#idk where i even got this font i just for some reason had one weight (the like. thin italic version and no other weights) downloaded

[wekillitwithfire]

ugh guys i love typography. yall ever heard to Footlight? serif typeface designed by Malaysian type designer Ong Chong Wah in 1986 for the Monotype Corporation?

[riceccakes]

Earth, Wind, and Coffee: Chapter Three Analysis

chapter one analysis | chapter two analysis

back again for another chapter analysis. i think ive been looking forward to this chapter the most, it’s where some big decisions were made!!! this analysis is a long one, i hope that’s all right! i kinda got carried away. so, let’s dive right in, shall we?

some fun stuff before we start!

chapter three was supposed to be the last chapter of the fic

idk if any of you were there when i first started writing this fic, but it was only going to be three chapters with a possible epilogue. however, everything changed when i finished the end of chapter two. (lil atla reference there for ya) (sorry i know that was bad, moving on). like i said in my last analysis, i had an idea of what i wanted to happen (the separation of korrasami) so that they could come back together. it was just a matter of what separates them. so, i’m not sure where i got the panic attack idea but once i did, the rest of the story changed. i realized i couldn’t quite possibly finish the story in one chapter so i split the ideas i had and decided on it being four chapters

now, this being said, maaaaajor changes were made in my story outline. most notably: korrasami was going to be a couple in this chapter

this was originally going to be a full fledged “they meet, they get to know each other, they fall in love, happily every after” but the thing was, i planned on treating their romance as korra’s recovery; that being with asami is what made korra better, that all she needed was a partner, someone to love, and that is not what i wanted to portray with this story. i’ve never been a fan of stories that give a character a love interest and all of sudden their problems are fixed and they’re completely happy, and here i was about to do just that. i knew i’d never respect myself if i continued down this narrative, and when chapter two ended with korra’s panic attack, i realized her growth needed better love and attention. so, i changed what happened and gave her some therapy

this change in the storyline also let me explore more of kuvopal !!! (is that their ship name?)

so, back to LOVE WITCH for a second (because that glorious fic really did steal my heart) not only did it make me love kuvira’s character more, it also got me into the kuvopal relationship! and yet again, i wanted my own go at it. with the original timeline, there was just no space for me to include the lil bread crumbs of their relationship. however, however, however; by splitting the ending between two chapters (and adding some stuff in between) i was able to lay some foundation for them, which im very happy about :)

into the chapter we go:

let’s talk about the meeting! the whole reason this fic came to be! i’ll start by saying i always knew the project was going to get pulled out from under asami. 1) because thats some angsty/hurt shit right there and im a sucker for writing angst 2) i didn’t feel like creating a whole ass presentation because knowing my ass i would’ve made a powerpoint about it so i had every detail down to the font asami used and 3) getting the presentation taken away from asami was a pivotal point in her character arc.

i actually started the chapter in two different ways. at first, i’d written her whole entire morning with there always being one thing that was off. like, instead of a perfect omelette, it was going to split and asami would’ve had a scramble, still good, but not her favorite. instead of going through all green lights on her way to work, asami was gonna meet every. single. red. light. i would’ve gone through with this if it hadn’t felt strange; i wanted to give the impression that something bad was going to happen but i felt like having something go wrong with every thing in her morning was gonna be a dead give away that some even bigger big bad was about to happen, if that makes sense. so instead, i went with the picture perfect scenario, almost too perfect, if you ask me. and indeed, it was too perfect, because hiroshi was too much of a coward to tell his daughter any sooner that his board agreed to get a new presenter

im just gonna cite a bunch of my favorite lines/bits from this chapter because i really enjoyed writing it xD

Iroh has already begun but Asami hears no words, only a blaring ring in her ears. Her face feels hot and she wonders how red she is. She stares at the black binder, notes the natural grooves and curves of the material, the plastic covering over top of it, the metal spine peaking out at the bottom. She’s only brought out of it’s dark trance when she feels a hand be placed on her arm; Kuvira. 

when you’re upset, do you ever just, hyper focus on one thing and its like you’re analyzing it under a microscope for the first time? yes? no? well, i do that, and personally, i do because if i focus on my anger/hurt emotions any more, im going to explode and i dont want to explode. so, this instance about looking at the grooves in the binder and each of the components of it just hits with me, idk if does with you too, but like bruuh.

Asami has her hand over her mouth, silently sobbing, feeling as if she’ll throw up. She leans her head on her wheel, her mind wanders to what could’ve been, what should’ve been. She feels as if her car is closing in on her, that the metal is compacting. The seatbelt keeps her locked down to the driver’s seat and she can’t leave if she wants to. The Satomobile holds her hostage and she lets it. Even while it’s hurting her, even while it’s harshly molding itself onto her, she stays at her father’s heel because, what else is she to do?

this is one of my favorite things ive ever done with asami’s character, is using future industries/satomobiles as a sort of vehicle (heh) for her relationship with her dad. this paragraph just kind of hurts, but the good hurt? but also not good hurt? it’s just, (and not me over here boasting about my writing or anything) it’s so poetic that she has this breakdown and she’s so upset with her dad, i mean “what should’ve been” like, asami KNOWS that the shit that’s just happened is more than wrong, yet asami is still somehow wondering how she can please her dad and it’s in the literal legacy hiroshi built for himself. “she stays at her father’s heel because, what else is she to do?” i remember writing that and being like “shit, am i really gonna do this? yeah” ugh, i could go on forever about how i love this section, but i’ll stop here for now.

Asami begins yelling, screaming at the top of her lungs, letting all the thoughts, all the insecurities her father gave her finally be released into the world. Kuvira lets her, simply nodding and following along on the couch while Asami paces her living room. She spews out word after word, about the work, about the presentation, about Iroh, his position, her position, the company, the CEO, and she only stops when she feels the weight of her father rest on her shoulders.

back with more diction; i really love this paragraph because of how we circle back to hiroshi. note how i first say “the CEO” and then a few words later say “her father” because, in a way, this is asami’s confession that hiroshi is CEO first and father second, if i haven’t already explicitly said so. it’s so heart wrenching and sad but my favorite thing about it is this isn’t even about korra. like THIS right here is a prime example about how i realized this fic became more than just a love story. in the planning stages of this fic, asami was going to go through getting the presentation taken away from her, but what was she going to focus more on? the fact that korra wasn’t around anymore. and yes, asami still does think about korra after this, but so much more happens for her. asami gets to know kuvira more, asami gets to know her lab partners more, (and my personal hc is that they’ve all been lab partners for two years and only NOW asami is getting to be friends with them in their senior year, but hey, better late than never!) and to me, what’s even better, is that a bunch of realizations come to asami w/o korra being there. asami is growing and the idea of being able to grow without needing to have a partner in order to grow is so important to me, not only for the fact that growth should be endless and something you do all the time for yourself, but asami literally wants to share it with korra. not boast about changing and growing and becoming better, but just be better with korra. sdlfakds i swear, im fangirling over my own writing, oops

okay, moving on from The Meeting and onto the rest of the chapter

this dock scene was also another part i wrote beforehand and it had a completely different ending in that asami was going to ask korra out on a date. of course, korra would’ve said yes, and then yay yay happy ending. this didn’t happen and i’m glad it didn’t. in one version of this dock scene, asami was actually going to be upset with korra for disappearing, and even worse, mad that korra wasn’t there to comfort her after the presentation. oof, i know. so so glad i didn’t continue down that line, cause it is toxic, and my girls aren’t like that at all.

Once Korra’s eyes meet hers, Asami says, “That doesn’t mean you always have to be on your own.” She smiles at Korra, at the girl who’s turned her world upside down. Her hand remains on Korra’s cheek and she feels the girl sink into her palm. “I’ll be here for you, and it seems like Tenzin will be too, what with saying he was calling you more. And you have his family, and your own family, even though they’re away, they’re here to support you, we all are. You can still be strong and turn to other people for help. It takes great strength to ask for help and I know for a fact you’re strong enough, those bags of coffee beans were nothing for you.”

i like this line of dialogue here for a few reasons, mostly because asami is so soft and so right and the joke at the really helped lighten the mood but didn’t take away from what she’d just said before. i don’t have too much else about the Reunions section, though if you guys have any questions or anything you wanna point out, please do so! i think what i will say is that i tried to be as real and gentle with korra’s progression. i was so nitpicky about everything i wrote because i didn’t want to get any of it wrong or over dramatized or fake. recovery from anything is so important and it takes time and it’s not a straight line so i hope i did a good job with it the rest of the fic. 

moving on, i love the found family trope and this leads me into the next section, New Friends

when i think about this section, i like how soft it is, and i really enjoy the ending bits: korra recounting memories from the south, asami meeting tenzin. i think what i like about the end of this chapter is that, it kind of leaves the question: what’s next?

asami has grown, she’s changed, she sees the errors of her father’s ways but she’s not excusing them. korra has grown, she’s changing, she’s taken the first step in recovery. now it’s just a matter of, what happens with this growth now. and i really loved how i wrapped up the fic in the next and last chapter, so i hope you enjoy it too :))

honorable mentions:

there were a lot of changes in this chapter and one of them got changed twice! korra was gonna get a therapist but then i was like, we gotta get the krew together, and then i was like supppppoorttttt grouuuppppp, because lets be honest, all the krew has stuff they need to work through, and i know therapy isn’t for everyone, but mental health is so vital and important. asami is an advocate for therapy in the chapter but there are also other means to take care of yourself and your mental health and while i’ve never been to a support group, i understand finding comfort in knowing you’re not alone.

i guess what i’m trying to say is please take care of yourself and dont be afraid to lean on others. i know not everyone has the means to get a therapist/psychiatrist and i know that your friends aren’t made to only be your therapist. buuuut, don’t be afraid to reach out, there’s nothing wrong with needing help and support :)

anything i would’ve wanted to change?

honestly, i think the only thing i would’ve wanted to change was mako’s speech during the support group meeting. for me, it was a lil bit too poetically out of character. not to say i want to change the content, but rather the manner in which it’s presented. other than that though, i really loved writing this chapter :)

so this analysis was reeeaaaalllly long, i understand if not everyone made it to end. anyways, thanks so much for reading this analysis and the fic! once again, i’m very much open to questions and any comments, i love them very much! i’ll see you guys in the next analysis of the final chapter :)

[danihow]

Pocket Clock

Bucky Barnes x Fem!Reader

Situated in the 1940s, before the war

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Word Count: 3.3k is it too much? Idk.

Warnings: Angst, pretty much just angst, sadness, a bit of fluff before that because there isn’t angst without fluff and I tried not to but couldn’t, it’s also themed in 1940′s if that counts as a warning.

Summary: You remember how you and Bucky fell in love before he departed to war, before he left he gifted you something so you knew that any time soon he will come back to you. Yet, he never did.

A/N: This one-shots is part of a challenge i entered hosted by @stuckonjbbarnes ​ and consists about an Angst vs. Fluff Challenge but is out of usual so my Song prompt is “Electric Love” by BORNS but to turn it angsty (you will find quotes of the song in a different font around the os) and everything and i thought: “Why not?” so here I am, anyway, I’m not fully pleased with the final product but what can we do. Damn, this is so bad.

Yet again, gif ain’t mine.

You remembered him too clearly to be healthy. You remembered the details on his face, you remembered the look on his eyes when something wasn’t right, when he wanted to go, when he was happy; you remembered the little wrinkles by the side of his eyes each time he laughed. You remembered the man you once loved, Bucky Barnes. 

You two met each other on a bus stop, he was going to get his friend and you were heading to work. You remembered it, it was on October 15th, 1941; you didn’t knew the time and the streets where way too light up by sunlight for it to be as early as you wanted it to be.

You had looked at him, he was tall in comparison of others, with his brown hair styled firmly yet not too much so a couple of strand fell on his face, wearing formal work black pants, a white shirt, a black vest that matched his pants and no tie. “Excuse me, sir.” You muttered to him, earning his attention, “Do you know what time it is?” You had asked, he nodded and took his pocket clock out, looking at it quickly.

“Its 6:21 in the morning, ma’am.” He said with simplicity and you thanked him in an impatient nod looking again to the road in case the bus finally showed up.

You remembered how that was your first word exchange, yet the only in the first times you’d seen each other. It wasn’t until six days later that he sat by your side on the bus, finally gathering up the courage to talk to you.

He got to you with that charming smile and confident eyes, but deep inside he was nervous to mess it up with the nurse that asked him for the time once and got him charmed.

“Good morning ma’am”, those were his first words after you smiled at him back, taking it as his cue to continue talking. Starting to chat with you about everything he could possibly think of, like your job, his job, the reason why you looked so impatient with your time the other day and a bunch of other things.

It still came to your mind how after that day, each morning, he was the one sitting by your side on bus, or standing near you when the bus was full. How even if it was crowded he managed to establish a conversation with you, it could last a minute or maybe the whole ride and it could be about everything, the weather, the news or the war.

“Candy, she’s sweet like candy in my veins.”

You could as well remember how the two of you were talking about food when he suggested to go for a brunch someday, you had thought it was a great idea. And that’s just how it happened, both of you agreed to meet for lunch on Saturday, that same Saturday. It was your day off and he didn’t worked until two.

The moment was still vivid in your mind, you got to the café on the corner near the bus stop and smiled at him once you saw him sat on one of the tables at the side of the window. 

He had greeted you with a small hi that you thought, maybe you’d imagined, was a little shy and nervous, but his eyes showed all the opposite, you may have portrayed your nervousness on him.

You didn’t knew about what he thought, but you counted that day as your very first date, he ordered some coffee with a weird patisserie and you settled with a smoothie and a croissant. 

The next time he asked you out on what he called “a date”, taking you out for dinner at a restaurant that was not fancy yet not plain, just perfect for the two of you. You could probably highlight that night as one of the best you had in your life, after dining the both of you walked around Brooklyn, surrounded by a comfortable atmosphere while talking about everything and anything, learning about his past, his friend Steve and how they have been stuck to each other since childhood, just as how he learned about yours, how you lived with your grandmother since the death of your parents in an accident. Talking and talking until both of you arrived your home, knowing it was time to say goodbye.

Yet you knew, deep inside, you will see him again on another date and let me tell you, you weren’t wrong. In a matter of two months the both of you had went on an approximately of four dates, and you remember each one of them. You went dancing in all of them and boy was he a good dancer. 

“And every night my mind is running around her.”

Each day, either on the bus or on dates, you fell a little bit more for him, for his smile, his eyes, for the way he called you “doll”, how he looked at you and only you. You were falling madly in love with him.

And your first kiss? God, you wouldn’t forget about it in a billion years. Both of you were walking home after a date, your sixth date, he took you to get dinner and then you went to the fair, he won a teddy bear for you and as always, when both of you got to your home he stood there, hands in his pockets and a boyish smile in his face.

“Thunder’s getting louder, and louder, and louder.”

“I really like passing time with you.” He admitted while looking at you, dare in the eye.

“Then I think it’s mutual, Bucky.” You answered with a smile, noticing how he stepped closer to you, slow steps until he was a few inches away from you, his face looking down to you with that charming sided-smile. 

“Oh really?” He asked in some playful tone, getting even closer. “Then... I hope this will be too.” His voice was now lower as he leant closer to you with each word till your faces were less than two inches away. He waited for a second, to make sure you didn’t stepped back; when you did not he felt relieved and finally met your lips with his, passing his left arm around your waist as his right hand grabbed gently your chin, rising it so he didn’t had to lean too much. Your hands stood on his chest, he was sure you could feel his hurrying heartbeat but he didn’t cared, not when he got to kiss you like that.

“Baby you’re like lightning in a bottle.”

After the kiss ended and he greeted you goodnight as you entered the house with a dumb smile on your face and he left back to his place with a smile just as big and dumb as yours.

You saw each other multiple times after that, now in a different way, was it on the bus, the street, on dates or just walking you home after work.

But then, things started to get complicated. This phase started before he formally asked you to be his girlfriend, because he never did; Bucky was standing at your doorstep, uniformed. “I may have joined the army.” You eyebrows frowned a bit but then smiled, he looked happy for it. You hugged him, happy for him. “I’m departing to England tomorrow morning.” He said after a while, still holding you in his arms.

Then it hit you, Bucky was going to war, he was going far away from you to fight for your country against Nazis, he was going to risk his life day to day, exposing himself to damage, to trauma, to death. You knew from first-hand experience how it damaged men, you saw it every-day in the hospital hallways, you saw men whose life was not the same, it would never be the same, men that fought with their lives to survive even though it meant their mates will die, these men lost themselves in battle and their scars went further than just physical damage. War caused emotional scars that with every second passed they carved a little bit more in their hearts until their old selves were gone, and your Bucky was going to it.

You moved back a bit, enough to look directly at his face. He knew what crossed your mind the moment you locked eyes with him. “I'll come back to you, doll", he reassured to you and you nodded, wanting to convince yourself to believe in him. "I promise." Both of you knew the weight a promise like that had but he was willing to take it over his shoulders.

Meanwhile, Bucky and you decided to appreciate your very last time together, he had already talked to his best friend, Steve, he was the first to know after his sister and then it was you. You let him in, your Grandma was asleep on the second floor so the living room was really silent. He’d sat on the couch by your side as you came from the kitchen with two cold beers and some snacks. 

That night was a mix of everything. You two were sat really close to each other, cherishing the moment. He took the last sip of his beer and left the empty bottle on the table before passing an arm over your shoulder, dragging you closer to him until he pressed a kiss on your hair. “I’m going to miss you, doll.” He muttered against your hair and you looked at him. Both of you were nostalgic but trying really hard to enjoy every second. 

“I’ll miss you too.” You said, looking at his blue eyes and making him smile, he leaned close enough to place a little kiss on your lips. “But I’ll wait for you.”

“I hope you will.” He said after giving you another kiss, this one was a bit longer yet slow and sweet. The rest of the evening you two cuddled together on the sofa until the clock hit 11 o’clock, he had to go. Bucky and you stayed on the doorstep for a bit longer you should had, plus no one could blame you for that, you didn’t wanted to say goodbye, not yet. 

“I want you to keep this.” He muttered, handing you his pocket clock, the one he used to tell you the hour the day you’ve met. “My father gave it to my mother during the first war, he promised to come back and get it afterwards. He did. Now I’m giving it to you as my promise to come back to you.” He said as you took it carefully in your hands. Then he kissed you one last time before going.

He departed early in the morning, when you woke up you looked at clock he gave you, it was a quarter to five in the morning, and he had went to England half an hour ago. You sighed and stood up to get ready for work.

You received the first letter a couple of week’s letter, he told how everything was going and how much he missed his doll. 

And that’s how it went, he sent you letter every couple of weeks and for each one you received you sent another. Even your grandma talked about how his husband never did such a thing back in the time for her. 

Suddenly the letters stopped coming but you kept sending them with the hope he will write you back, but he didn’t for a whole of four or six months. Yet you received a letter from England, his commanding officer was the one who sent it. Recalling that you were on the list the soldiers left him to write to in case they disappeared and that James Buchanan Barnes went MIA. Missing in action.

Bucky had went missing and your heart broke for the very first time. 

“I can’t let you go now that I got it”

You didn’t knew what to do, what to think, not even what to feel, you wanted to feel hope because he was not dead yet, but a part of you wanted to stick with the idea of never going to see him again, your only uncle went MIA during the Great War and he never came back home. 

You still remember the bitter sweetness you felt for the next couple of days, maybe weeks, you checked your mail everyday hoping to find more that the bills but didn’t. Then, when you were about to lose hope, you received a letter, from him. 

You didn’t waited to get in the house to open, no, you ripped the letter open right in front of the mailbox and read it.

“And all I need is to be struck...”

My Y/n,

Doll, I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry of causing you grief while missing but now I’m okay. I swear.

Steve rescued me and I swear he was smaller before enlisting; I’m now grateful with him for that, but well, you know I have been grateful for having him as my best friend even before all this.

I thought about you every time I could, I was trying so hard not to forget anything about you yet still forgot the sound of your laugh, I hope I can see you soon doll, I hope this things ends any time soon so I can be back at my Brooklyn with you and safe in your arms like that last night at your place. God I miss you, doll, and i don’t even know if you’re still waitig for me, I just pray you are.

Unfortunately I’ll be gone for a while more, but I’ll be alive, I promise. Take care doll.

“By your electric love.”

With love, 

       Your Bucky.

He hadn’t signed any of his past letter as Your Bucky before, yet, the one paged letter was enough to relieve a weight from your shoulders, he was save and sound, that Steve found him, god, now you were in debt with Steve and you didn’t even knew him. Now everything was alright.

But geez, were you wrong.

After a while you received a call, not a letter, and it was from Steve, not from Bucky.

“Y/N L/N” You had answered.

“Good night, Ms. L/N.” The voice on the lie was unfamiliar, it was a british woman with a sweet voice. “It’s Peggy Carter.”

“Oh, alright, Ms. Carter.” You nod to yourself. “What can I do for you?” 

But there wasn’t an answer, you heard arguing on the background, just as if she put her hand on the speaker to talk to somebody else. “I must be the one to tell her, Peggy.” A male voice said before the phone shifted hands. “Good night ma’am, it is Steve Rogers.”

“Mr. Rogers?” You frowned your brows in confusion. “Why are you calling sir? Where’s Bucky?” You’d asked, receiving only an exhausted, sad sigh as an answer. 

“Mr. Rogers, where’s Bucky?” You asked again, starting to worry a little bit, his last letter was three months ago and this was not the way you expected to know from him.

“He... We were on a train.” He started and your heart started pounding harder on your chest, “There was an explosion in the wagon and he ended hanging outside of it, right over a cliff.” No. “I tried my best to get him, I swear I did ma’am, I’m so sorry.” You heard him starting to stutter and your eyes starting watering, that was the moment you realized, you loved Bucky Barnes. You heard the man on the line clear his throat “He fell of the train miss, he’s dead.” This man’s voice has heavy, pained and full of guiltiness.

You didn’t answered, you weren’t able to. First, how could you answer? Even if you tried there were not words coming out of your mouth, you throat shut down in shock. “I know it’s not the way you should get know, it’s not. But there is no other way to tell you. I’m sorry.” The man, Steve, muttered to the phone as he heard dead silence on the line.

“I... I’m sorry, Steve.” You said with rivers of silent tears falling down your cheeks. “I know he was your best friend, I’m sorry too.” You muttered, sitting on the couch beside the telephone. 

“You shouldn’t be the one sorry, miss.” He whispered, you could tell he was about to cry but didn’t spoke about it.

“Call me Y/N. It’s not quite time for formalities.” You’d said trying to light the atmosphere. “I-I’m going to hang up, good night.” You said after a silence.

A good night was all you heard before hanging up. You couldn’t hold it anymore, the tears had ruined the makeup you wore for work and you cried your heart out. You didn’t knew why it hurt the way it did, you weren’t a couple, he was not even your boyfriend. You heart felt squeezed like a sponge, you could’ve swore you felt how it cracked at the pain became harder as the lump in your throat grew until it ached. It hurt much more badly that it should’ve, you shouldn’t be crying so much for a man you “barely” knew, but there you were, your sobs and whimps were so loud that your grandma came down the stairs to check on you, finding a heartbreaking scene. But what else could you do back then, you just lost the man you loved without being his girlfriend at least.

Now, sixty eight years after the end of the war, and seventy-one since you lost him on that Austrian Alpes, you were sitting on the balcony of your room at your son’s house, contemplating the big modern and reconstructed city that raised above you as you played with a really old but cared pocket watch between your fingers. You had just come from visiting Peggy at her house, the Alzheimer was getting worse every day that passed and you couldn’t help but thank god you still at least had her. 

You now knew Steve was alive, and since then you started thinking that maybe, just maybe, Bucky could still be too. It was impossible, but if he was, now you were seventy years older, with heart problems, white hair and wrinkles. You’ve lived a long and happy life next to another man, a man that Peggy introduced you in 1949, Jack Thompson, and by his side you had three children, April, Daniel and James. 

Yet, you still wondered how it could’ve been, how it all could’ve went if he hadn’t fell off that train, if you didn’t fell in love with him, if he didn’t enlisted, if you didn’t had asked for the time that morning when the bus was late. 

It all would’ve hurt less, yes, but then you wouldn’t have the life you had, the amazing people you met after the war, Peggy, Daniel, Howard, the Howling Commandos, Steve, Jack.

You still remembered everything, and if you forgot, you just grabbed your notebook, the notebook where you wrote all your story with Bucky and what followed afterwards, the notebook were you kept all your letters and an old photo with him at the fair. The notebook where a part of your heart lived, a notebook dedicated to Bucky Barnes.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #323

“dehumanized upon a shell  /  we came to bleed it dry  /  obsessed with divine wealth  /  divide and multiply”

Have you ever drawn on someone’s face while they were sleeping? No. Would you scuba dive in shark infested waters if you had the chance? No thanks. What is your favorite slow song? There are so many, but one of the slowest and most beloved of mine is "Obstacles" by Syd Matters. It gives me goosebumps without fail. It's one song I know I want at my hypothetical wedding. If there were aliens on earth, would you be afraid? I mean, yeah. I'd want to know their intentions. If your best friend died, would you be able to speak at their funeral? It'd be extremely difficult, but if I had any say in it, I absolutely would. Do you enjoy going through old pictures? Sometimes. Other times it causes too much pain, depending on the pictures, of course. Do you tend to have a lot of drama in your life? Definitely not. My life is painfully uneventful. When’s the last time someone was disappointed in you? I don't know. Do you have a house phone? No. Which fast food place do you eat at the most? McDonald's. Have you ever met someone on the Internet in real life? Yep. What’s your favorite color to wear? Black. Do you like being in pictures? No. Do you travel a lot? Essentially never, even though I'd love to. Do you play any sports? No. Do you like pickles? Yesssss. How many times have you been kicked out of a store? Never. Is there things you’ve told someone that you’ve NEVER told anyone else? Probably. When was the last time you had alcohol? My birthday dinner last month. Are you one to often make typos? No, except when I'm texting. I have autocorrect on for a reason. On a hot day, would you rather prefer ice cream or a popsicle? Ice cream. Have you ever wanted to get drunk and get your mind off everything? Yes, but I just didn't want to drink anymore at one point. I'm far from a lightweight, apparently. Have you played cards recently? No. Is there a band you like with amazing music but a bad vocalist? Mother Mother immediately comes to mind, but not the main singer; he's great. The woman who occasionally joins in is fucking horrendous. Like, it hurts my ears. Is there a certain song you like to headbang to? I don't and never have really headbanged, surprisingly. It's a sure-fire way to make me dizzy. Anything you might be giving up on soon? I hope not... Sometimes I feel like it's time with photography, but I just. Can't. Have you ever captured a moth? I've raised a caterpillar into one before, then of course let it go. Is there a band/artist who has strange lyrics but you love them anyway? Otep, noteably. When was the last time you wore earrings? It's been a long time. How many pairs of heels do you own? I don't think I have any. When was the last time you changed your picture on Facebook? Uhhhh it's been at the very least a month, but I know more. Would you consider yourself to be physically strong? Absolutely not, especially my legs. I struggle to fucking walk because they're so weak. Have you ever painted a piece of furniture? Yes, actually. I helped Jason paint his shelf black. Do you have a really fat cat? No, we never have. We've always been good about keeping our pets at a healthy weight. Do your initials spell a word? No. When was the last time you went to a playground? A year or so ago when I was taking pictures of someone's son, as well as just general family photos. That same family just had another baby the other day. Have you ever made a business card for yourself? No. Do you have a favorite curse word in a different language? No. Are there any recipes you have memorized? No. Do you know your multipication times tables? Lol not most of them, no... It's been way too long. Do you have a favorite font on the computer? Of the basic ones, probably Garamond. Are you good at creating logos? *shrugs* I've only ever really made my photography watermarks, and I only JUST made one I like pretty well. How about catch phrases? I don't make those. Have you ever been severely burned? Not severely, no. Did you ever dream that you had a baby? I've actually had numerous dreams where I was pregnant, but I don't THINK I've had one where the baby was born yet. Do you or anyone you know have a rabbit? No. What was the weirdest thing you ever saw cross the road? Hm, nothing too weird, I think. Last song you got stuck in your head? "ALTÆR" by 3TEETH. Last song you listened to? ^ Favorite movie quote? I don't know. Maybe Rafiki's quote about the past hurting, but you should take that opportunity to learn. Favorite lyric? That is impossible. There are so, so very many that just like slather me in goosebumps. What magazine are you an avid reader to? None. Have you ever gone a full day without interacting with another person? I have. How many relationships have you been in that lasted less than a year? Four. Have you ever been significantly more physically fit than you are now? Man, take me the hell back to my WiiFit days. I was pretty damn fit. The last time I did it, it was seriously alarming how much I struggled doing things that were once pretty effortless. When growing up, did you parents keep the house very tidy? "Very" seems a bit too much, but Mom definitely kept it in order. How many watches do you own? None. Should teenagers be allowed to have their cell phones with them in class? Yes. Emergencies happen. Do you have any gay relatives? Yes; my mom has a cousin who's gay. Have you unfollowed, deleted, or blocked anyone on social media recently? Not recently, no. If so, what was the reason? ^ What’s the biggest financial mistake you’ve ever made? Oh, y'know, dropping out of college three fucking times. Once I pay my own bills and I truly understand finances, that's going to fucking wreck me. Do you like metal music? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck yeah. If so, what sub-genres of metal do you like the best? Heavy and symphonic. Who was the last person you sincerely thanked? My mom for bringing home lunch recently. Have you ever been in a relationship where there was a large difference in maturity levels? No. What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed as a guest at someone’s house? Maybe like a month when I was technically homeless? How bad was your acne when you were a teenager? It was preeeetty rough. Do you like strawberry shortcake? No. What’s the last you got out of the freezer? A microwavable breakfast bowl. Do you go on the computer or watch TV more? Guess. Explain why you are single: Because I'm a very, very underdeveloped "adult" that has very little clue what she's doing. At my age, I and any potential partner should want someone with direction. What feature do you usually get most complimented on? My hair. Has anyone ever accused you of being gay? Well, I'm bi. I had this weird therapist once in middle school though who asked if I was a lesbian... Idk why she did? What Facebook groups have you found the most helpful? I'm in an advanced ball python husbandry group, and while a lot of people there are utter, degrading elitists, they do have valuable information. Did you name all of your stuffed animals and dolls? I sure did as a kid. What would you have your bridesmaids wear? Probably black dresses, and I think it'd be really cool if I were to marry a woman, the bridesmaids wear checkered Converses colored into a rainbow pattern, or something like that. Where do you want to go on your honeymoon? I think Alaska, if it was a good time to see the Northern Lights. Are you sick right now? No, thankfully. Do you feel loved? Yes. Do you like your butt? Why or why not? God no. I have such a flat ass. Are you ashamed of your faith? I'm assuming by this you mean religion, in which case, I don't have one and am not ashamed of that. Has anyone ever tried to force their beliefs on you? Yes. Have you ever personally been a victim of homophobia? Again, I'm bisexual. I have never had a personal act of homophobia inflicted upon me, though. Have you ever been accused of being homophobic? Yes, because I was for most of my life. Fucking repulsive to remember. "Repulsive" is much too gentle a word, but yeah. It is so, so embarrassing to recall myself ever believing it was wrong because my then-religion said no-no. Do you think you’d be happier if you had a pet? I have two pets. I would be so, so lonely without any. :/ I've had pets my entire life. Who was the last person you went on a date with? Sara. How long has it been since that last time you went on a date? Like two or so years. Do you think babies are cute? They can be, but I usually don't find them all that cute, honestly. Especially newborns/very young infants. They're usually hideous. My youngest niece is actually the only newborn that I remember seeing that I thought was absolultely precious. What is your favorite style of pants? Ripped skinny jeans. Were you ever hospitalized as a little kid? No. Who was the last person who broke your heart? Jason. ^Do you still miss this person? I'm sure I always will to some degree. Do you have someone to talk to and share your secrets with? Sara more than anyone, but Mom, too. Is there someone you feel extra shy around? Just men in general. Have you been hurt more by friend break-ups or romantic break-ups? Romantic. Closest living thing to you? My snake's terrarium is against the opposite wall. She's in her hide. Would you rather drown or burn alive? Drown. You go unconscious first, so. And I'd assume it to be faster than burning alive. Also me no like hot. :'''( Who is the last person you got really pissed off with? My stepmother posted some ignorant bullshit on Facebook about how people blow out of proportion our "supposed" environmental crisis. I nearly deleted her right then and there. I take that shit seriously. Most of her beliefs drive me insane, honestly, but she's a wonderful person at heart, so I just bit my tongue. Who was the last member of the opposite sex you laid in a bed with? Girt. What type of sushi do you like to eat? Never tried it, don't want to. Was the last person you kissed physically attractive? Yes. Do you have any flowers in your room? No. Do you know anyone that owns horses? Yes. Well, I took pictures for her family, anyway. Do you know anyone who has road rage? Who? Jesus, yes. My little sister. Is your mom a big health freak or your dad? Or neither? Neither are "big" health freaks, especially not Dad when you consider he smokes and knows it'll be what kills him. My mom is diabetic though, so she's reasonably careful. Do you know anyone who wants to be the president one day? No. What kinds of chips are in the cupboards? We don't have any. Ma tries to keep snacks out of the house for both hers and my sake. If you were going out with your celebrity crush, what would you wear? OH BOY idk. I'd probably spend days planning the "perfect" thing. Do you have any friends who have naturally red hair? I do. Have you ever cried when a teacher retired? Yep, my band teacher. He was incredibly loved by literally everyone. Do you have your mom’s or dad’s eyes? Neither's. They both have brown eyes. What’s the best date movie? We gonna have a problem if you don't watch The Notebook w/ me if I have it on lmao. How long has your current best friend been your best friend? Many years now. (: Do you swear and yell while playing video games? I might swear under my breath, but I don't yell. Would you rather name your daughter Andrea or Eva? Andrea. If you were adopted, would you want to know? Yes. Do you know anyone who has grossly skinny eyebrows? I couldn't care less about someone's eyebrows. Do your pets chase after bugs? Oh yes, Roman certainly does. When’s the last time you were so excited you couldn’t sleep? Why? Hmmm... this actually happened recently, but I don't remember why... What is your mom’s favorite movie? I don't know, actually. I think it's some romance one. What TV family reminds you of your own family? None, really. Do you know anyone who always looks perfect? Who? One of my best high school friends Alon was like... just always pristinely beautiful, it seemed like. I haven't seen many pictures of her lately, but I'm sure that hasn't changed. Has anyone you know ever pulled the fire alarm in school, joking around? I think so once, yes. Who was the main character in the last book you read? A dragon named Sunny. Who are the last people you saw kiss? On the lips, I'm sure it woulda been my sister and her husband. Would you rather look at clouds or stars? Clouds, I think. Well, it would depend on their design, I guess, and time of day. When you get married, who will be the maid of honor/best man? Probably my mom. Does your best friend get along with their parents? She has a wonderful relationship with them. Have you ever been in a wedding? What were you? I was the fat, hideous, crying bridesmaid. ;x; Are you purposely hiding something from someone? No. What’s the most intimate thing you’ve discussed with a stranger? My suicide attempt with doctors. What, if anything, do you substitute for fries? I always get fries. Have you ever been in a building that was on fire? No. Are you in an argument with anyone right now? No. Have you ever written a poem for someone? Yes. Who’s the last person who cussed you out in anger? My grandmother. Who is the person you are closest to that you’ve meet online? Sara. Have you friended your parents on FB? Mom, yes. Dad doesn't have one. What’s the last tourist area you visited? Chicago. Mice or roaches? Mice are precious, meanwhile I hate roaches. Did you give or get any Valentines this year? No. Well, Mom bought me and my sisters each a delicious candy apple, if that counts? What’s your homepage? Google. Is there anyone whose grave you visit? No.

[lizzieraindrops]

Your chance to make the sun rise thrice (Chapter 2)

a river that still runs (8803 words)

Beth Childs has come to Helsinki to meet her best friend Veera for the first time in the Herbs on the windowsill universe, an alternate timeline where the original Helsinki massacre was prevented and DYAD routed by Clone Club Alpha’s successful publicity stunt back in 2001. Veera Suominen and Niki Lintula survived and decided to live in a little apartment together as qpp’s. Numerous Leda clones worldwide are now in contact via a secure online network that Veera maintains. 

Note: This chapter is a bit heavier than the rest of the AU. Beth is still struggling with a lot of the same challenges in this universe, even if the events causing them are somewhat different because of such early canon divergence. But the whole point of this story is that things can end up okay no matter how rough it's been. She's getting the help she needs and she's gonna be alright. That said, warning for soft discussion of past abuse, the effects of trauma, depression and anxiety, and some suicidal ideation. And of course, lots of love and learning how to heal, with support from her best friend.

Fun fact: Veera's username is 3mika, and she always sets her font to the precise warm turquoise of hex color #2299aa. She thinks she's hilarious, and she's right. 

Also on AO3  |  Playlist  |  Aesthetic sideblog

Part 1: Herbs on the windowsill

Part 2: Someday colors

Part 3: Your chance to make the sun rise thrice  |  Chapter 1  |  Chapter 2  |  Chapter 3

***

Beth wakes on a squashy couch that isn't hers. Morning-soft sunlight pours through the window above her, bouncing back off the walls to fill even the shady corners with a warm secondhand glow. Her limbs are soft, splayed under unfamiliar blankets and sinking into the cushions. She doesn't move yet.

The apartment. Helsinki. Beth's really here. She holds herself still, letting the truth sink into her. She half expects the usual anxious tension to clench her into a ball the instant she moves a muscle, but it isn't there. Neither is the invisible weight that so often pins her immobile. She still wakes frequently with both of them holding her body hostage, keeping her muscles unmoving but restless, even in sleep. Right now though, they're gone. She just lies there, soft beneath the window.

It's quiet but not silent. The occasional car on the little road outside chuckles as it passes. A soft rush of water echoes through pipes in the walls, running toward an early riser in another unit. These sounds fall strangely on Beth's Toronto-bred ears, isolated in the stillness of this of this little apartment on the outskirts of the city. Still, the early-morning atmosphere settles comfortably into her jet-lagged bones, murmuring a rhythm for her to sink into. The temporal upheaval of a transcontinental red-eye and a series of exhausted naps yesterday have left her a little unbalanced. And yet, here she is waking up with the day, and the ground under her feels so much more stable than she’s used to.

Beth breaks her stillness with a deep, deep breath that she can feel expanding all the way down to her feet. She stretches, too, but soon pulls the toes that get exposed back underneath the warm, scratchy blanket. The cushions of the old couch creak a little in complaint as she shifts, but her limbs remain supple. For a time, she just observes the sensations. Then, her awareness spreads beyond the couch and the window to the rest of the room.

All around her, an oddly blocky pattern covers the walls. It's one of the first things she noticed when she walked into the apartment yesterday afternoon. The pattern isn't wallpaper like it appears at first glance, but actually a multitude of small photographs. Most of them are unframed, but taped up in crisply aligned rows. In them, she sees the same face infused with a hundred different lives. Just above her, a sleeping, slack-jawed redhead with bulky headphones around her neck sprawls on the very same couch Beth's laying on now. A few rows down, a brunette and a blonde with their long hair in matching wild waves are leaning all over each other and grinning like devils. One of the few framed photos shows a girl with a hospital-short buzz cut and a delighted expression, sitting in front of what looks like a mouthwatering strawberry shortcake. Beth can see at least six others in the background behind strawberry girl. Among them are Mika with her unmistakable scars and Niki with her bright blonde hair, their arms around each other's shoulders.

Morning light glances off the glossy surfaces of the photos on the west wall. The particularly bright reflection off one of the framed photos draws Beth's eye. With a tiny jolt, Beth recognizes one of her own selfies beneath the glass. In it, she's wearing the same old turquoise blue sweatshirt that's spilling out of her suitcase next to the couch right now. Underneath it, she's wearing her track gear, so the photo is at least two years old. She'd had to quit cross-country so she could try to get the shitshow her life had become under control. She vaguely recalls sending it to Mika a long time ago. It's strange to think that her presence has been in this apartment for so long.

She's here. In Finland. Staying with Mika – Mika - and Niki. Far, far away from everything.

Sprawling on the couch she slept on with a sigh as if she hadn’t a care in the world, Beth can't believe she's really gone and done it. She's run so far away that there's an ocean between her and her problems. It’s so much better than she's dreamed, even if it's only for a little while. It’s worth it, even though she'll be going back far too soon. For the first time in years, it feels like she’s where she’s supposed to be right now.

It had all started out as foolish idea she'd floated one Saturday morning, months ago. She hadn't been serious at all. She'd woken up so relieved at not having to get up and go to work, until she remembered her weekly therapy appointment with a hopeless groan.

Putting off the genuinely daunting prospect of hauling herself out of bed, she reached out to snag her phone from on top of her dresser, checking to see if she'd heard from Mika overnight. After all, Helsinki was nine hours ahead, so Mika had already seen most of the day that was just beginning for Beth. They talked so often these days, since they'd first made contact over two years ago. Rarely a day passed without touching base. But there wasn’t anything since Beth had checked last night. She took it upon herself to send the first message of the day.

runwaterblue: god, i dont wanna get up and deal with any of thsi shit today

After her world fell apart, after finding out about Project Leda, after realizing that all her nightmares and more were real, after her father...

runwaterblue: wish i could come visit u and get away form everything for awhile

Mika replied almost immediately.

3mika: you can

It was evening in her time zone, but to be honest, Beth had no idea if she had anything resembling a regular sleep schedule. The girl was always online.

3mika: though you really should go to your appointment. you always feel better afterward

runwaterblue: howd you know i have therapy today

3mika: you always have an appointment saturday afternoons

runwaterblue: yes but how do you remember that? i cant evne remember my own appts lmao

3mika: you mentioned it months ago when you switched from sundays to saturdays

Beth shook her head with a smile. Mika was so good with details.

3mika: anyway. you’re welcome here, if you can get here

3mika:  it would be great to see you

3mika: Niki wouldn't mind. we've had a bunch of Ledas visit us here, it's always fun

3mika: except that one time Dani and Ary got into a fight over football. some French-Italian team rivalry thing. that was not fun.

Beth laughed. It was funny how Mika was so good at making her do that, even on days like these. She leaned back against her pillow and held her phone over her head without sitting up, being careful not to drop it on her own face. She'd done that before. More times than she'd admit.

runwaterblue: i was kidding. id love to visit, but idk how id get there

runwaterblue: u should see the americans go off abt their football lmao. they're nerly as bad as the hockey freaks here

3mika: pls no

3mika: no more sports. it was a year ago and I’m still exhausted

3mika: sports are banned in this apartment.

Beth snorted. Mika wanted nothing to do with sports of any kind, and with Beth's athletic record, the topic had become a point of mutual teasing between them.

In so many ways, they were such different people, DNA be damned. Mika was reticent where Beth was outgoing. (Or at least, Beth had been. She was never quite sure how to think of herself these days.) Clone drama aside, Beth had been a pretty average Canadian high schooler. She got reasonable grades, played a few sports, and kept mostly out of trouble because there would be hell to pay if she didn’t. Mika was a brilliant homeschooled autistic orphan who had been raised in near isolation by her guardian after surviving the hospital fire that marked her skin for life. Beth mostly listened to pop music, and where no one else could hear, the occasional classical symphony. Mika held fast to Finland's weird obsession with death metal and dabbled in literally everything else.

And yet, Mika understands Beth like no one else does. And it's not just because they've both been through all this Project Leda bullshit. Though Beth doesn't know what she would have done without Mika to help her through that, too.

Beth won't ever be able to forget the moment that everything changed. Recognizing a her own face from the mirror on the evening news stopped her in her tracks, as something in her gut caved in with the hollow certainty that it wasn't her. Then face after face flickered before her, a flipbook barrage of déja vu. Blonde and smiling. Scarred and pensive. Braids and piercings and a rakish grin. Beth was rooted in place as people she had never been wearing things she had never worn said things she was never supposed to know.

That utter strangeness on the screen immediately seeped into her life like an oil slick into a river, tainting every thing she thought she knew with clinging uncertainty. Her father was inexplicably even more upset about it than Beth was, yet adamant that they shouldn't look into the matter. But it was already too late to stop herself from thinking. With slow horror, the truth of what exactly his behavior must mean dawned on her. And yet, even with the desperate growing certainty about who her Leda monitor must be, it was hard to believe that he could be anything other than her plain stern father.

He was always a bit strict and overprotective - probably well more than a bit, she realizes these days. But she’d thought that's just what it was like to be a cop's daughter. He'd never done anything really extreme, nothing beyond the firm discipline any kid could expect. He was just not a man to be trifled with, that was all. So until everything she thought she knew shifted that day and threatened to topple every assumption she’d built her life on, she had never truly dared to cross him.

Outright daring him to say to her face that he wasn't her monitor was probably considered a step beyond trifling. He did not take it kindly.

Two months later, Beth and her mother were living in an apartment on the opposite side of the city. It took two months for the two of them to lay plans to leave together, for good. For two months, her every move was watched. She spent two months knowing there would be hell to pay if she didn't give the performance of a lifetime pretending everything was fine, even while sirens blared inside her day and night. Two months was more than enough to teach her things she never wanted to know about the hidden marks fear leaves on the body.

Even after she finally escaped, her life was in tatters and nothing made sense. It wasn’t just the sudden jarring discovery of Project Leda, or the crisis it had forced her to confront. It was learning that, deep down, she had known that she’d never once felt free. She’d unconsciously kept herself from knowing to avoid exactly that conflict of wills that she’d known she would lose.

Trying to come to terms with what had happened and how it changed everything, Beth was continuously losing her balance. Questioning which parts of her life had been screwed over by her father and which by being part of some ridiculous supervillain science experiment was like trying to stand on two kickboards in a pool. She couldn't find her footing, and all she could do was try and stay afloat. She had to repeat her whole junior year of high school that she lost to this shitshow, while starting over at a new school, and only barely scraped her way into senior year. Now that she knew how honestly terrible she'd been at judging who in her life she could trust, it was as hard to talk to old friends as it was to make new ones.

Therapy helped her start sorting out what she was feeling, and how the environment she’d grown up in was really not the healthiest. She hadn’t realized how much she’d learned to doubt her own perceptions. That made constructing any kind of new understanding of her situation an uphill struggle. And of course, her therapist couldn’t help her confirm anything about a human experiment that was so illegal it had been an international secret. As she continued to stumble forward, Beth even started doubting her former certainty of the identity of her Leda monitor. She questioned herself and everything she knew until she wanted to scream with frustration or weep with confusion. The floor of the counselor’s office could have been mopped with her tears. It was, quite literally, driving her mad.

So, finally, Beth had taken up the invitation on the banner of every Leda news feature to "Contact the secure, clone-run Clone Youth Group Network (CYGNet) for answers by emailing info@cygnet.org."

She wanted something concrete that would help convince her brain to stop reenacting these head games that warped her reality. It still insisted on playing through the patterns it had been taught, even in its teacher’s absence. She needed something that could brace her against the ideas that she was really just paranoid, overreacting, accusing, that this was all her fault for making a big deal out of nothing. Even with his other faults (cruelties, her mind whispered) aside, at least his involvement with Project Leda was unforgivable, and she wanted proof of it. Maybe if she had that, she could stop being mad at herself for not wanting to forgive. And if anyone had that proof, CYGNet would.

Maybe it was just because of the sheer blunt honesty about her motives, or the inescapable vulnerability of the message Beth sent, but Mika had replied to her within a day. And she'd been so gentle about it, too, enough to make Beth later question where the stereotype of autistic brashness came from. Then again, over email, Mika had all the time she needed to compose her thoughts and lay them out as softly as she wanted. She didn't have to spit them out as fast as she could to keep pace with a quick and painfully overwhelming world.

Hi Beth Childs,

I'm so sorry for what you had to go through. I still don't know how they got away with doing things like this for so long. I suppose people will always find ways to be cruel. But we've survived this long, and the whole point of CYGNet is to help us all heal. The experimental network has been dismantled, and we are assembling resources to help us. We've brought mental health professionals on to the project to develop custom programs for our needs. We can make them available to you, if you are interested.

I attached scans of some of your files that we recovered from DYAD. There are a few case reports with the signature of the person you asked about, spaced throughout your lifetime. There are also financial records with his name in the list of paid employees. He was without a doubt part of the Leda monitor program. I can provide all of the documentation that we have related to you, if you like, but I thought that would be too much all at once. I know these are hard to look at, but I hope they help let your mind rest. They are very real, and every awful thing we have experienced was also real, no matter how they tried to convince everyone that we were making it all up.

Please take your time with these, and stay in contact if you want to. You can join our mailing list, if you want to know when we have new information or new resources available. We're here for you.

And hey, if you just want to talk to someone who knows what it's like to deal with all of this, I'm here, too. You can reach my personal inbox or IM me at wiz.of.dos@cygnet.org. It'll be okay.

-Veera

Beth had started crying before she even finished reading the letter, much less opened the attachments. She cried so often these days. She only knew why half the time. But this time, it felt like the tears were extracting some of her pain as they left her, instead of just overflowing from the unending wellspring of her directionless distress. All of this was real, and someone else knew it.

Though she was grateful beyond measure for her mother’s untiring support, they were each other’s too-close, ever-present reminders of what they’d survived, trying to act like they weren’t, trying to convince each other and themselves that they were okay. Beth had needed something else, too, something until now unnamed.

This was a handhold, a backstop Beth didn't know she'd been desperate to find. It wasn't just the confirmation of what she’d concluded about her father. The ability speak plainly to someone she didn't feel the need to pretend around was an exhale of a breath held too long. At least one person in the world not only understood, but really and truly didn't want or expect her to act like any of this was normal or okay, or that she would ever be the same again.

Veera – or Mika, as she often went by online – made good on her offer of a sympathetic ear. Their correspondence started off with awkward, grammatically correct messages about the less painful details of their lives. Mika told her about the farmer’s market three blocks away where she went walking early in the morning before it got busy, and the plant stand there that her best friend and roommate Niki (also a Leda) had to ask her to stop buying so many succulents from.

At first, Beth tried to chatter like she used to, but there were no safe subjects. What had happened had touched all of her life. Normally, she’d talk about school, or sports, or her friends. But she was trying to start all over again at a new school with all the struggles that came with it. She didn’t have the time or energy for sports anymore, and talking about them hurt, now. Running used to make her heart sing. But no matter how she tried, there was no joy in the motion anymore. To top it all off, it was as hard to connect with old friends from her old life as it was to try and make new ones. She spent most interactions either doubting her own character judgement or dreading the moment people recognized her Leda face from the news.

She didn’t know how to talk about any of it to anyone. Maybe she could have if it had been just the clone thing or just the dad thing. But the two were inextricably entangled, and she still couldn’t even explain it to herself. It was all unbelievably horrifying, and any time she tried to be honest about it, people ended up disbelieving or horrified. Shocker.

Maybe, though, it wouldn’t be weird to talk about it with Mika. Mika already knew the worst. Beth didn’t have to hide that hurt from her to keep from shaking her world, or to keep her dismissal from hurting Beth. Maybe that’s what was hurting the most: the feeling that even after escaping, she still had to pretend to be okay. That compulsive stifling feeling choked her whenever it bubbled back up. On her bad days, a simple “how are you?” could reduce her to a blank face plastered over a raw tangle of emotions held motionless her own iron grip.

But Mika mentioned having bad days, too. Days came where she was too scared and nightmare-weary to do anything but make herself some tea and soak up some sunlight in the safety of home. Beth could casually say things like after those two months, i still twitch every time i hear a door open, and i wish my body would quit feeling like it doesn’t exist, my legs feel numb. It barely broke the surface of what it was like in her head, but was discomfiting enough for people that she held her tongue at school.

Sometimes, Beth got tired of constantly thinking about all this shit and tried to lighten things up. On one comically disastrous occasion of cultural exchange, she liveblogged Mika her attempt at eating the infamous Scandinavian lutefisk, along with an audio recording of the incoherent horrified noises she made after tasting it. In return, she received a recording of someone, presumably Mika, laughing harder than she’d ever heard anyone laugh before. It made Beth smile. Not many things did, back then.

Slowly, as the formality fell away from their transcontinental conversations, their heavier stories seething below the surface seeped in. Beth had been in therapy long enough now to know that she couldn't just recklessly unload on people the way she did in counseling sessions. But a counselor couldn't always provide the same kind of unspoken solidarity that someone in the same boat could.

Bit by bit, slipped into the chats that were becoming a daily occurrence, they talked about monitors, about what the experiment had really all been for, why that both was and wasn’t important, and how they'd discovered they were a part of Project Leda. Putting words to the pain hurt, a lot. But the ability to lay out long-unspoken truths in front of each other, knowing they were believed in the way that only people who have shared something can, was a healing kind of pain instead of the festering one Beth had been living with.

The two of them had more in common than they'd thought, growing up a world apart. Beth's experience raised under the subconscious wariness of her father's hovering thumb felt a lot like what Mika described growing up largely isolated with her former guardian. But sometimes, whenever they realized that something they'd both thought was normal was pretty not, they got a good laugh out of it despite the weight of their pasts. Mika seemed somewhat accustomed to her normal being considered pretty weird, so she usually took the revelations in stride better than Beth did. Beth wouldn't find out for at least a year after meeting her that it was because of her Asperger's, since it was a topic Mika seemed quite sensitive about.

Mika explained it once, in a conversation full of long pauses on her part and watching the typing icon disappear and reappear on Beth’s. The way she put it, it just meant that her brain worked a bit differently than most people's, processing sounds and sights and all the information it took in at different speeds and with different emphases. The difference could turn everyday things like the sound of a refrigerator running into a splitting headache, or something as simple as the soft texture of her favorite jacket into a kind of bliss. That alternative way of processing also extended to things like words and emotions as well. Sometimes, it took her longer than the world was willing to wait to process them into something that made sense. It often made communication tricky, trying to compensate for the gap in mutual understanding with most people. The world and the people in it could be so overwhelming sometimes, so fast and bright and full of noise and uncertainty and bewilderingly arbitrary social conventions. But the biggest challenge was other people expecting her to do everything the same way they did, ignorant of the fact there were any ways to exist other than their own, and completely oblivious to the fact that she was already putting in at least twice as much effort to communicate with them as they were with her.

And yet, even coming from such a different perspective, Mika gets it. Beth says sometimes i dream of drowning and its not a nightmare and i wake up not knowing how to feel, and Mika says I still dream of burning and wake up not knowing which fires are real, and they both say yeah. And they sit there across the world from each other knowing these things, knowing that it doesn't fix anything. And yet, it does change something. Nothing's any better, really. But somehow, the knowledge that someone else understands makes it a little easier to bear.

And that's just it. Somehow, without ever even having seen her face, Mika sees Beth clearer than anyone. All of her, all the ugly parts she hides so that they can't hurt anyone, and all the good parts that she also hides so that nobody can hurt them or take them away from her. Mika sees all of that and then just tells Beth another story about the Northern Lights she sees on the regular. Apparently, in Finnish, they’re called "fox fires." Beth hardly ever sees the aurora, living relatively far south in a bright city. But her stories about life in the metropolis by the lake intrigue Mika as much as the tales of the twisting green lights do her. And Beth can talk about something lighter again while not having to pretend that the heaviness isn’t there, too, even while she’s just once more trying and failing to explain poutine. For her, the weight never really goes away. But the effort of pretending she’s not carrying it takes more out of her than the weight itself. Mika understands that.

Maybe that’s why Beth had talked it over with Mika first, even before her mom, when she was considering taking a gap year after she hopefully managed to finish her senior year of high school. (God, it was so hard to think about English or math or whatever when just that morning she’d woken from a nightmare about being back in a not-home house that she never escaped.) Beth's mom had been so unbelievably supportive of Beth's recovery, even while she herself was adjusting to the wrenching change in both of their lives. It was both inspiring and a little intimidating. If her mom managed to run a household and raise a daughter all on her own, even while trying to heal from her own trauma, how could Beth not do her utmost, too? She was grateful to be able to talk to Mika about it, to get a reality check from someone who both understood her situation intimately and didn't make Beth feel that pressure of expectation. In the end, Beth did decide to take a year or two off before considering college, and her mom was again nothing if not supportive. Beth figured, after this entire mess, she deserved some time to herself to work on sorting her shit out, and her mom agreed.

After graduating with reasonable if not flying colors, Beth worked a series of part-time and odd jobs that didn't stress her out too much, letting herself focus on her own healing. In between her mom's support, seeing a counselor regularly, and the security of having a friend she could really trust, Beth felt like she was making progress. Slow progress, sure, but progress, nonetheless. Considering that she had seventeen years' worth of lies to unbelieve and emotional trauma to finally acknowledge, Beth figured that there was only so much she could do in the three years she'd had.

Her days were still hard. Getting sleep and waking up and eating and even just existing were still so fucking hard sometimes, and it was horrible. Some days, the thinnest sheet trapped her in bed like it was a car pinning her down. It felt so stupid for such simple things to be so hard. But then her therapist would remind her that that’s what mental illness and trauma was, that this was what the wounds in her mind and heart made her feel like. And once in awhile, sun broke through the shadows, and she had a day that reminded her what an okay day felt like – that okay days existed. That more might.

Now, she’s here, lying in a bright living room so far from home, with her dearest friend in the next room. She’s comfortable, except for the knot in her neck from sleeping oddly on the couch. The soreness pales in comparison to the usual tensions that are so strangely absent. Beth can’t remember the last time she felt this okay. She’s not steeling herself to go to work. She’s not dreading the next conversation with her mother that goes quiet as they both remember awful things they don’t mention. She’s not bracing herself for the next time her brain runs rampant worrying about whether she’ll run into the subject of her restraining order somewhere in the city and have to wonder if he'll honor it.

None of that reaches her here. There’s something about this quiet little pocket of space. It’s overrun with a proliferation of potted plants, from the sprawling lacy-leafed monster in the corner, to the fern peeping out of the kitchen, to the vine cuttings spilling out of an oddly familiar leaf-shaped glass bottle on the sill. Sunlight streaks through leaves and windowpanes and across the colorful patchwork of rugs on the floor. In the midst of it all, Beth is held by a palpable aura of gentleness. It holds her so softly that she doesn't need to hold herself in. It's like the layer of caution that she always keeps wrapped between herself and the rest of the world has simply dissolved away. In this moment suspended in morning light, she is okay.

She feels safe.

The realization undoes something in her. She feels the tears starting, and she expects the taut tension of involuntary stifling that always comes with them to return. But it doesn’t. She lies still and soft on the couch with the water creeping over her cheeks, breath occasionally catching but flowing freely. She savors it in the quiet.

The soft thunk of an ill-fitted door opening breaks into her odd reverie. Mika’s up. Beth sniffs and scrubs at her eyes halfheartedly, but she can’t hide them right now and she doesn’t want to. Mika notices immediately, and comes trotting over with quiet steps, leaning forward all concern.

"Beth," she says softly. She shifts from foot to foot like a nervous cat, watching Beth with enormous eyes. Beth has never met anyone else with such an intense stare. Or maybe it's just the fact that Beth knows beyond all doubt that she's being looked at by somebody who really sees her in her entirety. It's like she's staring right into Beth's soul. But Mika was able to do that long before they saw each others' faces. They've shared so many thousands of words over screens and seas, so many emotions that have gone otherwise unspoken, so many too-early mornings and too-late nights on the fringes of each other's dawns and dusks.

“What’s wrong?”

Finally, a flash of that sick tension runs through Beth’s body. It’s been okay when Mika has asked that before, when it was just silent letters on a screen. But out loud, the question falls on her ears like every well-meaning inquiry she’s ever had to scramble to find an acceptable answer for. The strain begins to cinch tight around her again like coarse ropes across barely-healed skin, ready to compel her to replace the truth with something safer. Her arms and legs tied, she begins to freeze, railing against herself for tainting the softness, the safety of this place.

"Beth." Mika says again, softer but more urgent.

In the gap between thoughts created by hearing her name, Beth seizes the chance to redirect them to the present. She clings to the welling in the corners of her eyes, the warmth of the sun caressing her back. The leaves of trees whisper outside the third-floor window in a mild breeze. The brightness spills over the sill and across Mika’s asymmetrical, half-craggy face and lights up tufts of her short hair as she steps closer. The couch dips as Mika sits down next to her, tilting Beth toward her.

Without meeting her eyes, Mika lifts a hesitant hand that hovers in the air between them, uncertain yet reaching. Her gentle palm falls onto Beth's forearm as softly as a floating leaf. The fingers curl around Beth’s arm just below the wrist, firm but not tight. Comforting.

The softness surrounding Beth seeps back into her, saturating her. As the memory fades like a ripple into water, the tension slackens. But it leaves her shaky, with traces of a familiar ache in her neck muscles, one that goes deeper than the simple stiffness from the couch. She sucks in a few unsteady breaths while Mika gives her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” Beth says in a small, awkward voice.

Mika tilts her head. “Why?”

“Uh, I didn’t mean to bring all – this mess, in here.” Beth rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “It’s so... soft, and okay, and – I don’t wanna ruin it,” she says, trailing off into a mumble.

“Hey.” Mika moves her hand from Beth’s arm to her shoulder. When Beth looks at her, she’s looking right back. Mika's eyes dart down to the floor for a moment, but then return to hold Beth’s with deliberate steadiness. “It’s alright. It’s like this here because we wanted it to be safe to be messy. You’re not ruining anything.”

“... Oh.” She’s steadied by Mika’s fingers curling around her shoulder, by the tendrils of sunlight spreading across her head and back and arms. Mika’s voice is small but steady, and somehow it comes from the same throat that makes that huge pealing laugh. It’s so strange how they sound nothing alike. Until yesterday, Beth hadn’t heard her voice since the lutefisk incident. They’d mostly kept to text and pictures. It had seemed easier, the way it gave them both plenty time to think before they spoke through their different uncertainties. Beth was already planning her trip before they realized that they’d never actually called each other. By that point, it sounded like more fun to meet in person the old-fashioned way.

"I'll make you some tea." Mika abruptly stands and lets go of her. Beth is sad to lose the contact. She flits across the room toward the kitchen in her soft cotton pajama pants, complemented by yet another black graphic tee for yet another Scandinavian metal band Beth's never heard of. Or at least, she'd never heard of them before Mika, who has something to say about all of them, and now Beth knows more than she'll ever need to.

Mika moves in and out of view behind the half-wall that separates the little living room from the kitchen. The fronds of the fern on the counter make a green rustling as she brushes by them. It sends soft feathered shadows waving across the wall opposite the window. Beth hears the rush of water boiling out of sight, and soon sees steam rising from the mug that's being handed to her.

"It's hot," Mika says unnecessarily. She sits down next to her again, this time leaning into Beth with her arm. Beth’s glad for it.

"Have you ditched the bags and gone loose leaf?" Beth says, eyeing the fragments of bright green leaf free floating in her mug.

"It didn't come in a bag. It came from the window."

"The window?"

"It's basil tea. For the fear and pain. Five large fresh leaves in two hundred and fifty milliliters water. We grew it here."

Beth takes a cautious sip. It's surprisingly sweet, and the savory smell of the steam rising from it curls into her sinuses. The aching in her head and neck begin to relax. It's unfamiliar, but it feels like home should, just like everything else here.

"Thanks," Beth says. On an impulse of craving closeness, she leans her head onto Mika's shoulder with a sigh. The sensation of contact deepens as Mika leans against her, too.

Beth holds the cup close, fingers wrapping around its warmth. She takes another sip and gets a bit of leaf stuck in her teeth. The way she scrunches up her face trying to dislodge it pulls a tiny laugh out of Mika.

“You don’t have to be okay here,” Mika whispers. “You can just be. That’s what we do.”

Beth finds her eyes wet again, but she smiles while she sets her mug down and wipes them away. “Kinda already wish I could stay here,” she says with a chuckle.

“... That’s probably not impossible.”

“Really?” Beth asks wryly. “Not even twenty-four hours, and you’d already be willing to put up with me?”

“Twenty-four hours and twenty-seven months.”

Beth melts a little even while waving the idea aside. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, but... weren’t you looking at the school here?”

“I mean, yeah, but... really, my mom just thought I deserved a break to get away for a little while. She’d saved up a bit, and I didn’t want to make it a big deal or anything, but she really wanted me to. She knew I wanted to come see you. Checking out the school was mostly an excuse. I know it’s a great place, but... I don’t really think it’ll help with what I wanna do.”

“What do you want to do?”

Beth sighs and leans back, looking at the ceiling. Mika follows her so that they’re still shoulder to shoulder, and pulls her feet up to tuck them in cross-legged.

She flounders for a moment, trying to find where to begin. She hasn’t told anyone this yet.

“This Leda crap has been kind of awful, right? It’s screwed so many of us up. But there’s only, what, a few hundred of us? And that’s not the only reason things get messed up.” She swallows. Her eyes trace irregularities in the ceiling: a knot in an exposed wooden beam here, a sealed and repainted crack there. “Kids like me are a dime a dozen. There’s so many people out there going through hell, just because they got stuck with people who are hurting so much that they hurt other people. And then they go on and hurt more people. It’s a cycle that’s really fucking hard to break.”

Breaths that have become harsh force her to pause and let them lengthen again. A touch on her knee draws her eyes down to a hand resting on it palm up, offering. Beth takes it. Mika squeezes her fingers in reassurance.

“When I was little, I wanted to be a cop like my dad, did you know that?” Mika, eyes wide, shakes her head. “Yeah. That was always my plan. I used to think he was so brave. Wanted to be just like him.” She shudders. Mika grips her hand, steady. “Even if I could do it better than he did, the system is still full of people like him. It’s broken. I couldn’t – I can’t end up like that. I can’t keep being a part of this shit. I want to actually help people.

“I never thought about it before I met you, but the people you brought in to do therapy programs and all for CYGNet? They’re amazing. The stuff I’ve gotten from them has helped me so much. And I don’t know what I’d do without my regular therapist. These people really help people like me. Like all of us. Those are the kind of people I wanna be like.”

Beth’s voice drops and becomes small and secretive, but firm. “I’ve been looking at the social work programs at home. There’s some really good ones at the uni near where mom and I live now. And that’s the city where I grew up. I know how things work there. I know it won’t be easy, but. I could really... do stuff.”

Silence stretches. Beth looks at Mika, only to be completely thrown off by an expression she can’t make heads or tails of. “What?”

Mika’s face is blank yet soft, only barely hinting at her thoughts in the faintest crinkling of her eyes. It’s funny, how quiet her face is most of the time. Beth never would have guessed, going off her online impressions of her. Mika’s so expressive and eloquent with her written words. In person, she is much more subtle. But even after only a day spent around her, Beth is already starting to see how her movements speak volumes in a language of their own. The flickering of her hands flares to life with excitement. The casual shake of her head tosses her hair out of her eyes even when it’s not in the way, like she’s clearing the slate of her mind. And much like Beth these days, she goes very still and tense when she’s getting uncomfortable or overwhelmed, the way she did after a particularly loud whistle at the train station. It shows in her shoulders. They’re soft now though, and she just watches Beth and squeezes her hand once more.

“You’re really amazing, you know,” Mika says.

“Wh- huh?”

“Well.” She looks away and turns their hands over, but doesn’t let go. “After the awful things you’ve been through – nnnh! Don’t pretend,” she says, looking back sharply as Beth begins to protest that she didn’t have it that bad. Mika knows her so well. Beth can’t help but laugh a little. “After all that, you just want to help people. All I ever want to do is get away from them, most of the time.”

Beth quirks a brow at her with a bemused grin. “Really? Because setting up and running an organization that provides mental health resources and extremely important information to a few hundred people is a really shit way to not help people.”

“I never talk to most of them! And CYGNet only has one hundred and thirteen members, not hundreds.”

Beth rolls her eyes with an exaggerated motion. “Yeah, so, you’ve somehow convinced, what, a whole freaking third of a huge group of scared strangers to trust you?”

“A lot of that was Niki and the press team, she’s way better at talking to people th–”

“And you’ve been careful enough and clever enough to keep them and all the information you got from DYAD safe and secure? I can’t even imagine the organization and, and cyber-security and whatever the hell else you put into all this. That you still put in. And look what you’ve done. You’re helping so many people. You found something only you could do, and do it really damn well.”

Mika looks down into her lap, half her face flushed. The raised ridges and swirls of the scarred side are pink, but not as dark. Her shoulders curl in a little, but she doesn’t pull her hand away from Beth’s. If anything, she holds on a little tighter.

“You don’t have to like talking to people to help them. You don’t have to be someone you’re not,” Beth says gently, then pauses as a new thought occurs to her. “Why did you talk to me?”

Mika gives a tiny shrug, eyes still downcast. “You reached out to me. Most people are scared, or suspicious, or hard to talk to, but you were just... honest. You told me exactly what you needed, even if that meant sharing your painful secrets with a stranger. I...” She trails off, looking toward the closed door of Niki’s bedroom. She blinks slowly.

“It reminded me of something Niki said a long time ago. When we first met. We didn’t trust each other at first. But when things got bad, we needed to, and she just... We’d only known each other for a day. She told me a true story that people had called her crazy for, and trusted me to believe her. And when I told her about... my Asperger’s, about being autistic, she just told me something about herself, too, another thing that a lot of people get cruel about when they know. This was back before she came out, too. She was hardly out to herself, then, really. But she told me anyway. ‘Secret for a secret,’ she said.”

“She’s really special to you.” It’s not a question. How could it be, with the sheer softness of love rounding out every syllable and making Mika melt into the couch and into Beth’s shoulder.

“She’s... yes. She’s my family.” Mika looks out the window, and the bright light dances over her nose. “I don’t remember ever having one.”

Beth slings an arm around Mika’s shoulders and smiles as she curls closer into Beth’s side. “Looks like you’re part of a pretty big one, now,” she says, waving a hand at the dozens of photos on the walls circling them.

“I guess so.”

“No need to guess. The evidence is right there. And I’m right here.”

Mika turns those huge eyes on her again. She’s done that multiple times now, even though Beth knows she rarely looks people in the eye. Eye contact is too much, most of the time. She describes it as too intense, too distracting, too intimate. Meeting those eyes – so like Beth’s own, but filled with such a different kind of light – Beth thinks she understands a glimmer of it. If every eye she met were as overwhelmingly expressive as Mika’s, Beth probably wouldn’t meet them all either. It keeps taking her by surprise, coming across their eloquence in an otherwise quiet face. Caught by that gaze, every emotion that lives in it touches Beth. Right now, it’s soft with adoration but shaded with a gradient of doubt. The width and depth of Mika’s eyes reveal a clear view of a vulnerable, aching, healing heart that spent eleven years starving for the love it needs and still hasn’t forgotten the famine.

It might be breaking Beth’s heart. No wonder Niki is always showering her with hugs and kind words and gentle hands on rounded shoulders. Maybe one of these days, Mika will have spent long enough finally getting to soak up all that affection that she won’t look at Beth like this when she says the simple truth.

“Hey. Here I am. Really.” Beth’s voice is a little choked up. She pulls Mika into a proper hug with both arms. Mika squeaks in surprise at being squeezed so emphatically, but returns it all the same. God, but she gives the best hugs of anyone Beth’s ever met. All contact and even, firm pressure and steadiness. “It’s so damn good to see you. I can’t believe you’re...” real, Beth thinks but doesn’t say. I can’t believe I didn’t imagine you. I can’t believe you’re just as kind as your words. I can’t believe how good it feels to be around you. “I can’t believe I’m really here.”

Mika doesn’t say anything. For a moment, one of her hands leaves Beth’s back to fiddle with something, then comes back to give her a little squeeze that Beth returns.

Beth’s phone buzzes a notification behind her on the little glass-top table next to the couch. The table’s wooden base is a round blob carved into the shape of a very fluffy and very ugly sheep with curly horns. Beth’s arms loosen from their embrace as she turns to look at it, bemused. No one but Mika really messages her except for her mom. But if it’s morning here, it’s about time for bed at home. She checks it, just to be sure she’s okay.

But it’s not from her mom.

Mika reaches out to gently grasp her forearm again as Beth shoots her a quizzical look and opens the message.

3mika: I'm glad you're here.

Beth's heart quails.

To think, that her darker days might have kept her from ever being in this moment. Beth might never have gotten to this point, hurt but healing and here. Here, she's seven time zones and an ocean away from the cycle of pain she grew up in, barely aware she needed to escape. She might well feel safer right here in this crossroads of time and place than she has at any other in her entire life. It's a realization that's as humbling as it is nourishing.

Already, the distance this journey has taken her has given her so much perspective. She wasn’t sure, before, whether the work she’s been considering was just a response to what she’s been through – or just a way for the cycle to keep her within its spiral. But she’s seen what Mika can do, what Beth could do one day, if she keeps on.

It won’t be easy. She’ll go back, and deep-seated memories will try to drag her back into small dark places. But being here, even for only a few hours, has already changed her. She can change, and she can grow, and she is already tapping into new strengths that her past has yet to reckon with. She is here, right now, in spite of all of it. And today is not a dark day.

“Me too, Mika. I’m glad to be here, too.” Beth’s tongue stumbles over the name, because she’s never said it out loud before, only read it on a screen.

Surprise sends Mika’s eyebrows up and her eyes wide again, like she’s never heard it before, either. Maybe she hasn’t. She tilts her head again like a question, touching her ear and looking at Beth.

Beth grins. “Mika.” A smile blooms on that curious face, lighting it up. She’s the one who pulls Beth into a hug this time, and it’s both fierce and soft. When she lets go, she leans into Beth’s side again and they stay like that, arms over shoulders and comfortably curled up together, soaking in the warmth of each other’s presence like leaves drink in light. The simple sweetness and companionship of it soothes Beth’s heart, seeking its way into the aching crevices. It’s an odd feeling, both seeping inward and flowing outward, trickling all the way through her until it warms her cold toes in a way that feels both new and strangely familiar.

A long, sleepy yawn announces that Niki’s awake now, too. Soon, she comes out of her room stretching her arms over her head. Mika reaches a hand out toward her to wave in greeting, though she leaves the other arm draped over Beth’s shoulders. Niki smiles at them. That kind smile, too, adds to the warmth washing through Beth. Her feet practically itch with it, and with a growing sensation of déja vu. She fidgets her toes against the floor as Niki walks over to brush Mika’s outstretched hand like a touchstone.

“How'd you sleep? Isn’t that couch the comfiest?” she says to Beth.

“Well, I’ve got a crick in my neck, but I still slept better than I have in years.”

Niki turns her sunny smile on Beth. “Good to hear it. Weird, though, I nap there all the time and my neck’s always fine. Huh. Anyway, I think I might make waffles. You two want some breakfast?”

Mika nods, but doesn’t let go of Beth yet. Beth is lost in thought, trying to remember what that light, floating feeling in her feet reminds her of.

“Sweet.” Niki ambles toward the kitchen and bends down with pursed lips to peer at the fern perched on the counter. “Hmm. You still look a little pale. Let’s get you some more sun.” She brings the plant over to the living room and is fussing over settling it on the sheep table when it clicks for Beth. A physical memory washes over her, for once welcome. She lets it fill her, refreshing like a deep breath of cold morning air her lungs are suddenly hungry for. She flexes her calves and ankles, her legs remembering the joy and freedom of stride and strike. Her bones are finally recalling how they once carried her with ease, even while they're adjusting to the new weight of who she's become. Fully alive again for at least this moment, her soles are practically prickling with the desire to eat up ground.

“How about you, Beth? Do you like waffles?” Niki asks, fluffing the fern’s crinkly green leaves. Mika squeezes her shoulder.

Beth grins and plants steady feet on the blue rug in front of the couch. “Save a few for me? I think I might actually go for a run first.”

[shakingsphere]

um i need a distraction so heres a question thing that yall are supposed to send to me but i just answered all of them if ur interested

Alisons: Sexuality?

straight i think

Amaranth: Pronouns/Gender?

she/her cis

Amaryllis: Birthday?

january 30th!

Anemone: Favorite flower?

idk what they’re called but these vine type flowers on the side of my porch!

Angelonia: Favorite t.v. show?

atla

Arum-Lily: What’s the farthest you’d go for a stranger?

depends on the context, definitely nothing where they could take advantage of me

Aster: What’s one of your favorite quotes?

i hate quotes i can never remember any lmao

Aubrieta: Favorite drink?

.... diet coke

Baby’s Breath: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

no

Balsam Fir: Have you ever been in love?

maybe? he didnt love me back

Baneberries: Favorite song?

vienna by billy joel

Basket of Gold: Describe your family.

my parents are nice and supportive but overbearing and judgmental. my dad has a tendency to talk when its not his place and my mom is very jewish. my sister doesnt like me very much and is kind of rude. one of my brothers is really nice and the other is awful

Beebalm: Do you have a best friend? Who is it?

I dont

Begonia: Favorite color?

green

Bellflower: Favorite animal?

red panda

Bergenia: Are you a morning or night person?

night

Black-Eyed Susan: If you could be any animal for a day, what would it be?

a cat

Bloodroots: When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

an animator 

Bluemink: What are your thoughts on children?

i love kids theyre so cute

Blazing Stars: What are you afraid of? Is there a reason why?

heights bc theyre scary, and unachieving because i dont want to waste my life

Borage: Give a random fact about your childhood.

i used to play with ants a lot

Bugleherb: How would you spend your last day on Earth?  

like if i was conscious it was my last day? i dont even know

Buttercup: Relationship Status?

single :/

Camelia: If you could visit anywhere, where would you want to go?

central asia and iran

Candytufts: When do you feel most loved?

when im with my friends and we’re just hanging out

Canna: Do you have any tattoos?  

no ma’am i am a child of god

Canterbury Bells: Do you have any piercings?  

my ear lobes and i want to get my doubles done

California Poppy: Height?  

5′3. it be like that

Cardinal Flower: Do you believe in ghosts?

yes!!!!!!!!!!!! omg

Carnation: What are you currently wearing?  

a college sweatshirt and pj pants with penguins on them

Catnip: Have you ever slept with a nightlight?

when i was little....

Chives: Who was the last person you hugged?  

my friend hannah

Chrysanthemum: Who’s the last person you kissed?

i haven’t...

Cock’s Comb: Favorite font?

um lobster?

Columbine: Are you tired?

yeah lol

Common Boneset: What are you looking forward to?

college and moving out of state!!

Coneflower: Dream job?

something where i can use my degree lmao

Crane’s-Bill: Introvert or extrovert?

i think im an introvert but i also might just have anxiety

Crocus: Have you ever been in love?

maybe?

Crown Imperial: What’s the farthest you would go for someone you care about?

i would take a bullet for most of my loved ones

Cyclamen: Did you have a favorite stuffed animal as a child? What was it?

yes. a tie-dyed teddy bear named tie-dye. he is my husband.

Daffodil: What’s your zodiac sign?

aquarius

Dahlia: Have you done anything worth remembering?

nothing that people who arent me should remember, but i think our experiences shape us so

Daisy: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?

im not dead idk

Daylily: What would you do if your parents didn’t like your partner(s)?  

um id probably be upset i care about my parents approval way to much

Dendrobium: Who is the last person that you said “I love you” to?

my friend hannah again lol

False Goat’s Beard: What is something you are good at?

public speaking!!

Foxgloves: What’s something you’re bad at?

math

Freesia: What are three good things that have happened in the past month?

um i met my future roommate, i lost a bit of weight, and i got some cute shorts

Garden Cosmos: How was your day today?

stressful! 

Gardenia: Are you happy with where you’re at in your life?

no

Gladiolus: What is something you hope to do in the next year or two?

join my college’s honors program and study in russia

Glory-of-the-Snow: What are ten things that make you happy/you’re grateful to have in your life?

im not doing this one too tired

Heliotropium: What helps you calm down when you feel stressed? 

xanax 

Hellebore: How do you show affection?

i try to tell ppl they are important to me

Hoary Stock: What are you proudest of?

im funny i think

Hollyhock: Describe your ideal day.

i wake up at 9:30 its 70 degrees Fahrenheit and i get lunch with some friends and then we hang out for the day

Hyacinth: What do you like to do in your free time?  

im so bad about this all i do is watch youtube and study, but i love to draw and im going to start reading more

Hydrangea: How long have you known your best friend? How did you meet them?

Irises: Who can you talk to about (almost) everything?

Laceleaf: How many friends do you have?

Lantanas: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?

Larkspur: What do you think of yourself?

Lavender: What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

Leather Flower: What’s your least favorite thing about yourself?  

Lilac: What’s something you liked to do as a child?

Lily: Who was your best friend when you were a kid?

Lily of the Incas: What is something you still feel guilty for?

Lily of the Nile: What is something you feel guilty for that you shouldn’t feel guilty about?  

Lupine: What does your name mean? Why is that your name?

pretty sure its french for clear or bright (depending on the context). my mom just liked it

Marigold: Where did you grow up? Tell us about it.

im from a suburb of kck. its a nice and safe place to grow up but i wouldnt choose to live here

Morning Glory: What was your bedroom like growing up?

nice, but its in the basement so the view is really bad i hate that

Mugworts: What was it like for you as a teenager? Did you enjoy your teenage years?  

no nope no

Norwegian Angelica: Tell us about your mom.

she is very smart and hardworking but very judgmental and a bit inconsiderate. she loves me very much tho

Onions: Tell about your dad.  

he is short and angry. he tends to interrupt me a lot. he is supportive of everything i do. he is stingy about money tho

Orchid: Tell about your grandparents.

my mother’s mom died before i was born, and my i was never close with her father. he died when i was 8. my other grandma has bad dementia and isn’t sure who i am anymore. shes presbyterian but she would send my sister and i dreidels and such for hanukkah. im told i look a lot like her. my grandfather has been very grumpy for as long as ive known him.   

Pansy: What was your most memorable birthday? What made it be so memorable?

my 13th. i had an anxiety attack and had to go home early.

Peony: What was your first job?

i was a hostess at a seafood restaurant.

Petunia: If you’re in a relationship, how did you meet your partner(s)? If you’re not in a relationship, how did you meet your crush/how do you hope to meet your future partner(s), if you want any?

Pincushion: How do you deal with pain?

i give myself time to process it and then just move forward i guess

Pink: Where is home?

where your sense of belonging is ig idk

Plantain Lilies: If you could go back in time, what is one thing you would stop/change?

i would have made better grades and quit band in middle school haha 

Prairie Gentian: Who is someone you look up to? Describe them.

Primrose: Describe your ideal life.

i want to be happy with 2 kids and a husband and live below my means but still be comfortable 

Rhodendron: What is something you used to believe in as a child?

nihil was a philosopher. 

Ricinus: Who’s the most important in your life?

fuck idk my dog

Rose: What’s your favorite sound?

background noise when your sitting outside

Rosemallows: What’s your favorite memory?

Sage: What’s your least favorite memory?

Snapdragon: At this moment, what do you want?

for everything to work out!!!  

St. John’s Wort: Is it easy or difficult for you to express how you feel about things?

very very hard

Sunflower: What is something you don’t want to imagine life without?

the internet

Sweet Pea: How much sleep did you get last night?

8 hours but i overslept

Tickseed: What’s your main reason to get up every morning?

i have to

Touch-Me-Not: How do you feel about your current job?

i dont have a job rn and thats bad

Transvaal Daisy: What’s your favorite item of clothing?

my jeans from uo

Tropical White Morning Glory: Describe your aesthetic.  

cool librarian or 90s mom

Tulip: What would be the best present to get you?

160,000 dollars :)

Vervain: What’s stressing you out most right now?

the cost of college!!!!

Wisteria: How many books have you read in the past few months? What were they called?

oof like 2. i read Dune, and Slaughterhouse Five

Wolf’s Bane: Where do you want to be in life this time next year?

college! finishing up my first semester

Yarrow: Do you know what vore is?

yeah :( 

Zinnia: Give a random fact about yourself.

ive been late to ap french almost every day this semester #c’estlavie

[jasperrollswrites]

Ode to Fat

I always forget to post on this blog too...a simple weight gain commission for MysteriesOfMe.

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

Bodies like oceans. Undulating, swaying, flowing. Rolling waves, swelling and breaking, crashing on the shores. Vast, untameable, raw, powerful, and always beautiful, no matter what anyone says. This is our tribute to hedonism, to corpulence, and unconventional beauty. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, and there is so much to treasure. This is our Ode to Fat.

A nice sentiment, to be sure, and a lot classier than the usual kind of thing you’d expect from a site like this. The text was in a nice, not too hard to read but smart looking font, coloured grey on a pure black background. Underneath it was a button to enter the site, and Merlin dutifully clicked it.

Ode to Fat (odetofat.me) was, from what Merlin had heard, a relatively new site for plus sized modelling and nudes. He’d seen mention of the place on a Discord server for appreciation of bear-ish people, and he had to say he did like its style so far. As Merlin watched the slick loading screen (a grey circular bar, looping around as it filled to 100), he put his chin in his hand, the the bristles of his unshaven chin pressing against the palm as he waited. The last rays of the sun were coming in through the window, the darkness setting in, and he looked around the room, noticing that it was quite dark inside and he hadn’t even noticed.

Standing up, he walked over to the light switch near the door, turning on the light, which took a moment to flicker into full brightness. He blinked, the light hurting his eyes, and he let them adjust before he moved over to the window to close the blinds. He was dressed kind of lazily today. He wore a regular cornflower blue shirt that was a loose enough fit to not cling too tightly to the slight pudge he had on his body, and some grey sweatpants. No socks or shoes, nothing like that. It had been a lazy day in general.

He pulled the blinds over the window and looked back at the computer, seeing that it had loaded and the site was now displaying a number of different models available to look at. They were all dressed up in various looks but the focus seemed to be mostly on class - nice suits and tuxedos. Merlin clicked on the first one that caught his eye, a blond-haired guy with a light, scruffy beard and a black bow tie ensemble.

The portfolio of chubby men was whisked away, and a full screen image of the man Merlin had clicked on appeared. He was sitting on a chair, leaning back into it, smiling naturally at the camera. A jaunty black square appeared and filled with a bio, identifying the man in question as Caleb.

The biography was, refreshingly, focused on Caleb as a person rather than as a necessarily sexual prospect. It detailed the kind of person he was, his interests, and some of his personal beliefs about what it was like being a fat person in society, and what that meant to him. Merlin scrolled down, and the pages shifted to show Caleb’s gallery of pictures and videos. As he scrolled down, the pictures seemed to progress from clothed to various states of undress, but after about 20 pictures, a lock symbol appeared.

Subscribe to gain unlimited access to Caleb’s gallery - and every other gallery on Ode to Fat.

Merlin stroked his chin. Maybe. Not yet. The site hadn’t quite won him over into thinking it was worth it. He backed out of Caleb’s profile, back to the main page, and clicked between a few of the other models available. They were all broadly similar in style - a bio about themselves, pictures of themselves getting progressively undressed, the most lewd ones locked off for subscribers only. There was a decent range of diversity in the men available, of various ethnicities and ages, clean shaven, big beards, some scruffier than others. Of note was the fact that they all seemed quite...comfortable. They were all quite nice looking too, of course. Merlin glanced up at the top of the screen, seeing an “About” tab, and clicked on it. Maybe this would elucidate his feelings about the site - understanding what exactly it was about.

Fat is beautiful. That is our belief. We reject the modern notions of conventional attraction - to be fat is not shameful, to be fat is not a sin. To be fat is to be just as worthy of love and happiness as any other person in the world. Thus, we created this website, our Ode to Fat, to spread our message that fat means there’s just more of a person to love.

This is not a place of degradation, of mocking and scorn. It is a place of appreciation. Our models have presented themselves exactly how they wanted to be presented, revealing as much as they want to reveal. Their gallery is what their fatness means to them, and you can appreciate it along with us.

Merlin’s brow furrowed. Interesting take. A refreshing one. A lot of sites for this kind of thing had this...mode of talking that he didn’t really like, talking about how disgustingly fat and piggish their models were, how they were such big hogs who couldn’t stop eating...on and on...sometimes there was a mood for that, but more often than not Merlin just wanted to sincerely appreciate the beauty in something that most might not find so beautiful, and that seemed to be the tone this group were going for.

He clicked to the next tab, subscriptions. It seemed to be a monthly model of varying tiers. $5 a month got you access to the galleries, and then increased price values allowed you to see bonus videos or photos, you could subscribe to a particular model and get updates specifically for them...there were a lot of options, certainly. There was also an option to sign up to become a model, but Merlin didn’t really look at it. He was chubby, but he wasn’t the kind of chubby these guys were. Seriously, some of these guys were like, real big.

He’d have to think about the subscription service. He was intrigued by what was available, but he didn’t know if he wanted to commit to paying a monthly service just yet. At the very least, he’d heard a couple of people say they were very happy with their subscriptions. 5 dollars, that was...what, £3? Wasn’t that bad a price to get access to the full galleries. Merlin tapped his desk as he thought. He could shell out that much a month, right? It was less than paying Netflix monthly, certainly. If he felt like he wasn’t happy with what he was getting he could pull out after a month. Only a little bit out of pocket. It wouldn’t be the biggest loss of money in the world.

He clicked on the button for the $5 subscription. It seemed the most reasonable, since he’d get pretty much what he wanted out of the site. He diligently went through the process of putting in his card information to set up the recurring payment. A few button clicks, and he was finished. He had access, an e-mail notification popped up in the corner of the screen to inform him his card had been charged. A little bit extra for the conversion charge, but not enough to make him think this might be a bad idea.

Might as well see what his subscription had gotten him. He clicked back to the main page, and went back to the first guy he’d taken a look at, Caleb. The profile loaded up in a couple of seconds, and he scrolled down to see what he’d been missing before. A bunch more pictures had opened up for viewing, and he clicked to examine them in closer detail.

He found himself breathing a sort of tiny sigh of relief, as the pictures all seemed to be of a tasteful sort, even with the increased nudity. There had been a part of him that had felt kind of...suspicious? Like once he’d hit the subscribe button it would’ve reverted to the same sort of degradation kind of thing a lot of sites followed, as some sort of subversion - build ‘em up and knock ‘em down, that sort of thing. He needn’t have worried, it seemed.

He looked closely at an image he’d brought up to full size on the screen. It was black and white. Caleb was looking out a window, no clothing on, a small smile playing on his lips. The camera was at a low angle, and there was a high contrast between the shadow and the light. There was something about the interplay between the two opposites that really just highlighted how big this guy was. His belly was satisfyingly round, coming out quite a ways before him, sagging down a little but pleasantly plump. His chest rested on the belly - he was slightly turned away from the camera, so only one nipple was showing, but the areola was pretty big making it stand out. The shadow slightly covered the curve of his buttock, but it could still be made out, and from what he could see it was a pretty big one, smooth and round, a bit like a beach ball, and he imagined the rest of the guy’s butt was much the same.

Merlin smiled a little wistfully. What a look. He wish he looked like that. He’d made a bit of an effort before, but getting to that level of fat was like a full time job - or at least, that was how it was for him. When he’d seen other guys talking about how they’d gotten so fat, it was a range of experience from a dedicated gaining diet, to “idk i just kind of ate a lot and ended up fat lol”. Some guys got all the luck. He’d ended up slightly chubby, but nowhere near the weight someone like Caleb was at.

Although, it seemed like this would not be the case for much longer.

Within Merlin’s body, something was happening, something had been activated on a biological level. Things like mitosis and cytokinesis, where cells divide into multiples of themselves, are a just a regular part of human and animal biology, but something had changed - it was happening faster, or maybe the mass had changed. It was unclear how, or why this had happened, but the broad stroke of it was this - the cells of fat that had made Merlin kind of chubby were suddenly multiplying, slowly at first, but then quickly picking up the pace. There wasn’t an immediate outward effect at first, but it would take a minute - a minute which Merlin had to continue looking around the site.

He’d clicked out of the picture he was admiring, and was now browsing around the other models, seeing who else he liked. His attention was mostly drawn to the more hirsute guys. They had a tendency to be pretty big in form, even compared against most fat guys, and he had always loved big beards. These guys had some pretty big beards, full and curly, some with some grey streaks to give them a feeling of maturity. It was a very attractive feature to Merlin.

As he browsed around, the division of cells was starting to take an effect upon his body. The fat was settling where it could, and it began with a fairly appropriate place - the belly. Bit by bit, second by second, his waistline slowly began to increase in width. Little streaks of discoloration began to appear across his stomach, stretch marks being drawn in as his skin realized that he was starting to increase in size, and stretching to accommodate the increasing mass. Merlin was yet to notice, focused as he was on the site, but it was only a matter of time.

Next, it was beginning to settle around his thighs. His legs were getting thicker, the fat starting to close the gap between his legs, while on the outside it was beginning to press against the arms of the chair he sat on. Merlin shifted, feeling a little uncomfortable. As he briefly pushed himself off the chair, his buttocks began to bloat, each cheek swelling in size, slowly at first, but then picking up speed, quickly beginning to fill out with fat, so that when he sat his butt back down in the seat, it pushed tightly against the back and sides, squeezing out through any gaps. It was something Merlin could not help but notice, and when he looked down to investigate the problem, it was a bit too late to do anything about it - not that he could have, if he wanted to.

The whole process was something like a stone rolling down a snowy hill - slow at first, and not making much progress, but picking up momentum and mass along the way, until it was unstoppable. In this overplayed metaphor, Merlin had already reached terminal velocity, and all there was left to do was ride it out and see what happened. There was a second or two of shock and surprise as Merlin stared down at his body, seeing it grow before his eyes. His shirt was pulled up as his belly flopped out, his belly button looking rather deep with the added fat. He placed a hand on the gut, feeling the doughy flesh give way rather easily, and feeling his hands increase in size a little, filling out with fat as well.

He blinked and came to his senses, trying to get out of the chair, but his growing thighs and buttocks had wedged him in it, and it was going to take a bit of effort to get him out. He’d need to be quick. He was only getting fatter as the seconds passed, and it would only get more difficult the longer he left it. He placed his hands on the armrests, and pushed, trying to lift his body out of the chair. He could hear it creaking as his weight increased. He had no way of telling, but his guess was that he was probably past the 300lb mark by this point.

He pushed down hard on the armrests, and as he did so, his upper body was gaining fat as well. His chest swelled, what would’ve been pecs on a muscular man becoming flabby and plump. They would’ve sagged down were it not for the enormous belly he’d already grown, instead settling softly atop the belly. His arms grew in size, fat, hanging off them, wobbling as he strained to pull himself out of the chair that a minute go, he had considered as perhaps slightly too big for him.

His fat thighs pulled against the plastic armrests, the bottom of the chair being pulled up with him as he stood on his feet, which had also grown in size to support his new pear-shaped body. He let off for a second, and then pushed down again with renewed strength, straining to pull his flabby body out of the chair. It was like a cartoon, the way his body popped out, making the chair clunk against the ground and causing him to stumble forward. Not used to his body’s new size, he fell forward with an extremely heavy thump.

He groaned a little, and placed a fat hand on the carpeted floor, pushing to attempt to roll himself over. It took a couple of tries, with how big he was, and the feeling of all his fat rolling with him as he did so was a very new sensation. His shirt pinged up, cleaving tightly to his chest, leaving his belly on full display. He was glad he was wearing sweatpants. He didn’t want to think about what might have happened had he been wearing a less flexible kind of pants.

For the moment, his spontaneous growth seemed to have halted, and he had a second to look himself over. Pushing himself into an upright position, and with a clearer mind, he slowly began to realize exactly how he looked, and he couldn’t help but have a feeling of awe. He was...mountainous was the word that came to mind. It might not be a bad estimate to say he’d tripled in size. He felt his own belly with both his hands - indeed, it was as soft and doughy as it had been before, giving way easily underneath his palms. He was so utterly huge it was a little scary, but Merlin couldn’t say he was unhappy about this sudden development. What was more an immediate concern for him was how this had even happened. Blowing up like this was something that happened in fantasies of his. But this...seemed like it was for real.

Before he had much more time to contemplate this, however, his transformation received a second wind. The focus here was on his head and face. Merlin had already been pretty chubby, as previously stated, but the fat was starting to fill his face out, making his cheeks rounder, and his nose became a little bit bigger. His face was gaining a sort of ruddy complexion, becoming redder, making him look a bit more jolly.

It wasn’t just fat that was increasing this time, though. He was getting a boost of testosterone, and then a subsequent conversion into DHT that was giving him a sudden growth of facial hair. Hair was pushing out on his upper lip, across his jaw, up the side of his face. A beard was growing in a matter of seconds, filling out to the kind of length that took many months to achieve. It quickly straightened out, full of volume, as its length reached down to just above his chest.

He was getting hair all over his body too, quickly becoming more hirsute moment by moment. A light dusting of little pushed out across his arms, his chest, his belly - actually, it was a little more than a light dusting on the chest, the hairs increasing in length, forming quite a thick carpet across his chest. Merlin pulled on the collar of his shirt to get a glance at it, and his beard slipped down into the gap he’d opened up. He laughed a little, pulling the beard out and letting the shirt ping back into place. God, this was...all very new, and all very agreeable, as far as he was concerned.

He stroked his new beard, closing his eyes and smiling. It felt very good to touch, smooth and silky. He didn’t even really want to question how this had happened any more. He just wanted to enjoy it. There was a deep satisfaction for him in being so big he could feel it. He was taking up so much space just sitting here on the floor. He might have almost found being stuck in the chair a little hot if it hadn’t been something of a pain. For a few minutes, he just sat there, feeling himself over, his hairy body, his thick and full beard, his flabby body, revelling in his size.

Eventually, he had to stand up and do something, however. Doing so was a little tough. His fat got in the way of the usual forms of standing up, and he had to do a combinations of rolling and leverage from the nearby bed before he was able to stand up on his feet. He had a new clarity of mind, and now that he had a second to think, his mind redirected towards the most obvious question - how?

The most obvious answer was what he had done seconds earlier. He had subscribed to the website, but Merlin couldn’t really see why or how doing such a thing would trigger such a spontaneous growth in him. He waddled - he chuckled to himself a little, he had to waddle now - back towards the computer. He was about to sit in the chair, but thought better of it. Either it would break under his weight, or he’d get even more stuck than he had been the first time. Neither sounded like the best option. He’d have to shell out some money for a bigger chair.

He looked at the site - it was where he’d left it, the gallery of an older guy called Solomon. Merlin looked down at himself briefly, noting he didn’t look all that different from the man on the screen any more. He moved the mouse around, clicking through the site, trying to find any indication of what had just happened, but there didn’t seem to be any. Was it a coincidence? Or was this what his friends had meant when they said the subscription was worth it…? Man, if this was what $5 did, what would the higher subscriptions do?

Merlin scratched his hair, his hand tracing down his sideburns. A lot of things about his life would have to change if this wasn’t just a temporary thing. He wondered how he’d pay for all the new stuff he’d have to buy to accommodate his new body. His eyes drifted towards the top right of the screen.

“Become a Model”

Merlin looked down at himself again. Now...that might not be such a bad idea.

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

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[ukhandoit-blog]

Depressed Diary Day 1

I’m starting this online diary because I can’t remember my days. Also I always wanted to be a writer so this is a good place to start.

So I woke up this morning feeling motivated. I’ve been feeling more motivated to go to work and try to have good days lately, it’s probably a manic state but that’s okay. I got up jerked off took a shower jerked off in the shower too. The worst part about my masturbation is I have a girlfriend. She gives me pretty regular sex too so I really have no reason to but I just can’t bring myself to stop. The morning shower is the hardest place not to. I finished getting ready after my shower. Brushed my teeth with some charcoal toothpaste from lush. I noticed it was expired since last July, wonder if that means it won’t work anymore? Only time will tell.(cause I ain’t looking that shit up.) I went to my room and my GF was just waking up, I didn’t even have to tell her to cover her eyes when I was about to turn on the light. I told her I loved her and placed a hand on her leg. I really wanted to just go back to sleep but I kept at it today. I ironed a purple dress shirt and put on my blue jeans, belt, leather jacket, and some unmatched blue socks from a pack my mom had bought for me. I told my girl I loved her again and headed out for the day. On my way out I grabbed my vape, wallet, phone, and, keys. I headed to my beat up RAV4. Couldn’t remember where I parked so I looked in the front and back. It was in the back parked in a safe spot in our complex’s private lot. It was raining today, water poured over the car as I approached. I was glad cause I haven’t washed her in months, maybe even a year. I jumped in the front seat and started her up. It was easy, the car is pretty new but I have tons of dents and scratches. A coworker backed up into the side and knocked down a plastic panel that now hangs on the passenger door until either I get it fixed or something rips it from the car. My license plate hangs from one screw due to a time where my girl and I fought all the way to her dropping me off at my car. I was so mad I hit her bumper and broke the other screw that holds it in a way it can’t be replaced without drilling out the hole. My drive to work was in eventful. I played AM radio and listened to the traffic. “Even though we didn’t get enough rain to leave standing water on the freeways, the 880 is backed up due to several inches of water.” said the traffic host. It hadn’t rained much this winter but it was still better than the drought years that passed. I Arrived at the office after texting and driving the whole way there. Not the safest way to drive but the mornings are just so depressing I often can’t resist. I’ve found that it cures my loneliness temporarily. The office had posting on the door about carpets being cleaned, and not to walk on them too much. I laughed to myself as I knew it wouldn’t change the amount I walked. Not like I could levitate or climb on the walls to avoid the carpet. I entered the office ready to make coffee, had to walk thru the complex as our office is located inside on a corporate condo complex. I said hi to the few people in, David, Jeanessa, Colleen, Leslie(Lacey?), Heather, and Jennifer. I’m so bad with names and we have a Leslie and a Lacey in the office but I’ll be damned if I know the difference. The walls are stark white and the ceiling is tiled with those plaster or insulation tiles they use in schools and office buildings, also white. Rows of two laptop computers on desks of the glass walled cubicles sat humming waiting for the rest of the office to come in. I always make the coffee in our office if I can help it. No one had started it which was kinda surprising as last time Jennifer beat me to the office she had done it before me. Apparently she even had done a better job than me as the filter had over flowed the grounds and some were burned to the bottom of the pot. I grabbed the pot and threw away the used grounds, took the filter, it’s parts, and the pot with me to be cleaned. I rinsed and scrubbed them without soap in the communal sink near the vending machines. After I was done I marched back to the break room to make the coffee. I felt my stomach rumble as I poured the ice cold water into the back of the coffee maker. I hadn’t had breakfast. I was looking forward to making some ramen when I headed home for lunch, I knew I needed to make soup aswel because my fiancé was sick. I texted her to let her know I was excited to see her that night. We’ve been going thru hard times lately. Her grandparents were moving out of state and she spent the last few days seeing them off. She didn’t like that they were leaving and often made it personal, as if she were the reason they were moving away. I let her know I would be home for lunch at 12:30. I wasted my morning, did about 20 mins worth of work between 9 and noon when I was to leave for work, spent the rest of the time posting and looking for memes on my anon Facebook. I even managed to fit an argument about Moana and Disney in my drive back home for lunch. Lunch didn’t go at all as I had pictured. When I walked in my girl was standing I font of an empty wok at the stove, I thought it was strange as she never cooks with my wok. She immediately began to apologize for not have finished lunch. Since I had not expected my sick girlfriend to be cooking at all I quietly accepted and told her it was okay and I had enough time. I was very wrong. She asked me to help cut up some chicken, and I thought I saw about a cup of oil in the wok. “Oh baby that’s too much oil for this wok you only need to coat the pan when you stir-fry.” I told her sternly. “It’s not oil it’s water.” She replied Confused I asked. LOh really what are you making?“ I don’t remember exactly how it goes from here but she was not happy I questioned her and I was not happy either. I hadn’t eaten yet that day and my temper was short. I got pissed off when she couldn’t find a spice she needed. I wonder why the hell she was doing all this in the first place. I needed to be at work in half an hour and she was planning to make sauce from scratch. We fought for an hour, it made me late for work, plus I didn’t get to eat lunch at all. I’m so hungry, it all my fault. Idk what to do but now I’m supposed to cook to make it up to her. I feel like I want to die. I don’t even want to eat anymore. I want to just stop eating all together. I’m considering make this blog a kind of suicide note tracking what happens to an adult male when he stops eating all together. I’m 170 lbs 5'11 and heaviest weight I’ve been in my entire life.

See you tomorrow if I can remember. Khandoit

[shadowtearling]

January is over! I’m both glad and surprised it came and went so quickly. I feel proud of myself for reading as much as I did this month!!!! I think the new year is always a good motivator to read read read. I love it. I’m doing a better job so far this year of reading whenever I can and taking advantage of my spare time in between and before classes. PLUS the long commute helps. Last year, I constantly found reason to NOT read, and this year, it’s like I can’t get enough! I also apparently can’t get enough of the exclamation point. Is it too much? Also! Do you all like this new banner? Any font suggestions? I’m clearly terrible at picking fonts; too indecisive. :( Anyway! On to the books!!!

Rating system: 2017 is the year of reading critically if I want to add diversity to my list of priorities for the kind books to be reading. This means also being a little more stingy with my ratings. (I don’t feel bad about this actually. I found I feel guiltier giving out five stars willy nilly, so this is an improvement!). This rating system is still arbitrary, so three star ratings don’t always have the same weight to them. As always, I rate based on my own thoughts and feelings, and as always, these are my opinions (unless I’m speaking about my marginalization(s). Don’t argue lmao). 

Rating Scale: 🌟 - 1 whole star ⭐️ - ½ star

Nichijou: My ordinary life (Vol. 1 & 2) by Keiichi Arawi - 🌟  🌟  🌟  = 3/5  (for both) This is a manga series about high school everyday life, but with a twist! (she said with sarcasm) There are a bunch of girls in high school and one of them happens to be a robot who just wants to fit in and be human (and her child scientist companion). One of the girls also happens to love making puns, one of them is the typical deadpan-type of characters, and the others are the normal ones. Some jokes were funny, most of them were not. I love puns, but this just had really terrible ones. The characters were supremely uninteresting, and I really don’t care about any of them. That said, while I was reading this, I guess I was entertained for the time being. This helps pass time quickly, but not the greatest manga I’ve ever encountered. 

Sweetness and Lightning (Vol. 1) by Gido Amagakure - 🌟  🌟  🌟   = 3/5  What’s better than food-related manga? Nothing! Except, I can find better food-related manga out there than this lmao. This was fun to read, but I found all of the characters were bland. I couldn’t find myself too invested in their stories. I also feel like this is going in the direction of student-teacher relationship (younger me would have loved that, but me now is absolutely creeped out by the idea of it). The child is adorable, though. I also do really love the positive relationship between the child and the dad, so that’s one redeeming quality. I don’t think I’ll continue with this series, though, unless I find copies of this for cheaps. 

Orange (Omnibus Vol. 1 & 2) by Ichigo Takano - 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 = 5/5 (for both) Out of all 12 books I’ve read this month, these are the only two five-star reads! I’m stingy lmao. Anyway, this was soooooooo good! Basically, this series is about this girl, Naho, who on the first day of her junior year (I THINK... don’t hold me to this), she receives a letter from future her telling her what will happen on those days and what she needs to do versus what she should avoid doing. She dismisses that letter until the contents come true! So this series then entails what happens with those letters and Naho & her friends. I cried so many tears and felt so many feelings. I related so hard to Kakeru even though our struggles were not the same. I also really loved the ending (even though I know a lot of people didn’t like how open-ended it was). I appreciated that aspect of the story because it feels true to the kind of tale it’s telling. It perfectly depicts how friends first react versus how they should react to other friends’ struggles. I really love the dynamics between every person, and I can only wish this series was longer to explore the different friendships we were introduced to. I HIGHLY recommend this series. Please go read it! (And then tell me so we can binge-watch the anime together!)

Something in Between by Melissa de la Cruz - 🌟  🌟  🌟  ⭐️   = 3.5/5  A story with a Filipina lead?! Sign me up! This tells the story of Jasmine who is the perfect student and is set to kick ass in college until she learns that her and her entire family have been illegal immigrants the entire time, and this super awesome scholarship she was supposed to get can no longer help her. I really loved getting to see my own culture reflected in this story (this is an #ownvoices ;) so go check it out). I didn’t appreciate the little jabs at other cultures though I do understand where it comes from. I also think there was so much happening? I feel like Jasmine and her fam were trying to tackle so much all at once (it’s realistic bc what POC doesn’t go thru so much in so little time), but also it made for a messy story. OH! I hated the writing lmao. It was tacky and not my style. I also think I’m just hella tired of YA contemporaries, but as of right now, they’re the biggest source for diversity in any YA category. Fantasy is still far too white lol. I still would recommend this because it is an important story that helps humanize immigrants, but beware lmao.

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli- 🌟  🌟  🌟  = 3/5  I really enjoyed this story, but I was expecting so much more than what I was given. I hear everyone always raving about how fantastic this book was, but I think this was way too overhyped for me, which is why I didn’t like it as much as everyone else. I feel like the tension between friends was either unnecessary or done poorly (I’m talking about Leah here). HOWEVER, I still do like it. Simon was a fun character, and Blue was also really interesting. I also really love the discussion around consent and identity, and I think it was done well. 

Welcome to the Shadowhunter Academy (#1) by Cassandra Clare - 🌟  🌟  🌟  = 3/5  Simon felt reaaaaaally out of character in this novella. Maybe that’s bc of what happened at the end of TMI and that’s a valid excuse, but it makes me uncomfortable. Simon was one of the better characters in that series, and I really feel like he got butchered here. With that said, however, I do think that this novella shows improvement in CC’s writing because I still surprisingly enjoyed it. I just don’t think I’ll continue on with CC’s works? I think this is me breaking up with the Shadowhunter chronicles. She’s also highly problematic, so there’s that. 

The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi - 🌟  🌟  🌟  🌟  🌟  = 4/5 LOVE This! An #Ownvoices fantasy about Mayavati whose horoscope entails a marriage with death and destruction. I buddy read this one with one of my really close friends (she doesn’t read too often), and we both really enjoyed it. Maya is this really dynamic character that, as the story progresses, really matures in a realistic way. The writing was phenomenal but I do think it was a bit out of place? Idk I always have problems whenever the writing is sophisticated but then it’s first person POV. Like.... I’m pretty positive that my brain cannot conceive even half of those words to describe what’s happening around me. I’d see a tree and I’d describe it as “green and really tall...” So there’s that. I also think that the writing kind of made it difficult to fall in love with the couple. I didn’t totally buy the romance, despite me loving both characters individually. I love the incorporation of different aspects of Indian culture as part of the fantasy elements of the world. I would love more from this story, but as it stands, this is where Maya’s story ends (the next book is actually a companion........). I highly recommend it! (Even though it sounds like I didn’t like it lmao I promise I did).

Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake - 🌟  🌟  🌟  🌟  🌟  = 4/5 I absolutely loved this. First of all, I appreciate that I can tell each sister apart from one another because they have such distinct personalities (Arisonoe is my fave as it turns out even if she has a dumb ass name). It’s a super slow book that basically builds up to the fight to the death (it doesn’t actually happen in this book). I knew that going in which is why I wasn’t salty when it didn’t happen. Basically, we get introduced to the sisters in this book, find out that there are some hella issues going on with their missing powers, and it gave us time to get used to the world all while introducing us to the characters. My number one biggest giant complaint is that I realllllly fucking hate Joseph. He’s an asshat and I hope he dies in book two. Katharine please kill him. There was an unnecessary love triangle lmao like fuck off with that shit maybe. I also hated Pietyr. So basically, the dudes are assholes and the girls are fantastic. Maybe that was the point? This is a matriarchal society so I guess it worked. Highly recommend if you really like politically-driven books and a large cast of characters.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seannan McGuire - 🌟  🌟  🌟  ⭐️   = 3.5/5 The writing is quite calming. Also confusing. This is another one of those far too hyped for me to love in the same way everyone else does. i appreciate the amazing concept and the wonderful conversations taking place in this book about identity, sexuality, gender, and mental illness. However, it was too short for me to really love any of the characters. I certainly failed to connect with the MC and didn’t feel for her anguish. It also left a bad taste in my mouth that the first person to be killed off in the murder mystery aspect happens to be POC when there were like 20 other white kids lmao........ NOT THAT I CONDONE MURDER but why we gotta kill POC for....... Idk. Proceed with caution I guess. 

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe- 🌟  🌟  🌟  = 3/5  This was funny as hell. Basically, it’s about this lady whose name we never really know because she keeps changing it to suit her needs. She was born in a prison, so she’s set up to fail in every aspect of her life bc poor and no family. HOWEVER, this is the story of how she eventually says fuck you to everyone and succeeds anyway bc why not. I read this for class, and I highly enjoyed it. Problems: there were literally zero chapter breaks, random ass capitalization (why must 17/18th century authors do this to me), too many much cataloging of goods (though that was literally the point is to be excessive... I get it... pls stop), and the author basically just said to the plot “GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO” without taking a break. If you like classics similar to Jane Austen (but without the romance part bc she just basically scams all her husbands lmao), I think this is a really good one to check out. 

Thank you, lovely, for reading through this mess of a post. I love you and I hope you have a wonderful February reading month! 

[jackietracks]

so I was actually tagged for like the first time ever I think?? thank you @kerokerobitch you’ve made my day.

1: Are you named after someone?

Well not my first name... My middle name, Diane, was my grandmothers name on my mums side. She died before I was born so I never got to meet her but she sounds like she was a wonderful person.

2: When was the last time you cried?  

This probably sounds stupid but I kind of cry all the fucking time planning out stories. I like to plan out lots of emotional scenes and just kind of end up crying over them a whole bunch. I know I’ve cried this week bc of that. Hell I might have even done it last night.

3: Do you like your handwriting?

It can be pretty sloppy but if I take my time and actually put in like the smallest amount of effort its really clean and I swear it practically feels like a font and I like it a whole lot when its like that.

4: What is your favorite lunch meat?

Dude I ain’t gonna like to you here. None. It’s really never worth asking me about favourite foods because the answer will pretty much just be none.

5: Do you have kids?

No. I’m quite sure I’ll never want kids either which really pisses my mum off.

6: If you were another person, would you be friends with you?

I’m not sure? That’s a really weird question. I mean I’m apparently quite easy to get along with? So I guess I’d at least be able to tolerate me?

7: Do you use sarcasm?

I can’t have a conversation with a friend without being at least a little sarcastic. I’m glad my friends give as good as they get so we can just go back and forth being horrible, sarcastic assholes to eachother for eternity.

8: Do you still have your tonsils?

Yeah. The most work I’ve had done on my mouth has been a few fillings over the years. Never had need to have my tonsils out.

9: Would you bungee jump?

lol fuck no.

10: What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Ok, this is a food one that I can actually answer. I don’t really eat cereal any more but fucking Kellogg's crunchy nut clusters clusters with chocolate are a gift from god himself.

11: Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

No. I just kick those bastards across the room and forget about ‘em. I toss those fuckers off

12: Do you think you’re a strong person?

My physical strength is... weird. Like I feel like I can lift a decent amount of weight without too much issue yet I can’t open a bottle of lucozade? Actually... it really is always lucozade huh? Other drinks are like a 50/50 chance but lucozade, my absolute fucking addiction, I can never ever open by myself unless I use my fucking teeth... weird.

Mentally and emotionally I don’t really know, I don’t recall a lot of my previous thoughts and feelings very well. I can sort of recall highly positive feelings sometimes but anything else is like a swirling void of “these things sure happened huh?”. If I were currently going through a severely distressing situation I’d probably be able to tell you if I felt like I was coping well but right now there’s no distress and I’m in a state of ‘pretty chill’ so sorry fam, idk.

13: What is your favourite ice cream? Ever, ever?

Ok ok, this is another food one I can answer easy. Ben and Jerry’s phish food. I fucking love it. Every time I go to the cinema, they have this fucking stand where the sell fucking Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, I always have that with either chocolate fudge brownie or cookie dough.

14: What is the first thing you notice about people?

I really couldn’t tell you. That’s another thing I can never recall is what I notice first about people. I’ll try and take note of what it is I notice next time I meet someone new.

15: What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself?

I’m still sort of getting over the whole “I’m fat and ugly” thing I was going through for years but the only thing I can really think of is that my hair is really fucking flat? Like, there is no volume to it at all? It really bugs me then when people are like “Oh your hair looks so nice straightened!” because I feel like that’s when its at its worst. I love it when the hairdresser curls it though so I guess its and easy fix?

16: What color pants and shoes are you wearing now?

No shoes and these cute ass Bambi pj bottoms

17: What are you listening to right now?

Arctic Monkeys - Arabella  honestly I fucking love it so much!

18: If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Uhhh? Well purple is my favourite colour so I guess I’d want to be some kind of blueish purple?

19: Favorite smell?

Shit man I am a sucker for lavender. Like every time I go to Lush I have to get something lavender. I remember the first time I ordered from their website literally everything I ordered was lavender scented and my dad went to get the package for me and when he got back the smell of lavender was fucking painfully strong. it was fucking absurd.

20: Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?

I don’t use the phone much, it makes me really uncomfy for whatever reason, but it was probably my grandfather... Yeah, I remember now, he asked me if I had fun when I went to London for Shelter.

21: Favorite sport to watch?

I’m not to keen on sports but roller derby fucking owns.

22: Hair color?

I’m naturally blonde, but like a darkish, dirty blonde, but I got my hair dip dyed purple again on Wednesday and it looks so fucking good!

23: Eye color?

They’re like a kinda hazel green.

24: Do you wear contacts?

No.

25: Favorite food to eat?

I really don’t do a whole lot of eating atm and I don’t like a whole lot of foods but I will chow down on McDonald’s fries for the rest of my life if you let me.

26: Scary movies or comedy?

I don’t really know... I love horror but most scary movies seem to use cheap tactics or just generally be really dumb but I can’t say I’m fond of like pure comedy movies, if its like a comedic action movie then hell yeah. How about just fuck both of those and give me an action movie instead? Or some animated kids movie? That’d be better.

27: Last movie you watched?

I think it was Captain America: Civil War. Spider-man in that movie is a fucking blessing. And Ant-man.

28: What color of shirt are you wearing?

White fucking Bambi pj top to match the bottoms.

29: Summer or winter?

I’d say summer. Its warm and its like the designated relaxation season.

30: Hugs or kisses?

Yes.

31: What book are you currently reading?

I’m like a quarter of the way through Outcast, book 3 in the Power Of Three arc of Warriors. I actually haven’t picked it up in a while. I might get on that later.

32: Who do you miss right now?

Nobody.

33: What is on your mouse pad?

I’m using a fucking laptop.

34: What is the last TV program you watched?

I think it was 8/10 Cats Does Countdown which is fucking excellent by the way.

35: What is the best sound?

You ever turned on a PS1?

36: Rolling stones or The Beatles

No?

37: What is the furthest you have ever traveled?

Spain I do believe.

38: Do you have a special talent?

I say I can draw but I really can’t atm... 

I feel like I don’t talk to anyone enough on here for me to tag them without feeling weird about it so I’ll just tag @aclockworkqueer and @theplumps because I know you both in person so it feels less weird to me so if either of you wanna do this then cool but if you don’t that’s cool too.