#ill never actively cape for a company

[gifti3]

the idea that "if we are super nice to the greedy gacha company and beg them to be decent, they will" needs to die

[artbyblastweave]

Team Fortress Two: Parahumans Edition

Like eight different people asked about the specific powers I had in mind for the wormverse iteration of Team Fortress. Here’s the reddit write-up, updated and expanded, now with additional Ms. Pauling and Administrator.

(Read more under the cut; this absolutely got the hell away from me. This is so so long)

The Scout: The Youngest of Nine Brothers, The Scout triggered as a One-upmanship thinker/brute/changer; his power is the manifestation of “anything you can do, I can do better.” He can designate a broad area of human endeavor- usually, the extremely broad field of "athletics"- and, after a few hours of practice, will become slightly more competent at it than the most competent person in his company. Applying this power within his family dynamic bumped him up to about the level of an Olympic athlete. In the company of eight other parahumans his athleticism pushes into the superhuman, allowing him to make impossible standing jumps and run at the pace of a slow-moving car for hours on end without tiring.

Scout is loosely aware of his power, but he isn't aware that he can consciously apply it to anything other than his physicals, and furthermore hasn't caught on to the scaling mechanic at play. This has enabled his Casanova wannabe tendencies, as he subconsciously uses his power to become slightly more socially competent and charming than whoever he's currently attempting to woo. The emphasis, though, is on slightly- Scout’s power is optimized for groups approximately the size of the one that prompted his trigger event. In extremely small groups- three or less- his enhancements, physical, social or intellectual, tend to short out at inconvenient times, and if he currently associates himself with a truly massive group, his power simply doesn’t activate. The defining element is scrutiny- his power is nothing without an audience that Scout, on some level, esteems. 

The Soldier: An anti-GesselSchaft vigilante who was motivated to travel to Europe and attack the group in the mid-90s out of a rabid patriotism mixed with an “End-of-History” Ennui, soldier triggered after his incredibly poorly-planned attack on the group-which went well at first due to sheer dumb luck- ended when he tried to escape from a burning, Nazi-infested hovercraft using a homemade bedsheet parachute. Torn between panic at his impending splattering and his heartfelt conviction that his plan was utterly foolproof, Soldier triggered with a subtle but versatile brute/breaker power that shields him from harm in direct proportion to how bad of an idea his plan was.

The result of Soldier’s power is that an enormous number of incredibly stupid game plans are lubricated and made viable for The Soldier, and only for The Soldier, and never for the reason that he thinks his plan is currently working. His power shields him from the incidental blast damage of using high-explosive weaponry at unsafe ranges, it allows him to blast jump hundreds of yards with only minimal charring, and in addition it’ll shift his weight and density on the fly to make the bad landings less impactful. Blasting a horn to “rally the troops and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies” has limited effect on morale, but it does temporarily render him resistant to the smattering of gunfire now headed his way. Less overtly, it allows him to survive on a diet of expired rations and keep overtly rabid Racoons as pets with no ill effects.

 Soldier survived his trigger event with only a sprained ankle and has yet to realize that his power is more complicated than a simple low-level brute rating; This largely due to the fact that a mental complication of his always-on breaker-state is that he’s literally psychologically incapable of self-critique, and thus always barreling forwards in search of a plan so patently awful that even his power won’t be able to cover the deficit.

The Spy: Soldier was in fact a brute-oriented ping of a more-mature European cape, The Spy, who was also in the Gesellschaft base that day on an unrelated job. The Spy has a stranger power that increases the efficacy of his disguises in direct proportion to how unconvincing they are. The use of a paper mask with someone's likeness on it is sufficient to convince viewers that The Spy looks exactly like that person. Not that he is that person, mind you, but that he looks exactly like them; the effect doesn’t extend to his voice, and shatters if he attempts to do anything that the person he’s impersonating wouldn’t be physically capable of doing.

Unique on the team in that he’s actually very good at mercenary work and spycraft sans powers, Spy triggered midway through his career when a job went south and he was forced to attempt a “knock-them-out-and-take-their-clothes” gambit on a guard with a comically ill-fitting uniform. Spy actively resents his power, feeling that it forces him to make a mockery of his distinguished profession and behave like a boorish amateur, and providing him only marginally better coverage than the ill-fitting uniform should he face real scrutiny. Indeed, Spy is only really effective because he combines his power with a genuine talent for martial arts and sabotage; he got more of a power boost from the access and connections being a middling parahuman provided him than from the power itself, and he benefits massively in the field by being surrounded by a group of massively flashy morons who distract from his flimsy disguises.

The Heavy. A Russian dissident arrested on trumped-up charges of being an unregistered parahuman, along with his entire immediate family. After orchestrating a breakout from a Red Gauntlet internment camp, he triggered  during the grueling trek to a pre-arraigned extraction point, pushing himself to collapse after giving all his rations to his ailing family. 

Misha triggered with a brute power that exaggerates positive input on his body. Eating a spoonful of food meets his caloric needs for a week, eating a normal meal induces an extremely powerful short-term healing factor, consistent low-level exercise makes him strong enough to carry an artillery weapon free-hand, and various medications work positive effects on him almost instantly (in line with his own perceptions of what the medications ought to be doing!) While essentially set for life himself, his power does nothing to meet the needs of those around him; this pushes Misha to throw himself on the grenade as often as possible in order to resolve situations quickly and keep those he views as under his protection out of the line of fire. Misha is a major driver of Scout’s power, and his innate receptivity to medical intervention also gives him good power synergy with....

The Medic. An Implant Tinker, Dr. Humbolt is capable of building almost any kind of tinkertech device imaginable, as long as the device is mostly or completely embedded inside a living person. This includes the normal set of Bonesaw-like durability enhancements, bone reinforcements, organ meshes and the like, but it also extends to more esoteric technologies like teleportation recall modules, internally-mounted skin-tight forcefield generators, and (in one-notable case) rapid onset clone gestation within the target host. 

At one time a decently competent transplant surgeon, the medic triggered after being abducted by Gesellschaft and forced over the course of weeks to try and implant looted tinker tech into other captives. (Gesellschaft had no real expectation that this would work; it was as part of an experiment in causing a tinker trigger.) This culminated in a kludged implant backfiring and vaporizing both the current patients skeleton AND the supervising Gesellschaft doctor; resulting in a do-or-die sense that he either had to come up with something his captors would find usable NOW or get shot to death. He was saved from having to respond to the situation only by the soldier falling through the skylight wrapped in a makeshift bedsheet parachute.

Medic’s power has a surface-level armorfaceyness to it; he triggered because he couldn’t make tinkertech implants and got a power that let him successfully make tinkertech implants. Under the surface, however, his power is laced through with an allergy to respectable, replicable procedure, which he actually valued fairly heavily pre-trigger; he triggered as part of what (he) perceived to be a search for a process but instead got a trigger that let him jump straight to a successful outcome, that he himself has limited under-the-hood understanding of. There’s no process he can figure out that will make his captors let him go; there’s no innovation he can make that can become general industry practice; there’s no way to divest himself from his work. His singularly useful ability forces him to constantly append himself to cape teams that can protect him and act as vectors for his technology, lest someone press-gang him into circumstances similar to that of his trigger event. This has had deleterious effects on his mental health and professionalism; why bother taking shit seriously if it’s almost certain to pan out agreeably? All else being equal, why not do buckwild shot-in-the-dark things with whale glands and baboon uteri? In for a penny, In for a pound.

The Engineer:  Dell Conagher was an early beneficiary of the “skateboard trick” tech boom instigated by the tinkers; prior to his trigger, his small, fly-by-night engineering firm was able to make a small fortune by observing shard-enabled robotics in the field and then working backwards to create extremely advanced conventional prosthetics, automatons and security systems based on observed principles. Unfortunately, a search for funding brought him into the orbit of the nascent Elite; a subsequent falling out lead to Conagher’s remote workshop coming under siege from a group of Elite legbreakers. Rather than a straightforward smash-and-grab, the Elite sent a group of strangers, night-hag-style environmental breakers, and movers, intended to harass Conagher into insanity over days or weeks; the goal was to send a message. They’d unfortunately failed to account for the fact that Conagher was completely insane and had wired his house and workshop to the gills with security countermeasures and booby-traps, resulting in an extended tit-for-tat siege. Although he put up a decent fight, Conagher’s limited countermeasures began to run dry, and he triggered out of fear that he’d overcommitted, that he’d overestimated his own ability to counter parahuman abilities through conventional engineering, and that they were going to take everything that he’d worked so hard to build.

A Siege Tinker. Conagher specializes in building resource-Un-intensive, quick-to-deploy, hardy, easy-to repair defensive emplacements, and emplacements that make it easier to repair other emplacements, such as teleporters and dispensers; his combat specialty is squeezing blood from a stone, lowering the overhead of committing to, or retreating from, a fight. The tradeoff is that he has extreme difficulty expanding the total number of discreet emplacements included in his set-up, having a much easier time iterating upon and gaining razor-thin margins on the performance of his handful of existing devices; working down the alternative tech tree of a weaponized prothesis delayed his progress for years in other areas, and his power curtailed his ability to think about non-tinkertech designs without his thoughts drifting back to his defensive emplacements.  His power solved his inability to defend his valuable work by sharply curtailing how much work he can do that’s valuable enough to need defending.

The Pyro. An individual of imprecise origin and ambiguous gender, The Pyro was Dell Conagher’s business partner, bodyguard, and possibly either his ward or his relative. Noted for never appearing in public outside of their full body protective gear and gas mask; ostensibly related to their work with Dell’s company as a chemical engineer, although it was commented on more than a little that they apparently never took it off. 

The Pyro was caught up in the siege that caused Dell’s trigger event was in charge of running maintenance on Dell's various defensive measures during the seige, both before and after his trigger event, as well as contributing jury-rigged incendiary weapons to flush out the encroaching strangers. However, the stress of playing whack-a-mole refueling the more energy-intensive machines under fire caused them to trigger with a bud from their associate. The Pyro is a shaker with the ability to increase the longevity and energy output of chemical reactions within a certain radius. Pyro is a lowercase t tinker, using an arsenal of makeshift incendiary weaponry only made practical by their power. Their homemade flamethrowers can be fired continuously for hours, and the fires they set burn abnormally long. In their hands, a flare gun or a can of gasoline gains output equivalent to a military firebomb. If they superheat a blade, it'll retains that heat for hours on end. Crucially, their mere presence in a vehicle allows it to run for thousands of miles on fumes. 

The Pyro’s powerset is nominally complementary to that of the engineer; much of his tinkertech was built in conversation with Pyro’s ability to enhance the battery life and fuel efficiency. The downside, though, is that the power induces a Burnscar-adjacent form of delusional pyromania. When using their power at a low burn, Pyro is calmed and mildly elated; when using their power to amp up explosions and wipe away intruders in a cleansing fire, Pyro is both Euphoric and detached from reality. This is because, as a response to Pyro’s immediate situation, the intended use of the power is a knot-cutting, scorched-earth anti-stranger measure, meant to flood an environment with heat that burns hot enough and long enough to scour all life, probably at the cost of whatever (abstract, probably not really worth it) value you were defending that area over in the first place. Anything Pyro does with the power that’s more subtle than that is downstream of their continued attachment to their partner.

The Sniper. The brainchild of an undersea tinker collective off the coast of New Zealand, The Sniper had a rough go of it as a kid. His mother, a callous fermentation tinker, modified his biology so that all of his excretions were violently acidic and lightly alcoholic, essentially making him a bargain bin Newter. Then his father, a propulsion tinker, loaded him into a rocket to see if he'd designed a user interface intuitive enough that a three-year-old could operate it.

He hadn't. At the age of three, Sniper triggered with a thinker power related to calculating the angles and trajectories of moving objects in times of great chaos and stress. His newfound abilities allowed him to merely crashland in the Australian outback instead of plowing into Ayers rock and dying instantly. He roamed the bush as an urban legend until he was adopted by a pair of kindly farmers. Although his power proved almost useless for competitive shooting in a controlled environment, he realized at a young age that reckless, life-or-death attacks on the local wildlife brought out the best in his abilities, and eventually realized that he had the chops to cut it as a mercenary in the States. A loner by nature and inclination, the fact that his power only functions optimally when things have gone to hell essentially forced him into the company of Team Fortress, whose baseline idiocy provides a comfortable cushion for his power.

The Demoman. Originally a competent but unpowered demolitions expert, The Demoman triggered with a bud of The Soldier's power after an ill-advised drinking game between the two of them was interrupted by a surprise Behemoth attack, which Demo was then forced to face with a bad case of alcohol poisoning. Prior to meeting Soldier, Demoman’s life had been defined by aggressive mercenary rigor, inculcated by and shaped in reaction to strict militant parents. He drew firm lines in the sand in regard to his work-life balance, never letting the boisterous party-animal tendencies he formed out of rebellion leak into the strict hours he kept as a mercenary, until Soldier finally wore him down during a middle-of-nowhere-shit-shift. His trigger was thus heavily influenced by a sense that the first time he’d ever indulged himself while on-call had been smacked down hard by a karmically-inclined universe.

In addition to increasing his overall durability, Demo’s Brute/Thinker power causes his aim, courage under fire and overall competence to scale up to superhuman levels based while intoxicated.... and to sap to below what he was capable of pre-trigger when he's sober. His power carried him through the crisis of his trigger event with ease, but now forces him to constantly mix business with pleasure, constantly drinking on the job to maintain any semblance of competence. An additional complication of the power- which took some time to become obvious- is that any information or skills that Demo acquires while either drunk or sober becomes gated, hazy and slippery while in the opposite state, resulting in an almost Severance-like dichotomy of personhood. The sheer amount of personally important events that have happened to him on the job thus encourage Demo to stretch his buzz further and further outside of work-hours, pulverizing his ability to effectively compartmentalize or maintain a work-life balance; turning him into the always-on-call hypercompetent soldier they wanted in a way his still-living mother finds repugnant.

The inaugural Team Fortress lineup was formed in the aftermath of the shitshow at the Gesselschaft base; Soldier, Medic and Spy were joined by Heavy, who had been hired by Spy’s handlers in the EU as a last-ditch extraction option should things go south in the exact way Soldier caused them to. The swath of carnage the quartet generated during their escape both demonstrated their power synergies AND painted them as a unit in the eyes of Gesselschaft and the collective parahuman underworld, incentivizing them to hang together out of self-preservation. After returning to the States following a running fight through Europe against Gesselschaft, the Team picked up The Engineer and The Pyro when the duo hired them for a retaliatory strike on the Elite’s southwestern holdings, picked up Scout while cooling their heels from that stunt in the Northeast, were approached by Sniper after becoming a sufficiently-renowned laughingstock that he realized the potential power synergy, and finally picked up Demo for a gig that required a bomb guy and then just sort of kept him around.

The team became truly untouchable, however, after they picked up Ms. Pauling.

Ms. Pauling is a buck-passing Thinker; She has a PTV-style ability to redirect the fallout, blame for, and censure of wrongdoing; in any given situation, she knows who to throw under the bus in such a way that she’ll walk away clean. She knows what evidence she has to plant, and where, and what steps she needs to take to make sure she isn’t fingered while executing the frame job; she knows what to say, and in what intonation, to make people believe or at least not interrogate her transparently flimsy alibis. Her power works best when actively and intentionally used to someone else's detriment, although it can muddle through if there’s no obvious scapegoat for a disaster besides Ms. Pauling herself. The Primary beneficiary of Ms. Pauling’s power is Ms. Pauling; however, she’s capable of expanding her self-conception to include any organization or group of people she’s reasonably attached to, folding them into her getaway plans. A born company woman, Ms. Pauling labored for years prior to her trigger as an assistant at an international industrial concern whose corporate ethos she truly believed in; she spent years smoothing over scandals and allegations of corporate malfeasance in good faith, only to realize when it was too late that by making her the relentlessly loyal face of the company’s crisis response, her bosses had deliberately maneuvered her into position as a scapegoat when the bottom inevitably fell out and the SEC closed in; her attempts to throw her bosses under the bus using her new power was thrown off by her ingrained subconscious attachment to the company, resulted in her coverup mostly bouncing off and destroying the lives of hapless third parties; this incited a break into moral nihilism on Pauling’s part.

In the aftermath of her trigger, Pauling was recruited by a powerful Cauldron Cape known as The Administrator. The administrator was a Master/Brute who could stave off her terminal illness by visually observing violent conflict; the act of observing the conflict would also increase the bloodlust and durability of all observed participants while also stunting their critical thinking skills. The Administrator used her immense inherited corporate wealth (with which she had purchased the cauldron vial) to funnel dozens of powered and unpowered mercenary teams into pointless scrimmages over utterly useless remote properties through a host of shell companies so that she could feed off their violence via a mass surveillance wall; Team Fortress was one of many teams pulled into the set-up. Pauling was tasked with using her power to cover up the immense corporate malfeasance necessary for the plan to work; she was strung along with the promise that the immense violence was in service of a higher purpose this time. (This was partially true; the op was Cauldron-enabled and guided, with the intention of generating an experience mill for villains and mercenaries.) Pauling fell into Team Fortresses orbit because they both made good scapegoats for her power AND frequently got into jams that the Administrator would order her to get them out of; when the Administrators’ set-up inevitably imploded, Pauling remained attached to the team as an unofficial tenth member for a lack of anywhere better to go.

In the years following the end of the Gravel Wars, Team Fortress has roamed North America as a subdued mirror of the Slaughterhouse 9. Mildly heroic if mercenary in their ambitions, there’s no situation they can’t make worse through their cartoonish disregard for consequences, and no consequences that Pauling can’t find a way to make everyone else's problem. The team maintains a strange doublethink brand-image; they’re small-timers, they’re harmless, they’re clowns, they’re unstoppable, they’ve never failed a job (never succeeded, either.) You don’t want them involved; you want them on your side if they ARE involved. They fight for the highest bidder; they almost always end up fighting the highest bidder; you can hire them, but you shouldn’t, but you’ll only learn that the hard way because thanks to Ms. Pauling the story at the end of each job is never, ever about how the team is a risky hire.

[fatehbaz]

“They never told us these things.”

[O]n 6 August 1998, 10 members of the small Sahtugot’ine Dene community of Deline (Fort Franklin) in the ‘Northwest Territories’ apologized in Hiroshima for the atomic destruction of that city – and the death of over 200,000 civilians – exactly 53 years earlier by a bomb made in part from uranium from their land.

The Dene didn’t even mine the stuff, a role reserved for the all-white below-ground workforce of Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd., placed under state control during World War Two. They were allowed only to help it on its long and winding way, 3,000 miles by river, lake, road and air, from Port Radium on Great Bear Lake to Port Hope on Lake Ontario, where, from 1942-45, the suddenly precious ore – the ‘new gold’ of the atomic age – was, together with ‘Belgian’ uranium from the Congo, refined and dispatched to Los Alamos, the desert lab in New Mexico secretly building the new, city-smashing Superweapon.

The existence of this epic road to hell was unsuspected by the Dene until long after Eldorado stopped mining for radium and uranium in 1960. Beginning in the 1970s, and spiking sharply in the 1980s, many of the men who had handled and carried the ore – and the men who had mined it – began to die from cancer, raising obvious questions about health and safety which soon led in shocking directions. In the 1990s, Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), told a group of Deline Dene there was compelling evidence that the ore that had made so many of them sick had been used to kill vast numbers of innocent people. By the end of decade, Deline was better known as The Village of Widows [...].

The “Dene,” the CBC ‘revealed,’ “were never told of the health hazards they faced, even though the government knew … as early as 1932 that precautions should be taken in handling radioactive materials”. Instead of which, for example:

“Paul Baton, now aged 83, used to lift sacks of uranium ore onto boats. He said workers dressed in casual clothes and uranium dust ” — gold dust yellow — “covered the men like flour.” [...] ‘Paul’ Baton was actually Peter Baton, interviewed by scholar [...] Julie Salverson [...]. Peter’s wife, Theresa, told her: …that when they lived in Port Radium, the women would make tents for their families to sleep in from the sacks that carried the uranium.

The image harrowingly evokes the poverty of the workers, as detailed in a December 1998 article, ‘Deline Dene Mining Tragedy,’ in First Nations Drum:

During the beginning of the war efforts, the mine was kept running at a very high pace, utilizing non-Native miners brought in from all over the country. The Dene were employed as ‘coolies’ packing 45-kilogram sacks of radioactive ore for three dollars a day, working 12 hours a day, six days a week.

This at a time when the ore was worth over $70,000 a gram.

Cindy Kenney-Gilday, a member of the delegation to Hiroshima and Chair of the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee, told First Nations Drum journalist Ronald B. Barbour that the toll taken on “my own home” is “the most vicious example of cultural genocide [...].” “Kenney-Gilday,” Barbour wrote, “who has suffered the loss of her father to colon cancer and brother to stomach cancer, stressed that” [...] because the grandfathers [...] transmit teachings and worldways to younger men and boys, “the loss of these men in the community” has left “too many men” without guides.

The guide to all Dene, of course, is the land itself, and the legacy of the Eldorado era has been to create “a radioactive heartland.” Wrote Barbour:

Over 1.7 million tons of radioactive waste and tailings was callously dumped into and around the lake, drastically contaminating food sources.

In 1998, the Déline Dene Band Uranium Committee released a 160-page, 14-recommendation report, “They Never Told Us These Things.”

In a 2011 article in Maisonneuve, Salverson recounts a community meeting in Deline to discuss the report, “where [non-Dene] lawyers delivered a year’s worth of uranium-impact research from the archives in Ottawa,” revealing that in “the mountain of papers we dug up … there is not one mention of the Dene, your people.”

“The hall,” Kenney-Gilday remembers, “went completely silent. The elders had incredulous looks on their faces, a combination of sadness and anger.”

Nor were they once mentioned in Eldorado: Canada’s National Uranium Company, the official company history commissioned [...] in the early 1980s as controversy grew over the criminal negligence of Eldorado as both as a private and Crown corporation. [...]

In 1999, the Ministry of Indian Affairs and Northern Development appointed a Canada-Deline Uranium Table (CDUT) to investigate ‘health and environmental issues relating to the Port Radium mine.’ In 2005, its final report, while acknowledging “the perceptual link between exposure to mining activities and illness and death,” found no evidence of abnormal cancer rates in the area; it also concluded that the numerous environmental “impacts” and examples of contamination it considered were “not a cause of concern from an ecological perspective.” [...] Most controversially, the “only statistics considered relevant in the determination of cancer were body counts,” with other easily-obtainable, highly-pertinent evidence (e.g. blood and urine samples) excluded [...]. As van Wyck notes, in a 2006 documentary on Deline – David Hennington’s Somba Ke: The Money Place – scientist [...] Dr. Rosalie Bertell argued that relying “on death records alone” effectively killed off the study:

“Yet again,” he writes, “the testimony of their dead has proven insufficient. Once again, the living are passed over in silence.”

-----

Photos, captions, and text published by: Sean Howard. “Canada’s Uranium Highway: Victims and Perpetrators.” Cape Breton Spectator. 7 August 2019.

[kkeidawrites]

That Night

Chp. 3

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Another banquet was in full swing in the next couple of days that the moon goddess had first arrived and once more the same activities from before resurfaced. The sunrays of Asgard minimized to a light hue of yellows and purples, it would soon be night.

Gods and Goddesses, Dukes, Duchesses, Lord and Ladies alike littered the alabaster halls of the banquet hall. Each one dressed to impress, all colorcoded for the theme. How can anyone have so many parties every other day? It’s exhausting to say the least. Just imagine how much the servants had to prepare in such little time, it will amaze you.

This time the party was held in the gardens, overlooking Asgard’s lavish lands of green fields. Men and women rode horseback to play games, others included themselves in a fighting ring while everyone else lounged about and talked.

The food never disappoints and it seemed to never run low. Before your head would turn away from the lavish feast, it would automatically refill itself. Everything looked beautiful, the gold trim that surrounds the white pillars and green shrubbery elongated and twisted in beautiful vines around the pillars and added a bit to the dining tables as well.

For someone who has never been to Asgard and this was their first time they would be enthralled with the beauty of this place; the gold, the alabaster stone walls, the food, the style, the attire. It was like a dream come true. Except maybe a certain, moon goddess, who thought differently.

Mawu was bored. Stupid bored in fact. She was that bored that she had brought along Irawo to the banquet to keep her entertained. And let’s not forget the God of Mischief himself to keep her company as well. How delightful.

They stood at two different tables although it didn’t help the fact that Frigga used her powers to make sure that the tables were at least facing each other and with it she spelled the tables to only allow them to walk to and from their tables.

“Three hours you two,” she told the two as her fingers flexed to allow her magic to filter from her fingertips. “The spell will break once the hours are up, until then why don’t you both talk. Get to know one another.” She gave her charming smile and left the two beings.

“‘Get to know one another’.” Mawu mocked them scoffed in annoyance as she watched Irawo hop around on the table.

Mawu saw that there was no point in trying to break the All-Mother’s spell and occupied her time playing with Irawo; Loki in the meantime was doing everything in his ability to break his mother’s spell. From time to time you would see the illuminated green light of his spells.

Mawu feeds Irawo another carrot and the chunky rabbit munches it down, greedily and wiggles his nose in Mawu’s direction, happily waiting for the next carrot to be given to him and the goddess smiles.

“Sorry, Irawo. I don’t want you to pass out on me and go into a carrot coma,” Mawu teases and the rabbit stomps his foot.

“No more carrots right now, okay?” She watches as the rabbit begins to groom his head aggressively to show that he was unhappy. Mawu shakes her head and placed a hand under chin as she watched the festivities unfold.

She couldn’t believe that she had to stand in this one spot for the next, now two hours, and not be able to move anywhere. Mawu so desperately wanted to go horseback riding, and use swords against the opposing team. Hell, even the fighting ring looked appealing. It was much more entertaining than stand here and be bored.

“Damn it.” She hears Loki sigh out in frustration and looks to her right to see the green wearing God cross his arms and lean against the table in frustration.

“Having fun over there?” Mawu teases and Loki glares at her.

“I thought we agreed to only tolerate one another until you left Asgard.” Mawu rolls her eyes and turns back to Irawo.

“You spoke to me about it. I didn’t agree to ahem, tolerate you. As long you don’t bother me I won’t bother you.” Mawu tells him and Loki grits his teeth.

Irawo turns to Loki and wiggles his nose, sniffing the air and his gold eyes noticed the carrots on Loki’s plate. He squeaks and jumps from the table making Mawu gasp.

As he landed on the grass, Irawo uses his paws to groom his face once more then used his nose to snif around the area then pounces over to Loki’s table.

“Irawo! Come back!” Mawu calls to the black bunny, who promptly ignored her and began pawing at Loki’s leg to have him pick him up.

“Heh, little mongrel.” Loki reluctantly picks up the rabbit and placed him on the table where he quickly grabbed a carrot from his plate and proceeds to eat.

Mawu sighs heavily and moved over to Loki’s table to look down at the rabbit. She placed her hands on her hips and glared, disappointed at the bunny.

“I said, ‘no more carrots’.” Mawu said and watched as the rabbit takes a lettuce and eats that just as quickly as the carrot.

“You would refuse your pet food? How cruel of you, I thought you were the Goddess of Knowledge and Wisdom, shouldn’t you know that everyone has the chance to eat?” Loki says and Mawu frowns in annoyance.

“I am trying to limit him from eating so much, he had dinner less than an hour ago and the snacks I had was his snack. Breaking him of this, won’t allow him to limit what he eats.” Mawu says trying to pick up the rabbit but, Irawo squeals and moved over to Loki, the God of Mischief barks out a laugh in victory and Mawu glared at him.

Irawo snuggles his muzzle into the God’s hands and Mawu crosses her arms.

“Fine, stay here with him then.” Mawu pouts as she returns to her table and takes a sweet bun and begins to chomp on it, annoyance written all over her features.

Loki grins triumphantly and scratches under the rabbit’s chin to have his foot stomp in pleasure of the scratches.

“Well done, little hare.” He praises the furry creature. “Well done indeed.”

The next two hours went by excruciatingly slow and Mawu breathed a sigh of relief as the feeling of restraint on her body lifted off of her.

Stretching her arms, Mawu sighed and looked to Loki’s table to see the trickster playing with Irawo. He dangled the silk rope that held his cape against his back, above Irawo as the rabbit hopped to try and grab it.

It would seem that she didn’t need to keep an eye on Irawo and Mawu hopped that Loki wouldn’t do anything to her little friend. Not sensing any ill intentions towards Irawo from Loki, Mawu made her way over to the stables where the horses were being tended to for tonight’s parties and approached a stablemate. She could see that all the horses were gone and prayed that at least one horse was still available.

“My lady we unfortunately do not have any available horses for you to use.” The young male stablemate told her and Mawu pouted a bit.

“I guess it can’t be helped-” The sound of neighing turned Mawu’s body to watch as two stablemates that could be strongmen in the circus back on Earth, hold the reigns of a large black unicorn. It tussled with the reigns it was bonded in and pulled on it to make the men stop pulling it.

The unicorn neighed in anger and stomped the ground to force the men to drag it. Mawu was amazed at how big it was and seemed drawned to the unicorn.

Mawu felt her feet move as she approached the mystical being. The stablemate watched her in perplexed fear and reached out to stop her.

“My Lady, you mustn’t approach him!” The stablemate stepped in front of her making Mawu stop and look down at the young man.

“That colt was bred by a demon horse and ever since it has been a struggle to keep it under control. It won’t let us come close to it and we have to use force in order to control it-”

“Him.”

“M-My Lady?”

Mawu glared at the young man.

“Do not call him, ‘it’ he is a strong horse and surely calling him out of his name does little to gain his trust.” Mawu says as she walks past the man and continues her travel to the two bigger men.

The one on the right holding the unicorn’s reigns turned to Mawu and fear lit up in his eyes as the Goddess continued to approach the horse, who reared back in effort to be released from his clutches.

“My Lady, please stand back! He’ll kill you!” He warned but Mawu stops and turns to the two men.

“Let him go.” Was all she said.

“But-But, My Lady-!”

“Let. Him. Go. Please.” Mawu says again, still watching the unicorn who began to huff out angry air from his large nostrils. His green and gold eyes glared at the goddess and stomped his upper left hoof in anger.

The two strongmen looked to one another and then released the reigns taking several steps back readying themselves for the horse to begin to buck and cause havoc around the stables.

The unicorn did indeed rear back on its hind legs and Mawu watched him intently, being mindful of his hooves. Once the horse returned to all fours, Mawu raised a hand out, her palm facing the horse who huffed out another angry snort.

Trotting around Mawu, the Goddess didn’t let up from her spot, her hand still out, waiting patiently. Her plan was to allow the unicorn to relax around her and let him come to her. Let him trust her in his own time.

As the unicorn calmed, he nods his head up and down, snorting the last of his anger out and trots over to Mawu. He sniffs the back of her head and then nibbles her neck, making the goddess stifle a giggle. He then moved to the left side of her face and sniffs her some more. All the while the three stablemates stared in disbelief. They have been trying to get close to the unicorn for the past two months and the moon goddess was able to allow him to get close to him in less than 30 minutes.

Mawu showed that she wasn’t a threat to the unicorn and her calming aura allowed the horse to calm him down.

The unicorn then nibbles on her raised hand then sniffs it. Taking a step back, the unicorn looks in the goddess’s eyes and sees that he was indeed not in danger and hesitantly allows his muzzle to press into her palm.

Mawu gently rubbed his muzzle then moved her other hand and scratched under his chin. The unicorn neighs in delight and moves his head closer to receive more scratches.

“What is his name?” Mawu asked her eyes still trained on the unicorn.

“H-He d-does not h-have a name.” The youngest stablemate says and the unicorn neighs softly.

“Hmm....how about Gbekele?” Mawu asked the horse who unexpectedly nodded his head, then nibbling her scratching hand.

“My-My Lady, do you p-plan on riding him?” The young man asks the goddess.

“He still does not trust me, I do not think he would let me ride him.” She says and grabs the unicorns reigns, leading him to a stall. As he approached the stable Gbekele began to trot in place, fear returning to his eyes as Mawu did her best to calm him down.

“Gbekele, please calm down,” she tells the beast but, it rears back in terror making Mawu release his reigns.

“Lady Mawu, stand back!” Her eyes cut to the left and she sees Thor and two more stablemates come rushing into the stables.

“No! Don’t come any closer!” She tells the men but, they seemed to not hear her as the four stablemates run past her and try and grab the reigns of the beast. Gbekele rears back and neighs in anger.

Mawu felt his aura become more and more confused and his anger rose tenfold.

“No, please! Don’t touch him!” She yells to the men who once again either ignored her or didn’t hear her. One man was able to grab the reigns and another grabbed the back of his bridle. The horse rears back in anger and begins bucking. The unicorn spins in a circle as he continues to buck and Mawu was unfortunately close enough to luckily miss the hooves of the horse, make her stumble on her feet and fall hitting her head on the large salt lick.

Mawu couldn’t open her eyes anymore and allowed unconsciousness to take her.

A few minutes prior to the accident...

With Loki

Growing tired of playing with the rabbit, Loki sighed and looked around the area at the many nobles. He was insanely bored and he honestly wondered where that little moon goddess went. Now that he thought about it, he never realized how beautiful she looked tonight. For someone who is undeniably insufferable, she was a beautiful woman. Loki twisted his fist under his lips and felt his cheeks flush.

Yes, he thought about her, and what of it? She was beautiful, headstrong, and she spoke of war games like a veteran. She was perfect. If anyone offered her hand in marriage she would make a great queen. He didn’t know what it was that kept making him follow wherever she went, but, he didn’t want to stop.

It was fun messing with her, and mess with her, he shall. He wasn’t named the God of Mischief for shits and giggles.

He saw she had went to the stables and decided to check there. Not wanting to leave the rabbit, he used his powers to make Irawo disappear and made his way to the stables.

As he grew closer to the stables, the sound of shouting and a horse grew louder. Something inside of Loki made him begin to feel a sense of worry in the pit of his stomach. Walking closer, a yelp of pain was heard and by the time Loki turned the corner to enter the stables his eyes widened at the scene unfolding before him.

A black unicorn was stomping his hooves in the hay based ground being held by the reins by three men and Thor and a younger man was helping up a smaller body up from the ground. Loki’s eyes looked where the body once was and his green irises noticed the blood on the salt lick and then his eyes traveled to the one person he has been looking for this evening. Mawu was cradled in his brother’s arms bleeding profusely from the head and Loki phased over to his brother’s side.

“What. Happened.” Loki gritted out as he glared at his brother.

“A stablemate came over while I was in the fighting ring and told me that Lady Mawu was in trouble. I wrangled a couple more stablemates and I saw that Lady Mawu was trying to tame the beast but, it reared back and made her hit her head on the salt lick.” Thor explains and Loki takes the goddess in his arms and gently turns her head to see the extent of damage. He then stands up, while carefully holding the goddess in his arms. Her head landed on his chest, her lips were close enough to his neck and he held in a gasp from the sensation.

“I will take her to the medical clinic,” his eyes turns to the slightly calm unicorn that huffs in Loki’s direction.

“Get rid of that beast. I don’t want to see it in any stables of Asgard.” Loki says and a green light allows the God to disappear from view.

Arriving at the medical clinic, Loki kicked the double doors and called for a physician. Not a second later, a woman in grey robes came rushing towards him and she saw the injured goddess in his arms.

“Place her here, your majesty.” She instructs, pointing to a cot and Loki carefully set Mawu down moving back to allow the physician to do her job.

Loki didn’t know what to do. How did this happen? Why did he allow this to happen? Loki moved the cloud of hair she possessed and held her cheek.

“Thankfully, her wound is not severe,” the physician says making Loki look up at her.

“I will have to monitor her for the rest of the night.” She continues and Loki nods.

“Keep me updated on her well-being.”

“Yes, your majesty.” She bows and Loki uses his powers to disappear.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

The God of Mischief slams the doors of his room open and stomps over to his bed, plopping down in anger. Why was he so angry? He didn’t even know. Or perhaps he did.

He was frustrated about seeing her that way, but, then again why did he care so much anyway? Running his hands through his inky locs, Loki sighed in irritation then used his powers to allow Irawo to reappear. The rabbit snuggles into the side of his thigh as soon as he was released then squeaks.

“Your mother is in the clinic,” he tells the rabbit and the creature tilts it head. “She was hurt. How she handled the situation was so reckless of her!” He ranted to the rabbit as the furry begins to groom his head.

“She should have realized that that beast was unruly and she goes and gets hurt anyway!” He continues as he stands up and begins pacing, ranting still.

“She’s such a insufferable, uncouth, bratty, disobliging...beautiful, caring, degnified woman.” Loki’s rant slowly turns and he returns to sitting on his bed sighing with his hands folded in his lap. Irawo squeaks and Loki casts a spell and hands the rabbit three carrots. It happily eats the treats and Loki grins wryly.

“At least you are a better listener than Thor, then again I wouldn’t go to him with my problems, he’s just as insufferable as the Goddess.” Irawo squeaks once more as if agreeing with the trickster.

“You’re right, he is much more unbearable. My mistake.” He scratches under the rabbits chin and then thinks about the well-being of the moon goddess. Hoping, praying she would be alright.

Something like this was unfamiliar for the God of Mischief but, perhaps it was finally melting his frozen heart.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Ch. 1⬅️

Ch. 2⬅️

Here’s Chapter 3 enjoy it! Like, comment, reblog and be sure to ask me anything in the inbox.

See you guys!

[writing-to-ms-eyre]

Magpie! Fae Boyfriend

A/N: Sorry this took long! Anyway, hope you guys had a nice holidays. Here’s to a new year. Hope you like this sweet birb, this is a bit more casual

word count: 1.4K

sfw.

— 

One for sorrow, two for joy...

Your hands are cracked and dry, and your knuckles sting as you clench your fist around the handle of your watering can, exposed to the morning air yet to be warmed by the sun. 

The gentle stream of water pools at the base of a lettuce plant, all bright and green. It darkens the soil and the smell, akin to rain hitting the fresh ground, brings a small smile to your face as the memory of the long dry period of mild winter echoes faintly behind your eyes.

Getting up early to tend to the garden is a routine you are still trying to get used to. Normally, your mother, who had the greener thumb between the two of you, looks after the extensive garden. It consisted of a greenhouse and the majority of the backyard, that once could have been mistaken for a typical suburban space if it wasn’t for the lack of proper enclosure, and the fact that it seamlessly connected itself to a glade and then the forest beyond. It certainly gave the illusion that your mother owned the biggest garden in the world.

Much to your chagrin your mother begged you to spend the entire spring and summer to house-sit for your former childhood home.

“Don’t blame me if your plants die, Ma.” 

Your mother waves her hand dismissively. “Just take out the small planters from the greenhouse every morning, water generously but—”

“Don’t flood it, if the soil is moist then don’t water it. Take it back to the greenhouse at the end of the day, but when it’s windy take it back early. Weed out some plants, if you’re not sure, leave it. Clean the garden beds, rake the front yard. Yep, I got it.” 

She pats your cheek as the both of you walk towards the taxi, her bag lugging behind her.

“See? You’ll be fine.”

“But you’ve got plants that have these weird, specific needs! What about that zucchini, that I need to manually pollinate?” You found yourself out of your element. Living the last decade in the city, a concrete jungle as opposed to your old home edging an actual woods, made you feel ill-suited for the job. 

“No need to worry about that. Think of it as practice!” 

“Practice for what?” Your mother is already in the taxi before rolling down the windows to yell out as it begins to drive away.

“For when you have children!” 

“Ma!” 

It wasn’t like you hated children. You just didn’t have the time for it. In fact, the longer you lived in the city, the more you felt that you didn’t have the time. Aside from work dominating your schedule, it was also the fact that you are painfully single. 

Having put off any thoughts of dating to pursue other things is not something you regret, however. You were determined and focused, prioritizing what you thought that needed to take precedence and it took all your attention. You were proud of your decision.

It’s just that by the time you wondered whether you should attend to your nonexistent dating life or not, you were already embroiled too deeply with work, potential flames have long since died out, and was too tired to drag yourself after work to even grab a drink and wind down.

Maybe this change of scenery would finally give you that opportunity to learn how to relax. But the primary problem still persists. 

“At least, you guys won’t yell at me for being too slow with the paperwork.” You murmur to a group of planters, all cloistered on a shallow, plastic tray. As you were about to exit the greenhouse, a squawk startles you. 

Just a few metres in front of you, a little bit to your left, a bird lands on a low pot of a lemon tree. 

A magpie. 

It is the same one that visits you everyday.

Every morning, when you take out a tray of seedlings from the greenhouse, a squawk calls for your attention. Initially, it kept a wide berth from you, so far that you didn't even realise it was observing your morning activities in the garden. The first time it decided to show itself, you treated it with a careful respect, wary of its beady eyes that never seemed to leave you.

Neither of you wanted to get close, nothing less than ten feet. But remembering how its species had the tendency to dive-bomb passerby’s during Spring, you decided to extend a token of friendship in the form of bread. At least, to let it know that you mean it no harm, just space for you to do your gardening in peace.

It took three days until it got close enough to accept your offerings. Now, you are both content to live and let live; you tended to your garden and the bird is comfortable enough to land on the ground to search for grubs. 

In fact, this has somewhat become some sort of a routine. You wake up every morning then you hear it cooing from a nearby branch before its feet patter gently on the slightly damp soil.

“Morning fella, slept well?” You greet. It caws back in reply. 

It tilted its neck as to observe how you gently raked the soil before laying on new seeds. It, he, hopped a little closer (you could now deduce it was in fact a ‘he’ judging by the white patch of feathers on his nape unlike the light gray of its female counterpart). It wasn’t long before its feet started scratching the soil before clumsily falling on his feathered back as it tried to mirror your action.

“Helping me are you? Thank you.” You laugh lightly. “I’ll bring out some mince meat as a special thanks.” 

He squawks again in reply.

On a particular hot afternoon, you spy a black and white ball of feathers dive into the shaded portion of your garden. You peer out to see your friend with his beak parted open, obviously affected by the scorching heat.

You hurriedly fill a bowl with chilled water and braced for the wave of heat as you exited your cool home.

“Here you go buddy.”

“Thank you.”

What?

A flurry of hot wind, leaves and feathers whip past your face. Instead of your feathered friend, in his place is a man you’ve never seen before. His beady eyes became pure black scleras, his hair a beautiful, glossy, albeit disheveled mixture of black and white that fall pass his waist. Black feathers receded from his chest but the ones on his back remained, greatly resembling a cape of midnight feathers. Sweat glistens on his skin as his black tongue snaked out to lick his dry lips.

It instantly occurred to you that a fae is currently dehydrating in your garden.

“Thank you.” He says at your shocked face. His clawed hands reach out meekly towards the plastic bowl.

“Wait!” He immediately retracts his hand.

“Uh. I… Will you come inside?” He parts his lips. You are both surprised by your invitation considering the general mistrust between humans and the fae. But there is something not right letting a fae drink out of an old, plastic ice cream tub. “It’s cooler inside… and I have mango juice?” 

And a proper drinking glass.

His feathers ruffle and he smiles. “Yes, I will.”

Instead of reaching for the plastic bowl, he gingerly takes hold of your hand. If you trust him, he trusts you. Your cheeks flush and you lead him inside.`

If he means you harm, he would have done so ages ago. If the goal was to enslave your mind, he could have easily done it after thanking him for helping you plant seeds.

And there was also the fact that he thanked you. And he had done so casually and easily.

Besides, it’s difficult to imagine him as the monster everyone paints his kind to be when his eyes are closed, gleefully sitting in front of the air conditioning, the cool air blasting a relieving reprieve from the punishing heatwave. In his hands, an empty glass of mango juice, and it seemed that he had no intent of letting go.

“Would you like some more?” His eyes lit open.

“May I?”

“Yeah of course.”

You refill his glass quietly and you feel his gaze bear down on you.

“May I come back again tomorrow?”

“Don’t you every morning?”

“...as this?”

He trusts you to show you his current form again.

“As long as you help me plant my sunflower seeds first.”

He beams and nod furiously.

You laugh. “Then I better make some biscuit too then.”

Plants are fine company but he’s not too bad either. And maybe, he’s even better.

One for sorrow, two for joy...

[emy-loves-you]

Sanders Sides AU-gust Day 20: Single Parent

Logan needs a nanny to watch his 3 sons. Patton wants to take care of kids. Sparks fly and chaos ensues. Patton POV, logicality with creativitwins, familial Intruprinxiety and dad!Logan Ages: Logan(37), Patton(35), Remus and Roman(7), Virgil(10)

Day 19 | Masterlist | Day 21

Patton smiled at the cheery tune the chimes played as he stepped into the cafe. He checked his phone again to reread the email he had been given just a few minutes ago. He said he was sitting at one of the tables wearing a black polo, blue tie, and glasses. Patton fought back a giggle as he scanned the tables. This reminds me more of a blind date than a job interview- there he is! Patton quickly made his way over to the small table in the back of the cafe. His potential employer was hunched over his phone, reading an article of some sort. Patton stopped when he was a foot away from the table and spoke up. “Mr. Sanders?” The man’s head shot up, and Patton fought down a blush. He had assumed that Mr. Sanders would be an older man, in his late 40s or early 50s. He didn’t look a day over 30. No time for gay panicking! Patton fiddled with the sleeves of his cardigan. “I’m Patton Hart. The one applying for the nanny position?”

Mr. Sanders nodded. “Of course. Take a seat.” He gestured to the seat across from him and Patton sat down eagerly, trying not to let his nervousness show. As far as Patton was aware, he basically already had the job, and this was just a customary interview to make sure that Patton didn’t lie about anything in his application. Still, Patton couldn’t help but fear nervous. Patton tried to ignore his anxiety and focus on what Mr. Sanders was saying. “So, Mr. Hart-”

“Please, Mr. Hart’s my father. Call me Patton, please.” If Mr. Sanders noticed the was that Patton nervously tugged on his cardigan sleeves, he didn’t say anything.

“Patton, then.” Patton smiled appreciatively. “Would you like to order a beverage before we begin?” Mr. Sanders used his coffee cup to gesture towards the front of the cafe.

Patton blushed. “No thank you. I tend to talk more with my hands when I’m excited or nervous. I’ve learned from past experience to not have hot drinks around when that happens” Patton used his head to gesture towards his hands as he spoke, which were gesturing as he spoke.

Mr. Sanders gave him a look before continuing. “Alright. I will go over your application and ask a series of questions. If you feel as if a question is too invasive, please let me know.” Patton nodded, and with that, the interview began. “Patton Sanders, 35 years old. Raised in North Carolina. According to your previous employers, you’ve done extremely well with children in the past. You’ve dealt with kids at almost every age. You’ve been shown to successfully perform both the Heimlich Maneuver and CPR. You have also been employed as a tutor and have multiple years of volunteer work at shelters and public schools. It says here that you recently moved here a few weeks ago. Are you intending on pursuing any other job while employed as a caretaker?”

Patton shook his head. “The original offer you gave should be enough for me to afford my apartment.”

Mr. Sanders blinked, and Patton suddenly felt like he’d done something wrong. “I’m afraid there was a communication error somewhere. Allow me to clarify: you would be staying in my house while working for me.”

Now it was Patton’s turn to blink. “What?”

Mr. Sanders frowned, adjusting his glasses as he spoke. “I am very dedicated to my job, Patton. Sadly, my job requires me to have extremely flexible hours. It would be incredibly redundant to have you stay from 8 AM to 5 PM, then have to hire a sitter from 5 PM to 11 PM. There would also be several benefits on your end. Unless you started using an excessive amount of food or utilities, you would not have to pay for food or housing. You would be staying in the guest bedroom, and you would have every Sunday off, which is my day off as well.”

Patton rubbed the back of the neck sheepishly. “I think I remember reading that in the advertisement, but I assumed it was less of a requirement and more of an option.”

Mr. Sanders steepled his fingers as he stared at Patton. “I apologize, but it would be necessary for you to stay in the guest bedroom in order to ensure that my children have constant adult supervision. If you do not wish to be employed, I completely understand-”

“No!” Both men were surprised by Patton’s shouting. Patton blushed as he continued. “I still want the job, I just didn’t want to waste your living space if it was optional. If it’s mandatory then I’ll take the room. I’ll just have to wait for my lease to end in a few weeks.”

Mr. Sanders nodded. “Alright. Next question: why do you wear your cardigan around your neck?”

Patton smiled. “I don’t get cold very easily, but I always have my cardigan on me just in case. Besides, it makes me look more friendly and fun. Kids like to call it my superhero cape!” He struck a dramatic pose, and he felt a surge of triumph when Mr. Sanders' mouth quirked up slightly.

They went through several more questions before Mr. Sanders smiled, holding out his hand. “I believe you would get along well with my children. I understand that you would like to wait until your lease ends to move in, but I would appreciate it if you start a daily shift on Sunday. I will be there to make sure that you interact well with them. Does that sound satisfactory?”

Patton nodded, shaking Mr. Sanders' hand. “Sound’s like a plan, Mr. Sanders!”

“Please, call me Logan.” Patton smiled as he heard the name. Logan. It’s fitting.

“Well, Logan, what are your kids like? I was given general ages and names, but nothing else. What are their favorite colors and activities? Any allergies or disliked food? Any mental illnesses, disorders, or sensitive topics that I should know about?”

Logan took out his phone and showed Patton the lock screen. It was a photo of Logan with three children. Two identical twins posed in red and green respectively, while the third child looked slightly older with a baggy purple hoodie. “The twins are Roman and Remus, 7 years old. Roman always dresses in red, while Remus dresses in green. They both have extremely vivid imaginations, and they get upset when you don’t participate. Roman has some confidence issues, while Remus suffers from intrusive thoughts from time-to-time. Virgil is 10. He’s almost always wearing that hoodie. He says that his favorite color is black, but it’s actually dark purple. He has been known to suffer through anxiety attacks, and he tends to have trust issues towards strangers. Virgil prefers to be left to his own devices, and music tends to help when he’s stressed. The twins tend to find amusement in pulling pranks on Virgil, though he does not appreciate the sentiment. They all enjoy watching Disney movies and all have artistic talent. There are no food allergies to speak of. All of them were closed adoptions, so I would appreciate it if you don’t bring up their birth parents. That is all you should need to know before you meet them.”

Patton smiled as he listened to Logan describing his kids. It was clear from the tone of his voice that he deeply cared about his kids. “I’m sure they’re lovely. I can’t wait to meet them!”

Logan nodded, moving to stand up. “I assure you they’re just as excited to meet you. I’ll email you my address.”

“Oh, wait!” Patton reached into his pocket and pulled out an ink pen. He then grabbed a clean napkin from the table and scribbled his number onto it. He handed the napkin to Logan. “Here’s my phone number. It would be best if we have each other’s numbers in case of an emergency.”

Logan took the napkin, and Patton suppressed the shiver he felt from where their fingers met. “I’ll be sure to contact you with my address as soon as I get home.”

Patton blushed, moving to leave. “Alrighty then. See you on Sunday!”

Logan nodded. “Farewell.”

Patton smiled before hurrying out of the cafe. He quickly drove to his apartment, not stopping until he was inside of his (soon to not be) home. He gently caressed his own fingers, blushing as he remembered the electricity he’d felt from their fingers touching.

Patton shook his head, but the grin and blush he had never faded. “Logan Sanders.” He whispered to himself. Patton then tilted his head curiously. Logan Sanders…where have I heard of that name before?

Patton went over to his bed and pulled out his laptop. Search: Logan Sanders. Patton flipped through several websites until he saw Logan’s face. He quickly clicked on the article and gasped.

Logan Sanders, 37 years old, was just appointed as the CEO of Logic Tech two months ago. That’s where I recognize his name! I can’t believe he works for Logic Tech. Isn’t that the same company that he used to work for?

Bzzz.

Patton slammed his laptop shut, suddenly feeling like he’d done something wrong. Was this technically invading Logan’s privacy? It was an article that Patton could easily access at any time (he was pretty sure he’d read it before), but did that mean it was okay? Was Patton in the wrong for searching for Logan’s name?

Patton’s phone buzzed again and he nearly threw his laptop. He tried to calm his racing heartbeat as he checked his phone.

?- (4:13 PM) Salutations. This is Logan Sanders.

?- (4:14 PM) Is this the correct number?

P- (4:14 PM) Patton Hart here! You have the right number

L- (4:14 PM) That is good

Patton was then sent an address.

P- (4:15 PM) You want me to start on Sunday, right? What time?

L- (4:15 PM) 3:00 sounds amenable. Since it is my day off, you won’t need to be there in the morning.

P- (4:16 PM) Alrighty then! I’ll see you on Sunday!

Patton smiled as he turned off his phone. He was going to meet the children on Sunday! And seeing Logan again would be a nice bonus.

[kitaychan]

White Flame

Chapter 4

Rating: M

Warnings: Blood, Psychological Horror

General Summary:  Royal/ Magical AU. As their two Kingdoms get closer to a war, the past keeps on hovering around their choices. Prince Ivan has a hard time controlling his magical powers while being tormented by a mysterious ghost and Prince Alfred embarcs in seeking a revenge that might cost more than it’s worth it.

Preview:  Arthur tried to delay the crowning ceremony, he didn’t want to go through it, it was a horrid setting, the black dresses and the long and exhausted faces of the attendants made it worse. When he walked through the crowd of people, his heartbeat quickened, the silence that engulfed the scene was broken horribly by his footsteps and instead of feeling like the soon to be king in his crowning ceremony, he felt like walking the corridor to his execution.

A crown and a clock.

Arthur was accustomed to his life in the palace.

Tutoring the twins and keeping them company while the king was away was quite easy. He had been bitter at the beginning, deeming the task as a babysitting activity but the peacefulness when Alfred behaved and Madeline played the piano was something he didn’t have back home with all his brothers’ fuss and fights.

In the gardens, he heard the hem of Madeline's dress rustling against the bench while Alfred ran around them claiming to be a knight, the current obsession the young prince had. Arthur smiled at the sight of the fourteen year old liveliness, he hoped that this time Alfred would stick to it instead of abandoning his classes as he had done before, the boy didn’t seem to have a long- lasting vocation. Arthur was disappointed, Alfred showed more interest in the fencing practices than the magic lessons he offered him, after all the magic ran in the family but it was futile to teach the prince if he refused.  Madelaine on the other hand, was so diligent that Arthur was delighted, she’d be able to chant complex spells in no time, her attentiveness and carefulness were compatible with her curiosity and kindness.  

The warm and cozy scene was broken by the galloping of several horses and Alfred’s shouts, the boy ran excitedly to the palace as he heard the clicking of metal and hard footsteps. All that noise could only be due the King’s return.

He followed Madelaine to the entrance, a bitter taste crawling in his mouth when he observed the knights surrounding the entrance, one of them stopping Alfred in his tracks, telling him to stay away. Arthur stepped up to them, a single glance outside confirmed his fears, the horses had returned but there were few men left, the king was nowhere to be seen.

The twins were taken away by a maid, while Arthur was surrounded by courtsmen and the few soldiers that returned. An emergency meeting was held, taking the rest of the day as well as some part of the night, the King’s death was confirmed and the details for the following transition into the next monarch and the current defeat were arranged. Arthur had to sign a poorly done treaty, giving out territories to the enemy in order to assure peace. The only detail missing was that Arthur had to be crowned for the truce to be legitimate.  

The ceremony was going to be quick and solemn, after all, they had to save their respectful duel for the deceased king. Arthur stood still while some servants dressed him, not daring to glance at at them. He’d never admit it, but he was secretly scared and ashamed of his recent promotion if one could call it like that. He tried to not to worry too much about the situation but being told out of the blue that he was to take on the King’s duties until the prince was old enough to do so, were the kind of news that one had to take a week to overcome. All he was given were thirty minutes of breakfast and the resounding cries of two children when they got the news of their father’s death.  

Arthur tried to delay the crowning ceremony, he didn’t want to go through it, it was a horrid setting, the black dresses and the long and exhausted faces of the attendants made it worse. When he walked through the crowd of people, his heartbeat quickened, the silence that engulfed the scene was broken horribly by his footsteps and instead of feeling like the soon to be king in his crowning ceremony, he felt like walking the corridor to his execution.

The smell of incense made him dizzy and the feathery cape they put on him made him sweat. When the crown was placed in his head, he felt chills running down his spine. It was heavy and cold, he wondered if the late king had passed through something similar or if it was just him over analyzing the scene. Arthur tried not not think about it as it reminded him of the fate of the later king. They said it was a coincidence but it took a bit of curiosity and some questions to the soldiers to figure that it wasn’t only an unfortunate conflagration. Fire and ice at the same time were strangely rare and the dimensions of both were suspicious. Arthur was sure magic had to be involved, the question was what kind of it.

The only certain thought that Arthur had at the moment was that everything would change from now on. The predicament that tormented him was if it would change for the better or not.

---

Arriving to his homeland seemed like a fairytale to Ivan, seeing the outlines of the palace from the city entrance was surreal after such a long trip, the sight filled him with ecstasy.

They were received by a cheering crowd, they had returned victorious from a foreign land and for a moment, Ivan let himself be rejoiced by the sudden glory of it; staying back in the city instead of going straight into the palace alongside his father.

The evening went smoothly, the tired soldiers reunited with their families, the citizens offered a feast, unknowingly sharing it with their prince and for what seemed like a short span of time, Ivan felt himself at ease, not caring about his royal duties, his lessons or his father. What would he do? stand up from his illness and drag him back into the palace?

The soldiers seemed to forget about his title, treating him as they would treat any other comrade, offering him the same warmth as they did to their fellow friends. Ivan found himself integrated within the group, they sat alongside, devoured the meals and shared the wine until one of them started to sing.

It was only at that moment that Ivan understood he wasn’t supposed to be there, everybody joined the song while he just stayed there, drinking the awful beverage they called wine. The situation bothered him for a while but a couple of women served him another of those fermented liquors that made the whine seem like the greatest delicacy of the world. He pondered on throwing it away but the warm feeling it gave him made him change his mind.

The night came before Ivan could realize, the people arranged a campfire and some musicians started a simple tune, some gathered around the fire and started a festive dance. He was dragged into the crowd, not bothering much to follow them as the dizziness made him clumsy, not that it mattered as most of the soldiers were worse than him.

The dance was abruptly broken with the arrival of a carriage, Ivan trying to return to his sitting spot without tripping didn’t seem to register the scene until he was forcefully dragged into the carriage. Panic overtook him as he tried to ask for the help of the silent observers, reminding them that he was their prince.

He kept struggling until he met the face of her sister, growing embarrassed of his foolishness.

She crossed her arms glaring at him.  “I can’t believe what you did.”

He looked down, the situation was stupid, he couldn't help but laugh at the display of strictness from his sister. “Katya, what are you doing here? why did they drag me into the carriage?”

“You are drunk!” she exclaimed, furrowing her eyebrows and frowning.

“I am not… that drunk.”

She shook her head. “I won’t talk to you like this. You will go to sleep and we´ll talk tomorrow at first hour.”

“Fine.” Ivan wasn't stupid enough to talk back to Katya when she was displeased, but seeing her frown and give him such disapproving glance made him realize how similar she was to their father.

The silence was bothering him but he was too mortified to keep on talking with her, leaning against the carriage’s window and feeling his eyelids heavier with each second, he let himself drift out to sleep accompanied by the galloping of the horses.

The next day, Ivan woke up with a horrible headache and an overwhelming sense of dread. He had to force himself to be present at breakfast.

At the table, Katya sat with her brows furrowed. “What were you thinking?”

Ivan sighed, taking a seat. “Good morning sister, I am happy to see you too.”

She set aside her fork and scolded. “What is wrong with you? Everyone knows it was you, you stated it quite loudly last night, everyone is talking about it. What do you think Natalya and her family are going to think?”

A plate was arranged for him to eat, alongside some water. Ivan took a sip and  dismissed with his hand. “They’ll think that I got drunk with the rest of the soldiers, which is not wrong. That wasn’t the worst thing I could have done last night, Katya. Anyway, is not like they are going to draw back from the compromise, they did not care when I explained that I was disgusted by it.”

Katya gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “What has happened to you? you spend some time with father and return like a completely different person.”

“How is our father doing?” Ivan glanced at her sister before picking at his food.

Her behavior softened considerably. She moved away her food and looked away from him. “Not well, he keeps saying that the conquest is not over, that we must not sign or accept any peace offering”

“Well, in that he is right. why should we negotiate if we won? I don’t think that’s how a war works.”

She shook her head and raised her voice, her eyes pleading. “Vanya, you have to listen to me, while you arrived, there was a crowning ceremony in the west. The new king has sent a request, to end the conflict. It’s a good deal, convince father of accepting it. It’s enough bloodshed for now.”

Ivan glanced up to see her sister looking intently at him. The idea of talking with their father wasn’t attractive but he’d do as she wanted. After all, going back to another battle wasn’t something he wished to do. He nodded at her.  “I'll try.”

---

Ivan entered the room in silence, trying not to upset the figure resting on the bed.

He sat carefully in the chair that he supposed Katya had moved, meeting those familiar cold eyes that always glared at him, before he could talk, the king started.  “I heard you spent some time with the soldiers.”

“Father, I'm here to talk about something else. My doings in the city are not of importance.”

His father scoffed. “Of course they are. I know what happened, Katya told me everything.”

Ivan frowned, how cruel could Katya be, sending him right into the beast’s fangs.

“Ivan you are old enough to understand that your actions have consequences. What will people think when they see the next king, not only with the peasants but drunk?”

“If this is about Natalya and her family, I assure you they won't care.” Ivan said crossing his arms.

“Of course they won't Ivan,” the king laughed. “My sister will see that you marry her daughter no matter what. I couldn't care less. What I am talking about is the people that matter, like the other princes we've just barely defeated or those from the western kingdom whose king you killed.”

Ivan straightened his posture, fidgeting with his fingers. “Father-”

“Do not interrupt me. You have to get this through, you have a reputation to maintain, you can't show weakness because the moment you do so, they'll attack you. You think you'll win the respect of the one's left in the firebird by sharing a feast? What we'll do from now on is to feed their fear. You saw what happened back there, that Ivan will be the key  to maintain the order or to lose it. If they fear us, they won't fight back.”

Ivan leaned forward, looking down. “About that... they already surrendered, father. We have to rearrange administration and gain back the resources we spent. Signing the peace is the most sensible choice.”

The king sat up, raising his voice. “No, we won't I have to finish this, it is necessary. You are not capable of doing such thing.”

Ivan pushed him down again, not hiding the annoyance of his tone. “Father, you have to rest.”

“No, I can't. I will rest when I die,” he said, prying off Ivan’s hands from him. “This has to finish before you take over the throne. I won't die peacefully knowing that it'll be you doing it. Your mother will kill me.”

Ivan sighed, lowering his voice. “Father… I am sure that mother would have agreed to the treat, she disliked conflict. She'd like me to have a peaceful reign.”

“You Idiot, how dare you use your mother's memory like that,” the king fumed. “that's exactly what I am trying. Why do I have to bear with your useless rambling. Don't waste my time. I… Ivan, what time is it?”

“It’s four past five.”

His father glanced around and questioned. “Where is it? What have you done with it? I won't pass that clock to you, give it back.”

Ivan rolled his eyes and stood up. “I don't know father. It's clear to me that you deem me unworthy of the family relic.”

“Where is it? What have you done?” the king cursed, his tone grew desperate, some servants entered and Ivan stepped back, frowning at his angered father and shrugging.

“Idiot! Where is it? What have you done? Why, why does this have to happen? Not again, this can't happen again. Ivan, what have you done? Where’s Katya?”

His father's shouts were appeased when Katya entered the room and retrieved the clock from the nightstand. The scene made Ivan glare, no matter what, his father would always blame him for everything, even stupid things like this.

Once outside, Katya was scolding him for torturing their father.

Ivan walked hurriedly through the corridor. "It isn't my fault that he has gone mad."

Katya followed his pace, lifting her dress to take longer strides. “You should have told him it was there.”

“How could I if he doesn't let me talk?” he argued.

“Did you manage to convince him?” She whispered.

Ivan stopped, shaking his head. “Katya, just sign the treaty yourself or I will. Father won't last long anyways.”

She gasped, fear crossing her face. “How can you say that?”

“Katya, at this point we are better off without him.” He admitted, looking down after the words left his mouth.

“Ivan!” She warned looking around the hall.

“He won't know unless you tell him,”Ivan murmured. “Sign with his name, you have his seal. If he somehow gets the news blame me for it. What will he do? Execute his successor? The rest of the kingdom approves your plan.”

Katya gasped but stayed silent probably pondering on the idea.

Ivan walked away, trying to evade the blue eyes judging him from above, perhaps he could convince Katya to finally burry that haunting gray wolf.

[vellaphoria]

Tim (not Red Robin) owning a cape!

“I kind of want to ask, but I don’t think I want to know.”

Tim runs the edges of the cape through his hands, pulling the kinks out of the fabric.

“What,” he asks, turning to Dick. “You don’t get the reference?”

In the mirror, the cape’s reflection swishes along with it. A few tufts of cheap black velvet shake loose and drift to the floor. One ear of the plastic Batman mask Tim is wearing is longer than the other.

The look Dick gives him tells Tim that the question won’t be dignified with a response.

As if he can talk.

It isn’t that Dick didn’t put a lot of time into his costume. He definitely did. But the red wig, green lipstick, and gauzy, see-through leotard barely covered with leaves where it counts…

Well, the paparazzi’s going to have a field day with that one.

Tim just shrugs. The cape shrugs with him. Around the ill-fitting, plastic mask, he growls, “because I’m Batman,” in his best approximation of the Batsuit’s synths.

Dick, to his credit, almost doesn’t laugh at it.

And then almost immediately doubles over, done in by laughing.

“He’s actually going to kill you. You know that, right?” he manages to get out between bouts of it.

“Oh, I know. But I have to do something to get back at him for trying to bench me from patrol.”

That sobers Dick up.

“Tim,” he starts. “Last week you forgot to take your meds and literally almost got sepsis. You should be happy we’re even letting you go to this.”

Tim scowls at him. He hopes Dick appreciates exactly how unhappy he is with this entire development.

“This is why I never come home.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Between one breath and the next, Dick is right next to him, hugging him. Tim’s face gets crushed against flimsy gauze and toned muscle.

Eventually, Tim resigns himself to his fate and hugs back.

“Calm down,” he mumbles against Dick’s chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dick squeezes him a little tighter. “Good.”

Tim lets him have it, but after a minute he pushes away. Better to extract himself before Dick can go full octopus mode on him.

“Come on,” he says, “we’re gonna be late.”

Dick’s smirk is the only warning he gets before he’s being lifted up into the air, into a bridal hold. The cape hangs freely, brushing against Dick’s legs.

“Really??” Tim asks, letting his head fall back in exasperation.

“Really.”

Tim groans. Dick presses a kiss to his forehead, still smirking.

“Besides,” he says, lips moving against Tim’s hairline. “Ivy carrying Batman? Please tell me you have someone on retainer to take a picture of his face.”

Tim… has to concede that point. He’d thought the picture of his shitty costume would give Bruce an aneurism, so he’d talked Tam into bringing her camera. But Tim’s shitty costume, combined with being carried in by Dick…

Well, the company’s guests will all have a good laugh. So will the civilian-clothes vigilantes who are going to be in attendance, but they’ll be laughing for an entirely different reason.

“Yeah, fine,” Tim relents. “But only until we’re in the room. Got that?”

Dick smiles. There’s something adorably triumphant about it.

“Sure thing,” he says, nudging open the room’s door with his hip.

The next morning, Tim emerges from a safehouse that’s both inexplicably on the other side of Gotham and, even worse, has a doorway facing the rising sun.

He squints against the light, his head pounding. Silently, he swears to himself that he’s never drinking again. Or at least not until he and Wayne Tech’s R&D division create some sort of instant hangover cure through the power of chemistry and possibly magic.

That said, he nearly trips over a package on his way to get the newspaper.

Huh. Tim bends down, inspecting the area.

Once he’s sufficiently confident that there are no traps that’ll activate if he moves it, he picks it up, tucking it under one arm. The newspaper he rolls into a tube, shoving it, too, under his arm as he locks the door.

First, he walks through the apartment to the bedroom, tossing the newspaper in a graceful arc. It lands on Dick’s face with a firm smack.

The headline reads “WE Halloween Gala,” but the really interesting part is the nearly full-page picture of Dick and Tim’s entrance to the party. They took the shot at the perfect time, too. In the picture, Bruce is mid-turn. He has a single eyebrow arced incredulously. His drink is halfway between his hand and the floor, and people who know him outside of his corporate playboy persona will understand that particular quirk of his frown to mean that he’s frustrated he can’t catch it before it hits the ground. Or, batman could catch it. But Brucie Wayne could never.

The groan of a very hungover man creeps out from under it, adding emphasis to the very interesting front page cover.

“Mission accomplished,” Tim says, leaving Dick to the process of waking up with a splitting headache.

He takes the package to the hidden workshop he keeps behind a false panel in the hallway and gets to work.

Fifteen minutes in, he’s determined it isn’t a bomb and doesn’t contain any recognizable poison There is no return address, but the safehouse’s address is written in flowing, familiar handwriting.

The recipient is listed as “Timothy Drake.”

With a resigned sigh, Tim reaches for the nearest batarang-turned-boxcutter. It’s sharp enough to split only the tape open, leaving the box undamaged.

He flicks open the lid. There’s a note on top, written on what looks like high-quality recycled paper. It reads:

‘While your attempt at fashion is refreshing, your approach lacks a certain verve. It is my hope that this will remedy the situation before we next meet.’

Which. Seriously?

Tim tosses the note across the workbench and tips the box over. What seems like miles of green fabric spill out of it, the fabric sighing as it brushes against itself before landing in a pile on the table.

Tim picks it up.

Unfurled, Tim finds himself holding what looks like a cape made for someone his size. It’s aggressively green, with gold embroidery all along its edges.

Somehow, Tim isn’t even surprised.

The workshop’s door opens, and Dick steps through. He’s put on pants and a shirt since Tim last saw him, but his eyes seem bleary as he takes in the scene in front of him.

“…what.” Dick says. It isn’t a question.

“Someone saw last night’s news,” Tim responds, distractedly. The fabric quality on this thing is insane. Can’t have been cheap…

“Is that from – ?” Dick presses.

“Apparently.”

Dick takes a step towards the workbench and picks up the discarded note. He gives it a once-over before crumpling it in his fist.

The look he gives Tim is appraising, then proprietary.

“… please tell me you’re not actually going to wear that?”

Tim only laughs.

Later, he tries it on anyway.

He doesn’t want to know how Ra’s got his measurements.

[thosewhoharvest]

Self-Sufficiency in the Time of Pandemic

With the current path that we as a planet are on, the facts are becoming increasingly obvious: times are going to get tough, in many ways. Climate Change warning flags, such as rising temperatures, more numerous and intense natural disasters and struggling ecosystems; and problems particular to the human population, such as resource depletion and the current COVID-19 outbreak we are currently facing; make it pretty clear that from here on out, humankind needs to be resourceful in order to survive.

We are busy going through something unprecedented in human history – there have been pandemics and widespread outbreaks before, but never has the world seen such a huge human population, nevermind one which is so interlinked across the globe. When you think about it, getting anxious during these times is only a natural and somewhat necessary response. But once one’s head begins to clear and the reality of the global situation sets in, the important questions begin to emerge: How am I going to look after myself and those I care about?

The measures we should all be taking to “flatten the curve” and slow the spread of the virus in time for healthcare systems to cope – physical distancing, washing our hands, and isolation, are all symptomatic responses to the current crisis. Don’t get me wrong, they are extremely important to how the pandemic unfolds, but I believe we should also be looking further down the line into the future. The world as we know it is changing before our very eyes, at a pace which is frighteningly tangible, and this pandemic is showing us a few key points, which can now no longer be denied:

We live in a global society – whether we like it, or not. This means that we ultimately need to work together, and respect our place in the collective human species, taking the rights of others to heart.

We are painfully dependent on ageing systems which are designed with profit as the key component, not necessarily human or planet welfare. Capitalism has engulfed all spheres of our society, to the point where the very things we need in order to survive – food, water, shelter and medicine, are turned into mechanisms through which we, as “consumers” can be drained for financial gain.

Our international leadership is largely inadequate and, whether on purpose or due to bureaucratic red tape, slow to act and respond in our time of need. Many countries have seen their governments refuse to react to the pandemic sufficiently, meaning that it wasn’t contained when it should and could have been, and as a result things have gotten much worse.

There are good (as in, really really good) everyday people out there who are willing to put their lives at risk to help others. Cashiers, paramedics, janitors, farmers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and many other overlooked professions are in fact the real heroes in this situation – and not the CEOs, directors or owners of companies. Without those who keep our society running through the day-to-day necessities, things would begin to crumble real fast.

Pandemics can affect everyone, regardless of their demographic. whether directly or indirectly, when something like this happens, it affects you – regardless of who you are. Stock markets and currencies are beginning to crash, companies are closing down, borders have been shut, and lockdowns are taking place. Things like these have far-reaching effects, which can be felt everywhere.

That being said, the planet can feel them too – just a few weeks of decreased human activity can lead to huge environmental improvements such as less pollution, returning wildlife and cleaner waters. This is just a little “sneak peak” at what is possible if we change our ways and try to live more harmoniously with nature.

Once this particular chapter of history subsides, how do we protect ourselves – personally, and on communal and global levels from similar things in the future? Ultimately, they are unavoidable and bound to happen again, be it in a different way or form. Once we accept that there are elements we cannot control, we can begin to look at what can be done to minimise our own suffering, and that of those in the same boat as us, at the hands of such disasters.

Look After Yourself: Strengthen That Immune System

This virus might subside, but chances are that it will be back, or another will take its place soon enough. So you need to fortify your body’s natural defences in order to give them the best chance of fending off such things. This boils down to one thing: keep healthy. Organic fruit and vegetables bring none of the poisons or chemicals that conventional produce carry with them, and often contain more vitamins and antioxidants. In particular, things like garlic, chillies, ginger, broccoli and citrus fruit are great turbo-chargers of the immune system. The fresher your food, the more nutrients it contains, and the better it is for you – so avoid canned or prepackaged produce where possible.

Local is Lekker

In South Africa, we have a saying that “Local is Lekker” – it essentially means that what comes from nearby is great; and it couldn’t be more on point or relevant than right now. By choosing things from local suppliers, businesses, farms, and organisations, you are not only decreasing reliance on the transportation system, but also “voting” with your coin against multinational corporations. Of course, the more local you can get, the better – ultimately, you should aim to be growing as much of your own food as possible. For some, this may mean growing a basil plant on their balcony, for others, perhaps a bed of tomatoes and garlic in their garden. Do what you can, with what you have. We recently began offering food garden design, consultation and establishing services, so if you are interested, please do contact us. Otherwise, support your local farmer and get to know where your food is coming from – it is a great step in not only learning how it’s grown, but also in becoming aware of what you are eating and how it reaches you. We deliver weekly boxes of our fresh organic produce to people nearby every week. Read more about or boxes, or order here.

Water is Life

Without water, we’re in trouble – just ask any Capetonian about the struggle. Having narrowly missed day zero, we can all attest to the importance of this liquid in our lives. Ensuring that you have a good supply or reserve of clean, drinkable water is of utmost importance. Setting up rainwater and dew harvesting can be done extremely easily and fairly cheaply – whether using small tanks to catch rainwater from gutters, catching your bathing water to water your garden.

Take Shelter

If you are among the lucky who have a good roof over their heads, take a moment to appreciate it, and consider how you can improve your dwelling. If there were to be a nearby disaster such as a flood or fire, how would it hold up, or perhaps instead, what is the contingency plan? If you are looking to set up a home somewhere, how can you construct it in such a way that it requires as little new resources as possible, and makes use of what is around? Small changes, such as using natural building materials, simple designs or even just taking note of the prevailing wind can have rather big impacts on a home, and are often overlooked.

Avoid Blackout

Technology plays a huge role in our lives – beyond communication and business, we rely on it to keep our food cold, light up our homes, drive our vehicles and make our stuff. All it takes is a little “Stage 2 Load-shedding” from your friendly neighbourhood power supplier to remind you how dependent we are on it. Although going entirely off-grid is becoming cheaper at a rapid rate, it is still largely out of the financial question for most people. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take certain smaller measures in order to reduce your reliance on the grid. Depending on your financial position, you can take various steps – install a solar geyser to get electricity-free hot water on tap, buy or make simple solar lamps to light up your house (it’s really easy – look it up), sell your fridge and replace it with a gas alternative, or even just put together a little solar oven (we made one out of an old window and some planks – it cooks brownies like a charm!).

Wash Your Hands

Keeping things clean is a must. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that stockpiling toilet paper and hand sanitiser is necessary. Firstly, that just creates a shortage (do you see the self-fulfilling prophecy here?) and secondly, if worst came to worst and all the toilet paper in the world were to run out, you could use water like the entire continent of Asia is still largely doing after centuries). What is important is finding a way to maintain good hygiene and prevent illnesses from coming into your home and body. The good news is that soap, hand sanitiser, shampoo, and even general house cleaners are really easy to make with very simple, cheap and biodegradable ingredients. Good friends of ours, Guerrilla House, hold frequent soap-making workshops in Cape Town, and there is a plethora of online resources which can teach you how it’s done.

All these steps, however small they may be, add up and create a ripple effect, which although may seem immeasurable, can grow into a huge wave, given the right tide. So my advice is this: prepare yourself. Don’t freak out about the toilet paper, and don’t panic in general. But take time to think about how you can reduce not only your financial and environmental footprints, but also your reliance and dependence on the systems that surround you. And when you do need to depend on them, do it consciously and with full understanding and awareness of the implications it has. Be selective about how you “vote” with your spending – support those near to you, both geographically and socially speaking, and in so doing help build the network of interdependence we all need in order to survive. Because if the governments of the world aren’t going to look after all of us, then we will do it ourselves.

– Nevau, one of those who harvest

[thdorkmagnet]

For the First Time in Forever (Star is Anna AU)

Summary: A series of one-shots and multi-chapters proving why Star Butterfly should be considered a Disney Princess, as Star and company take over the roles of all your favorite Disney Princess characters! (Starco inevitable)

Check out my other stuff on Fanfiction! 

Disclaimer: Star vs and all its characters are owned by Daron Nefcy and Disney. Frozen belongs to Disney. All rights go to their respective owners.

"Meteora!" Star yelled into the blizzard, her voice quivering as her body shook from the freezing chill. She slowly trudged her way through snow bank after snow bank, while the heavy, numbing wind tried it's best to freeze her in place. Still she pushed her shaking form on, trying to focus on finding her sister, instead of the biting chill that had frozen everything from her toes to her face. "Meteora! Meteora, where are you?!" She screamed, her breath fogged and her breathing labored, every step heavier than the last. She ran her hands up and down her arms trying to create some form of warmth but never with any success. It didn't help that she hadn't changed before foolishly deciding to face the elements on a long trek through the countryside meaning she was still wearing her regular sea green dress, purple and orange leggings, and purple boots, none of which had equipped her for the cold weather, only the thin velvet cape she had been given provided her any sort of warmth, but even it did very little against the freezing wind. 

"Ugh, look I'm sorry okay!" Star tried again, quickly losing patience with her sister and her very problematic powers. "I shouldn't have said those things! But you were being difficult!" At her raised tone, another chill jumped down her spine, making her body shake even more. "I mean," she quickly backtracked. "We both made mistakes so maybe please come out so we can talk about this?"

There was no response and Star merely shivered and began muttering under her breath, "Stupid snow. Stupid Meteora. If she had just told me about her powers instead of exploding out of nowhere than none of this would be happening. But noooo she just had to lock herself away and keep secrets from me." Star sighed, hurt crossing her face for a second, before she tripped over a branch hidden in the snow and fell flat on her face. She quickly sat up, yelling to the sky, "Ugh why did it have to snow?!"

How had her day turned around like this? Today was supposed to be amazing, today was supposed to be special but not like this, it was supposed to be the best day of her life. Instead it had turned into one of the worst and it was all because of her sister's secret. The blond picked herself back up, her body now covered in snow as she continued through the blizzard, her body shuddering more and more with every step as she thought back over the events that had led her to here.

…

For about as long as Star could remember she had been alone.

Sure for the first several years of her childhood she had had her sister to keep her company and play with. Meteora was always so much fun and she could recall all their good times together like they were yesterday. Even though Star was a few years younger than her, Meteora was always so nice and helpful to her needs, playing with her and being there for her whenever she needed her and Star cherished those memories more than anything. She could still remember waking her sister up in the middle of the nigh to drag her outside and build a snowman for no reason other than she wanted to and her sister willingly complying, smiling and giggling along with her as they stayed up into the late hours of the night.

Until one day, Meteora locked herself in her room and never came out. At first, Star thought she was just sick and after a week of waiting for her to get better and asking her parents as many questions about what was wrong with her as possible (only to ever receive a vague answer), she realized that her sister wasn't ill, she just didn't to leave her room for some reason.

That was when Star had changed tactics and had began a daily ritual of knocking on her door and begging her to come outside and play with her, listing every activity she could think of to get her to agree, only to either be ignored or turned away. But Star was not one to quit so easily, she stayed persistent hoping to spark some kind of reaction out of her other than rejection, and as her boredom and loneliness grew, so did her desperation and determination. Still nothing worked and so Star spent most of her days laying around the castle trying to entertain herself and fight the losing battle against her greatest nemesis: boredom.

On top of that, she wasn't even allowed to leave the castle, the gates which once stayed open were now closed and sealed tight. Her mother and father were always busy, the few servants they kept in the castle kept to themselves mostly, and Meteora... well she was just a lost cause.

And it stayed like this for years and years until Star was convinced that this was just the way it was, this was just her life. She stopped knocking on her sister's door, most of the time avoiding her wing of the castle altogether, because as much as she tried not to let it bother her, it hurt every time she knocked and received no answer other than a short, “Go away, Star!”

In fact the very last time she had knocked on her sister's door at all was the day of her parent's funeral.

They had announced that they were leaving on a trip and would be gone for two weeks. Star had been sad to see them go, but was used to being alone by now so it didn't really bug her that much that they wouldn't be there at the castle. She could still remember giving them each a tight hug and saying brightly, “See you in two weeks, guys!”

It was a few nights later when she received the news that her parent's ship had sunk. She had been devastated, her entire world shattering around her as she struggled to cope with the loss of her beloved mom and dad. And in her lowest moment imaginable, feeling empty and broken and so lost she felt a massive weight on her chest that seemed to be pressing down on her making it difficult to breathe, she had gone to the only person she had left: her sister Meteora. She knocked only once, fighting back tears as she begged one last time for her to come out, telling her how much she needed her and how she was there for her and to please not shut her out and just let her in. But when she received no answer Star had just collapsed against the door, crying and weeping, no longer able to hold back the pain and sorrow she felt coming to her in waves. But as she wept she could almost swear she heard soft sobbing from the other side of the door, and there was nothing she could do about it.

A few more years passed until at last Meteora was 18, finally old enough to take the throne. Star (now 15 years old herself) was ecstatic about her sister's coronation day. Cause with that day promised the thing she had been dreaming about for so many years... the gates would open. And with them would come a flood people, not just from town but from their surrounding kingdoms and after the ceremony there would even be a ball to celebrate their new ruler's rise to the throne.

Star had been giddy, telling her favorite paintings (so she talked to pictures on the wall, so what?) all about her plans for the big day. Her imagination ran wild as she envisioned every possible dream scenario she could cook up, most of them ending with her falling in love with a handsome stranger. And as the days ticked by at their ever slow pace, Star's eagerness only grew.

Finally, the day arrived and Star had been up bright and early, energetically bouncing around the castle as the servants rushed to get ready around her. She couldn't keep her enthusiasm contained, especially as she heard the order being called out for the gates to be opened. She had raced outside, waving to the large crowd of guests as they passed, standing on the railing of the bridge leading to the castle and walking along it as she took in every smiling and excited face that passed. The only face she hadn't seen smiling, in fact, was a little man (who she later learned was named Duke Ludo of Weaseltown or something like that) he instead just had a dark and a little unnerving look on his face as he entered into the castle, surrounded by at least three guards.

But Star hadn't taken much stock of the man, her focus and attention on all the new sights and smells the village had to offer as she quickly rushed around, trying to see as much of it all as she could. She had just been running down by the harbor when she had suddenly crashed into the front of a horse, causing her to stumble back and land in an empty rowboat, sitting on the edge of the dock. “Hey, watch where your going you jerk!” Star shouted up at whoever she had just crashed to in annoyance, only to feel her cheeks light up with a blush as she saw a young man with spiky, salmon colored hair and a fancy white suit, climb down off his horse and quickly race over to check on her.

“Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, are you alright?” he asked, offering her a hand up, but as he did the boat tilted, beginning to fall over the edge and he quickly tightened her grip on her hand, yanking her off the boat as it hit the sea below. The blond landed against his chest, before looking up at the pair of gorgeous red eyes he had, lost for words for a second, even as he pushed her away, now holding her at arm's length. “Well that was a real close one,” he joked, chuckling awkwardly to try and diffuse the uncomfortable tension that had formed. Star however, was incapable of responding, stumbling around for words that seemed to be lost on her at the moment. She ended up only babbling out incoherent nonsense that caused the boy to raise an eyebrow at her weird behavior. “Uhhh, do you need me to get you a doctor or something, cause your kinda not making any sense?” he hesitantly asked.

Star finally got a hold of herself as she stumbled out, “Oh, n-no-no, I'm fine.”

“Well, I-I'm really sorry for running into you back there, I didn't see you,” the boy apologized, shooting her a very remorseful look.

“Oh that,” Star said, before scoffing and waving a hand in the air, trying to shrug off the whole situation. “Don't worry about it. I've taken way worse. I'm totally good. In fact, I'm better than good, I'm...” she paused to sigh dreamily. “...great even.”

The boy merely smiled in return before saying, “Well that's cool to hear, my name is Prince Tom of the Southern Isles.” He bowed and Star did a loose curtsey in reply.

“Star Butterfly,” she said simply, but Tom quickly gasped.

“The princess?” he exclaimed, before dropping down onto one knee in respect. “Your Majesty, I'm sorry for not recognizing you sooner.”

“Oh, no, no, you don't have to do that,” Star assured the prince, grabbing his arm and helping him stand. “Just Star is fine. You don't have to be formal around me.”

“Okay then, how about I just call you Starship from now on,” he said in an almost flirty tone and Star quickly blushed.

“You can call me whatever you want,” she said shyly, folding her hand behind her back.

“Great then, I guess I'll see you later at the coronation,” the boy said and Star nodded dumbly.

“Yeah, guess you will,” she sighed, still lost in his eyes.

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

And with that, the two had departed, leaving Star in a lovesick daze. The next time she had seen him was at the coronation, though he had looked annoyed from his seat in the front row, since he had two people asleep next to him, using each shoulder as an arm rest and drooling on him the whole time. He seemed about ready to shove them off when Star had caught his eye and a smile had crossed his face as he waved to her, which she returned eagerly.

Meteora had been a bit tense, Star remembered thinking, as she stood next at the front of the large room. A choir was singing their national anthem while the young woman looked liked she might puke at any moment. Star had just chocked it up to anxiety though, after all she did shut herself off from the world, so clearly being around people must make her uncomfortable... even if one of those people was her own sister. She had even noticed her sister's hands shaking as she took the scepter and the small orb (which was always used for the coronation for some reason) into her hands. She had stood still as a statue as the priest went into his whole speech in their native tongue about crowning her and whatnot before the crown was placed on her head and the crowd began clapping and cheering for their new queen. Star wasn't a bit surprised as her sister almost threw the objects back onto their sacred pillow and slipped her gloves back on with a relieved sigh. She did always have this weird thing about dirt.

After that, things continued to go smoothly as the crowd quickly emptied into the ballroom, where a cheerful and pleasant party began. As soon as Star had entered, she had been swept away by a guard who decided it was a great idea to position her right next to her sister and for a minute the two just stood awkwardly next to each other struggling to find something to say. Meteora kept rubbing a hand up and down her arm and didn't even seem to want to look her way, while Star just had her arms wrapped around herself. “Uh hey,” she had finally tried, figuring she could at least take the initiative and try and strike up a conversation with her sister. “Sooo, haven't seen you in a while...” Understatement of the year. “You been... good.”

Meteora nodded, a small smile dancing on her lips. “Yeah, I'm fine,” she said just as awkwardly as Star.

“Well you look good,” Star blurted out. “You look like a real queen.”

“Yeah I guess so, don't really feel much like it yet,” Meteora replied, her body seeming to relax some the more they talked which encouraged Star to move a teensy bit closer.

“Come on, your gonna do a great job at it,” Star encouraged her.

“Thanks,” her sister replied with a bright grin.

Star looked out at all the other party-goers and sighed in awe, “Woooww this is sooo cool! Can you believe we're at a real party?”

Meteora chuckled slightly and said, “Not really. Though didn't we throw a party way back in the day?”

“Oh yeah,” Star said with a grin, the memory resurfacing in her mind, though it felt a bit fuzzy, like she was having trouble holding onto it. That tended to happen a lot though whenever she thought about the old days. “It was for your birthday, right?”

Meteora was now openly laughing, a mischievous glint in her eye as she recalled the incident. “Yeah, and we ended up trashing the entire dining room because you snuck an entire heard of pigs inside.”

The two sisters shared a laugh for a moment, Star had felt her spirits rising, as a connection that she had thought had long since severed began to regrow. It felt like real progress toward rekindling their friendship. After all she wasn't running off and slamming the door shut in her face, she was actually talking to her and she felt like they were getting along. Too bad she ended up messing it all up with the very next sentence. “Man I miss those days, it's been forever since we just hung out.”

Meteora's smile dropped in an instant, the same guarded look that Star hated seeing on her replacing her pleasant grin. “Well, things are different now, it can't go back to the way things used to be,” she said her voice full of emotion that she seemed to be struggling to choke down.

“Why not?” Star asked as innocently as she could but this seemed to push Meteora over the edge as she she turned away from her sister and retorted sharply, “Because I said so.”

The blond's eyes filled with tears as she quickly excused herself in a hushed tone, walking through the crowded ballroom as she tried to put as much distance between herself and Meteora as she could. But she had been stopped by Duke Ludo who gave her what she guessed was supposed to be a smooth smile. “Milady, would you do me the honor of sharing your first dance with me?” He bowed low in front of her and Star quickly wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand as she declined him softly, “Um, no thank you, I-I can't-”

“Well why not?” Ludo insisted, looking annoyed at her refusal.

Before Star could open her mouth to try and come up with an excuse, she felt a hand land on her side and a presence appear behind her. “Because she promised her first dance to me,” Tom's voice spoke up and Star looked over her shoulder at him with surprise. He winked at her, which made her whole face blush, but she did smile back.

She turned back around to face Ludo and, playing along, shrugged and told him, “Sorry, but a promise is a promise.”

Ludo just grumbled something under his breath and stormed away, rejected. The moment he was out of earshot, Star sighed before giving Tom a deeply grateful smile. “Thanks, I didn't know what I was gonna do about him.”

“Don't mention it,” Tom said, grabbing her arm and twirling her around to face him. “Just give me that dance you owe me and we'll call it even.”

Star giggled, but complied, saying teasingly, “Well if I must.” She placed a hand on his shoulder and the other locked with his own as they moved smoothly across the dance floor. “Gotta say that was pretty noble of you Tom, coming to my rescue like that.”

“Well that is what us princes do,” he said smoothly.

Star leaned in a little closer as she asked, “You mostly did it just to annoy that Ludo guy though, didn't you?”

Tom smiled mischievously over at the small man, watching them with a death glare, before admitting, “It didn't hurt anything.”

Star laughed as the two moved in perfect sync around the ballroom.

Star and Tom pretty much hit it off after that, escaping from the hustle and bustle of the party and moving onto a quiet balcony to talk. And that's exactly what the two did, chatting and sharing their past life experiences with each other. He was quick to ask the question that almost everyone had which was about the pure white streak she had in her hair and Star was quick to explain to him that she had been born with it and that it was really no big deal. She never got why so many people focused on that, she didn't think it was really that weird.

Soon the hours began to fly by as they talked more and more and Star found out that Tom was surprisingly relatable. He too had had some bad experiences with his siblings in the past and considering he had 13 of them, boy did he have some stories to share. Eventually the two grew tired of talking and so they instead started sneaking into restricted areas of the castle and running from the guards just for the heck of it and Star found herself having a blast with the boy. Probably the most fun she had had in years.

Which why when he had caught her off guard as the two sat on the roof of the castle, just staring up at the stars, and he suddenly asked, “Okay am I crazy or do we just seem right for each other?” her instant reply had been, “Heck yeah we do.” She sighed leaning her head against his shoulder making him blush, “This has been one of the best nights of my life. I wish it would never end.”

Tom paused for a moment, looking deep in thought, while Star just enjoyed cuddling against the handsome prince. “What if... it didn't have to?” he finally said and Star instantly sat up, staring at him wide-eyed.

“Huh? Wh-What do you mean?” she asked, giving him a confused but hopeful look. She was desperate, she didn't want to be alone anymore, this night had only proved to her how starved she was for human affection of any kind and she wasn't really sure she could go back now that she had had a taste of what her life could be like. If Tom was offering her a solution then she would take it, whatever it was.

“Well, and this is probably a pretty insane idea,” he began hesitantly, rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. “But it wouldn't have to end if... we got married.”

Star was stunned, her body freezing up and refusing to move as she just stared at him blankly, her mind incapable of coming up with a reply. Tom watched her reaction closely and cringed, believing he had just made a huge mistake. “Oh man, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that.”

“YES!” Star screamed a second later, tackling him with a tight hug that nearly caused them both to slip off and plummet to their death, but luckily Tom was able to hold them steady for a moment.

“You mean it, you really want to,” Tom said in surprise.

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes,” Star squealed with delight. “Let's do it, let's get married! Oh my gosh this is gonna be so great!”

“You can't get married.” That was the first thing Meteora had said when Star and Tom had gone to her asking for her blessing, giving them a deadpanned stare and speaking in a firm, no nonsense voice that left no room for arguments.

Still Star felt her whole world crumbling at this declaration as she said in shock, “What, why not?”

“Oh I don't know maybe because you know literally just met him today and know nothing about him,” Meteora hissed back, looking beyond annoyed at her sister's actions.

“I know more about him than I do you!” Star argued, her tone beginning to raise some. Meteora's face seemed to soften for a second, a hurt look appearing on her face, before she hardened it with the rest of her features.

“Well that may be but I am still your queen and you still have to do as I say,” Meteora said sharply, struggling to keep her anger down and in check.

“Not if your rule makes no sense, admit it you just want to take away my one chance at happiness because you want me to be miserable like you!” Star shouted, her frustration reaching an all-time high.

“Um, so should I go and let you two work this out or-” Tom asked awkwardly, starting to slowly inch away from the two sister's quarrel but Star latched an arm onto him and pulled him back to her side.

“No way, you are my future husband, anything she wants to say to me she can say to you too,” Star said stubbornly.

“Greeaaattt,” Tom slowly said, trying to keep a supportive smile on his lips despite the intense discomfort he was feeling.

“He is not your future husband because you aren't getting married to him!” Meteora shouted.

“Yes I am!”

“No, Star you aren't.” And with that Meteora turned her back on her sister saying to one of the guards. “The party is over, close the gates.”

“What, no?!” Star screamed in terror as she watched her sister walking away. No, no this couldn't be happening. This was supposed to be her happily ever after, but her sister was about to take that away from her. She couldn't let this happen. She had to stop this, she couldn't take another year alone.

And so without thinking, Star lunged forward, ripping one of the gloves from Meteora's hand, her older sister turning around to stare at her with a look ranging from shock to terror. “Give me back my glove,” Meteora said desperately and Star felt her stomach twist with guilt. But she wasn't backing down yet, she had her attention again, she needed to use this.

“No, not until you listen to me,” Star argued quickly, hiding the glove behind her back even as her sister tried to lunge forward to snatch it back. At the point they had attracted an audience but Star didn't care, she was going to say her piece and nothing was going to stop her. “You have treated me like this my whole life and I want to know why? Why do you always shove me aside? Why do you lock me out and never listen to me? Don't you see how miserable I am here? Why are you trying to take away the one good thing that I have had in years?”

Her sister was shaking her head, growling under her breath and Star didn't even notice the temperature around them dropping, all she saw was the her sister looked close to snapping and still she pushed her more. She wanted to get a reaction out of her, she had to know the reason why... no matter what. “Why Meteora?! Why can't you just let me be happy for once?!” Star yelled at the top of her lungs, tears starting to surface in her eyes.

“If you aren't happy, then why don't you just... leave!” Meteora screamed, throwing her arm out. But a cold force followed this action, a biting wind knocked Star and several others down as thick shards of ice appeared around the young queen's body. She took a step back, her eyes wide with a level of fear Star had never seen on any human being in her life, but the blond was too dazed by what she was seeing to say anything, her body frozen as a collective gasp fell through the audience. Star took a quick look around at the other members of the crowd, everyone looking at their ruler with shock and horror, Tom was stunned into silence as well, his eyes darting from the ice to Meteora and then over to Star as if silently asking her if she knew what was going on.

But then there was a shout from the crowd as Duke Ludo suddenly yelled, “Magic! She has dark magic! She's a monster!” He stabbed an accusing finger in the queen's direction and she stumbled back even more, her breathing erratic and her eyes jumping around the room in terror.

“I-I, no! No it's not like that!” Meteora panickingly cried. “I'm not a monster, I'm not!” But then for a brief instant she locked eyes with Star and the blond was able to read her expression for the first ever and what she saw was guilt, fear, and loneliness, so much packed into one short exchange that it took Star's breath away.

Meteora seemed to panic even more as she spotted Star, saying under her breath with tear-streaked eyes, “I'm sorry.” She then turned on her heels and throwing the doors open, ran from the castle, from the judging eyes... from Star. Somehow, Star got control of her limbs back as she hopped to her feet and chased after her sister, shouting after her, “Meteora wait! Stop! Come back!”

But her sister didn't listen as she raced through the courtyard, freezing everything she came across, causing the crowd of people to scream in terror and cower from her, which only seemed to make the place grow colder. Star panted as she tried to keep up with her sister but it was hard to do as the ground beneath her turned to ice, making her slip and slide across the courtyard, while Meteora seemed to have no trouble running.

Eventually Meteora reached the fjord, Star a short ways behind her, still begging and pleading with her to come back so they could talk it out. But her older sister no longer seemed to feel like listening as she gave one last glance back, Star once again seeing the fear and decision in Meteora's eyes, before she took a step forward into the water which froze on contact with her foot. The blond gave one last burst of speed in hopes of reaching her sister in time, but then Meteora took off in a run across the lake, the water being incased in a layer of ice as she did. Star was so paralyzed in shock by this her foot accidentally slipped, sending her crashing to the ground.

From there, the blond could only watch helplessly as her sister cleared the distance of the lake in less than a minute, before running into the treeline across the shore, disappearing from Star's sight and life for what the girl feared might be forever. For a moment, all she could do was stare ahead blankly, shivering as the temperature seemed to drop more and more around her. She felt lost and alone and it was everything she could do to keep the tears out of her eyes. But then she felt a warm hand on her shoulder, pulling her back to reality and comforting her and she turned to see Tom staring down at her, concern pinching his eyebrows. “You okay?” he asked, slowly helping her to her feet, but all the blond could do was nod numbly.

He began to lead her back toward the castle, his arms resting around her, trying to provide her heat she was sorely deprived of right now. The two walked in silence for a moment, before the young prince asked, “D-Did you know?”

“No,” Star replied, her voice cracking as the true weight of that word hit her. She hadn't known her own sister was magic. How could she not know that? How could Meteora have never told her? She suddenly understood why her sister had been guarded and closed off all those years, she wasn't trying to push Star away, she was trying to keep her from learning the truth. But why? Why had she kept it from her for so long? Did her own sister really not trust her enough to tell her such a huge secret?

The next several minutes passed by in a haze for Star, unable to get the image of Meteora's frightened face out of her head, while Tom tried to settle down the crowd, who were almost in a panic over the dropping temperature and the now frozen lake that surrounded their home. And Ludo was not helping the situation as he began freaking out the most out of everyone, screaming his head off about how they were all going to die and that the monster who did this needed to be stopped. Finally, Tom decided to take matters into his own hands, stepping over to him with a firm look, and snapped out, “Hey would you knock that off! You're making things worse!”

Ludo opened his mouth to respond only to spot Star next to him and he quickly screamed out, “Ahh, get her away from me! She probably has black magic just like her sister.”

“No I don't, I'm completely normal,” the girl said, hands on her hips.

“Oh yeah, well how do we know for sure you aren't a monster like your sister?” Ludo asked, with a suspicious glare on his face.

Star felt an anger bubble up in her chest, unable to keep herself from shouting, “Stop calling her that! My sister is not a monster!”

The small man hid behind the safety of his guards at the girl's raised tone, before saying, “Oh yeah, than how do you explain her almost killing me back there?”

Tom rolled his eyes. “You slipped on some ice,” he snapped, shooting him a doubting look.

“Yeah, well I still could have been seriously injured,” Ludo grumbled in annoyance, before whining out, “I think I got a concussion and it really hurts!”

“Oh brother,” Tom mumbled under his breath, resiting the urge to roll his eyes again.

“I think we should send a search party out there to hunt that traitor down and dispose of her!” Ludo suggested.

Star let out a loud huff, before declaring loudly, “No one is going to hurt Meteora! Look, I know things look bad but this wasn't her fault. It's-It's mine.” The girl hung her head guiltily at this. “She never would have lashed out like that if I hadn't provoked her.”

Tom put a hand on the girl's shoulder, saying, “Star, you didn't know.”

“No, but I'm still the one who made her mad,” the blond royal said, shaking her head once. She took in a deep breath before adding in a confident tone, “So, I'm the one who's going after her.”

“What?!” both Tom and Ludo said as one, with varying levels of concern and surprise. “Star, you don't have to do that,” the prince added.

“Would you rather I send Mr. Paranoid over there,” the blond said, pointing a finger over to Ludo.

“Hey!” the small duke shouted.

“Good point,” Tom grumbled in annoyance, before his face softened, looking deep into her eyes as he asked, “But are you sure you're up for this, I mean it could be really dangerous.”

“It may be,” Star agreed, but the determination and resolve in her face and tone never wavered once. “But I still have to try. I'm the only one who Meteora's gonna listen to, if I find her I can convince her to undo her magic.”

Tom didn't look convinced but he didn't voice any doubts he seemed to be having about Star's sister. Instead, he only sighed and asked softly, “And you're sure there's no way I can talk you out of staying?”

Star shook her head, grabbing the cape offered to her by one of the servants and hastily throwing it on. She took in a deep breath before saying firmly, “No. I need to clean up my mess, Tom, and...” Star's brain momentarily flashed to that look of fear in her sister's eyes and she held back a shudder. “.... and I need to talk to Meteora again, finally figure out why she's been keeping secrets from me all these years.”

Tom nodded in understanding, giving her a comforting smile before he declared brightly, “Then I'm coming with you!”

“No,” Star said, gripping his hands tightly between her own. “I need you here, looking after the kingdom while I'm gone. Someone needs to be here to keep everyone from freaking out and causing a riot.” Both teens gaze slowly shifted to Ludo, who crossed his arms defensively in front of his chest. “What?!” he snapped out.

Tom let out an annoyed sigh, before grumbling childishly, “Okay, fine. I'll stay.”

Star smiled at her finance, saying sweetly, “Thanks Tom. I knew I could count on you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I know you're right and all but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it,” he grumbled out, refusing to meet her eyes for a moment, as he pouted.

“I'll be back soon,” the blond said, giving his hands one final squeeze before letting go and raising her voice enough so that everyone could hear her. “While I'm gone I'm leaving Prince Tom in charge. Everyone try and stay warm and dry until I get back with the queen.”

With that she took a deep breath and started on her journey, only to be pulled back by Tom who said in a scolding tone, “Okay well if you're going, then at least take my horse.” One of his servants handed him the reigns which he then passed to Star. The girl gave him an eager grin, before climbing up onto the horse, saying, “Thank Tom, this'll make it much easier.”

“Hey, be safe, okay?” the boy asked, giving her another concerned look.

Star gave him a soothing smile, reassuring him, “I'll be fine. She's my sister, she's not gonna hurt me.”

“I hope you're right,” came Tom's anxious reply and the air around the two grew uncomfortable for a moment as they both tried not to think of the damage Meteora had already done.

But Star swallowed this doubt, shouting triumphantly, “Okay then, let's get going boy!” A few seconds passed of the girl just grinning confidently, while nothing happened, until finally the girl glared down at the horse. “Come on, boy! Move! I don't have all day!”

“Star?” came Tom's skeptical voice and the blond gave him a sheepish look. “Do you... know how to ride a horse?”

Star scoffed, saying with a slight chuckle, “How hard could it be?”

Tom and his horse, Hampton, shared a look, before the prince said, “Okay, well first of all, you gotta flick the reigns to make him move.”

“Ohhhh, got it,” the girl said and raised her hands to do just that.

“Wait, wait,” Tom said, putting a hand over hers to keep her from moving just yet. “If you're gonna go out there at least let me at tell you the basics.” The young prince cleared his throat before  giving her the basic rundown of the rules he knew but Star soon grew bored and her eyes glazed over, leaning against the horse with a tired expression as she tuned out his lecture. “And if you do all that you probably won't die. Got all that, Star?” Tom asked once he was done and the girl only cast him a small sideways glance.

“Hmm, oh yeah,” she said distantly and Tom let out long sigh, knowing she in fact, hadn't heard anything he had said for the last several minutes. He quickly cast Hampton a dangerous look, knowing how wild and hard he could be to control sometimes, before hissing in a warning tone, “If anything bad happens to her, I'm blaming you.” Star overheard this, but decided to ignore it in favor of actually getting somewhere...that day.

Finally, Star had lost all patience as she quickly told her finance, “Okay thanks for the tips, Tom!” before flicking the reigns down with all her might, shouting, “Okay boy, onward to Meteora!” Hampton reared up on his back legs, letting out a loud ninny before trotting forward, several people having to dodge out of the way to avoid being trampled, as the horse and its rider galloped out of the castle and into the unknown world that awaited them, Star confident that she and her sister would be back within the day.

But that confidence had been short-lived, as Meteora seemed to have just vanished into thin air, the only sign left of her being the snowdrifts and intense wind that Hampton fought his way through. Star regularly called out for her sister, hoping she would hear her and come back, but either she had gotten way ahead of her somehow or she was ignoring her and neither was a particularly great option in Star's opinion. And things had only gotten worse from there, as a loud noised spooked Hampton, making him rear back and Star slipped from his saddle, landing harshly in the snow. “Hey!” she screamed in annoyance. But Tom's horse paid her no mind, turning and galloping away at full speed, happy to finally be fear to explore the wilds once more. “Come back here!” the blond shouted, already beginning to shake in the cold, the snow that had caught her landing now trying to turn her bloodstream to ice. “You can't just leave me here!”

She let out a loud huff of annoyance, before pressing onward, quitting no longer an option for her now.

…

Which led back to her current predicament, wandering around lost in a blizzard, miserable and freezing cold with only a small, very thin jacket providing her any form of warmth. To say she was in low spirits at this point was an understatement, any semblance of hope was being diminished with every passing second, as if the biting wind was forcefully ripping it away from her to be devoured. The girl's body was beginning to grow numb and every step was more and more difficult to make, her labored breath coming out in short, foggy gasps. She tried to will herself forward, as she forced her frozen limbs to continuing trudging ahead though the waist-deep snow.

But the truth of her dire situation was starting to catch up with her, filling her with numb indifference, if she didn't find some heat soon she wasn't going to make it. “G-Great, dying in a b-blizzard,” she growled under her breath, felling her withering hope continuing to drain from her sore and shivering body. “Just yet a-another thing to add to my list of t-terrible t-things that have happened to m-me today.” She let out a frustrated huff, ignoring the chattering in her teeth (which grew worse with every struggled sentence) as she continued to rant to herself, “S-She just had to h-have s-s-secret ice powers, d-didn't she? S-She couldn't have been b-blessed with something more practical l-like, oh I don't k-know maybe like powers that don't end up f-freezing over our entire kingdom! Like magic that makes s-sandy beaches or cute little n-narwhals or sh-shoot rainbows into the sky. Now those would have been a g-good p-power to have, literally anything would be b-b-better than this.” She let out a long sigh, before asking the universe, “C-Could today g-get any w-worse?”

Barely a second passed, before she got her answer, as she heard a loud crack below her and she looked down to see that she had unknowingly been standing on a large patch of ice, which apparently was not holding up under her weight, jagged incisions slicing their way through the thin layer of ice beneath her shaking feet. Realizing the ground beneath her was literally about to break, she just stared forward blankly, letting out a very annoyed, “Great,” before she was submerged in the freezing cold water.

Star's body instantly went numb (what wasn't already) the moment she fell beneath the waves and she nearly gasped as the further drop in temperature took her breath away. She tried to will her arms and legs into motion, hoping she could swim back toward the surface, but for some odd reason she couldn't, her limbs had become dead weight, refusing to move an inch as the dreadful cold filled her very being, a feeling of familiarity accompanying it, leaving her stunned and confused, since she was fairly sure she had never experienced anything like this before. The fight left her quickly, as a sudden overwhelming exhaustion took hold, willing her to close her eyes and just give in. So she obeyed, feeling her body slowly sinking downward, hoping to find a release from all this cold in the safety of her dreams. Maybe... her tired mind thought, as everything began fading to black. Things will be better when I wake up.

Just before the inky blackness could consume her, she felt something wrap around her abdomen. And to her shock, whatever it was felt...warm. She reveled in the feeling it brought her, nearly snapping her awake right there as her entire being fought to reach out and grab as much of this heat and warmth up as she could. But her limbs remained heavy, lifeless bricks and so all she could do was wait, as she felt herself being slowly lifted back up toward the surface, her body losing the fight to stay away as she fell into unconsciousness, the last thought in her sluggish mind before she was swallowed up by the black being  her wonderment over what exactly it was that was holding onto her that could make her feel so... safe.

…

Star came back to consciousness slowly, fighting past the fog that consumed her mind, as she came back into awareness. The first thing she noticed was that she felt oddly warm, which was a huge surprise since the last thing she remembered was wandering around lost in a blizzard, slowly freezing to death. Wait, was she dead? Was this heaven? It felt kinda like it, since her body felt safe and comfortable in whatever place she had ended up. Which begged the question, where was she anyway? What had happened to her out there?

As she pondered these questions, letting them turn over and over again in her mind as she tried to recall the last thing that happened to her, she picked up muted voices talking nearby. This also came as a surprise and she strained to try and hear them, hoping they would provide her with answers, but it took a few moments before the fog cleared up enough for her to process what they were saying.

“So what you just found her like this, wondering around in some snowstorm?” a voice asked.

“Yeah pretty much, she fell into some ice, I had to pull her out before she could drown,” a different voice said.

“Geez, she'd have to be crazier than you Marco, to be out in this weather,” the first said, sarcastically.

Star heard a low growl, which she identified as coming from the second voice, who seemed very displeased with his friend's comment. “Yeah well, it's a good thing I was, otherwise she might have died out there,” he added, with just the slightest hint of annoyance.

“So what do you think she's doing out here?” a third voice spoke up, sounding more nasally than the other two.

“The bigger question is, how much do you think she's gonna pay us?” the first voice said, matter-of-factly.

“Ferguson!” the second one snapped.

“What? I mean you have eyes, we know who she is,” the first piped up defensively. “I'll bet she'll pay us all handsomely for saving her life when she comes to.”

“Is that really all you can think about right now... money?” the second voice scolded.

“Hey I'm a businessman, what can I say.”

“Your terrible, Ferguson,” the third said, bitterly.

“Hey you were thinking it too, Al, and you know it!”

Star tried to peek open her eyes to better understand the situation, only to hiss in pain as a bright light instantly attacked her pupils and she rolled over with a groan.

“Hey, I think she's waking up,” the first voice said, while the other two gasped.

Star tried once again to force her heavy eyelids open, this time succedding since the light was not nearly as intense as before and she blinked a few times as she took in her surroundings. She was in some small shop it seemed, the place cozy and quaint, filled with cute little trinkets of all shapes and types. The room was lit in a soft glow coming from the roaring fireplace, which Star had been placed next to, her body covered in soft furs and coats that had been piled on top of her for extra heat. The blond looked over at the three boys who were watching her with various levels of worry and skepticism. Two of them were standing behind a counter top, one lanky, one thin, while the third leaned against it, watching her closely and something about him made Star pause and observe him closer.

He looked about her age and height, though some of his features were hard to make out since his body was covered with snow and frost. He had brown hair and quizzical brown eyes, which seemed to be searching her for something, making her cheeks heat up with a blush. His eyebrows were pinched together in worry and the concerned frown on his face showed kindness Star could see creeping behind those chocolate orbs. He was wearing a thick red coat and matching pants with black boots that had a cute looking point on the end and black gloves. He had on a black hat and a brown bandana which currently hung loosely around his neck. The blond thought she spotted a little mole under his left eye but it was hard to tell with the snow on his face. Speaking of which, from the amount of snow that coated him Star would have thought he had just scaled an entire mountain by himself, twice, and his entire face was still slightly pink from the chill outside. He was also soaking wet, his clothes clinging to him at odd angles and his spiky hair, lying flat beneath his hat. If she had to take a guess she would say he was the one who had saved her.

For a moment the two just stared each other down, never once breaking eye contact as they seemed to be summing each other up silently, the only sound coming from the crackling fire and the muted roar of the blizzard outside. Finally, the boy cleared his throat and asked, “Are you okay?”

Star nodded, ignoring the slight dizziness that followed the motion. “Yeah, I'm fine.” She did another quick survey of the shop as she asked, “Where am I anyways?”

“Oh where are my manners?” the chubby one quickly exclaimed. “Welcome to Ferguson's-”

“-And Alfonso's-” the skinny teen added, before they both finished as one, “-Outlet Shop! Where all your needs are found!”

“That's still a terrible tagline,” the other boy added and his friends scowled at him.

“Shut it, Marco,” Ferguson grumbled.

“How did I get here?” Star asked, rubbing her head, still a bit fuzzy on the details.

“I brought you here,” the brown-haired boy who was apparently called Marco, clarified. He blushed slightly as he added hesitantly, “After I saved you from the ice, that is.”

“Oh that was you!” Star exclaimed in surprise, the memory finally flooding back to her.

“Uhhh, yeah,” the boy said shyly, tenderly rubbing the back of his neck.

“Tell her how you had to give her mouth to mouth to keep her from drowning, Marco?” Ferguson coyly suggested and the boy in question shot his chubby friend a death glare.

Star froze up in shock, a hand slowly rising to her lips and her cheeks heating up in a blush. Had this total stranger really kissed her to save her life?

Marco seeing the startled look on the girl's face, quickly exclaimed, “I-I didn't have to do that, I swear! You were still breathing just... really cold.”

Star breathed a sigh of relief, feeling her cheeks return to their normal temperature, though strangely enough it felt a bit forced coming from her lips. Okay that was weird, she should totally be relieved since she was engaged and all. But she pushed these thoughts aside as she gave her savior a grateful smile, pushing off the pile of blankets as she said brightly, “Well thank you so much! Without you I'd probably be a princess popsicle by now!”

The boy returned the grin, saying, “No problem, I've actually run into those situations once or twice myself.”

“Oh yeah like the time you got your feet frozen in that block of ice,” Alfonso pitched in, he and Ferguson laughing at the memory.

“Oh yeah, I remember that,” Marco said, before chuckling himself and soon Star was too, finding their hearty, cheerful laughter contagious even if she didn't quite understand what it was about.  

But suddenly, Marco stopped, his eyes widening as he whispered in an intense tone, “Sometimes in my nightmares, I can still feel the cold emptiness trying to consume my soul.”

The three all gave Marco bizarre, frightened looks, Star even muttering out in confusion, “What?” The boy's face returned to normal in a flash, the bright smile lighting up his face once more as if nothing had even happened. “Not important.”

“Uhhh, riggght,” Star hesitantly replied, not sure what else to say, what did you say to a person after they tell you something like that? “Um, I'm Star by the way,” she finally said, offering him her hand.

He eagerly took it, shaking it softly, as he said politely, “Yeah, I know who you are, Your Highness. It's an honor to meet you.”

“Can you please just call me Star,” she groaned, practically begging the boy. “I hate people being so formal with me.”

“Right of course,” the boy said with a small nod. “My names Marco Diaz.”

“Well thanks Marco, for the save back there. I owe you one,” she said, still not breaking hand or eye contact, trying to ignore how her hand tingled in his touch or how deep, vast, and beautiful his eyes were, or the now rapid beating in her heart as she tried to get a hold of herself. What was she thinking, he was still just a total stranger, how come being around him felt so... right? This was a totally different feeling than she had even had with Tom.

“Well, you know, you could always pay us for our services,” Ferguson pitched in, breaking Star out of her confusing thoughts, as she watched Alfonso roughly elbow him in the arm with a scowling glare.

“Ignore him,” Marco said, rolling his eyes while shooting his friend's a scolding look. “So, what are you doing out here in the middle of a snowstorm, Star? Seems kinda unsafe to be out and about right now,” the boy asked.

Kinda like you were, Star thought but didn't voice this out loud, as she simply answered, “Actually, I'm out here looking for-”

“The best deals, this side of Mewni has to offer!” Ferguson suddenly exclaimed a wide smile on his face, as all eyes fell on him once again.

“Oh no,” Marco groaned, face-palming. He felt bad for the blond royal who was fixing to have to endure one of Ferguson's business pitches. There was no way to stop him now either, once he got that look on his face no power on this Earth could make him quit until he was done. Or somebody bought something. Or both.

“Uhhh,” Star began in confusion, shooting Marco a helpless look who only shrugged, silently relaying her to just 'go with it'.

“Maybe you would be interested in purchasing something from our big summer blowout?!" the eager Ferguson continued, holding up a container of sunscreen for Star to see.

The blond shook her head, raising a hand in a polite gesture as she tried, "Um, no thank you. I was more wondering if any of you have seen my-"

"Or maybe you'd like to see something from our rare collection of bear statues, oooohhh!" Ferguson interrupted again, holding one of the miniature statues out for her to see. Star looked over it quickly before asking, “Um, why does it have a horn on the top of its head?”

Ferguson brought it back up to his own face, before saying with an unceasing smile, “Oh my mistake.” Then he turned over his shoulder, asking his colleague in a harsh tone that made both Star and Marco jump, “Hey Alfonso! What did I say about giving me defective statues?!”

“Oh no, that's okay, really,” Star said, waving a hand in the air to try and get him to stop, hoping not to make a big deal out of it and get out of this as quickly as possible. But that hope was dashed as is it seemed Ferguson was insistent on correcting this “mistake”.

“It's not defective,” Alfonso argued, adjusting the glasses on his face with a knowing look. “I'm telling you, I saw one of those bearicorns out in the woods.”

“Stop trying to push your crackpot theories onto our customers!” Ferguson shouted in a scolding tone.

“But it's true!”

“Um, guys, y'know its fine,” Star said, trying to gain the attention back on her but to no avail.

“Yeah right, oh and also this whole blizzard is being caused by an angry spirit right?” Ferguson said mockingly, rolling his eyes.

Wellll, Star thought in her head. Not quite. Just one overemotional teenager.

“I'm telling you, this blizzard isn't normal, it's magic!” Al screamed from the other room.

“No, it's not!” Ferg shouted back. “Geez, you just believe whatever you hear, don't you?”

“Um, excuse me, could you please just give me some informa-”

“Well maybe you should be more open minded!”

“And maybe you should stop reading too much into everything you hear!”

Star quickly losing patience as the fight seemed to be nearing no end anytime soon, slammed her hands down on the counter top and shouted, “Guys, could someone please just tell me if you've seen my sister!”

The three boys froze in shock, before Marco spoke up, asking in concern, “Your sister? You mean the queen?”

“Yeah,” Star said in depression. She took a deep breath before quickly blurting out the whole story, “See turns out my sister has ice magic which I never knew about and she got upset after we had an argument and she ended up freezing the entire kingdom in ice before running off to who knows where. And now I have to find her before the everyone in the kingdom dies of frostbite or whatever, but I have no clue where she went!”

The girl took a few deep breaths trying to regain her air flow, while looking between each of the shocked faces around her, all three boys staring at her wide-eyed, Marco softly mumbling, “Wow, I did not... expect that.”

An awkward silence filled the room for a moment, until Alfonso shattered the uncomfortable tension, as he gave his chubby friend a superior look, shouting, “Ha, told you!”

“Not now, Al!” Ferguson snapped in a scolding tone.

“Well, good luck with that, Star,” Marco said, giving her a kind smile. “I'm sure you'll work it out, somehow.”

“Yeah, I hope so,” the girl whispered under her breath, looking unsure.

The boy paused before saying, “Um, hey if it makes you feel better, I think I know which way she went.”

“You do?!” Star screamed, her eyes shining with intrigue and her smile incapable of growing any wider as she grabbed the boy tightly by the front of his jacket, leaning in close till their faces were practically touching.

The boy's cheeks instantly turned red at the close contact. He wasn't really used to being this near girls, or anyone really, and he began to feel sweat dripping down his face as he did his best to keep his cool. But he couldn't stop from stuttering out his reply, somehow managing to keep his voice from cracking, “Uh yeah, I think she went up the north mountain, the storm seems to be coming from that direction, so you might want to look there.”

“Awww, thank you so much!” Star squealed, surprising the boy with a hug, his body going stiff and tense as she did, but the blond didn't notice as she quickly ran for the door. “Now I can finally find Meteora and bring her home!” she proclaimed, throwing the door open as freezing cold air hit her full force, blowing her hair back as sharp wind cut into her under-dressed form. A shudder ran through her, before she slammed the door shut with an annoyed groan. She leaned back against the wooden frame, her arms crossed huffily in front of her chest as she muttered, “Oh right, the blizzard.”

“Well if you are in need of some supplies, I do happen to have some clothes for you to wear out there,” Ferguson suddenly pitched in, drawing both Star and Marco's attention onto him as he pulled out some soft, thick fabric and fancy black boots from behind the counter. He set them down on the tabletop, wagging his eyebrows at the girl as he said, “And since you need them so badly I'm even willing to go down on price some, just for you.”

“Wow, thanks!” Star exclaimed, racing over to examine them closely. “They're just what I needed!”

“I thought you would say that,” Ferguson said, a mischievous smile tugging at his lips. Marco frowned at the trader, a suspicious eyebrow raising as he began to suspect foul play was being used against the naïve princess. “Which is why I'm giving them to you for the low, low price of $300.”

Star gasped, saying in wonder, “That is low.”

Marco just face-palmed as the girl reached into her purse and began to pull out a wad of cash. But Marco couldn't stand to see the blond conned so easily as he leaned over and placed a hand on hers, stopping her from pulling out the cash. The blond gave him a confused expression, but he ignored the stunning blue staring at him as he said, “Wait, wait, wait. You can't charge her for that. That's way overpriced.”

“It is?” the girl gasped, her eyes shining with so much innocence that it made Marco's heart leap into his throat and he struggled to swallow down the lump.

“Come on, Marco,” Ferguson said in a low tone, his eyes begging. “She's rich, she can afford it and it would reallly help the business out.”

“I don't care,” the boy said firmly, his hand unknowingly squeezing over Star's own, making the princess's face turn bright red. “We're all in hard times right now, but trying to manipulate people isn't the way to go about it.”

“Ugh, fine,” Ferguson groaned, grumpily crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Will that be all?”

Star opened his mouth to answer but Marco quickly cut in, saying, “Well actually if she's going to go up there, she's gonna need some more supplies. Some rope, a grappling hook, fresh drinking water. Maybe some matches so she can light a fire, oh and a first aid kit, those are always handy to have-”

The blond watched the boy mystified as he listed off the long list of supplies that Star herself hadn't even thought to bring. She had been ready to climb up the mountain without thinking but this boy seemed intent on making sure she was well prepared for such a journey.  “Wow, Marco you really know your stuff,” Star commented, impressed with his superior knowledge.

The boy blushed slightly as he said shyly, “Yeah, well I've been climbing mountains since I was a kid. I'm an ice trader after all.” His voice got very soft at the end as if he was almost ashamed to admit to her what his job was.

“Oh wow, really,” Star blurted out without thinking and the boy flinched at her negative tone. Star felt a guilty wave wash over her, as she scrambled to correct her mistake, stammering, “N-no, no, no! I mean that's fine, I just- y'know, after what my sister did you're probably not- you just- I-” she sucked in a deep breath, steeling her nerves as she tried again, this time sounding much more sure of herself, “I'm sorry. I'm the reason Meteora did all of this. And now you're job is in danger because of me.”

“Mine isn't doing too hot right now, either,” Ferguson pointed out, but Alfonso just elbowed him once in the arm, whispering quietly, “Shh, let them have this.”

Star studied the boy's face for a moment, as he gave her a confused look, unsure how to react to the girl's confession and her heart went out to him. He had already done so much for her and she felt a deep gratitude to him, saving her from the ice, giving her directions, keeping her from stupidly spending too much on some clothes. He seemed so nice and trustworthy and Star hated the idea of him suffering because of her stupid mistake. She wanted to help him and she felt a deep resolve tighten in her chest as she said confidently, “I promise I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna bring back summer, no matter what it takes.”

Marcos' gaze softened as a smile lit up his face. “Thank, Star,” he said, his voice cracking some against his will and she could tell by the uncertainty in his eyes that he wasn't used to using this word all too often. But he gave her a questioning frown as he asked, “But, uh, sorry if this seems rude but do you even know how to climb a mountain?”

Star scoffed, saying for the second time that day, “How hard could it be?”

The ice trader cringed, worry flooding his features as he said softly, “Pretty hard.”

“Oh, I'm sure I'll get the hang of it,” she said, simply, keeping  a wide smile on her face.

“Um, right,” the boy said, giving her a forced smile, the concern never leaving his eyes.

Star didn't seem to notice this though, as she set the cash down on the counter, saying, “So I guess I'll just go get changed and I'll be on my way,” She scooped up her purchased supplies, heading for the small changing room at the back of the shop, the three boys watching her go. The moment she was out of earshot Alfonso quickly said, “So she's gonna die, right?”

“Hey, you heard her, there's no stopping her now,” the chubby teen pointed out. “Besides she might be able to pull it off.”

“Did you forget Marco brought her in here half-frozen, she clearly had no idea what she's doing?” Alfonso argued.

“Well it's not our place to tell her she can't.”

As the boy continued their argument, Marco just listened quietly, his eyes never leaving the wooden door Star had disappeared behind. He couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that he needed to go with her. She clearly needed the help, her inexperience in almost every area imaginable as clear as day and her confidence and head-strong nature was only going to get her into trouble. There were an unspeakable number of dangers that she would have to overcome in order to complete such a trip and the idea of her having face all of these alone made Marco sick to his stomach.

Especially after she had seemed so genuinely concerned for him, promising to secure his job for him and that was something he really hadn't expected. Most people didn't even notice him and they certainly didn't offer to help him or compliment him, even his two friends Ferg and Al, only paid him any mind because he helped deliver them a steady string of ice to trade.

But not Star, Star was different from the others and now she needed him. And even though he knew he had only just met her, he felt a connection beginning to form followed by a growing and overpowering urge to help and protect her.

And, just as he was coming to a decision, the door swung open and Star stepped out, every brain cell in Marco's head frying at once, bringing him to a screeching halt. Her hair had been braided into twin pigtails and she had changed out of her already cute dress into something just as undeniably adorable... mossibly moreso. She now had on a long-sleeved blue and black winter dress with light blue leggings and black winter boots, her outfit complete with an absolutely precious purple cape. If she had been pretty before now she was downright gorgeous and the boy felt his heartbeat pounding in his chest the longer he looked at her. If fact it was so loud he began to fear she would be able to hear it and he swallowed, trying to will it back to a normal rhythm. “So how do I look?” Star asked him with a smile.

Marco, thrown off guard by this, began trying to form a comprehensible sentence, choking out a squeaky, “You look... amazing.” The boy wanted to slap himself for sounding like a total moron, but Star just smiled and surprised him with another warm hug, as she said, “Thank Marco! You've been a great help!”

As she released the now paralyzed boy from her grasp, she turned to Ferguson and Alfonso and said, “And thanks for the supplies guys! I really appreciate it!”

“No problem, princess,” Ferguson said, with a wave of his hand. “Just maybe try and spread the word about our humble little shop when you get back with your sister.”

Star giggled, saying sweetly, “I will.”

She started toward the door then and Marco, finally recovering from the dazed state the blond's hug had left him in, quickly turned on his heels and grabbed a hold of her hand, blurting, “Wait!”

Star gave him a puzzled look, asking, “What's wrong, Marco?”

“I want to come too,” he said quickly and the girl's eyes widened in surprise.

“Wait, really?” Star asked, looking genuinely caught off guard by this. That was definitely unexpected.

“Well yeah, I can't just let you go out there alone,” Marco explained, his eyes somehow full of both concern for her safety and a fond warmness that Star couldn't quite place. “No offense but if you go up there alone you're only gonna end up getting yourself killed. I on the other hand have been climbing mountains my whole life. You need my help.”

Star's face lit up with joy for a second but she quickly got a hold of herself, shaking her head and saying in a halfhearted tone, “No, no, Marco. I can't ask you to do that. This is my problem, not yours.”

“Yeah well, maybe I want it to be my problem, too,” he said firmly, his voice leaving no room for argument.

The blond bit her lip, whispering under her breath, “I don't know.”

“Please Star. It wouldn't feel right, letting you do this on your own. Let me help you.”

Star stared into his begging eyes for a moment, feeling his intense desire and need to come with, and she felt a smile slowly spreading on her face as she reconsidered his offer. He did seem so sincere and had already proven himself trustworthy in her eyes, maybe she should let him come with. She didn't really know what she was doing and having him to guide her would be a lot easier than her stumbling around in the snow all alone like she'd been doing. Beside, if she was being honest with herself, she wanted him to be there with her. She didn't know why but she was intrigued by this boy and found herself seeking his company and companionship, for reasons beyond her level of comprehension. And the longer she stared into his stunning chocolate brown orbs, the more sure she was that he should come with.  

Which was why Star found herself nodding and saying, “Alright, Marco. You know what, let's do it.”

Marco's face seemed to brighten at that, his voice full of hope and joy as he asked, “Really?”

“Yep, with the two of us working together, nothing will be able to stop us,” the girl said confidently.

The boy laughed, which for some reason sounded like music to Star. “I don't know about that,” he muttered sheepishly. “But we'll definitely stand a better chance if we work as a team.”

“Heck yeah, we will,” the girl said, putting an arm around his shoulder as she drew him closer to her, causing his face to instantly flush. She turned back to Ferguson and Alfonso, walking backwards with Marco out the door as she said in a determined tone, “Keep those ice cubes and fans ready boys cause summer is gonna be back before you know it!”

The two boys waited until the little door to their shop closed, before sharing a look, Alfonso simply asking, “So they're both gonna die, right?”

…

“Okay well, if we're going after your sister,” Marco began as he led Star over to the barn next to the outlet shop. “we might as well ride in style.”

The blond gave him a curious look, asking giddily, “You got something in mind?” She elbowed him with a playful wink, while Marco just gave her a little smirk in response.

“You'll see,” he hinted mischievously.

“Ooohh mysterious,” she said excitedly, her eyes now shimmering with anticipation.

As the two finally reached the door to the barn, Marco quickly threw the doors open with a flourish, saying, “Star, I'd like to introduce you to my traveling companion and best friend-”

“Ahhhh!” the blond screamed in excitement, not even letting the boy finish as she spotted the reindeer gently munching on some soft hay, and her hands flew to her cheeks, squeezing them tight. “Oh my gosh, you have a pet reindeer!”

“Uh yeah,” Marco said hesitantly, a little startled by the girl's reaction. She acted as if she had never seen one before. Still he recovered enough to say, “Her name's Nachos!”

The girl zipped forward, quickly engulfing the shocked reindeer in a tight hug as she shouted in pure joy, “Oh I love her! She's adorable!” As Star pulled out of the hug, she began to gently scratch underneath Nacho's chin, making the reindeer practically purr in response to her touch. “Who's a good girl?” Star cooed. “You are. Yes you are!”

Marco smiled softly as he leaned against the door frame, finding this crazy blond girl quite endearing. Most people never reacted this way to Nachos, but then again Star wasn't most people. In his opinion... she was better. And it seemed Nachos agreed as she began licking the blond royal, who only giggled in response while still petting her. “Hey Marco look, she likes me!” Star said, looking over at him with twinkling eyes that perfectly matched her namesake and the boy felt his heartbeat pick up some in pace.

“Would you like to feed her?” he asked and Star gasped in delight.

“Can I?” she asked, hopefully.

“Yeah sure,” he said, pulling out a small bag from the saddle and tossing it over to the blond. “Here you feed her these, while I get everything ready.”

Star nodded in reply, before quickly untying the thick rope holding the bag closed, her eyes narrowed in concentration as she did. Nachos took this opportunity to gaze over at Marco, her gentle eyes silently questioning what exactly was going on and the boy patted her head, before explaining to his pet, “Star needs us to take her up the North Mountain to find her sister. Think you're up for it!” Nachos looked over at the giddy girl before turning back to Marco, nodding her head with a small grunt. “That's my girl,” he said with another quick pat.

Star, finally got the bag open and her joy only seemed to increase as she skipped over to the two, holding up one of the tasty treats up to the reindeer's lips. “Here you go Nachos, a nice juicy carrot for you!” she exclaimed, before giggling as it quickly vanished from her hand and down the hungry creature's throat. “Wow, you must be hungry, huh,” she said, giving Nachos a loving pet. “Well don't worry there's plenty more where that came from!”

The next several minutes passed by as Star fed Marco's Reindeer, while the boy worked to get everything together, going through their assortment of supplies, double-checking to make sure they had everything, before tying them all down securely to the sled. He then took the harness and attached them onto the reindeer, before triple-checking his work. It was important to be prepared, after all. Finally, they were ready to go, Marco nodding in approval of his work, before turning to his blond companion. “Okay Star, we're ready to go,” he said, wiping the sweat off his brow.

“Alright!” the girl exclaimed, quickly hopping into the sleigh. But it seemed her enthusiasm was making it impossible for her to hold still as she practically bounced in her seat. “Let's go!”

Marco just laughed at the girl's childish antics, before climbing in the seat next to her. “Well you heard her, Nachos,” he said over to his pet, before giving the reigns a little flick. “Let's move.”

Nachos made a grunt in response, before quickly racing forward, barreling her way out of the barn as they started their journey through the snowy landscape. Star looked around her, starry-eyed at every sight she saw for a few minutes, before her eyes landed on the towering structure up ahead, looking dark and foreboding as it hovered in the distance. “Is that... the North Mountain?” she asked, concern in her voice for the first time in a while and Marco felt his heart ache at the strained tone. It sounded so wrong coming from Star.

“Yep,” he replied, in the most pleasant tone he could, but he couldn't quite keep the grim somberness out of his tone. “We got a long way to go.”

Star frowned, slouching some in her seat, as the sudden weight of the task fell on her at once. Everyone was counting on her, she couldn't let them down. She had to succeed. For her sake, for her people's sake, for Tom's sake, for Marco's sake, for... Meteora's sake. She felt a cold chill run up her spine as the image of her sister's distressed face entered her mind. What was she going to say when she saw her again? What could she say? They had barely spoken in years, how was she supposed to reconnect with her now after everything that had happened?

“Are you okay?” Marco's voice asked, cutting through Star's depressing thoughts as she slowly turned to him with a thin smile. “Yeah, just a little cold is all.”

The boy stared at her for a few seconds and the blond felt his quizzical gaze digging into her skin, making her squirm in her seat. And the longer he looked the more paranoid the princess became, afraid she had upset him by complaining to him five seconds into their trip. After all, he was only there out of the kindness of his own heart and they wouldn't even be out there if it wasn't for her, she had no right to-

Star's thoughts were cut off once again, as she felt something soft fall over her shoulder. The girl blinked, as she found herself now sharing a blanket with Marco, the boy giving her a soft, comforting smile that made her heart bounce around in her chest. “Is that any better?” he asked, his cheeks slightly tinged pink, and the girl felt her throat close up, human speech incapable of escaping her lips for the moment. So she just settled for a quick nod.

Then to her greater surprise, he wrapped an arm around her waist bringing Star in closer to him, until their sides were touching. “Here, you'll stay even warmer if we stick close together.” He seemed to suddenly become flustered by this decision though, as he quickly stuttered out, “But uh, y'know, If you don't want to that's okay too.” He began to nervously scratch at his cheek and Star had to hold back the rising giggle over how adorable he looked at that moment.

“No, it's okay, I don't mind,” she reassured him, causing a bright smile to light up his face.

The girl settled into a comfortable position, leaning as close to Marco as her body could allow, staring ahead at their destination, while the boy just focused on the task of holding the reigns steady. However, he couldn't quite keep his eyes still as he occasionally glanced over to his passenger, a nervous, but pleasant energy beginning to settle over the two. Suddenly, the sky seemed to light up with color as the two stared up at the aurora borealis in wonder, Star whispering under her breath, “Whoa, it's so beautiful.”

“Yeah it is,” Marco agreed.

After a few more moments of silence, Star's gaze returned to the North Mountain, where her sister was waiting for her. She felt her heart clench as she remembered back many, many years ago when her and Meteora had stayed up all night to watch the dazzling array of colors. It was a fond memory, one that Star realized she had almost forgotten completely, but she was glad to be reminded of it after all these years.  And as she sat there in the sleigh, leaning against the strong, comforting form of Marco and guided by a thousand bright flashes of color and light, the blond felt a determination beginning to build within her chest once more. Her previous doubts and worries exited her mind and were forgotten, as she came to a new conclusion. She would find a way to fix this... to fix them. She would get her sister back, no matter what it took.

Just wait, Meteora. I'm coming for you.

[imagine-loki]

Lonely Endeavors

TITLE: Lonely Endeavors  CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 2 AUTHOR: written-loki-imagines ORIGINAL IMAGINE:Imagine Loki being a sickly child. You’re the child of a palace maid and ordinarily you keep your distance from the princes, but one day you find Loki in his room, gazing at Thor and the other children playing outside from his bed. You decide to keep him company, reading books with him and even sneaking pastries from the kitchens for him while no one is looking.  RATING:  T NOTES/WARNINGS: Loosely based on imagine and I suggest reading the first chapter for context. Sorry for all grammatical errors, i try my best to catch them but I miss things.

The dusty off-white rocking horse teetered in the slight light of the room coming from the window. The slivers of golden light held particles that danced their way down to what they were shining on. The air changed upon entering the room, smells attached with memories wafted towards you. Smells of finger paints and broken crayons, misused clay and small wooden swords. The smells of your childhood long forgotten until now as if the memories were waiting for you to return to them.

A lone finger swirled across the old oak of the window seat many stories came to life at. Returning back with a thin, almost invisible dust layer on your fingertip.

“I thought i’d find you here,” he spoke in a voice like that of a lover, almost silent and meant only for you to hear. 

“I didn’t see you come in,” You replied still being hit with calming waves of nostalgia.

Thor chuckled to himself slightly, making his way across the room over to you, toys littered the reflective floors giving him obstacles on his way to you. He took long strides confidently, shoulders back, face fixated on yours greeting you with a smile. 

His heavy metal armor clanked with each heavy footed step he took further into the room. Thor grew into his features over the long centuries you had known him. No longer was he a goofy looking kid with round rosy red cheeks and short messy blonde hair. His red cape swished around his ankles and onto the floor sweeping up the dirt and dust left from the years on no use.

“Sorry i missed training your mother was running allthe wedding plans she already choose and it’s to late to change them by me.” You swiped your hand across the window seat and wiped the now dusted hand off on the fabric of your leather pants. You pushed yourself up to sit  horizontally in the window and looked out at the others still training outside

“That explains why you missed training but not why you’re in here.” Thor managed to get to you, kneeling down and resting his head on his arms atop the window seat. He peered up at you while you actively tried to ignore the warmth of his gaze, choosing to blankly stare at the others outside enjoying the day.

“It’s okay to think about it (Name), I do as well,” Thor once again demanded your attention with full force and effort, his cool and weighted hand found yours that was resting in your lap. You could feel him staring holes into you even if you couldn’t bear to face it head on.

“We’re getting married Thor I doubt this is the best time to dwindle on the past,” Your voice may have been cold when you tugged back and freed your hand from his grasp. Even the light pouring into the room stilled upon the silence you had invoked. Thor sighed and stood once more, the shifting of his body could be heard quite clearly from under all the layers.

You and Thor had never talked about how either of you felt towards the fast approaching marriage. Once you both had become of age it was clear why Odin encouraged your friendship between the two princes. Even as a young and tattered orphan he saw you as an object to betroth his eldest to. Which he did the first chance he got, it ensured Asgard a princess and Thor a family for when he ascends to the throne. Even the pairing made sense, no longer were you that broken girl dependent on others for safety. No more were you afraid of monsters and the darkness that came as soon as the sun set, no, now you were a decorated warrior and general of the Asgardin army just like your parents would have wanted you to be. Strong, tactical and wise with a goal to irradiate the jotun as an entire race of monsters.

Still it all felt like anything other than reality, marrying your best friend who you were raised along side like siblings. It couldn’t have felt anymore confusing than it already did. Thor was your friend, your family, your equal and now he was to be your husband. His affection and attitude towards you had never changed after the engagement and even then it all felt much more different paired with the thought that you were to be wed before the night was over.

“Is there not a better time? You came here on your own accord for a reason (Name), tell me what that may be." 

You finally looked at him seeing much more concern than you would have liked to be across his features. You pulled your eyes up to meet his still and serene blue ones, a small smile pulled on the corners of your mouth but never spread across your face. Thor in all his gentle giant glory couldn’t help but worry about the thoughts you had on your mind. Forcing you to voice them regardless if he knew exactly what you were thinking about.

"Do you think he’ll come?” You spoke confidently as always, not bothering to whisper or hinder the words you had been wanting to ask for years.

Thor’s whole body went limp and his once strong and confidant stance faltered at your voice. His eyebrows brought themselves together leaving little lines of disapproval over his face.

“(Name),” Thor started, shoulders down and head tilted. You could already guess what he was going to say or tell you to think and yet even his slightly commanding and disappointed tone brought you satisfaction.

“If he were dead do you not think your mother would have the decency to tell us? Now more than ever?” You swung your legs and watched as Thor hardened bit by bit looking like his father did when he was confronted in a way he did not wish. If you were weaker and more vulnerable that would have frightened you but you hadn’t been that in a long time.

“We were kids.” Thor frowned with hardly any movement of his lips. The smells you once welcomed in the playroom turned sour all at once and left a vile taste in your mouth.

“We had feelings! I had feelings. He was here and then he wasn’t and I- we never got to say goodbye. I never got to see him before…” You felt your throat closing in on you and your elevated voice. Out talking and outshining Thor’s still calm tone with an agitated demeanor.

“Loki was sick, there was nothing that could have changed that. No actions could have prevented him from being transported to Alfheim for  care. If that were the case i would have never said and done what i did all those centuries ago but we were nothing but children (Name). You cannot blame yourself forever, what happened wasn’t your fault. It was’t either of our faults, that night in the library was-”

“That’s enough,” You mumbled reaching to grab the small sunflower pendant you wore around your neck. You couldn’t remember why you bought it from the village markets, you hated sunflowers and yet you were so drawn to it. It comforted you in a way for no explained reason at all. You stared blankly past Thor and found your eyes being drawn to the door on it was various lines and names Frigga had used to measure how much taller you all were growing up. Thor’s red line grew up with your (f/c) one while Loki’s green one stayed the same. He wasn’t there to be measured and left behind all those years ago, still what you would do to have those times back.

You never got to see Loki again after that night, you could never form the perfect words to say how much you missed him and needed him in your life. Not before he got sick and the queen prevented both you and Thor from seeing him in such a fragile state. The illness had gotten progressively worse because before you knew it he had been sent to Alfheim for their healers to help him. You never knew what happened to him after that, death was a thought you couldn’t handle anymore of it so you spun a narrative of him getting bigger and stronger like Thor. Going to school and perfecting his magic even reading all sorts of new stories so he could come back and tell them to you . A comfortable lie felt better than what the truth might be.  

Thor leaned his tall frame down to meet you as you sat. His hands cupped your face gently and he pulled you forward to rest his forehead against yours. There was nowhere to look but into his deep eyes. No place to retreat but into him and his touch. It could have been a more uncomfortable silence if you didn’t know Thor so well, even in his quietness you could tell what he wished to say. 

All at once a gush of rushed footsteps and frantic voices burst into the room snapping both you and Thor out of the peace and conversation you were previously having. Thor jolted up dropping his hands from your face and folding them behind his back as he whirled around to face the door. Sif stood fully dressed in armor and wielding her sword in one hand. Two soldiers stood besides her wearing what attire was required of them but oddly holding weapons as well instead of leaving them by their hips.

Sif looked between you and Thor clearing her throat and entering the room closing the gap between you both. Unlike Thor she had no regard for dodging the objects on the floor or even trying to avoid them instead she stomped crushing everything in her path.

“Thor, general…” She declared regarding you as formally as she possibly could. You knew she and Thor had a dalliance in their youth but you also knew she was strongly against the marriage of you both. The only reason she had anything to do with you was because she couldn’t not respect you as her superior and as a warrior.

“Our team of scouts were ambushed trying to transport goods to vanaheim.” Sif was usually grim but there was no remains of joy left on her face. The way she gripped her sword as if her life was depending on it you instantly knew how grave the situation. You stood quickly pushing Thor out of your way and getting closer to Sif in order to speak directly to her giving orders if needed.

“What of my soldiers?” You were already letting your illusion magic fall allowing the once casual clothing you were wearing to reveal fully fledged armor and weapon.

“They are presumed to be dead, the frost giants have reportedly planned a strike against us. They have been organized as an army lead by a monster we cannot identify.” Sif didn’t bat an eye at your sudden change in attire nor did she unhand the handle of her sword. She was looking for a fight and you were dead set of giving one to her.

“You and you,” you said pointing to the two soldiers standing in the doorway awaiting your orders. “Tell the crown there will be no wedding on this night and you,” your eyes fixated back on Sif who readily was preparing for your orders,“Prepare my soldiers for battle, no frost giant will slaughter my people and get away with it.”

-/-

Despair was around the frozen battlefield. You could smell the spilled blood in the ridged air that flooded your lungs. Grunts, screams, battle cries, it was all that echoed across the frozen waste land. You brought the back of your hand up to your face and smeared the blood leaking from your open wound. 

Adrenalin was high. Your heart pumped in your chest surging you with a vengeance and power you never got except for when you were on a battle field. Death gave you a thrill and here, right now. You were the hero of this story.

You were at a stand still as people fought around you. The hair that was ragged and resting on your shoulders lifted off of them and got swept where the wind pulled it. The burn the cold left on you allowed you to see your hot and scattered breaths. Even your hands were numb and wanting the feeling of flesh underneath them.

That’s when you saw him.

The Jotun king.

Single-handedly taking out five of your men at a time.

Spear in hand.

Wearing the most ornate jewels and loin cloth seen only worn by those of nobility. He was smaller, smaller than any frost giant you had ever seen. He was still tall by nature but far from the size of a giant more like the size of a mere man. There was a mass of long ebony hair flowing down his almost bare body, even then he looked the most primed and prepared for battle. 

His head hung forward over his latest victim, mouth hung open and animalistic growls came from him solely. His hand holding the spear tightly, periodically bursting with some sort of energy radiating from him.

Slowly his horned head lifted with a devilish grin reminding you monsters were real. He lifted his head to stare at you with red eyes more red than the blood you felt rushing through your veins. 

You watched each other.

Chaos swirling around you and with one move his head tilted leaving the most frightful of smiles on his face.

That was all it took.

The game was on.

You charged. 

He stood.

 Knowing you would come to him and challenge him the best you knew how. The motives you rushed to him with were unclear and muddled. You wanted him dead, you wanted to be the last thing he saw before those red eyes glazed over with death. That was enough. You were granted with a number of choices and abilities to attack him with. Judging from what you just saw he was skilled in seiðr arguably more skilled than you. His fighting style was unique, hand to hand combat all the while casting spells and twirling a staff. 

With a sword in your hand and a dagger hidden in your boot you confidently attacked. He was like a snake so wiry and slippery, wriggling his way out of your grasp with each beat. 

Annoyed grunts left your lips and he managed to throw you over his cold and lean shoulder, slamming you flat on your back on the wet snow. When he dropped you an earthquake erupted inside of you spreading quickly, you were dazed even if it was for a second every aching bone in your body begged you to stay still. He lifted the spear over his head intent on driving in through your rapidly beating heart and the will to live over took the will to lie dormant. You rolled out from under his path, still driving the strange object into the snow and beyond that.

Without missing a beat you managed to shove him hard enough that the spear still stuck in the snow slipped from his grasp leaving him one weapon down. You tried to knee him but he caught it yanking your body part closer to him and causing you slip once again landing on the ground. A sense of dread washed over you all at once, a blood thirsty Jotun wouldn’t wait to end your life but this one enjoyed the fire you brought. He enjoyed dragging it out and watching you retaliate.

 You obliged throwing the sword you didn’t want to use to the side leveling the playing field so the one person who deserved to live walked out of this alive.

You kicked him in the gut with enough force to shove him backwards releasing your skin. The fear you should have held was swallowed as you stood again on unreliable feet. You slumped forward pulling your hand up to wipe the blood dribbling from your busted lip taunting him to come closer.

He did allowing you enough time to reach down and grab the hidden dagger from your boot and freely slice upwards cutting him across the abdomen.

He hissed in pain, his hands flying to the open wound. If you were anything but numb the sight of him in such pain would had stopped you but it didn’t. Once a drop of his blood fell on the ground you knew you wanted more.

He looked at you evilly and annoyed, in one strange second you felt a familiarity towards him. The fear you didn’t have came unexplained at full force. This situation filled you with such dread and pain. He made you feel small and only one person before had done that before.

“Loki?” Your throat was on fire and you let your guard down for a mere second. He pulled your limp arm towards him twisting the arm that held the dagger so harshly behind your back you dropped it. You howled out in pain and felt his own breath on your neck, your body pressed against him almost waiting death by his hand.

His breath seemed colder than the air everywhere else but even the hand he was using to hinder you defenseless felt like a memory.

He brought your own dagger to your neck and you hitched your breath feeling the metal press into your skin. Hard enough that blood was becoming uncovered. He abandoned that pain only to snap the pendant you wore with the knife he held. Your chin was lifted and you wanted to look down with every bone in your body. 

To see it lying on the ground. If you were to die on foreign ground you needed the last comfort you had to welcome you home to Valhalla. 

The knife was back on your neck and your eyes fluttered closed hearing every sound near you. 

The howling of the wind.

The rage of his heart beat.

The breath in his chest and the sounds of a war you lead.

The only thing you couldn’t hear was his voice.

You wanted to hear it to know it was him, to know it was him killing you. To know it was his hand solely giving you the satisfaction you needed to welcome death.

Out of nowhere a battle cry belonging to no other than Thor erupted from the sky along with a flicker of lightning. He tackled the man removing him from you and filling air within your lungs. The knife was so sharp that there was a cut where Thor slid him from. Shallow enough that you were not choking on your own blood but deep enough to bleed.

You could hear Thor landing punches hard enough to crack the skulls of a hundred men. Each punch hit like and egg cracking on the ground with such ferocity he didn’t need his hammer.

You were still frozen in place, staring upwards as you placed one trembling hand on the wrist of your other. His touch lingered and you knew it better than any other, it had brought you spots of comfort even as he was threatening your life.

“Loki.”

-/-

[vamonumentlandscape]

Fort Monroe

Fort Monroe is an area rich in history. Before the settlement of British colonists in 1607 at Jamestown, Cape Comfort was occupied by Native American groups for hundreds of years. The first Africans that were brought to North America arrived in the Hampton Roads region in 1619. John Rolfe wrote a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys of the Virginia Company about the arrival of “Twenty and odd Negroes.” Race-based enslavement would eventually become normalized in the decades to come. Though the original colonists attempted to fortify what is now known as Old Point Comfort repeatedly, destruction always ensued leaving the area vulnerable to competing entities. It was not until after the War of 1812 that the young United States Army constructed Fort Monroe as a part of a defense strategy against future attacks. Construction began in 1819 and was not fully completed until much later in 1836. A young Robert E. Lee directed the final phase of construction between 1831-1834. Ironically, Lee had constructed a Union stronghold essential during the Civil War when much of Virginia was in the hands of the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln visited the fort briefly for four nights during the war and saw the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia fighting in the nearby waters. Though a Virginia slave owner demanded the return of escaped enslaved persons at Fort Monroe in 1861, General Benjamin Butler refused as they were a “contraband of war.” This action led to the United States Congress adopting the First Confiscation Act, which meant that escaped enslaved persons from an active state in rebellion would be kept out of the hands of Southern slave owners. Just a few years later in 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made it clear that the North was intent on ending slavery for good. Since former President Barack Obama designated Fort Monroe as a national monument in 2011 after its formal decommission by the Army, the National Park Service can fully interpret all components of the site. This includes the two-year confinement of Jefferson Davis at the fort, as well as its strategic importance during World War I and World War II. It is a site that shows the benefits of historic preservation and redevelopment, and we felt a unique sense of fulfillment incorporating the fort into our last journey of this project.

Once we had driven around the large fort for about fifteen minutes, we finally found a map that helped us find all the important landmarks we wanted to see. As we were pulling away, we came across our first stop. There was a historic marker at the top of the Casemate Museum that caught all of our attention. “Confinement of Jefferson Davis” is what the marker was titled. At Fort Monroe, in what is now the Casemate Museum, Davis spent the first four and a half months of his short two year prison sentence. The 1932 marker only detailed facts about his imprisonment, but right below this sign was a plaque installed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy that was riddled with the Lost Cause narrative. The plaque honors Dr. John J. Craven, U.S. Army doctor, who took care of Davis as he was imprisoned. He, according to the UDC, “lightened the monotony, loneliness, and the physical suffering of Jefferson Davis.” The sign did not stop there with the odd language of calling Davis a “prisoner of war.” He was not a prisoner of war. The war was over, Davis was imprisoned because of his crimes of treason. He was never tried and was released after two years. It is an example of one of the largest injustices in our country’s history that added fuel to the fire of the Lost Cause.

Just down the road we came across an arch above a large hill, overlooking the ocean across the way. It was formerly an entrance to a small memorial park to Jefferson Davis. The UDC installed the overwhelming metal arch in 1956 with the approval of the US Army to “commemorate the imprisonment of Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Fort Monroe.” It was shocking, but also quite expected for the times, to us that the US Army would approve the arch dedicated to a traitor. It was also unsettling because of what was happening in our country at the time. In the 1950s and 1960s the rise of the modern Civil Rights Movement was taking place. Organizations, like the UDC, were making sure their presence was known and making racist statements across the country. In August 2019 the name of the park was removed and the area was reinterpreted. We were all impressed with the signage from the National Park Service that told the full truth about what the memorial park was and meant for those who installed it. The signage was blatantly honest about why the arch was put up, along with the many other types of Confederate memorials across the South. The signage states that these memorials “ … highlight(s) the intent to exclude African Americans from public life and civil liberties.” The signage even speaks to how “ … Davis stood as the most vocal proponent of the claim the war had been a constitutional struggle, not a fight over the future of slavery in the United States, His claim was part of the Lost Cause crusade….” It was a proud moment to see how well the NPS is interpreting the history of the past mistakes at Fort Monroe. Lastly, as we stood under the arch, overlooking the ocean, we could see the signage for where the proposed First Africans memorial will go. We couldn’t tell if this was a coincidence or just a powerful twist of fate for the two sites to coincide in such a way. We are thankful for the correct interpretation of history here at Fort Monroe.

Before Fort Monroe was a military installation, Old Point Comfort was where the White Lion brought African captives to be sold into indentured servitude. The arrival of the 20-30 Bantu Angolans was the catalyst for slavery in America. We were able to park near a fishing pier and easily found the sign. The sign explains the arrival briefly and also introduces a couple, Antony and Isabella, who were two captives on the White Lion. They had a child named William, who is believed to be the first child born in Virginia with African ancestry. The sign concludes with a statement confirming the facts of Virginia creating a system of hereditary slavery, which would last until 1865 with the ratification of the 13th amendment. Each of us had an emotional reaction to seeing this historical sign as the sun went down for the day. We looked out towards the ocean, closed our eyes, and heard the crashing waters below. This place is where one of the greatest travesties of United States history began to form as an institution. After shedding a few tears, we walked down to the future site of the African Landing Memorial. Sculpted by Brian Owens, the memorial will allow further reflection upon America’s greatest violation of human rights and dignity. To move forward, one must look to errors of the past. If all Americans can do this, maybe we will be able to realize the true potential of a free nation.

Our last stops at the fort were two signs detailing the former locations of the Contraband Hospital and Contraband Quarters. In the beginning of the Civil War, General Benjamin Butler took in hundreds of enslaved people who had run away from the hands of those who owned them. He called them “Contrabands of War” as they were property of those who they were fighting against and General Butler confiscated such “useful property.” There was no mention of emancipation, but ultimately this policy led to thousands of formerly enslaved workers to be freed. The resilience the enslaved had to make such a journey from all over the South is a momentous accomplishment. Freedom was never easy to achieve and the hard fight never came without hardship. After travelling the long roads to freedom, most of the men, women, and children had been injured or faced illness along the way. The Contraband Hospital was set up exclusively for the freed people who were facing these struggles. Harriet Tubman worked as a nurse at the Fort Monroe hospital for a short period of time. Fort Monroe holds some of our earliest histories, darkest moments, and many highlights that are important for all Americans to see and remember.

Our final stop in the Hampton area was the small town of Phoebus. A small, rundown town in the middle of a revitalization, stood out to us as we were on the way back from Fort Monroe. Only about a mile away from Phoebus is a national cemetery for servicemen and women. But, the most interesting piece of history we discovered was a small historic marker that was titled “Slabtown.” Slabtowns were the pop up neighborhoods of the hundreds of freed people making homes for themselves out of slabs, which are leftover cuts of bark from the local sawmill. Many of those freed people’s descendants still live in Phoebus and surrounding areas today. We found this stop to be inspiring as not only does their story live on, but their familial legacy too.

[thelionshoarde]

If you still need prompts: Suzu and Shirayuki, the need for warmth and good company, and the mysterious disappearance of a bottle of wine?

Iiii got sick this last week and fell behind so this was rushed and probably shoddy, D: please forgive the errors and inconsistent characterization??

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS PROMPT-A-THON, DAY 4

Or you can read it here on ao3 if you prefer!

Shirayuki escaped through the balcony door, squeezing her way through the throng of merry-makers and out, gasping, into the sudden dark and quiet and empty space of a frozen night.

Icicles glittered in the dim glow of lanterns, of the stars, of the distant city lights. Relieved to be alone, Shirayuki moved toward the balustrade. Her breath clouded the air, and though the festive gown she wore was ill-suited to winter weather, the heat that flushed her from the crowded ballroom at Wilant Castle kept her from shivering.

A familiar, lethargic voice said, “I’ll have you know I claimed this balcony right from the get go. If you want sanctuary, it’s going to cost you.”

Startled, Shirayuki turned sharply to the side. Benches were set up along the wall, tucked between frosted topiary and hidden largely in shadow. Suzu looked out at her, sprawled comfortably in what looked like Obi’s new, velvet cape. He also appeared to have brought his work satchel with him, the bag slumped beneath his booted feet, oddly shaped and bulging in places.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked. “It’s nearly time for the -- the kissing, you know. I thought you wouldn’t want to miss out on that.”

Suzu waved a lazy hand, gloved in expensive kid skin. If Shirayuki remembered correctly Obi had taken him out shopping for the event, insisting that Suzu had to show up at Wilant Castle in something nicer than his work attire.

It seemed strange, for a moment; Suzu across from her in the cold, as if they were still pulling long hours at Lata’s and had stepped outside for a short break, talking idly and half-asleep as had been their habit, cooling off from the intense heat of their research. Over a year since then, Shirayuki realized with a start.

With their individual workloads at the Pharmacy, with Suzuri and Ryuu and Obi always about, it had been easy to fall back into familiar patterns. Ones where Shirayuki rarely saw Suzu alone. Her heart clenched, an uncomfortable burn, as she realized how much she missed it. Shirayuki had enjoyed his company, and it wasn’t until now she understood that, for some reason, Suzu in a crowd was never quite the same as Suzu alone.

“You look weird,” Suzu accused, rather than answer. “Like a -- a Lady.”

Then again, perhaps absence really did make the heart grow fonder.

“Sorry?” she asked, mouth pursed with irritation, “Should I go inside? I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Eh? Oh, no,” Suzu said, sounding soft and distant, distracted. Shirayuki always forgot the oddity of him -- how he could give off such an air of apathy, and yet have the most direct, attentive gaze -- until his focus caught on her. “I was getting bored anyway.”

“Well,” Shirayuki smiled, crooked and uncertain. “Shall I sit, then?”

Suzu snuggled more firmly beneath Obi’s purloined cape, the crushed, royal blue velvet dark against his pale hair, long enough now to curl against his broad shoulders. “Sure,” he said, tilting his head to the empty stretch of bench beside him. “But I hope you brought your own blanket, I’m not sharing.”

* * *

A brief tugging war later, Shirayuki had the cape pulled over her front, huddled against Suzu in the bitter cold. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to eat my spoils as well,” Suzu sighed, reaching down to his satchel.

“Your -- your spoils?”

“Mm,” Suzu agreed, coming back up with two goblets full of bite sized cubes of cheese and little mince meat pies. Laughing, Shirayuki accepted the prize, flavors bursting against her tongue, the metal goblet biting through her thin silk gloves, Suzu muttering outrageous commentary about the looks he’d received as he piled his goblets high with appetizers.

* * *

“What about you? Not going to go on a kissing spree?”

Shirayuki felt the prickle of a blush in her cheeks, and kept her gaze on the distant stars. She had thought this would be the same as it had been in the past -- when she and Suzu had bowed their heads nearly touching over the olin maris seeds, the glittering crystals, and the heat, murmuring conjectures and frustrated oaths, close enough their breath mingled -- but it wasn’t.

It felt strange and new. Maybe it was because instead of needing the chill air to cool off, they were curled together for warmth. Or the way Shirayuki caught Suzu staring at her, only to have him look away a second too slow not to be obvious about it. Or perhaps it was because she knew what Yuzuri would say -- that dinner beneath the stars, the two of them alone, sounded like a date.

It wasn’t a date. And it was completely normal for them to be talking about kissing. It was Longest Night, after all.

“No, I --”

“Saving all your kisses for a special someone?”

“No,” Shirayuki protested, blush intensifying. “It’s only --”

“Oh.” Despairing, Shirayuki closed her eyes on the stars and tilted her head back against the stone as Suzu interrupted again. “I see. You’ve never been kissed?”

The blush flamed, burning her. “No!” she cried, shifting so she could glare at her fellow pharmacist. “I’ve -- I’ve been kissed! But I only -- well.” What dignity did she even have, here, faced with Suzu’s placid interrogation? For a moment she wished she could scoop up a palmful of snow and throw it in his face. “I’ve only been kissed by one person,” she admitted. “I don’t think I’m quite capable of -- of going around and kissing dozens, even if it is a tradition.”

The North was weird, she had long decided. Kissing wasn’t meant to be a group activity -- right? Nettled, she subsided, leaning back against the wall, head tilted back once more to take in the unfeeling, soothing sky. Only after she settled did she freeze, realizing that her shoulder was pressed to Suzu’s, that her thigh ran along the length of his.

“Who was it?”

Oh! Really. Even for Suzu, that seemed too prying. “None of your business,” she said, tone tart. Beneath the cloak she folded her arms, trying not to pay attention to the solid muscle of Suzu’s arm, a strength that usually went unnoticed.

“Hm, I’ll guess, then. Garrack?”

“That’s your fantasy,” Shirayuki claimed, startled into laughter.

Suzu hummed, sounding pleased. “That should be everybody’s fantasy. Okay, so not Garrak. Shidan?”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Shirayuki snorted, rolling her eyes.

For a moment she thought he was going to let it go. That he had gotten bored, or distracted, or simply satisfied his urge to -- to tease her. But then he asked, voice strange, “Obi, then.”

“W-what? No,” she said, brows furrowing. “Not Obi. It --”

Honestly, she may as well give in. Suzu was obsessive when he chose, and for some strange, unfathomable reason, he had chosen to obsess over this topic. Sighing, she admitted, “Zen. Zen’s the only person I’ve ever kissed.”

“Zen. The Second Prince of Clarines, Zen?”

“That would be the one,” Shirayuki muttered, plucking at the cape. The noise from within the ballroom lifted, loud with cheers, before subsiding back into a gentler, ambient noise of controlled, festive chaos. Maybe she should go back in, but --

She didn’t really want to.

“Huh,” said Suzu. “Well, can’t say I blame you. If he’s as pretty as his brother I wouldn’t say no to a kiss either.”

Shirayuki tucked the cape over her nose, groaning.

* * *

“Well, I think it’s time for drinking,” Suzu decided. “You wipe out the goblets, Shirayuki. I’ll get the wine.”

“The -- how much do you have in there, Suzu! Goodness.”

The cape fell from Shirayuki’s shoulders as Suzu leaned forward, and she shivered, but took advantage of the give to wipe clean the interior of both goblets. “Not much, really,” Suzu said, voice muffled. He grunted, tugging, and then came back upright abruptly, his hair a silvery sweep, like fine snow, that brushed against Shirayuki’s cheek. “Just enough for a quality evening, don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Shirayuki allowed, as Suzu worked the cork out of the bottle. It wasn’t one of the sparkling bottles served by the waiters inside, either, it was cloudy, a little dusty, a wax seal on one corner of the peeling label. Shirayuki felt realization dawn on her, slow and tinged with horror, but mostly amazement.

“Is that -- oh, oh my. Obi got in so much trouble for this!”

The bottle in Suzu’s hand was a very expensive wine that had been, allegedly, purloined from Lata’s house. Obi had been accused, Lata muttering indignantly that he knew Obi wasn’t a real knight. Suzu hummed, but Shirayuki recognized the smug amusement that deepened the corners of his mouth, an almost smile, as he said, “Care for a drink, Miss Court Pharmacist? It’d be a pity to let Obi’s theft go to waste.”

“Might as well,” Shirayuki said, trying to keep the laugh from her voice, and failing.

* * *

With the wine, a full belly, and company that Shirayuki found entirely too pleasing, she was warm despite the sharpness of the air stinging her nose. “I really am surprised you’re not inside,” she admitted, sipping at her second glass of wine. “Rubbing elbows with moneyed Lords and Ladies, and the like.”

“Mm, money would be nice,” Suzu sighed, sounding dreamy. “Think of all the research I could get done if I could only charm one of these rich nobles into funding me? Do you think I could convince Duchess Manaka to make me her sidepiece? She can lavish me in rewards for being so pretty.”

Shirayuki snorted. “I think I would have better luck with that.”

“Oh?” Suzu blinked at her. “Then perhaps I could be your sidepiece, and you can be Duchess Manaka’s. Share the wealth, Miss Court Pharmacist.”

Coloring slightly, Shirayuki looked away, prim. “Isn’t it time you stopped calling me that? We’ve been at Lyrias for two years now, you know.”

“I did notice,” Suzu admitted, voice dry. “But --”

The hesitation was enough to have Shirayuki turning back. Suzu wasn’t one for second guessing his words.

“Weren’t you planning on leaving us all behind and heading to Wilant to be Court Pharmacist?” There was a curious tilt to Suzu’s mouth, one Shirayuki didn’t know how to read.

“It’s not as though it’s far,” she whispered. “It’s not as though --”

“You’ll forget us, left behind amidst the dusty research shelves. Moving on to better, grander things.”

The way he said it -- a brittle quality hidden behind airy distance -- had Shirayuki’s heart hammering in her chest. Unease, or excitement; irritation and fondness. “I won’t,” she declared, catching Suzu’s gaze and holding it. “I would never. I cherish all of you too much. We’ve been through too much. You’ll always be my precious friends.”

“Friends,” Suzu murmured, head tilting toward her curiously. “I’m not your friend, Shirayuki.”

“I...what?”

Suzu took her goblet and his and set it on the ground at their feet, the cape rustling. Shirayuki caught the edge of it before it could quite escape and gripped it, hard, confused. She had thought -- but of course they were friends. How could he say something like that? Even Suzu couldn’t be so --

When Suzu turned back toward her, he was entirely too close, leaning over her in a way that pressed her back against the wall, that blocked the starry sky and seemed to muffle the sounds of the party carrying on inside. Hesitant, he tapped his fingers against her jaw, before withdrawing his hand.

“I don’t think,” he reasoned out of nowhere, “that kissing is that big of a deal.”

“What,” Shirayuki exhaled, starting to get annoyed, “is going on? What do you mean we’re not friends? I thought --”

“You should let me kiss you,” Suzu interjected.

It certainly interrupted Shirayuki’s irritation, her brain suddenly as still as the world in winter, quiet and frozen. He -- kissing. He wanted --

“I thought I looked -- weird,” Shirayuki whispered, oddly breathless. This close Suzu’s eyes were nearly too much, clear and bright as the moon on snow, staring at her as if he might take her apart just to see how she worked.

“I only meant,” he murmured, leaning closer. His gloved hand returned, more confident this time; firm, drawing her in. “That I prefer you as you usually are.”

“Oh.”

“Back to the kissing,” Suzu said, brows arching hopefully. “It really is a shame you’ve only been kissed by a prince. How are you to know what you like if your sample size is only that? We should rectify it. For science.”

Shirayuki’s breath was coming faster, little stuttering inhales and exhales. Suzu’s thigh was firm against hers beneath the cloak, a source of sizzling heat. “For -- ah, science?”

“Sure,” he said. “If you want it to be.”

She managed, just barely, to ask: “You would kiss someone who isn’t your friend?”

“I’d kiss anybody,” Suzu admitted. “And it’s -- you’re misunderstanding. I don’t feel about you the same way I feel about Yuzuri, or Obi. I don’t feel friendly with you.”

Licking her lips, Shirayuki felt hot, nervous. “Then... how do you feel? With me?”

An expression shifted across Suzu’s face, a tightness, a glimmer of sharp longing, that Shirayuki barely knew to recognize. But she did, and it caught her breath in her chest, made her hands tremble where they were clenched in velvet. Oh, she thought. So that’s what it means. That’s what I’ve been feeling.

“Lots of things,” Suzu said, lips brushing just barely against Shirayuki’s. “Awful, annoying, incessant things. I’m going to kiss you now, okay? For science.”

“Sure,” Shirayuki whispered. “If you want it to be. But you can -- you, uh --”

“Mm,” Suzu’s hand slid back into her hair, and her eyes fluttered shut. “I can what?”

How was he so obtuse, she wondered, but she couldn’t get angry. It wasn’t as though she had done much better. Words felt too awkward, her emotions spinning, wild, as everything she had thought she understood revealed new meaning. As Suzu gained new meaning. And --

Annoyed at her own idiocy, Shirayuki opened her eyes, angled her head, and kissed him in the moonlight, in the cold and the dark, while the crowds inside danced and cheered, passed kisses like favors amongst the throngs. Suzu kissed her like a question, a curious, hungry glide of lips and tongue, a nip of teeth; and he kissed her like an answer, a humming moan as he pressed into her, the greedy clench of his fingers tangled in her hair.

Even through their finery she could feel his heart beat fit to burst from his chest, matching the erratic, hungry, startled pace of her own.

When he pulled back, dragging in air, his eyes searched hers, brows quirking. “In case you’re still confused: I’m out here because the only one I want to kiss anymore is you, you know.”

“Yes,” Shirayuki gasped, flushed and embarrassed, confused but pleased. “I -- sort of gathered. Uhm. Shall we -- ah, would you like --”

“Yep,” Suzu agreed, and dipped down to kiss her again.

[loki-god-of-menace]

♫ five times my muse swears it’s not a date, and the one time it maybe is.

One. They had not been teacher and apprentice for long.

It had been five, short years, but Loki was enjoying the daily lessons and finding he was not so inadequate of a tutor as he first thought.

Sigyn had learned swiftly enough of his private library and herb collection, and his predilection for charting stars and independently studying spells in languages lost to time. Such pursuits led him on frequent visits to Asgard’s open-air market, where merchants from across the Realms came to trade.

He had asked Sigyn to accompany him today.

Several of the traders he paid to keep their eyes open for his eclectic genre of books had met success in their latest travels, and Loki was in good spirits as they turned to leave some hours later.

“What about some iced cream?” Loki suggested as they mounted the stairs from the market to the Medina. “I owe you something for your company.”

The proprietor dipped her head in deference when Loki entered, but the smile on her face told enough of how often he stopped. It was not five minutes more before Loki suggested a seat on the over-looking balcony of the shop and they settled into a corner table like a couple.

Loki poised a spoon between two, slender fingers, and when he saw how Sigyn enjoyed it, could not help himself but smile.

It occurred to him then that this look vaguely like an outing…a romantic one, and the rumors that had recently been spreading about his and Sigyn’s late hours returned to the forefront of his thoughts.

His lips thinned into a line. This is not a date…. He vowed to himself.

Two. This was certainly not a date.

Loki shifted his satchel on his shoulder and forged ahead, hearing Sigyn keeping pace at his side.

Thor’s ribbing was a customary, fraternal occurrence, and Loki took most of it with the same levity that he hoped it was intended. But when it came to remarks about him and Sigyn, he was less genial. His brother largely ignored his close friendship with Sigyn, but there were times it either seemed to bother the Thunderer, or suddenly became apparent enough that he thought it amusing to join in his friend’s teasing.

Loki was not fond of their jokes. The inferences were clear, and he was certain the flecks of jealously in Sif’s eyes made her tongue even sharper where this was concerned. He did not know if she wished to reveal him and Sigyn in an attempt to keep him from Thor’s side or if the growing gulf between them was simply making jabs easier. Either way, there was nothing to bring to light, despite the suggestive glances of the courtiers.

And this excursion to investigate a reported seidr incident was most certainly not a date.

Loki stood a comfortable distance from the fire and flexed his cold fingers in the light. The camp he and Sigyn had made was picturesque. A sheen of magic domed the area in a field that would alert them if anything trespassed, and their dinner, directly from Kenna’s kitchen and warmed by the flames, smelled delightful.

Loki rested down beside Sigyn on a log and smiled as he looked up at her. The flames lit the deep red color of her hair and he caught himself before his eyes lingered.

The infuriating phantom of Thor’s chuckling face drifted in front of his eyes and he scowled at it.

Three. “Would you attend with me?” Loki asked, adjusting his helm into the crook of his arm.

He was tasked with meeting a party of delegates and ambassadors from Alfheim’s counsel, and was thus clad in full, ceremonial armor. His cape dusted the floor, and in-place of black leather he wore silver molding that straightened his already impeccable posture even further.

“…to the feast being held in honor of Alfheim’s latest envoy. Each noble invited is permitted one escort or companion, and though I am bound to attend regardless, I would be glad of your company.”

Loki was required to be punctual when welcoming foriegn emissaries to the Realm, but he wanted to make a point of asking if Sigyn would be at his side before he filled the rest of his day with hosting tours, reviewing schedules, and ensuring their guests had all to their liking.

Frigga knew Loki preferred Sigyn to any of the other escorts she could supply, and thus did not often meddle in who, or who he did not, take, but when there were visiting dignitaries she was not above pairing him with one of them.

‘It is for diplomacy, and you are so good at this, Loki’  she had reasoned with him, once. As much as it warmed him that she thought he was skilled at the necessary smiling and appeasing that accompanied royal life, he had little taste for spending a whole night with a woman he was fairly certain would rather attend with Thor.

Sigyn was his friend and, more than almost anyone, she understood him. He knew what the others would say - the delegates and the courtiers from whom they would hear it from. They had been saying it since Sigyn had become his apprentice; since they kept late hours together and picnicked together; since he started to be with her more than without her.

‘Prince Loki has finally taken a bed-mate’  they would whisper, unashamed of their suggestive rumors. He tried to dissuade them as much as was tactful and possible, and defend Sigyn’s honor where it was his place, but they would have their lurid suspicions, regardless of how false.

“Of course I will come with you.” Sigyn answered with a smile, and Loki nodded, possessed with relief,

“Thank you. I shall look forward to it then.”

It is not a date… He thought when she took her leave and he too departed to meet the Alfir. Thor would chuckle and jostle him with his elbow and smirk when he learned that Loki had invited Sigyn again, and Loki would crave to wipe it off of his infuriatingly bearded face.

She does not see me that way.

Four. It is not a date. Loki mused as he came down the path toward the Healer’s Complex, his raven hair almost blue-black in the moonlight and his cloak snapping in the breeze. He had invited Sigyn to walk with him that night since he had felt, in light of the week’s happenings, they could both use time away.

The Mauraders had resurged under the leadership of an ill-tempered Aesir exile, and in the bloodbath that had resulted from the first day of their unchecked onslaught they had massacred two villages. The carnage had been hard to stomach and the half-dead and wounded had been transported back to Asgard to be tended by the Healers. Several days and nights of battle had elapsed before their enemy had shown himself, and Thor and Loki both were wrung thin. An embittered Berserker, the self-established Marauder king had taken them both to curb, and in the process both princes had touched his staff. Designed to send warriors into a blind rage, the Beserker staffs amplified any pain a being might be harboring, and it turned the pain into uncontrollable wrath.

Loki had never seen anything bring Thor to his knees like whatever visions the staff gave him, but he could well imagine. He still felt hollow from his own ordeal with it.

Sigyn was there waiting, and Loki and her mounted the pair of horses he had brought from the royal livery (his black mount, and hers; the one she had chosen when he had taken her to the herds and told her to pick whichever she wanted) and trotted into the forest.

They were on an out-cropping shelf overlooking the bays, and the brink of Asgard beyond it, when they stopped.

The star seems to stretch even over the edge and down, into the void beyond Asgard’s shores. Loki stared at the mist and froth swirling around the waterfalls that tumbled over the brink, and felt.. lonely. All at once he was afraid of falling; of finding out where the beauty of the stars went after they disappeared. When he was a child the edge had not seemed so looming, but now it did. Like something out of a dream he could not remember.

Sigyn touched his arm and he turned to her, easing the crease in his brow and stroking a thumb across her fingers.

“I wondered once what was beyond that…” He murmured, “Space. Darkness. Stars. I thought only of the stars when I was young, but now… I almost fear it. I do not know why.”

“Thoughts are darker at night at times.” Sigyn answered, “And these last days have been difficult.” She searched his eyes, “I… heard what happened. With the staff. Is this about that?”

“I do not know. I have had dreams as well. Dreams where I am falling, but… I do not know where from.”

Sigyn’s brow tightened in concern, and she reached up, hesitating only briefly, before touching his cheek. Loki leaned into her hand, and released a long pent sigh,

“I am all right… and here I am, brooding, when we have both have had our struggles.” Loki mustered a smile, “Come. Let’s sit. How are you?”

Five. It was two days before Thor’s coronation. Two. Loki was surprised he had found a moment’s peace among the bustle of activity. The entire kingdom was expected to show - at least those able enough to do so - and thousands more from their Realms, and there were equally as many preparations to be made in light of it.

He had not seen Thor in hours. He had hoped he might be in counsel with their father, but if he were to be honest with himself, he knew that Thor would be avoiding speaking to Odin. He would be reciting in front of a mirror and pretending his stomach was not coiling in anticipation and hiding in his chambers under a reasonable excuse of business.

Loki ought to be at his side.

But he needed this.

He had been smiling and congratulating and advising and preparing for over two weeks. He had swallowed down the hollowness he felt each time he went over the ceremony, and reviewed the seating arrangements, and checked the wine and ale choices. He had bit down his jealousy and swallowed back his disappointment with enough expert grace to even fool his mother, since he knew they were wrong and he had no more right to feel them than he had right to believe he was as worthy as Thor.

But he needed to get away. To see Sigyn and do something other than think of Thor being king in two days.

He had asked Kenna if he could have samplings of the pastries she was seeing made for the feast, and though she had put her hands on her hips and wagged a finger at him, he’d come away with fairly a basket full of food.

Oh, how he loved Kenna.

Loki was settled in an out-of the way corner of the expansive palace gardens. The shade of the tree hide him from few of the path, and he waited, leaning against the trunk, for Sigyn to round the path.

It was not a date per say.

Though you are meeting her in a secluded portion of the orchards beneath a tree. That will not cause talk at all… He though, and simply disregarded it with a resolve not to care. Thor would be king in two days. What did it matter?

He doubted anyone would be looking.

He did not realize how black his mood was until Sigyn came into site and he felt the tension in his chest ease and a smile ease the furl in his brow.

At least he had her.

Six. It was very much a date.

Loki was dressed impeccably. The silver of his cuff-links matched the silver of his ring and complimented nicely with its matching gold band. He adjusted his sleeves and straightened his tie, casting a cursory glance over his image in the mirror.

He had no need to impress Sigyn, but he very much wished to please her, and a smile edged up his lips in hopes that it would. It was a fine tailored suit of black, and his hair was smoothed down in dark waves.

They had decided dinner out, and after it? Well. They had no where to be but with each other. After would be anything they wished.

Loki emerged from the bathroom and felt himself warm at the site of Sigyn, finishing the last of her appearance as well. He took her coat from the bed and stepped up behind her with a purr in his throat.

“You are a vision.” He murmured in her ear, and slid the fur-trimmed wrap over her shoulders. He kissed her neck,  “And I love you.”

Oh, it was a date, undeniably, and Loki knew there had been dozens before, when he was too uncertain of his own heart to admit it. But he was not uncertain anymore.

[schlenanigans]

Sundown on Cape Town

[JANUARY 30, 2019]

Howzit ma brus?

What a whirlwind few weeks in the Mother City!! I cannot believe my time in Cape Town already came and went. Between spending half the last weekend in the Winelands and the other driving down the Cape to see the southwestern-most point of Africa and the PENGUINS at Boulders Beach (along with some of the best fish & chips EVER), the time flew by, but man did we have a good time! 

I realize that in my last post I did a very poor job of laying out exactly what I am doing, for those of you that I did not explain it all to in person :)

Remote Year is the name of a company that offers 4- and 12-month itineraries around the world. I was picked by my company to choose an itinerary; I was given 4 options and the one I chose was here in Africa and Europe… the company has many itineraries going in different areas at once, both 4 and 12; mine is a 4-monther called Kuungana, which means “connect” in Swahili…. and did I mention there are 50 of us? We did our first month here in the Mother City, head next to Marrakesh for 5 weeks, followed by 4 weeks each in Lisbon and Valencia. Each group has a Program Leader accompanying them to all the cities on the itinerary; our mama on Kuungana is Jen, a wonderfully bubbly and funny Aussie who has been living the nomad life for 4 years and been working for Remote Year for over 2— she rules. Once you have completed a program, you can jump into any city where there is a group and take advantage of the activities and resources that RY makes available to their newly christened Citizens (what they call folks who have finished a program). Obviously, I am already making big plans to figure out where I am going in May once my run with Kuungana has ended.  

But I digress. With the whole setup of Remote Year, you truly do feel like you have an entire network in the city you find yourself, and there is always someone willing to go find a new restaurant or explore a new neighborhood. They encourage everyone to get to know EVERYone, which is actually kind of nice, as you find yourself able to talk to anyone in the group and have shared interesting interpersonal experiences in close proximity. And did I mention there are 50 of us in the Kuungana fam?  It’s also interesting to learn bit by bit about what people do for work and how they form work habits in a remote environment. Some people are adhering strictly to their American work hours; others are not working at all. Some of use hang in the workspace til 11PM, others are early birds knocking out their tasks in the early morning. Today we actually had an “UNconference’, a quick event where everyone presented one slide about what they do, like to talk about, can offer to teach other, and want to learn from others…it was such a neat opportunity to understand how people got here, but also get an idea of the great resources available when you bring together a group of gifted and talented people, to see what other ways we can work and learn. Everyone is so eager to help, it is pretty freakin rad to see.

I have already gotten really close with my “tramily”— my travel family (an RY term, not mine)— and it’s pretty interesting to reflect upon the relationships forged in the first month, both with the other Remotes and with the folks on the city teams and who work for Remote Year. Obviously, I am already making big plans to figure out where I am going in May once my run with Kuungana has ended.

As my month in Cape Town came to a close, I found myself reflecting on the time warp… it feels like I just got there … and now I have already left. I was so sad to be leaving “so soon”… but I am also filled with excitement and anticipation at what this next stop brings. January has been a true emotional rollercoaster— mostly highs, a couple lows, with a little stress in the mix to keep me honest. It feels like Cape Town was sort of a holiday, one on which I had to work, but also one on which I went NON.STOP. Seriously, no sleep. So, it will be nice to chill and spend a little more time alone and reflecting…. this whole journey is one of the crazier things I have had the opportunity to do in my life— and I have had a lot of crazy opportunities— and I am determined to squeeze every last drop out of the experiences; I remain unbelievably grateful. I have met amazing people, seen amazing sights, learned a lot about South Africa and its history and people, (hit some pretty rad parties,) and found myself feeling so at home and in love with the place. I was SO not ready to leave, and I already can’t wait to go back. (And I am still convinced I will marry a South African…)

I know I promised to be good about sharing, through photos and more…. This month I did not do a good job on ye olde social media; but I hope you all know that I have been living my best life, enjoying the moments to the fullest, and feeling incredibly blessed to share every second with people that I love, whether I knew them before getting here or met them upon arrival. Having Kristina and Nadia and Kelsey from home be around to get a glimpse into what this whole thing is (and drive convertibles down the coast of Africa while on a carrot cake tour for the ages) has been so special and SOOOO fun. I said it before, I’ll say it again: this is a life-changer.

🇲🇦Next stop: MOROCCO!!!! 🇲🇦

We left Saturday for our new home in Marrakech— two ~9-hour flights and a 3-hour bus ride away. The whole group of us traveled together (kids’ stuff—reminded me of Plexcon, traveling with a big ol’ group—we. got. this.). This city around, we are living in the same apartment complex (we were split across two here in CT), with new roommates, 25 min from the famous Medina marketplace and 20 min from our workspace, which is in the hip, up-and-coming part of town. Our city team here is a married couple from Marrakech and from our exposure thus far, they are sweet and knowledgeable and lovely and very enamored with their home (they both served the military, she as an engineer and he as a pilot, and they are amazing tour guides). So far it looks like the opportunities for doing unique, awesome things are vast and varied; I have already signed up for a leather workshop, a cooking class, and a heritage tour of the city (this one starts in about 8 hours)… camel rides on the Sahara are also on the table, and I already just know the shopping is insane.

On our first night (Sunday) a small group of us went “for a quiet dinner after our 25 hours of travel” and ended up sitting in a beautiful Moroccan restaurant for 3.5 hours eating delicious food, listening to live music, which was then interrupted by a show complete with belly dancers and women gyrating and shaking with trays of candelabras on their heads…. all followed by shisha (hookah) brought to the table after dinner…to accompany the most insane salted caramel dessert ever. Another wonderful, memorable, completely unexpected welcome to our new home. This morning we went for a traditional breakfast in the marketplace and had warm flatbread with eggs and khlii, a fermented meat mixed in, with the most delicious mint tea ever…. For about $3.60. YES.) The food does NOT disappoint here.

Morocco has already proven different from Cape Town in many ways; from the slower pace of activities organized by RY (orientations, etc.) to the dynamic of the workspace (pic above), as we share it with a whole bunch of entrepreneurs and remote workers who are not associated with RY. It is not as fancy schmancy as the one in CT, but we do have a delightful rooftop deck with reliable internet where we can work outside for the few hours that it is warm enough in the sun. (YES, it’s cold here. Really cold.) They do have some educational meetings set up for us to learn about language and culture, which is awesome to help us navigate the city, and—surprising to many—it is actually safer for us to walk around at night here than it was in Cape Town (albeit much more psycho drivers here!). I was at the workspace til late tonight and walking after 11 I wouldn’t have dared back in CT; here I feel fine walking with just one other girl the 20 min back home. (Which reminds me, I had my iPhone stolen on my very last night in Cape Town….unfortunate, and I am not proficient with the backup android I am using, so my photo quality has really taken a nosedive...)

☝My new home sweet home for the next 5 weeks!

Morocco promises to be pretty amazing; it is exciting to be in a place I have never been before and that is so completely different from really anywhere else I have been. The culture here is such an interesting mix of histories and the way Moroccans view themselves as a nation is fascinating, given how different it is in the rest of Africa, the Arab nations, and Europe. I am so excited to walk around, exploring, getting to know a new place, and to meet the people and eat alllllll the food.

So, month one down in the Mother City! We will be here in Marrakesh for 5 weeks, followed by 4 weeks each in Lisbon and Valencia. Again, please reach out if you have any questions about any of this— even if it's about being new to juggling time zones or what I have been eating. It’s always fun to hear back…. And I am amazed if you made it to the end!

[sextonsharpwinhalstead]

Deliver Us Review

This episode...

First things first we have got to talk about Robyn and her “illness”… At first I thought it wasn’t smart to give her care over to Sarah but I actually don’t think it was a bad idea, her explanation of the way she was evaluating Robyn seems sound and smart but like all things Chicago Med the writing failed here. Would it have been so hard for us to HEAR Dr. Charles tell his daughter to HER face what he’s hypothesizing that her illness might be? The next episode we have Connor yelling about it and we as an audience still have no DIAGNOSIS. Why is he yelling? How serious is this? Who knows? The scene between her and Reese should’ve been more in depth or revealed when Reese was talking to Goodwin, somehow they should have told us something.

Natalie and Will. Sigh, you know I for one am so tired of this shit but it’s a big part of the show so you cannot ignore it. I’m glad that we got a little glimpse of the old Natalie. The Natalie that would confront Will and call him on his behavior, she was bold and spoke the truth, but we also got “old” Will too. Good ol’ gaslightin’ Will. Run Natalie, just run, and take Nina with you because he is doing the same with her too. He actively has Nina thinking she’s being irrational and Natalie (who already questions her judgment as far as treatment/procedure goes) feeling like what she is seeing between them isn’t real. Oh Will just stop. Which brings me to the scene that has the Linstead PDer’s out with torches and pitch forks…,

The hockey game “date”…listen I don’t think anything is going to happen, this show doesn’t do that kind of drama (lawd I wish they would)…I mean look at Nina’s “extreme” actions. If you didn’t understand fake hospital protocol would that seem extreme without Will going downstairs to confront Nina? No. I think the hockey game “date” is done to mess with Will again. I assume they’ll do the off screen OneChicago thing where a conversation we never saw happened between Will and Jay where Jay tells Will about his break with Lindsey. Jesse is slated to be in the next episode when Natalie calls him for help with a little girl and there is going to be some kind of slip about having a good time or enjoying each other’s company and Will is going to hear it and get jealous.  And probably do what he always does and lash out at Natalie.

Moving on to Noah, Ethan, and April….I just really can’t stand Noah. I can’t, he is so annoying and ungrateful and ridiculous. He didn’t even earn that “win” out of the other med students. He won’t have what it takes but he will be named the new resident and we are going to have to put up with his ass all of season 3…I’m telling you get good with this….maybe even good with Wrexton. However his whining did cause April to put on her cape and try and save him from Ethan. Can we talk about the fact that she looked him dead in the face and called him a “hard-ass”….oh lord. If there is ANY kind of relationship that may happen between these two we’ll see….next episode it sounds like there could be conflict, they are on either sides of, and you know all the best ships are born this way…

Finally if you weren’t paying attention than you might not realize that everyone is in some kind of conflict with someone else, which is why the season finale is Noah celebrating his graduation and trying to get everyone there to “kiss and make-up.” I for one would love to see who kisses…but knowing Med we’ll get a conversation with Dr. Charles and Connor as they patch things up and a montage with everyone else as the new doctor gives handshakes to the staff and Will looks lovingly at a laughing Natalie and everyone else slowly fades into the ether.

Please Med, deliver us from this formula and get.a.new.showrunner.