it that you'll be able to get where I'm trying to go with it, so... here.

I'll put a readmore right here because this'll have more pictures than I have still-thriving brain cells.

Do bear in mind I've not actually been playing very long, and this is maybe the.... eighth? fortress? that I've kept from going up in flames long enough to have Something Going On.

Out of the gate was picking an embark. I've been trying to build a fortress primarily out of glass for a while and kept cocking it up or embarking somewhere that made it a nightmare, so I scoured the map of the realm of Romxah for the exact right place to do it.

Sand? Check. Nearby abandoned monasteries so we can acquire books? Check. Elves we can have that old sacred eternal Unsteady Peace with who come and count our leaves every spring like the wood narcs they are? Check. VOLCANO so I don't have to be at definite war with said elves while making the glass? Check-check-checkaroo. We're too far from the coast to actually have any of the ocean in our tile, which worked out to be vastly more unfortunate than I expected.

Starting out, I had it in mind that I wanted to make use of the transparency of the glass in the design itself, because that is Very Cool. I considered but ultimately omitted the inclusion of crystal glass into the main design because working with crystal glass makes me cry in real life. I planned to go with green glass as the majority material, with clear glass as the accent. I like the look of the result but clear glass is also, as it turns out, a wailing nightmare to keep in sustained production.

Approaching the main entryway is... this. (With current morale stats. And supplies. I cannot keep these people in meat I stg).

Now, obviously, this is sort of cool, but not in any way finished. You'll be seeing that theme coming up a lot. I had planned to involve statues of the Founding Seven Dwarves in some way, but I'm still kind of batting around the actual execution because most ideas would provide goblins a means by which not to get jet-propelled into the Fanta. I like goblins landing in the Fanta.

The slits contain serrated green glass discs, ten apiece. This generally has the effect of turning enemies into a fine pink mist (see: the pieces of said mist still awaiting cleanup). The Draltha are on their way out with the Routed Roads squadron, a soldier team that I primarily send out to abandoned monasteries to cart off the books. I'm not sure I recommend them as war animals. They're long-lived but I also have to remember to graze them when they come back, and then unpasture them so they don't sadly sit there with the chicken leg icon above their heads making me feel all guilty.

Zooming out a little as we enter the doorway:

These rooms are for The Great Citadels, my 'primary' soldier squadron. Each statue is of that dwarf (and their spouse if they have one at the time of stone-casting). The other sets are of each soldier's war animal, and the blank engraved spot will be for the second war animal I have not yet finished harvesting the alunite to immortalize in said stone. I know it's not important in the scheme of things, but I really like to track who owned what animal. It makes my heart happy. A couple of the giant war dingos have died of old age, which I didn't realize could start happening from age six or so and I'm very sad about it. I thought I read they got 15-20 years but I must have been mistaken.

They got dedicated and specific rooms because I hate, absolutely hate hate vomit hate, how they all get unassigned from their fucking bedrooms after being sent out. No joke, it makes me think twice about dispatching them, so this at least makes it clear to me who ought to be returning to which fucking space.

Down this road, with its perpetually unfinished walls and floor, lies the barracks proper and the road to the foundry. What are those statues and slabs, you ask? Every time a forgotten beast or dangerous creature that involves a popup warning dies in our territory, I like to immortalize it. I just like that you can do that. I think of it as a running history of our land.

To the right there is an access shaft to the mist generator, which is not working, and I am salty about it to the point of tears. This map has no wind. ZERO wind. I did not realize it was a possibility until I had already built all the fucking infrastructure so I'm working on... alternative means of power. But it stands now it's sort of just a Circle of Embarrassment.

The foundry's main focal export is glass- obviously- with its quantum stockpile for random bits of metal coming out of melted down goblin shields. The draltha there are not war animals, but instead have a different very important job- to eat all the mushrooms that grow on the sand. It appears that we can't gather sand where the mushrooms grow, and this is the only situation in which the eternal Snack Hunger of my army of draltha is coming in actual handy. God knows these are a bugger to feed otherwise sometimes.

Given the sheer amount of stuff needing constant melting down I am seriously considering expanding this foundry. There's little space remaining to the south before I hit the edge of the map so I may add more workshops between here and the barracks. I am hesitating mostly on pain of them being on different elevations and me being terrified of fucking up the magma circuit expansion. I know me. I fuck things up. And this is a very hot thing to fuck up.

Heading down the hatch and to the north, we have the trading depot. This is one of the most unfinished parts of the whole place so far unfortunately.

It will EVENTUALLY have detailed rings of glass flooring and perhaps dedicated tables and chairs and stockpiles, but right now it is the emergency draltha feeding tunnel featuring the Barrel Hoard and the accidentally wild-caught elk birds I'm trying to get some offspring out of so I can sheepishly return them to the wild and they can stop pecking our shoelaces in vengeance. I also have tentative plans for a statue-lined road instead of the paved path we currently have outside, which would be both 1) pretty and 2) an early detection system for the werebeasts knocking stuff over.

To the south we have another mist generator. It doesn't work and has redundant gears and materials. We have not finished prettying it up for its eventual functionality. We call this the fail hole. We go in here to cry.

Here we have the rooms of the Duchess, the mayor, the manager and the bookkeeper. Here, and in the hall, you see the first instances of what I was trying to do with the transparency. The glass floors show what's happening downstairs, and if I layer the patterns, starts doing really interesting things indeed- as well as creating an effect that is uniform, but at the same time varied and dynamic.

Further to the right:

The prisons and the quarters of the captain of the guard, with our stockpile of cages and assorted animals being trained. The idea is that any visitors are almost guaranteed to pass through the guard's corridor, which makes it easier for me to forbid doors and lock them up until dear lady Sibrek Amudalåth Ebalfer (Sibrek Thunderbolts the Revered Beast) finishes... dealing with them. She's our captain of the guard, dungeon master and hammerer. Judge, jury, executioner. A sweetheart, really, despite that. You might spot her around- she's wearing a breastplate but no other armour. That's not an accident- this way I can actually see exactly where she is and identify her fast in the crowd. I really hate it when I forget to arrest people. This happens a lot. ADHD and all... so I have to give myself the best odds of managing to lock up the fuckers.

Onto the tavern!

The Mechanical Cake was my first real major attempt at designing the multi-level glass details. The idea was that the 'cream' would get a slight spiralling effect with the furniture on the floor beneath, with the middle layer of clear-glass cream also having some shading because the construction finishes partway through it (this is RIGHT at the end of the map! I'm corner to corner here!). The spoke at top right connects... to things. Things that don't fucking work.

Every statue is also specifically OF something that is either important to the city or took place and is something we want to remember. Mostly this is in the form of animals- a few wild creatures that earned names through good deeds (or misdeeds, in the case of Omalurush the giant wren). The manera is the one who wrestled that forgotten beast. The draltha is simply a celebratory piece of the animal once we tamed a few, as is the dingo. The cat statue is a custom design entirely, made to celebrate Stâkud Wethandle, the only male cat we had on embark. He was not interested in helping us have kittens, so we had to buy another male a few years later when I actually realised.

Down south is our kitchen which is SUPPOSED to be shaped like a gear and spoke and NOT like a penis. I feel the need to point out the meals on the fucking floor and the HUGE NUMBER OF BARRELS WE VERY MUCH HAVE. I don't know why they won't use the barrels. It's doing my head in. It doesn't matter how many I make, they just sit around being tube of empty failure. I'm convinced this is a rudeness directed at me specifically.

DESCENDING DOWNSTAIRS FOR ANOTHER TIME.

The hospital over its water reservoir, the stone and gemstone workshop, and more dogs! Yay! The floors and walls are, as always, not yet finished. Other stuff IS finished. I swear. It's not all like this.

To the north of this stairwell:

The woodworking, craftworking and tailoring suites. Tailoring in particular could do with more space (and I DID use up all that leather... why do they need new underpants so often?). I'll have to think about doing that in a way that doesn't throw off this whole... thing.

OH SHIT, I FORGOT TO GO UPSTAIRS FROM THE ENTRY HALL. Uh. Brief deviation time GO

The underground processing facility with our very important Farm Draltha. Another one of the most unpolished sections but it sure is one I spend a lot of time staring at trying to figure out why I'm out of booze again. Featuring the wildly akimbo disconnected wooden failures of machinery that doesn't work, and the little corner notification about how many forgotten beasts I'm ignoring with ALL my might.

Scrolling up is the paddock proper.

This is also, at this point, pretty wildly off-brief because I keep having to expand it and don't have time to do that in a design-preserving way. I will eventually figure out a good form to contort this into so that it looks like it was intentional and not just sort of... built around trees and things.

Note the single giant elephant that I had zero plans for but absolutely HAD to buy because who WOULDN'T buy the one elephant.

We scroll up to reveal... a plain glass ceiling... and UNEXPECTED RUBE GOLDBERG IDIOTIC EVIL TOM AND JERRY BULLSHIT!

I rebuilt the bridge from the retracting version to make it the kind that launches things upward instead. Usually, those things go straight into the lava, but occasionally they survive and make it onto my rooftop. Whereupon they activate my trap card, and the serrated spinning glass discs make their debut as belles of the ball and then it rains feet and happiness.

um. anyway. BACK TO THE MANUFACTURING HALL.

Here you see the guildhalls, zoomed out.

All technically unfinished. I plan at least a few token workshops with desks and tables to emulate the demonstrations they so frequently hold in there. The displays in the back contain artifacts- specifically, exactly enough artifacts to make the room value sufficient to qualify as grand guildhalls. Zooming in, however, we'll find evidence of one of my more useless passion projects!

Varying numbers! The water ripples and flows! It does, admittedly, lose something from a still image. The idea is to provide an interesting design-in-motion effect beneath these halls, mostly because I never know what to actually DO with guildhalls that isn't just... you know, production.

Some of the detail in those channels DOES get lost in the water flow. This is what it looks like dry.

To the right of the halls is my secret shame.

The top section of what was SUPPOSED to be a perpetual motion machine, and instead has poop everywhere and generates no power. There is an anterior section below that is much the same. I THINK I know what the problem is but it's going to take a lot of work to correct and I kind of want to explode in flames before doing that.

Going down again, we have the cistern to the water system, the first section of residential accommodation, and the first chapter of the pet cemetery.

For some reason, I didn't realise until THIS fortress that you could bury pets, and that you were SUPPOSED to do that. Not kidding, I abandoned the last fortress once I realized I hadn't been doing it. Shit like this matters to me, so every residential floor going down will have a section cut out for the pets. I also include a slab and a statue of that pet, which so far is mostly of that pet being adopted, but in the case of the turkey it's 'that time the turkey fell over'. It made me laugh so I let it stay even though it throws off the design pattern.

There's about 10 residental floors beneath all the other stuff and they all are designed off this same pattern. Eventually, they'll get flooring. I swear to god. I'm at year SIXTEEN and we still don't have all the floors. Fuck me.

DOWN ANOTHER FLOOR!

The barracks of the Routed Roads. Unfinished and looking decidedly spoonish. This is the last barracks I've built- which, yes, means I only have two military squadrons. It's been enough so far because I've been Bridge Discing All who Cross Me. I know damn well it won't suffice long term, but for now I'm enjoying spoon life with occasional desperate use of Dfhack.

TO THE RIGHT

The All-Faiths Chapel (The Mauve Fold) with some pet graves and a dwarf funerary annex! I may have murdered someone in the unused cairn!

I vacillated between designing this temple as a butterfly, a clover or a filigree emblem so I sort of did all three at the same time. The stripes layered beneath the swirls are not just ornamental water this time, but that's for the next floor!

The two dead dwarves were vampires and kept drinking my fucking children. I DFhacked them back to life and I'm not ashamed. DON'T DRINK MY FUCKIN KIDS.

on the south side of this corridor:

The outpost liason's quarters. Admittedly built in a bit of a hurry. I wasn't expecting the Royal Entourage yet. There's still some ore in there.

BUT HE IS NEXT DOOR TO:

The Bronze Vault.

Designed to resemble a heart, with tables running down the ventricle in an effort to create a sort of shadowed effect. I expected to need to build more bookshelves. Have you ever looked up how many books they hold? Holy shit. You could probably make do with one if you weren't a crazy person. As is most shelves do in fact contain just one book. Everyone leaves them on the fucking chairs. I guess our asses like to read.

Orbitting the lava and to the right:

The king's quarters!

I was going for a sort of semi-transparency chessboard effect here (I just noticed that door I missed fUUUCK). The queen consort has her own tomb because she is also a baroness and required her own separate one, so I added it onto the design as best I could. Why do they need so many weapon and armor stands anyway? I never see anyone who asks for one using any of them....

AND LAST OF ALL, BECAUSE I'M NOT GOING TO SHOW 19 FLOORS OF IDENTICAL BEDROOMS, THIS

MORE pet graves, and this. A stem and leaves, with artifacts in the tips.

I know you don't need a temple to every individual member of your pantheon of gods, but honestly, it doesn't feel correct not to build it, does it? They're not used very often, and mostly just have Megadogs playing in them, but I still felt like they were important to build.

Starting at top left and going down:

The Earthen Chapel, where we worship the Diamond Rocks, a deity who appears as a female dwarf and holds domain over minerals. The Secretive Chapel, dedicated to Betan, appearing as a female dwarf and governing silence and dreams. I'd probably worship this one if I was a dwarf. The SANCTUARY OF OBLIVION. The edgelord chapel for Vesh the Fated, who takes the form of a skeletal male dwarf. His statue features Atir Releasechannel, an undead dwarf who worshipped him ardently about 1000 years ago (presumably for feeling a kinship?). I ought to comb the legends file and found out what happened to him. As an aside, this feels like a common name for a god of this sphere. My last fortress had Vesh the Fated Death. The Cathedral of Aquamarines, dedicated to Onget Canyonambers. The weird cube sculpture is apparently actually of Melbil Flankboulders being cursed to vampirism. Wonder if this one had anything to do with the pair I have in the graveyard. Onget presides over jewels and takes form of a male dwarf. The Helmed Abbey, worshipping Arban Healergates, a god shaped as a male dwarf and who is the god of fortresses. He's depicted engraving in his statue.

To the right side of the stem! The Silvery Sanctum, the as-yet-artifactless temple dedicated to Zim the Turquoise Spines, a female dwarf. The goddess of mountains. The Temple of Taxing (???) for Limar the Ivory Diamond. A male dwarf god, who governs… wealth. Ah. I see. A divine Ted Dibiase, only with presumably less 'going to jail for massive fraud on the needy', but presumably the same number of dollar signs on his championship belt. The Submerged Cathedral, appropriately dedicated to the goddess of water, Kogan (Not to be confused with Betan, even though I absolutely do). The Sanctuary of Playing, for Lun Dashedtop the Courageous Justice. The goddess of the sky and the wind, who takes the form of a female dw…

she's a giant bat. WHY ARE THEY ALL DWARVES BUT SHE'S A BAT and, uh, last one: The Cathedral of Avalanches for Uzol irongravel the Amethyst. Male dwarf god of metals.

and I will stop this here. enjoy the mental image of our eight perfectly normal dwarf gods, one skeletal god, and one who is a BAT for NO REASON

[kobblefort]

Rushsly: The Early Days 2

She's done it! Osgi made a wool turban. Besides "menacing with spikes of sheep wool"(???) it has no real interesting aspects, but it's pretty valuable and now I have one less kobold meltdown to worry about. The kobolds also demanded I build a temple for "The Goldenrod Creed," a religion about worshipping rainbows and the rain. And yeah sure I can get down with rainbows, I fuck with rainbows.

Looks pretty cool I think. Their priest is called "Holy Fish." I gave the job to a new arrival called "Cokuk Warnbarbs" and I'm sure I won't regret placing a hateful, greedy kobold in a position of religious authority.

Humans showed up to trade and seem to just be stuck here. The rabbits haven't left either. We didn't actually have any crafts to trade with the humans so they just sort of stood around. Eventually I read that when this happens you can get them to leave by deleting the trade depot. However this also made the humans just drop everything they brought and leave. I guess that made it our stuff. Well this could be a funny exploit but I don't know if they'll just see it as stealing.

Before the migrant wave even finishes I have to make it clear that this is not a hunter-friendly fortress. If you want to run around shooting arrows do that shit somewhere else. We don't do that here.

We're getting quite a sizeable population now and whoa hey hold up what the fuck

Some ratfolk dickhead broke in!!! A peasant Almda is just punching the absolute fuck out of her. Just going at her head like a fucking speedbag.

I mean holy shit

I love when they say this.

As Almda beat the ratfolk to death, a woodcrafter created their masterpiece across the room. Can you imagine being that kobold. Just like "whoa, that's crazy. I'm busy though"

Things are going smoothly. I'm trying a different bedroom setup for once. Glass production is going kind of slow, they keep canceling stuff because they "need sand-bearing item" (it's usually right next to them but they won't use it for some reason) I'm sure there's some way to fix this but I'm not sure what it is. "I ball to remember" - thought that came to me so vividly while i walked through the kitchen that I had to say it out loud. "I ball to forget" the only logical conclusion to that thought.

Rushsly was elevated to a Warren (kobble version of a barony) and crystal glass operations are up and fucking running baby!!! Big things poppin!!!!! We also have enough fucking iron and billon to get absolutely rich but the faster the economy go up the sooner we're likely to get raided and there's still no military here. You might be wondering how I got all these magma furnaces without embarking on a volcano or digging into Caverns 3 well baby I fucking cheated. I busted open DFhack with ` and I went to gui/liquids and I made some little magma pockets. I don't know how to get kobbles to move around buckets of magma without killing themselves in the process but if I did I would still probably do this. I'm still ultimately just using the resources I have and I'd never outright cheat to fix a kobble's mood or survive a siege or anything like that, sometimes I just get sick of the clerical bullshit! Maybe that sounds fun to you. Maybe it sounds insane for me to say that about a game that is, in essence, literally just clerical bullshit, but what is more insane than caring? I am still going to attempt to make steel completely legitimately, if you think me speeding things up so that I don't have to deforest the entire map and wait three times as long for the coal to actually get moved around ruins the integrity of the fortress then I don't know just stop fucking reading and you'll be better off.

We are also establishing a hospital even before we establish a barracks (I have decided to go the military route after all though traps are still in the cards) and guess how I got those water tiles two z-levels beneath those wells. Go ahead guess. Actually it's not a great solution because they will eventually dry up given enough use and I certainly don't want to manually re-fill them but by the time that becomes a problem I should be able to breach the caverns (relatively) safely and make me a mother fucking pump stack. I refuse to use windmills because I believe they make power too easy while also providing a really bad defensive weakness (I have had a forgotten beast break in through the axle tunnels and slaughter my entire fortress because of that one-tile-wide vulnerability) so drawing waterwheel power from the caverns is simply what I'm going to have to do. And yes I know that's a weird double standard for a guy who magically summons the water and magma from console commands but this is not a competitive game!!! When you boot up Dwarf Fortress it's YOUR choice whether you want to play as some kind of omnipotent god, minor deity, or literally just advisor to your little ant-farm of fake people. And I like being a minor deity with power over little time-and-effort-saving things but ultimately leaving matters of actual survival in the hands of my kobbles.

Just found a fat-ass native platinum vein, you wish you were me so bad.

A big part of why I'm so hesitant to breach the cavern layers is actually just that once you do, all your un-floored areas start growing cave fungus, which I hate. It can even start growing trees which will bust through your entire base but you can't really cut them down early you just have to literally build floor over them which is annoying and takes up so many resources. Some of it, like the red fungus, looks cool but most of it just looks ugly. However it does let you pasture your animals indoors which is always a boon, invaders fucking love to kill animals and if you can just have them sealed off in their own little chamber where nothing bad happens to them you don't have to worry about them. Once the kobolds get barracks set up and a bit of training under their belts I guess I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Right we've fucked around long enough, barracks time. And I smoothed them because if they're going to be stuck "constant training" they may as well get to enjoy the place. I particularly like having the dungeon right next to the barracks because it means any attempted jailbreakers will have to try and sneak through a room full of heavily-armored goons who are in the middle of swinging their weapons around. I don't really have the logistics set up for leather armor but I have an absolute fuckton of iron so it might be good enough to just make a 10-kobble melee squad and 10-kobble xbow squad with iron armor. For some reason, holding off until I have steel production up and running just seems like a bad idea.

I saw this notification and thought "oh shit, is there another thief or something" but it turned out my kobble actually just had a panic attack at work thinking about her friend dying in the Fucked Up Bridge Incident. This is a fucked up game. If you ever ask "what kind of god would make monkeys that get anxiety and have to drive big metal boxes to go operate a deep fryer all day," well, us I guess. We do that. Maybe this is what "god made man in his own image" means right. We've literally evolved so much that we can simulate being the same uncaring god doing the same awful things to little unassuming people. As above so below. I feel pretty normal playing Dwarf Fortress. It feels like a very natural behavior to me. Am I simply taking after my own creator

Ratfolk tried to sneak in, but gave up the element of surprise by shooting at some boar halfway across the map. Welp time to lock shit down! To be honest they seem more like they got lost on a hunting trip than they came here to fuck with us but we don't actually need to go topside for much of anything. And that "anything" includes making a good 10 or 20 sets of iron armor. Be our guests ratfolk... stay as long as you like.

Sometimes when I'm just sitting here doing this, I think about how happy I'd be with a soul-sucking spreadsheet job. Like the guy from OfficeSpace was such a bitch! What was with Generation X and going "no maaan, you don't want a job with fixed hours where you don't get cut or burned or blow out your knees! Having the same weekend every week and only having to worry about fucking up your posture will suck your soul out, maaaan!" Passing papers around pointlessly and doing fake social niceties for it sounds great. If it's so bad then give up your fucking paid vacations and holidays off and liveable pay and just switch places with the guy pushing carts around the Wal-Mart parking lot while 60 year old Xanax addicts in pickup trucks and SUVs try to run him down as practice for when they finally live their ultimate wish fulfillment by driving their car into a bunch of protestors for daring to temporarily mildly inconvenience them.

Not now bunnies

Oh I guess they have no beef with each other. That sort of makes sense they're both rodents right. Well uhh they just keep standing there on the edge of the map.

It seems kind of arrogant for William Shakespeare to say "All the world's a stage." Maybe not arrogant, but I don't know, of course you see it that way, you're a fucking playwright. What about everyone else? To the dishwasher, is all the world that salad you barely even took three bites of? What about to the soldier? Is all the world a target, a threat, an enemy? It is convenient for us to only see life through a pinhole. Both for us and the next pigeon up on the higher wire. Life isn't really a play or a fight or any one thing but as long as you never drop out you don't have to worry about that. You can stay right on a track and become a software engineering guy who can't cook instant noodles for himself or tell the difference between different species of trees. People always told me "ginkgo biloba trees smell like cum" but I've never smelled it. I've never really considered cum to have a smell, maybe I just don't have smelly cum. I mean I know the smell of a cum rag you toss in the corner of a room that you ended up forgetting for way too long and had to throw away, but that's more of just a bacterial smell to me I think and I've never smelled something like that while I was walking out in public, even around ginkgo biloba trees. It feels like you can generate infinite cum in life sometimes, like even when you haven't eaten or drank you can still make some come out of you, but you will run out eventually. I'm not sure about the "semen retention" guys, I kind of believe more in the "balance of fluids" thing. You can definitely have an excess of cum sometimes and it makes you act like a fucking idiot. If you don't jack off or otherwise dispel excess semen (as if anybody even has sex anymore - Not gonna catch me doing that nerd shit!) at least once every few days everyone can tell and they think you're wound-up and stuck-up and way too aggressive over little things. At the same time if you masturbate too much that's also weird and everyone can tell that too. Just do it once every two or three days to keep your levels normal. Hop on e621, punch in "breast_expansion dragon" and you're good to go. You're normal again.

Some migrants showed up, got into some martial trances, and then all died futilely to the four ratfolk rangers that kinda just won't fuck off. Well, actually, one of them went home. I guess he got his fill of fucking around. I don't really feel the urge to take revenge because I didn't know any of those guys really. We don't really need a fish cleaner and we certainly don't need any milkers or shearers so I don't know what to tell you. Bad day to show up. You really should have phoned ahead. You really should not have showed up to your girlfriend's house after she ignored your calls for like 3 hours obviously she was cheating on you!!! Sometimes a girl is just giving you those psilocybin mushrooms to try and subtlely convince you that you want to break up instead of just saying "we should break up" maybe direct communication isn't that great maybe you should just play weird interpetive-dance games with each other trying to change each other's minds instead. Sorry. I said I wasn't going to talk about David Cage.

Alsrta, previously the gelder, is now our Caravan Voice (manager) because Anl was stuck in a strange mood that I thought was going to fail but we managed to sneak a kobble out to collect a single log for him. She seems better at it anyway. Also, after drinking booze straight from the barrel even though there are plenty of cups, she gave birth to three children: Anl Crystaldepth (badass name) Iltos Coveredspells (decent name) and Zhatrsi Homagebutters (I'm sorry lil lady) making the need for protection clearer than ever. Death and birth within just moments of each other. Existence, even in this little pixelated simulation, is far too complicated to ever summarize with just a witty quote, but we keep trying. Maybe there really is an all-encompassing philosophical Theory Of Everything that's catchy and fits in as many characters as a tweet. Before they let the Twitter Blue perverts write as much as they want, I mean. I'm not sure 140 is realistic but 280 could probably fit it. Everything in the whole universe can be flattened into one slogan. Why else would everyone be trying to build an ideology out of little quotes and zingers

The kobolds are dancing around and listening to stories casually like there aren't any murderous ratfolk creeping around outside. Feels kind of opposite to real life. Everyone locked away in their McMansion is glued to one of three boxes telling them that everything is going to hell and everyone is out to get them and that we are in an untold flood of violence and despair. Then you go outside and you walk through that "bad neighborhood" and it's just people going to the store to get fucking groceries like everybody else. But I guess kobolds live more communally. And I can't say I'd ever want my bedroom to be right next to anyone else's ever again - even if I do get a box and a cabinet!

Some of that food they be making sounds good as hell

Kody Inkblighted has an appropriate name for someone who is regaling everyone with poetry. Apparently it also thought the last person doing poetry sucked.

DANKNESS AND NOTHING MORE LOL!!!!!

That peasant got their head bashed in with a crossbow so fucking hard that it exploded. That's pretty fucked up. I guess it's kinda even for our kobble punching that thief in the head over and over until they died but we only killed one of them and they killed five of us and it's not like we went out to fuck with them, they were literally sneaking around trying to steal our stuff. Well folks I hit 30 images and I'm high as fuck and honestly the things I'm about to do to a tuna sandwich would not be allowed on television in ANY country. I'll be here though not doing shit else so expect another post in I don't know a few hours I guess

[bluepenguinstories]

Remoras Full Chapter X: Sunny D

Prologue:

We traveled to the rumored temple by canoe in what was a rather long trip, a few days minimum, but well worth it.

“Why couldn’t we have taken a plane? Don’t you and Ray have connections?” Complained my traveling companion. Indeed, we could have gotten a ride on the private airline that was in Ray’s name, but where would the fun in that be? I could picture Ray now, saying, “it’s not about fun, it’s about convenience. The fun comes later,” but that would have missed the whole point. For Demetria, who must have missed the point as well, I was there to remind her just what that was.

“As the old saying goes,” I raised my finger in the air. “It’s the journey, not the destination.”

“Yeah, well the journey’s been frustrating and boring, and the destination is likely to be dangerous,” she argued while slouched over on her end of the canoe. It wasn’t that long, or wide, of a canoe, but it got the job done okay; I sat with my knees up while due to her size, she had her legs stretched out as if she were about to lay down and take a nap (something she had already done many times. Could anyone have blamed her? We have been on this trip for the past three days).

“The destination will be dangerous! That’s the best part!” I got all fired up. Really, we must have been almost there, and just the thought alone made my heart race!

I remembered that just a couple days ago, she started to grow suspicious. Night had fallen and we were out in the middle of the ocean. We were in the same positions, with paddles idly in hand, and as she began to speak, I thought we were about to embark on ‘girl talk’ and have some fun banter, but instead she sounded irritated.

“You said this was a ‘girls night out’ or something like that?” She asked, her voice dull, listless.

“Sure did!”

“Oh, bother. I feel like I’ve been manipulated.”

“Aw, honey, why’s that?”

She leaned her head back. “When you talked about this trip, I expected we’d only be gone for one night. We haven’t reached our destination, have we? Unless you’re planning on just sleeping out in the middle of the ocean, then expecting me to paddle right back to the diner in the morning. Which, by the way, really? Do you think I have that kind of arm strength?”

I laughed my hearty laugh. Ray’s laugh could occasionally get up to my height, but mine just came more naturally, and more often.

“Don’t worry about that! It’s a two person job, and I’ve got more than enough strength to paddle for the both of us!”

“Good,” she spoke as she yawned. “Then you do it. I’m going to sleep.” With that, she closed her eyes and was fast asleep.

I blinked. Not a response I expected. If anything, it seemed more like what would have come out of Remora’s mouth. But, then again, I guess Remora had the arm strength that she would’ve just shrugged and done it. Things were different in Demetria’s case, but I had a feeling she had some strengths of her own that I was not yet aware of. After all, she managed to take down a supposed ‘cosmic entity’ and found her way back all the way up to the arctic just on intuition alone (and maybe some clever deductions). The way I saw it, my job was to find out just what those strengths were.

But in that moment, I took off my sweater vest, the same one I wore when the winds were harsh, as if a blizzard were about to descend on the open sea, and laid it over Demetria as she slept.

Ah, but that was just the other night. It must have been an easy mistake on my part, and the next day, after she realized that we were still on the sea, she seemed much more adjusted to it. Just yesterday, we shared a nice meal of mackerels. Sure, she grumbled about it and said that “I can’t eat my own kind” but after weighing the other options (there was a bag of peanuts, a sealed container of leftover clam chowder, bacon muffins, and salmon jerky, all packed underneath our feet), she gave in.

“Demetria, dear,” I turned to her. “I know you must be frustrated; you feel betrayed because you expected it to be one night out, and here we are, day two, and we haven’t arrived at our destination. I assure you, we will still have fun, and we will be back at the diner. Believe me, I think this could be a good experience for the both of us to get to know each other.”

None of those words seemed to register to her and the whole time she glared while her head swayed from side to side.

“How I feel…” She muttered. “Mostly, I just feel sick.”

Then, she leaned over the side of the canoe and threw up. After gasping for air a couple times, she looked at her hands, horrified.

“I can’t believe I did that! I’m seasick and it’s your fault! I’ve gone against everything I stand for! I threw up in the ocean and I ate fish! I’m a monster!”

Just like the night before, I was speechless. Out of all the things I expected, that was NOT it. But, if I could say anything, anything at all, I was enjoying the experience. Every little thing that she showed helped me to get to know her better.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I didn’t know you got seasick! It…” Damn, I sure was the jerk in the situation, wasn’t I? Next time, I really would consider a plane or some other method, if that opportunity were ever to arise again. I reached down and handed her my canteen of water. “Here, take this. Drink slow, take slow breaths. Focus your vision.”

After she did so, it seemed like she was starting to feel better, although I was sure the bobbing of the canoe along with the waves didn’t help matters.

“How much longer, anyway? Until whatever it is you have in mind, that is.”

“We’re probably about halfway there,” I replied. “Trust me, it’ll be well worth it. We’ll have fun! Just a couple of girls hanging out!”

“Right,” she eyed me. “You’ve been saying that, but even if that were the case, I think I’d rather be at the diner. At least there I could see Remora.”

Ah, the other thing. The little suckerfish in the room, if you will. That lingering subject.

“Would you be okay with spending a few days out at sea with Remora?”

“Of course! Are you kidding? When can I? Sign me up!”

I tilted my head. “What makes her and I different?” It wasn’t that I needed to ask; I already knew the answer, but I wanted to understand her thought process.

“Well, for starters, she’s big and strong…”

“Wait! Hold up! I’m not big and strong?!”

She looked up and down, examined me, then gave a little “ah” sound.

“Yeah, no, you are too. So that’s not it. I mean, you’re fine. By yourself, you’re fine. Just having a chat, you’re fine. But you’re more like a mom.”

I spat out and laughed. “Well, I am a mom.”

“Oh yeah, huh? If Ray has a kid, you’d have to, too, wouldn’t you?”

“Um…” Usually I’d be more enthusiastic to talk about Elodie and send pictures, but that time, the enthusiasm just wasn’t there. “Yes, I am,” I smiled anyway. “But that’s beside the point! You don’t have to think of me as ‘the mom’, rather, you can come to me as a friend!”

She shook her head. “No, you definitely give off ‘Mom Energy’. I speak from experience with my own mom. She likes to drag me all these places and usually, I’d turn people down but she’d just be so pushy that I’d feel obligated to. I think if it were Remora in the canoe with me rather than you, it wouldn’t be because she dragged me to come along. If she’d want to be alone with me at all. But God, could you imagine? We could just sit in silence all day long, and that would be all I need. I could stare at her and she wouldn’t have to say a thing.”

I started to get the feeling that I put such a picture in her head and now she was fixated on the very thing. Unintentional, but I understood. If there was one thing I loved, it was love. More than that, however, I loved adventure.

So there we were, day three. My heart continued to race and my intuition kicked into overdrive. Following that, I pulled out a pair of binoculars and lo and behold! Land! Off in the distance, a massive volcano. Now, once we were a little closer, it would seen so obvious what we were approaching, but I couldn’t wait that long.

“Hey! Demetria! We’re almost there!” I nudged her.

“Wah!” She jolted up. Hand over her chest, she started hyperventilating. “That...that’s not cool! I was just about to nap again! What gives?”

“What gives?! We’re almost there!”

“Really? Dope.”

“Yeah! Let’s get to paddling!”

Whatever brief glimpse of joy she might have had seemed to diminish as soon as I said the word ‘paddling’. She groaned the biggest and most exaggerated groan I’ve heard in a long time. However, she must have known that it was a necessary step, as her hands were on her set of paddles and she was just about to start up on rowing. Then, we both felt a thud as something bumped into the canoe and knocked it off balance.

“What was that?!” Demetria started to freak out.

I peered over the water and noticed the unmistakable outline of a shark.

“Now, don’t panic,” I urged her. “But there’s sharks right underneath us who probably find this little boat rather curious.”

“Don’t panic?! Are you serious?! How am I supposed to not panic?!”

Okay, point well taken.

“Here, grab your paddle and start hitting them with it.”

She glared at me and pointed at her arm. Yes, I knew what she was telling me.

“Really?! At a time like this?!” Now I was the one working up a frenzy. “Can’t you work up an adrenaline rush or something?!”

“I’m not about to hurt a shark! They’re precious! It’s just a misunderstanding!”

Again, the sharks bumped into the canoe and almost tipped it over. Demetria let out a little squeak and just about fell over along with our canoe. I helped her up.

“Here,” she relented, handing me her paddle. “Be gentle with them.”

I nodded. “I’m just going to bonk their noses a little!”

True to my word, I fended off the sharks the best I could, but this only served to provoke them further.

“Um,” Demetria spoke up. “Do you have any more mackerel?”

“Now’s not the time!”

“If you do, throw the rest in the water!” She yelled, and then, it clicked. So, out of my pocket, I fished up the bag of mackerel and threw it into the water. The sharks must’ve picked up the scent, as they rushed over to the mackerel in the distance.

“That should buy us some time. Good thinking, Demetria.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she looked away and groaned.

“Now, can you swim?”

“Can I WHAT?!”

“We’re going to need to abandon ship.”

“No, I can’t swim!” She protested. That threw me off as well. Damn, she was really good at that.

“Really? How come you never told me?”

“Because I didn’t think I would have to!”

I sighed. Looks like it couldn’t be helped.

“All right, time to get on my back.”

She shook her head with such an intensity that I had to believe that’s what her all her adrenaline ended up being spent on.

“How are you going to swim while also carrying me on your back?”

“You’re small, and I assume you don’t weigh much, so…”

She groaned. No other word spoken.

“Come on, we’re already close to land, and this ship’s not going to make it.”

“Fine. But if I drown, I’m taking you down with me.”

Such confidence. Well, no matter. I crouched down and she got right up. Then, I took the leap. It didn’t register to tell her to hold her breath, nor did it register to her. So when we sank below, only for a few seconds, the moment she came up, she started coughing. Her grip was beginning to loosen and we hadn’t yet moved.

“Hey, hey, hold on tight.”

The coughing continued and she spit out water. Then, she began to sound out the words.

“I…” Then, a gasp. “I...I hate you...so much…”

She managed to stop coughing. No longer gasping for air, her breathing returned to normal. She was quiet the whole way, even when I picked up speed. Really, she didn’t weigh much at all. Light as a feather. Or maybe it was just the fact that I’ve carried far heavier things on my back before. But I wasn’t slow, not like a turtle. Rather, one could go as far as to call me a camel. Now, the pertinent question may be whether or not there was such a straw that could break my back.

I:

Once we made it to the shore of the island, we both fell over.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” I started laughing. I looked up and saw her shaking hand raise, then, she formed a thumbs up.

“That’s the spirit!” I cheered. She groaned in response, as usual.

“Just let me lay down for a bit,” she croaked out the words.

“Sure!” I leaped to my feet. It was about time for me to stretch. After all, I didn’t wanna get any cramps or anything like that. Plus, it’s just good habit.

After I got done stretching, I turned to Demetria.

“Are you dead?” I asked.

“Not yet…” She picked herself up, already looking exhausted. Of course, when we were confined on that canoe, there weren’t many opportunities for her to shine, but now that we were on land, I couldn’t wait to find out what she was capable of.

“Um…how do you stretch?” She asked.

“Oh! Good question! So let’s try something simple! Like, bring one arm across to the opposite shoulder, and hold it there.”

Just as instructed, she held her arm over her shoulder. She stared at me the whole time she did so.

“Just like that?”

“Yeah! Now the other arm!”

Again, she held on, then, her eyes lit up. “Wow! I can feel my power level rising!”

“Really?” I couldn’t hold back my excitement.

“No,” she replied, returning to a deadpan expression.

Note to self: she didn’t seem to know the importance of stretching. That’s okay, though! I could teach her!

“Well, are you ready for the girls night out? We’re going to explore an ancient temple and look for treasure!”

I looked up, and off in the distance, I could see the volcano. Daylight was still upon us. By the time we reached the temple itself, dusk may yet greet us. All the better. Once we were done, maybe daybreak would return, and we could make our way back home.

“Wait, that’s your plan? Can’t we just hang out on the beach and sip on coconut milk?”

“Come on! There’s not any coconuts on this island!” Oh, that silly Demetria.

“Yeah there is! There! And there!”

I was already way ahead of her, but that got me thinking: what would we have done with coconuts, anyway? She ran up to me after noticing how far ahead I was.

“Okay, so, what’s the plan?” She asked. Either eager, or just wanting to get things over with. Either way, valid.

“Let’s see...we’re going to scale up the mountain trail, walk across an active volcano, then head into the ancient temple. Once inside, we’ll avoid all the traps and pitfalls, make it to the end, and take the ancient artifact. Simple stuff, really.”

“That’s...okay, yeah. I don’t even know why I’m surprised anymore.”

That’s the spirit! Now she finally gets it!

We headed up the mountain trail. I was somewhat of a natural when it came to those kinds of things. Demetria, on the other hand, was lagging behind. But this time, rather than complain or show her difficulty, she trudged on.

“So we’re going across a volcano, right?” She called to me.

“That’s right. There’s a bridge that’ll take us across.”

“You know, my cousin’s wife is a volcano.”

“Really? Is it because she’s hot?” I joked. Though, now I was curious what her cousin’s wife looked like. Oops. Active mind.

“No, nothing like that. Even if she wasn’t tangentially related to me, I wouldn’t be into her. I just meant that she’s named after a volcano. Pretty crazy, though, right? Like what kind of person names their kid after a volcano? Now, in my family, a lot of people are named after trees, which is weird, too. When I was attending university, geology wasn’t my field of study, but I’m pretty sure that magma runoff from an active volcano could destroy a tree. What do you think?”

What I thought...what I thought…

“Are you always this dorky, Demetria?” I couldn’t hold back all of my laughter.

“No. Well, shit. Maybe? Oh well. That was my attempt at making conversation. I’ll shut up now.”

“Aw, don’t be like that! I thought it was cute!”

“That’s such a mom thing to say. Let’s just get a move on.”

Yet again, she was a tough nut to bust. Every time I thought we were getting somewhere, she’d turn away. That wouldn’t deter me. By the time we were done with our trip, I was certain I’d be able to see her in action.

Once at the summit, we saw the bridge. The heat was at its worst up there, but I saw it as a nice change of pace from the usual climate of the arctic. Demetria didn’t see it that way.

“Goddamn hot!” She cried out. I turned and saw her wipe her forehead. It must have been covered in sweat.

“It’ll cool down once we go across the bridge,” I assured her. I went in front so she could see how it was done. “Now, don’t look down, hold onto the rope, and keep moving forward.”

“I hate it how in movies they tell you not to look down, ‘cause that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Just follow behind me,” I turned my head. She nodded.

Each step, the wood platforms underneath us creaked, and the bridge swayed to and fro.

You know, now that I think of it, I don’t think this is bridge is meant to hold two people at once. Maybe at one point it was. Hmm...I better keep this in my head and not jinx it.

With each passing step, I could feel her hesitation. For me, this was just like walking anywhere else, but I had to imagine she didn’t walk through that many bridges suspended over active volcanoes in the past.

“How you doing back there?”

“I’m not looking down...I’m not looking down...I’m not…”

“Yeah? Good!”

“Hey! You broke my concentration!”

“AAAAA –!” She must’ve looked down, for what came next was stomping against the wooden tiles and I had no choice but to run to the other side, just to keep from her bumping into me and potentially knocking both of us over. I managed to make it to the other side. Demetria, however, stood stunned on the bridge. Just a few steps away from the solid ground I stood on, but she was too frozen in fear.

“I can do this...I can do this…” She looked around, first her right side, then her left. Then, she looked down. “THIS IS NOT COOL!”

She held onto the ropes on each end and started to shake them in place. As she did so, the bridge also swayed.

“Careful! You could really break the suspension that way!” I cautioned.

She stopped shaking the ropes. Although still frozen, and hyperventilating, it seemed like she had calmed down to some extent. I could feel a smile spread across my face. I wanted to extend my arm forward and raise my thumb up.

“Okay…” More deep breaths. Very loud, audible, deep breaths. “I can do this.”

I watched as she held onto the ropes which kept the bridge suspended and used them to lift herself up, then she swung herself forward and inched her way closer to me.

Hmm...that’s not half-bad.

But just as she was about to take another swing and reach the end, the rope on her right started to snap and I could tell she was about to fall.

No! Just one more step and she would have had it! I reached out for her and grabbed onto her hand. I pulled her toward me and got her off the bridge. As she stood with her head down, she mumbled something.

“What was that, dear?” I asked.

“Thank you…” Her voice sounded so grim, like me saving her life was somehow a bad thing. Before we moved on, I noticed the unspeakable happen: the bridge we both crossed collapsed right in front of us. The crackling noise made Demetria turn around and her shock rang throughout the air.

“NO! How are we supposed to get back home now?!”

“Hey! Hey!” I patted her shoulder. “It’ll be okay! We’ll figure something out! Something usually turns up eventually!”

“Maybe so…” She still sounded so glum. “Let’s get a move on, then.”

I know she’s glum now, but by the end of it, she’ll be peachy keen! I’m sure of it because I always get that way after I’ve explored a place full of death traps and find ancient treasure, so it’s gotta be the same for her! I just gotta be patient and keep my chin up, cause I’m sure she’ll come around!

We walked our way down and it was as if a glow shone down from the heavens and illuminated our destination: the ancient temple.

“Look! Look!” I pointed with such aggression, no, that was the wrong word. Passion! With such passion, such excitement, such amaze!

“Oh yeah, huh? Some old building. Wonder if there’s any squatters living there,” she commented.

“That’s where your mind goes? I think it’s romantic! How it just shines so bright, like it’s waiting for us to go inside!” I placed my hand over my chest.

“Romantic? Don’t you have a husband?”

“No, that’s not it! Romantic, like...those old adventure stories, you know? Like when an adventurer finds buried treasure and seeks far off lands! It’s just so dreamy!”

“Huh? Is that so?” She asked.

“Yeah! Let’s run down and check it out!” I was all fired up. That’s how it was with me: the closer I was to the destination, the faster my heart raced. At all times, I sought such excitement.

“Hey! Slow down!” Demetria called out to me. Too late. The Sunny Express was full steam ahead. “It’s too steep! You’re going to slip!”

Oh. I didn’t even consider that! I skidded across the rocky path and almost slipped, as if she had placed some kind of slipping spell on me.

“Good call!” I raised my fist.

She hunched over and tried to catch her breath. Ah, she must have been running as well and ran out of breath. Her shaking hand held up a fist, which then formed into a thumbs up. “Let’s keep going,” she wheezed.

Well, looks like she’s at least more open to this now, I thought as I smiled. “Yeah!”

In order to get in, we had to duck under a fallen stone pillar. Such a thing was actually easy for her. As for me, I had to practically crawl on the ground just to get through. But that’s okay, I liked getting my hands dirty!

Once inside, we were surrounded by a great darkness.

“I knew these contacts weren’t going to cut it,” she murmured. “But I can’t be badass wearing glasses, can I?”

I mean, yes you can, but I guess I see the point. If you do some crazy acrobatics, chances are they’ll fall off and possibly break. Maybe that’s what she means.

I walked over to the wall and felt my way around. Next to me was a torch. Well, what could have been a torch, if it was lit. Which meant it was an unlit torch! Yes!

“Hey dear, got any matches?”

“No. I used them all up back at the mansion.”

“Hmm…a lighter, perhaps?”

“I don’t smoke.”

Ah, how nostalgic. Reminds me of the first conversation I had with Ray.

“Guess I’ll have to do this the old fashioned way…” I flicked the torch against the wall and watched as the tip caught fire.

“Bingo!”

“Oh cool!” She stared in awe. “Let me try!” She went up to the wall closest to her, jumped up, grabbed a torch, then tried to brush the torch up against the wall. Nothing happened.

So instead, I watched her drop it, as if her one hope for enjoyment had been taken away. In its place, she stomped on it.

“What gives?! I can strike a match but not a torch? I really am useless!”

I went up to her and with my free hand, I gave her head a pat. “Now, now. It takes practice. Besides, sometimes the wood itself is no good. I think in my case, I just got lucky!”

“Still…”

“Can’t you walk?”

She nodded.

“Then you’re not useless! That’s all you need to do!”

No comment came from her, but we continued to walk on. As we walked, a thought cropped in my head that could cheer her up.

“So, tell me about this crush of yours.”

“Is it that obvious?!”

I let out a laugh.

“To me, it is.”

“Also, who opens up with that out of the blue? Like, ‘anyway, how’s your sex life, Mark?’ Nobody talks like that!”

“Sorry, if it’s that sensitive of a topic for you, we can drop it.”

“No, it’s fine. How did you know, anyway?”

I looked up and closed my eyes, unable to resist the urge to smile. “I was in love once, too...” I reminisced.

“W...What? Once? You aren’t anymore?”

“...And I still am,” I concluded.

“What the fuck? Who talks like that?”

To answer the question about how obvious it was, maybe it was the fact that I’ve experienced similar things. Or maybe it was just a few days ago, back at the diner, that really made me catch on to how bad she had it.

The few days spent back at the diner after Demetria’s return from the mansion consisted of her recovery. She complained of soreness every waking hour and walked in slow, stilted motions. I recalled the shower being used a lot more often than the last time I had been there, as well. Which only made sense considering how long I had been away and all the people who had moved in since.

Really, it seemed like I had become a stranger; I had memories of the diner being full of life, but during those times, the back would be calm and quiet. Only Ray and I. Now it was like the opposite and neither Ray nor I had an explanation. All of that wasn’t to say that I disliked such changes. In fact, I welcomed new faces and new opportunities for adventure. It was just an adjustment.

One thing that didn’t need adjusting however was my sense of adventure. I was just waiting for the next spark before I departed once more. True, I told Ray that I was planning on staying for a while after having been gone for almost a year, but he must have known me well enough to know that I couldn’t resist. When that time would come, I’d tell him that I wouldn’t be gone long. Seemed like a fair compromise.

“Feels strange, doesn’t it?” He was back at the desk which he had given to Remora after declaring her leader. Guess he too had things he couldn’t keep away from. “We’ve been at this side business for years, practically building up an empire through it.”

“Yeah, maybe I was too hasty with that,” I shook my head and sighed. “I was just worried, you know? When you told me Demetria had no special skills and she went and risked her life, I thought the worse. Not to mention the wildfires I saw. At the time, I thought she could have been caught in the middle of it.”

He did a little one-armed shrug, something I didn’t even see him do before. Guess he picked up a couple of new quirks in my absence.

“I’m sure if I was in your position, I would have reached the same conclusions. No need to fret, my love.”

Oh my. It was on now. I couldn’t just let him get the upper hand in the Terms of Endearment Department. Everyone knew I held the title of Lord of Romanticism and I wasn’t about to give my title away.

“Who says I’m fretting? Now I can make memories closer to home, where I know they’ll be the most vivid. Because after all, home is where the heart is, and you, my Ray of sunshine, are my home.”

I leaned in and brushed my nose against his. He opened his eyes slow, his little mole-like eyes, and we exchanged a look which we only exchanged when we were about to give each other the most passionate of kisses.

“Ew. Ew. Ew. Get a room you two!” Interrupted a voice of disapproval. We both turned and saw Demetria seated against the wall. She had her arms crossed, which she only unfolded to give us both a thumbs down. Ray and I looked back at each other, then back at her, and the two of us laughed.

“What’s so funny?” She scowled. “I’m being serious! Couples are gross and should be banned. Why can’t you two get a hobby?”

Once again, Ray and I gave each other a look. This time, a rather sly look.

“Oh, but dear. Ray is my hobby,” I teased. Ray nodded.

“And I’m quite good at Sunny, if I do say so myself,” he added.

“Please, I always bring my Ray-game. Nobody’s as good as Sunny at Sunny,” I argued.

“LA! LA! LA!” She yelled while covering her ears, which prompted Ray and I to burst into laughter once again. Ah, I sure missed how fun it could be to tease others.

Before we could keep it up, the door to the front opened. In walked Remora, who also had her arms crossed. But in contrast, she was hunched over and shivering. Next to her was Tigershark in all her glory. She raised her hands up and announced.

“I CAUGHT A BIG ONE!”

Demetria looked over to the kid. “A big what?”

“I don’t know the name but it was big!”

Ray leaned over, one hand on his chin. “And how fares you, my frigid friend?”

“Couldn’t you find another way to describe me?” Remora groaned. “Anyway, I’m just chill. I went hunting for elk while Tigershark went fishing nearby. Now I am here. You should turn the heater up, by the way.”

“You know that won’t do you any good,” he reminded her.

“Bluuuuh. Can’t you be helpful? Get me a heated blanket.”

“Oh!” Demetria leaned close to Tigershark. “So you caught a fish! I probably could’ve told you what it was!”

“Yes! And then I ate it!”

“No! How could you? Now I can’t identify it! Tell me what it looked like!”

“It had fins and a tail!”

“That could be anything! Gah!”

“Jeez,” Remora chimed in. “If I knew it was so important to you, I could’ve just taken a picture of it.”

“You would? If you did, I would treasure it! But...don’t worry! You’re more important!”

“Why?” Remora looked confused. Demetria shared the same confused look for an instant, likely pondering her own statement, before her eyes lit up once more.

“Because! You’re you! You’re cool!”

“Blame it on the weather.”

“No!” Demetria got up and stood on top of the chair. “You’re cool no matter where you go!”

“Jeez. No need to rub it in…”

“That’s why I –” Before Demetria could finish whatever it was she was trying to get out, she lost her footing and fell onto the floor, lying on her back.

“Are you all right?” Remora asked, without a hint of concern in her voice.

“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” Demetria cried out in an almost Shakespearean manner.

“Do you want me to call a medic?”

“No! You have no choice but to walk on me!”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m taking up the whole floor!”

“No you’re not. I could just walk around you. But if you’re in that much pain, you should have a medical professional take a look.”

“It will take too long! You have no other choice but to step on me!”

“Or...I could just help you up?”

Demetria paused. No more zany outbursts. Then, in a lowered tone, she spoke once more.

“Actually...I think I can help myself up...I don’t know what I would do if you held my hand even for a second…”

“Okay, then,” Remora walked off.

As soon as Remora went into her room at the end of the hall, Demetria picked herself up and went back to the seat.

“So were you just acting?” I blurted out.

“My back really does hurt like a motherfucker, but I also may have exaggerated a little because I lose my mind whenever she’s near.” If nothing else, I had to appreciate her honesty. But then my eyes darted over to Tigershark, who was still standing near Demetria and seemed to be mouthing out the word ‘motherfucker’. I gasped.

“What are you saying, kiddo?” I tried to keep my voice down.

“Motherfucker!” She declared. Yeah. Thought so.

Demetria turned her head and covered her mouth. “Oops! I didn’t know you were still there, I swear!”

“Can you unlearn that word, dear?” I kept my attention on the little shark.

“Okay! I’m going to go make a spaghetti now!” And with that, she waddled off to where I presumed was the kitchen. Ray sure did turn Tigershark into some sort of cooking prodigy, even if it didn’t stave off her energy one bit.

With Tigershark gone, I focused my attention once more on Demetria.

“So, how ‘bout those muscles of yours?” I grinned.

“Who? Me? I’m flatter than a slice of pita bread.”

“Still, you must be pretty amazing to do what you did back at the mansion, don’t you think?”

“Oh yeah, huh? It’s gonna take more than an incomprehensible space alien to keep me down! Of course, I only did it so I could prove to Remora how good I was. It’s just too bad now that I won’t get any other chances. Feels like I really screwed up that one.”

That was right. The one who I thought had no special skills did something that for just a minute astonished even Remora. To take on something called a ‘cosmic entity’ (whatever that meant) and live, that couldn’t have been a small feat. Then, a spark ignited within me which I just couldn’t tame.

“Who said you won’t get any other chances?” I asked, a smile spreading across my lips.

“Aren’t we no longer taking requests?” She recalled.

“Oh, I must have misspoke. We’re just taking a short break from them until you recover. Once you’re all healed up, we’ll get back to work, and you’ll be invited to take on whatever you’d like.”

“Really?!” Excitement leaped from out of her voice. “In that case, I’m all better now!”

I laughed. “Let’s give it at least a couple weeks, yeah?”

All the excitement she had evaporated in a heartbeat. “Fine…” She groaned, then walked away. Probably to her room.

Which left me all alone with the hubby. Now it was his turn to ask:

“Really?” He looked up at me.

“Come on! Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“About what? You need to plant a rumor in order for it to bloom.”

“About this whole ‘cosmic entity’ nonsense!”

“Hun, it’s not like you or I are going to find one just by wandering around.”

“No, not that! I hadn’t even heard of those things until Remora mentioned them, but just the fact that they’re apparently some dangerous creatures and yet Demetria faced one and made it out? I’ve got to see her in action!”

“You’ve got to remember. Our frosty friend has dealt in things such as alternate universes and time travel. The things she’s encountered most people will never see or even hear about. Still, it reminds me of that old billionaire we once cheated out of his money.”

“You mean Mr. Chambers?” How could I forget something like that? That was one of our more memorable escapades. “Wonder what ever happened to that guy.”

“Last I heard, he became a marriage counselor, then passed away shortly after.”

That made sense, in a sort of topsy-turvy way.

“Anyway,” Ray continued. “He’d rave about that sort of thing. Far off lands, strange beings. All that jazz. The unfortunate thing is that unless we encountered such creatures ourselves, there’s no way to tell just how dangerous or not they are.”

“Okay, I hear ya, but I got a good feeling about this. There must be something more to Demetria that neither of us are aware of and I want to find out what.”

“What do you have in mind?” He asked, although at that point, I assumed he already knew what my proposal would be.

“I’d like to take her out for a bit. You know, girls night out. That’s all.”

“All right, honey. Just don’t overdo it.”

I gave him a hard pat on the back.

“No worries, I won’t be gone long!”

“That’s not what I mean. But in any case, have fun, and I await your return.”

I wasn’t quite sure what Ray meant and I didn’t bother to ask him to elaborate. After more than two decades of marriage, I figured we both knew each other pretty well, so I’d just figure it out eventually.

In any case, the following day, I brought my proposal to Demetria and thus our trip began.

II:

We continued our small talk while traversing the temple.

“How much do you know about Remora?” I asked. “By the way, watch out for that vine.”

“Huh?” She asked, about three seconds before getting hit in the head with a vine.

Oof. I should’ve been quicker to warn her.

“Uh. Plenty,” she replied. Not about the vine, but that must’ve been obvious. “I know her hair is red, she’s taller than me, she has muscles, she lives in the arctic. I know she’s too cool to approach and that she can kick my ass.”

That was plenty, but at the same time, nothing.

“That’s all?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s all’? That’s a lot!”

“But, like, what are things she likes? Or dislikes? Do you know much about her life outside of what you’ve seen?”

“Yeah! There was that job she had and apparently her coworker pissed a lot of people off and then that coworker died and people are still pissed off!”

Gee, I wonder who she’s referring to.

“Oh, huh. Do you know what Remora’s job was?” I pressed.

“No, but I bet it had something to do with being badass!”

You’re not wrong there. I almost want to say ‘the less you know, the better’ but I think it would be good to know. I just don’t think you need to hear it from me.

“That’s all?”

“Oh, come on! What else do I need to know?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. Aren’t you the one interested in her?”

“Oh...well...I…” She froze up, as if I had caught her in a trap. “I never said I was interested in her!”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Err...well, I’m passionate about her, and most of the time, she’s the only thing on my mind, so maybe I am interested.”

“Then wouldn’t you want to get to know her?”

“Not really.”

“What about when you were interested in marine biology? Didn’t you want to learn all you could about marine life?”

Yeah, but that’s different!”

“How?” I pressed on.

“I’ve never been interested in people before.”

Now, there could have been a couple of takeaways from me having such an interest when it came to the young woman’s feelings: one, I could have been trying to play matchmaker and had every intention of setting those two up. On the opposite end, it may have seemed like I was doing the opposite and wanted the poor thing to cease her pursuits, learn the error of her ways, and go back home. Neither of those were the correct opinion.

See, it was all about adventure. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, that kind of stuff. Who was I to say who was good or bad for who? Whether or not something would or could work out didn’t really concern me, either. Reality was much more plain and simple: I just loved love. But like a good weapon, in order to fully utilize love, it was important to refine it, make it sharper.

Daydreams were nice, but if you didn’t have a lot of details, such dreams could fade with ease. To that end, I would help her fill in such details and practice until she crafted herself a powerful weapon.

So no, I neither encouraged, nor discouraged the fixation she had, I just wanted to help her refine her approach. Who knows? In due time I could have watched as she held a mighty sword in the palm of her hands.

I was getting into metaphors but now I’m genuinely curious what kind of weapon Demetria would use if she had one. Oops. Guess now I’m the one daydreaming...hmm...maybe a bow and arrow? Or a hammer? Ooh! A chainsaw!

Click.

I swerved to my side as arrows passed me. On cue, I turned around to see Demetria, one foot over a panel on the floor.

“Are you okay, dear?” I asked.

“Those just flew past my head!” She gasped.

“Ah, the old ‘step on a panel, arrows shoot out’ trap. Oldest trick in the book. Gotta watch out for those.”

“You just moved out of the way without hesitation!”

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m used to it. You are okay, though, right?”

She nodded. “Actually...I think I could have caught one of them.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah. They were so close to my face that if I just reached up in time, I could’ve caught one.”

Interesting that she would think so. Gotta give her props for the confidence. But there was just one flaw…

“If you grabbed one, your hand would bleed from the friction. Even if you’d have survived since it didn’t pierce through you, you’d still be pretty badly hurt.”

“Maybe if I wore gloves,” she suggested.

“Ah! You might be onto something there! They would have to be strong gloves, though, otherwise it would tear through the fabric.”

To be able to catch one of those arrows...I wondered if such a thing was even possible. Considering the speed in which those arrows get shot, it seemed unlikely.

Still more likely to catch an arrow than a bullet.

“I think if you’ve got good enough reflexes, you would do better to dodge rather than catch,” I added.

She kicked the floor. “That’s boring. I want strong gloves.”

There’s a reason why the expression ‘you sure dodged a bullet’ and not ‘you sure caught that bullet’ exists.

We pressed onward through the winding maze that the temple was. Cracks along the ceilings made for nice decoration. Any day now, the temple may fall apart. I just hoped it had one more day left in it. Just a little further down and we would reach the end.

“You know, what we’re doing isn’t technically a good thing.”

“What?!”

“I’m basically a glorified graverobber. Think about it: if you were buried with something you treasured, you wouldn’t want someone opening up your grave and stealing it from you, would you?”

“Then why do you do it?” She spat out.

“Because it’s fun!” I answered with glee.

Our momentum was pulled to a halt once I noticed what was ahead. I held my arm out to my side to signal her to stop as well.

“What’s the holdup?” She asked. I held the torch out in front of me, to which she gasped. In front of us was a vast pit of darkness and we were right there on the edge.

“What are we supposed to do now?” She tugged at my shirt.

I leaned over and glanced to my left. That was when I noticed it. Aha! But then there was the matter of the torch. Oh, what a dilemma.

As I pondered a solution, I heard the sound of something rolling against the floor. I turned around to see a boulder headed in our direction.

“I was wondering when that would show up…” I remarked.

“This is not what I want to be crushed under!” She panicked.

Having to act fast, I threw the torch across the depths and watched as it landed on a platform on the other end.

All right! We won’t have to go far!

I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me. We took to a thin platform along the walls and stood against it. As we inched across, we watched the boulder roll off.

“Whoa!” She began to wobble. I held onto her, my other hand held tight onto indentations on the wall.

“Find places to grab onto and move slowly,” I instructed. She nodded.

If anything, I think she’s got more of an advantage than me, what with our sizes. I’m barely able to keep my soles on the platform, so it’s more like I’m rock climbing. But she can keep her whole self on the platform no problem.

After several more slow paces, I made it to the other side and waited for Demetria to get there as well. At one point, I watched part of the platform crumble underneath and her foot slipped. But rather than fall, she growled as held on tighter and pushed herself back up. I wiped sweat off my forehead and smiled. Seemed like she’d be okay after all.

She made it to the other end and landed on the edge of the stone floor, right next to me.

Before we could celebrate, we both heard a crack. Her eyes widened as the ground beneath her broke apart and fell down below, just about taking her with her. I cried out as well.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. My heart wouldn’t cease its pounding. Maybe it was the same for her as well. I looked down. Then, I saw her: hanging on to the side of the platform.

What was that about rock climbing?

I dropped to the floor and reached my arm down.

“Take my hand!” I called to her. As she reached up, inches from my grasp, I leaned forward so that she could grab on. Instead, she reached her other hand up. The indentation she had planned to grab onto broke off and her arm was left dangling.

She could pull herself up, but she might not have enough strength to. God damn it, why did I think going on this trip was a good idea? I put her through so much all because of some stupid suspicion and now she’s in danger.

As she reached her dangling arm back up, I jumped at the opportunity and reached out to her right hand and managed to take it. I pulled her up and brought her back to solid ground with me. Once she stood up, she glared at me.

“Let go of me,” she groaned.

I let go my hand. She sat down, silent, looking down.

“I didn’t want you to save me,” she murmured.

“Did you want to die?” The words escaped me. Me, the thrill seeker, wasn’t enjoying this particular thrill.

“No. That’s not it.”

I didn’t know what else to say. Still silent, she picked up a pebble and tossed it. My focus ended up drawn to how scratched up her arms and knees had gotten. To have experienced such a sting and not have that be her focus, it showed true...no. That wasn’t it. Not strength. She probably wanted to show that she was capable, and I had assumed (wrongfully so) that she was. Seeing her so scratched up like that conjured images of Elodie in my mind.

For that reason, I knew whatever I would say next would end up being tinged with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked out the words. “I didn’t realize you were ordinary…”

“That’s right,” she replied, devoid of emotion. “I’m ordinary. There’s nothing special about me. I get myself in these situations, naively so, and end up having to be saved by others.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I just assumed that because you survived the mansion, that you –”

“I almost didn’t. I only survived because I got lucky. If anyone else had taken on that mission, it would have been taken care of with ease. I know this. And those two would have survived…”

“Those two?” I tilted my head.

“I still see them even though they’re gone. Sometimes when I shower, or in my dreams, those moments replay. What happened to them. If I wasn’t ordinary, I could have saved them. Instead, I’m the one who keeps having to be saved. Time and time again.”

Her words sounded dry. I expected any moment for her to break down in tears, but none came.

“So yeah. I’m ordinary. But I don’t want to be.”

Damn it. Maybe I picked the wrong words to open up with when I said ‘ordinary’. I gotta rethink my approach here. Sunny is supposed to be a bright name, not something associated with bringing others’ spirits down.

“Lucky or not,” I stumbled through the words. “It was still quite a feat what you did.”

“Yeah. But those two still died. I’d hardly call that a victory.”

“I know things could have turned out better,” I crouched down next to her. “But I’ve made plenty of mistakes, too. I’ve gotten people hurt when I didn’t mean to. You can get better, though, I believe that.”

Do I? Why was comforting people so hard? Ray makes it seem much easier.

“Maybe so, but I still can’t keep up with you,” she replied.

“That’s something you can work on. Everyone at the diner has their strengths and weaknesses, so it’s all about finding what yours are and honing it in.”

“What if I don’t have any?”

“Come on! Don’t be like that!” I paused, then thought of something. “Why is it you don’t want to be ordinary?”

“Remora. She’s pretty much been my motivation for anything.”

Somehow, I am not at all surprised she would say that. More surprised that I would have to ask.

“Very well. What is it about Remora that makes her so special, anyway?” Oh gosh. The phrasing. I could’ve offended her then and there.

“It was when I first met her,” she said and I sensed no offense taken.

“Yeah?”

“It was at an aquarium. I was so anxious because I liked studying fish, but I didn’t really interact with people much. Let alone go out in public. So all those crowds of people really got to me. But then I saw her standing there, staring at one of the tanks with such a fixed expression. Like nothing around her mattered save for the fish she stared at. Maybe that’s why I was so transfixed, is because she seemed like the same as me, but better. Like the kind of person I wish I was.”

“Do you know what fish she was looking at?”

“No? Does it matter?”

Hm. I guess not. I was just curious. Maybe the kind of fish she focused on could’ve said something about her. But then again, it might not have been all that important, either.

“It was just that she stood so tall,” Demetria continued. “And cool in a way that I didn’t think I could ever be and I ended up losing all interest in my studies as my attention was fixed on the image I had of her.”

“Since that’s the case, may as well get to know her, right?”

“Ugh. That again? Look, compared to her, I’m a mouse. Besides, like I said, I’ve never cared much for people.”

“Not even your mom?”

“She’s too pushy.”

“Any siblings?”

“Yeah, but they’ve all got their own lives. Never really paid me much mind, and likewise, I’ve never seen any reason to get to know them. Don’t get me wrong, though. It’s not like I don’t think of people at all; I get first impressions of people, and that’s how they are to me. Nothing else.”

Ooh. My curiosity wouldn’t allow me to let that one go.

“Oh yeah? What’s your impression of me?”

“Mom,” she replied. “But not my mom. A mom.”

P’fft. Well, I’ll take it.

“Ray?” I asked next. It seemed like we began playing an unofficial game of twenty questions.

“Deceitful.”

“Tigershark?” “Annoying.”

“Remora?”

“Cool.”

I let out a good chuckle. “Well, you’re not necessarily wrong about any of those things, but there’s more to us than that.”

“Yeah, I guess...you don’t need to tell me that. It’s not like I don’t know. But maybe I just don’t consider it. But you’re right. You’re like a mom, but you’re also reckless and like to do dangerous stuff. Ray is deceitful, but he’s helped me out here and there so I guess he’s not always bad. Besides, he let me live at the diner, so I’m kind of in his debt. Tigershark is annoying, but...she’s a kid. Kids are like that.”

She drew a deep breath before commenting on the final person.

“Remora is cool and badass, but...I know little else. I wouldn’t even know how to try to know more.”

“How about just go up to her and say ‘I’d like to get to know you more’?” “That easy?”

I shrugged. “Worth a try. If nothing else, better than just flailing around and confusing her.”

“Yeah, maybe…”

“As for you being less ordinary, I could help you with that. Say, if you could choose any weapon to wield, which would you have?”

“Uhhh...well, at the mansion, I tried to pick up a sword, but it was too heavy.”

Aw, darn. And here I was thinking ‘she should get a sword! She deserves one!’

“There was also the sickle I looted off that Cronus guy, but had to part ways with that in order to leave the mansion. So...dunno.” She shrugged.

“Well, if you ever think of something, I know a guy who could forge something for ya.”

“What? Really?” She lifted her head up and looked much more excited and full of life. “I thought Ray was the guy who knows a guy!”

“Usually he is, yes. Ray had a guy, but now he doesn’t. So Ray is not the guy. But I know a guy.”

Demetria stood back up and looked more excited than I’ve seen her throughout the whole trip.

“Well, what are we waiting for? We need to get out of here so I can get back to the diner and brainstorm what kind of weapon I’d want!”

Heh. Well, whatever cheers her up, I suppose.

I stood up as well and smiled.

“Yeah. We’ve gotta be close now.”

“Hey, uh. Sunny?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Thanks. For the chats.”

“Of course. You can come to me any time.”

So together, we ran forth, with me carrying the torch. Turns out I didn’t need to keep carrying it, as the closer we got to the treasure, the brighter our surroundings became until we were in the final room and I noticed a series of torches all lit along the walls.

Scattered across were panels which similar to the one Demetria stepped on earlier, would shoot out arrows. Also, around the perimeter were gaps that could send people falling to their death. Still, far less dangerous than what came before.

What I didn’t notice was the treasure. I ran toward the pedestal at the end of the room and panicked. No matter how many times I looked around, felt my hands around the granular surface, there was no sign of it.

“What are you doing? What’s with the freakout?” Demetria asked from behind me.

“The treasure! It should be right there!” My head began to spin. It didn’t make any sense. It had always been there. “Last time I was here, it was right on the pedestal.”

“Last time? Wait. You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah. Why? Does that surprise you?”

“No. Never mind.”

I glanced over and noticed the treasure right behind the pedestal. I felt all the color return to my body and a sigh of relief washed over me.

“There it is!” I picked it up, its small handles nestled tight between my fingers.

“That’s the treasure? It’s just a cup,” Demetria sounded unimpressed.

“It’s not a cup!” I argued. “It’s a chalice, and an old king used to own it!”

“But now it’s ours!” Came a voice from behind us and the cocking of someone’s gun. Oh jeez, I knew who was there right away.

Demetria and I turned around to see a group of three men in suits, each carrying guns.

“You evaded us back in Italy, but I had a feeling you’d show up here,” spoke the leader, one Mr. Jerry Mander. “And what’s this? You brought someone with you?”

“No, actually, I’ve never met this woman in my life, I’m just a squatter,” Demetria fibbed.

“Silence! Sunny, hand over the chalice and both of you, hands up!”

I might have been able to take them if it was just me, but I wasn’t about to endanger Demetria any further. I did as instructed. Next thing I knew, his men tied us up and had us sit on the ground. Rather than outright kill us (as I’m sure they would have had I not given them the chalice) they spoke amongst themselves.

“Who are those people?” Demetria whispered.

“Oh, well, you know. When you’re in a business, you’re bound to have competition. They’re far from the only folks out there, too.”

“Okay, next question: if you’ve been here before, why not just take the treasure all those other times instead of getting us both tied up?”

“I was waiting for the right opportunity…” In truth, I kind of liked the idea of leaving things where I found them, but I should’ve known there would be others who would want to take such things.

I struggled to break loose, but they really tied me tight.”

“Psst,” Demetria whispered again. “I don’t know about you, but rope play is not my thing.”

“Not a kink of mine, either,” I agreed.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. I really didn’t expect for them to show up. We should just wait until they’re gone.”

“Hey! Quiet back there!” Mr. Mander barked.

Demetria ignored the guy.

“I can’t wait that long. Those guys might decide to kill us, and another confession? Not how I want to die, either.”

“We’re kind of shit out of luck, kiddo.”

“Distract them.”

“What good would that do? And how?”

I mean, courage or stupidity, I admired that she wanted us to kick it into gear, but I really had nothing in the noggin. Oh well, I may as well indulge her.

I looked them right in the eyes, then uttered:

“Hey guys, there’s a giant spider on the ceiling!”

“What?” They all turned and looked up. In just a few seconds, though, they turned back to face me once more. “Nice try,” Jerry Mander gloated. “But we won’t be fooled so easily.”

“Hey boss, wasn’t there someone else next to Sunny?” One of the other two asked him.

What? Did I not notice? How?

I looked beside me only to find a bundle of ropes and no Demetria. But behind the pedestal, I heard rustling.

I don’t know how you managed to break out that fast, but you’re going to get yourself in trouble.

“Check around! She couldn’t have gotten far!” Jerry ordered his men, then walked toward me. “I swear, if you’re up to something, you’ll regret it.”

Trust me. I don’t know where she is, either.

From somewhere behind me, I heard a shrill scream. Jerry’s men ran over to check it out.

“Boss! There’s a piece of cloth down there! I think she fell down!”

My heart sank.

Crap. I know you wanted to be cool, but you just weren’t experienced enough!

Just as Jerry’s men turned around, I saw a hand come up and grab one of the henchman’s ankle, pulling it toward the gap. Although not strong enough to pull him under, it managed to budge him close enough to step on one of the trap panels.

At once, arrows shot forth and pierced the one who stepped on the panel. He shrieked, before crashing into the other henchman and knocking them both to the floor. Then, I saw Demetria struggle as she lifted herself up.

I was amazed, but more than that, shocked. That someone who I had declared so ordinary had managed to go to such lengths. Just a moment before, her and I were in agreement that she was ordinary.

I watched as she grabbed one of the henchman’s guns, then stood up, her legs shaking.

Jerry pointed his gun at Demetria, and my awe was short lived. Soon, she may have been short lived as well. Even still, she pointed the gun she stole right back at him.

“Knock it off, kid. You’re shaking. You’ve obviously never shot a gun before. You’re hesitating. We both know I can pull the trigger before you even have a chance to aim. Put it down and I might let you walk away.”

“You’re right,” she replied. “I’m not used to this kind of thing and I’m really nervous. Because of that, my fingers might slip at any moment.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Maybe I am, but unlike you, I don’t value my life all that much. I’ve got less to lose.”

In spite of such a bold declaration, she seemed to heed his words and lower the gun. But, as she did so, she pulled the trigger and shot him in the foot. I winced as the shot rang.

“Oops! See? I’m such a klutz!”

“Argh!” He growled. His hands began to shake now. “That’s it!”

She swerved out of the way before he could fire.

“Now, if you want to walk again, I suggest you let us both free,” she declared. “Your men aren’t dead, but they’re hurt real good. We can both walk away from this. What do you say?”

He winced, tears began to flow. The pain must have really got to him.

“No way…”

She pointed the gun toward his kneecap. “Are you sure about that? I mean, I might miss, but I might hit something else. Who knows with me? I’m such a clumsy ditz!”

This almost seems like something Ray would do. Just who am I looking at here?

He looked up at her and shouted. “FINE! GO!”

She grinned. “Hey Sunny! Did you hear that?”

I nodded, grinning my best grin.

“Be careful, dear!” I cautioned. “His henchmen could still shoot you!”

“Oh! Thanks! Hey Jerry? Could you do me a favor and tell your men not to shoot?”

He growled, but obliged. “Don’t shoot them,” he groaned.

“Great! Thanks!” She ran over to me and began to untie me.

With wide eyes, I asked:

“How did you do all that? That wasn’t at all ordinary.”

“Oh, sure it was,” she brushed off. “They really didn’t tie me down tight enough. Plus, I already have experience climbing.”

“But you could’ve gotten shot.”

“Oh yeah. Sorry. I’ll try to be more careful next time.”

She finished untying me and I got up to my feet. Then, I grinned. “In any case, thanks!”

I went up to Jerry, who still looked ready to shoot us at any moment in spite of his injuries. “Say, how’d you guys get here, anyway?”

“Helicopter,” he replied.

“Cool, can we steal that from ya?”

No answer. How rude. After I asked and everything. Instead, he just handed me the keys.

“Thanks, love. I’ll come back for you guys after I drop off my apprentice back home. All of you look like you could use a hospital visit.”

“Don’t bother,” he growled. “I’ll call someone. The last thing I want is to be humiliated by Sunny and some pipsqueak.”

I shrugged. “Suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t try to be nice.”

We managed to make it up a flight of stairs through a hidden passage in the back of the room, and the two of us ran outside where we took to our ride. Neither of us were experienced pilots (if only Cybele was around), but if anything, that was part of the adventure.

Epilogue:

In the evening, we returned to the diner, exhausted and hungry. Tigershark served us a big lasagna dinner, seasoned with parsley and coriander. With just a hint of lemon juice.

Demetria didn’t have any of it, complaining of it having meat in it. Instead, she took it on herself to toss together a salad and sat away from everyone else.

After I ate and had a shower, I sat next to Ray, taking in the silence of the evening.

“So Sunshine, how did it go?” He asked.

“It was interesting, for lack of a better word. She’s very inexperienced, but I learned a lot about her and she still managed to surprise me.”

“Really now? What I find most interesting is when Tigershark pranks her.”

We both shared an uproar of laughter.

“But for real, I’m curious how she might turn out in the future. I think she has potential, and I’d like to help her in any way I can.”

“How altruistic of you.”

As Ray and I were about to turn in for the night, Demetria ran up and approached us both.

“Hey Sunny?” She turned to me.

“Yes, dear?”

“I did as you suggested: I went to her room to talk to her. She was sitting on her bed, huddled around a blanket, shivering. I said hi to her and she said hi back, then I was like ‘hey, I was thinking of trying to get to know you better, if that’s okay with you’.”

“Yeah? What did she say?”

Her expression lowered as she recalled what happened next.

“Well, she said that wasn’t okay with her. I admit, I was kind of bad about it.”

“Bad about it? How?”

“Well...I said how I figured since you and Ray know a bit about her, that it would be okay if I did as well, and I know that was stupid, but it just came out. She turned to me and was like, ‘yes, and I hate that those two know anything about me.’ I tried to argue, like, ‘well, it doesn’t have to be anything big’, to which she replied, ‘let me make myself clear: I don’t want anyone to know me. I have the right not to tell you anything and you are not obligated to know anything about that.’”

Sheesh. I knew she could be harsh. No wonder her face dropped.

“Anyway, I was taken aback. I did something I didn’t want to do. I mean, she didn’t deserve it…”

“What?” I asked. Was it really something so bad?

“I stood there, unsure of what to say. She was like, ‘understand?’ and I nodded my head, but then I got defensive and asked ‘do you even want to be here?’ and it was in that moment that I knew I fucked up. It just came out.”

‘Do you even want to be here?’ I mean, true, it’s rather defensive, but I wonder about that. I mean, Ray and I weren’t forcing Remora here. She could leave at any time. But, knowing her, or rather, not knowing her, I had no idea how she’d answer. Maybe a straight up ‘no’?

“It wasn’t right of me, right?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I mean…” I stammered. “We all say things in the heat of the moment, right?”

“Yeah. Right as I said it, it was like she froze in place. She didn’t really give a reply, and I felt like I had pissed her off. Hell, I would’ve pissed me off. So I told her I was sorry, and she shook her head and said ‘no, it was a valid question.’ Anyway, I’m not going to press her further on anything. If anything, me not knowing much just makes her seem more cool!”

“Well, you did your best. Maybe just leave her alone for a bit?” I suggested.

“Yeah. I’m going to bed anyway. That was a long girls night out.”

Once she left, I was alone with Ray once more. He gave one of his sly laughs.

“Welcome home, hun. Try not to meddle too much,” he chuckled once more.

I jabbed him, and we both laughed. Indeed, things have gotten quite chaotic in the best way possible. I mean, there was everything: laughter, drama, heartbreak, action, adventure, and intrigue. The only thing missing was a whole-ass cake shoved right into my mouth. God damn, I was still hungry.

[talesfromafork]

Everything I had researched about Udo Island made it seem so pure and scenic with its crystal clear blue waters and natural beauty. Visiting an isolated islet felt romantic, even when embarking on a solo trip for the day. (Mike was off hiking Mount Hallasan, a shield volcano.)

Caught in a Tourist Trap

However, when I got to Udo Island, it wasn’t isolated at all. It was overcrowded and noisy from the public bus and ferry ride there to the attractions along the outer trail of the island. My skin started to crawl with discomfort as I wanted nothing more than to escape the tourist traps of the so-called isolated island. How spoiled rotten was my attitude? After all, I was lucky enough to be in Korea.

– Pin now, read later! –

This need to escape happened the second I got on the hop-on, hop-off bus (₩8,000). I chose this option thinking that the 90°F (32°C) heat and my lack of health would make it quite exhausting to explore the island on a bike, and I didn’t have a license to get a scooter or quad, but obviously I picked the wrong mode of transportation for myself. As the bus drove towards the first tourist attraction on the island, I stared out the window wistfully wishing that I was riding through the peanut fields in open air and able to capture them without the reflection of a scratched glass pane.

I got off the first stop at the black sand beach excited to be off the bus but was very underwhelmed quickly. The beach was littered, and there were hordes of people around waiting in line for peanut ice cream and taking selfies rather than enjoying the view. I didn’t even bother going down to the beach based on how it looked and joined the crowd for peanut ice cream as the peanuts are locally produced in Udo Island. #wheninrome The ice cream was good but overhyped.

After that, I went back to the bus stop hoping that the next attraction would be better but ended up having to wait 30 minutes in line for the next bus because of a traffic jam in such a small area. I was both amused at seeing people in their scooters and quads not being able to get around the traffic and frustrated that I wasn’t able to leave freely. I had a battle going on in my head between the selfish, whiny voice who wasn’t happy with the ever-so-lucky opportunity of being in Udo Island versus my self trying to be the better person.

My selfish, whiny self won!

Once the bus finally pulled in, I rode it around the whole island. I sat there while everyone else was getting on and off. The bus driver kept looking at me like I didn’t know what was going on, but in the end, I got exactly where I wanted to go to– back to the beginning!

The Electric Bike Saves the Day

Then I found the best mode of transportation for me– an electric bike! I didn’t need a license and wouldn’t have to exert much energy to get around. Win-win. I put on my yellow helmet, which the store owner called cute, and “sped” off. I had complete freedom of where I could go now and was so much happier!

I skipped the tourist attractions listed on the map and went into the center of Udo Island where people live and no restaurants or tourist attractions exist. My mood changed instantly.

With a slight breeze on my face from biking, the sun shining on my back, and wide, open roads with no one around, I was in my element.

If you’re curious, I’m wearing a Seafolly bathing suit.

The Lesser Seen Side of Udo Island

Biking around was quite tranquil. I stopped and stared at whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Isn’t that one of the perks of traveling by yourself?

I checked out the agricultural fields, weaved in and out of small dirt roads, and even found myself in awe of these pretty average rock walls.

I loved the different colored rooftops of these homes around the island. They added a spark of personality to the neighborhoods.

When I saw that flag, I got a bit prideful about standing in the country that my parents and grandparents came from.

I especially loved watching these ajjumas (old women) planting peanuts. It made me wonder if this is what my grandma did in Korea, and sure enough, she did. When I went back to New York City, I showed my grandma all my photos from Korea. She said she used to work in fields like this and noted, “No way do I miss that type of work.”

Because they reminded me of my grandma, and it was something so different than I’m used to as a city girl, I wanted to go over there and ask them if I could help out, but I quickly stopped romanticizing this hard labor and moved on.

I don’t know what it was about to broken home and piece of sh*t mess, but I must’ve been on a high from my bike ride because I thought something about it was quite beautiful.

Towards the end, I finally saw some life besides the field workers– this cow! I also saw Seongsan Ilchulbong from a distance. I had climbed up to the top of this crater formed by volcanic activity right before coming to Udo Island so it was cool to see  from a different perspective.

Lastly, I went to see what I came here for– the pristine blue water at what they call “Popcorn Beach”. Can you see why they would call it that?

I headed back to the ferry for Jeju Island, but before I left, I made sure to get some local peanuts from these hardworking ajjumas as an addition to the stories I would tell him about my day.

They were absolutely smitten with my American-accented Korean and told me how polite I was. I was absolutely smitten with their kindness and their OG field worker status, which you could tell from their skin color.

All in all, I had a wonderful day and am so happy I escape the tourist attractions and found my own path. I hope you do too if you visit Udo Island!

Thanks for stopping by! xo.

Must-Haves for Udo Island

The sun is quite strong, there’s no electricity to borrow, and exploring away from the tourist attractions means less accessibility to water so prepared, and bring all these things I brought!

It’s quite funny about the one-piece though. I was probably the least dressed person there wearing this one-piece bathing suit. Most people in Korea like to be covered fully for sun protection. I definitely knew where they were coming from! The sun was so strong, and I lost my sunscreen so by the end of the day, I had a black long sleeve on to prevent sunburn, which is something I would NOT do in the US or Europe.

[amazon_link asins=’B004D2DR0Q,B01M1Y2L6V,B00EPGMN1E,B005X1Y7I2′ template=’ProductGrid’ store=’tafrafo-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’46e6821e-e8f2-11e6-ad5b-5ddb013efbbc’]

Let’s stay in touch!

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[New Post!] Avoid the #touristtrap. There's a lesser seen side of #udoisland with colored rooftops and peanut fields. #southkorea Everything I had researched about Udo Island made it seem so pure and scenic with its crystal clear blue waters and natural beauty.

[zealoptics]

Journey South: A Loco Chile Adventure

Words by Summer Fenton

Images by Summer Fenton and @vivachile

“Traveling isn't always as easy or glamorous as it sounds or looks. Sometimes it’s challenging, and you're put in situations that break your cool. But it’s all good because that’s part of the thrilling adventure, unforgettable memories and experience of the journey.” 

As I took my last steps on American soil to board my flight to the southern hemisphere, I couldn't help but feel the traveling jitters as I embarked my first journey to Chile. I finally got the opportunity to check it off my bucket list of places to snowboard. The terrain looked like a snowboarder’s dream- so many endless opportunities. Without the World Cup event happening in New Zealand this year, I realized this was the perfect moment to ride and explore a different country. But don’t worry New Zealand; I will be back in a heartbeat. A lot of people asked me “where are you snowboarding in Chile? or “what are your plans down there?” And honestly, I had NO idea. I knew two things: I’d be filming with Powanoia members Fancy and Christine for the last bit of our movie project (coming this October) and that we would be cat boarding at Ski Arpa with Steep-N-Deep Tours  the day after I arrived. We were on a mission to chase the snow and let it flow; little did we know that we were about to hop on a crazy ride with lots of bumps along the way.

It all started to feel surreal as I packed my backpack for the upcoming day with avalanche gear and snowboarding essentials. I felt so lucky to be cat boarding at Ski Arpa, a private mountain in the shadows of Aconcagua Mountain (highest mountain in the Americas) on my first day back on the board. Our friend, Ian, told us that our fifteen-passenger van would be the biggest vehicle to ever drive up the Ski Arpa road. I didn't realize how serious he was until I saw the extremely narrow dirt road leading up to the mountain. There were no guard rails and barely enough room to make the switchback turns with this massive van. With each turn it was a huge drop off. Our van struggled to make it up this road and at some points we didn't have enough momentum to go up anymore, so we would have to roll back down the road in hopes of getting enough momentum to make the turn. The smell of the clutch burned my nose, and I squeezed my crystals for protection. Every time we rolled back it felt like we wouldn't brake in time and just slide off the road and tumble down.I kept my eyes closed for the majority of the ride until someone said, “we made it!” I was so relieved that I didn't die on my second day in Chile.  Instead, I got to ride a private mountain with open, long runs with five of my friends and the luxury of getting cat rides up to the top. The bumpy, nerve-wrecking drive was SO worth it!

Photo: @vivachile || From left to right, Monica, Christine, Fancy & Summer (Me) 

A snowstorm closed down the roads to Portillo (mountain resort) so we decided that our next best move was to get that fresh powder. From opening to closing, it was a blue bird, powder day where we found fun wind lips and scored a lake run just as the ropes dropped. As I was on the narrow traverse next to the lake, I couldn't help but feel so grateful for this moment and this view.  

Photo: @vivachile || Rider: Summer (Me) enjoying Portillo

But it was time get moving to pick up our filmer Keith who had just flown in and picked up the rental car for us. It would finally be time to start filming for Powanoia! Within ten minutes of meeting up with Keith, putting our bags in the car, getting stoked to film for the movie and going inside the gas station to use the free Wi-Fi to book an Airbnb for the night, the security guard at the gas station tapped on our shoulders. We had no idea what he was saying because none of us spoke Spanish. After some hand motions and following him out the door, we saw the tragedy. Our rental car windows were smashed in and Keith and Fancy got $10,000 worth of belongings stolen. Frickity frick!! This is not how I pictured the trip going.

After a couple days of helping our friends with police reports, translation issues, insurance calls, and embassy runs, I was itching to ride. It was hard explaining such a devastating situation to my family back home when I really wanted to tell them about our rides & adventures. My expectations for the trip were to ride & film but we were running back & forth between the airport terminal, hotel, and embassy. In hindsight, I realize that it was most important to put my expectations aside temporarily to be there for Fancy & Keith even though there wasn't much Christine and I could do to help Fancy and Keith with their stolen goods.

We were handed a pretty challenging situation, and I knew the only way to make this situation better was to get back on my board and ride it out. Christine and I headed to La Parva, about 45 minutes outside of Santiago with our amigo Pedro, while Fancy and Keith went to the black market in search of their stolen belongings (they were able to recover half of what they’d gotten stolen!). When we got to La Parva there was still snow left over from the last storm. We decided that we should hike up and ride a steep chute called La Chiminea. I’ve never ridden a chute before, so I was up for the challenge. As the adrenaline pumped through my veins, I felt readier than ever to drop. The entry to the chute was a sketchy drop off where you had to hold onto a ski pole to get down to the starting platform. Once you got on the platform, there is no turning back – only moving forward. It was a steep, icy ride, but I was all smiles at the end of the chute. It was so rewarding after being cooped up inside the previous couple of days. La Parva gave me hope and reminded me to live in the moment. I accepted the situation I was in and what I couldn't control. Nothing was going to ruin the trip.

Photos: @vivachile ||Top: Summer (me) slashing the wave. Bottom: La Chiminea  

When we got back from La Parva, Fancy and Keith said that they would be heading out on the next flight to the U.S.. I was bummed to hear my friends were leaving, but I understood that they wanted to get home. Christine and I thought hard about if we should stay or go since we weren't going to film like we had hoped.

After weighing our options, we figured we were already there, so we shouldn’t give up on beautiful Chile and just make the best of our remaining days. We came to Chile for one reason and that was to snowboard so the Chilean adventure must go on! We spontaneously took a 10hr overnight bus south to the lovely town of Pucon, and there just so happened to be a storm hitting Villarrica (active volcano). When we got off the bus at 7am, we dragged our board bags down the road to the cutest hostel called Chili Kiwi. The smell of the overnight bus on our clothes, our sweat covered bodies and sore hands from carrying our heavy board bags probably gave the impression we were transients, but we didn’t care – we just wanted to explore and ride Villarrica. 

We quickly threw our belongings into our hobbit hole room and walked 10 minutes up the road to start hitch hiking up to the volcano which was pretty exciting because Christine and I had never hitched hiked before. We stuck out our thumbs and waited but no one was picking us up. Finally, this lady in a tiny car stopped for us. She didn't speak English, and we didn't speak Spanish but we tried our best to communicate with her. We assumed she was going to take us up to Villarrica because we had our boards but instead she dropped us off on the side of the dirt road very far from the mountain resort. We looked around and everything around us was closed and there was no one to be seen. We saw a sign that told us it would take us about an hour to walk through the lava fields and dirt road. We were about to start walking down the hill when these three old men gave us the peace sign, picked us up and brought us to the mountain. They didn't speak English either, but we were somehow all still laughing and smiling the whole drive up. It might have been because Christine and I had the biggest old dude, with his massive fur coat, sit in between us. 

Summer (Me) trying out this hitch-hiking thing

When we got to the resort, it was extremely flat light, snowy and we couldn't see the top of the volcano. We were one of the five cars in the parking lot, but we just laughed it off. At least now we know how to get to the mountain. We decided to get a ride back down with our three new amigos, since we weren't sure who else would be able to bring us down. We realized that hitch hiking is great but maybe not the most convenient for us, especially when there’s a language barrier. 

After our long travel day, I was able to get in contact with Pucon locals, Tomas and Pato, over social media so that Christine and I would have a better plan for the next day. In the morning, Tomas picked us up from our hostel to bring us to the volcano, so we could ride the powder we weren't able to see the day before. Pato hooked us up with lift tickets for our time in Pucon – Thank you Pato for your generosity! When we got to the bottom of the volcano to pick up our lift tickets, we realized we only got one. Our friend Tomas said, “two for one.” We were a little skeptical but went along with it. Every time we would have to show our lift ticket to the lift operator, we would shrug and say “dos por uno.” The lift operators were confused just like we were, but it worked! We linked up with Pato later on in the day, and he showed us all the fun, natural terrain Pucon had to offer, like gullies and wind lips. With it just being Christine and I, the natural terrain made it easier for us to build a quick feature.Our time in Pucon was pure bliss; starting from the kind people to the great snowboarding terrain. I wish I had more time to stay in this small lake town overlooking the snowcapped Villarrica volcano, but it was time to head home and get back to work.

Chile was quite the adventure from almost missing every overnight bus (there are too many terminals), lugging board bags on the overcrowded subway, getting electrocuted by my adapter twice (taking the power out of half of the hostel), to Christine breaking seven, full wine bottles and getting our car broken into. Speaking Spanish would have been helpful, but hey, at least I got to ride, get creative with the natural terrain that the volcanoes and mountains had to offer, and I could order empanadas and menu del dias. It might have not been the trip I initially had in mind but shit happens and plans change. You have to make the best of the situations that you can’t control and give the universe permission to fill the empty space with magical opportunities and experiences. There were a lot of lessons learned along the way, and I felt that I really grew as a traveler from this trip. Till next time Chile! Chao!

Click to check out the recap video!

[us-trending-directories-blog]

Honeymoon Destination Hawaii

Do you dream of Hawaii Wedding trip? From its white sandy beaches? Of its volcanic landscapes? We had already flown over the destination with Flora in a previous article but this destination was rather for her an extension of her honeymoon in Japan. This time we return with Urielle, blogger of the Adventurers of life and mistress of ceremony under the same name, which takes us in a veritable whirlwind of information, photos, good addresses.

First a complete presentation of the destination, and photos that make you dream. Then, as always, we try to be as concrete as possible on this blog, so you will find all the technical info, budget and quantity of good addresses To prepare your trip at the end of the article.

Oahu * *

It is the main island where Honolulu and its famous Waikiki beach are located. Honolulu is a nice city, which looks like a Disneyland by the turquoise sea. We thought we were hated, and we loved shopping in the middle of the buildings before drinking a cocktail in front of the sunset.

In Oahu you can visit Pearl Harbor, very interesting (and excellent argument for sir, there is a submarine and fighter jets, mine had stars in the eyes), but also get away from Honolulu for (Paradise of surfers), the east coast (paradise short, with its white sand beaches and turquoise waters), visiting Byodo In Temple or the Polynesian Cultural Center (we did not do it, but everyone says That's fine).

It is a very varied island, with a nice relief and very impressive highways.

Big Island, the island of the volcano 

To go to Hawaii without going to Kilauea is a heresy for me. The lunar landscapes as far as the eye can see, the flight of the lava lake and helicopter flows, the lava flow at your feet, all this justifies for me the 24 hours of flight in an Air France sardine box ... The land that is created Big Island (also known as Hawaii), it is also two peaks over 4000 m (if so), the virgin forest, snorkelling very nice, nice beaches, Waterfalls, and the Hawaiian heritage ... A big favorite for this island that brings together all the climates of the planet apart from the polar.

 Kauai Island Garden 

Kauai has served as a shooting location for many films, and when one discovers it one understands why. The landscapes are unique and exceptional, especially on the Napali Coast. We are not good enough hikers to have appreciated this island because a large part of the island is inaccessible by car and very vaguely on foot from September 15th, since the summit of Kauai is a Of the rainiest places on the planet, with 13m of water per year (but I reassure you, the south coast is dry, so you can take refuge there). 

You do not realize, but it's enoooorme 13m ... In France, the record is on Mount Aigoual and it's 4m. Part of the coast is very urbanized, full of tourists, and we did not like it too much. A tour by plane or helicopter, as well as a boat trip, Make it possible to discover the incredible landscapes of this island. And we had our beach, at the end of the island, 10 km of golden sand beaten by the waves, and a little bath protected by the reefs, with the cliffs starting at the bottom ... If you go, Our share in Polihale Beach.

Why is it a good idea to go there?

I recommend this destination for those who are not great adventurers but want to do something else but stay in a hotel: Hawaii is adventure safe, with the scenery of the US AND an island tropical . This is also the best place for Hawaii Wedding.

It's a pretty amazing mix of hiking, shopping, beach, small fish and volcanoes! And people are really adorable .

When you want a few paradisiac beaches but not that, it's perfect: there are beautiful beaches, but they are very punctual ... So much to do other than to stick to the beach all day! Especially since as soon as one leaves the beach and the few spots very tourist, there is nobody any more ... Add to this that we found the weather very pleasant, not too hot, with always a little air. And the water is at 28 °, which suits me very well😉 What to Know Before You Go Flight time: about 24 hours from Lyon, often more. If you can ever choose, make the trip West Coast - Hawaii with Alaska Airlines: past the minute of worry where you are wondering if your flight is not going to take you to Anchorage, we loved this very cool company that gave us the Feeling that we had already arrived in Hawaii as soon as we embarked in Seattle. Hawaiian Airlines is frankly a lot more tight, though hostesses are far more guns.

Vaccines: none, and more generally nothing dangerous except the blows of suns and the centipedes. (No snakes to the delight of my husband) Time difference: 12h, it's easy to remember!

When to go? You can go to Hawaii all year round. For the hiking, it is better to privilege the summer (from April-May to September-October), and for the whales and the surf, from November to March. Avoid December and January, high tourist season, with cargoes of American retirees who land. September is perfect: low price, hot water, little rain.

The Budget

7500 € with two all inclusive (flights, accommodation, cars, food and excursions) for three weeks, organized by us with hours spent on the net to find the right plan. By travel agencies, it is quickly overpriced.

Truth Info

The inconvenients :

- the hotels: expensive and far from being idyllic (you see the Maldives, the cabanons of charm, ben make a cross on it, here it is rather ambiance La Grande Motte with palm trees). Target the guest rooms and rentals in condominiums.

- It's touristy: if you do not have a rental car to escape, plan to share your deckchair by the pool with overexcited Japanese and American families a little bit boring .

- It's the United States: you're going to hurt your sustainable development if you vaguely have ecological fiber. The big 4 × 4, the lack of public transport, urbanization without reflection, inequalities (many homeless people on some beaches, but they are not the most beautiful), etc. It also has its advantages: the cleanliness and the level of equipment of the beach parks (me, pee in the public toilets of a beach, I can assure you that it happens not often), the quality of the service, Speak English, the protected areas are very well .

- Teddy's bigger burgers, mmmmmmmmm .... You are not going to eat very well: apart from breakfast in bed and breakfast, the only good thing was the burgers and the Asian restaurants.

The best addresses of Urielle Oahu

The New Otani Kaimana Hotel in Waikiki: we chose it because it is far from the most moving part, quiet on Sans Souci Beach. You walk 10 min between the beach and a park to reach other hotels, bars, restaurants. We were afraid of the atmosphere of Waikiki, which explains our choice.

On the spot, a rather pretty restaurant, under the trees by the beach. Dear, but we eat well and what a frame! The breakfast is in the same place. Our first night in Hawaii was perfect.

The Royal Hawaiian if you want to indulge yourself: the most beautiful hotel in Waikiki, which looks like a big pink cream cake, decorated with great care, in an outdated ambiance. Service very nice, nothing to be careful without being stuffy.

The restaurant Moana Surfrider : a crazy terrace with wooden columns, live music, very romantic ... Book in advance and ask for a table near the sea. Rent a studio on Kailua Beach in the east of Oahu. Ours was on the beach, it was perfect, in spite of the deco a bit kitsch (the owners are Austrians, not everyone can be perfect) ... The beach seemed surprisingly unoccupied, and yet it is the True beach of postcard with turquoise waters.

Finally, we did a photo shoot with Mark Holladay, and the photos are pretty guns. It is specialized on the underwater photos, if it tries some .

Hawaii: Volcano Places : a perfect bed and breakfast to discover the volcano. Kate is adorable, and the cottage is really well equipped.

Horizon Guest House : We ended up there after the overbooking of the place we had booked, and we were upgraded to this wonderful place which has become our happy place ... The pictures do not do justice to this peaceful place , Where Clem welcomes you with exactly the right amount of care that preserves your privacy. The infinity pool and jacuzzi are to die for. The rooms are decorated with care, and the breakfast is a killer. I tried to redo the pancakes with coconut milk and mango, but nothing to see. If you have a plan for this you might want to contact the best people for this. https://www.iwanttomarryyou.org

[annamcnuff]

The Dash For Dallas

This week, the Director at the Department of Destiny decided that I’d got a little too big for my Cowboy boots. He sensed my belief that the final ten days would be a mere formality, and so plunged his hands deep into the weather well, and began drawing out: “Flood? Hmm, no, we’ve done that one. Blizzard? Come now, that’s so 2013…” Then he happened across a little bottle marked ‘Polar Vortex’. “I wonder…”

A HERCULEAN STRUGGLE

The first few flakes of winter storm Hercules fell in Memphis. They were barely even whisps, so I thought no more of it, and ploughed North for the obligatory dip into Kentucky. Things there began to get a little brisk, even for a Brit (I had to put leggings on and everything), and when I looked out the window in Missouri the following morning, my mouth did the droopy thing. Snow. Sigh. I checked the forecast. Minus 7C. Windchill - minus 13C. 23 mph headwind. Turd.

So I had a brainstorm - with myself (this is totally possible, I didn’t even need a whiteboard), and came up with a what I thought was a Grade A plan. I’d move slowly from small town to small town, making as much headway as I could. Only… I couldn’t seem to get operation 'Creep’ underway without at least bouncing the idea off of someone. I was caught between wondering if I was a fool to go out in such temperatures or whether I’d gone soft because I was even considering not to. My guts had gone glacial. My balls, below zero. My can of man-up, frozen. I needed back up, and fast. So who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? The A-Team? Danger Mouse? No…. your Mum. I flipped open the Skype App and hit call. “Hello Petal” came the familiar voice. Ah. I felt better already.

All credit to the Mothership, When every instinct is screaming at her to tell the precious little spawn (moi) to stay safe and warm indoors, she came at me with “I agree you’ve got to keep moving, it’s due to get worse” and “You’ll find a way, there’s always a way”. Parents. You’ve gotta love em.

So I let some air out of my tyres and embarked on 3 days of wind battered, icicle encrusted, hill-tastic riding. When the chill hit -15C my legs stung as if being stabbed by itty bitty knives. An icicle beard formed on my chin, frozen droplets took up residence on my eyebrows and my water bottles turned to lumps of ice. Oddly enough, and honestly, I was so het up by the challenge of it all, that it was rather bearable - or so I remember. I was careful to listen to the soft whispers of Captain Sensible however, who reminded me (at intervals) that no matter how good I felt, it was still bloody cold.

LOSING IN MILES, WINNING IN SMILES

I made it about two thirds of the way across the Ozark mountains before things slid off the scale of silliness. I woke up to a foot of snow and not a scrap of tarmac in sight. Bugger. What’s more, the sub zero temps had also caused a layer of ice to form under the snow. Double bugger. Had this been earlier in the trip, I would have sat it out, and waited the four days for it to pass. But with a visa expiring, and my folks bound for Hawaii to meet me - sitting tight wasn’t an option. So I did the thing that made me die a little inside - I took four wheeled assistance. The first was from super-host Larry, who, with nerves of steel (and studded tyres) drove me 60 miles through snowy back roads, round steep curves and over mountain passes. Each time he said “Well if we make it up this one, I think we’ll be okay” my heart crept higher into my mouth and my feet pressed a little farther into the footwell. At one point I wondered that they might break clean through the floor and we’d wind up in a Flintstones-mobile (“Willlmmmaaaaaaa!”)

At Springdale, Arkansas, Larry’s work was done. Like precious cargo I was handed over to new host, Jay, who drove me the final few miles to his home in Gentry. The following morning the mercury dropped to -22C, with a windchill of -28C, and I discovered that it was a warmer at that point in Alaska, than it was in Arkansas. I began to feel a tad foolish. Embarrassed even. Who rides their bike through the US in the winter? I’d done research. I’d checked the average temperatures for the times I’d be going through each state, and not found anything to suggest I might hit this kind of cool. But of course, like the flood and the blizzard, I was assured that this wasn’t 'normal’. What can I say, I’m just a lucky lady. Or a weather witch. A lucky weather witch.

Funnily enough, a snowy stopover turned out to be just about the best thing that could have happened. Not only did I get to hang with kind and adventurous souls Jay and Shirley, I also got to meet their group of bicycling buddies - who all descended on the house for dinner one night. I was touched to discover that they’d been following the blog, and I enjoyed answering question after question between mouthfuls of Mexican nosh. In turn, they shared tales of their own - of dog chases, near crashes, actual crashes, post ride feasts and random acts of kindness. To be part of such a close knit group of friends for the evening was a joy. And I retired to the lad of nod with cheeks wearing from smiling and a belly that ached from laughing (that, and ODing on the guacamole).

For the remaining 3 days in Gentry I was treated like a princess. I got taken for a massage, went for lunches, played board games with the girls and had dinner with both sets of grandparents. I even went on a million micro-adventures from the comfort and warmth Jay’s couch - as he took me through photos of previous family bicycle, hiking and four wheeled trips.

THE ADVENTURE ARMY

I’m sure you find this hard to believe, but I struggle with asking for help (I know, right?). I tend to think I can fix most anything on my own and above all, I hate to put others to any trouble. Which is ridiculous, because going to trouble for others is literally one of my most favouritist things to do. Put it down to homesickness or weary traveller syndrome, but this week I accepted a mountain of help. And in inflicting my icicle-pickle on the residents of Arkansas, I found me a powerful Adventure Army.

On the second night in Gentry, the army was in full swing. Imagine the scene: Jay called bike friend Dan. Dan called his brother. The brother called his store manager, Erin, who said I could stay with her on the outskirts of Dallas before my flight to Hawaii. Bike friend Tod then called his mum, who agreed to put me up for my first night in Oklahoma, and his sister, Robin, offered to take me out for dinner. (Are you still with me? Good…). Shirley’s Dad arranged to get me clear of the ice and more cold weather with a ride to Kansas with friends of his. He then called another friend who’d source me a bike box in Dallas, drop it off, then come back at 3am in the morning to take me to the airport (who gives people a ride to the airport at 3am? Kind people, that’s who). And that wasn’t even the half of it. I had friends of friends on standby across Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, ready to host me and ride with me should I make it to their area. I watched all of this unfold in awe, feeling so incredibly blessed and grateful. It. Was. Awesome.

DALLAS, AT LAST

The final furlong, from Kansas to Dallas, wasn’t entirely plain sailing. I had a dash of nasty fog, headwinds, rain and a minor 'moment’ on a clay farm track as I spent an hour unclogging one very dirty Boudcia. But as D-Ream foretold in 1994 'Things, can only get better (they can only get, they can only..) I said things, can only get…… better.“ And sure enough, by day four I was riding towards Dallas in sunshine and Blue skies, with the wind on my back.

I write this with the biggest grin my face, having just touched down in Hawaii and been reunited with my folks. There’s an upwards assault on a volcano on the cards this week - so tell the fat lady to hang tight for a little, I’m not handing her the mic just yet.

Catch you all when I’ve conquered the 50th state, Anna