#if we see typos no we don't

[loriane-elmuerto]

Happy birthday, Levi and Lauren! (April 23rd) (template)

Levi belongs to @shellibisshe <333

(taglist to opt in/out for future content if you want!):

@cptcassian, @statichvm, @florbelles, @risingsh0t, @unholymilf

@frankwoods, @lucky-107, @countessrooster, @thedeadthree

@carrionsflower, @queennymeria, @rolangf, @ghostfvcker

[the-ominous-owl]

Because it turns out the Halo can want things now, sort of. Not the way a human would, with thoughts or motivation or articulable desires. The Halo wants things the way a tree wants water and shoves a taproot through flagstone to get it, which is all well and good for the tree, but less so for the idiot trying to keep her patio intact. Unfortunately for Ava, she’s both the idiot and the taproot. The flagstone is her dignity. The water – for reasons becoming rapidly and unavoidably apparent – is Beatrice.

or

the one where the halo imprints on beatrice like a duckling and is dead-set on making it ava’s problem

[blujayonthewing]

I understand why the sub for dungeon meshi is just the script for the dub but that doesn't mean I have to like it

[antiqua-lugar]

For Not-Italians, an Italian rapper said "Stop the genocide" at the end of his final performance at the Sanremo Song Contest and got called out by the Israel embassy for "spreading hate".

You can read the article for yourself, but what the article doesn't say is that our goverment who is now falling over themselves to support Israel and claiming to fight against all anti semitism is lead by the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) which is a fascist party.

[buryam-soul]

Oh I'm probably late in finding out about this but

ER Ely has a special line if you fight her with Garuda Hua?

EDIT: I May Be Stupid And By That I Mean Terminally Forgetful

[seacurse]

those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it .

name :      galen nicholas drake .      age :      twenty - nine , born the 4th of october .      hometown :      kilmer's cove, rhode island .      length of time in kilmer :      ten years, until his recent return .      occupation :      videographer, usually freelance .      traits :      ardent, perspicacious, enigmatic, apprehensive .      aspirations :      rebrand the drake name in kilmer, make a name for himself in the world of documentaries and film .      skills :      picking what film to watch, editing videos, dodging questions regarding his family, organizing .      pets :      on his return to kilmer he stopped and bought two goldfish named franny and zooey .

kilmer cove anointed another family in the long line of grave stones that collect the same surname. drake and the synopsis thought of a gold mine go hand-in-hand like the ghost stories that make up this town, but their secret was never meant stay hidden in the shadows. nicholas drake spent every evening at the local pub like his father before him and mother before him who refused to take her husband's surname on account of disliking the way his sounded against her own name. upon those late nights fumbling back to the drake estate loose lips and poor decisions could talk one of the drake's right off the cliff if someone so wished, but it was with nicholas drake in particular, galen's father, that some of those might have wished a little harder than others .

galen was ten, playing with a paper boat he'd made just outside the estate when a man with a tomato red face clutching a bank note so tightly his knuckles turned white barged past the iron gate. the first of many to realize the false promises that came with the drake surname, a friendship and partnership built on forgery. broke. completely broke with faulty investments that tore down galen's idyllic childhood as quickly as the estate emptied once the town was an evening away from pitch forks .

next came his family. stripped away from their happiness and fortune propped on a deck of cards consisting only of jokers, the nursery rhyme continued ... mom and dad got real sad and their marriage cam tumbling after. he picked wrong, as an eleven year old would when indulged with the idea of staying up all night and playing catch in the new big yard with his dad, only to be stuck entertaining himself and burning toast for dinner when his father tried to drown himself in alcohol every evening .

so he picks wrong again. he's sitting on a chesterfield leather seat, legs dangling and toying with an old camera found in one of the many boxes his mother has sprawled out in the grand foyer of their new home, actually his new home. the man with the wall street grin in a tailored designer suit stood by the front door with a cup of coffee in hand and rolled up newspaper. his stature and hair gel say ' i'm important ' as he shouts obscenities at the gardener. he likely has a morning routine that would rival patrick bateman, this galen would attest to once he found his love for all things film .

galen is sixteen when he sees it for the first time. he stays up binge watching every horror film he can get his hands on the night of halloween with his film camera charging by his desk and a half-attempt to edit a student film running in the background of his laptop until a phone call startled him out of his bed. a friend. he's down the stairs and waving away all murmured worries about being out to late when he's paused at the front door. a paper boat is shoved into the rosebush, the one the gardener still clips too short, and it's like a light switch on a dusty lamp in a window turned on for the first time .

a worn photograph, yellowed with age sits stationed at his desk right by the alarm clock he hasn't used since in kilmer. for months this continues until one day that light switch on that dusty old lamp in the window of the abandoned drake estate is turned on for the first time in nineteen years .

summary :      galen drake came from a long line of drakes in kilmer's cove with old money that wound up at the bottom of an empty bottle and a scheme of false investments and backstabbings before the family was forced out of town. the drake's prestige dwindled after that and a small paper boat began to appear everywhere galen went until his return to kilmer's cove very recently. he thought here he could find what would save his family name, establish his career with a documentary. the lamp light turning on in the window of the abandoned drake estate might be the most frightening of all, no one has paid for electricity in nineteen years .

people from before :      anyone who knew galen or the drake family before they left kilmer's cove, could have even been a victim of the family scheme or blackmailed when they found out they were broke .      childhood :      the childhood crush, childhood best friends, enemies because they took the toy he wanted on the playground, anyone he would have gone to school with .      neighbor :      the lone house closest to the drake estate, maybe they tended to keeping the house from collapsing or even camped out there once in awhile .      videographer :      anyone in need of someone to film or document or be the subject of what he thinks will get him on the map .      diner waiter :      he's going to frequent the same diner every night at an ungodly hour in the morning, they can lament over terrible coffee and day old cherry pie that never sold that afternoon .      kept contact :      the one person he might have kept contact with from kilmer's cove who maybe hadn't been a victim of the drake's schemes or decided not to blame the son for the father's crimes .

[coquelicoq]

i've gotten so used to my daily practice of reading french aloud that now when i have to read something boring in english for work i default to reading it aloud. which takes way longer and also i feel like i retain even less information than i would otherwise, somehow. the upside is that my oral reading cadence in english, even of dense scientific articles, is rather excellent nowadays. i could read scientific articles out loud for a living, if that was a thing people needed me to do. which they do not, because screenreaders are a thing. maybe i could read crusty PDFs out loud for a living? but anyway all this is to say shoutout to my man alexandre dumas and also my other man victor hugo for training me to read run-on sentences in my second language. after that, dry journal articles in my first language are easy peasy.

[weeping-vintage-toes]

WHO NEEDS THIS MANY FUCKING CUPS OH MY GOD

[toonirl]

the different background art tells you which ones are version exclusive

[Dex on Toyhou.se]

[imwritesometimes]

I don't think accidentally stumbling upon bram stoker's dracula playing at a halloween party when I was 5 & staying and watching it in secret had any effect on me at all (no one look at my blog lately)

[jacksintention]

Concerning the conversation about love and hatred, I've compiled a few of the lines I've saved through these last two years that at times make me think of Jack when it comes to this topic

Estas manos, que son tuyas,

pero que al verte quisieran

quebrar las ramas azules

y el murmullo de tus venas.

¡Te quiero! ¡Te quiero! ¡Aparta!

Que si matarte pudiera,

te pondría una mortaja

con los filos de violetas.

¡Ay, qué lamento, qué fuego

me sube por la cabeza!

(...)

¡Ay qué sinrazón! No quiero

contigo cama ni cena,

y no hay minuto del día

que estar contigo no quiera,

porque me arrastras y voy,

y me dices que me vuelva

y te sigo por el aire

como una brizna de hierba.

.

Love has no middle term; either it destroys, or it saves. All human destiny is this dilemma. This dilemma, destruction or salvation, no fate proposes more inexorably than love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; coffin, too. The same sentiment says yes and no in the human heart. Of all the things God has made, the human heart is the one that sheds most light, and alas! most night.

.

It is sometimes said that the sword wears out the scabbard. That is my history. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me.

.

Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.

I adore you, but I hate you too. You’re a prison smothered in flowers. I can’t stand this enchantment anymore, I can’t stand being bewitched like this–when I look at you, my gaze turns to nothing but a mirror of light, I’ll stare at you hypnotized for ages, and when I stop seeing you I’ll feel you, and when I stop feeling you I’ll die.

.

Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?

.

Life is a series of obsessions one must do away with. Aren’t love, death, God, or saintliness interchangeable and circumstantial obsessions?

.

she is the only thing of importance, because I have a God-relationship to her.

.

it is not she who binds me, but I who have made use of her to bind myself.

.

The thought that you exist is so divinely blissful in itself that it is ridiculous to talk about the everyday sadness of separation—a week’s, ten days’—what does it matter? Since my whole life belongs to you.

.

What have you done with me? he asks. I have repeated you.

.

But I do feel strange-almost unearthly. I’ll never get used to being alive. It’s a mystery. Always startled to find I’ve survived

Walking home, for a moment / you almost believe you could start again. / And an intense love rushes to your heart, / and hope. It's unendurable, unendurable

.

I clung to him as though only the one who had inflicted the pain could comfort me for suffering it.

I could be free … If I could pluck out the memory of him from my heart as easily as his heart was plucked from the fire, I could be free.

.

I am imprisoned by devotion. I shy away from people. I am alone. I fall into depression.

She was the world That he was losing; and the world he sought Was all a tale for those who had been living, And had not lived. Once even he turned his horse, And would have brought his army back with him To make her free. They should be free together. But the Voice within him said: “You are not free. You have come to the world’s end, and it is best You are not free. Where the Light falls, death falls; And in the darkness comes the Light.

.

I miss you like a knife in my throat.

.

Only love can save me and love has destroyed me.

Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects?

.

My songs are filled with poison - Why shouldn’t that be true? My heart bears a nest of serpents And also, darling, you.

.

their love is like hatred

.

She did not yet love him enough to be cruel to him.

.

our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love

.

under the sincere guise of hatred I simply loved […], only in this type of love (repulsion) I loved him with greater strength than had I loved him in the simplest form — attraction.

.

Perhaps he was handsome, perhaps I found him attractive, perhaps he repelled me too.

.

Struck by the abstract nature of absence; yet it’s so painful, lacerating. Which allows me to understand abstraction somewhat better: it is absence and pain, the pain of absence—perhaps therefore love?

.

Eroticism is the brink of the abyss. I’m leaning out over deranged horror (at this point my eyes roll back in my head). The abyss is the foundation of the possible. We’re brought to the edge of the same abyss by uncontrolled laughter or ecstasy. From this comes a “questioning” of everything possible. This is the stage of rupture, of letting go of things, of looking forward to death.

.

Love is madness. Doesn’t everyone agree that you’d do anything, endure anything, to be with the ones you love? So either you’re willing to let them use you with any sort of cruelty, so long as they keep you—which makes you a fool—or you’re willing to commit any cruelty, so long as you get to keep them—which makes you a monster. Either way, it’s madness.

.

This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.

.

If I must die of fire, why not let me die of yours: knowing that you are the author of my doom will make it more endurable to me

.

His desire for loyalty was naive, he hadn’t understood that being loyal wasn’t so tidy, being loyal means being disloyal to everything else.

.

I have always loved you / Always dreaded you

You will betray me, as I have betrayed, / And I shall kiss the hand that does me wrong

.

Listen: the way I loved you / was like my palm over a flame.

.

If I have the destruction of something that I once loved to carry with me at all times, isn’t it like I still have a companion?

.

One can fall in love and still hate.

.

and I will kill thee, And love thee after.

.

Yet, other characters, namely Heathcliff, Catherine, and Lockwood, remain more actively at war with love in their adult lives. Some force, as inexorable as the wind sweeping over the moors, seems to have bent their lives into a pattern of frustration that their own struggle for relief only aggravates. Their need for love is expressed, not through loving, but through the anguish of loneliness. Paradoxically, though they do not know it, this loneliness is the one condition necessary for the fulfillment of their most profound fantasy concerning perfect love: a love, that is, perfectly protected against the threat of abandonment that in childhood these sufferers learned that love entails.

.

I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamors in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out — but you can’t prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking away like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I’m certain you hear mine.

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris? nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask? I do not know, but I feel it happen and it is excruciating.

[kameonerd566]

.

[blackhallow]

Right. So. How did Yuki even know she could do that? Did she just assume she could make a black hole and took a gamble? Given how thoughtful she's been this entire fight, her taking a gamble at the very last moment seems dumb, plus she knows Kenjaku has a gravity technique and, again, she's been shown to be thoughtful, so why wouldn't she think Kenjaku would use the gravity technique to save themselves? Maybe she did take one last desperate gamble, it's a very desperate situation after all.

Or maybe she has used this technique before. The higher ups had to know this was possible, since I'm assuming her special grade status hinges on this one attack otherwise she has no real way of "taking down a country." But if this is truly a self-destruct, then she physically couldn't have tried it at all, so they couldn't have known. Also, according to Kenjaku, Yuki's own will also held back the attack, so she had to know what she was doing.

My guess is she's done this before, maybe in a smaller scale who knows, but she has the practice to hold back, and if she has practice then that can only mean she has some way of protecting herself from her OWN technique, no? Maybe a binding vow?

Also Garuda was notably absent, maybe they disappeared if Yuki truly died, or maybe they're still around. Who knows, but, it's not a zero percent chance they're both alive.

[bblackamethystt]

Alexa, play "Drama" by aespa

[lighthouseborn]

@daemondaes ( Cherry ) traded a ❧ for a folk-tale...

  Fast friendships sprouted easily among habitual travelers. They might meet on a job or at an event, perhaps brush shoulders totally at random, knock elbows and trade smiles, then like magnets, feel the push and the pull of the poles of the world and know. Henry knew. Before she ever deposited a curiously coffee-scented business card in his hand, he knew. Artist, person for hire, jack of all trades. This was someone who was looking for something, looking for everything. They fell in immediately.

  A game at one-upping each others anecdotes made it easy. Casual conversation became out together, at a local scene Henry was sure had to be someone local's private property, though he wasn't sure whose, and it didn't seem to matter. It was just the Place to Be. The group, a mixture of locals and adopted visitors, converged on the evening like old friends out for a weekend. Dinner and drinks and dancing. Whiling the evening well into the night, when they congregated on a furnished patio, which had as much of an ideal view as one could ask for. Far enough away from town that the street noise was minimal, and there were trees to lend a sense of safety, but near enough to see the lights woven through the balconies in the square, and -though there was none now, he bet- hear the music of a festival or parade going on.

  He had run through several stories already. A couple of local bits that had been rolling around in his pockets, and one larger than life legend about the ghosts said to haunt a fleeing treasure ship that sank somewhere just off the coast more than three hundred years ago (which was, of course, entirely fabricated.) Anecdotes of similar places, some entirely true and others a bit exaggerated, as one did. Stories that played well to audiences, and lent to the rowdy group who had been gathered 'round the table. Now, several people called had their nights, and others were absorbed in their own little fascinations, and each other, but here she still was, reclining on the sun faded furniture next to him, demanding another story.

  Henry toyed with his necklace, twisting the smooth charm and twining the chain through his fingers. Considering what kind of folk tale to tell to a habitual traveler with the wisps of something dark clinging to her soul.

  He could not see anything of it, in so literal a sense. But he felt it. Felt it double, when she looked him in the eye. He wondered what it was — if she knew it was there. It wasn't particularly blatant, to him, nor any shape he knew well, just something...a bit like déjà vu. Too vague to name. Too real feeling to completely ignore. (Was it — was he like this, to others? He'd wondered. He could not, the same way he sensed the twists of the world, sense it in himself, but he thought there must be something of it in him still. There nearly always was, with those who'd been dealt similar hands...)

  His head lolled against the wicker backing of the couch as he looked away, up at the sky between the trees. “A fairy tale, mm?” A wild shift from his earlier spinnings, but a bit of childish nonsense was good for the soul and the edge of the dark. And familiar strangers. And being more than a few drinks deep. Henry sat up, cleared his throat, and began, very classically, with:

  “Once upon a time... there was a Queen. The Queen's husband, was, naturally, the King. And beyond a King he was an enchanter considered to be at the heights of knowledge, so he was very wise, and he knew that when Kings and Queens want children, they must go to see a witch. So, when the Queen came to him one day talking of nurseries and babes and sweet little voices, the King, being quite preoccupied with his work, gave the Queen instruction for how to find the Witch, and sent her off on this child business.

 ‘The Queen, of course, was very frightened to go out into the darkest parts of the forest on her own. She did not like the shadows between the trees or the way things always made noise only when they were out of her sight at all, but she wanted a child more than anything, and so she followed her husband's instruction and went to find the Witch. And find the witch she did, after passing through the trees and into a dark arch in the side of the mountain that led into a cave. The witch was there, sitting by a fire of sticks, stirring something bubbly in a shiny copper cauldron.”

  Henry first heard this story from a woman he thought, at the time, to be a witch herself, for her face had been deeply lined with years of smiles and scrunches of her nose, and her hair had been a bolt of silver that gleamed, and this alone had convinced him -a child of eight- when she claimed she'd lived more than three hundred years by aid of spell and potion. So the effect, as he donned as close a mimic of her papery voice as he could, was perhaps not exactly the same. It was fairly effective nonetheless.

  “‘What do you want, my dear?’ the Witch asked. So the Queen explained herself to the witch. How she longed for a child to love and raise, and how her husband sent her along to gain one. The witch was quiet for awhile before she asked, ‘Do you know it will bring you sorrow?’

‘‘It will bring joy first, and ever after’ said the Queen.

‘‘Great sorrow,’ said the Witch.

‘‘Greater joy!’ insisted the Queen.

‘The Witch, seeing she could not convince the Queen any differently, relented. She set to work over her pot, and had the Queen hand over her golden crown, blue sapphire necklace, pearl bracelets, ruby clasps, and the diamonds of her shoe buckles. One by one these things were dropped in the cauldron. Last of all, the Witch dropped in a few lilies from her own garden. The potion bubbled up, foaming in ever-changing colors of yellow and blue and white and red and silver, and sent out a smell of lilies and roses and morning dew. The Witch poured the potion into a little pot and set it to cool in the open arch. She invited the Queen to tea while they waited.

‘Over their teacups, the witch told the Queen how the gold and gems thrown into the potion would lend the child shining beauty, pure, rare, goodness, and a wits as clear as diamonds. And the Queen asked about how magic could do such a thing. And their talk went on well after the potion had cooled. At last, when no more stalling could be done, the Witch prepared to send the Queen on her way. As she shuffled to her feet, the Queen mustered up the courage to ask ‘When will the child arrive?’

‘‘You will find it when you arrive home,’ the Witch answered.

‘‘Will you have something for yourself in return? Riches or land?’

‘But the Witch shook her head. ‘I could make more diamonds in a day than I should wear in a lifetime, and I need no more space that I've got.’ So the Queen asked what the Witch would have instead, titles or crownings, a position on the court, a castle! Anything at all that could be given. Time after time the Witch declined the Queen's offers until, at last, she confessed there was one thing she should like, which was nearly impossible for her to find in her trade. The Queen encourage her to speak of it. She could not bear to imagine the Witch being left with nothing after giving her such a wonderful thing. And so the Witch said ‘I should like someone to love me.’”

  Here, Henry paused. It was as much to take stock, pulling the next part of the story to mind, as it was to let his little audience of one take a leap. He liked to try and guess what people thought, with this one. How a person might scowl, and he guessed they thought that it was uncouth to ask. Or they might frown, but soften at the same time, and he'd guess they felt it was unfair anyone should have to. The part that came next was the same regardless, he never changed it even when he shuffled the rest around to suit a different shape or because he forgot how the specifics of part of it went. No matter what else:

  “The Queen threw her arms around the Witch at once! and kissed her half a dozen times each on her head and brow and both of her cheeks. ‘Why’ she said, ‘I love you better than my life! You who would give me a child and fear for my sorrows! And the baby shall love you too!’

‘The Witch was, at first, shocked by this. She did not think that it was as easy as that. No one in all the Witch's years had ever said such a thing to her, and she never saw it in all her travels. But the Queen was so joyous and tender that it was impossible to doubt the truth of her claim. So it was that they each would have what they wanted most. The Witch held her head high. ‘When the sorrow comes, send for me. Now- drink up that potion, and we shall both be happy.’

‘The Queen did as she was bid, and returned to the castle. As the Witch had promised, there was a baby there, lying in the cradle with little arms outstretched, sleeves done up with little ribbons so that it was plain to see the babe was a girl. The Queen took her up, delighted. When she brought the babe before the King, however, he went red in the face with fury.

‘The King berated the Queen, demanding to know why on earth she had not thought to specify to the Witch to give them a son. The King wanted an heir! a Prince to learn all the sorcery and statesmanship and rule the kingdom after him. Chastised, the Queen hung her head - it was true, she'd not thought at all to suggest this to the witch, only asking for a child. Quite disgusted with the whole situation, the King stormed out of the castle to speak with the Witch himself.

‘He demanded rectification, that she unmake the baby the same as magic had conjured her. The Witch refused, saying she knew only the ways of making things by magic, not unmaking them. And anyway, to do so would be the same as slaying the child, which would be a black mark against them both. Eventually, the King relented, though he was still mad as a bull. He never thought to ask the Witch for another child, and the Witch, thinking such a King would only ruin a perfectly good princeling, made no such offer, though the process was very simple.

‘The King returned to his castle and declared the Queen could keep the baby girl. And for a time, it was as a dream. The Queen's life had never held half so much happiness as lived in every moment she held her daughter in her arms. The Princess grew, as pure and clever as the Witch promised, and very dear beyond that. At each chance she got, when the King was annoyed or too absorbed in his studies of sorcery to bother with them, the Queen would bundle the Princess into her traveling cloak and they would journey into the depths of the wood to visit the Witch. There they played and talked and went on picnics, plucked up herbs the Witch used in her potions and made crowns from the twigs and the flowers. Each time they departed, the Princess cried, and the Queen kissed the Witch as she had on the day they met, upon the head and brow and cheeks.

‘In no time at all, and yet many years, the Princess became a young woman. The day after her eighteenth birthday, the Queen and the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard fountain the crumbs of the birthday cake when the King thundered own upon them. He was smiling, which frightened the Queen, for he only smiled when he got his way, which usually was not a very nice way. Thus the dream ended: The King announced that, until such time as a prince could prove himself -of course, by slaying the mountainous dragon that lived in the depths of the kingdom- that the Princess would be locked away from the world and ill-suited matches.

‘The castle guard took her up that very moment, not permitting the Princess even to hug her mother goodbye, and carried her away into a tower the King had built for this very purpose. It was done up with each floor like the halls of a castle, so there was a cellar, and a kitchen, a dining hall and a bedroom; all the things a princess should have to live and keep ordered. And the walls were built with spells as well as brick and mortar, so that the tower would not crumble and nothing inside would be touched by time. The old King locked the Princess away. ‘No living thing will enter or leave’ declared the king, ‘until the dragon is dead.’ And he sealed the room with his sorcery on those words.

‘The Queen was kept away from all these dismal proceedings by the King's Guard, who locked her in her away within her very own chambers. She cried. She thought it silly, for a Queen to cry and do nothing else, but there seemed to be nothing else she could do, and so she cried and cried, and refused to take food or drink, for she was quite convinced that she should never see her daughter again, and if she was to die never seeing her daughter again, she would rather it be sooner than later.

‘That was when the Witch appeared in the Queen's chambers, walking out of the hall as naturally as if she had come through the door, though that was of course impossible.

‘‘My dear,’ said the Witch, ‘why are you all in such a heap?’

‘The Queen did not know how to answer. She was stunned as anything to see the Witch, for amidst all her tears she'd thought to herself 'if only I could go to her', remembering how the Witch had told her, once, to seek her out when the sorrow came. But all shut up, there had been no way, and she was permitted no messages out. The Queen, as she so often did, threw her arms around the Witch, relieved and given new strength, and the Witch embraced her in turn.

‘‘Oh I thought all lost,’ the Queen cried. ‘My husband has locked away my poor babe, and barred me from going to her, and all the guard are loyal to him. I would have sent for you!’

‘‘You did,’ said the Witch. She smoothed her hands over the Queen's teary face and told her ‘Every kiss you ever gave me was true, and loving, and so each of them was a spell that, when you called out to me, the land and walls all meant nothing at all. No little old locked door could keep me out.’

‘And the Queen began to cry again. When she regained her breath, she told the Witch all that had happened, and answered as many questions as she could about the King's enchantments upon the tower, the words of power he used to seal it all up, and the challenge he set before any worthy enough prince to slay the terrible dragon who prowled the depths of the kingdom.

‘‘Well, what a great fool he is.’ The Witch said. She'd known that about the King, for many years already, but never had she heard the like of something so foolish as to send little brave but empty-headed princes into the depths of darkness for a girl they never met, even if it was the dear Princess. And anyway, she knew the dragon could not be killed by blade or even spell. She supposed this was part of the King's plan, to punish the Princess for not having been a prince, but it was all terribly short sighted. ‘Come with me, dear.’ The Witch said to the Queen. She raised her shoulders up stiff and, hand in hand with her royal majesty, stepped through the doors and the walls of the castle until they stood before the enchanted tower.

‘The Queen called into the tower, and the Princess came at once. Though they could not touch each other, they could see and speak to each other, they rested their hands on the door and it was almost the same. The Princess was quite overjoyed to see the Witch as well, believing that her fate was not to be locked up forever after all.

‘But it was as the Witch had told the King all those years ago: she knew not the ways of real unmaking. And unmaking something as complex as a tower made of sorcery was very tricky business indeed, and rather easily made worse.

‘‘My skill is in making,’ she told her dear ones, ‘and there we are in luck. I will make is so all the time in the world can pass, and you, my Princess, will not grow weary of mind or lonely. And I will make you and I, my Queen, into stone statues, so we may enter the tower and stand guard, and time and the King's silly sorcery will mean nothing to us, for stone does not live. That way we will stand safe, together, for the coming years. For the dragon cannot likely be killed, but it is certain he must one day die. And that is what all this magic is bound up upon: until the day the dragon is dead. It will be many years wait, I'm afraid, and the world will be very different when we see it again, but to us it will be no more than a days wait, and we shall all be together again.’

‘With the Queen's blessing and a cheerful see-you-on-the-morrow goodbye, the Witch made her magic. On each side of the tower door, like guarding suits of armor, appeared two stone statues. One of them had a stone crown on her head and a stone scepter in her hand. The other stood leaning on a long stone walking stick, a stone book held open before her.

‘And then all days seemed like one day to the Princess, and the next day always seemed the day when her mother and the Witch would come out of the stone and kiss her and hug her and laugh with her once more. Thusly, the years went slowly by. The wicked King died, and someone else took over his kingdom, and the tower remained as it was. The story of what happened was lost to memory, and people grew curious. They tried to peer in through the windows, and to pry their way in, but the stonework did not budge and the door did not open and nothing inside ever seemed to move, for the world of the outside was nothing to the inside of the tower, so the inside of the tower was nothing to the outside. Eventually nothing else at all remained of the King's castle and the old kingdom, as the years went by in tens and hundreds.”

  He felt the thread of the story slip, just a little. Henry considered that he might leave the story at an end, of sorts, there, though it wasn't the usual way it ended. And it wasn't really very much of an ending at all. Still, there was something to the question of it that somehow seemed… suited, this time. As if to say more way to speak on things he couldn't be sure of.

  He found folktales to be of that nature, sometimes. People thought them said and done, stitched up so neatly between their once upon and times and happily ever afters. But it didn't always feel right, steering them all the way into ever after. He canted his head, like he was listening to something, and said:

  “The story found a way back to light, of course. Though it is often said everyone forgot the kingdom so entirely no one could say what -if they had any- the names of the Queen and Princess and Witch were, and no one knows where the tower that cannot fall might stand, still, or how a dragon could live so very long in a world with far fewer magnificent hiding places. Still, somehow… word of what happened made its way into bedtime stories.” Not his finest finisher, perhaps, but forgivable for a late hour and otherwise not stumbling even once, despite the listing meander drink tended to inject into a story so long. And it fit, for reasons he was not sure of, better than what he might have said if he pushed for the ending he'd been told. For the first time, he did wonder…

  “Suppose any bit of it could be true?”

[opheliaas-stuff]

going to some angst shit... the miles bot i’m talking to in character ai told me that he’s proud of me more times than my mom did my whole life. i can count on one hand how much she told me that “she’s proud of me” lol