#i was drawing a minute ago too but not even that is doing the trick

[frankenstheythem]

aftermath from week long friend sleepover/hangout bullshit: i got her pissed at me bc i tried to argue w her religious rethoric i guess, a diff (fake) friend that havent contacted me in ages emmerged from the dead just to die miserably again (no time for that shit), seeked a new therapy place but ppl were all like "hell naw its a lost cause", got pissed and spent like 100 moneys on uber rides to get drunk, also i got contact lenses but lost one of them and im mad over it bc ONCE AGAINNNNN money goes down the drain because of my stupidity so i relapsed and did blood rituals and self piercing while watching clockwork orange life is sooOOoOoooOOOoo fun rn. expect a month long break or yet again a psych ward lashout

[doki-doki-imagines]

Not sure if you take requests but could you write about Shang Tsung (and others) with breeding kink?🙏

feat. Shang Tsung, Bi-Han, Liu Kang, Syzoth (aka the guy I think would be into it)

tw: smut, afab!reader

author note: requests are open! It's been a while since I wrote smut, I hope you'll like these.

Shang Tsung: -He is staining your soul, putting his seed of evil into you. -The thought gives him goosebumps, his right hand keeping your leg up and open wide, while to other play with your nipple and at the same time pushes your back against his front. -The hand that way playing with your chest slides lower, now drawing patterns on your tummy that in a few month will be round and full. -Shang Tsung bites his lower lip, and close tight his eyes, it's a sinful thought that is bringing him too fast to the end. -"Let me cum inside, you want it too right? You always tell me, don't you remember?" He whispers into your ear, voice weavering at each of his thrust in your core. -You seriously don't remember ever telling him that, but you nod, too fucked, too lost in the throes of pleasure to formulate a coherent thought. -"I knew it, you will be an excellent brood mare." He smirks, wide and wicked. -Shang Tsung almost hope he didn't impregnate you this time, the idea so good he wants to try again and again. -Not that he will stop anyway…

Bi-Han: -He is the Grandmaster, you know? He needs heirs! -But Bi-Han isn't doing this to follow orders, his eyes liquid lust while looking at your soft body, phrases way too broken and badly formulated to be of a man following his duty. -"I'll make you full of my cum, I'll fuck you so good-" The sudden grip of your core make Bi-Han stops in his track, lost in the pleasure of your pussy suiting his cock like a glove. -It's not like you are doing any better, legs up his shoulders, hands scratching his biceps the only stable thing to keep you anchored to this moment, mind wandering in the sea of bliss at each of his hard thrusts. -Bi-Han can't stop thinking of your chest, filled to the brim with milk, soft and round begging to be touched, nipples hard desperate for some attention, tummy full of yours and his child. -His mind plays a dirty trick and he cums with just one last thrust, falling on top of you, groaning into your neck, while he fills you with his cum. -"Keep it all in, don't make a single drop fall."

Liu Kang: -He waited his entire life to be in peace and in love. Now it's time to step up the game. -The idea of you carrying his baby, your entire body glowing of happiness make his brain vessels close really fast, blood flowing to his crotch pathetically fast. -That's why now you are on your hands and knees, taking him like a champ, his thrusts hard and fast, the fat of your ass red from the slaps you counted a minute ago, the sound you are both making obscenely lewd. -Liu Kang isn't a gentleman. He is a man with a goal that he needs to accomplish if he doesn't want to become crazy. -Something that you already are, tears running down your face, drool escaping your open mouth, moans escaping freely. -"Please, lemme cum-" You sob "I've been good." You gasp out. -Liu Kang whines after hearing your voice. You always sound so good, and he is too weak to you. -"Take it all, my darling, you can do it. I know it." He prompts you on, close to the end himself. -And you do, not even a sound escapes your mouth, too tired and desperate, total opposite of Liu Kang whom cum into you, an high pitched moan blessing your ears. -You lay down, knees and arms weak after the intense session, trying to stabilise your breath, while your lover stay behind you, pulling out and admiring his work. -Liu Kang notices some cum rolling down your core, so he scoop it up with his index and middle finger to plunge it inside you again, earning him a whine. -"Don't waste any of it, keep it inside. It's holy, you know?"

Syzoth: -He gets a bit insane thinking of you having his kids, honestly. -That's why for the longest time, Syzoth won't say anything and keep this thought for himself, ashamed you may get scared. -But then he finds out you share his kink and his wall drop. But he'll ask to repeat yourself because Syzoth thinks his intrusive thought pulled a bad joke on him. -Syzoth prefers to enjoy his kink when he isn't in "heat", when his mind is a bit more stable and he can control himself a bit more. You tell him he is fine either way, but please respect his decision one step at a time. -Doesn't mean Syzoth won't rock your world anyway; you should know how hot your shy boy is. -Syzoth would bite your neck, tell him if he is being too rough, he may not be in "heat," but the blood isn't pumping only in his brain right now. -Don't tap out! For lizards, it means you are being submissive, and it is like an okay sign to keep going, Syzoth didn't agree on a safe word with you just for fun. -"You are so fucking big-" You turn your head back as best as you can, face still pushed into the mattress, voice almost a little whine "Fill me up, please cum inside!" -Syzoth doesn't have to mind to reply, but he understands enough to act, filling you to the brim, the idea of your full tummy and soft glow the last push he needed.

[fckbatmanhiskidsareminenow]

bat siblings as things kids have said to me at work.

(i kept me as me because i couldn’t figure out anyone way to format this 😭)

steph: *taps me*

me: yeah?

steph: *whispering* hey show me ur moves

me: what 😀

me: how did you even get pencil on ur face?

dick: i dunno

me: my goodness ur a magician

dick: i am 😌

jason: i like picking my nose

me: how about we take a break from drawing and colour in

cass: no i don’t like colouring

cass: i like colouring more than drawing

me: ??

steph: *telling me about all the drama at school*

me who now has beef with a 4yr old named jessica* that’s wild

me: do u wanna colour them in now?

tim: *nods hesitantly*

me: are u sure? 😅

tim: no *seriously*

duke who arrived all of two minutes ago: *asks me something*

me: you’ve already got paint on ur face how’d you even do that?

duke: i know i put it there

me: aight fair

damian: why can’t u bring ur cat here?

me: that’s a great question

me: timmy pls i love ya but imma need you to stop rocking on ur chair kiddo

tim: timmy? only my mum calls me gems

me: whelp guess what i’m ur mum now stop rocking on ur chair

tim: no 😌

damian: mum-oh

me: listen hear kiddo i’m too young to be a mother

damian: but u said ur cat was ur son?

me: yes i did

damian: that makes no sense

jason: let me guess ur in ur teens

me: let me guess ur 2

jason: 😱 no i’m 7! 😤

me: oh right of course

dick: i’m done 😌

me: u sure? *pulls out other sheet of drawing from behind the first one like a magic trick*

dick: 😮

me: is that the same as that (talking about their drawing and the reference)

duke: yes?

me about to ruin this kids whole career: not quite

me: omg ur a goose

jason: *mildly offended* >:0

cass: *smacks self in the face with pencil*

me and her: *laughing way too loud*

context: student asks about a painting across the room

me: don’t worry about it just do ur drawing

dick: then why do you worry?

me: about what?

dick: about everything!

me: that’s so true

context me and the kids were talking about different coloured fish and one mentioned her doubts about pink fish

me: oh there are pink dolphins…but i guess they aren’t fish..

jason: pink dolphins? no they’re grey

damian: no there are pink ones

me: yeah i’m pretty sure they’re from the amazon

steph: like the shop???

me: *laughs to the point of almost tears*

tim: you got it dude

me: i know i got it but do you? (he doesn’t)

[ryuichirou]

Replies

Catching up! So today we’re mostly having replies related to all the stuff we posted recently.

Starting with the most important question.

Anonymous asked:

Wait, Idia got called a brocon? When?

He did! Grim called him a brocon in 5-13 right after we saw Ortho for the first time :3 (timestamp on 5:42 just in case)

Anonymous asked:

How does that smoke beer donut taste?

(this is about this drawing)

Very smoky! And like something Gidel isn’t supposed to eat…

Anonymous asked:

I wanna see some of your traditional art

Actually, Anon, you’re looking at it…

The majority of things that we post daily was originally drawn traditionally, and then coloured digitally. I really want to do more art that is 100% traditional, but never get a chance to for a bunch of reasons :(

Anonymous asked:

I love your analysis holy cow! see its because of Book 5 that i cant stop seeing Vil and Rook as mom and dad. i love this ship mind you, (they are my comfort ship and it gives me life whenever you draw them you beautiful soul) but even if some didnt see them as a romantic couple--in my opinion they still have that VIBE you know? Like whenever they're there you just cant help but feel like BRO THEY WOULD BEAT UP YOUR BULLIES AND THEN GROUND YOU AND SEND YOU TO YOUR ROOM FOR FIGHTING IN THE FIRST PLACE LOL is it just a me feeling?

(this is related to this post)

Thank you for your kind words, Anon! I am very happy you enjoyed the analysis and that you like my RookVil art <3

Yeah, I think these two being very parental is pretty obvious and pretty intentional! All jokes aside, Pomefiore trio really feels like it was written in a way that they would read as a family. We don’t usually like this trope because characters playing house could get pretty boring, and a lot of family-related tropes don’t resonate with us at all. So I am surprised to this day that we love Pomefiore’s vibes so much. I’m guessing that it’s because of how unusual of a family they are, how Epel actually fights with Vil a lot, and how he grows from being a little brat to being a little brat that is eager to grow and excited to show his senpais his new cool magic tricks, while they tease him but still are very proud and excited for him. Like, they’re strict and would smack him (well, Vil would) but they also want him to grow. Woah, that sounds way too wholesome ew lol

Anyways! Even if we exclude Epel, and this is another thing I’ve talked about a lot, I genuinely feel like Rook and Vil were intentionally written as a couple that has been together for quite some time, at least coding-wise. There are just too many tropes and situations that they have that are usually used for couples… Alright I’ll stop myself or I’ll rant about them again even though I just did a couple of weeks ago.

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

I just love baby Vil so much, makes me wonder what happened

(this is about this drawing)

Adults with shitty opinions + kids that can’t separate reality from fiction happened… truly, two of the worst things that could happen to a possible friendship between actors.

A couple of asks about this drawing:

Anonymous asked:

Oh oh! I saw! Che'nya art! We (smiley kitty fans) are starving! Thank you for the food! It is delicious! May we have another plate, please?

Poor smiley kitty fans! :( I am so sorry you’re starving! Please enjoy your food.

Unfortunately I don’t have any more smiley catfood for you…….. yet.

Anonymous asked:

*see Chenya *

*starts biting at the bars of my containment*

Better question for him..... What that tongue do??? 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

What that tongue doesn’t do, Anon? Wink

Anonymous asked:

Question. How much of Riddle's body do you think Che'nya would lick to clean him?

In theory, he’d probably get bored pretty quickly, but I kind of want him to just keep licking… Riddle thought it would be over 15 minutes ago, but Che’nya’s still licking… The moment he would be done with his face, ears and head (cat saliva in Riddle’s hair…), Riddle would realise that Che’nya is determined to lick him all over. Time to call Trey…

blackbutlerfandomnerddomain asked:

Riddle gets licked my Chenya often in my lil delulu ass world

Sometimes Che’nya randomly appears, licks his cheek and disappears again.

Anonymous asked:

Bro I gotta know, what do the tweel's dick(s) look like on their merform? I was scrolling on ur bluesky and saw this one with jade and idia and something between idia's legs and I was like "is that his dick?" If so DAYUM! May that bussy rest in peace

Love your art and speedpaints btw💗

Thank you for enjoying my art and especially my speedpaints! I am very happy to hear that <3

Hehe I’m glad you liked that one! I had a lot of fun with that piece.

I feel like I draw merpeen differently every single time lol but I love the design we came up with for that Jade/Idia drawing, and in fact I do have a post in which I talk about how it probably works! There aren’t any pictures there, but there are some interesting thoughts…

[courtingchaos]

An Excuse in the Form of Pie

Eddie Munson x Female Reader

Summary: A little Thanksgiving ditty for you, just a few days late. This is in my Rent universe but you can just read it on its own if you’d prefer. Takes place like a year into them dating.

Warnings: Sex

NSFW 18+ No Minors

Oh they shouldn’t have trusted either of you two to do shit asked of you. All Wayne had to do was huff at the cardboard box that he was unloading onto your mom’s counter and Eddie was at the front door with your hand in his.

“What’d you forget?” He asked it too enthusiastically, earning a hard side eye from Wayne.

“The buttermilk pie.”

“We can go grab it.” Eddie already had the door open with you nodding along behind him.

“It’s not a two person job.” Wayne’s gaze never falters off his nephew or you, just a raise of his eyebrows while you two practically jitter out of your skin.

“What if my hands get cold? We can share the load, right Samwise?” Eddie has mischief all over his face when he glances at you over his shoulder. It’s in the dimples on his cheeks and the crinkles around his eyes. Those shine with giddiness that he’s been trying to tamp down all morning.

Wayne relents wordlessly, a toss of his hands upwards and another huff. “Nothing wise about either of you.” Muttered as he turns to help your mom with the unwrapping of casseroles.

Your aunts came in two days ago and he hasn’t had a moment alone with you since, all of it spent at your place in your mom’s living room listening to three middle aged women gossip. It was fun for the first day but when he realized you were essentially being held hostage and he couldn’t get even a quick feel up in the hallway without someone calling for you. A trailer not much bigger than his own and it was swarming with people and you kept getting lost in the throws.

“How long before they send out a search party?” Eddie asks while stomping up his front steps and unlocking the door, everything done in a rush like he’s running from your extended family.

“Well bud, I think Wayne already knows.” Your laugh follows him into the dark trailer before he yanks you in with him.

“Bud?!”

“Yeah, my buddy that I sleep with.”

“Is that all I am to you?” He pulls you against his chest in the midst of giggles and a tangle of feet trying to rid themselves of shoes. “Just a warm buddy you can take advantage of?” He asks like he isn’t the one manhandling you down the short hallway to his room. Your protests fall on deaf ears though as he nods along all aloof like and blindly slaps around behind his back for his doorknob.

“Seriously Eddie we gotta be quick, I don’t want Wayne marching over.”

“Hey.” He pulls away to point at you. “You don’t get to make fun of me when it’s over in under a minute, capiche?”

You laugh into his mouth while trying to kiss him and also trying to pull at his belt. His hands immediately find their way under your blouse, a lavender colored satin thing your mother forced you into that morning. He’d made a comment about you looking like one of those sad porcelain clowns and you’d thrown a serving spoon at him.

Now though you can’t get enough of his teasing mouth. His teeth that nip and pull away to draw you closer to his bed, his tongue that sneaks out to lick at the corner of your lips.

��Eddie c’mon.” You whine when he dips his head to kiss under your jaw, his hands still skirting the edges of your bra under your shirt. “Get me out of this stupid thing.”

He’s already plucking at the covered buttons before you finish your sentence. “Say no more.” Undone, just like your bra apparently, his little magic trick he’s perfected in the almost year you two have been together. He tugs you with him to sit on the edge of the bed and with you barely in his lap, the phone trills from the kitchen.

“There’s that ten minute warning.” Your hands slow down on the zipper of his ‘nice’ jeans, coming to terms with the fact you weren’t going to get anything you wanted this week.

“Well fuck their ten minutes.” His hands are rough on the wool of your skirt where he pushes it up your thighs, fingers sneaking under the silky lining to find the crease of your hips. “It’s not like we’re eating pie first.”

“You might be.” Your laugh is soft between you. Breath pushed out from the tickling movement of his fingers along sensitive skin. He gets a grip on you though and rolls you onto your back, your legs kicking around until he settles between your knees.

“Unfortunately no.” His fingers hook on your underwear to pull them down quickly. “But I wouldn’t be opposed to sneaking away later for a slice.” He vaguely pushes his jeans aside, finishing the job you left undone. The phone stops finally and Eddie grins down at you looking flushed and disheveled and wanting. He wants to get you out of your holiday finest and keep you in his sheets while the sky is still grey with rain. He doesn’t want to make this quick just because he’s missed you for a few days but the ache in his boxers does make a persuasive argument.

“What are you smiling at?” You ask him, trying to reach out to pull him closer. He gets the idea and drops down on his elbows to crowd into your space, nose running down along your cheek to plant a kiss on your earlobe.

“You. I miss you.”

“I know. The aunts will be gone by Saturday and you can have me all to yourself till Monday.” You run fingers through his tangled hair and he sighs, taking the moment for longer than he should. This was supposed to be a quickie after all.

“I’m gonna hold you to that-“

The phone rings again and he could swear it sounds more insistent than it did two minutes ago. “Fuck me.”

“I’m trying.” Your giggling does him in. He sits up with a rough yank of your hips to meet his and he works himself out of his boxers. Doesn’t give you more than a second to realize before he rocks his hips forward and makes you gasp through your smile.

The shriek of the phone echos through the empty trailer and it sets his teeth on edge, anger a whisper on the back of his thoughts “I swear to god I’m gonna graduate this year.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Yup.” He grabs your leg to sloppily kiss your knee and keep your hips open for him. “I’m gonna get the fuck out there so we can get the fuck out of here.” His other hand sneaks between your legs to find your own ache, thumb rubbing circles over that bundle of nerves. The leg in his hold jumps and he laughs through his nose at the way you squirm against his onslaught. “Have our own fucking Thanksgiving.” His hips pound a rhythm against yours. “And I’m unplugging the fucking phone.”

Your laughter turns to moaning that you don’t have to keep hidden and Eddie’s eyes roll in his head. These are the daydreams he gets lost in during biology, ideas of you two living on your own anywhere but here. A place where you don’t have to keep quiet due to thin walls and family ever present. Eighty five is gonna be his fucking year if it’s the last thing he does.

When one call ends and immediately picks up into another loud ring, Eddie drops his head and focuses on you. “Come on baby, they’re gonna send out the sheriff soon.”

“I don’t-fuck I don’t care!” You give him a show with your head thrown back and your hands pawing at your own chest, one of your nipples pinched between your orange painted fingers. His hips snap in an uneven rhythm while he tries to hold off until you break, always trying to make you break first. Eyes screwed shut, back arching off the bed suddenly, he feels you clench around him and he buries himself deep to ride out the feeling with you. His movements stutter and he mumbles his love at you, babbling about next year in your own shared place. In your own shared bed.

There’s no room for basking in the afterglow and when Eddie finally lifts his head you’ve already rehooked your bra and started buttoning your shirt back up quietly. “I’m sorry this was…well, this.” You look around you sadly and spot your underwear on his crowded floor.

“Don’t be, I got to steal you away for a bit.” He’s redoing his belt but leans down to kiss your forehead. “And maybe later we can sneak out back and have some quality neckin’ time.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you and the phone rings again and he turns unceremoniously out of his room without another word.

He tears the phone of the cradle and immediately hears Wayne, exasperated on the other end, asking where in the blue hell you two are. “Hello!” Eddie twirls the wire around his finger, his irritation clear through the line. “No we didn’t get lost, I was looking for something in my room.”

A moments fucking peace, he thinks to himself.

“Yeah, I see it. No I’m literally staring at it right now. Yep, she’s picking it up and we’re walking out the door.” You’re strolling into the living room and picking up your shoes and his, waving them at him. “Yes Wayne, I know. I’m sorry. Uh huh. Well…oh.” You’re watching him as his face softens and he smiles. “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

“What’s up?” Your hair is stuck up around your head and after he hangs up he reaches out to smooth a hand over the flyaways.

“He said he was stalling for us.” A blush creeps into the tips of his ears at the thought of that. A sweet gesture but still something he wished he could have kept to himself.

“Well that’s sweet of him. Told you he knew what was up.” You hand him his shoes that he drops and shoves his toes into while you grab the homemade pie out of the fridge. “You ready?”

“I was serious, by the way.” He doesn’t look at you while he locks the door and makes his intentions clear.

“About what?”

“The getting us out of here.”

You wait at the bottom of the steps, looking up at him warmly with the glass pie dish tucked up against your chest. “I know.”

He has a hard time meeting your eyes sometimes when he tries to talk about the future. “I mean, if that’s anything you’d want anyways.” He keeps his gaze unfocused while you both start back off to your trailer and your full family.

“Getting out of the trailer park?”

“Yeah.”

“Getting out of Hawkins?”

“That too.”

“Getting away with you?”

“That’s the part I wasn’t sure about.”

You find his hand swinging between you to grab it tight, lacing your fingers together. “Eddie, I’d love nothing more.”

[meltedmush]

how long does it take you to draw your sketches/doodles? also do you have any tips to draw faster? 🙇‍♀️

I generally take 30 - 60 minutes a sketch,,,, but honestly really depends on how detailed it is.

Like a Chibi will be done in 20 - 25 minutes (Counting in the extra time I spend on minute details like a perfectionist 😭)

I for some reason really like spending egregious amounts of time on random objects too??? Unless it’s the in the background, I’ll spend 40 minutes refining it.

Random characters that are fully colored and rendered with take like 80 minutes.

The comics take usually take an hour or two per page. (If I decide to cross hatch it, my entire day will be gone with 4 pages… so I’ve been trying to find shortcuts. But not without sacrificing the quality for time lol)

I don’t think there’s any trick or magic to drawing faster. It’s really about weaponizing your artistic knowledge, and finding what’s comfortable or convenient for you!

There was a period of time where I would spend 11 or 12 hours on an illustration, and it wASS UGLYYYYY. (Some of these artworks are still available on my tumblr,,, but it’s SO LONG AGO, AND IT WAS MY 1ST OR 2ND YEAR GETTING INTO DIGITAL ART)

Overtime I learned what worked best for me, and practiced till I felt more comfortable with what I was drawing. Eventually I managed to shorten the time to 4 hours or less! Ambition was my biggest enemy but at the same time my biggest motivator. (And it still is LMFAO) 😭

EDIT (bit more to my way too long tangent): ALSO??? BRO DON’T BE AFRAID TO USE YOUR MESSY SKETCH AS LINEART OR DRAW ON TOP OF IT. I’VE DONE IT FOR YEARS NOW AND IT ADDS SUCH A GOOD EXTRA BIT OF TEXTURE,, AT THIS POINT I DON’T EVEN USE LINE-ART ANY MORE UNLESS IT’S A COMMISSION,, (IT’LL ADD LIKE AN 2-4 HOURS TO MY WORK)

[starlingflight]

Ginniversary Drabble 13

Prompt: O68 — To his horror, he realised he'd been this way before.

AO3 or read below:

The castle, which Dean had, as a naive eleven year old, found intimidatingly large, was now too small. It would be easier if he could walk around with his eyes closed, a pursuit that was rendered impossible because Hogwarts was essentially the world’s most infuriating maze. He’d used to find the moving staircases and the trick doors enchanting, now he just found them extremely bloody irritating. 

Of course, for the past few days he’d found everything extremely bloody irritating, and his mood definitely wasn’t improved by constantly running into the sickeningly happy new couple, who seemed to be everywhere Dean was trying to go. 

“You said you were over her mate,” Seamus said as Dean stomped unseeingly down the sunlit charms corridor in the direction of the staircase. “You said yourself that she wasn’t right for you.” 

Dean didn’t reply as they turned the corner, no set destination in mind, just needing to keep moving. He had said that. He’d meant it. 

“And you said you were a bit relieved when you broke up,” Seamus continued, either not understanding or, more likely, not caring that Dean absolutely didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “You fought over the stupidest things. It was painful to watch, I can’t imagine what it was like to actually live it.” 

Dean turned another corner, grunting in response to Seamus’ observations. To his horror, he realised he’d been this way before. His stomach sank.

There they were, where he’d seen them five minutes ago, completely wrapped up in one another and oblivious to Dean’s – to anyone’s – presence.

Their fingers were entwined; Ginny was pulling away from Harry, but he was tugging her back towards him. Far from looking annoyed, Ginny’s head tilted back and she laughed, acquiescing to Harry’s attempts to pull her closer without any real resistance.

“Keep moving, mate.” Seamus shoved him lightly, forcing Dean’s feet to resume walking.

Unfortunately, Harry and Ginny began to walk at the same time as Dean and Seamus. Transfixed, Dean watched as Harry collected Ginny’s school bag from the floor; Ginny’s eyebrows raised in question and Dean still couldn’t look away. 

He’d made the same fatal error once before, and received a lecture that had very quickly turned into an argument when Ginny had refused to see that Dean’s actions had not been some silent suggestion that she was incapable of carrying her own belongings. As if he didn’t have enough sisters to know exactly what girls were capable of. 

For the first time in days, Dean didn’t envy Harry in the slightest. He braced, waiting for Ginny’s inevitable flare up. 

It wasn’t forthcoming. 

The newly familiar sting of bitterness pierced his ribs. She’d never smiled at Dean like that. She’d been happy, especially in the beginning. They’d shared grins and knowing looks across the common room, but she’d never looked so… incandescent. 

Idly, Dean wished he could draw her as she was right in that moment, even if the expression on her face wasn’t for him, there was some unnamable quality to it that deserved to be inked on parchment. Of course, Ginny had never been Dean’s to capture in such a permanent way; that much was becoming increasingly clear. 

��Let’s go to the North Courtyard,” Seamus said, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder and steering him in the opposite direction to the one Harry and Ginny were walking in, forcing Dean to look away. “You can have another attempt at the rowan tree. I think you almost had the shading right last time.” 

“What are you going to do?” Dean asked, trying not to let his eagerness for the suggestion show. It was one of the good things that had come out of his breakup with Ginny. She had never possessed the patience required to sit for the hours it took Dean to perfect his pieces, and he was slowly starting to remember the simple pleasure that came from creating. 

Seamus shrugged easily, not wavering from the path he’d set. “I’ll probably just watch you – you know I like to see how it all comes together.” 

[finishwhatyoustarted-event]

Tools Tuesday - Motivation to Start, and Setting Goals - Sept 3

It’s the first Tuesday of the event, so it’s time for a Tools Tuesday! Tools Tuesday is a weekly part of the Finish What You Started event where I share various resources I have found to help everyone complete their WIP. Have a resource you want to share? Send it in a message and I’ll take a look!

Today is about motivation to start and setting easy goals to keep the momentum going.

Starting a project can be the scariest part. Good news! If you’re participating in this event, you’ve already completed that step! But finishing is daunting, especially for long projects with no end in sight, or ones that you’ve struggling with for a long time.

When you have a big project, especially one that you may have started and put down years ago, it can be intimidating to pick it back up. Give yourself a few minutes to review what you already have done. Read through the last part you wrote, read your notes, check the pattern, etc. If you need to, make notes about what you have, where you remember you wanted to go, and what is inspiring you now. That scene you got stuck on might make sense now, or you see another angle you could draw that tricky pose from. You could even go in a whole new direction.

Be kind to yourself if you feel stuck. You can't intimidate or yell yourself into productivity!

When you’re ready to work, it can help to do some warmup stretches, especially for artists and sewists, but writers, musicians, and others craftspeople benefit from a good warmup stretch too! If you’re on the discord, check the general resources channel for wrist stretches. And stretch during breaks! This is a stretch guide I keep on my phone, to remind me to loosen up. made by @/tizzymcwizzyALT

[basic ID, more in alt: an infographic of a pink figure demonstrating a variety of hand, arm, and upper body stretches. End ID.]

If it’s not distracting, set the mood for your work with an applicable playlist or soundscape. Make sure you won’t be interrupted or distracted during your work time by silencing notifications and minimizing other windows. Let yourself focus on this one thing.

When you do start, set a small goal. It can be word count based or time based, whatever makes sense for your project. Make it very achievable: maybe just five minutes or 100 words. The thrill of reaching that goal can help carry you through another 5 minutes, another 100 words. If you struggle just to get through that goal, congratulate yourself on making your session goal! You can go do something else now. Decreasing the pressure on yourself can help get creative energy flowing. When you make your goal consistently, you can up it, but not too much.

There’s a famous anecdote that whenever author Terry Pratchet sat down to write, he set a goal of 400 words. Whether he wrote more or not, he did his 400. By the time of his death, Terry Pratchet had written and published over 40 novels. For myself, I like to set session/day goals, weekly goals, and monthly goals. That way even if my progress isn’t linear, I can see myself approaching where I want to be. Incremental goals can feel really good! But if holding yourself to a number doesn’t help, find what does.

If you want help from others also working on wips, come join the discord! We have a space for accountability buddies to help keep you on track and a place to write during timed sprints, as well as many resources. This link should not expire!

These all might feel obvious to you, but maybe someone else hasn’t considered them before. What gets you motivated to work on your wip? Do you have any tricks that always work for you? Share them with your fellow participants here!

[mumms-the-word]

Bound by Blood - Ch. 6

Ch. 6 - Morrigan

Characters: Alistair, fem!Surana, Zevran, fem!Tabris, and basically the rest of the DAO crew Plot: Seventeen-year-old Nyssa Surana never expected to find herself a Grey Warden - let alone one of three surviving Wardens, one of which is her own cousin, Velle Tabris. She's the last person anyone would ever choose to save the world. Young, inexperienced, deeply anxious, and only just out of the Circle Tower for the first time in a decade, she's convinced she's as unlikely a hero as unlikely heroes come. But someone has to save Ferelden from the Fifth Blight...and keep her cousin out of trouble...and try not to fall in love with the charming Alistair Theirin, all at the same time. Three impossible tasks, but she's determined to succeed, even with the odds stacked against her. A/N: Nyssa finally obtains the darkspawn blood she's supposed to gather, and the team meets a mysterious Witch of the Wilds.

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Nyssa slipped out from under Alistair’s hand and stumbled toward some nearby bushes, hoping to disappear around them before she embarrassed herself completely. She managed to duck behind a sparse-looking shrub before she retched, her body heaving despite almost nothing coming up. Her stomach was as hollow as a cave, without even the small breakfast she'd eaten hours ago to lose.

She sank to her knees, panting, trying to force her stomach to settle through sheer force of will. The attempt only made her feel worse. She retched again, eyes watering as her throat and nose burned.

“Oh, charming,” Daveth said nearby.

“Quiet, you,” Jory responded. “We can’t all be so cavalier about these beasts.”

“I don’t see you emptying your guts, ser knight.”

“Shut up, both of you,” Velle snapped. Nyssa heard her coming, stomping through the swamp brush, before she felt her hand on her back. “Hey, it’s okay. Let it out. You’ll feel better.”

Nyssa pressed a shaking hand to her forehead, her skin feverishly hot. The icy cold that still lingered on her palm from that last ice spell was only a small relief. She called more ice magic to her palm and pressed her hand to the back of her neck.

Maker’s breath. She was pathetic.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’ll…I’ll be okay in a second.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Velle said, rubbing her back. “You were awesome out there. The way you just crushed that guy? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Nyssa’s stomach lurched again and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Velle, please. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Oh. Okay, sorry.”

Beyond the brush, Alistair cleared his throat. “Uh, Jory, Daveth, why don’t you…scout around a bit? Make sure there aren’t any lingering darkspawn waiting to jump us. We can meet up by the bridge in a few minutes.”

Eyes still closed, she heard the two of them drawing away, Daveth muttering something under his breath, and then the sound of armored footsteps coming closer. She sat up and opened her eyes just as Alistair crouched near her, unhooking a flask from his belt and opening it.

“Here.” He offered it to her with a small, friendly smile. “Don’t worry, it’s just water. I’m not trying to trick you or anything.”

After a second's hesitation, she took the flask gratefully, raising it to her lips for a few tentative sips while Alistair fussed with another small pack on his belt. The water didn’t do much to settle her stomach, but it at least washed away some of the acidic taste of bile from her mouth.

“Feeling any better?” Velle asked, kneeling beside her now.

Not really. But she nodded instead. “A little.”

“I have some army rations,” Alistair said, pulling out a small bundle from his pack. He took something like a dry tea biscuit from the bundle and snapped it in half, holding out part of it to her. “It might help, I don’t know.”

“Thank you.” She took the biscuit from him and nibbled on one corner. It was dry and tasteless and almost too hard to bite into, but the thought of eating anything more adventurous than half a stale biscuit seemed like a bad idea anyway. And bite by tiny little bite, it did seem to help.

She cleared her throat gently, dropping her gaze to the ground. “Sorry that I’m so…you know.”

Weak. Ridiculous. Stupid. Slow. Any of those could apply, she supposed.

“Hey, don’t apologize,” Velle said. “These things are creepy as hell. And you splattered that one like a bug.”

Nyssa winced. “Not helping.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“She’s right, though,” Alistair said, giving Nyssa the other half of the biscuit as she finished the first half. “No need to be sorry. I remember when I fought my first darkspawn. I screamed like a little girl and nearly fell on my arse trying to stab it. I think it probably died of laughter before I even hit it.”

She couldn’t tell whether his story was true or if he was merely trying to make her feel better, but either way, it helped. She bit her lip to stop a smile from showing. “Did you feel sick afterward?”

“Well, no,” he said, shrugging, “but I did nearly soil my drawers, if that helps.”

She wrinkled her nose slightly but couldn’t help a small laugh. “Maybe a little.”

“Only a little? Well, you can’t blame a man for trying.” He smiled as she giggled again. “Feeling better now?”

She nodded. “Yes. Thank you, Alistair.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, standing. “I know what it’s like to be the new guy. Or—I guess you would be the new girl. Girls,” he added, glancing at Velle, who stood and crossed her arms, arching an eyebrow at him. “Point is, I get it. And it does get easier. Fighting darkspawn, I mean. You sort of get used to them.”

Nyssa doubted she would ever get used to fighting darkspawn, but she kept those thoughts to herself as she ate the rest of the biscuit Alistair had given her and stood. She took one last sip of water and then, a little self-conscious, cleaned the mouth of the flask with her sleeve before closing it and handing it back to Alistair. “So what now?”

“Now you collect your vial of darkspawn blood, same as the others.” He reached into a different pack on his belt and produced a small crystal vial with a cork stopper, holding it up for her to see.

“Oh…” Right…she had forgotten that part. She took a deep breath. “Well let’s get that part over with, then.”

Velle put a hand on her shoulder. “Nyssa, I can—”

“No, no. I should do it.” If she couldn’t do this, then what was the point of all the dramatics? Besides, she did feel better now, with a little water and food in her. She nodded, mostly to herself, steeling her nerves. “I can do this.”

She took the vial from Alistair and returned to the path, making her way over to the darkspawn that she had killed with her magic. It was still a gruesome sight, with the darkspawn’s broken body in a mangled heap among the shattered wood and bones. She forced herself to study it, looking for places where blood still flowed freely from its body.

Think scientifically. This is a specimen, like in textbooks. Nothing more, nothing less.

She took a careful breath and crouched beside the debris.

Ugh, Maker, the stench…

She thought she had gotten used to it. They had fought and stepped over the dead bodies of plenty of darkspawn already. But to crouch so close, the pungent scent of wet, rotting decay, and foul, corrupted blood so near her nose, her stomach threatened to rebel all over again. This time, however, she swallowed down the nausea and held the vial beneath a dripping wound on the darkspawn’s arm.

Black, thick blood dripped steadily down into the vial, slowly turning the transparent crystal black, as if she were filling it with pitch or tar. As she watched, waiting for the little flask to fill, the words of one of the army sergeants lingered in her mind, something she had overheard as she was helping the other mages cast protective spells on the soldiers before they headed into the Wilds.

Careful with the darkspawn. Their blood is as black as sin and poisonous. Don’t even touch it. You get tainted with that blood and you may as well slit your throat.

Unbidden, the image of the soldier from that morning came to her mind. The way he writhed on his cot, mumbling feverish, half-mad nonsense, the veins standing out stark and black beneath his skin. 

She clenched her teeth together. Why was there no cure? And if there was, why did only the Grey Wardens know about it? Three Wilds flower blooms lay gathered in her bag right this moment, with enough potential to cure a mabari sick from darkspawn blood. Yet for men and women, the blood was a death sentence.

She held up the vial to the light, letting the early afternoon sun try to shine through the crystal. But the blood inside was so black and thick, she might as well have asked the sun to shine through stone.

This small crystal flask now held the thing all the soldiers in Ostagar feared. The thing that had corrupted the soldier in the clinic and caused him days of suffering.

You get tainted with that blood and you may as well slit your throat.

More than the claws or weapons of the darkspawn, more than the chill of the mountain air or wounds from the battle itself, it was this blackened blood that could taint and kill them. This little vial, only half-filled with darkspawn blood, would make the entire army camp quake if they knew she carried it with her.

So much fear, and so much trouble, for such a small measure of blood. And she didn’t even know what she needed it for.

She stood and stoppered the vial closed, careful not to get any of the blood on her hands. Then she slipped it into her bag alongside the Wilds flowers she had collected. Corruption and cure, side by side.

“Now what?” she asked, turning back to Alistair and Velle, who had already wandered over.

“Now we find those treaties that Duncan wants,” Alistair said. “Come on, let’s regroup with the others. The sooner we find the treaties, the sooner we can all return to camp for a bit of downtime.”

Nyssa wasn’t sure if they just had bad luck or if it was normal for nothing to go right for Grey Wardens, but of course, the treaties they were looking for were not in the ruin that Duncan had directed them to.

What waited for them instead was a witch.

“Well, well, what have we here?” a voice crooned nearby. Nyssa turned from where she and the others had gathered around a broken stone chest to see a woman descending the steps of the ruin. Dark-haired and with strange, gold-colored eyes, she smirked at the group of them and crossed her arms loosely in front of her. “Are you vultures, I wonder? Scavengers poking amidst a corpse whose bones were long since cleaned? Or merely an intruder, come into this darkspawn-filled Wilds of mine in search of easy prey?”

Around Nyssa, the others reached for their weapons, either to stand ready or, as Daveth and Velle did, to completely unsheathe their blades, each of them on high alert.  But Nyssa only stared. The woman looked to be around the same age as her and Velle, yet she stood with an air of proud confidence that neither of them could match. Her clothing was a patchwork assortment of black-dyed leather, raven feathers, and a worn, purple drape of fabric that barely covered the curve of her pale breasts. Despite that most of her upper body was exposed to the chill of the mountain air, she seemed as unbothered by the cold as she wasby the wary stares and drawn blades directed at her.

Nyssa knew she ought to be wary, but something in the air crackled with energy, something she recognized instantly. Magic.

This girl was a mage. The staff she carried on her back, twisted black wood topped with some kind of curling horn, only confirmed Nyssa’s suspicions. A hedge mage, perhaps. A mage outside of the Circle, certainly.

An apostate.

At their silence, the woman tilted her head. “What say you, hmm? Scavenger or intruder?”

Velle scoffed. “And who made you lord over these wilds, huh?”

The girl arched an eyebrow, amused. “No one. But I know them as only one who owns them could. Can you claim the same?”

“Don’t answer her,” Alistair muttered under his breath. “She looks Chasind, and that means others may be nearby.”

The girl laughed. “You fear barbarians will swoop down upon you?”

Alistair’s frown switched easily into a dry-humored expression. “Yeah,” he drawled. “Swooping is bad.”

“Stop talking to her,” Daveth hissed. For once in their entire adventure out in these swamps, he looked nervous, even scared. “She’s a Witch of the Wilds, she is. She’ll turn us into toads!”

“Quiet, Daveth,” Jory whispered back. “Don’t give her any ideas.”

…toads? Nyssa tried to ignore a flicker of annoyance. Was that all people thought about when it came to magic? That it could turn people into frogs and toads? They had bigger things to worry about, if this girl truly was a Witch of the Wilds.

Nyssa had read a few stories of them in the Circle library. Stories of women practicing dark magics in far away corners of the world, swamps and forests to the north and south, from as distant as the jungle marshes of Rivain to the tangled forests of the Arbor Wilds in Orlais. They were either myth and legend, women selling their souls to demons in exchange for extended lifespans or more magical power, or they were simply hedge witches, apostates who were more danger to local villagers than power-hungry abominations.

It was hard to say which narrative fit this girl. She didn’t seem to align with anything Nyssa knew about these supposed witches.

“Witch of the Wilds,” the girl repeated slowly, sounding amused. “Such idle fancies you have, to believe such tales.”

Her gold-eyed gaze swept over to Nyssa and lingered. She uncrossed her arms and gestured to her, as if beckoning her to speak. “You there. You have not spoken yet, and elves do not frighten like these little boys do. Tell me your name and I shall tell you mine.”

The weight and attention of four other gazes suddenly settled on Nyssa, watching her. She knew she ought to be wary, even frightened of this girl, but instead, she was simply curious. The aura of her magic was unlike anything Nyssa had felt in the Circle. The girl carried fragments of wild, untamed magic about her, as though she’d never cleansed her staff or her clothing of residual energies even once in her entire life. It was so different than magic in the Circle, where the Templars were constantly doing mana cleanses and dispelling lingering magical effects whenever possible.

Something within her was drawn in like a magnet to steel, like a moth to a flame, even as another part of her whispered that she ought to be wary. This girl was an apostate, a rogue mage separated from both Circle and Chantry. The priests and Templars would call her a maleficar merely for existing and practicing unregulated magic. She was everything the Circle and the Templars had taught Nyssa to avoid. She was dangerous.

Yet Nyssa was not afraid.

“Nyssa,” she answered the girl. “My name is Nyssa Surana.”

The girl smiled, as if pleased. “You may call me Morrigan. And if you wish to retrieve what was so poorly hidden in that chest there, then I suggest you follow me. I can take you to the one who currently has them.”

“It’s a trap,” Daveth hissed, at the same time that Jory said, “I dislike this. We cannot trust her.”

“Who has them?” Nyssa asked, ignoring them.

“My mother,” was Morrigan’s mild reply.

Alistair scoffed. “Your mother?”

She cut her eyes toward him with open disdain. “Yes, my mother. Did you assume I spawned from a log?”

“A thieving, weird-talking log, perhaps,” Alistair muttered.

“Why does she have them?” Nyssa asked. They needed to stay on track. And, she had to admit, she wanted to know. How did Grey Warden treaties end up in the hands of a young apostate and her mother living out in the Wilds?

Morrigan shrugged. “I know not, but you may ask her yourself, if you please. I daresay she is curious enough about you to indulge you.”

The others shifted uncertainly. No one seemed eager to make a decision. Not even Alistair, who had more or less been leading their group around from place to place. Morrigan’s offer to take them to her mother still stood, however.

Velle stepped closer to Nyssa, lowering her voice to a near-silent murmur. “She’s weird, but I don’t think she’s trying to trick us. What do you think? Do you believe her?”

Nyssa considered for a moment before nodding. They didn’t have much of a choice if Morrigan’s mother had the treaties they needed. They had to get them back somehow. And if this was a trap, why would Morrigan lure them away to a different location? This ruin was secluded, and she was a mage. It wouldn’t take much for her to cast a spell to incapacitate them all and then call for others to kill them, if that was her plan.

Perhaps she was just being naive. But she believed that Morrigan was telling the truth about where the treaties were. Even so…

“Do you promise that you will do no harm to us while we retrieve those treaties?” Nyssa asked. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alistair shoot her a look, eyebrows raised, but she kept her eyes trained on Morrigan. She wasn’t expecting much of a promise, but maybe it would soothe the others’ nervousness to hear the “witch” agree.

If she agreed.

Morrigan smirked, amusement glittering in her strange-colored eyes. “Of course. You have stirred my curiosity, so you have my promise. Does that suffice?” She flicked her gaze to the others.

Daveth grumbled something under his breath, but there were no open complaints. Seemingly satisfied with the lack of response, Morrigan stepped over to a path, little more than a thin worn line through the swamps, and beckoned to them all.

“Follow me, then, if it pleases you.”

The five of them were relatively quiet as they followed Morrigan through the swamps. She was a sure-footed among the wetlands, navigating with ease down paths Nyssa couldn’t see even when she was walking along them. The rest of them crashed clumsily along behind her, with Nyssa once more at the back, quietly pondering the mystery that was this Morrigan of the Wilds.

Who was she? What was she doing out here in the Korcari Wilds? What was her mother like? More importantly, was Morrigan just a simple hedge mage, a relatively harmless sort of apostate, or were there darker things at play here?

Of course, Nyssa had answers to exactly none of these questions by the time they reached Morrigan’s mother. But she pondered them nonetheless.

The moment they stepped into the clearing where Morrigan’s home stood in the distance, the air shifted around them. None of the others seemed to notice, trudging along behind Morrigan, but Nyssa paused at the edge of the clearing.

Strange…the air felt thinner here, in a way that she had only felt in Kinloch Hold or at the main camp at Ostagar. Not colder, but as though the barrier between this world and the Fade, the Veil, was worn thin by time and magic. Curious, she called magic to her hand, drawing on the energies of the Fade. The energy came easily to her, dancing across her fingers with green and blue light, more easily than in the midst of the Wilds where it had taken more concentration to shape magical energy into spells.

She didn’t know if it meant anything. Perhaps this place was simply old. She frowned, but dispelled the magical energy with a quick wave of her hand, then hurried to catch up to the others as they moved toward the building in the clearing and the woman who stood outside.

Morrigan’s mother, she presumed.

She waited outside of a hut that looked as though it had been patched together two centuries ago and was only standing now through sheer force of will. Around the hut, more ruins lay crumbling, half-sunken in marshy pools, the stones bleached white by ages in the sun. It was difficult to say what was older, the ruins or the hut…or to which era Morrigan’s mother belonged.

She stood, arms folded, watching them approach as though they were late to an event she was hosting. Like her daughter, her eyes were a strange gold color, dimmed slightly by age, but there, much of the similarity ended. Whereas Morrigan was dark-haired, pale, and youthful, her features accentuated by the dark stain she had added to her lips and her eyes, her mother was wizened, her nose slightly crooked, her gray hair rough-cut and swept back out of her face. She narrowed her eyes at them as they drew nearer.

“Greetings, Mother,” Morrigan said breezily. “I bring before you five Grey Wardens who—”

Her mother cut in with a brusque, “I see them, girl.” She tapped her chin as she studied them, her eyes trailing slowly from one person to the next. “Hmm. Much as I expected.”

Alistair raised his eyebrows. “Are we supposed to believe you were expecting us?”

“You are required to do nothing, least of all believe,” she said, a cynical smile suddenly on her lips. “Shut one’s eyes tight or open one’s arms wide, either way, one’s a fool.”

Nyssa and Velle glanced at one another. What? Velle mouthed. Nyssa could only shrug.

“She’s a witch, I tell you!” Daveth said, his voice low and urgent. He looked even more nervous now than he had been before. “We shouldn’t be talking to her!”

Jory elbowed him hard in the side. “Quiet, Daveth! If she’s really a witch, do you want to make her mad?”

The old woman chuckled. “There is a smart lad. Sadly irrelevant to the larger scheme of things, but it is not I who decides. Believe what you will about me.”

Jory’s eyebrows drew together at the woman’s strange proclamation. Daveth, meanwhile, tightened his grip on the hilts of his daggers, which he kept unsheathed but at his sides. Alistair continued to look wary, but not necessarily threatened. It was difficult to tell what was going on in his mind, beyond the obvious distrust he harbored for both of the women before them.

But the old woman didn’t wait to hear what the men thought. She turned and appraised Velle and Nyssa with interest.

“But what about the two of you?” she asked. “Do your elven minds offer any insight? A different perspective for what you believe?”

Velle took a step back and shook her head. “I think you’re both crazy,” she said, pointing to the woman and Morrigan. “A pair of batty shems having too much fun with mud and magic. Leave me out of this.”

The woman snorted. “Is that all? And you?” she asked, her gaze now on Nyssa. “Is that also what you think?”

A whisper of warning brushed featherlight against her mind. It was a simple question, asked without a hint of serious weight in its tone, yet it felt like a trap. Or perhaps a test. Something in this old woman was familiar, her gaze too sharp for someone who pretended to be merely a madwoman, even a mad mage woman.

A chill worked its way down Nyssa’s spine as she realized what was so familiar about her. Her stare, the coy smirk on her lips, the stillness with which she waited for Nyssa’s answer—it was as though she was facing the pride demon she’d encountered during her Harrowing all over again.

Keep your wits about you, mage, he had whispered to her. True tests never end.

Just who was this woman?

Outwardly, she appeared little more than an old woman in patchwork clothing. Yet Nyssa couldn’t deny what she felt when they had first approached the hut. It went beyond the Veil being thin in this place. Something about this old woman herself suggested magic, older and deeper than anything Nyssa had encountered in the Circle, as though she herself carried ancient magic within her rather than drawing it from the Fade.

Maleficar. Demon. Abomination. The words came easily to mind, bringing with them a nervous trepidation that sank like a stone in Nyssa’s stomach. But she didn’t know whether any of those labels were necessarily true or accurate. The old woman seemed all of those things and none of them at the same time.

Whatever she was, it must be something very old, very powerful, and very dangerous. Morrigan was a curiosity. Her mother, however, was something unknowable.

“I…I don’t know what to believe,” she said at last. “Yet.”

The woman broke into a crackling laugh like a crow’s cackle. “A statement that possesses more wisdom than it implies! An open mind, not yet made of mush. Or am I merely complimenting you? We shall see.”

She tilted her head and tapped her chin, examining Nyssa, then Velle, then Alistair, and back to Nyssa with narrowed eyes and a cat-like smile. “Hmm, yes. So much about you three is uncertain, and yet…I believe.” She paused briefly and then, as if to herself, or to someone within herself, “Do I? Why—it seems I do!”

“Wow,” Alistair said. “So this is the dreaded Witch of the Wilds, huh?”

And just like that, Morrigan’s mother was back to being a strange, slightly batty old woman. Another laugh cackled from her throat. “Witch of the Wilds, eh? Morrigan must have told you that. She fancies such tales, though she would never admit it. Oh, how she dances—”

“Mother,” Morrigan cut her off. “They did not come for your wild tales.”

“Ah, true, true. They came for their treaties, yes?” She turned and retrieved several scrolls from within the satchel at her waist. They were smaller than Nyssa expected, curled tightly around smooth wooden rollers, wrapped with thin leather coverings to protect the parchment, and tied closed with cords. She handed these to Alistair. “And before you begin barking, your precious seal protecting them wore off long ago. I have protected them since then.”

Alistair blinked, staring down at the scrolls he now cradled in his hands. “You—protected them?”

“And why not,” she said, shrugging. “Take them to your Grey Wardens and tell them this Blight’s threat is greater than they realize.”

Again that lingering feeling of this woman being more than she appeared—a demon, an abomination, a maleficar—needled Nyssa’s mind. One moment she was rambling nonsense, and the next she seemed to predict the future. Maybe it was all nonsense, but…it made Nyssa nervous, nonetheless.

“How…do you know all this?” she asked.

Another mysterious smile crossed the old woman’s lips. “Do I? Perhaps I am simply an old woman with a penchant for moldy parchments.”

Nyssa very much doubted that, but she kept silent. The woman merely chuckled.

“Oh, do not mind me,” she said. “You have what you came for. Morrigan?”

Morrigan sighed. “Yes, very well. Come with me then, and I shall return you to your camp.”

As the others turned to follow after her, Nyssa lingered, hesitant. “Thank you,” she said, directing her words to the old woman. It seemed like the polite thing to say.

But the woman merely arched an eyebrow at her, unimpressed. “Do not thank me yet, girl. We will see one another again soon, perhaps. Then you may think about whether you wish to thank me.”

With those words serving as her farewell, the woman turned away and returned to the hut. Nyssa swallowed the questions burning on her tongue and hurried to catch up to the others before she got left behind. Morrigan and her mother puzzled her, but she had no desire to linger any longer than she had to.

[witchy-shortcake]

That one Jade drabble i promised i would write.

TW⚠️: This story contains mentions of drinking and substance abuse, if you find those themes triggering i advice you to Skip this.

I really hope you all enjoy my first attempt at a semi-decent whump drabble.

Jade came stumbling into the apartment. She didn't even bother to take off her boots, which were leaving muddy footprints everywhere.

Slumping against the wall, she managed to reach the couch and crah face first into the cushioned surface, letting out a small muffled sound.

She sat Up as best as she could, wincing in pain, and started undressing, tossing her blood-stained clothes aside, leaving on only her bra and panties. There's were still a couple hours before she had to pick up Sunny from school so she could clean It all Up later.

She examined the bullet wounds on her leg and forearm, she was sure she could dig the bullets out of there herself, she wasn't a newbie anymore, but, still, she would need a little... Numbing if she wanted It to work.

She crawled towards one of the drawers she always kept locked so her sister wouldn't try to play with it's contents, leaving a bloody trail on the floor, and took out some pills, gauze and a bottle of cheap liquor. Those would probably do the trick.

She stumbled back to the couch with the little strenght she had left and downed the pills in one go, followed by a big gulp of absolutely disgusting alcohol that tasted like rusty nails. She then closed her eyes and waited for the pain to subside, taking another hit from the alcohol bottle every time she felt the burning pain of her wounds, which were seemingly already starting to get infected.

Jade finaly started feeling the effects of the drugs coursing through her system. She bit into the shirt she had casted aside before to try and avoid screaming and started digging her fingers into one of the wounds. The pain made her see black spots but the alcohol and The pills were numbing the sensations down to some degree, and she sure was thankful for that.

She managged to dig out both of the bullets and poorly wrap both the open wounds in gauze. She got Up from the couch, skinny legs trembling with the effort to walk to the bathroom to clean herself without putting too much weight in the injured leg. When she got there she turned the water on to draw herself a cold bath and disposed of her underwear. She took the rest of the pills out of their bag and swallowed them before going into the bathtub.

She slipped into the bathtub, letting out a sigh of relief as the freezing water made Contact with her sweat-soaked skin, her wounds stung like hell but It wouldn't last long, the drugs were already starting to take effect and She could feel It, she only had to wait a couple of minutes more.

Before she knew It, Jade was barely conscious, her head kept above water but not for long. She felt hot and nauseous and her head felt like It was stuffed with cotton. She could no longer tell when or where she was anymore.

If she could have looked at herself from outside of her body, Jade would have though It was ironic, She looked almost like he did, when she found him in his apartment almost three months ago, feverish, high out of his mind and injured beyond repair, marinating in a mixture of old bathwater and his own blood for god knows how long, but, somehow, still Alive and kicking. But, if she didn't manage to get Up before the bathtub overflowed and her head ended Up under water Jade would not have the same luck.

She woke Up again almost an hour later. The water had thankfully stopped running, and The one that she was bathing in was a brownish red, from her Blood and all the dirt that she had come home covered in. She crawled out of the tub, leaving behind the drenched and bloody bandages and managed to take a few steps before she fell to her knees, overcome by pain and overwhelming nausea. She held back her hair as best as she could, even though It was damp and plastered to her face, and started spewing out all the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl. She had barely eaten anything for the past few days, but still, she felt like her body was purging out all her sins, along with what seemed like an endless flow of watery vomit.

When her stomach finaly stopped convulsing she fell to the ground, too exhausted to even cry in pain when her head hit the cold floor, falling into a far from blissful sleep.

[parkitaco]

super belated bday ficlet for @astrobei!! (+ my stonathan debut 👀)

Jonathan wakes up with a splitting headache.

This, unfortunately, is nothing new to him - he usually has a headache of some sort these days, as unrelenting stress and trauma will tend to do to a person. There's always something plaguing him. Most of it's his own fault, due to his general inability to let go of anything ever, but still. It's not a pleasant way to be.

He can hear clattering in the kitchen, presumably his mother getting a head start on the weekend's chores. It's still early, if the shaft of weak light streaming in through the gap in the curtains is any indication, and he'd sort of been looking forward to sleeping in as long as his anxious brain ever allows him to, but he's always been a light sleeper and he knows it's pointless to go back to bed now. He groans, sitting up and tossing his covers aside as he runs a hand through his hair.

Jonathan knows it's a little ridiculous, the way his brain works. Summer started two weeks ago, and his job is a decent one, even if the men at the Hawkins post make him want to tear his hair out for a myriad of reasons. The Mindflayer is gone. The gates are closed. Will is safe. Jonathan should not be this stressed.

And yet.

He gets dressed quickly, wincing when he catches sight of his eye bags in the mirror. He hasn't been sleeping well. He hasn't slept well since 1983, probably. Every time he closes his eyes he sees blood, grey skin stretching obscenely over gnarled muscles, gaping mouths with too many teeth to count. His brother's eyes, corrupted from their usual hazel to a dark, swirling, angry color as he strained against the rope tying him in place.

A red-hot poker, sizzling as it met flesh. Jonathan's pretty sure he's more traumatized from that than Will is. He's the one who had to stand by and watch, after all.

That's selfish, though, and Jonathan strives not to be selfish. It's hard to win, in a household with a harried, overworked parent and a younger sibling who seems to get cursed at every turn, but he tries to do as much as he can. It feels like he's doing everything, some days. There's never enough of him to go around.

"Morning, hon," his mother greets when he enters the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning. "Did I wake you?"

"No," Jonathan lies easily, stepping around her to grab an apple off the counter. He leans against it, biting into the apple with a satisfying crunch that serves to jumpstart his overtired brain.

If his mother notices the lie, she doesn't mention it, simply humming a noise of assent as she scrubs at a plate in the sink. Jonathan had meant to do the dishes before going to bed last night, he realizes with a stab of guilt - they'd been piling up, neglected all week, and it had been bothering him, but then Will had asked him for assistance with the evidently very important matter of deciding what to draw for his friends' next DnD campaign, and he'd forgotten.

"I can help with those," Jonathan offers now, guilt twisting in his gut as his mother works at a grease stain, and she waves him off with one soapy hand, showering him with flecks of lemon-scented water.

"Don't worry about it, hon," she says, which is what she always says, and just like always Jonathan wonders how, exactly, he's meant to stop worrying about things. He's pretty sure that worrying is his sole purpose in life. "Doing anything fun today?"

Fun. Jonathan does have fun, sometimes, he supposes. He has fun with Will, though his brother has been more and more concerned with spending time with his friends lately, which is- fine, it's fine. Jonathan has friends of his own, sort of. It's a good thing, that Will's figuring out how to get back to normal.

Still, Jonathan feels a little lost sometimes, without his brother there to hover over. Like that one night, on Halloween last year, when he'd let Will go trick-or-treating without him, and he'd sat in the car for a solid ten minutes after, wondering what he was supposed to do with his evening.

That was the first and last party he'll ever be attending, thank you very much. He hadn't even lasted for fifteen minutes before something demanded his attention - Nancy Wheeler, in all her overwhelming, drunken glory, clinging to him all the way from the car to her room.

Jonathan tries not to think about the way that mess had begun. Him, watching a drink spill over Nancy's white blouse. Him, listening halfheartedly to raised voices from the hall, watching a bathroom door fly open and a boy come storming out, leaving the girl behind to stare moodily at herself in the mirror. Him, Jonathan Byers, following the boy instead of the girl, stepping out on the porch and murmuring a soft I'll take her home, don't worry.

That had been the same night Will's visions started in earnest, and Jonathan had been off at a party, caring for drunk girls and their jilted exes instead of his own family. He can't win. Ever. Everything he does is just a little wrong.

"Jonathan?"

Jonathan blinks, snapping himself back into reality and staring blankly at his mother, who's smirking from where she stands by the sink. "Huh?"

"I asked what you're doing today," she repeats, smiling, and he offers a smile that turns into a grimace halfway through.

"Don't know," he says tightly. "Is Will here?"

"No, he went to Mike's," Joyce answers, already back to the dishes, the water a gentle spray over her hands. "I have to go to the grocery store in a little while, and I have a couple other errands to run- oh, did you ever make it to the pharmacy, hon?"

Jonathan is ninety percent sure she never asked him to go to the pharmacy, but he figures he probably should have known to go anyway. They're low on ibuprofen, of which he is in need of constantly. "No, I'll go today."

His mother smiles absently over her shoulder at him. "Thanks, hon."

Jonathan nods, a little distracted by his mental checklist, which is constantly growing - pharmacy, library, laundry, an endless list of tasks that never really seem to disappear. God, he's tired. Maybe he should have tried to sleep in after all. "No problem," he says, and is only sort of lying, because the truth is that there are no problems, not really - other than the underlying ones, such as money being tight and everyone being traumatized, things are fine. There are, strictly speaking, no specific problems.

It never seems to feel that way, though.

His mother heads out after an hour or so, reminding him to eat breakfast and ruffling his hair on the way out the door. Jonathan spends a half hour making scrambled eggs (and then remaking them, after burning the first batch horrifically). He eats them slowly, one hand holding open the book he's been trying to read for the past three months, always ending up too distracted by the everything else around him to get more than a few pages in. He's never been much of a comic book person, but he gets why Will likes them - they're definitely far more digestible than anything he's ever tried to read. But Jonathan's a bit too serious of a person for stuff like that. Bright colors make his headaches worse.

It's almost ten by the time he starts getting ready to go to the pharmacy, book abandoned on the table and keys in his hand. Maybe he can go to the record store - he has some money, after getting his first paycheck from the Hawkins Post, but at least half of that is going to need to be used to cover their bills this month. Probably better to wait a few more weeks, until after rent is due and he can properly assess how much is left over.

He grimaces to himself and pulls the front door open in one fluid motion, shoving his wallet in his back pocket and flipping through his key ring for the right one - and almost crashes directly into Steve Harrington.

They both yelp and stumble backward, Steve looking sensibly chagrined as he drops his arm, which Jonathan now sees had been poised to knock. "I- sorry," Steve says, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Sorry."

Jonathan stares at him for a beat, one hand still holding his keys a bit uselessly. Dimly, he wonders if there's a new supernatural horror come to haunt him - that seems the only logical reason why Steve Harrington would be at his house, on his own, at ten in the morning on a random Saturday in June. They don't do this. They're not- friends, they're probably something closer to enemies if he thinks about it. They don't show up at each other's houses unannounced except in dire circumstances.

But that one time, a snide voice in Jonathan's head pipes up, he did. Remember?

Jonathan banishes the thought, on account of the fact that a., Steve had come to apologize for literally beating him to a pulp, which does not connote friendship in any way shape or form, and b., they'd both nearly been eaten alive less than five minutes after. Not exactly a good track record.

Steve grimaces, and opens his mouth to say something else, but before he can Jonathan blurts; "What are you doing here?"

It comes out sounding a little ruder than he intended, as do most of the things he says, but to his immense relief, Steve seems more put at ease by it than anything. He laughs, a short, huffy sort of sound that's more endearing than it should be. "Um. I wanted to talk to you."

Jonathan and Steve are not friends. They do not talk. Is he having a stroke? "About what?"

Steve shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets and glancing away awkwardly. "Jesus, Jonathan, I don't know. I was just gonna see if you wanted to come for a drive or something." He glances back at him, sheepish, and he does an awkward sort of shrug-twitch thing with his shoulders, eyes falling to the keys in Jonathan's hand. "If you're busy, though-"

"No," Jonathan says before he's even aware of it, thinking of his mother asking if he was doing anything fun today and how spending time with Steve Harrington is probably not really all that fun, but is at the very least an interesting concept. Better than blowing money on records that should be going to his family. "I was just gonna- pharmacy," he says, gesturing vaguely. "My head, uh." He pauses. He doesn't usually tell people about his headaches. Or any other ailments, really. "Nevermind."

Steve squints at him, looking stuck between a laugh and a frown. "Okay. Is that a yes, then?"

The pharmacy can wait, probably. "Yeah, sure." He coughs. "Yes."

A blinding smile splits across Steve's face, a genuine one. He never used to smile that way, Jonathan remembers - two years ago, it was all closed-lips and wry smirks and raised eyebrows. Kind of insufferable, if you ask Jonathan, but then again, no one ever does ask Jonathan.

It's- nice, is the point. If you asked Jonathan, right this second, what he thought of Steve's smile, he'd say that.

"Where are we going?" he asks, trailing after Steve to the car parked haphazardly in his driveway and shoving his own car keys into his pocket.

"Just- for a drive, man, I don't know," Steve says, pausing with one hand resting on top of the open driver's side door and looking mildly exasperated. Now that he knows he has Jonathan's attention, he supposes, he's back to behaving like a prick.

(Not really. He's not much of a prick, anymore. Not that Jonathan would ever admit that aloud.)

Despite himself, Jonathan smiles a little as he climbs into the passenger seat. "Okay. Got it," he says, tinged with amusement and sarcasm, and Steve gives him a dirty look that doesn't reach his smiling eyes as he backs out of the driveway.

The radio is playing softly, some sort of Cyndi Lauper bullshit spilling from the dash as Steve drives. He's a good driver, Jonathan notices a little fondly, better than he would have expected, with the whole being-a-prick thing and all. He's careful. Like he cares about keeping Jonathan alive and well, which is- bare minimum, really, and it's probably just as much about his own self-preservation, but still. It's nice. Jonathan's always a little pleasantly surprised, where Steve's involved.

But he doesn't want to think about that for too long, so instead Jonathan rolls down his window, letting the cool early-summer air waft over him. "Any particular reason we're doing this?" he asks, just for the sake of distracting himself from his own thoughts.

Steve shoots him another look, though he looks distinctly more amused this time. "You ask a lot of questions," he says wryly, and Jonathan snorts, glancing back over at him. "Don't you ever just, like. Go with the flow?"

At this, Jonathan outright laughs, and surprises himself with it a little. "Go with the flow," he repeats, a little incredulously, and Steve's cheeks pinken a little as he pointedly looks back at the road. "I don't think I'm a very flowy sort of person."

"I'm getting that," Steve grumbles, and Jonathan laughs again. "I just meant - you're so tense. Like, I get stressed out just looking at you sometimes."

You look at me? Jonathan thinks, and then immediately banishes the thought because- no. He's not going to start asking questions like that. "Yeah, well, not all of us can be the perfect Steve Harrington," he says, and it comes out a little more biting than he intends. He winces, an apology on his lips, but it gets stuck in the back of his throat. Better to be a little mean than a little too incriminating. That's how they operate, him and Steve.

Steve coughs, halfway toward a laugh but falling short. "No," he agrees, and sounds like a person trying desperately not to sound as hurt as they feel. Jonathan bites back another apology. "Guess not."

Jonathan's never been good at letting things go. Desperate to fix it, fix them, fix everything, he corrects; "Well, I guess the kidnapping probably mars your record a little."

The statement works precisely how he expected it to - with a cough and a splutter and a reddening of tanned cheeks. "I am not- kidnapping you," Steve squeaks, and there's that laugh again, bubbling up from somewhere in Jonathan's ribcage that he wasn't previously aware of. Maybe that's where he's been keeping his serotonin all this time, locked away in his chest somewhere. "You said you wanted to come!"

"I said I would come," Jonathan corrects, "I didn't say I wanted to."

Steve scowls. "You did want to. You- you want to hang out with me so bad."

Jonathan's not so sure about that one, mostly on account of the fact that he hadn't really known that hanging out with Steve was an option until today, but now that he is, he can definitively say that- maybe, possibly, he likes it. A little. Maybe.

"Don't make me beat you up again," he says, for lack of a better response, and this time Steve laughs, loud and bright in the summer air, and the sound settles something in Jonathan's usually-nervous system. People don't usually laugh with him like this. It's a bit odd, realizing that he's- funny. Likeable, maybe, in the right set of eyes. Or maybe that's just the Steve Effect. He puts people at ease.

"You wanted to," Steve says again, a little more quietly, and Jonathan stays silent, an admission by omission.

They pull into an abandoned parking lot, somewhere on the outskirts of Hawkins where Jonathan's only been a handful of times. It's a decent spot, raised on a hill overlooking downtown, grass growing through he cracks in the pavement. Pretty, in the bleak small-town way that Hawkins typically offers.

He shoots Steve a questioning look, and Steve smiles as he kills the engine. "No one ever comes here," he says, which feels a little like a confession even though it's not, doesn't mean much of anything at all. "I mean- I do, but. I don't know. There's probably, like, better and quieter places to hang out farther out of town, but I get kind of- um." He flushes, running a hand through his hair. "It seems sort of depressing, you know? I like to be somewhere where I can be close to where people are without having to actually, you know- talk to them."

There's a beat of silence, the radio having gone silent the moment Steve shut the car off, and Jonathan allows himself a moment to examine him, a little, the twisted grimace of his lips, the flush steadily rising to his cheeks, the faraway look in his eyes. Steve is a little confounding, sometimes.

Then:

"Sorry, that sounded dumb."

Jonathan blinks, shaking his head on instinct. "No," he argues reflexively, but finds he means it when he adds, "I know what you mean." Under normal circumstances, maybe, he'd poke fun, ask why Steve has suddenly gone philosophical on him, but there's a weird energy in the car, something delicate and vulnerable that Jonathan isn't nearly cruel enough to break.

Steve meets his eyes earnestly, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips, which Jonathan is- not looking at, not even a little bit. "Yeah?"

Jonathan's mouth suddenly feels very dry. "Yeah," he confirms hoarsely, and then, because that's a little too raw even for him, "Yeah, it's- that's what photography is like, kind of. Using a camera to distance yourself while still, um. Still seeing people, as they are."

Steve raises an eyebrow. "Yeah? Maybe I should take up photography." He glances back out the window, lost in thought, and Jonathan, overcome with a strange kind of confidence, nudges his arm gently.

Steve turns back to him, frowning, and he tilts his head at the window. "It's boiling in here," Jonathan says, which is half-true. In truth, it feels a little too closed-off, like anything could happen here, anything could be said, and only the two of them would ever know it. It feels like if he's not careful, he might do something dangerous.

Luckily, Steve only nods, unstrapping his seatbelt and climbing out of the car after Jonathan, who clambers up onto the hood of the car with a considerable lack of grace.

"Scratch my car and you're dead to me, Byers," Steve says, but he doesn't sound like he means it even a little, especially when he hops up onto the hood seconds later, knee knocking against Jonathan's.

There's a few moments of silence, both of them staring quietly out at Hawkins spread below them, the breeze ruffling their hair. They make an odd pair, Jonathan knows - Steve, in all his letterman jacketed glory, and Jonathan with his old band t-shirt and eye bags and headache. But oddly, it works like this, in the silence and summer air, the two of them opposite ends of the same spectrum.

"I'm not perfect," Steve says after a moment, less like he's correcting Jonathan and more like he's speaking it into existence, like he's afraid to admit it. "Just- just so you know."

If this were any other day, Jonathan would laugh, make a joke, deflect. But today is different, so he just bobs his head once, a quiet acknowledgement. "I know."

Steve glances at him, brows drawn together in concentration. "No, I mean it," he says, "I'm not- I mess things up, all the time. I think I'm- I don't know. If you're not a very flowy person, then I think I'm too flowy, or something." He bites his lip, eyes raking over Jonathan with an intensity that leaves him feeling oddly exposed. "I wish I was more like you," Steve says, with a quiet reverence that makes something stutter in Jonathan's chest.

He shakes his head once, a wry smile tugging at his lips. "No you don't," he assures him, and Steve's frown deepens, "I'm exhausting."

"You're driven," Steve argues, looking almost offended on Jonathan's behalf. "Not the same."

"I'm a nervous wreck, Steve," Jonathan says with a laugh, but it falls flat. Too close to the truth. He swallows. "All the time."

Steve stares at him for another couple seconds, then releases a soft breath and turns back to stare out at their pathetic little town. "Maybe we should switch," he muses, voice low but sending sparks through Jonathan's nerves all the same, "or- meet halfway, or something."

A year and a half ago I was arrested for beating you up, Jonathan thinks and doesn't say, and now you want to meet me halfway.

They make an odd pair.

"I'd like that," he says, and Steve's gaze snaps back to him, something clicking into place in his expression.

"Yeah?" he asks again, and again looks hopeful and earnest and all of the emotions the old Steve would never have been caught dead exhibiting.

Jonathan's throat is so very dry. He nods. "Yeah."

The breeze ruffles through his hair, and a hand presses against the side of Jonathan's neck. Far in the distance, a bird squawks, and here on the hood of a car a boy meets Jonathan's eyes.

The car creaks beneath them, and Jonathan leans in.

Like everything else, kissing Steve is pleasantly surprising. He's gentle, more gentle than Jonathan might have expected given his reputation, and his lips are soft when they press against Jonathan's own. He tastes like soda and smells like detergent and is careful when he lays a hand over Jonathan's chest, right where his heart is throwing itself against his ribcage. Jonathan presses in closer without meaning to, hand grappling for purchase against the surface of the car before grabbing Steve's waist instead, pulling him closer with a gentle creaking of metal beneath them.

Steve hums, a soft, unintentional sound, and pulls back, the carefully blank look on his face not quite hiding the gleaming look in his eyes, fiery and terrified at once. He shivers once, Jonathan's thumb brushing gently over the cotton of his t-shirt, tucked under his jacket.

His hair is falling into his eyes. Jonathan brushes it away without thinking about it, and only pauses when Steve's breath catches somewhere in his ribcage. Jonathan offers a shaky smile and presses in again, lips connecting with Steve's softly and briefly before he pulls back for real.

"What," Steve says, and then pauses like he doesn't know where to begin.

Jonathan smirks. "Too many questions."

It takes a second, but Steve's face falls into a (feigned) scowl in one swift motion, much to Jonathan's delight. "Wh- I didn't even ask anything yet!"

"Good," Jonathan replies, smirking as he lays back against the windshield, "Don't."

"You're a prick," Steve says, and doesn't seem to mean it in the slightest when he follows suit, leaning back and folding his arms behind his head.

Jonathan presses his leg against Steve's, enjoying the solid warmth of him next to him. "Right back at you." He closes his eyes, letting the summer sunlight wash over him, and Steve shifts beside him, leg pressing more insistently against his own.

Jonathan's head doesn't hurt at all anymore.

[ionlymadethissoicouldleaveanask]

SPIDER-MAN KISS FROM PROMPT LIST

From this prompt list!

Thanks for the prompt. This was a fun one to write. Anybody else who is interested, send a prompt my way! I need the help getting back into the swing of writing.

...

2230 Hours, September 10, 2525 (Military Calendar) / Epsilon Eridani System, Reach UNSC Military Complex, Planet Reach

Frederic-104 paced slowly, his footsteps silent in the pitch black of the cavern around him. He was on watch duty while several of the others went on a recon mission - that meant that it was his job to make sure no adventurous DIs managed to get the drop on the rest of the squad while they were otherwise involved. They didn’t know why Mendez had brought them to this particular hole in the ground, but not a single one of them was stupid enough to believe that the old man had had anything but tricks up the sleeves of his standard-issue BDUs.

Fred hated pulling watch duty.

The others were all off having fun. Ambushing DIs, stealing whatever supplies and equipment they could find, just making a general nuisance of themselves… you name it, they were doing it. What was Fred doing? He was pacing back and forth in an empty cavern, bored nearly to tears.

It sucked.

He wasn’t sure just how long he’d been down there on his own. That wasn’t true. He was sure exactly how long he’d been down there. Twenty-six minutes. The excursion team - John, Sam, Anton, Linda, and Kelly - would be back soon. No team was allowed to be gone more than thirty minutes. They didn’t want to draw the attention of any hidden camera they might have somehow missed. If they kept their exploratory missions to short and sweet supply or information runs, they stood a better chance of keeping their instructors fooled.

Twenty-seven minutes.

The young man’s shoulders tensed imperceptibly when something in the air shifted. He wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t quite know what to make of this newfound ‘sixth sense.’ It was certainly helpful - in the weeks since their augmentation procedure, each and every one of the Spartans had learned to trust their body’s natural reactions first and pick out the memories that actually set such a reaction in motion later. 

For instance, in this moment Fred’s first response was to take several steps to the left of where he had been standing, then cut back to the right and circle around slowly. It wasn’t until halfway through his circle that he realized what it was - somewhere up above him, there was an almost imperceptible sound of movement. 

If he were a regular person, Fred would never have been able to pick up the practically nonexistent whisper of fabric against fabric in the rafters up above, but… well, he wasn’t exactly a regular person these days.

The young Spartan continued his casual pacing, careful not to alert the newcomer that he had recognized their presence.

Suddenly whoever had been stalking him from above seemed to grow bored of being patient. He tracked the sounds of their movement as they angled around behind him. There was something different about it, but Fred didn’t waste time trying to discern just what had changed. He was too busy getting ready for whatever was coming. He had to imagine that whoever it was had night vision goggles; otherwise, they would be blinder than a mole down here in the dark. Even Fred’s enhanced vision was having a hard time compensating for the darkness of these caverns. He would be at a visual disadvantage, but that didn’t mean much.

In fact, Fred enjoyed the challenge.

He reached into his pocket. There inside was a tube of something that resembled ancient livestock markers. It was a tube of chalk that was potent enough to stain clothing. He had stumbled upon it while sifting through one of the trainer’s bags a few weeks ago, and ever since had taken up the hobby of marking whatever non Spartan personnel he came into contact with. It was something akin to the ancient Native American tradition of counting coup.

Suddenly the stranger dropped. Fred turned to watch them; they must have lost their balance and fallen by accident, because rather than go feet first like he had expected they plummeted headfirst toward the floor. He very nearly let them fall. Almost regrettably, his sense of morality insisted he reach out a hand to at least attempt to keep them from breaking their neck. In the other hand he lifted up his marker and prepared to mark them, just to add insult to injury.

It wasn’t until the interloper’s descent began to slow unnaturally that Fred realized they were attached to a black rope and were controlling their fall. They slowed to a full stop about six feet off the ground, leaving them roughly eye-to-eye with Fred.

In the span of a moment, the young Spartan took the other person in. They were clad head-to-toe in a black uniform, including a hood drawn over their head covering everything but their eyes. Bright blue eyes that were meant to be scowling, but were very clearly grinning instead. Eyes that he knew.

Kelly.

“Got you,” they said, their voice playful, if muffled by the fabric covering her mouth. She glanced meaningfully at his outstretched hand still poised to catch her.

Fred stuffed his hand back into his pocket and grinned at her just as teasingly. “Did not. I just didn’t want your brain matter to splatter onto me.” He took another look at her, raising an eyebrow appreciatively at her new attire. “Nice getup. Where’d you get the new threads?”

Kelly smiled in response, the mask stretching around her lips as she did so. “Oh, we liberated a few items from the guard garrison a few levels up.” With the hand not currently holding her in position on the dangling rope, Kelly held out a tightly wrapped bundle of black fabric to Fred. “I picked out some new clothes for you; thought you’d like to see them.”

The young man grabbed the clothing and held them up. “Just my color,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. “Kelly, you really shouldn’t have.”

The other Spartan shrugged, which turned out to be a somewhat funny image when dangling upside down like a spider, and waved away his mock admiration for her ‘gift.’ “It was the least I could do,” she said with a theatrical sigh. With another smirk hidden beneath her black facemask she added, “After all, I knew I’d have to do something for you to make up for scaring you like I did.”

Fred rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue. “Well, thank you,” he said, his voice quieter and slightly less sarcastic now. He turned away from her and started down the corridor, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll let the others know you’re on your way back.”

Then Fred stopped, turning around and grinning. “Actually, Kelly, I forgot one thing.” She cocked her head curiously to one side and mutely watched him approach her. Her posture was relaxed, unsuspecting. She remained that way right up until Fred stepped in close, pulled her facemask to uncover her mouth, and planted a firm kiss on her lips.

“Got you,” he breathed with a smirk. Then he turned and stepped into a quick trot away from her. He was already nearly out of earshot by the time Kelly managed to yell after him, “Did not!”

[luvo27]

cut scene from stress vs love

Finally, finally, Fig manages to make it to what passes for rogue classes. Honestly, it’s been kind of fun. There’s a part of her that kind of wants to attend rogue classes regularly now.

The instructions she’d found behind a locker led to more instructions that led to an inscription on the bottom of a potted plant that led to more instructions on a piece of paper hidden behind a chalkboard in a classroom on the third floor that led to a key that unlocked an unused classroom that apparently, isn’t all that unused. Scrawled on the chalkboard are tips and tricks for avoiding notice when sneaking, specifically for sneaking into tall buildings from the ceiling.

Riz is already in the classroom, standing by the chalkboard and scribbling in a notebook. Fig feels herself smile. It’s nice to see Riz, at any time in the day. At lunch, yeah, but it’s nice to hang out with him, it’s nice to see him in his element. Again, she considers attending rogue classes regularly, because she has a ton of fun hanging out with Gorgug in Barbarian, so if she picks up rogue classes, she could hang out with Riz!

She considers whether or not she would want to pick up classes with all of her friends, because that would just be the most epic thing in the world, right? She loves hanging out with them. It would be the perfect way to maximize the amount of time she gets to spend with her friends! It’s the perfect plan!

Grinning, she taps Riz on the shoulder. “Hey, Riz!”

“Fig?” Riz turns to blink at her. “This is rogue class.”

“Yeah, I know.” Fig shrugs modestly and feels her grin widen. “I was just trying it out.” She’s about to start talking about how she managed to find all the clues scattered around the school. She’s pretty proud of herself, considering she’s never actually taken a rogue class before. Yeah, she’s sneaky when she needs to be, but she’s really starting to appreciate the specific skill set that Riz brings, but Riz talks first.

He starts, “You should—Fig, you need to be in class.”

Fig closes her mouth as she takes Riz in. He’s blinking rapidly, like there’s something wrong with his eyes, and his tail is flicking around his feet the way it does when he’s feeling distressed, and in the gloves that he’s taken to wearing, his hands are twitching minutely. Fig feels her eyebrows draw together.

“Hey, Riz,” she says, softening her voice, “it’s okay. It’s my free period.”

Riz stares at her, taking in the information. And she isn’t technically lying, she doesn’t really go to bard class anymore and not going doesn’t affect her grades, even if she is a bard, so it is a free period. Whatever Riz is thinking, he doesn’t remember that this is when bard class meets.

“It’s your free period?” he asks.

“Yeah, Riz.” Fig nods. “It’s my free period.”

“Okay.” Riz nods. “Cool. So, you’re trying out rogue class?”

“Yeah,” Fig starts to say. She thinks about the probability that Riz will, at some point, realize that bard classes take place during the same period. She imagines the reaction that would cause if she told him she was going to take up rogue classes.3 It’s okay though, because while it has been fun, she’d be perfectly not adding another class to her schedule. 

“But,” she continues, “I think it’s not really for me, you know?”

“No,” Riz says. Fig notes with delight that the corner of his mouth twitches up in a smile. Another part of her notes that she doesn’t remember the last time she saw Riz smile, not really. “I don’t know, actually,” Riz finishes.

“Right,” Fig nods. “Course.” She thinks about Riz, focused on homework during lunch, and everyone saying that they asked if he wanted to hang out, and how she doesn’t remember the last time she hung out with Riz herself. She tries to think about the last time she saw Riz smile, really smile, and thinks it was probably over winter break, which is now a couple weeks ago and that’s way too long.

“Hey,” she says, “I was wondering, do you want to hang out?”

Riz frowns. Not one of his bad frowns, just a thinking frown. “Um,” he starts to say, “I guess—” he shivers, shakes his head. “I shouldn’t,” he says apologetically. “Uh, date night.”

“Oh.” Fig feels her face fall. That’s right, she thinks. Riz is, unfortunately, just really, really busy. She knows she’s gotten a few texts saying he couldn’t hang out at Mordred because he was spending time with Baron. But it’s sweet of him, she thinks. If Ayda were here—if she could call, or text Ayda, but cell service and time travel don’t really work together, she knows she’d be spending as much time with her as she could.

She’d also be spending as much time as she could with Riz and the rest of the Bad Kids though, of course. And in the back of her mind, something bothers her. Not enough that she notices it, not yet, but it is really weird that Riz is spending more time with Baron than any of them. That’s not the Riz she knows.

It’s sweet, she tells herself. It’s really sweet that Riz is putting so much effort into this new relationship. She tries to pull a smile back onto her face.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with Baron,” she says, trying to be playful. “Haven’t you?”

Riz laughs sheepishly. “Yeah, I guess I have.”

“Well, don’t forget about us, you know?” Fig tells him.

Riz smiles. A real smile. The worry in Fig’s heart melts away as he promises, “I won’t.”

Fig puts two fingers to her forehead in a salute. “See you later then, Riz,” she tells him. “Alright?” She starts to walk back towards the door.

“Yeah, Fig,” Riz says as he watches her leave. “See you later.”

Fig hesitates just outside the door for a moment. Riz gives her one last little wave before turning back to the chalkboard. Within seconds, he’s back to scribbling away. It’s almost like Fig was never actually there. Like she was never needed. Just an unwanted intruder, brushed off as soon as it was okay to.

Fig rubs her shoulders. She doesn’t go to any of her other classes that day.

[siphoklansan]

(hey hello hi new follower and I love your work) For the oc interaction I hand you Melanie and Louise!!

"It's a pleasure to meet you all!" The young girl curtsies to the three before rising. "I know we've never met before but I'm part of the Ramshackle dorm, here!" She then hands Siphok a small basket of bright red strawberries. "I grew them myself, I hope we can get along!" Soon enough a little mouse emerged from Melanie's breast pocket, scurrying up to her shoulder before bowing. "And I'm Louise, trusted knight of her highness! Pleased to meet you!" He squeaked proudly causing her to giggle.

Anan gives a curt bow, pressing a hand to his chest, “Good morning, and pleasure to meet you Miss Melanie.” His eyes then trailed over to Charin, who’s hands are behind his head in a relaxed manner. “This is my body guard Charin. Please, don’t mind his-“

“The pleasure is all mine, Melanie.” Charin says with his usual flirty tone of voice that makes Anan sigh internally. “How sweet of you to gift us these lovely strawberries? How about we all enjoy them together over a cup of tea?”

Of course, Anan’s eyes were already glued onto the small mouse in Melanie’s breast pocket. Oh my. What an adorable, fluffy little thing! It’s passionate about its duties as the girl’s trusted knight too! How benevolent. Surely Louise and Charin would get along—

It was even five minutes until Louise was chewing on Charin’s ears and kicking his feet on the poor half-merman. Anan stared blankly. Should he stop the fight, or should he continue to stare at how small Louis is- how Louis could definitely fit into his palms. Or those socks humans hang by the fireplace on Christmas. Oh wait! Maybe he should knit Louis a tiny scarf? Yes..yes, that shall do.

Meanwhile, Melanie and Siphok were too busy enjoying the strawberries and the tea that Charin offered (Siphok had to brew them, because Charin was dragged away by a rather protective knight.)

“You grow the strawberries yourself?” Siphok asks, trying to ignore how Charin was pretending to be defeated by Louise while Anan stares blankly at Louise from a feet away. “You gotta show me your tricks! Everything I grow dies.” She laughs.

My art is in it’s flop era💔 First pic was a million years ago (still dedicated to this ask) the second one slayed (also a million years ago) and I FLOPPED SO HARD ON THE THIRD I HOPE I DREW MELANIE RIGHT😭 honestly, Melanie is such a sweetheart I love how she gives off idol vibes🥺 AND LOUISE RRAAAAAAAA HE’S SO SILLY I LOVE HOW HE;S SO DEDICATED ON BEING MELANIE’S KNIGHT IT’S ADORABLE😭

I was torn between drawing Siphok and Grim waving lightsticks while Melanie performs at monstro lounge jshdijsunjcjosjudn but decided to stick to the prompt!

ALSO I LOVE HOW MELANIE DESIGNS ALL HER CLOTHES?? SHE;S GORGEOUS TOO?? WITH THE SUNSET COLORED HAIR (REMINDS ME OF SUNSETS BUT YK) RRAAAAAA SHE REMINDS ME OF MY SISTER FOR SOME REASON(In a good way!)

[celestiallywritten]

☆ TWST - Card Tricks

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland Featured: Ace Trappola & Reader Rating: General

Word Count: 1060 words

Premise: This was supposed to be a study session, but Ace has pulled a deck of cards from his pocket and set himself to the art of distraction. It seems as though you have a thing or two to learn, yourself.

☆ — 

With the flick of his wrist and the pinch of his fingers at their edges, you watch in fascination as Ace shuffles the playing cards from one hand to the next. They make a pleasant, if muted sound, cardstock rippling as they come to rest between his waiting palm. He doesn’t give you much time to track his movements, all curving grins and crinkled eyes, shifting the cards back to the tabletop.

He doesn’t need to look to see what he’s doing, the movements long practiced since his dad had shown him how to shuffle all those years ago. But for your sake he glances down, playing to the plain curiosity on your face.

“That was a simple transfer, y’know. It’s the same technique as this,” Ace says, splitting the cards into two stacks. Sensing the questions looming, not too different from the different things you’d been asking him for the past ten minutes or so, he continues, “This is called the riffle. It's an easier shuffle, sure, and kind of hard for the dealer to make any sneaky moves.”

“And yet,” you mumble, lips formed in a mock pout, “You somehow manage to stack the deck anyways when we’re playing.”

Ace’s grin returns tenfold, and he cackles, drawing the edges of the cards close as he bends them up. They move in a blur when his thumb edges away, overlapping one another, and his laughter fades as he nudges them back into a proper pile. “That’s ‘cause I’m the card master. Even if I let you or Deuce try, you wouldn’t be half as good.”

You’re quick to guffaw, mouth hanging open slightly as you draw your hand up to your chest in mock offense. “Maybe I don’t have any fancy tricks up my sleeve, but I can shuffle a deck just fine, so don’t you be so quick to assume. Come on, then.” You stick that same hand out, palm upturned, and make a vague gesture towards where Ace has drawn the cards back into his grip proper. “Let me see those. I’ll show you.” 

As always, Ace makes a show of it, humming and hawing rather loudly as he runs the pad of his fingers across the stack’s side. You make a move for the deck but he’s tilting his chair back, clattering it onto two legs so he’s out of your reach. Only when you sigh and concede back into your space does he return his elbows to the table, that familiar light of mischief sparking in his eye.

“Okay, under one condition.” He holds up a single finger for emphasis, wagging it in your direction. “You gotta try this first. I wanna see how hard you fumble these cards.”

You’re tempted to bawk, to complain about how little faith he has in you, but quickly reel back in your thoughts. Knowing Ace, if you talked a big game and failed spectacularly, it would be all you’d hear for the next week and a half. So, you mumble a quiet, “I suppose,” and focus on where his fingers are already twitching around the deck.

“Try a bridge,” is all he says before he’s separating them again in his hands, shifting to bend the cards into a high arch. All he places below them is a single finger, the others held aloft in a blatant show of practice. Show-off. It looks effortless in his nimble hands, the cards shifting just as he wills them, and when he removes his finger they’re coming back together in a nearly perfect pile. 

Your hands, fidgeting with the cuffs of your sleeve as you watch, still as he proffers the deck to you. 

Before you can even think of how to arrange them, fingers feeling oddly leaden, he makes another quip. “You can probably try it on the table since you’re a newbie… What do they call it? A handicap?”

“Oh shush,” you retort, the response less sharp than you’d intended. Yet your cheeks flush as you follow his suggestion, placing the cards on the tabletop in their little pile. Your mind works as you try to figure it out this way: pushing up the edges into a bridge like he had and letting them fall should work, right? 

Only one way to find out, you suppose.

It turns out that the bridge is the easy part, and the cards bend willingly, scuffing quietly against the wood. Ace is quiet, hands drawn beneath his chin as he watches your hands move. But as you move to let go, your one hand spreads too wide, and the cards are springing wildly from your grip. A squeak of surprise leaves you as they go everywhere, shooting across the table and into Ace’s lap, one even ricocheting up and off the table to nail you square between the eyes.

For the second time that evening, Ace bursts out into howling laughter. Again, he tips backwards, nearly losing his balance with how hard he’s cackling, chest heaving and eyes pin-pricked with tears as he revels in the proof of his own assumption. You can’t help but begin to laugh along too, snatching at the card that had been flung into your face.

“Alright, alright, laugh it up,” you manage to eke out between breaths. “Guess I can’t shuffle good like you, Ace. I guess I’ll just have to leave it to you.”

“Of course!” He’s quieting down now, but not any less smug about it. “I think I’ll have to try that on Deuce next time. Bet he’d fumble the cards even better than you,” he muses. 

Ace sets to gathering the cards back up with a pleased hum, fingertips gazing across the backs and upturned fronts of cards alike as he sorts them into a loose pile. “C’mon,” he quips, eyes flickering up to the card still sandwiched in your grip. “Let’s actually play something. You up for a couple rounds of Crazy Eights?”

“Just a couple,” you agree, going to hand the card to him. “Don’t think that I forgot that we’re supposed to be studying right now. We still have to finish the next chapter of material before tomorrow afternoon.” 

Before the card can leave your grip, though, you glance at the face of the card, and are rather amused to see the Ace of Hearts beaming up at you.

How fitting.

[l1ch3nnn]

Third day of @charpimweek! I originally was going to make a comic, but realised there was too much dialogue to realistically draw it.

So, enjoy my first charpim fic! Featuring two men arguing.

8th of October – "Something's gotta change, brother"

Words: 915

Genre: Slice of life, Hurt/comfort (ig?)

This fic also contains mentions of substance abuse and trauma, so tread with that in mind!

Another shift began a few minutes ago, and there was no calls yet, so everyone was just chilling.

Pim, at the table, read some gardening tutorial on his phone, Alan, wearing headphones, was on a stepladder, counting the supplies on the top shelves, and Glep was at his usual spot watching video reacts.

With a slight thump, the door opened, and Charlie treaded towards the table, mumbling to himself. His eyebags looked worse than usual, his tendrils limp and all crooked, like someone chewed on them.

— Oh, my head's gonna explode. Man, I hate this... — the yellow critter groaned, rubbing his temple.

— Charlie... How much did you drink yesterday? — Pim asked in concerned tone, eyeing his boydfriend.

— Huh? Like, two cans of beer.... maybe three when I was playing and stuff. — the taller one answered.

— Charlie.... — Pim frowned, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows.

— What?! Can't a guy enjoy a cold one after a bad shift?!

— ...Charlie, you were already very drunk when our shift ended. Yes, I saw you sitting there with a glass of something strong, and....

He recalled it. While he was talking to a client and accompanying them on the party, Charlie just sat there, laughing, a thick glass of brownish beverage in his hand. Was it whisky? Scotch? Something else? That didn't matter, and it still made the smaller critter sigh in disappointment before focusing on the client again.

— Pim, wh.... Why are you chastising me? Why are you doing that shit now?

— ...Because it's kinda important to me, Charlie. Yesterday you were getting buzzed when I did all the work, and...

— I did help!

— You were...

— I did help, Pim!

Technically that was true, because some of the Charlie's buzzed ramblings accidentally were adressed to the right person, who, in the end, approached the client, making them finally smile.

— D-don't interrupt me... Charlie... you were drinking while on job. And I had to drive you home, while you tried to...The pink one fidgeted nervously, tapping fingers on the table and against each other.

Just why is that reaction? He didn't mean to upset his boyfriend, just give an advice, but now it seemed only getting worse.

— Pim, shut up, you're not helping the situation. And was it the first time I drank on a job? Was it?!

— No, it wasn't, but....

— Really?! Well, shut up then!

— Charlie, listen....

— Why should I?! When we hang out, it's always, like "Oh, Chawlie, can I have a smoke?" but when I drink, it's suddenly a problem, huh?

Tendrils raised on the back of Charlie's head, now resembled six tiny snakes ready to attack. His canary fur stood on end, and a little growl could be heard between the words he spit.

— Ch-charlie.... It's, like, different... — What difference does it make, then?

— Well, I only smoke when hanging at yours, so, like, once in two weeks? So, it's not to match with what you do. Plus.... He rubbed the back if his head, sighing and looking down.

—...Charlie, you can really be dangerous sometimes.

— Wh-what do you mean? — the snakes slightly trembled, going down a bit.

— You remember Mr Boss's wedding? When you, like, bought that knife, held me by the shoulders and started waving it at my face?

— Man, I... I didn't hold you! I don't remember holding you, I was just showing a cool trick, and...

— Well, you did. You know I don't like accusing you, but that's what happened.

— Huh?...

— Charlie, I even said I was scared. See? That's what I'm talking about!– Pim, but that was...– That's not the only time. Remember when we got abducted and those aliens said they can't get us back home? When you, like, picked a fight with them...– Pim! They were super assholes, and we were both shit-faced that one time! – No, see... See, it's not about that. It's that I tried to stop you because they had big claws, and you... you really punched me?...A large drop collected at the lower eyelid of Pim's smaller eye.

— Oh, man... I, like, didn't mean to.... And you could talk it out sooner, you know?

Charlie's fur laid down, his thick eyebrows folding into the same shape as Pim's.

— Charlie, I... I thought it wasn't a problem. I tried to convince myself, for weeks, but I couldn't. It's just that... When you're that intoxicated, I genuinely fear you. It's not your fault even, it's like... It's something deep inside me that I can't throw away. It's like a reflex.

— Pim...

— No, Charlie, I guess I didn't have to say it, you know...

— No, Pim, I'm sorry for that shit. Like, really. I think.... I think I finally need to get my life together, man.

— For me? — the smaller one's antenna lifted a bit, eyes shining with a small glint of hope.

— For us. – Charlie moved his chair closer, hugging Pim firmly, letting the tears stain his hoodie.

They sat like that in silence for a few minutes.

...Suddenly, the door opened again, letting a small draft into the breakroom.

— Hi boys, guess what an adventure do I have for you? — Mr Boss giggled, winking at his employees, — Oh boy... Did I miss something?

— Ah, it's nothing.... — Charlie mumbled, quickly letting go of Pim, who blushed profusely.

Allan looked on the new guest, putting off his headphones.

— Seems like Those two aRe aT iT a-gain wiTh the ga-eey shiT, huh? – he commented.

— Aww, just.... Shut up, man! — Charlie protested, blushing a shade of orange.