#in the small logistics room he and other 3 men in a circle

[dreamyberry]

Isn’t it great when a thing which rationally thinking wouldn’t be a big deal makes you feel awful and it’s like a domino effect that pulls out all the pain buried inside you and makes your bruises burn, and everything tastes so bitter and it’s as if that time you cried a lot for no reason at 7 after having come home from a summer camp is somehow connected to all this

[sabraeal]

We Seek That Which We Shall Not Find, Chapter 7

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Written for @k-itsmaywriting as her prize for winning the Trope Madness kitty last March! I’d make the usual groaning noises about how late I am, but honestly...this is about as good as I could do this year XD

“So let me get this straight.” Obi’s long fingers steeple over his character sheet. “Not only is homeslice the lord of this particular castle and its whole dealie--”

“Demense,” Kiki offers.

“--Right, demense. That sounds fancy enough. So he’s not only the big wig of this demense place, but also--” her stomach curls to match the trajectory of his smirk-- “my lady’s boyfriend.”

“Ah! It’s not like that!” Shirayuki waves her hands, attempting to scuttle this whole avenue of inquiry. “He’s not-- we’re not-- together.” She dares a glance at Izana. “I...think?”

His mouth twitches; no comment. This may be presumptuous of me, one of his first texts reads, burning a hole in her pocket, but would you be open to a potential failed betrothal in your backstory?

There was no way for her to know, not when her only image of Zen’s older brother was a blond man behind a backseat window, waiting in the school parking lot, but still, still--

I’m open to whatever you think would go best, should not have been her answer. Every poster on r/tabletop would have called her...well, nothing polite, that’s for one.

“I mean, maybe...technically?” She’s not entirely sure how fourth century betrothals work, especially fantasy ones. “Lynet is under the impression that this was all dissolved for, ah...” Izana offers her a beatific smile, like an angel before it sets fire to a city. “...reasons.”

“But officially,” Obi presses, “he has dibs.”

Her mouth pulls flat. “I guess if you’re the sort of person who thinks you can call dibs on a sentient being with free will, yes.”

“Right,” Obi bulldozes on, oblivious to the pothole he’s hurtling toward, “and now he’s throwing you this banquet--”

“The banquet’s for all of us,” Zen snaps, arms cross and cheeks flushed. “As a reward for saving Laxdo.”

“Oh, is that right? As I remember it--” Obi taps his chin, so thoughtful-- “Lynet was the one who figured out the whole compulsion thing. And who was it that broke the curse? Oh, right: Lynet.”

“No!” Shirayuki claps her hands to her cheeks. It would be nice if she could take even a fictional compliment without blushing. “You all helped!”

“See?” Zen cuts a hand toward her, smug. “It’s for all of us.“

“Oh yes,” Kiki deadpans, teeth peeking out from her smirk. “Moral support is just as important as actually solving the puzzle. I’m sure his lordship agrees.”

Mitsuhide rubs at his chin, stubble scraping over his palm. Four hours ago, he arrived clean shaven; now he’s sporting a five o’clock shadow. Shirayuki can only stare in wonder.

“I think...they might have a point.” He winces under Zen’s scowl. “Not that I think we weren’t important! But Lord Shuuka...”

He shrugs. It’s like watching mountains heave, but in a gentle, lovable way.

Kiki’s mouth twitches. “I have the distinct impression we were afterthoughts on that banquet invitation.”

“I’m the Prince of all the Britons and the Angles!” Zen shrills, slapping his hand on the table. “I’m not an afterthought.”

The room goes suddenly,awkwardly silent; the only noise the rattle of heating through the ducts. The exactly moment his words echo back to him is made painfully clear by the way he blushes, blotchy and red all up and down his neck, like he’s the one with a curse.

Kiki’s eyebrow nearly collides with her hairline. “You mean Arturius?”

“That’s what I said,” Zen grumbles, hunching down in his seat. “Or at least what I meant.”

“In any case,” Obi presses on, “what’s a king to a cute girl you’re gonna marry--?”

“We’re not engaged.” It’s pointless; Obi’s clearly concerned less about Lynet’s marital status and more about riling Zen up about it, but still. “I mean, not now.”

“Betrothed,” Izana interjects casually, tapping the end of his pen on his notebook. “It is different. Legally.”

Shirayuki nibbles on her lip, stomach wriggling in a concerned squirm. Nothing good comes of Izana getting pedantic.

“Sure, maybe you’re not now,” Obi allows with a shrug of his shoulder. “But come on, what better place is there to woo a medieval maiden than a banquet?”

“A ball,” Kiki offers, flat, at the same time Mitsuhide thoughtfully posits, “A stroll through the garden.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Zen snips, lifting his chin. “Shirayuki already said Lynet wasn’t interested.”

“Sure, sure. Hey, boss.” Obi pitches toward Izana with a smile that can only be described as looking for trouble. “How tall is this guy?”

For once, Izana seems flustered, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks down at his notes. “I’m sorry, come again?”

“This Shuuka dude. The lord here? The baron or whatever he is.” He rests his chin on his hand, smile sharpening into a feral grin. “How tall is he?”

“Ah...average, I suppose.” His brows knit, fingers shuffling through his papers. “There aren’t any good estimates of height for this era, but I suppose if you wanted a modern equivalent...five-ten? Five-eleven?”

“Really? You don’t say.” Obi cuts his smile toward Zen. “And just how tall are you, Your Highness?”

Shirayuki winces at the flush climbing Zen’s neck; if they’d been outside, she’d have suggested some aloe vera before the burn blistered. As it is...

Zen’s fingers crumple the edge of his sheet. “Arturius is six-one.”

Obi hums. “How interesting.”

It is a fine day at Laxdo; this autumn may still have a bite, but it’s crisp, refreshing after so many days in the confines of the great hall. A great hall that is now transformed, tables and benches populating it instead of the sick. Most of the afflicted now hobble about the grounds, slow and unsteady, but healing; the few still confined to their sickbeds are only the elderly and previously infirm, and your attentions are a boon to them still.

The manifest is in your hand now, the last few names in your care curling across the page. It is those men on your mind now as you sweep through Laxdo’s bright corridors, striding through the tiger stripes the sun leaves across the rushes. Your burden is light now that the castle’s healer is back on his feet, able to help with potions and poultices and whatever else you are able to fashion to ease the weakness in your patients, but logistics are ever the enemy. Supplies were depleted before you arrived and have only been brought lower. Winter is just around the corner, and--

Steel rings through the stone. Metal on metal-- blades meeting. Out in the courtyard.

Your heart flutters wildly in your chest, and your pace hurries to match it. Surely, surely it cannot be an attack; not now, when Laxdo is but a shade of its former glory.

The certainty of pragmatism grips you, your stomach roiling in its clutches. But of course it must be. What lord could suffer the sweet temptation of a neighbor brought low? It would be nothing to sweep in here and take the manor for a second son, something to placate him, to keep him complacent for another dozen years.

You steel yourself, wishing you had more than the bare pouch of herbs and water skein you carry on you, and step into the blinding light of the arcade--

Only to see a crowd of men gathered in the yard, conspicuously not fighting. Oh no, they are cheering instead.

Your mouth pulls thin, and ah, fortune favors you, for the crowd parts just so, and there are two of your recently healed patients, bare steel in hand, fighting each other in the yard.

Violence is not in your nature, but oh, you are contemplating a change of philosophy.

“Lady Lynet.”

You should startle; time and experience have taught you to shy when approached from behind, but strangely...you do not. Shuuka comes to stand beside you, a respectful distance as is due to your station, but closer than you have been used to these last few months, and it is-- easy. Familiar.

The lord of Laxdo has certainly seen better days; his shoulders stoop as if he expects to be smaller, and the circles beneath his eyes are quite deep still, but-- he smiles, and it is easy to see that time will heal his ills, even these.

“Shuuka,” you murmur in greeting, leaning against one of the arcade’s columns. “It is good to see you on your feet.”

“It is good to be on them,” he assures you with a laugh that brightens the day around you. “I see you are taking in this fine weather.”

“I am. And so are you men, it seems,” you add, wry. “Whether or not I told them to.”

“I know you told them to rest,” he says, lips struggling to rein in his smile, “but it has been a long season for my men. To be outside after such a long sickness, to be moving as one ought--” the longing on his face is plain to see and painful to witness-- “perhaps you might allow them this. Just this once.”

You watch the men dance around each other in the ring, laughing and shouting, breathless from both, and let your jaw ease. “Just this once.”

Shuuka smiles, a bright, earnest thing, and it is so hard to reconcile him to the boy you knew all those years ago. The small lord’s son who viewed the whole world through a veil of tears. He’s grown up better than you could have ever hoped.

He leans on the pillar across from yours, eyeing you with an eager sort of wariness. “I have set the night of the banquet.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” His skitters away, back toward his men. “Tonight. If-- if you allow it.”

“Oh!” You had not-- this was not-- you are not even prepared--

“Hey, you!”

You both jump, heads swinging to where Arturius storms across the yard, looking as unrelenting as winter itself. “You and I must have words, Lord Shuuka!” He glances at you, mouth pulled thin. “Privately.”

Shirayuki considers herself well read.

An understatement, actually; a well-crafted cover for the amount of hours she’d spent curled up in the B&B’s window, devouring books Jaja bought by the box at a yard sale, or the amount she could carry in her arms from the library.

(The maximum was supposed to be five at any one time, but during on particularly slow summer in middle school, the librarian had made a special “all you can carry” policy, applied solely to Shirayuki. It had turned her daily trips into weekly ones, and saved her from slowing her pace to a crawl Saturday nights, so that she could have something to read on Sunday)

She doesn’t have a favorite book-- just thinking about culling the list to top ten makes her break out into a cold sweat, let alone one-- but she has formative ones. Ones that became annual re-reads or just stuck with her, claiming a stake in the back of her mind, ready to whisper the words she needs when she wants a laugh, or the rest of the world gets too hard to handle.

So it’s no surprise when she looks at Obi, his grin stretching impossibly, gleefully wide, and thinks Cheshire Cat. It only makes sense, since she’s fallen down the rabbit hole.

“Well now,” he drawls, far too pleased. “I think we all saw this coming.”

Kiki arches a brow. “What? Because you goaded him into it?”

“Princess,” he gasps, hand pressed against his chest. “Would I purposefully rile up the Prince of all the Briton and the Angles?”

“Absolutely.”

His retort is lost, cut off by the heavy tread of Zen clomping down the stairs. If Shirayuki thought some hallway time might help him cool off, well-- that notion is instantly disabused when he turns the corner on the landing. If anything, he’s more agitated, neck flushed and mouth flat, slouching over to his seat like he’s asking for someone to start a fight.

Izana is not much better, even if his annoyance is more subtle. He settles into his chair with lips pressed thin, the corners of his eyes crinkled in a way that does not suggest good humor.

“Now if no one else has any more business,” he says, voice a trembling thread of his patience, “I think we can skip right to the feast.”

Shirayuki shifts, biting her cheek. It’s not important, it really isn’t but still-- “Um...”

Izana peers up from his notes, brows raised with a shocking lack of sarcasm. “Did you want to do something, Shirayuki?”

“Oh, no, I just, um...” She rolls a corner of Lynet’s sheet, tight and neat under her stubby fingernail. “I just wanted a...clarification?”

He blinks, flipping a hand out in encouragement. “Go on...?”

“It’s only, ah....” It’s silly, she knows that, but she’s already started asking. “Is this an...informal feast?”

Izana’s mouth parts, just slightly. “I’m...sorry?”

“I thought I would ask since Lynet didn’t exactly pack her, um, fanciest gowns.” Her cheeks flare with heat, and ugh, she really just should have let the chips fall as they may on this one. At least if the stares she’s getting from the rest of the table are any indication. “She was traveling light.”

“I...” His mouth opens once, then shuts. Opens again, brows furrowed. “Lord Shuuka has seen fit to outfit you all accordingly if you did not have appropriate clothing for the evening.”

She means to thank him, maybe even ask what might qualify as proper dress for a celebration such as this, but--

“So what you’re saying,” Obi interjects, grin slanted and sly, “is that Beaumain’s got some sick new threads.”

Regret etches itself on every plane of Izana’s face. “...Yes. I suppose.”

“Ha.” Obi leans back, eyes tracing a searing trail up her from heels to hairline. “Then yeah, I got something I want to do before this shindig.”

Had the Lord Himself but asked you if there were women in Laxdo, you would have sworn upon the grave of your mother that you and Morgaine were the only two. Surely you had treated none when the castle was under its curse. But when you attempt to beg off the feast, explaining that you are not properly clad for such a celebration--

Well, Shuuka finds you a gown easily enough. Your fingers linger over the remarkable wool, woven thin and tight, dyed a rich indigo. Woad, you think, though your own forays with it never yielded a color so impressive. The linen kirtle is the same, so light it might as well be air, and oh, you may be born a lady, but never did the Castle Perilous have such luxury.

A knock lands lightly upon your door, a quick little ditty sketched on oak. You’ve heard it before, though you can’t remember the words, or even the tune, just the beat. Ba-ba-bum. Bum-bum. A song from a better time.

You shake yourself. Song it may be, but a summons it is still. And you are the one who must answer it.

The door is heavy beneath your hands, but you coax it open with little effort. Behind it is the evening’s shadows, thick in the growing dim, and the gold that shines from them.

“Ah Beaumains,” you murmur as his outline resolves into a man, one dressed as fine as you. His colors are more subdued, the black of the shadows and the deep blues of his skin, humbler than any words that have passed his lips. “I was not expecting that you would, um...?”

“I am your escort, my lady.” He bows over his arm, a gallant. His pose gives the distinct impression of mocking Bedwyr, though the man himself is not in evidence. “What sort of shield would I be if I let you walk into the fray alone?”

“Ah...” You stare at his sleeve as he holds it out to you, hesitant. “I suppose that would be...unseemly, yes.”

“And I, the height of propriety.” His teeth flash like a knife’s edge as you slip your hand around his elbow. “Lucky, too.”

Your brows raise. “Oh?”

“Of course.” He shrugs; every inch a siege. “I get to see how nice you look before everyone else.”

“Hey!” Zen directs the brunt of his scowl toward Izana, though the angle of his glare is easily wide enough to include Obi. “Why is Beaumains getting this scene?”

“This scene?” Izana drawls, utterly mild. “Do you mean the conversation he just had with Lynet in her chambers?”

“Yes!” Zen’s jaw sets into an ill-tempered jut. “If anyone, Arturius--”

“You mean the scene wherein Beaumains takes the opportunity afforded by his current occupation to further their flirtation,” Izana continues, “the flirtation in which both players have built upon from their character introductions?”

A flush licks flames up her jaw, threatening to blaze across her cheeks. It’s one thing for it to happen, it’s another thing for everyone to just talk about it.

“...Yes.”

Izana raises a brow. “Because he asked.”

And it’s a whole other thing to do it like she wasn’t even here.

“Well, I want one too!” Zen pushes, hands gripping at the table. “Arturius--”

“Is missing the point that the DM is making,” Kiki supplies, deadpan. “Which is that Lynet is also choosing to have this scene too.”

Zen sputters, red-faced. “I know that! Shirayuki wouldn’t have any problem if Arturius wanted to--”

“Arturius is having a very long, very pointed heart-to-heart with the lord of Laxdo,” Izana reminds him. “Or have you forgotten?”

“Well, it’s not like that took all day!” he protests. “I have time to do both.”

Izana pinches the bridge of his nose, letting a long, noise breath out. “The next half hour is not going to be all and sundry complimenting Lynet on her sartorial choices.”

“It’s not everyone, just Artur--”

“Why not?” Kiki tilts back her chair, wedging her knees against the table. “Morgaine wants to tell her she’s beautiful too. How about Bedwyr?”

Mitsuhide stares at her, slack-jawed, before darting a worried look toward Iana. “W-well,” he says finally, with a hard swallow, “he certainly wouldn’t be able to disagree.”

Izana stares at Kiki, nonplussed. “Well then,” he drawls, mouth settling into a disconcerting smile. “What do you think, Shirayuki?”

She’s already pink, but with everyone’s eyes on her, her skin burns to a painful red. “M-me?”

“Shall we allow Arturius--” he darts a quelling glance at Kiki-- “et al to have their moment with Lynet, or shall we press on to the feast?”

Zen smiles at her, so kind and warm, just like he did that first day at school, and she-- she wishes that this wasn’t up to her. It’s not as if she minds the compliments-- fictional as they are-- but Beamains’ had been spontaneous, inspired by the moment, and this--

--Zen settles back, his smile curling smugly at the corners. His gaze is no longer on her, oh no, it’s on Obi, the challenge written clear in his eyes--

--has nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with the people playing it.

“I think,” she begins without a tremor in her voice, “I’m fine with moving on.”

Zen’s jaw drops. “What?”

“You heard the lady.” Izana lips twitch behind his paper screen. “She is content with only Beaumains’ love making.”

Shirayuki jolts. “That’s not what I sa--”

“Anyway,” he continues, ignoring his brother’s glare and Obi’s grins in response, “it’s the feast now.”

This is no longer the great hall you remember.

Or perhaps it is if you search your earliest memories; if you allow yourself to remember being seated upon the dais, a cushion placed beneath you so that you might reach the table and impress the court with your grace. You did not-- you sister would have, were she allowed, but it was you who would be sent to marry at Laxdo, not her, practically an infant still. It was no disaster; it was not your beauty that had brought the lord of Laxdo to break bread with your father.

“Lady Lynet!” Shuuka rises on the dais, holding up a hand. “Please, come here!”

It is perhaps a different tale now.

Still, this no longer resembles the hall in which you have been toiling in these long weeks. That was a dark, stifling place, the miasma of curse and compulsion lingering for days after you had dispelled them. But this--

This is a new country entirely. Candles twinkle in their holder overhead, the ceilings so high they seem as distant as the stars themselves. Bodies no longer line the hall but instead pack benches, the men dressed bright and boisterous, ale already flowing from their cups.

“Surveying your domain?”

You blink, eyes blurring as they settle on the shadow beside you. His teeth flash white against the indigo of his lips, too amused. “N-no! I was only thinking of how changed this place is. Only days ago man laid head to toe, and now...”

He tilts his heads, horns glimmering in the candlelight. “Now they are all hidden away, and we play at heroes.”

It is only the rough wool beneath your fingers, wrapped around the hard curve of his shoulder, that tells you once again you have acted without thinking. You cheeks burn as you pull away-- to think, you raised a hand to him as if he were one of the tenants’ children chasing you around the courtyard, as if you had known him all your life.

“Oh, my lady,” he clucks. “How rough you are with your servant--”

“You were unkind,” you murmur heatedly. “There are few enough that are still ailing, and they would be better served in their rooms. There is no harm in Laxdo’s lord wanting to celebrate their good fortune.”

“Mayhaps.” His nose wrinkles. “A little ridiculous, you must admit.”

You snorts, unladylike. “Says the one who polished his horns.”

Ah, now the shoe is on the other foot. His gaze is quick to drop from yours, expression rumpled with annoyance. Beaumains may be eager to ridicule the pageantry of the nobles, but he enjoys it as well.

“Come on then.” His arm tugs at yours, not gentle. “Let’s see what your skill has won you, my lady.”

You sputter, feet stumbling as you attempt to keep pace. “As I said, I am not--”

“Ah.” Beaumains mouth curves slyly, eyeing the tables he leads you past. “You may not be taking their measure, but it seems tonight they will take yours.”

It is only his words that make you notice; conversations quiet as you pass, the men’s eyes following you not with hunger, but with curiosity. For the first time, you prefer the former more than the latter.

“I cannot see why.” You take pains to place your feet more carefully, to strive for that ladylike bearing your sister achieves so easily. “They know me already.”

“But tonight is different.” He nods to the empty place beside Shuuka. You stomach drops when you see it is to his right. “Tonight they find out if you fit into the lady’s seat.”

You gut clenches. You did not come so far for this to dog your heels once again. “That-- that cannot be. I have been clear--”

“Lady Lynet!” Shuuka waves again, though more subtly. No need for grand gestures when you are already so close. “Come, take your place by me.”

Beaumains’ brows raise. “Are you sure?”

You thought you were, but the smile the lord gives you as you approach gives you doubts. Beaumains pulls out your chair, chin tucked respectfully, but you do not miss his amused smirk or his knowing look. Fine. He may think what he likes but this is not-- not that. Your betrothal is long in the past for both you and Laxdo’s lord.

“My women did well,” Shuuka tells you, friendly and bright, no hint of romance. “You look radiant, my lady.”

Well...not much of one, at least. “They have my thanks,” you reply, “I truly had nothing for a feast such as this.”

His smile widens, and it does him credit that he keeps it as he turns to Beaumains. “Thank you as well, for escorting my lady.”

To his other side, Arturius scowls, glaring as your shadow performs a polite bow, no respect spared. The same he categorically refused to show the prince. “My pleasure, your lordship.”

“You honor us with your actions, Sir Beaumains.” Shuuka gestured past her, hand open in generosity. “Please, take the seat next to the Lady Lynet, I--”

A chair scrapes across the dais, and Arturius stands, as thunderous as any storm. “That man is no sir.”

The room is so quiet it practically has its own crickets. Or at least it would, if the atmosphere hadn’t suffocated them all. Shirayuki has admit, she’s feeling a little stifled herself

Mitsuhide shifts, chair creaking, mouth grim. “Zen...”

“No,” he snaps, still on his feet, red-faced and tense as he squares off with his brother. “It’s ridiculous! He’s a commoner.”

Izana peers up from his notes, raising a mild brow. “Is this really something you think is appropriate to pursue right now?”

Speaking fluent teacher like she does, Shirayuki hears the warning loud and clear: back down. But of course, Zen doesn’t.

“Beaumains doesn’t belong on the dais,” he reasons angrily. “He should be down at the tables with the vassals and retainers.”

Izana’s expression doesn’t betray a single thought, smooth as still water. “I must concede the point, technically, but as he is a member of your party, it would make sense if--”

Zen barks out a laugh. “Oh, you’re such a stickler for accuracy, but now you’re going to break a simple rule of hospitality--”

“It’s for ease of play--”

“It’s meta gaming.”

If she’d thought the room was quiet before, she’s disabused of the notion now. All motion has ceased; even Kiki holds her breath, eyes fixed on Izana who-- who--

Stands. Or rather, unfurls; every inch is a journey as his long limbs draw straight. It’s hard to remember when Mitsuhide can hardly fit both his thighs on a dining chair, but Izana is tall, a good ten inches above her perfectly respectable 5′4. He uses every bit of that to his advantage as he looms over his brother, eyes cool and steady. “I think--”

“It’s fine.”

Obi lounges in his chair, ankle cross over knee without a care in the word. Big Dick Energy, Kihal would tell her, and wow, she really does not need to be thinking about that right now, in the middle of all this.

His lips slowly spread into a grin that does not help her brain stay on the straight and narrow, not one little bit. “Beaumains can sit among the masses.”

“Obi...” His head swivels to her, and oh, she really hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but-- it’s too late to turn back now. “You don’t need to--”

“Nah, nah, it’s no big deal,” he laughs, waving her off. “Let’s be real, given a choice between being in the box seats or getting trashed with the smallfolk, we all know which one he’d pick.”

Izana frowns, brow knitting. “As much as I appreciate your rationality in the face of the irrational, Obi, it isn’t necessary. It makes more narrative sense for Beaumains to be treated the same as the rest of the party--”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it, boss man. I can tank a hit for historical accuracy.” His gaze cuts to Zen. “In our fantasy roleplaying game where I play a demon and half the party does magic.”

Zen has the grace to look abashed, at least.

Izana lowers himself back into his chair, mouth set in faint disapproval. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, no prob.” Obi grins, sending her stomach into a tailspin. “Don’t worry, my lady, Beaumains knows how to keep himself entertained.”

You may sit at the lord of Laxdo’s right hand, but it is Morgaine who sits at yours, as radiant as any song. By all rights, she should be in your place; base-born she may be, but king’s daughter outranks a count’s, even born on the wrong side of the sheets. Still, she makes no protest when she takes her seat, only curling her lips in one of her mysterious smiles.

Shuuka is an attentive host, selecting the choicest cuts from the trays and laying them upon your plate. He chooses well for you, each morsel a delightful burst of flavor upon your tongue, but still--

Beaumains’ teasing spoils your every bite. It does not escape you that your host is not paying Arturius the same diligent attention but-- one does not feed a king. Or, rather, a prince. And you, well-- you would be the first to say that the curse was ended by the efforts of your whole party, but you know the men of Laxdo hold a different opinion.

(And for that matter, so does Beaumains, which he shares loudly and without prompting whenever possible, much to Arturius’ ire. It is flattering, but oh, you would much rather not be a needle used to provoke, no matter who holds it)

It is kind of Shuuka to pay you such an honor, but still, it leaves you feeling awkward, as if you were born with two left hands. You cast helpless looks to your right, but Morgaine only replies with sly smiles, ones that make your skin itch with expectation.

With no safe place to look on the dais, your gaze fans out over the press below. Lady you may be, but it’s the benches you are used to; your father had never stood much on ceremony, preferring to eat and be merry among his men, rather than make himself a proper lord. Even now you long to be among them; the talk may be bawdy and the drink more sour, but you would not suffer so many eyes upon you, measuring the curve of you breast and speculating on the red of your hair.

You do not look long before your eye catches on midnight blue and glistening horns; even dressed as a shadow, Beaumains is hard to miss among the lord’s men. He laughs, tossing his head back, hand pressed to his belly-- a truer one on him than any you have seen. To think, you had pitied him when Shuuka did not tender an invitation to the dais, but now--

Well, he’s certainly enjoying himself more than you are.

A sharp prod to your ribs sets you upright, your mind snapping back to the present, reminding you sharply that you are being watched and weighed by the same men you long to join. Morgaine pulls back her elbow, sending a pointed look over your shoulder. To Shuuka.

Shuuka, who is staring at you expectantly. Shuuka, who has almost certainly asked you a question that you did not hear.

Morgaine reaches for the wine pitcher, bumping your shoulder. “He’s asking if all this is to you liking.”

“Oh!” You stitch a smile to you face. “Yes. The fest is, ah...lovely. You do me a great honor. Ah, us a great honor.”

His own smile widens, sore pleased. “I am glad to hear it, Lady Lynet. It was my greatest hope that you would find Laxdo pleasing.”

You nod, awkward, before turning back to your meal. It is hardly touched, only a single bite from each dish, and you suffer a pang of chagrin to think you have so obviously ignored his generosity-- save that you notice everyone else’s plate remains untouched as well.

Shuuka’s chair scrapes across the dais as he stands, holding his arms wide. “Before we partake of this feast--”

Oh, Lord in Heaven, the blessing. You had forgotten it entirely. Your gaze darts guiltily across the table, trying to see whether the lord’s chaplain has caught your petty sin, but the only man of the cloth at the table is Bedwyr.

“--We must all give thanks to Our Lord in heaven, from whom all our bounty flows.”

A murmur of agreement shuffles out from the men at the tables, heads bowed with lips mouthing an impassioned amen--

Ah, right. Bowed heads. What she should be doing now, in this place of honor.

“I would be remiss if I also did not offer our gratitude to the Lady Lynet.” Your head snaps up, gaze tangling helplessly with his. “If it was not for her cleverness and diligence, not a single man would be standing here today.”

This is-- this is not the toast you thought he would make, not when he spoke of the feast this morning. Not when he had told you it would be in honor of those who saved Laxdo.

“We are blessed that the angels guided her back to us after so many years away,” he continues, every word adding to the pit of dread growing in your belly. “It can only be the provenance of Our Heavenly Father that she has returned, and in returning, removed the blight from our land. I would be turning my back upon God Himself and all His angels if I did not receive what blessing he has given us.”

You heart pounds loudly in your chest, rattling the drums of war. You had been so clear. You had said--

Not enough. Nothing short of an explicit refusal ever stuck in a man’s ear. you know this all too well.

It galls you that Beaumains knew it better.

“My father has passed, but his will has always been my guide.” Shuuka showers praises down on you, oblivious to how you wither beneath it. “It had been his wish to seen our houses joined, along with your father’s, my lady. I am eager to tread the path they left for us.”

You want to protest, you mean to protest. But all of the eyes of Laxdo are upon you, and-- and your hands clench helplessly in your skirt. For a man to be refused after such a speech, after such feeling, in front of all his men--

It would be kinder to leave a blade in him. At least that he might recover from.

Your gaze swivels to your left, to your right, but Arturius sits, stunned, and his sister is much the same. The moment for an objection has passed for them, for all those who sit on this dais, but on the floor--

You cast your gaze out, searching, hoping, but--

Beaumains is not among the tables, not anymore.

The chair squeals across the floorboards as Izana stands, smoothing down his pants.

“Wha-- where are you going?” Zen stares at him, jaw slack. “We’re in the middle of a feast. This jerk just proposed!”

Izana flips his phone, screen out, and there is Obi’s name, right at the top of his messages. hey boss can b get himself some quality hallway time

It buzzes, followed up by a long string of hot lips emojis, double hearts, and what looks like an eggplant..

“Well,” Kiki drawls, “now I know too much.”

Izana glances at his screen before swinging to glare at Obi. “Really?”

He shrugs, gleefully pocketing his cellphone. “Hey, you set it up. I just took the shot.”

“Well, I suppose I can’t argue that.” Izana sighs, gathering up his dice. “Give us a moment.”

“Don’t rush on our account,” Kiki hums, mouth twitching at a corner.

Izana groans, shaking his head. “At least pretend you’re going to behave.”

[copias-thrall]

When Mary Met Sally … err, Suey

Timestamp How do two walking disasters meet? Well, one of them walks into a bar …

(Start at the beginning)

*public sex*

It’s not the worst dive bar you’ve ever been to, but any place that can double as a venue usually makes a bit more effort. Maybe there are some coding regulations or whatever. Your friend swears by it for cheap drinks and chaotic atmosphere, which is why you made the effort to put on a dress—a short, black thing with diaphanous tails that forgives your belly rolls—and did your doll eyes.

But the bitch isn’t even here yet. You’re on your second beer—and a band growling into mics and shredding is playing on the paltry performance area that the bar boasts—when you get another text. The first one—that you had received upon arrival yourself—had said she was on her way. This one says she’s leaving work now.

You sigh and tap your foot along to the bass. The majority of the patrons in the place are crowded into the venue room, bopping and screaming along. There are a handful, like you, who are loitering by the bar—an old drunk; two finance types with loose ties; a gaggle of scene girls waiting for their drink order; and a group of college kids at a bar top with a half-full pitcher surrounded by empty shot glasses.

The bartender—a crusty-looking dude with long, greying hair and the kind of tattoos you’d expect were done in the kitchen of a friend’s house by a biker—leans on the bar into your space and sets down a shot.

“Boyfriend stand you up, doll?”

You give the shot a little toast to him and shoot it, only coughing a little and the whiskey’s afterburn.

“Something like that” you say.

“He’s a fool to leave a face as pretty as yours up for grabs.” He pushes away from the bar to service the next customer as you stammer, “Um, thanks.”

One-third through your third beer is when you get the text that she just got home and is exhausted and can’t possibly change to come back out and meet you now. You roll your eyes, even if this was exactly what you were expecting. You’re annoyed since she picked this bar because it was near her work and therefore a quick jaunt for her on her way home—whereas you took the bus for 27min and then walked 3 blocks. But, ok.

You definitely have to pee, and—after debating  whether you can wait until you finish this beer—ultimately decide that peeing is actually an imperative. Since your friend’s not here, you’ll have to take your beer with you. It seems the band must have just finished because it looks like every women in the bar is now waiting to use the two-stall women’s room. Your eyes flick over to the men’s room where there’s—you guessed it—no one.

“Fuck it,” you say out loud. “I’m crossing enemy lines.”

Occasionally you can get a flock to come with you, but tonight it seems like the other women are content with their lot, and not one follows in your wake. You kick open the door and yell, Female coming aboard! as you stomp into the bathroom. You’re prepared to cover your eyes, because men get real shy, but there actually doesn’t seem to be anyone even in here. You don’t question your luck, just make a beeline for the small stall.

Once in the stall, you debate the logistics of what to do with your beer glass—you don’t usually mind putting it on the floor, but for some reason this time you get a bad feeling, which is when you remember that you have tits. Using your cleavage, bra panel, and neckline, the glass fits quite snuggly—and you only have to be somewhat careful as you perform the intricate process of doing your business without spilling the liquid or getting your dress in the toilet.

When you wander out there’s a dude in the stall next to yours and a tall, skinny, punk guy at the bathroom sinks. He’s leaning into the cracked mirror and either putting on makeup or touching it up. Actually, upon closer inspection he’s in white face paint with black, corpse-like accents and … blood?

Whatever.

His eyes meet yours in the mirror as you sway over to the sink next to his.

“What?” he says with a sneer.

You turn to face him, leaning your hip on the sink; you point to your own mug saying, “You got something on your face,” and do a few sweeping circles with your hand. “Hereabouts.”

He looks at you and furrows his brow as you turn to wash your hands, remembering at the last minute to not lean over. In the mirror you watch as his eyes glance down to your beer cleavage. 

Beerage. 

Hah.

“Pfft. You wish, dude.”

He doesn’t say anything further, but you feel his eyes heavy on you as you finish up and saunter out. You make your way back to the bar, sighing in relief when you can safely deposit your pint glass back on the counter. The stage area is now dimmed and you notice the crowd has thinned somewhat while the bar has gained new pods of people.

You fiddle a bit with your phone—checking social media, playing a round on your game app, and texting out memes—until a fresh glass of beer is set down in front of you. One you didn’t order. When you follow the perspiring glass up you meet the black-rimmed eyes of the guy from the men’s room. He’s resting on his crossed arms and smirking you.

“I do wish, actually,” he says.

“What?”

He gives you an exaggerated once over.

You squint at him. “Weren’t you in that band?”

“Wow. ‘That band.’ Yeah, I am.”

“So why’re you behind the bar?”

He leans back, licking his lips and looking down at you with hooded eyes.

“I’m multitalented,” he says, and then makes a vulgar motion with his tongue.

You’re about to respond with something very clever, you’re sure, when the older bartender barks, “Mary!—a little help?”

He makes a shrugging motion at you as you before he turns to help with a gaggle of girls who all giggle and bat their eyelashes at him. You hadn’t intended to stay past your third beer, but after you assess the lines of “Mary’s” body and the swell of his ass in his ripped jeans, you slide the proffered beer closer to you. Maybe the night won’t be a bust after all.

You’ve just started on the gift beer when “Mary” saunters back over. He pours a shot and shoots it himself before leaning on the edge with his hip and considering you.

“Is your name really ‘Mary’?”

He lifts his chin at you in challenge. “What of it?”

You giggle. “It’s just—”

“A girl’s name? Yes, I’m qu—”

“It’s my name,” you say as you slap your hands on the bar.

He squints at you. “It’s not.”

You fish a credit card out of your phone wallet and offer it to him. He takes it, looks at it, looks at you, looks at it again, lets out a Huh , then hands it back to you.

“Well, I’m not calling you Mary. I’m calling dibs on it.”

You rest your tits on the bar as you lean toward him conspiratorially.

“You’ll have to scream something later.”

He raises his eyebrows at you.

“That’s presumptuous,” he says as he straightens and crosses his arms.

Well, ok. It’s possible you misread him. Maybe he was just angling for a good tip. You think of the other girls straining for his attention.

You shrug. “You caught me in a mood to grant wishes. But whatever.”

He gives you an unreadable look before he’s being called away again, and then he’s pouring drinks across the bar—and your face burns.

You’re suddenly irritated. It just feels like it’s been a day of teases—first your friend inviting you out then blowing you off, and now this guy who implied he’d like to fuck you only to back off once you called him on it. You could be home watching Netflix, not alone at a bar with only your phone for company. You dig into the bustle at your hip that’s really a bag and fish out a $20 and a $5—which may be a little over, but worth it in terms of expediency.

You slip off the bar stool and remove your coat from it, intending to shrug it on. It’s going to be a bitch to get home—the bus only coming every 90min at this point, so you may be in for a long walk if you don’t want to wait or splurge on a cab.

“Christ, you’re impatient,” comes a voice from behind you, and you startle.

When you turn, the Mary guy is behind you. You narrow your eyes at him.

“Dude, I’m not playing your games.” You jab your finger into his chest. “If you’re pulling some PUA shit on me, I’m not into it.”

He takes your elbow and guides back onto the stool.

“Since when is a free brooze a game? Just hang and enjoy the fucking beer I bought you, k?”

“I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous ,” you snipe, but allow him to help you back on the stool.

“And here I thought women liked a little flirtation.”

“Is that what you thought you were doing?”

He slaps his hand to his chest and makes a pained face.

“Mary get your dick back in here!” yells the other guy.

“Coming, Mickey!” he yells, his eyes still on you. He licks his lips and gives you another once over. “I have a break coming up,” he says as he backs away. “Stay.”

“MARY!”

You watch as he scrambles back behind the bar to close tabs and sling more beers. When he catches you looking at him, he winks. You just scowl at him. Some of the girls at the bar look at you with a mixture of curiosity, interest, and envy.

Whatever. Can’t shut this down.

You sip at the beer, growing increasingly more amused as Mary’s attention keeps drifting back to you. You raise your now half-full beer at him, eyebrow raised. The older dude—Mickey—wanders over to you.

“Well now, darlin’—I’m not surprised you caught our Mary’s eye, pretty thing like you. Be careful of that one though.”

You grin at him, showing teeth.

“He should be careful of me.”

Mickey blinks at you for a second, then bursts out laughing and throws his hands up. Mary is looking over at the two of you worriedly.

Time ticks on, and the beer that you’re purposely nursing goes down. Mary swings by every now and then, but never for more than a quip or two before he’s back doing Bar Things. It’s been hours , and honestly you’re pretty bored with just sitting at the bar waiting . And you’re definitely going to need a cab home because in these heels? No. 

You decide, fuck it . It’s not like this guy was going to be amazing. You drain the rest of the beer, and decide to hit the head before heading out. It’s nearly midnight, so there’s no line or issue with the women’s room, and you’re basically in and out. When you leave the restroom, you’re startled again by Mary—who’s leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” he says. “Leaving so soon?”

You level a look at him. “I’ve been here for 6 hours.”

He scrunches his brow at you.

“Really?”

“So unless you’re going to fuck me soon …”

He pulls at you. “How ‘bout you take me home when I get cut, and I’ll fuck you into the mattress?”

You press your tits into him. “And will that be soon?” you ask sweetly.

“I’m here until 2, but—”

“Yeah, no,” you say, extracting yourself.

He bites his lip. “Well … I’m on my break,” he looks down the hall towards the bar, “but there’s probably only 10min left.”

You cross your arms at him. “So you’ll have 7min to spare.”

Mary straightens. “You’ve got a mouth on you.”

You lick your lips exaggeratedly and smirk. “I know.”

He grabs you by your wrist, and yanks you into his body, leering into your face. “Well, if you want me to pound you into tomorrow right now, I have no problem with that.” 

He drags you into the men’s room, not even stopping to assess for casualties. There’s a guy at a urinal, but he doesn’t even look up as Mary ushers you into the stall. He runs a hand into your hair and grips you by the roots. You go with it, allowing him to tilt your head back.

He leans into your space to growl, “You better be fucking quiet.”

“I doubt it’ll be an issue,” you taunt, biting at him.

Mary pushes you back and shoves his fingers into your mouth.

“I told you to be fucking quiet.”

He crams his fingers further down your throat. When you don’t gag, his interest piques, and he spends about 30 seconds thrusting his fingers in and out of your mouth.

“Shame we can’t explore that,” he says as he extracts his fingers and wipes them on his jeans. Your eyes are drawn to the decent bulge at his crotch. When he tracks your gaze, he gives his dick a vulgar squeeze. “Is this what you’re here for?”

“It sure ain’t the conversation.”

“I’m tempted to shut you up with it.”

“ Promises ,” you purr.

You press into him, then reach under your dress to yank down your panties. You use the solid presence of his body for balance as you slide them down and then off one leg, wobbling a little as the loop catches on your heel. His arm reaches up to steady your elbow as you shake your boot free. He watches you, and you wink at him exaggeratedly as you stuff the excess fabric into the other boot.

“Been a while since I fucked a smart girl,” he quips.

You hook your hand around the back of his neck. 

“What about me? Am I about to fuck a smart boy?” You grab his hand to lead to your pussy. “Make me wet for you.”

He’s quick to get with the program, and he cups you with his whole hand before his fingers explore between your folds. You pull his head down to engage him in a sloppy kiss, sucking at his tongue and biting at his lips. A finger presses shallowly into your hole, then smears your slick up to your clit. You moan into Mary’s mouth as the pad of his finger circles you a few times.

He repeats the process until you’re sloppy, spreading your wetness out and over your lips. He breaks the suction of your mouth to whisper into your ear. “If we had all night, I’d play your pussy like my guitar and make you scream until you were horse—and that would be before I fucked the shit out of you.”

Then Mary retracts his hand—wiping his fingers on his jeans again—so he can work at his studded belt and zipper.

“But I’m really looking forward to burying my cock in you before my break is over.”

He advances on you, but you stop him with a hand to his chest.

“Condom?”

He pauses to pat at his jeans before pulling out his wallet from his back pocket and extracting a condom packet. He hands the foil to you so he can shove his jeans and boxers down. His hard cock juts out from his pelvis, and you lick your lips. You open the packet, make sure the condom is correct side up, and then roll it down his cock as he grips at your arms. Then you turn around so you can brace your hands against the back wall and perch your foot on the toilet.

“Not your first rodeo, I take it?”

You glare at him over your shoulder.

“If you slut shame me I will punch you in the nuts and walk out of here.”

He shuffles closer. “No, it’s hot. You fuck a lot of dick in bathrooms?” 

“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.”

His hands run up your sides and then start to fiddle with the tails of your dress.

“So you should have no problem answering me.”

“You’re awfully glib for a guy who wants to get his dick wet.”

He’s still fiddling with your dress.

“I’m not the one who needed to fuck right now —christ what are these?”

“Just tie it in a bow!”

You feel the tails tug and tighten, then Mary crowds into your space. He rubs his cockhead through your slit a few times, and every time he hits your clit, you let out an Mmm . Then he presses at your hole and begins to slowly push in as you push back. You moan and he grunts as he sinks into you, a steadying hand at your hip.

He presses closer, his one hand bracing next to yours on the wall.

“This ok?”

“Oh god,” you moan as you clench around him.

“ Shit . I’m going to fuck you now.”

He gives a few experimental thrusts until he finds a good angle and rhythm—and then you’re in trouble. He curls an arm around your waist and begins to pound into you as much as the position and angle allows—which is more than enough to have you moaning out.

“Fuck, you’re tight. You feel so good around my cock.” He bites into your shoulder. “Fucking tell me you like my cock.”

“Fills me up so good!”

His cock does feel good—enough that you’re still wet—but definitely not enough for you to come. You try to take a hand off the wall so you can finger yourself, but a well-placed jolt from Mary has you sliding dangerously before you catch yourself. You try your other hand with similar results.

“What are you doing?” Mary pants.

“Need … my clit …” you whine.

The arm around your waist loosens, and Mary’s hand wanders down your stomach and begins to search around for access. He’s just about to dip down, when your trembling leg gives out and shoots across the toilet. You’re sure it’s about to go into the bowl, but then Mary’s hand is there, gripping your thigh hard to steady you.

“Fuck, careful.”

It becomes clear that Mary’s supporting arm around your waist is all that’s keeping your boot from sliding away, so he doesn’t attempt to finger you again. He’s panting into your ear with the effort of fucking into you and holding you up, and you feel him start to flag. He slows his pace to long thrusts, and you can hear the squelch every time he bottoms out.

“Are you at all close?” he wheezes.

“Not really.” All you can think about is the strain in your arms and the tremor in your leg.

He blows out a breath.

“I don’t know how much longer I can—”

“Just cum,” you say.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s fine.”

He grips you tighter as he speeds up, forehead pressing into your shoulder blades, and then he’s giving a hard thrust into you gasping, “Oh god, oh fuck.” He gives another couple of jolting thrusts into you, grunting, before the tension bleeds out of him and he leans into you. It’s too much strain on your arms, and you squirm with an annoyed Ok . He back ups, and his softening cock slips out of you. You shakily bring down your leg and push off the wall. When you turn around, you see that Mary has already tied off the condom and is pulling up his pants. You grab some toilet paper to swipe at yourself as Mary just stands there.

Frankly he looks a little embarrassed.

“I am actually better at doing that.”

You nod at him. “I’m sure.”

“I could—”

“I’m going to pee now,” you say, and make a shooing motion.

He blinks at you a few times, then back ups and slips out of the stall. You have to get your whole situation in order, so when you leave the stall, Mary’s no longer in the restroom. A drunk guy does a double take.

“Emeye the right place?” he slurs as he turns and misses the urinal.

You give him jazz hands. “ This is all a dream .”

When you get back to the bar, there are only the truly drunk left still standing—metaphorically speaking. Mary’s at the other end fussing with the cash register as the Mickey dude gestures at him. You grab your coat back up to put on—you already left the cash for the drinks and tip so there’s nothing left for you to settle up.

As you push open the door to the outside, you hear an exasperated Mary behind you, so you’re not surprised when—3 steps out of the bar—Mary grabs your arm.

“Wait!” he says.

You sigh, but stop. “I have to get up for work tomorrow and I’ve already spent my entire night waiting. It’s, like. Super late. What ?”

“Well I—don’t you think you deserve the full Mary experience?” He makes a sweeping motion up and down his body.

“Not tonight I don’t. Tonight I deserve a hot shower and my warm bed.”

“I will literally come by whenever and eat you out for hours. I owe you at least one phenomenal orgasm, but I’ll call the other nine interest.”

You consider him.

“C’mon,” he says swaying closer. “Give me your number, and I’ll show you what I can really do. Don’t you want this warm, wiggly tongue making you sing the high notes?” He goes to run his fingers through your hair, but you dodge and he drops his hand, his face falling.

He looks like a little boy who just got his favorite ball taken away. 

You sigh.

“Tell you what: Uber me a ride home, and you can give me your number.”

“What?” he says, squinting at you.

“Consider it asshole tax.”

He stares at you, then he takes out his wallet and rifles through it. “I don’t have Uber—you know they’re anti-union, right? But here—” He pulls out $40 and extends the bills to you. “This is all I have. For a cab.”

You stare at the bills for a moment, then pluck a twenty from him.

“This is fine.”

You take out your phone and poke at it until you’re in your contacts.

“Here.”

He takes the device into his long fingers. He does the hunt and peck until his number is in your phone. When he gives it back to you, you see his number is under “Best Sex You’ll Ever Have”.

You snort. “Subtle.”

He sneers. “Can’t have you confusing me with your other conquests.”

You waggle your phone at home. “I’ll call you. And you better rock my fucking world.”

Once you get home, you basically collapse, and the next morning is hell in getting yourself up and alert—but once the day wears on, you find yourself opening and closing Mary’s number. It actually takes you two more days before you decide: Why not have fun with a booty call?

Me [4:37pm]: My pussy’s not going to eat itself.

⬅️Previous | Next ➡️

[foreverholdmedown]

Short: Momzilla (Part 3)

“After spending months living out in L.A. you really learn to appreciate New York so much more. It’s been good to be home, honestly.” Robyn curled her toes in the warm water and blissfully sighed as she stared across the nearly empty nail salon while Monica sat along side her. Rather than having her manicurist Kimmie come over to the house and do her nails, she decided to go and have an outing with her long time friend at one of their favorite spots in Brooklyn. It allowed her to get a bit of fresh air on one of the cooler days out of the week and to give her Bentley a drive since she hadn’t been in it in quite some time.

“What’s so bad about Los Angeles? I love it here too, but I don’t mind L.A. at all honestly. Mike and I have discussed moving out there on a number of occasions but we’ve also discussed moving back to North Carolina too. Either way, New York is always a sure thing for us.”

“I just don’t like the vibe out there. It’s such a big place and yet it’s such a small world. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone is fucking everyone. I swear there’s a ten to one ratio when it comes to women and the celebrity men they fuck. You literally have women who have all fucked the same guys and they hang around one another in the same circles. I’ll never understand it. Everyone’s a vulture and an opportunist without a care or a concern for any damn body. I don’t want to be around people like that. I don’t fuck with that Hollywood scene which is why I don’t take on too many movie roles. I know Cole loves to work out there and I make the sacrifice for him, but living there is and will always be a hell no for me.”

“Does it have anything to do with Lisa?”

“Not really. I can’t run from women who have or want to fuck him. You know? I just can’t. If that’s the case I’d be running my whole life from place to place to place. There are barely any places on this planet where I can go to without there being some woman who has either had him, almost had him, or has dreams of having him. I hear the wildest shit and see women doing the craziest things to have the slightest chance to get backstage. I’ve walked out to see women who have made their way near the tour buses and they literally walk around trying to figure which one is his. I’ve seen women offer pussy to stage hands, venue security, the fucking doorman, and anyone else just to get to him. They don’t have any regard for me or what he has at home which is why I can’t really stress myself over women of the past and the ones who would do anything to have him now. I’d go insane.”

“He doesn’t give a damn about that though. Whether you’re there or not, he shows up to the venue, does his soundcheck, relaxes on the bus, works on music, eats, goes to the dressing room, calls you if you’re not there, talks to you until it’s time to perform, does the show, and he’s right back to the bus. I’ve watched him do it night after night when I fly out to visit and hang around.”

“I know.”

“And when you’re there, he’s at his happiest. I see it all over him and the way he moves. It’s not easy being away from home, especially when the people you love most are there waiting for you, so I know for him it’s special to be able to travel with his family along side him. He’s all about you and the kids when you’re there. It urges him to go even harder when he’s on that stage because truly has his biggest fans out there cheering him on. You don’t need to see or worry about any of that shit you just spoke on because you’re all he wants. Despite everything that has happened, you’re all he wants.”

“It took me quite some time to realize that, with reason, but I know Mo.”

“So what’s up? Why aren’t you two on speaking terms?” She had a conversation about her chosen distance from him upon her return to New York and it has remained as such since she’s been in town. Though it’s only been three days, much hasn’t changed from the hostility while she was in Los Angeles. With much argument involved between her mother and the occasional words from her mother-in-law, the children were left there with them as they pleaded and she went to New York to officially close on an office space for her corporation and imprint. Having a breather within the walls of the home she missed so much was an added bonus. Though the silence is eerie and the bed is missing the warmth of the man who owns the other side of it, it’s still home and it’s been pleasant to be there. Though she didn’t have much of anything to say to him while preparing herself to head to the East Coast, she did answer his phone call when he flew to Houston for the first date of the Dollar & A Dream Tour. The conversation was as brief as she needed it to be and yet more than enough to irritate him to the point of him hanging up before the argument budding between them worsened. This morning, she woke up to the feel of him flopping down on his side of the bed. His greeting was faint as his head crashed into the pillows and the warmth of his body radiated against hers as he pulled the covers over himself and fell into slumber within minutes. She didn’t even have a chance to greet him in return.

“I don’t want to call myself needy but maybe that’s the place I’m in right now. It goes beyond him missing the premiere. That hurt me but I think I’m in this place of just wanting his acknowledgement as my husband. I hate when we’re in a place of work feeling like it’s coming first and that happens a lot. I try to control it on my end because I know how it makes him feel, but there are times when I feel like he starts to slip up with making sure that he controls it on his end. Missing the premiere was apart of it but sometimes it goes deeper than that. I miss him so much and it’s weird because he’s right there. I miss him even when we’re on tour because the time is so split up. He’s working, he’s creating, he’s figuring out logistics, and making adjustments. For most part, I try to stay out of his way. I know what it’s like to be under pressure to make sure everything goes smoothly and he’s doing that night after night for months. I get it. On top of that, we have kids and I don’t get much of a break. I love them more than life itself but sometimes I need a breather and I don’t get much of that.”

“Have you told him this is how you feel?”

“No, because I don’t know how to nor do I want to sound needy. He’s been asking me what I want and what he needs to do going forward to make sure I have that but I don’t want much. I just want him to know that sometimes mommy needs a day to do something like what we’re doing right now and I need him to be there for me when I need him to. I’m not even being picky and saying when I want him to, but just when I need him to. I wanted my husband there on my big day and I felt like he wasn’t proud of me because he wasn’t.”

“And you still haven’t told him this?”

“No. I left it up to him to understand my emotions without needing the words. He apologized but that was just one part of it.”

“Who do you think he is? Miss Cleo? Say it. Everything you just said to me, you could have said to him as soon as you were feeling it. That man is not going to call you needy. You’re just asking for some time to yourself and some time with him for yourself. You’re not asking him to move a mountain. Tell him. Communication is key and closed mouths don’t get fed. That’s what my mother always tells me. Right now, the only emotion you’re giving him is anger and hostility. He’s reading it and I’m sure he understands it, but you’re resistant. This has been you since I’ve known you. You’re stubborn.”

“I am not.” Her denial even amused her. Stubborn is at the top of the list when it comes to her personality traits. Though she’s gotten better with it, it’s still apart of who she is and how she conducts herself.

“Girl, bye. You’re the most stubborn person I know. You’re sitting here telling me you miss your husband and yet instead of being home with him, you’re here with me getting a mani and pedi because you’re trying to stick it to him. Stubborn. Funny as hell, but stubborn. Talk to him though and if he doesn’t listen I’ll knock him upside the head myself.”

“You and I both.”

“Oh no, please. I don’t think his mouth can take another one of your punches.” Though she snickered along with Monica, Robyn couldn’t help but to think back on the day she put her hands on him. What felt like a justified punch then is cringe worthy to hear about now. While his words were vicious, she could have handled it much better and has known better ever since. Today, a knock upside his head would mean a scolding that would throw him off track or aggravate him a bit.

“Are you going to the show tonight? Please tell me you’re coming.”

“Yeah, I think I’m going to go. Your husband texted me a little while ago playfully threatening me that I need to be there and I don’t want to miss out on hearing him perform those songs. It’s Friday Night Lights. I’m not missing that.”  

“Good! Get cute and come out to rock out with your hubby. Maybe we can all go out for drinks after it.”

“Fair enough. I could use a great cocktail or two.”

“Mr. Shaw and I are taking a trick to Jamaica for a couple of days before the tour resumes. I could use it after spending so much time out in London working on my Missguided collaborations and he loves it out there, so it’s a win win.”

“Baby making for the win. Jaxton needs a playmate.”

“We’re working on it. You could always be working on a playmate for him your damn self.”

“Oh, please. This mama barely has the time to fit in a pedicure on her schedule and you’re trying to have me walking around here with a big ol’ belly in the process? Maybe a little later, but not right now.”

“I think the timing is on point for Mike and I. We’ve talked about it a lot, but we both feel ready now. We’re in a place where we feel comfortable enough with balancing one another, a child, and work. It too a while to get there, but we’re alright now.”

“Yeah, I think you two are in a great space for children. I’m excited for yall. You know I’ve been waiting on this. You two are my favorite couple of all time.”

“Yeah, you’ve been saying that since high school and I’d always tell you that you and Cole were mine.”

“Even though we weren’t a couple.” Robyn shook her head at the sound of Monica’s laughter. If you let their friends tell it, they were a couple since birth. They all truly believe that they were destined to be with one another from the point of conception.

“Oh yes yall were. The only person in denial was you. You were in denial, so he had no choice but to pretend like he was as well, but we all knew the deal.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Now look at all of us. We’re successful, married, making babies. It’s wild because it actually happened. When you think about a lot of the stuff we used to speak on and dream about, you being the one who did it quietly by the way, it felt like pipe dream and yet something attainable. It’s damn breathtaking to realize that we’ve done it and it happened along side the people we always deemed to be family. I think about that a lot. I remember when I fell in love with Mike and despite the little things that we’d go through, I would alway hope that he’d be my husband in the future no matter where we went in life. When the modeling was taking off, I worried a lot about us but we held on tight and we continue to do so. I never wanted to do life without him or you or J. So, I cherish my blessings. Shit could have gone way left, you know? It felt like it was shifting that way when you left but God works harder than we ever could. He knew that we all needed you.” The silence that fell between the two friends was a sentimental one. The flutters within Robyn’s heart intensified at the brief reflection she had on their experiences over the years.

“Are you trying to make me cry or something? Sheesh Mo.”

“No. I’m just letting you know that I love you. We love you. We’re here whenever you need us Rob. Often times, you tend to move around like you’re in this world alone and I understand where that comes from, but I just want to remind you that you’re not.” Once their hands met, they laced their fingers together.

“I know and I love you too.”

The silence inside of their plush penthouse was unexpected and yet appreciated. She mentally prepared herself to see and hear a ton of men sounding like a stampede moving throughout their home in preparation for the hectic show tonight. Instead, she found the centerpiece of it all still stretched out and sound asleep in their bed with his mouth slightly ajar and his head meshed into her pillow. She kept the quiet going as she returned downstairs and made her way into the kitchen to prepare lunch for him and a chicken parmesan lasagna for dinner. In the midst of preparing the chicken for the dish, she prepared a turkey burger and her homemade seasoned steak cut fries that he loves so much. If she didn’t feed him, he was sure to stuff his face at some random fast food restaurant on the way to the venue.

“Hey.” Though he wasn’t sleeping anymore, he was still lazily slumped across the bed with his phone placed beside him. Had it not rang, he absolutely still would have been sound asleep. The grogginess was all in his facial expression.

“I made you some lunch. I don’t know if you want it now or want to wait until you’re fully up to have it.”

“I’ll take it now. I don’t want it to get cold. Thank you Baby Girl.” The sight of his bare chest caught her eye and she instantly, she pulled her lip in-between her teeth at the sight. His laziness when arriving home caused him to not look for anything to sleep in. As she lifted the covers to get out of bed hours ago, the only thing that covered his frame was a pair of black Polo boxer briefs.

“You’re welcome. Tired huh?” While she placed the tray over his lap, he nodded his head in response to her question.

“Super fucking tired. We were going back and forth with a bunch of venues over here up until the moment I got on stage last night. I wanted to give the people this type of experience in a bigger venue so that I could fit more people inside. It fucks with me when people come out and they don’t get a chance to rock out after spending all of those hours outside, but none of these venues trusted it. They’d heard about it before and talked about their fears of chaos and kept nicely shutting me down, so I don’t have much of a choice other than to do it at Irving Plaza.” Without any hesitation he reached for the fries and stuffed two of them into his mouth. “These shits are so good.

“Well you tried. That’s what most important. I know what these Dollar and A Dream experiences mean to you and the fans. I know it gets even harder every time you do them, but what matters is you still do them. You still get in touch with the people. You still give them these moments where they feel like you’re still their favorite guy that they’re rooting for. That makes it all the more special no matter what, so don’t be upset. It’s going to be incredible tonight. Everything is going to be alright.”

“I know I hurt you by not coming to your premiere and I regret that so much. I think about it a lot and it fucks with me because no matter what the consequences may have been, I should have gone, because there’s no greater disappointment in that type of situation than disappointing my wife. I love what I do, but none of it is more important than you and our kids. It’ll never take precedence over my family. I apologize again now and will continue to do so however many times you need me to, so you can understand that I mean it.” His sigh influenced her to inch closer to the bed.

“I never said that you didn’t mean it. I just need adjustments. That’s all I’m asking for. You see how you’re tired? It happens to me too. You often time need space for your own creative outlets or just to get yourself together and so do I. I know you’re working right now so I can’t expect what isn’t realistic or fair to you until this tour wraps up, but just understand that I need you and as this family expands, my expectations and needs from you are doing the same thing. Much like I have to adjust to your life, schedule, and whatever it is that you need, you have to be able to grant me the same courtesy.”

“I know. Just give me until the end of this tour and I’m all yours. I promise. I know you think my promises are empty, but you have my word. As soon as that Homecoming wraps in the Ville, it’s us and the kids.” Despite the truthfulness within his tone, most of his statements went into one ear and right out of the other. Jermaine has talked himself into and out of so many situations that has gone on between the two of them. Talking is his expertise and it’s literally his job to have a way with words to draw people in and leave them hanging onto every syllable that comes out of his mouth. Words mean nothing this time around. If the actions don’t follow then they’re nothing more than empty thoughts and promises right? Right about now, he could promise her the heavens and it would hold no weight. If he truly means it, he’ll show her when the tour is over.

“Enjoy your burger. I have to finish cooking. I’m making chicken parm lasagna. I just need to finish the top layer and put it into the oven.”

“You should come back up here when you’re done with that.”

“For what?” The sly smirk on his face and the way he patted the bed was silly enough to earn a chuckle out of her. Of course that’s what it would be for.

“Oh, I see.” Her eyebrow raised as he ran his tongue over his lips. The playful shaking of her head instantly made him laugh in silliness and excitement for his request.

“You want me to start taking your clothes off now?”

“No. I’ll be back.”

“Nah. Nah. Take something off now so that I can know for sure you’re coming back up here.” Her laughter of disbelief meshed in with his.

“You cannot be serious right now. Where am I going? I’m coming back.”

“Take the shorts off.” While playfully rolling her eyes, she kicked her PUMA slippers off to the side, unbuttoned and unzipped the denim shorts she went out in earlier, and allowed them to fall to the floor to reveal barely there lace that worsened his lust.

“Happy?”

“Hell no. That lasagna can wait.” His reflexes were swifter than her own. Before she could take a step in the direction of the door, his arm lunged for her own and he pulled her onto their bed. Her squeals of excitement were heightened at the warmth of his body as it eventually hovered over her own. As their eyes met, familiar sparks and chills ignited every single aspect of her body in a manner that has yet to falter since her first encounter with him. In just that instant, she fell even deeper in love with the man she had vowed her to love to long before doing so under the oath of God. For every single man she called out when conversing with Melissa, there would have been a pending failure awaiting whatever journey she took with them. The love she developed for one man is once in a lifetime and embedded into the deepest root of her soul. No matter what decision she makes, it’s beyond her at this point. No matter what happens between the two of them, it will always run that deep.

“I love you so much.” She didn’t get a chance to respond. His lips meshed into her own and her caramel thighs wrapped around his waist in a hunger she hadn’t even realized she was feeling. Her hands slowly ran down his bare back and she drew him closer to not only intensify his sensual kiss but most of all to entice him to remove both barriers separating them from being one. Foreplay would have to wait for the second round that she’s hoping for. Once his long fingers locked into the thin straps of her thong, the sound of his iPhone ringing halted their actions.

“Has to be Ib.”

“Ignore it, please. Please?” She pressed her lips into his again and he obliged her kiss and pleading.

“We have to be quick.”

“That’s fine.” Yet again, he began the task of pulling the racy material down over her thighs and succeeded with his mission. As she reached for the Polo boxer briefs covering his lower half, the sound of his phone filled the room again and a sigh instantly spilled from her lips. Guilt filled his form as they listened to it until it finished and yet seconds later, yet another call followed.

“Just answer it. He’s not going to stop calling.”

“I’m going to make this up to you tonight baby. I promise.” With his phone in his hand, he disappeared into the bathroom leaving her to lay there in frustration with hormones that were raging beyond her control. Every angry thought is what slowly but surely brought the natural high he caused back down to the ever confusing earth. She then recovered herself and returned to the task at hand in the kitchen. Their words for the next hour and a half that he was within their home were as brief as she needed them to be. He was far too busy wrapped up in the details of the evening and her mind was purposefully elsewhere. His words of love and yet another promise to make things up to her was their last exchange as he rushed out of the door with a plastic bowl filled with the lasagna she prepared for him more so than herself. She was met with the silence of their home yet again and this time, instead of bringing her peace, it triggered an eerie discomfort.

The sound of her metallic ankle lock Tom Ford sandals transitioned from a faint patter against the pavement to a sharp clack as she trekked through a long hall to reach the backstage area. While reading herself, she thought the sequins covered couture Schiaparelli dress was far too much for a overpacked Hip-Hop show, but she couldn’t pass up wearing it because she looked damn good in it and if she did decide to go out for drinks, it would serve it’s purpose. Rather than wearing her hair loose, she pulled it back into a tight long ponytail and allowed the dress to be the statement piece.

“You’re really going hard with your First Lady status, I see. You’re trying to look like royalty while standing up there in that balcony and watching your man, huh?” She texted Ced to meet her out back to escort her inside since she didn’t have a pass and he’d been cracking jokes ever since. If it’s not him, then it’s Mike doing it.

“Not really.”

“Or you’re trying to have him rushing to get off of that stage then huh?”

“No.” Neither one of those things were on her mind but she’d take his masked compliments either way.

“First Lady. What’s really hood?” The aroma of kush and the multiple stenches of men moving around filled her nose. With a nod of her head, she chuckled at Ron’s greeting and waved.

“How are you?”

“Shit, I can’t complain.”

“I didn’t think you were going to show up Mrs. Cole.” Her once relaxed expression contorted into an automatic frown at the sound of the man’s voice who she’s been at a quiet war with for years. Despite both declaring they have a mutual love and respect for one another, she can’t help but to believe Ib hoodwinked her to appease his business partner and best friend.

“I’m sure you didn’t want me to.” In an instant, his head jerked back and he frowned his face up at her words. Instead of furthering her response to worsen the confusion filling both Ron and Cedric, she reached for the handle of Jermaine’s dressing room.

“He’s in there with Jay, Ty-Ty, Jay Brown, Joie, and some other folks. They came through.” Whether she read into it the wrong way or not, the manner in which he said it immediately threw her off task. Rather than twisting the knob, she stepped away from what he made sound like some exclusive club that she could never be apart of and walked off. She’d seen him perform in the venue twice before so it wasn’t difficult to find the balcony on her own and her preferred seat of choice. It’s where she remained, even as her presence caused quite a bit of a stir as the doors opened.

“Why are you up here alone?” Mike’s lips met the side of her face and he flopped down in the chair along side hers and passed over a red cup filled with some sort of alcoholic concoction he crafted. Many of her drunk nights are credited to him.

“This is where I’ll be sitting either way, so I figured I might as well come up here and chill out.” “Mo’s about to come up here. She was looking for you. I think she called you but you probably didn’t hear it because of the music.”

“I didn’t. I’ve had my phone in my clutch bag this whole entire time. What is the superstar up to?”

“Cole? He’s sitting in his dressing room talking to Jay and them. We found out they were coming just a couple of hours ago and had to end up scrambling to make accommodations for that. I think they’re going to sit up here where you are.”

“Should I move?”

“What? Hell no. Shit, you’re more important than they are. If you got here after they did, I’d make those niggas move.” His endearing response earned prompted her to place a kiss on his cheek.

“That’s why you’re my brother.”

“You coming to Atlanta with us? You might as well since we’re going to end up back in L.A. for the final show of this little run.”

“I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m enjoying being home.”

“I hear you. At least we still have a little over two weeks off until we start the final leg of the tour. After Jamaica, I’m chilling at home for one of those weeks for sure. Yall still going to Tahiti?”

“No.” There’s no point in doing that. If anything, Disneyland with the kids and possible some other place they’ll enjoy needs to be added to the agenda. It’s summer and Yari needs a bit more fun outside of traveling with her dad all over the place. “Yari wants to go to DisneyLand so we’re going to do that and maybe a zoo or aquarium. I thinking the San Diego Zoo. There’s also the National Air and Space Museum. She’s mentioned it, so I’ll see if we can get out to D.C. to see it.”

“Aw. You’re such a mom.”

“Shut up.”

“Maybe we can meet yall out in D.C. for that one. Let me know. I’d do the drive out there for that.”

“Will do.”

“Let me get back downstairs before Ib’s nagging ass calls me. I’ll sneak up here once that nigga hits the stage. It shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Alright.”

Monica eventually did join her but so did all those who were occupying Jermaine’s time in his dressing room. With respect, they acknowledged her presence with hugs and words of praise just minutes before the man of the hour took the stage to further excite the eager audience. Despite releasing it for free out of sheer frustration about not having an album out and to feed his growing fanbase, Friday Night Lights stands as one of the most classic projects of his career thus far and the response to it was evidence of that. A ton of songs were records made inside of his bedroom and without the production of major producers. He simply put the pen to the paper and expressed some of his most creative, vulnerable, and powerful thoughts and turned it into a project for the ages. Those that fell in love with it fell in love with him even further. It was the project that solidified Robyn’s contemplation to return to the states in search of him. Though she’s seen him perform a few songs here and there during the promotional run before and after the first album, there’s nothing like seeing him run through the tape it it’s entirety. She hung on to every lyric he rapped and every moment he stopped for a breather and talked about the journey it took to get to the tape. His raw honesty, genuine appreciation, and humility hadn’t changed since the world began to discover who he is and it stands as a testament for why every face watching him tonight would leave tonight championing for him even more. Though he’s a superstar, it still feels like he belongs to them and is that best kept secret that everyone loves to talk about and take credit for putting people on. It was a show that anyone who calls them self a fan wouldn’t have wanted to miss and it felt exactly the same for her. The nearly hoarse voice as she walked down from that balcony with was a clear sign of that.

“It’s always nice to see him perform the new shit, but it’s damn good when we get some nostalgia, right?” Robyn snickered at Monica’s tipsiness and nodded her head in agreement. She only took a couple of sips of the one drink Mike handed to her and that was enough to know if she finished the rest, she’d be wobbling around here.

“Right.” Though the hall was packed with people, she remained posted up against the wall observing the activity. She hadn’t even noticed the other well known attendees who decided to come out and support since he was performing in their native state. Aside from them were the most famous radio personalities and journalists looking to capture just a couple of minutes of his time for a few words to put in an article or on a YouTube channel. Missing was Jermaine, who ducked into his dressing room and closed himself in to cool down from the performance and gather his thoughts. If you weren’t someone of importance to him, even catching the slightest glimpse of him as he exits the venue might not be possible.

“He keeps fucking asking where his wife is.” Robyn turned in the direction of Ced’s voice and the frustration within his expression nearly made her laugh.

“I walked all around this place looking for you and you’ve been standing here the whole time?”

“I saw you walk past.” She just didn’t know he was in search of her.

“He keeps asking for you. Why you out here anyway?”

“Just enjoying the atmosphere.”

“Enjoy the atmosphere where he is because if he asks for you one more time, I’m probably gon’ punch him in his chest.”

“She’s been with me. We’ve been hanging out all night.” Monica sipped her drink yet again without any regard for the slight slur in her response and playfully bumped Robyn with her hip.

“Are yall drunk?”

“She is, I’m not.”

“I’m not drunk either, at least not yet. Now when we go out after this, I can’t make any promises.”

“I’ll be back. Hold the wall down until I return.”

With her only being inches away from the door, she simply swung around Monica, walked a couple of steps down and quietly stepped inside of the dressing room. It was easy to tell he hadn’t moved from his seat on the couch since flopping down on it and the smile on his face as Ib hyped him about the results of the show was priceless.

“Finally. I’ve been looking for you all night. I finally caught you standing up there in the middle of the performance. Damn you look good.” A complain, observation, and compliment all in one breath. Only Jermaine.

“You knew where I’d be. The show was incredible.”

“Yeah?”

“Of course. It’s always amazing to see you get out there and perform the records that you created while on the grind. You’re always grinding but that was so much different. I just enjoy seeing you in that type of element and so close to the people. It’s priceless. The most amazing part is you only charging a dollar for people to watch you pour your heart and soul out onto that stage. That’s a show I would have paid thousands to watch.”

“Thank you baby.” His smile widened and she gave him a nod to assure him that she meant every word.

“You’re welcome. I loved it. I hope Scott got a lot of footage.”

“We’re recording every show and we’re going to use it for a future project that we’ve just about closed on with HBO.” Ib chimed into their moment and though she didn’t bother turning in his direction, she was considerate enough to listen.

“That’s amazing.”

“Baby, Miguel is in the city and he’s doing a midnight showcase for his new album. A few of us want to go. Come with me.”

“Sounds nice, but I can’t. I have some things to do.”

“At this time of night? What could that be?” Though it was late, in her field there is no particular time that work stops and the same could be said for his.

“I don’t want to get into all of that right now, but I really do have something to handle tonight.”

“Come with me, please.” His puppy dog eyes had no affect on her decision.

“I can’t.”

“Well then I’ll come with you.” That’s the last thing she needed or wanted.

“That’s not necessary, go and enjoy it with your friends. You worked your ass off tonight, so go and have a nice breather. Have a drink for me.”

“I’d rather have one with you.”

“Next time.”

“Or you can just come with us tonight? It’s fucking Miguel. You love him.” Us? Hearing that Ib would be in attendance was the final nail in the coffin on that decision.

“I’ll see him another time. I’ll be back in a minute. Mo’s waiting for me.”

“Baby Girl. Will you ride home with me first? I want to talk to you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

It’d been the first time in a long time that she actually told him a bold faced lie. She didn’t return. Her exit out of the venue was just as quiet as her entrance. Her choice to drive made it easier because she didn’t have to wait for a driver to return to pick her up nor did she have to wait for a security escort. As fans were still filtering out of the venue, she was riding off into the night in her Bentley. Her only stop was at a Wine and Spirits store for a bottle of her favorite red wine and her choice to enjoy it while sitting on the floor of her of brand new office space made it merry. While staring out at the breathtaking views of Manhattan, she didn’t mind toasting to herself and celebrating what will soon be the space where she continues to build upon her resume. Though it’s empty, she filled it with hopes and aspirations. Not only will she continue to change her own life, but this will be the place that’ll change the lives of many others.

“Hey Edward. I apologize for calling you so late.” Her long time lawyer’s chuckle eased her nervousness just a bit. He’s never gotten a call from her past five in the evening but the questing burning the tip of her tongue couldn’t wait.

“I was awake. What’s up Robyn? What incredible idea are we going for next?”

“It’s nothing business related. I just have a question. I know this isn’t really your field but I figured you may know a bit about it. Again, it’s just a question. I’m only curious.”

“I’m listening.”

“How do you file for a legal separation in New York?”

“Uh…” The hesitance in his tone seeped out quickly. “It depends. There are two ways to do it. You can file a separation agreement in which both parties involved are willing to do so or if it’s just you alone without a willing spouse, you have to file for a summons with a complain for judgement of separation within the court. Is this hypothetical situation mutual?”

“Um…probably not.”

“Well then you’ll have to do the summons. Here’s where the difficult part comes in. You have to ask the New York Supreme Court for the judgement of separation by filing a complain for divorce and then a summons is issued for your spouse to appear in court. From there, it’s the court who decides upon the terms and conditions of the separation. Now, the only way you’ll actually win a separation is if you’re being physically or mentally abused to the point of your well being and life being unsafe to be within the presence of that person. Uh, there’s abandonment or neglect of care and support, whether it be for you or the children. Of course there’s adultery and it had to be within four or five years of the starting lawsuit for the judgement of separation. I believe it’s five. And then of course, if your spouse has been in prison for three of more consecutive years after the marriage began. If you’re not going through any of those problems, then it’s going to be difficult but I can get it done and if not me, I can call up Laura Wasser. She’s a good friend of mine and she knows this process quiet well.” She’d heard of the Disso Queen and her reputation in the celebrity world. Name a celebrity divorce and her name is somewhere in the mix. Calling her also brings about a ton of publicity that Robyn would literally meltdown over. The last thing she’d ever want is the public in the midst of her issues, especially with Jermaine.

“I see.”

“Are you sure this is just a question? I’m here to help.”

“It’s just a question.”

“Well, there are a ton of resources that you can seek before taking things that far. In this hypothetical situation, start with a conversation and maybe some counseling.”

“Sounds fair enough. Thank You.”

“I’m here if you need me. Are you okay? Safe?”

“Absolutely.”

“Jaxton?”

“He’s great.”

“Alright. Well I’ll give you a call in a couple of days.”

“Alright. Have a goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

With the tingle of the red wine trickling down her throat, Robyn’s bitter sigh filled her space.

[phthalology]

HZD: Winter’s Bargain Chapter 3

Read here on AO3 

This fic is becoming a jigsaw puzzle of a project, so the posted chapter numbers may change, but not likely by much. This also seems like a decent time to say thank you to the people who have reblogged or commented so far. Especially in a small ship in a small fandom like this, comments can make a big difference.

Marad had suspected. The Eclipse had been scattered, its leadership slain in front of Avad’s eyes. Those people still held their grudges, though, as Dervahl had done. Some, with efforts at restitution, could be bought back into the Carja proper as quiet citizens who could live their lives, tilling their ground and nurturing their children or their village’s children. Recovery was a steep hill, but one that could be climbed.

Others would not turn aside from the mission they had been told was holy. Marad sighed, lifted his hand against his forehead to shield his eyes and steel his nerves as he stood at one of the golden railings near Avad’s canopied throne. He had foiled eight assassination attempts in the parlor stage in the last year, eight people or groups of people who had wanted to see Avad’s young blood on the golden floor. Marad’s agents had ensured those plans never got past the parlor, never got past drunken boasts. When people were guided home and the bottle eased from their hands, a knife held to their throat or an embarrassing secret whispered in their ear, that attempted revolutionary would go to sleep into nightmare and wake up sick and ashamed of jumping at shadows. Most political furies could be eased this way, with the right pressure point of embarrassment and threat.

Avad did not carry out the threats, of course. Avad’s anger was patrilineal and sated. That was a valued trait in a ruler, true sanguinity and true kindness. Marad was fond of Avad for it.

This was why Avad gave the spy work to Marad and his agents. This was one of the reasons Avad chose not to hear every record of Marad’s work.

Another reason: it helped the king sleep.

Aloy’s return had spooked the dissidents. While not many were left after the attack on the Spire had torn up everyone’s carefully planted plans, Marad had been beginning to see new signs of anger. He was not yet certain whether they had come from a central source, an idea person, or whether they were working on their own. They could even be newly adult hunters, flush with too much energy and not enough work in the fertile maizelands. Whoever they were, Aloy would find them. The Sun shone gently onto him as Marad thought it, and his own mild religious devotion stirred vaguely godward and rolled back to sleep.

He just had to be sure that she did not become the claw of the Carja such that when she left — and she would — people perceived Avad as defenseless again. Her companion seemed savvy but harmless; Aloy had had to rescue him from falling off a cliff, Marad recalled. He shook his head and turned to go back into the halls at the center of the plateau, there to walk down to the library near the cliff’s edge. Aloy and Vanasha would reach the top of the hill soon.

The library in the palace at Meridian had not been sacked during the coup. This had been a matter of apathy, not choice: the Sun-Priests had burned and exalted other books in their day. Many were the scrolls that had burned in the city’s public braziers for the crime of mentioning the prowess of kings before Jiran. The king’s private library, inherited and redecorated by Avad and his advisors, had remained a sanctuary for older texts in which records of Meridian’s founding had been given the newly fashionable, more amicable political slant. Meridian’s expansionary wars were reframed as noble explorations under both regimes.

Sylens enjoyed the quietude of the place. Tightly rolled scrolls wrapped in neat ribbons sat in cubby holes made of wood stained red and bronze. Books were open to delicate drawings and detailed maps. Even the pieces in places of honor were not chained down. The library occupied a cool stone vault inside the plateau palace, and it would take just a day more of casing to figure out how to walk out with the best of its works.

Aloy moved ahead of him, following Vanasha, both of them loping along the neatly organized walls as comfortably as Aloy had moved in the maizelands. She touched her fingers to her Focus, holding the scan for just a heartbeat before marking off any reactive data for later. Vanasha did not seem to notice. They quickly outpaced Sylens and the Kestrels.

Avad, Marad, and Nasadi met Aloy at the other end of the room. Sylens had not seen Nasadi since Sunfall; the queen looked as if she had aged backwards, becoming more radiant and straight-backed after her captivity. She spread out a map across a table and began to weigh its edges with stones.

“This isn’t the first attack.” Avad, barely more than a boy-king, looked nervous. In the oppressive heat he acted as if he was cold, arms crossed and jaw tight. His gaze skimmed over Sylens, more concerned with Aloy and Vanasha. Good. Would it not be a nightmare to be recognized here? Sylens had travelled to the furthest outskirts of Carja territory and now stood here, back inside by some law of physics that demanded objects in circular flights stay in circles. If that track was interrupted, the forces released would be terrible.

If Bahavas or Helis were still alive and spotted him here, he could be executed on the spot … but he and Aloy had made sure that they were not.

Sylens kept half of his attention on Avad as the king explained that Eclipse marks had recently been found on gates, on masons’ stones, on wells poisoned by corpses of dead rabbits. Marad cautioned that it could be copycat work, an unsubtle attempt at mockery now that the wars were officially over, the Eclipse mostly scattered, and the rumors of the attack on the Spire running wild. Or perhaps it really was remnants of the Eclipse, shorn of their leaders, trying to rally around delinquency instead of or in advance of genocide.

Aloy, concerning herself more with logistics than motive, began to trace lines where machines had come from. Nasadi conferred with her about where traders or refugees entered the city, and Marad offered quick summaries of where people had been displaced after the fighting. Marad had been in Jiran’s court while Sylens was recruiting Bahavas, but he had not been a spymaster then. Bahavas had remembered him as a clever page, one whom Behaves had eyed as a potential for priesthood. Marad’s own inclinations had never lead him that way, though, and Bahavas had moved on to recruiting toughs and dead machines.

Aloy and Vanasha muttered at the war table in the corner. “A new break in the tree line here —“

“—not likely to come from the city if —“

“—searching around the waterfalls —“

Sylens examined the scrolls nearest to him. What could Meridian possibly have from before the attack that HADES itself did not? Had anyone measured how machines behaved around it? If the method of transmission could be understood in more detail … He had been inducted into some of the mysteries of spectrum, but some studies needed to be put aside because they did not involve the specific frequency through which the Focuses spoke to one another or, Sylens remembered with a chill, HADES spoke to its FARO Scarabs.

There was something in the cubby among the scrolls, a black machine claw like the tread of a Corruptor. Sylens glanced at the guards. He might pick it up just to see what they would do. How much did they know about what secrets this library might hold?

The claw was half way inside one of the shelves. Sylens reached in and slid it out without wrinkling the paper to either side.

Yes, this was something important. The guards reacted quickly, a coordinated flinch across three men. The man nearest him reached out a hand but did not quite touch him. “Excuse me. Do not move the artifacts.”

Sylens turned the claw over. “This?”

“Do not …”

“I find both your hierarchy and security to be disappointing, if removing two Bellowbacks is not enough to allow one the privilege of touching an artifact set out in the open.”

“It was inside the shelf,” one of the guards attempted.

It was this that seemed to finally draw Marad’s attention. He glided over from the king’s side. “What’s this?”

“Captain said we aren’t supposed to let anyone touch anything in the library, except the king and queen-mother.”

“Remind me of your name,” Marad said softly.

Sylens opened his hand. “I am an interested wanderer.” The Corruptor claw thumped onto the table. With no power source at all and not even a way to connect to one with the ends sheared clearly apart, it was as heavy and lifeless as a rock. “Aloy and I worked together, before the attack on the Spire. You have us to thank for some of your walls holding.”

Marad’s expression smoothed out, replacing an increasingly sour look with an envoy’s blank one. He looked over at the table. “Is that right, Aloy?”

She had been bent over the map, pointing at a location nearer to Nasadi. While Avad hovered like a frightened bird, Vanasha had almost blended into the background. Uncannily for someone so striking, she could lean against a table and project an aura of astonishingly convincing boredom. Just a citizen visiting the library. No information here at all.

Aloy’s gaze was even more unsettling as she turned to Marad. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Your friend says that we owe him for our city still standing. Is that right?” I just saw him palming the artifacts, Marad did not say. The Carja could be so courteous about their cruelty.

Not the reaction Sylens had wanted, but neither a problem he could not solve. Aloy, though. She caught his gaze and stared, her cheeks flushed, clearly feeling as blind under the Sun as he had been when he thought about his orbit around the library too long. She would hold information over his head, but which part exactly? That he had founded the Eclipse? That he had worked with HADES? That he had taught Bahavas and cultivated Helis through inaction? Helis could have been talked down from his mad devotion. Sylens had not done that.

Aloy narrowed her eyes. “Why?” Her suspicion was cold and fiery at once. ���Sylens. What did you do?”

Marad raised an eyebrow.

Ah, so now Aloy was suspicious. That was a problem — and he felt guiltier about it than about dislodging the work of an anonymous librarian. She had rescued him. She had tied both of them together in their deals and plans, risked death for one another. The world owed them both, and the pressure of it made them into diamonds.

He gestured at the claw. “I examined that.”

Aloy’s cheeks flushed. She knew something. Maybe she was thinking of Ban-Ur, of the theft that had unlocked the very first door to the Metal World that Sylens had ever known. “Your examining is going to get us into trouble.”

“And why is that?” Marad said.

“He’s a tinker,” Aloy said. “He used to work with the Eclipse, too. But we have a deal, Marad. You won’t break it.”

Sylens felt cold. Aloy’s regard was like water seen through ice: distorted, shifting. He had the sudden and terrible sense that she might reveal him. What would that give her? She would lose a partner in the research. He was certain that she would not risk their alliance. Or was he? He knew himself to be a liar and so struggled to think of a reason for Aloy not to lie.

Marad shrugged wry assent. “I trust you, Aloy.” The royalty by the table had raised their heads to look over now. Conscious of his audience, Marad raised his voice. “Aloy’s deeds allow her leeway. Her deeds and the rumors. They say you can become invisible, that you kill people who displease you, that you call machines. Some rumors are kind, others are fearful. Both serve different ends, depending if one wants to demonize the Nora or the Carja or another group entirely. You understand the value of a good rumor, I think.”

Aloy said, “Give us — he and I and whoever you can find for us — the chance to catch these Eclipse soldiers, or pranksters, or whoever they are. If we find out who did it and there’s proof that it wasn’t Sylens, we’ll go on our way. Ways. If we find out it was him, I won’t stop you from whatever you want to do.”

Good, Aloy. Appeal to their desire for control.

The Kestrel behind Sylens had begun to bristle, his expression souring and his grip on his long, thin spear tightening so hard that his knobby knuckles turned bone-white. The man with the Oseram-style mustache straightened his shoulders. “Keep him inside the city, not outside the library.” Marad crisply chastised the guards. When he met Sylens’ eyes he managed to look calm. “You must understand that your prior association may be useful in this endeavor. We ask —”

“You insist,” Sylens said.

“We do.”

Was that a civic plural, the whole city arrayed behind Marad’s reptilian-cold eyes? Bahavas had been contrary too, sometimes. Helis had been easy to lead, as simple to goad as a Strider on a rope. What hooks could he put in Marad? Sylens made an obvious effort to turn away from the claw.

Marad pressed his fingers on either side of his nose. “There is also the chance that someone may have let those machines in, or driven them in out of the forest.”

“They could have had Focuses, to see the tracks,” Aloy said.

Marad made a sound of recognition. Aloy turned to him. “Do you know something about that?” She asked.

“I had thought they were referring to you,” Marad said. “But there are rumors of people with strange devices that glow like your Focus.”

“If so, that would remove the possibility that they are with the Eclipse,” Sylens said.

“Because we took down the network.” Aloy nodded at him. “So we have a way to eliminate some suspects. If they have a Focus, they weren’t part of the original Eclipse.”

“Yes.”

“Yariki, the envoy from the Banuk, is in the city and might have seen something.”

“Good,” Marad said. “Talk to her when you can.” He looked at Sylens.

Sylens spoke before Marad could. “Am I a captive then?” He glanced at the guards. Aloy rolled her eyes behind Marad.

“Stay in the city and the fields until we sort this all out. Not past the Spire.” Marad looked at the guards to be sure they understood. “And Aloy, talk to Yariki if you think she knows something.”

Some of that work would be easier than others, Sylens thought. With Aloy keeping his identity secret — if only to hold the information over his head — he didn’t think Marad would bother him. Something had stuck in his mind about Marad, though, some data point that Sylens thought he had seen somewhere else. Had he ever met the man before?

It would have to be one of the many answers he found here.

After they were done mapping out potential routes for the machines, Aloy left the library quickly. The room had started to feel stuffy. Carja architecture was beautiful, but so heavy. Something had also begun to nag at her about Sylens’ presence. She wasn’t used to being in the same place as him for so long, for so many of her actions to have consequences around him in particular. After Sunfall she had begun to lean against the idea of him, to take comfort in his grudging aid. She had started to wonder again what it would be like to touch the cords on his arms, or to kiss him against the shelves in that library.

Having the reality so close was odd.

He seemed to think so too. He followed her at a distance, looking out over the steep drop toward the pools below.

It didn’t quite feel right insisting that Sylens be a captive in the city, but nor did it feel right knowing that he could still be working on something for HADES. Their bargain was set: Sylens would pause in his dangerous experimentation as long as Aloy kept the Carja from skinning him alive. Had she said the right thing to Marad today? She supposed she would have said the same thing about Nil. He is dangerous, but only when it serves him, and usually then it also served Aloy.

She started to speak without preamble. They were far enough away from one another that the Focus picked her voice up, transmitting to the channel he had forced open. Once she realized it, she lowered her voice so that the passersby could not hear. “Look, when you said that Marad was keeping you captive I wasn’t angry at you. I was disappointed. You can be subtler than that.”

Sylens ranged further around the other side of the balcony. It was so much easier to talk this way, Aloy thought. Without looking at his eyes but knowing he was there. “Now I know that. I will be. Don’t start ordering me around, too.”

This was more familiar ground: Sylens being short with her and Aloy not caring. “Remember, Marad said that I kill people who displease me.”

He paused. The slight crackle around the words, stronger in the stone palace, was as soft as an indrawn breath. “Do I displease you, Aloy?” he said, wry.

She felt her cheeks heat up. Well, that would haunt her.

“No, Sylens.” The balcony curved; it brought them together at the bridge, to stand in front of stony-faced guards. Aloy met his eyes, willing him to understand. She would say this like she had him at spearpoint, and she would say it as if they were sitting side-by-side in safety by a fire. “You and I have a bargain.”

She broke the stare and moved across the bridge at a jog, relishing the slam of her own feet on the solid wood.

Last night she had dreamed about walking through the maizelands with Vanasha. They needed to reach a particular canyon in the mesa walls, but neither of them could find the right paths despite their familiarity. Maps became blurry, memory more so. Vanasha said that they needed to find the most quiet pathways, and so they moved from trail head to trail head listening. Aloy woke up before they found the canyon and lay under her blankets thinking about how they had gone from place to place looking for silence, silence, silence.

The slam of her own feet did not distract her too much from the voices around her. Over the sound of Sylens’ own footsteps and the shuffling of the guards, she heard Vanasha call her name insistently, as she had done when they first met.

“Aloy,” said the spy. “Wait.”

[med-blahg]

2017: Year in Review pt. 1/??

After compiling most of the notable pictures of the year and hoping to make a nice twitter thread as is the bandwagon, I’ve decided to do this year-end reflection survey instead, since a) I was a bit too lazy to organize my thoughts, and b) surveys!!! This was the shit back in the multiply days.

What one event, big or small, are you going to tell your grandchildren about?

I’m going to cheat on this a bit because two events came to mind.

TRP - Two-peat Championship! Once again, batch 2020 proved itself legendary. TRP chorale season was extra memorable this year because I ran for the position of Music Head. Fed, my predecessor, warned me that scheduling rehearsals was especially a logistical nightmare, with last year’s different schedules for Blocks A and B. What more for LU5′s eight blocks, right?

I think there were three main challenges we had to go through for this to happen. The first was the very beginning -- the creation of the song itself. There was an added pressure since our piece last year was deemed the best, and even the same composer and arranger had a difficult time creating one for our last chance to grace the stage. We had two nights of brainstorming at Fed’s place (with free Angel’s pizza... and an out-of-post PER ICC huhu).

As far as I remember, he was already on his fifth or so attempt to make a song as the first ones garnered negative reviews. It was hard to get inspiration unlike last year where he was just especially moved after a lecture in Ther. In his words, pigang piga na siya. We were also having creative differences which really hindered us from making any real progress. Fortunately, on the second night, we finally overcame this with a switch to major chords and a great concept from James, giving birth to our wonderful chorus with the lines,

Bawat segundong nilaan, bawat hirap nalampasan,

Katumbas ng buhay na maliligtas.

...which tied very well with the theme, Orasa: Ang Dakilang Maestro.

The second challenge was actually a personal one. I got a taste of this logistical nightmare that Fed spoke of. It was particularly nerve-wracking especially for an irresponsible person like me, who has always clung to the clutch life. Getting venues for rehearsals was the main problem for this. Our choices were limited (MSU, Paz Men, Student Lounge, Tipunan) and in high demand, because many groups had to rehearse for TRP. It was my first time to attempt reserving a Paz Men room, which was surprisingly a lot of work -- needing to go to the Dean’s Office to check the availability of the rooms, go all the way up to the eighth floor of PGH to get it approved, go to the Cashier’s Office in OUR, and then go back to the Dean’s Office for them to confirm the payment, and then finally to Paz Men to submit the permit. But wait, there’s more! It actually cost a lot of money, which was the worst part, for me. #WeNeedSpace !!! I used my own money, which I was going to reimburse, but then we won, so... yeah, my treat then. (No one knew anyway heheh.) After all that, Paz Men obviously got scrapped from possible venues. I then had to coordinate with the MSC and MedChoir to get the free ones, being careful not to affect the batch dance schedule as much as possible.

You can then imagine getting all that work done, albeit very crammed which was entirely my fault, and then getting a poor turnout for rehearsals with just mere weeks before the competition (oh and that stupid ASEAN week which took more precious time away), to be quite disappointing, to say the least. The schedules of the different blocks and other TRP practices just couldn’t fit. This leads us to the third problem, which was to get the class motivated. This was my first reason for running to head the whole thing anyway -- I really just wanted to get the class together and to sing their hearts out once again! Thankfully, with a few motivational messages from me and our conductor, Joker, that I’m sure every one in the batch admired and respected, the attendance started going up, with one week to go.

My babies. (Sorry for the distorted faces.)

One of the final practices in particular really just transformed the song. I asked the class to do a simple exercise of singing to each other. They had to stand in a circle so they could look at each other’s faces. It was funny and awkward at first, but it was the first time I heard the piece sung with heart, and I knew they felt it too!

There were some issues with the final scoring during the competition itself, and I honestly wasn’t quite sure how to take it. But seeing how my batchmates rejoiced and hearing the audience do the winner clap (THIS IS LEGIT THOUGH HEHE) made me feel like we really deserved the win. Very grateful for the talented and hardworking music team and my bibo batchmates!

Abendlied: An Evening of Songs for the Benefit of Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus -- our year-end concert for A.Y. 2016-2018. It was my first time to sing for a benefit concert. We took this opportunity not only to share our love for choral music, but also to spread awareness of SLE, a rather common condition found in PGH. I was very proud of how big this event has gotten -- thanks to sponsored boosts and our first time to get media partners (and, admittedly, our high ticket prices), we were able to procure a few hundred thousands, a part of which was donated to the PGH Lupus Club.

UP MedChoir always has a lot of major and minor events like these, but I’d choose this to share to my grandkids because in this concert, I really felt that I was blessed with talent that could help others. (Oh, which just reminded me of something, haha. Maybe it’ll get featured later, or in some other post.)

If you had to describe your 2017 in 3 words, what would they be?

Mistakes, lessons, cycle. I repeatedly did a shit ton of mistakes this year, with repercussions not only for me, but regrettably to the people around me. This came with the responsibilities I chose to accept this year. But heck, I’m proud of myself for accepting and embracing these new roles. I was brave enough to challenge myself. #characterdevelopment

What new things did you discover about yourself?

Oh, man. Haha. One of the things I discovered was that I am quite quick to forgive and forget. And then one day, some stimulus will come that will take me all the way back to when it hurt. A lot. Many of the tears shed this year were still in relation to the past aches of 2016.

What single achievement are you most proud of?

I am proud of always finding reasons to stay.

For one, there was a time when I really, really wanted to quit MedChoir. I felt that it was taking too much of my time and energy, and was also taking a toll on my mental health. There were many days with triggers, days where I just couldn’t manage to perform well, days where I was always on the brink of crying during rehearsals. It’s not supposed to be that way, I thought. There has to be another reason of staying besides the fact that I was needed. But then I saw some post saying that continuous pressure can make you hate doing the things you love. I have forgotten what turned me around during this time -- probably my friends, or taking a step back to appreciate the music like I once did. Or just the energy that we get from each other. Whatever it was, I’m glad I stayed.

I’m also proud of myself for staying in med school. Not that I actually have the choice to leave anyway, what with the millions my family would have to pay. But the thing is, I actually want to stay now. (Well, most of the time.) I’ve always feared that maybe the doctor life isn’t for me, but this ICC year has proven otherwise. Although a big factor of this is that we’re still babies in the hospital, the mere baby steps of actually enjoying interviewing, examining, and just getting to know patients was life-changing for me.

What was the best news you received?

I can think of two off the top of my head. The first, that one of our Christmas gigs got us an unexpected @@ thousand pesos (so that was around @@ thousand per song... what???), and the second was the news that one of my aunts was going to adopt a baby. This has some MMK style plot behind it, by the way -- politics, cheating, and whatnot. It didn’t push through, though. I hope that baby lives well.

What was your favourite place that you visited in 2017?

South Korea, no question!!!

1) Day 4 - The Garden of the Morning Calm. This day was my favorite. Our morning was spent in the astoundingly beautiful Nami Island. Picturesque. Trees, nature, ...and a very ideal place for dating, haha! For all ages pa. We saw couples young and old, holding hands while walking. This was where we made a pact that we’ll go back to Korea when we all got our own SO’s. That night we went to The Garden of the Morning Calm, where I thought the expanse of land decorated with lights just wouldn’t end! It really seemed like a different world back there.

2) Day 2 - Palace hopping! We went to the Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung Palaces. We joined the free English guided tour of the places and learned a lot. We even joked about making it like an SGD, like the bibo kids we are, hungry for learning. Haha! Photo (c) Bana

3) Day 1 - My travel buddies, Bana and Reg. For our first day, we walked around the makeup and skincare heaven that is Myeongdong and ate a lot of oh so glorious streetfood.

4) Day 3 - We went to the Namsan Tower to cap off the day... Featuring the toilet that got away.

I’m so so so glad this trip pushed through, na nakaldkad ako nina Bana and Reg to this land! I wasn’t even a hardcore Kdrama fan and I think I was initially invited just because Gio was supposed to go as well, haha. But these two welcomed me to their group, and it was such a beautiful experience! Lots of walking, sites, damn Korean couples, and food!!!!!!!!!!! These pictures are just a preview of the places we’ve been to, and the photoshoots we have so shamelessly done. Here’s our itinerary from Bana’s blog, and photos from Bana’s album, and my album!

Which of your personal qualities turned out to be the most helpful this year?

I honestly don’t know, haha. Whenever I’m asked about my strengths, I tend to think of my weaknesses instead. For this, maybe the best answer is my openness to try new things. Or just that I really tend to appreciate some people and experiences in my life. I’m in no way consistent in any of these qualities, but during the occasions that I am such, I could really feel the difference.

Who was your number one go-to person that you could always rely on?

This constant used to be Gio. After he left, I can’t say that I really have that single go-to person. Nevertheless, I could often rely on #clingy2020 and our thorough SGD’s whenever we’re going through a rough patch. I will specially mention my beshie Ian, who could always make me have a good laugh and at the same time discuss the not-so-lighter things in life.

Okay, I didn’t expect this post to be this long haha. I haven’t even gone through half of the questions yet! I guess I’ll do this in parts instead. Next year na yung iba. (He he he.)

[chatting-leaves]

Somebody From The Internet (6/?) - “Serious Business”

Content Warning: This story involves some adult situations, albeit presented in an SFW context.

A noted Boston-area hospital - February 2018

"You really should reach out to her," my therapist suggested to me. "It seems like you have a lot of overall trust issues stemming from Courtney that you need to resolve to move forward. Do you have a means to contact her?" 

"I have her old phone number saved away somewhere, and I could go and see if she's on Facebook, I know she has been on and off there several times," I responded with an anxious tone to my voice. The treatment methods of my therapist, a recent psychology grad stationed at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world, could be seen as a bit off-the-wall, but it can be argued that said hospital did not get the groundbreaking reputation that it has earned through nearly two decades by being conventional. I had some vague idea of what had become of Courtney, the first serious relationship I had a little over a decade earlier; last I had read, she had become an ER nurse somewhere in the suburbs of Detroit, a long distance from where we had met back when we both lived in Albany. However, with a parade of difficulties in my own life I needed to go back and make peace with some actions we had done to each other so many years earlier.

Albany, New York - October 2006

I originally had met Courtney while trolling Facebook, looking for people who lived geographically near me who seemed interesting enough. Two months younger than I and a graduate student wrapping up her studies to be a cancer screener, her profile picture showed a young woman with shoulder length strawberry blonde hair, glasses, freckles in some blessed places, and a wide open yet slightly forced smile. Her looks were a mere cherry on top of the real reason why I wanted to meet: she lived literally a block and a half from me. As my friends were clustered further uptown and even in the suburbs closest to Albany, it would be nice to have a friend within walking distance and my original aim with this was just that. So certain that we would be "just friends" that our first meeting was in her apartment, a third story walkup near a key intersection. We talked about the typical first date material without any expectation that this would end up anywhere near a relationship, in fact her profile said that she was "in a relationship" though she assured it was tenuous at best. While her DVD of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" played on her small television in the background, she made a risky admission.

"I don't think my relationship with my boyfriend is going to be lasting much longer, and to be honest I'd rather leave him and at least try to be with you," Courtney admitted. "You seem much nicer than he is and I don't have to drive an hour to do anything with me." Courtney went on to detail things regarding her current boyfriend, a friend she had met in high school who had his life unravel after being arrested for drunk driving. Given my hapless track record with women, the idea that for once I was going to be the man someone else got dumped for made me feel lucky. Our friendly evening then drifted into hugging and cuddling, a form of affection showing that was physical if not deeply romantic. After five hours, we went our separate ways for the evening with plans to meet up a few days later, during which time she said she would give the boyfriend she loathed the news that their relationship was no more. I was elated, yet somewhat cautious of what was to come. I knew that before I could enter a relationship with her, I had to get the approval of my friends which came about a week and a half later at the 21st birthday party of a friend who Courtney immediately bonded with given their similar personalities and interests in the health field. My friends overwhelmingly approved and welcomed Courtney into our ever growing circle, yet logistics of actually starting a relationship had gotten in the way thanks to a series of pre-existing commitments. That weekend, while out of town for the wedding of a cousin whose branch of the family I had not seen for quite some time, I awoke to a text message the morning of the wedding that was sent at 3:00 AM.

"I'm drunk and I miss you."

Our friendship had reached the point of drunk texts and had I been back home I would have been over to her place by 3:05 at the latest. Alas, I was in a hotel room in New Jersey, the wedding was the next day, and I regretted not knowing her sooner because she would have easily been my date to this wedding. As I would not return to Albany until Monday and she had a class on Monday nights, Tuesday night would be the next chance for us to act on these feelings. While at the wedding, one of the few people there without a companion of some sort, I felt an emptiness that I knew how to fill, I just couldn't fill it at the current time.

Tuesday night came and as soon as she met me at the door, we instantly kissed for a good minute and it felt good. While cooking dinner for her that night, I popped a question to her. "If you missed me so much, why shouldn't we be boyfriend and girlfriend?" Courtney didn't know. "Well, why don't we then?", I continued.

"Sure," she responded, not fully sharing the enthusiasm that I had in this case but more than willing to give this a try. Regardless of how she felt, our relationship went full steam ahead, my spending many nights at her apartment, often up into the wee hours of the night mocking assorted weird television and just talking about our lives. That weekend, Courtney revealed another thing that was on her heart.

"I wish you could come home for Thanksgiving with me." I had already committed to making plans to visit a good friend and his family for the holiday, my regular destination of Mom's house not an option given she had recently undergone a gastric bypass and was on a liquid diet. Courtney then went on about how Thanksgiving at her home was going to be quiet this year, her younger brother had enlisted in the military and the family was still hurting from the suicide of her father three years earlier. Tears of rage stemmed from Courtney's face as she detailed the events that led to her father taking matters in his own hands, that the fallout from being pushed out of a state job he had for twenty-five years just short of retirement was too much to bear. Thanksgiving this year would be just her and her mom, a semi-retired teacher, a loneliness she didn't want to deal with. I could not relate to the suicide but I could relate to feeling alone during holidays where the opposite is supposed to be true. While I was away for Thanksgiving, we talked multiple times a day just to see how the other was holding up.

As 2006 came to a close, we had started to delve into making longer-term plans as a couple. As I was going back to finish my bachelor's, a long story in itself, and she had finished her masters and was going into her first "real" job, we spoke of the things we wanted to do and the places we wanted to go when the weather got warmer. Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, all the overnight travel I didn't want to do alone was now within reach with Courtney to share it with. There was one bigger piece of fish to fry: I was invited to a late Christmas gathering with my Mom's side of the family and I wanted her to pass the test of meeting Mom and some of my family. Courtney and I piled into her mess of an early 90s Plymouth to make the hour drive to visit Mom at her cottage on an apple orchard on the eastern foothills of the Catskills, spending the night in separate quarters before making the trip down to Long Island. The trip itself was eventful, Mom decided to take her old minivan which died en route, but an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins loved Courtney and saw us as a cute couple. Given Mom's lack of luck with men, it was good to see that this apple fell very far from the tree. While things on the surface seemed fine, meeting my family set something off in Courtney that would lead to the demise of our relationship.

The Monday after our trip to meet my family, I was going to meet with Courtney that night to see how her first day of work at her new job (a branch of a known testing lab) had gone. Once I arrived, she confronted me with a bit of shocking news.

"You know, if we're going to meet each other's families and such, we really should have sex."

I had told Courtney that I wanted to wait until a time I was ready before going down that path because I wanted to make sure our relationship was solid. While a Christian at the time, I was not opposed to the idea of premarital sex but I wanted it on my terms and on my time, not hers. Needless to say, anything and everything short of it were things we had previously had done and I had looked to losing my virginity for some time, just not like this. I asked her if we could wait a little more, perhaps after a trip to North Carolina I was taking with friends that was starting that weekend before the spring semester kicked off.

"If you really do love me, you'll have sex with me right now," Courtney flat out guilt tripped me. I didn't want to lose our relationship so I gave in, my first full-on sexual experience lacking the passion and unbridled glee that happened every time we fooled around. Truth be told, we had given each other wedgies with more passion than this sad act of fornication. Afterwards, we ended playing the original Super Mario Bros on her 1980s vintage Nintendo, the best way to try to bleed out coerced intercourse. After this, I felt something wasn't quite complete with me, as if this earth shattering experience turned out to be a massive void. When Courtney and I had met up with some of my friends for coffee later that week, they could tell that there was a feeling of cloaked frustration between us two yet I couldn't flat out confess that we had done something for fear that my more Biblicaly-minded friends would judge me.

My trip to North Carolina, with a one-day detour in DC en route which eventually would change the course of my life, was what I needed after all of this. I met people who I am still friends with to this day and have made memories that will last with me until the day I die. On the last night of our trip, one of my new friends - Wally, a lead campus minister for a student group at UNC Charlotte - asked me some questions about my relationship with Courtney, some biblical but mostly general relationship questions. Afraid to entertain judgment regarding having had sex, if you could call it that, with her, I tested his limits with the questioning, even bringing in my campus minister who was present to try to take my side.

"Remember when Jay knocked up Maddie the first time either of them had sex?," I said with a sarcastic lilt. Our student leader Vice President and Secretary two years earlier, Jay and Maddie were head over heels in love and "randomly" lost their mutual virginity while stuck inside during a blizzard. Our group survived that and at this point they were still members, albeit with Jay a senior and Maddie a stay-at-home mom to their one year old daughter.

"Yes. And it wasn't a clean situation to be in. I'm not going to violate their privacy, but I know that everything wasn't as you and anyone else saw it as," my campus minister said. 

"If Courtney really loves you and wants to be with you, she'll wait for you. Ideally until marriage," Wally said. Wally had been blessed in a way, he married his college sweetheart two weeks after she finished her studies at a Christian university in Indiana, that he was off the market at the mere age of 22. At a seemingly ancient 24, I didn't know how long I could meet.

The next day was spent solely on the road, 13 hours from Charlotte to Albany less a few stops to eat and use the restroom, Somewhere in rural Virginia along Interstate 81, I brought up the idea of waiting for any further sex with Courtney via text message. Naturally, she seemed resistant.

"Well, if you really do love me, you'll wait, right?" I responded somewhere in the fifty mile mess where the states come fast on that highway - Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, absolutely using the words Courtney used on me a week earlier against her.

"When I'm in a relationship, I have an expectation of sex," Courtney replied, somewhere near Harrisburg.

"And fooling around and doing everything but that isn't enough. What about a relationship of true intimacy that is built to last?," I responded.

"Either we're going to have sex or our time as boyfriend and girlfriend is over," Courtney fired an ultimatum somewhere near Allentown. I didn't know what I wanted at that point, frankly what we had pre-sex was ideal for me, that wasn't good enough for her. The romantic aspect of our friendship was seemingly dead at this point. Once we got out of the car to get dinner and fuel up somewhere in northwest New Jersey, I was livid at everyone involved. Standing firm on my morals cost me the most viable relationship I ever had and I was not happy at all, as if the advice of those I trusted blew up in my face and cost me what I had yearned for for so long. Years later, I came clean to several friends about what really happened and the consensus was that through my denials that they knew something had gone on. So much for putting up a poker face.

Needless to say, Courtney and still stayed friends in the resulting months. We stuck to our plans for a Valentine's Day date as being together would be preferable to being apart and while our romantic chemistry had fizzled, we worked great as friends without the cloud of romantic tension. That March, she had been sent to a conference in San Antonio by her employer and after two days stopped responding to anything. I began to get worried, if she was in harm's way I would be heartbroken given that even our friendship was something I had wanted for some time. A week later, she broke her silence: She had gotten very drunk and ended up having a mental breakdown in the aftermath, the week she was not responding was spent under observation in the mental ward of a large hospital. I didn't seem to make much of it, everyone has had mental health issues at some point in their lives and the best thing she could use after returning home was a solid friend who wouldn't abandon her.

As Spring sprung, our friendship resumed as it ever was. While the idea of a romantic trip to Montreal or Boston was off the table, we still spent time together on a regular basis, often going out to eat at least once a week. In an attempt to get me to finally get my driver's license, she took me out driving and had promised her beaten up Plymouth as a set of starter's wheels to me when she was to get a new car later that year. While I was always a welcome presence around her friends and she was even more welcome around mine, my friends started to have some concerns about how long this could be kept up.

"You know that if she ends up finding a guy that you're going to end up on the back burner," my friends warned me in consensus. I already was trying to deal with losing a few good friends to graduation and to get my own, more adult, life set up and the looming truth of having my friendship with Courtney get curtailed wasn't something I wanted to confront. As time passed, she moved to another part of town, within walking distance, and I helped her shop for housewares and furniture. If it wasn't for our bedroom conflict, her new apartment very well may have been mutual, my own being basically a room with a miniature kitchen and bathroom. That July, everything came to a screeching halt.

"I've been seeing a guy and I think you two should meet," Courtney said. "Why not meet us for dinner one Friday night," she suggested a hole-in-the-wall pub right down the street from her new apartment. I arrived to find her and her new boyfriend, Greg, one of many cogs in the machine of New York State. Keeping conversation to basic small talk and trying not to make too much eye contact, I made it through meeting him. I had hoped that Greg wouldn't have much of a presence in my life. I guessed quite wrongly.

The next week, Courtney invited me to a play at the Park Playhouse, a theater inside Albany's sprawling Washington Park. I accepted, having not much else to do and wanting to have some time with her as a friend. Unknowingly, she had invited Greg to come with and while I was engrossed by the play I found that I was being wedged in as a third wheel of sorts and got the feeling that she wanted Greg and I to be friends even though her romantic past with the two of us created conflict. Greg saw me as the friendly ex she could easily take advantage of, I was jealous of Greg because if not for my own hangups it would be me in that position and I knew damn well that I'd never put my rebound girlfriend in such a position unless it was a fair double date. While all of this went on, Courtney was fired from her job at the lab because of performance issues that escalated after her breakdown in San Antonio; this job loss only made her lean on Greg further. Needless to say, I still considered her a good friend and lent any moral support I could give, however she soon would reach the point where my limits of friendship would be tested.

My birthday is in mid-August, a time of year when the looming presence of autumn makes itself known with earlier sunsets, the occasional chillier night, and ads for back-to-school sales plastered over the airwaves. For my 25th birthday, the weather in Albany leapt straight to October, barely hitting 60 degrees and having me make the rare-for-August wardrobe choice of corduroy pants to work and my resulting birthday dinner. I had called a restaurant I liked, a small neighborhood joint in a lull before colleges resumed, to save a table for myself and about ten of my friends, one of which being Courtney who swore that she'd go solo as Greg had to "work late" that evening. Imagine my shock when she walked in with Greg by her side, my failures as a boyfriend on full display. My birthday was already gloomy thanks to the weather and a professional reduction of duties that was a prelude to my own looming job loss, the last thing I needed was to have the girl I once dated to bring her new boyfriend to my birthday dinner. While I acted diplomatically, I felt a lot of internal anguish. After all this, I vented to a friend about the awkward state of affairs.

"Courtney has always been a bit...condescending when we've been around her. I don't think she really liked you the way you liked her, that she was with you as a matter of convenience than for an actual relationship," my friend brutally told me. "That she dared bring her boyfriend to your birthday dinner showed that she clearly didn't give a crap about your feelings." I knew that I wouldn't dream of doing the same if I was the one with a girlfriend and she was single and as such I asked her to not have him around me as what she did made me feel very uncomfortable. Surprisingly, she honored my request. We still met up for lunch here and there, but things faded away once she moved into Greg's apartment when she was no longer able to maintain her own rent. Eventually, she took a job at a fur store in a suburban strip mall, often inviting me to stop by to keep her company during her slower shifts. The last time we saw each other was at this shop, a dark and gloomy afternoon that winter, at a time when I myself was trying to get hired at said fur shop to help her out so she could return the favor. I never got the chance to do so, deciding to decamp for the greener pastures of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, a goal I had set on the side trip I took en route to Charlotte a year earlier.

After I left Albany, Courtney and I kept in touch from time to time as she returned to college to stake a new career path in the field of nursing. Several months after I moved, one day she reached out to me that a mailer from a church I briefly attended was "a sign" that perhaps she should go herself and we used it as a chance to catch up. Eventually, we drifted away on our own paths minus a conversation a couple of years later where we both shared stories of our individual premarital anxiety, her wedding with Greg happening two months prior to my own wedding. Since we were both off the market, obviously with people we were both happy with, I felt that I could close the book on any sort of friendship with Courtney. However, she still had left quite the mark on my life, I just didn't want to admit it until it was dragged out that I needed to resolve it to move forward.

The evening after my therapist challenged me to reach out to Courtney, I shot a message off to her via Facebook Messenger saying that I felt bad for how our relationship ended and how I was standoffish regarding how she tried to make Greg and I be friends. I had figured that things in her marriage had gone south as she had reverted to using her maiden name. A few minutes later, I got a quick response from her that chilled me: "What did I do?" "You coerced me into losing my virginity to you," I bluntly said.

"We had sex? I thought that we just fooled around a few times," Courtney replied. "I don't ever remember having sex with you."

I was floored at her admission. I had felt guilt for eleven years over the fact that I felt the loss of my virginity wasn't 100% consensual, that she used meeting my family as a cudgel to get laid, that our breakup was because I wanted to wait until I was ready to have relations on a regular basis. I went through all of this anguish for her to forget that we even did it!? She mercifully changed the topic though soon I would find out how she could forget.

"I'm not doing good," Courtney said. "I had another mental breakdown a little bit after I moved back home from Michigan." I remembered the incident in San Antonio so many years earlier and how that ended her days as a cytotechnologist.

"After the breakdown, I lost my nursing license, then Greg and I broke up because I wanted kids and he didn't want them and wouldn't budge. Then my brother committed suicide," Courtney continued. My heart broke on the last statement, remembering how her father's life ended under similar circumstances. "I can't work, I'm hoping to get on disability, and I've earned and wasted two degrees now. I'm 35, my mom pays my rent, and if it wasn't for me being all she has left I would probably kill myself too."

I apologized for her abysmal string of luck, yet deep down inside felt that I had dodged a massive bullet. I don't know how I would have dealt with this as a husband, especially given the shaky reasons I would have had to marry her. While she probably would have fulfilled her goal of having kids, there are tons of opportunities that got to pursue thanks to our relationship going south. In an odd and somewhat gallows way, Courtney ditching me was just what I needed to grow as a person. We spoke for a time until she deleted her presence on social media at which point I realized that I could finally move on from any regrets that I had.

Sometimes we need certain people in our lives to help us grow as a person. As much as things between Courtney and I were unstable, I needed her to get over the idealization of relationships I had. While she has had awful life luck and I feel for her as such, at least I've been somewhat successful in my life, maintaining a successful marriage and bouncing back from personal and professional instability. I hope she reaches the same sort of peace sooner than later.

[robertkstone]

Snow Queen: A Cold Pursuit of One’s Finnish Roots, in the Dead of Winter (w/Video)

I have a thing for snow. When other people head south on vacation, I go north. I come by it honestly. I was born and raised in Northern Ontario, and my mom is a Finn. So when editor in chief Ed Loh needed someone to fly to the top of Finland and breach the Arctic Circle to test Nokian’s newest tires, the formulation of a plan began.

Snow, tires, cars, reindeer, northern lights, and saunas—time for a good old-fashioned Motor Trend road trip. Spoiler alert: Things got personal along the way.

Nokian Tyres is a big deal in Finland. The company traces its history back to the founding of the Finnish Rubber Works in 1898, and it invented the winter tire in 1934. Today Nokian has a 1,730-acre winter test site near Ivalo, 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Nokian is a household name in Europe when shopping for winter tires, but in order to grow it must enter the mainstream with new lines of all-season and all-weather tires. Hence its desire to raise its profile in the U.S.

New tires have been developed for North America, and Nokian is building a $360 million tire plant in Dayton, Tennessee, with ambitious goals of doubling sales in five years.

So we headed to Lapland (a region covering the northern third of Finland) for a taste of what this small player—$1.7 billion in sales in 2016 versus $32.5 billion from giant Bridgestone—with big plans has to offer.

Our Motor Trend trio included videographer Cory Lutz—a fellow Canadian in danger of getting soft after years of living in Southern California—and photographer Robin Trajano, who was born in the Philippines, now lives in L.A., and could provide thin-blooded comic relief in these frigid arctic climes.

We rendezvous in the capital of Helsinki and hop a 1.5-hour flight to the northernmost airport in the European Union. “Welcome to Ivalo,” the airport sign says, showing a current temperature of minus 4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). No big deal; my hometown in Ontario has dipped to minus 40. Trajano, however, is giving me sideways shade for putting him in this icebox. Eh, he’s young and tough.

“Kiitos” I say under my breath, Finnish for “thank you” and a remnant of the Finnish I knew as a child listening to my mother talk to her mother. I am finally in a place long on my bucket list. I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

In Ivalo, a former gold-mining town that is now a winter recreation destination, you can snowmobile to the highest point in Finland and see Russia. Finland is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its independence from the Russian Republic; they haven’t always been the best of neighbors.

Nokian is the only tire manufacturer with a permanent winter testing facility. Nicknamed “White Hell,” the Ivalo Testing Center has slalom and handling courses, a 1.0-kilometer (0.6-mile) speed run on the lake, a rally track for drifting, hills to test traction, an SUV course through the reindeer-populated woods, and an ice hall housing 2,300 feet of natural ice. There are more than 30 tracks covering 62 miles on a variety of ice and snow conditions. In this sprawling complex, Nokian tests 20,000 tires a year from November to May. Every day, results from icy ovals are sent back to corporate headquarters in the pursuit of the best beads, compounds, treads, and studs to improve grip.

Nokian is not alone in its quest for winter tire supremacy. Michelin, Goodyear, and Bridgestone now have small test sites near Ivalo, Hankook recently built a facility, and there is an independent facility the industry shares.

In Finland everyone knows Nokian, which has its headquarters and a tire plant in the city of Nokia, near Helsinki. Nokian split off from conglomerate Nokia (best known for cell phones) in 1988.

Winter tires are mandatory across Scandinavia, Russia, and other northern countries. As a result, the Nokian brand and its Hakkapeliitta tire have become synonymous with excellent winter tires. (“Hakkapeliitta” was a Finnish light cavalry unit during the 30 Years’ War. The name refers to their fearsome roar as they charged into battle.)

The brand is also known in Quebec, another place where winter tires are mandatory. But Nokian is largely obscure on this side of the Atlantic—beyond users such as the Michigan State Police and wonky Hakkapeliitta enthusiasts. The push to increase awareness is now the responsibility of new CEO Hille Korhonen.

For our Finnish excursion we are joined by Nokian PR rep Dan Stocking, a Michigan native who grew up smelling rubber at his family tire shop. Among the Finns who meet us at Ivalo Airport is Matti “Mr. Tire” Morri, a Nokian technical expert who has spent the last 27 winters in Lapland but has never seen it in the summer. Growing up, he cross-country skied a mile-plus to school every day on a track his father groomed for him. He still likes to end his day with a kick-and-glide on an XC trail.

We pile our gear into cars. Morri whips away at breakneck speeds on what we later discover are roads of hard-packed snow compacted to the consistency of ice. Our studded Hakkapeliittas so completely grip the low-mu surface that we are caught unaware when we get out of the cars. We promptly windmill our arms as we struggle to keep our balance.

Among the perks of Lappish life: Our rooms at the Hotel Tunturi in Saariselkä have private saunas. The Finns invented the sauna, and I was eager to compare them to the traditional wood-fired saunas in Canada in which we steam and then jump in a lake or roll in the snow. And conveniently, my room at the Tunturi has a snow-covered patio. We also are invited to join Nokian dealers and executives in a corporate-building communal sauna and dip, but I prefer to limit my team-building exercises to Motor Trend Of The Year testing.

Another Finnish delight: As we walk back from dinner, crunchy packed snow underfoot, we see the northern lights. The scientific explanation for the aurora borealis is charged particles hitting the Earth’s magnetic shield and releasing energy in bands of colorful light across the sky. Northern Finland is in the “Aurora Belt,” where the lights are most frequently seen as leaping iridescent lime spikes, flaming pink shoots, or bright purple curtains in stark contrast to the inky black sky above the Arctic Circle. By contrast, back home on Ontario’s 49th parallel, my last sighting displayed black and white piano keys being played across the sky like beams from a flashlight in need of new batteries.

Day 2

We are back on frozen rural roads heading north to Inari through areas where reindeer farmers herd via snowmobile. Our destination is Lake Pasasjärvi, also known as White Hell Area 2. A fleet of Audis awaits us.

To escape the minus 20 C (minus 4 Fahrenheit) cold, we hop in a yellow AWD RS 4 with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires to try the slalom and handling courses. There also are areas for drifting and collision avoidance. Although drifting on the slippery stuff is tempting, the actual goal is to drive on the edge of control and not drift. The combination of the car’s traction control and the grip of the tires almost stops the vehicle completely until it regains control and accelerates again. Same excellent grip in a red RS 5 with studded tires.

A blue RS 6 is doing speed runs on the lake. Nokian has the world record for fastest car on ice with the RS 6 hitting 335.7 km/h (208.6 mph) on the Gulf of Bothnia wearing studded Hakkapeliitta 8s. By comparison, we are mere amateurs. Bouncing along the uneven surface at autobahn speeds, I repeat the winter-driving mantra, slow hands, slow hands. We back off at 100 mph, knowing the car and tires could easily have done more.

To test the new SUV tires we try Audi Q5s with studded tires but also with the nonstudded Hakkapeliitta R2 SUV winter tires. Even without studs, the traction on sheer ice is remarkable. The vehicle prefer to stop rather than drift. There are occasions I’m convinced of an imminent kiss with a snowbank, but the tires pull the SUV back on track time after time.

On the way to lunch at the Kultahippu restaurant, we stop abruptly on the crest of a hill. In the not so far distance, we spy Murmansk, Russia. We taunt our grumpy neighbors with our American, Canadian, and Finnish flags.

Finnish cuisine is influenced by Germany, Sweden, and Russia. But Lapland is influenced by what is available. We have a fine lunch of traditional reindeer stew (sliced reindeer strips in gravy over mashed potatoes with lingonberries and pickle spears). Dinner that night: the same reindeer stew but with a third pickle spear.

I learn Finnish men drink giant glasses of milk with their meals. I also learn that pulla (the Finnish coffee bread I grew up with) is not on every table. In fact, I never found it during my travels. Crepelike Finnish pancakes were also scarce, and the fish stew I know as kalamojakka is apparently not a Finnish word at all! “Oh, yes, in Finland it is called kalakeitto,” my mom tells me after I get home.

With bellies full of Dancer and Prancer, we dash through the rest of White Hell before calling it a day.

Day 3

We’re up early to start our road trip south. It’s still March, but the days have started getting longer—with sunrise about 7 a.m. and daylight lasting until almost 6 p.m. in this land of the midnight sun. We have a pair of rental cars: a 2016 Volvo V40 fitted with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires and a 2017 Volvo XC90 with the R2 SUV tires. Our ultimate destination: Nokian’s headquarters, which employs about 1,500 people at its R & D facilities, tire manufacturing plant, and immense logistics center.

The V40 will finally be sold in the U.S. when the next-generation 40 series launches, starting with the XC40 early next year, so we were curious to spend time in its European predecessor. We have a bare-bones Volvo V40 T2 with cloth seats and no navigation system. Our support vehicle is a Volvo XC90 D5 with a two-tone leather interior and soft-pore wood. Compared with Motor Trend’s long-term XC90 T6 Inscription with the 2.0-liter gas engine, the diesel in the D5 provides nice, smooth acceleration. It also means we got to pay 1.426 euros/liter (about $1.70) for diesel rather than €1.545 for regular gas or €1.609 for premium gas.

Our new Finnish friends greet our drive route with skepticism—they attempt to persuade us to book a flight for part of it. What they underestimate is how much driving, photography, and video from thigh-deep snow we can pack into a day. What we underestimate is travel time: Speed limits are reduced in winter, coinciding with the December 1 to March 31 mandatory winter tire period.

We leave Saariselkä and head south on E75. Finland is a country of 5.5 million people occupying 151,000 square miles. It looks exactly like Northern Ontario—I swear I have not left home—with 190,000 lakes, high snowbanks, and packed-snow roads that don’t see pavement until spring. The same pine, spruce, and birch trees mean we see the same barn wood as we cruise through Finland’s rural environs. They also have the same national animal: the mosquito.

Our studded tires perform so well in the deep snow that we can whip the V40 around to double back for photography. It is proving to be a sturdy vehicle and blends in with the other small cars and SUVs that dot the roads—with Volvo, Audi, VW, Mercedes, Mazda, Honda, and Nissan nameplates being the most common. Finland has the most vehicles per capita in the world, and many wear extra headlights to spot reindeer during the long, dark winter months.

We stop for a late lunch in Rovaniemi, hometown of Santa Claus. But its history is not the stuff of children’s books. Snow covers the ground pockmarked from World War II bombings by the Russians and the scorched-earth retreat of the Germans. The local airport is a former Luftwaffe airfield.

We visit the Arktikum Lapland museum, the gateway to the north. You enter from the south, and the structure disappears underground like an animal burrowing under the frozen tundra for warmth. Inside are scenes of Finnish Lapland and Arctic life: fishing, hunting, a cold room, and a northern lights theater.

Our trip then meanders west to the border with Sweden and the Gulf of Bothnia.

The weather gets milder as we cross the Arctic Circle—where we also cross the freezing mark. It is easy to forget we have studded tires when the pavement bares itself, but we are reminded in the hotel parking garage in Oulu with a staccato snap, crackle, and pop underfoot. The Hakkapeliitta 9 has new stud technology. There are more studs, including some in the center of the tire, and the corners of the studs are cut so the tire doesn’t hit the ground before the stud does. But the studs are also smaller, lighter, and designed to spread out on impact to help protect the occasional exposed patch of pavement.

In Oulu we walk under fat snowflakes to a French bistro for dinner. Robin rejoices; he has had enough reindeer for one trip. Once again, my room has a sauna. I am in heaven.

Day 4

We are up with the sun as sleet swirls outside our windows. We continue south on E8 along the coast to Vassa, where the scenery is marked with elevation changes and rock outcroppings. I choke up; Vassa is the birthplace of Signe Kujanen, my mummu (grandmother). She is the one who introduced me to pulla and taught my mom how to make the incorrectly named kalamojakka. Listening to her, I learned Finnish as a toddler. My first car was the 1972 Chevy Impala she willed me. We gave it a Finnish accent: It was known to everyone as from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2ioPhlL via IFTTT

[bestnewsmag-blog]

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Steven Holcomb: Olympic gold medallist bobsledder found dead at 37

Olympic gold medalist bobsledder Steven Holcomb has died, aged 37.It’s far believed Holcomb, who changed into observed in his room at the USA Olympic Training Centre in Lake Placid, Big apple on Saturday, died in his sleep dead 

  He competed in 3 Iciness Olympics and piloted us four-man bobsled team to gold at Vancouver 2010 – the USA’s first Olympic title in the event in 62 years.

At Sochi 2014 he received bronze in both the 2-man and 4-man bobsled.

“The whole Olympic circle of relatives is stunned and saddened by way of the incredibly tragic loss nowadays of Steven Holcomb,” said US Olympic Committee leader government Scott Blackmun.

“Steve becomes a first-rate athlete and even higher character, and his perseverance and achievements had been a proposal to us all.”

Holcomb had been competing considering 1998 and gained 5 international titles and changed into also a six-time international Cup champion.

His achievements got here in spite of a serious eye disease that left him with streaked and blurred vision.

Holcomb found out to drive a bobsled via sense instead of sight however his situation supposed he become taken into consideration legally blind and become almost compelled him to retire a year earlier than the Vancouver Games.

Non-surgical remedy reinforced the cornea, permitting him to compete, and he went on to win the primary of his 5 world titles in Lake Placid in 2009.

Holcomb discovered in his autobiography how he had struggled to return to terms together with his condition and attempted suicide in 2007.

Exfoliation Tips for Dead Skin Removal at Home

  Having a glowing and radiant skin is the dream of many. However, a clear and radiant skin needs a lot of care and nurturing which includes following a proper skin care regime, eating a healthy diet, and periodically removing dead skin cells. This helps in removing the accumulated dead skin from the surface and reveal a glowing skin.

Dead cell accumulation leads to a dull and lusterless skin. While some of the body processes involve dying of old cells and growth of new cells naturally, the removal of dead cells is important. This is done through exfoliation methods. Exfoliation can be done on any part of the body to remove the dead skin cells.

Things to consider

Exfoliation is an important step towards revealing a radiant skin, However, the process needs to be carried out with care and gentleness, so that the surface skin is not damaged or scratched. Be gentle yet firm with your strokes when removing dead skin cells, thus refraining from causing injury to yourself.

Softer areas such as areas around the eyes and mouth need to deal gently with a mild scrubbing motion. Rough areas such as legs and buttocks need a little more vigor when exfoliating them, to remove the dead skin cells.

Homemade natural exfoliation products

There are several homemade methods as well as products that can be used for excellent exfoliation Apart from being natural, these methods are effective to gain youthful, glowing skin. Some of these methods are:

An inexpensive yet very effective homemade scrub is to mix organic white sugar with virgin olive oil to make a thick paste. Apply it on the surface and scrub in a circular motion till the sugar melts.

Baking soda is a great scrubbing agent when mixed with water and applied as an exfoliant.

Grounded coffee seeds to act as an excellent exfoliant when mixed with olive oil and used as a scrub.

Preparing exfoliating natural face masks at home is easy too.

Take equal quantities of fruits such as papaya, kiwi, banana, and pineapple. Mash them in a blender and mix with a small quantity of honey or yogurt. Apply the pack onto the skin and leave for 15 minutes. Wash off with cold water.

Mix clay with distilled water and glycerin to make a thick mask. Apply it on a face and leave for 15mins before washing off. It is a great pack for oily skin.

Avocados are great for exfoliating skin. Mix equal quantities of avocado and corn meal to exfoliate the skin.

All these exfoliating scrubs can be used on the whole body too when made in large quantities.

The Case for Flag Football As an Olympic Sport

    The Olympics are unlike any other sporting competition on the planet. For 16 days, over 300 events representing 35 sports and every country on the planet compete to take home their prized medals, and I have looked forward to watching the Summer Olympics every 4 years since as far back as I can remember. But there’s always been something missing. One of the United States most popular sports, and a top 10 sport throughout the world, it looks as though tackle and flag football could be Olympic sports by the year 2024, but issue obstacles still remain for that to become a reality. First, we’ll walk through some reasons why the road to getting American Football included into the Olympics has not been an easy journey, followed by why we believe flag football to be the logical solution and choice as a future Olympic sport.

WHY ISN’T AMERICAN FOOTBALL ALREADY AN OLYMPIC SPORT? According to an article by NFL.com, the biggest logistical problems facing the sport of American Football being included in the Olympics are very similar to that of Rugby. With the large numbers of participants on each team, the “gender equality” formats where both men and women participate in every sport, and the compressed 3-week schedule that would be tough with a more physical game like football and rugby. Furthermore, for American Football, the barrier to entry is high due to its cost to equip all players with pads and gear and therefore has also been slow to adopt in many foreign countries, especially of the poorer variety.

Knowing all this, it’s hard to see how either sport would be a good fit for the Summer Olympics. Rugby is a lot like Soccer in that very little is needed to play the sport in terms of gear and practice at its base level, and has a much larger international following. This among other reasons has recently allowed Rugby to be cleared for the Olympics starting in 2016 by changing the traditional style to a less traditional “sevens” format which is faster paced with fewer people, which could help carve a similar path for American Football, or flag football more specifically.

TACKLE SAFETY CONCERNS Even more and more high school, college and pro teams are starting to reduce the number of contact practices, still sporting the likes of soft-padded headgear and shoulder pads for added protection. But what if we could limit the contact players see before high school and middle school while also addressing some of the concerns for the sport related to it being fully accepted into the Olympics?There’s a lot of talks recently revolving around the safety of tackle football, and not just in the NFL where concussions are a major concern. Starting as far back as the youth football level, recent evidence has surfaced supporting the idea that even short of a concussion, repeated head impacts and collision can manifest in similar brain injuries later in life for kids tested between the ages of 8-13. Many researchers are suggesting kids shouldn’t be playing football at all, suggesting that kids’ heads are “a larger part of their body, and their necks are not as strong as adults’ necks. So kids may be at a greater risk of head and brain injuries than adults.”

DREW BREES BELIEVES FLAG FOOTBALL CAN SAVE FOOTBALL As of 2015, studies show that flag football is the fastest growing youth sport in the United States, greatly outpacing the growth of traditional tackle football. Many individual high schools are making the switch to flag football over the tackle, getting other schools in their regions to follow suit creating organized leagues and divisions. It’s even an officially recognized varsity sport in many states, and with women especially flag football is a way to allow easier participation versus the physical nature of tackle.And he’s not the only one. Recently Drew Brees was interviewed by Peter King for NBC’s pregame show and had some strong words on why he believes flag football is the answer. “I feel like flag football can save football,” Brees said. Brees coaches his son’s flag football team, and played flag football himself through junior high, never playing tackle football until high school. “I feel like (flag football) is a great introductory method for a lot of kids into football,” Brees mentioned. “Otherwise I feel it’s very easy to go in and have a bad experience early on and then not want to ever play it again. I feel like once you put the pads on there are just so many other elements to the game, and you’re at the mercy of the coach in a lot of cases too. And to be honest, I don’t think enough coaches are well-versed enough in regards to the true fundamentals of the game especially when the pads go on at the youth level.” Many other pro athletes and coaches have expressed similar sentiments as well, singing praises for the sport of flag football, and the rise in popularity of the sport echoes that.

[robertkstone]

Snow Queen: A Cold Pursuit of One’s Finnish Roots, in the Dead of Winter

I have a thing for snow. When other people head south on vacation, I go north. I come by it honestly. I was born and raised in Northern Ontario, and my mom is a Finn. So when editor in chief Ed Loh needed someone to fly to the top of Finland and breach the Arctic Circle to test Nokian’s newest tires, the formulation of a plan began.

Snow, tires, cars, reindeer, northern lights, and saunas—time for a good old-fashioned Motor Trend road trip. Spoiler alert: Things got personal along the way.

Nokian Tyres is a big deal in Finland. The company traces its history back to the founding of the Finnish Rubber Works in 1898, and it invented the winter tire in 1934. Today Nokian has a 1,730-acre winter test site near Ivalo, 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

Nokian is a household name in Europe when shopping for winter tires, but in order to grow it must enter the mainstream with new lines of all-season and all-weather tires. Hence its desire to raise its profile in the U.S.

New tires have been developed for North America, and Nokian is building a $360 million tire plant in Dayton, Tennessee, with ambitious goals of doubling sales in five years.

So we headed to Lapland (a region covering the northern third of Finland) for a taste of what this small player—$1.7 billion in sales in 2016 versus $32.5 billion from giant Bridgestone—with big plans has to offer.

Our Motor Trend trio included videographer Cory Lutz—a fellow Canadian in danger of getting soft after years of living in Southern California—and photographer Robin Trajano, who was born in the Philippines, now lives in L.A., and could provide thin-blooded comic relief in these frigid arctic climes.

We rendezvous in the capital of Helsinki and hop a 1.5-hour flight to the northernmost airport in the European Union. “Welcome to Ivalo,” the airport sign says, showing a current temperature of minus 4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). No big deal; my hometown in Ontario has dipped to minus 40. Trajano, however, is giving me sideways shade for putting him in this icebox. Eh, he’s young and tough.

“Kiitos” I say under my breath, Finnish for “thank you” and a remnant of the Finnish I knew as a child listening to my mother talk to her mother. I am finally in a place long on my bucket list. I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

In Ivalo, a former gold-mining town that is now a winter recreation destination, you can snowmobile to the highest point in Finland and see Russia. Finland is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its independence from the Russian Republic; they haven’t always been the best of neighbors.

Nokian is the only tire manufacturer with a permanent winter testing facility. Nicknamed “White Hell,” the Ivalo Testing Center has slalom and handling courses, a 1.0-kilometer (0.6-mile) speed run on the lake, a rally track for drifting, hills to test traction, an SUV course through the reindeer-populated woods, and an ice hall housing 2,300 feet of natural ice. There are more than 30 tracks covering 62 miles on a variety of ice and snow conditions. In this sprawling complex, Nokian tests 20,000 tires a year from November to May. Every day, results from icy ovals are sent back to corporate headquarters in the pursuit of the best beads, compounds, treads, and studs to improve grip.

Nokian is not alone in its quest for winter tire supremacy. Michelin, Goodyear, and Bridgestone now have small test sites near Ivalo, Hankook recently built a facility, and there is an independent facility the industry shares.

In Finland everyone knows Nokian, which has its headquarters and a tire plant in the city of Nokia, near Helsinki. Nokian split off from conglomerate Nokia (best known for cell phones) in 1988.

Winter tires are mandatory across Scandinavia, Russia, and other northern countries. As a result, the Nokian brand and its Hakkapeliitta tire have become synonymous with excellent winter tires. (“Hakkapeliitta” was a Finnish light cavalry unit during the 30 Years’ War. The name refers to their fearsome roar as they charged into battle.)

The brand is also known in Quebec, another place where winter tires are mandatory. But Nokian is largely obscure on this side of the Atlantic—beyond users such as the Michigan State Police and wonky Hakkapeliitta enthusiasts. The push to increase awareness is now the responsibility of new CEO Hille Korhonen.

For our Finnish excursion we are joined by Nokian PR rep Dan Stocking, a Michigan native who grew up smelling rubber at his family tire shop. Among the Finns who meet us at Ivalo Airport is Matti “Mr. Tire” Morri, a Nokian technical expert who has spent the last 27 winters in Lapland but has never seen it in the summer. Growing up, he cross-country skied a mile-plus to school every day on a track his father groomed for him. He still likes to end his day with a kick-and-glide on an XC trail.

We pile our gear into cars. Morri whips away at breakneck speeds on what we later discover are roads of hard-packed snow compacted to the consistency of ice. Our studded Hakkapeliittas so completely grip the low-mu surface that we are caught unaware when we get out of the cars. We promptly windmill our arms as we struggle to keep our balance.

Among the perks of Lappish life: Our rooms at the Hotel Tunturi in Saariselkä have private saunas. The Finns invented the sauna, and I was eager to compare them to the traditional wood-fired saunas in Canada in which we steam and then jump in a lake or roll in the snow. And conveniently, my room at the Tunturi has a snow-covered patio. We also are invited to join Nokian dealers and executives in a corporate-building communal sauna and dip, but I prefer to limit my team-building exercises to Motor Trend Of The Year testing.

Another Finnish delight: As we walk back from dinner, crunchy packed snow underfoot, we see the northern lights. The scientific explanation for the aurora borealis is charged particles hitting the Earth’s magnetic shield and releasing energy in bands of colorful light across the sky. Northern Finland is in the “Aurora Belt,” where the lights are most frequently seen as leaping iridescent lime spikes, flaming pink shoots, or bright purple curtains in stark contrast to the inky black sky above the Arctic Circle. By contrast, back home on Ontario’s 49th parallel, my last sighting displayed black and white piano keys being played across the sky like beams from a flashlight in need of new batteries.

Day 2

We are back on frozen rural roads heading north to Inari through areas where reindeer farmers herd via snowmobile. Our destination is Lake Pasasjärvi, also known as White Hell Area 2. A fleet of Audis awaits us.

To escape the minus 20 C (minus 4 Fahrenheit) cold, we hop in a yellow AWD RS 4 with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires to try the slalom and handling courses. There also are areas for drifting and collision avoidance. Although drifting on the slippery stuff is tempting, the actual goal is to drive on the edge of control and not drift. The combination of the car’s traction control and the grip of the tires almost stops the vehicle completely until it regains control and accelerates again. Same excellent grip in a red RS 5 with studded tires.

A blue RS 6 is doing speed runs on the lake. Nokian has the world record for fastest car on ice with the RS 6 hitting 335.7 km/h (208.6 mph) on the Gulf of Bothnia wearing studded Hakkapeliitta 8s. By comparison, we are mere amateurs. Bouncing along the uneven surface at autobahn speeds, I repeat the winter-driving mantra, slow hands, slow hands. We back off at 100 mph, knowing the car and tires could easily have done more.

To test the new SUV tires we try Audi Q5s with studded tires but also with the nonstudded Hakkapeliitta R2 SUV winter tires. Even without studs, the traction on sheer ice is remarkable. The vehicle prefer to stop rather than drift. There are occasions I’m convinced of an imminent kiss with a snowbank, but the tires pull the SUV back on track time after time.

On the way to lunch at the Kultahippu restaurant, we stop abruptly on the crest of a hill. In the not so far distance, we spy Murmansk, Russia. We taunt our grumpy neighbors with our American, Canadian, and Finnish flags.

Finnish cuisine is influenced by Germany, Sweden, and Russia. But Lapland is influenced by what is available. We have a fine lunch of traditional reindeer stew (sliced reindeer strips in gravy over mashed potatoes with lingonberries and pickle spears). Dinner that night: the same reindeer stew but with a third pickle spear.

I learn Finnish men drink giant glasses of milk with their meals. I also learn that pulla (the Finnish coffee bread I grew up with) is not on every table. In fact, I never found it during my travels. Crepelike Finnish pancakes were also scarce, and the fish stew I know as kalamojakka is apparently not a Finnish word at all! “Oh, yes, in Finland it is called kalakeitto,” my mom tells me after I get home.

With bellies full of Dancer and Prancer, we dash through the rest of White Hell before calling it a day.

Day 3

We’re up early to start our road trip south. It’s still March, but the days have started getting longer—with sunrise about 7 a.m. and daylight lasting until almost 6 p.m. in this land of the midnight sun. We have a pair of rental cars: a 2016 Volvo V40 fitted with studded Hakkapeliitta 9 tires and a 2017 Volvo XC90 with the R2 SUV tires. Our ultimate destination: Nokian’s headquarters, which employs about 1,500 people at its R & D facilities, tire manufacturing plant, and immense logistics center.

The V40 will finally be sold in the U.S. when the next-generation 40 series launches, starting with the XC40 early next year, so we were curious to spend time in its European predecessor. We have a bare-bones Volvo V40 T2 with cloth seats and no navigation system. Our support vehicle is a Volvo XC90 D5 with a two-tone leather interior and soft-pore wood. Compared with Motor Trend’s long-term XC90 T6 Inscription with the 2.0-liter gas engine, the diesel in the D5 provides nice, smooth acceleration. It also means we got to pay 1.426 euros/liter (about $1.70) for diesel rather than €1.545 for regular gas or €1.609 for premium gas.

Our new Finnish friends greet our drive route with skepticism—they attempt to persuade us to book a flight for part of it. What they underestimate is how much driving, photography, and video from thigh-deep snow we can pack into a day. What we underestimate is travel time: Speed limits are reduced in winter, coinciding with the December 1 to March 31 mandatory winter tire period.

We leave Saariselkä and head south on E75. Finland is a country of 5.5 million people occupying 151,000 square miles. It looks exactly like Northern Ontario—I swear I have not left home—with 190,000 lakes, high snowbanks, and packed-snow roads that don’t see pavement until spring. The same pine, spruce, and birch trees mean we see the same barn wood as we cruise through Finland’s rural environs. They also have the same national animal: the mosquito.

Our studded tires perform so well in the deep snow that we can whip the V40 around to double back for photography. It is proving to be a sturdy vehicle and blends in with the other small cars and SUVs that dot the roads—with Volvo, Audi, VW, Mercedes, Mazda, Honda, and Nissan nameplates being the most common. Finland has the most vehicles per capita in the world, and many wear extra headlights to spot reindeer during the long, dark winter months.

We stop for a late lunch in Rovaniemi, hometown of Santa Claus. But its history is not the stuff of children’s books. Snow covers the ground pockmarked from World War II bombings by the Russians and the scorched-earth retreat of the Germans. The local airport is a former Luftwaffe airfield.

We visit the Arktikum Lapland museum, the gateway to the north. You enter from the south, and the structure disappears underground like an animal burrowing under the frozen tundra for warmth. Inside are scenes of Finnish Lapland and Arctic life: fishing, hunting, a cold room, and a northern lights theater.

Our trip then meanders west to the border with Sweden and the Gulf of Bothnia.

The weather gets milder as we cross the Arctic Circle—where we also cross the freezing mark. It is easy to forget we have studded tires when the pavement bares itself, but we are reminded in the hotel parking garage in Oulu with a staccato snap, crackle, and pop underfoot. The Hakkapeliitta 9 has new stud technology. There are more studs, including some in the center of the tire, and the corners of the studs are cut so the tire doesn’t hit the ground before the stud does. But the studs are also smaller, lighter, and designed to spread out on impact to help protect the occasional exposed patch of pavement.

In Oulu we walk under fat snowflakes to a French bistro for dinner. Robin rejoices; he has had enough reindeer for one trip. Once again, my room has a sauna. I am in heaven.

Day 4

We are up with the sun as sleet swirls outside our windows. We continue south on E8 along the coast to Vassa, where the scenery is marked with elevation changes and rock outcroppings. I choke up; Vassa is the birthplace of Signe Kujanen, my mummu (grandmother). She is the one who introduced me to pulla and taught my mom how to make the incorrectly named kalamojakka. Listening to her, I learned Finnish as a toddler. My first car was the 1972 Chevy Impala she willed me. We gave it a Finnish accent: It was known to everyone as the “EEMP-a-lah.”

Vassa is a city of 68,000 with a history of Russian occupation. Everything is covered in snow and ice. Pedestrians prod the snow with walking sticks for traction and push sleds on sidewalks to carry their groceries, and some brave souls ride bikes on the ice.

We grab a quick bite at a Finnish McDonalds, find some terwasnapsi pine tar liquor for the questionable palate of my colleague Frank Markus, and get back to work. We have a lot more kilometers before we reach Tampere, near Nokia.

It was a longer trip than it appeared on paper, with many single-lane highways, fluctuating speed limits, and a preponderance of speed cameras. Despite our diligence we see a bulb go off. Finland is one of those counties where the fine is pegged to your annual income if they deem it an infraction. We app from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2ioPhlL via IFTTT