#inbox — the messengers of death & beyond.

[witchembrace-a]

@mariotime inquired :

" it was worth it to know you. " // rosaaaa

rosalina frowned, taking the plumber's hands in her own. " that sounds like a goodbye. you're coming back, right ? " she was in a slight panic, but tried not to let it show, even as her luma companions all squirmed and scattered, clearly freaking out at the idea of mario not coming back. " . . . right ? "

[macawbre]

starter call!

capping at 3!! inbox is open to all mini introductions though!

please comment with an emoji at the starter you're interested in!

Faculty and Staff Mission Task Board

Small hunting parties regularly venture beyond monastery walls to hunt for additional food to pad out supplies. On one of your patrols, your arrow manages to sink deep between the ribs of a young buck. He flees, alive, but leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Tracking him down will take all night, which is bad news when there’s snow already falling. Even so, you can’t just return empty-handed. [Grants Bow +1] 🏹

The younger members of the clergy empathize deeply with the fearful students. Noticing that it’s the Guardian Moon, one of them decides to show the students how to make a “Saint Seiros charm” from their hometown, a traditional craft for Saint Seiros Day. The bit of Faith magic woven into it gives the trinket a certain comforting aura, something much-needed during these perilous times. Others offer instruction about their own version of charms that, while not for Saint Seiros, offer a sense of togetherness and cultural connection, and helps take one’s mind off the cold. ✨

An overnight outage to the stables’ heating system results in the deaths of several wyverns, personal mounts and beloved lesson drakes alike. In their grief, passionate students vowed to sleep overnight in the wyvern stables to help them keep warm through the night. [Grants Flying +1] ❄

The long, dark nights often lead to despair, but this year seems to have led to a more extreme crisis. Some members of the Knights of Seiros defy their orders and steal away with some crest stones in the dark of night. The promise of power and, most importantly, eternal warmth in a cold winter drives their actions, but they are powerless against the curse. These monsters roaming the hills may have been your allies once, but there is no trace of them here. ☠

Desperation pushes starving villagers and stranded merchants to unscrupulous means to survive. As you finish up one of your patrols, a band of thieves manage to catch you by surprise and take one of your colleagues hostage. Holding a knife to their throat, they demand gold and supplies to help them survive the storm. They are still inexperienced civilians in the end though. An experienced warrior like yourself would cut them down easily, if that’s what you choose to do. [Grants Gauntlets +1] 🤺

NEW! Oddly, the mages notice that Reason magic has been on the fritz lately. Even the most experienced sages find it difficult to control their magic, never mind the practicing novices that keep burning themselves and injuring others. A late-night attempt to study for a Reason exam quickly gets out of hand and sends a classroom up in flames. The Knights of Seiros and other members of the monastery’s facilities must rush in quickly in order to contain the fire and save lives. [Grants Reason +1] 🔥

NEW! Mail arrives at the monastery for the first time in weeks, carried by a brave messenger who dies almost as soon as he arrives. With the break in communication and lingering unrest from the incident with the imposters, friends and loved ones from other continents are desperately trying to reestablish contact. Their frantic letters speak of trouble from home, but there’s no way to get a timely reply back in this weather… 💌

NEW! As you brave the wilderness for more food, you hear the howl of wolves nearby. It looks like they’ve just brought down a massive buck, big enough to feed an entire pack… the hunger pangs return, gnawing at your empty stomach. When was the last time you had a proper meal? Do you have it in you to keep hunting for however many hours it takes, when there is food right here? Trying to steal from starving wolves is a big risk to take—you’ll become prey yourself if you’re not careful. But a deer that size could provide many meals to your friends and allies back in the monastery. You better act fast before the wolves devour every piece of meat. [Grants Lance +1] 🐺

Non-Mission Task Board

The Ethereal Ball is done, but as you’re leaving, you see flocks of people making for a barely-trodden little footpath leading partway down the mountain. Should you follow it, the sound of music and hollering would begin to swell, until you are greeted with a barebones but extremely lively party with a large bonfire and no shortage of entertainment. Dancing, singing – both far more boisterous and free than anything the Ball offered – is plentiful, and it only seems to be getting started. There’s even a fun axe-throwing game set up between the trees. Better take advantage of the party now - those clouds overhead look ready to snow. [Grants Axe +1] 🪓

Certain students concocted their own solution to last month’s shrinking problem: a potion that allows one to add a couple of inches to your height. It’s so potent that the effect remains even after the curse was dispelled, resulting in students noticeably taller than they were before the incident. No one knows what the side-effects are, or how long the potion lasts, and yet demand grows among the student population. Investigate by offering yourself as a guinea pig, or observe from afar. 🧪

A new exercise craze has taken over the continents and has now infiltrated Fodlan’s borders. A group of people claiming to be professional instructors are hosting a class promoting ‘The Askr’ along with other various aerobic, high-energy exercises to keep one warm! If the new wave and synth pop beats don’t get you moving, then maybe the brightly-colored leotards, headbands and legwarmers will grab your attention. (Or maybe you’re just there for the cute men and women in said leotards). [Grants Heavy Armor +1] 💪

Winter has settled in at Garreg Mach, and the long hours of darkness are working their way into the bodies and minds of its staff and students. Shelter from the bitter winds and snows that blow outside soon turn just as suffocating, as the stillness permits too many unwanted thoughts to worm their way into the crevices of your thoughts. A fresh distraction is desperately due, but in short supply during this season. A minor Faerghus noble knows these troubles all too well, and so she offers to Garreg Mach a small donation. A small, vacant building in town has now been renovated into a simple retreat for anyone to visit. Rustic and cozy, it features a host of simple food and drink, a warm fire…and a challenge not for the faint of heart! Participants need to eat a whole bucket of the spiciest pieces of chicken you can imagine or fall over trying. Will you come to cheer or boo the competitors on? Enter it yourself? Or stow yourself away in a more quiet corner to have a drink and reflect? 🏠

Have you ever wanted your own emblem ring? Well look no further! A professor at the academy, who shall not be named, has recently begun forging copies of his Ring of the Avenger, which he promises will grant overflowing power and arcane energies to any who equip it. But, he also warns, it curses the wearer with an insatiable urge for bloodlust! With so many copies floating around, surely these claims can’t be real… Better slip one on and find out for yourself! 💍

NEW! Stir-crazy students, desperate for anything new, have latched onto a new fad. An anonymous student’s ongoing novel, updated with a new chapter every other day with little fanfare in the past, takes the academy by storm! The premise is of a group of students on a frozen planet a grand city, the last bastion of humanity, in hopes of finding others of their kind. Students rave over the gripping plot and complex characters, but when the story begins inspiring reader to set out on an adventure of their own, the administration moves quickly to ban it from school grounds. You ought to see what all the fuss is about. 📚

NEW! This most recent run of the Arena results in more injuries than usual, and with resources scarce as-is, the infirmary turns to lesser-used remedies and ancient herbs to try to treat these wounds. Few people want to try them, for good reason: the list of potential side-effects is almost as long as your final essay in history class. Yet the nurses are in grave need of test subjects willing to test out these new cures. Will you help them out? [Grants Faith +1] 🌱

[duskandstarlight]

Embers & Light (Chapter 30)

Notes: Well, it's here... the chapter you have all been waiting for. I can only hope that you like it and that it tugs at your heartstrings. This is my Valentine's day gift to all my wonderful readers who have stuck with me for thirty chapters for... this, I imagine. It's a start—a beginning for these two—as they step into something new. As usual, forgive any typos and I intend to reply to every one of you who commented on the last chapter. I'm so sorry for the delay in replying, things have been a bit crazy on my end, but I appreciate every single one of you.

ACOSF in two days...! And because I am desperately trying to keep spoiler free, please don't mention any snippets you may have received beyond SJM's teasers. That includes the leaked chapters—please keep it to yourself but of course, let me know what you think of the chapter and my inbox is open for any of you wanting to speak to me spoiler-free. Thank you so much <3

Chapter Thirty Cassian  

Pure, undiluted rage burned inside of Cassian. It roared, drowning everything out as he landed to a blood bath of winged males impaled with pine needles, charred ashen bodies and the evidence of killing blows. But Cassian only registered them because of the years of training that had been drummed into him to catalogue and analyse his surroundings.

His hands wielded twin swords as if they were an extension of who he was but his legs… they moved of their own accord, racing towards the opening of the cave without him asking them to. Towards that scent that Cassian had no problem detecting above the blood and shit and gore.

Behind him, Lorrian swore as they stepped over the threshold of the cave’s entrance, their siphons flashing and flaring to find rusty cages lining the walls and a pit of blood in the centre. The awful images of dirty abused girls registered as Cassian desperately scanned the cave—until his eyes fell on Nesta’s back. Her leathers were streaked in red and she was kneeling in a pool of blood before an injured girl who was wreathed in that wondrous, singing light.

Frawley appeared beside them in a swirl of smoke, moving in that way she often did that hinted she was more element than being, stopping them in their tracks a few feet away.

“What took you so long,” Frawley snapped to Cassian, one blue eye boring into him whilst the other flicked to Lorrian at his side, as if her attention could not help but be drawn to her husband. “Get Nesta out of the trance—now. Pull on that damned cord, do whatever you need to do. She channelled her energy from the fear and despair, but her body is dropping into exhaustion. She’s going to crash earlier than expected. We haven’t trained for this. Only you—”

Frawley’s voice tuned out as the crack of Cassian’s knee-caps jarred his body as he hit the rocky floor. Wet seeped through Cassian’s leathers, courtesy of the pool of fresh blood coming from the dead male to Cassian’s right, but he barely registered. He was too busy detecting the stale scent of arousal and death and cruelty. This was a male had no doubt stuck his cock where it did not belong and caused unimaginable harm to innocent, defenceless girls as they cried and struggled.

Anger soared into the snow ruffled peaks of Cassian’s fury at the thought and the cave… it quaked in response.

“Don’t bring the cave down as you do it.” Frawley’s words bit through him, her voice wholly ancient—too like Amren’s. “Put a leash on it otherwise we’ll be buried in rubble.”

It was easier said than done to reign in that snarling beast. But then time seemed to—change. From the moment Cassian pressed his back to Nesta’s and hoarsely began to chant her name, everything blurred and tumbled. As Cassian’s eyes shut of their own accord, the cave became as dark and depthless as a night sky devoid of starlight. As Cassian was pulled deep within himself, sucked inwards by a vacuum he had no control over.

The black Cassian spiralled down towards was as thick as tar, but to his right, a shadowed veil rippled in an invisible wind. It chanted in tandem with the screaming in his mind, that one word repeated over and over and over—a mate calling to its mate. A male calling to their beloved and hoping they were enough.

That beautiful healing lullaby had started to miss the right notes, the music falling into something off-kilter and gut-wrenchingly wrong. Panic rose like bile in Cassian’s throat and he reached for that twisted rope, and, without hesitating or second guessing himself, he tugged on it with all of his might.

The resounding crack and splinter in Cassian’s ears was awful. Pain threw itself down that bond and into the heart of his chest. And then, for a beat as that pain ebbed away, there was nothing… Even the healing music stopped. The quiet was so eerie Cassian could only hear his heart beating wildly in his ears. But then he felt it: fiery strength and steely determination. A light travelling down that tether to meet his, scenting of jasmine and vanilla—of Nesta.

Then Cassian was thrown outwards and his eyes opened to find the cave bleeding back into focus and that enthralling power dying at Nesta’s hands. Her magic dropped with such suddenness that she lost balance and careened backwards into his chest. The jolt had the world tilting again, but Cassian scrambled to collect himself, encasing Nesta safely in wings and arms.

By the time those smoky blue eyes snapped open and stared up at him, Cassian was already ferociously scanning Nesta’s body for injury. He catalogued every cut and scrape, every smear of blood. He turned her hands over in his to find them stained red. There was so much death on Nesta’s hands if the charred remains and bodies impaled with fiery weapons were anything to go by. This strong, sharp female fighting for what was right—to fight for those who could not defend themselves, even as it sent her spiralling into the darkest of places.

And Cassian knew it had effected her in unthinkable ways. Knew as he stared into those beautiful eyes that had held such life in the past month and found her pupils blown wide and unseeing. Felt the churning emotions that Nesta was too overwhelmed to keep in check as they hurtled down that bond between them. Frozen wrath and terror and agony. Each sensation a double-edged sword as it was plunged into the gut, over and over.

Fury clambered inside of Cassian at the injustice of Nesta’s magic. That not only was she burdened with the tireless task of keeping a check on her own heightened emotions, but others as well. Constantly monitoring them day in and day out so they did not become too much—so they did not swell and spill over the wall she had resurrected for herself. The wall that had been lowered so it was waist-high rather than a fortress—so she was not doomed to float through life numb and unfeeling and at a distance from others.

Understanding all of that—the sacrifice and burden Nesta carried—had the cave shaking again as Cassian ordered Nesta to put her walls up. Loose pebbles and dust rained down from the ceiling, and in the periphery, Cassian heard Lorrian swear and Frawley hiss, but that anger… he couldn’t control it. It was white hot and sizzling, boiling his blood and making his power itch. His siphons hadn’t stopped flaring since he’d first felt Nesta roaring down that bond and he’d known something was dreadfully, knee-tremblingly wrong. He and Lorrian had torn through the sky as he followed that invisible tie wreathed in light—emerald and ruby shooting stars tracking their way across the sky.

And now… that anger that had been pushing against his skin was morphing into something truly terrible—the monster who became consumed by blood lust. Just as he had that day when he’d slaughtered and tortured all of the males at the Spearhead camp—

A hand rested on Cassian’s cheek, cutting through that urge to massacre and ask questions later. The touch was grounding and so unquestionably right that he leant into that blood splattered palm, relishing in the cool, slim fingers which cut through that fire.

“Walls up, Nesta,” Cassian ordered, as he felt those talons hooking deep inside of her, clawing at her, tugging her down into the oily depths where he could not reach her. He watched those eyes glaze over until they were hollow, and even though that bond was open, everything went so unearthly quiet that Cassian would have thought some vital connection had been severed if it wasn’t for the faintest glimmer of her that sparked in the gloomy dark.

Everything moved too fast after that. And the entire time Nesta walked around the cave and clearing like a phantom ghost, even as she held her hands out to assist Frawley in healing any urgent injuries.

“We need a support unit or we need to get out,” Lorrian said roughly in Cassian’s ear, as together they surveyed the bastard tied to the tree. Nesta’s bindings still glowed silver and the bastard’s head hung limp against his chest from where Cassian had knocked him out.

“Frawley can cast a shield over this place so nobody can get in or out without our say so,” Lorrian continued, “but I don’t doubt that Ironcrest will have warriors out searching for us. Not after we left so abruptly without informing anybody of where we were going. I bet the first thing Rufous did was send a messenger straight to Marsh or Kallon. I suggest we leave and come back tomorrow with males we can trust to search the place.”

Kallon—the prince who none of them had seen all day. Not even in the sparring ring. And whilst Marsh hadn’t made an appearance, it was the latter that sent warning bells ringing in Cassian’s head. Something about it was off. All of them could all sense it, but right now there were bigger matters at hand. Namely what to do with the females.

“Can you host the girls at the cottage?” Cassian asked his friend. From the girls that had been able to speak, it was clear that all of them apart from Samra and Ailie had no parents to speak of. “Set up makeshift accommodation until we decide what we need to do?”

It was dangerous territory they were stepping into. A statement and the beginnings of power-play to take females from a camp, even if it was for their safety. Lesser actions had started wars between the clans, but Cassian would not stand by. Rhys wouldn’t either. Especially not when the males were wearing bands around their arms that Cassian was certain belonged to the rebellion.

“Of course we can,” Frawley announced as she came up beside them. Nesta and Sala were close behind. The manticore had stuck to Nesta like a shadow since Cassian had arrived, as if she too could sense that Nesta was far, far away. “It will be quicker if I channel us to the cottage.”

Lorrian was frowning with concern. “All at once?”

“Needs must,” Frawley clipped, but she did not meet her husband’s eye. “It will drain me after I cast a shield but I can do it. It does mean that I won’t be able to channel you and Nesta back to Windhaven. There won’t be room—”

“That’s fine,” Cassian interjected, with a quick cut of his hand through the air. “We’ll fly from the Steppes.”

“I can help.” It was the first time Nesta had spoken in a long while and it came out as a rasp. “I still have some magic left—to help heal the girls. I can heal their wings.”

Terror gripped at Cassian’s gut but he would not tell Nesta no. He wouldn’t take this from her—her ability to heal and bring life rather than take it away. Even though Cassian was tired, he could feel the whisper of Nesta’s magic churning back to life, no doubt fuelled from the sickening history that had seeped into the landscape.

Those eyes slid to Cassian as her chin tilted upwards. And although there was a fierceness to Nesta’s expression, something was missing, as if she wasn’t really there. “I can do it.”

He nodded to show he understood, just as Frawley added, “Caer has already gone on ahead to alert my sisters. They’ll come to help heal the injured. One of them can send word to Velaris for you, assuming that’s what you need to do.”

Cassian nodded. That was essential. Cassian needed to connect with his family to tell them what had happened here. He needed to let Rhys into his mind so he could showcase the horrors and get Azriel down to interrogate the bastard Nesta had thought to keep alive rather than bring about his death.

The male that Cassian knew to be called Alaksandar had struggled and thrashed against Nesta’s magical bindings when he had first spied the general—had pissed himself as he surveyed the iron rage on Cassian’s face. It had taken everything in Cassian not to murder him on the spot, but they needed him—needed the information he would bring once Azriel plucked out Truth-Teller from its shadowy sheath. Not that Cassian wasn’t tempted to wrestle the information out of the male himself.

Time sped by after that. Frawley obliterated the shattered remains of the shield hiding the cave from sight before casting an impenetrable web of her own. Then she had weaved another bubble—her magic a smoke that glittered with such gentleness that Nesta did not tense beside him. Cassian pulled her to him anyway, burying his hands in her hair at the nape of her neck. But Nesta did not look at him. Did not even seem to notice as they blended into smoke and mist—into water and earth and air—until they were channelled into the muddy paddock that served as a sparring ring at the back of the cottage.

Frawley’s sisters had kitted out the barn with inviting, spacious beds and cast their magic so it was wonderfully warm and inviting—safe. And even though Frawley’s sisters were far more intimidating than the white-haired witch, they had all dampened their glow, emitting an aura of calm that even made Cassian forget at times that they were something ancient—something other.

Cassian sought out Kalika as soon as they landed—the dark-skinned witch of the Northern Steppes and the most terrifying of Frawley’s sisters—and dared to ask her to cast a message to Rhys which disappeared on a moth-carried wind. Frawley’s other sisters—Narihara and Andraste—swished between the kitchen and the barn, remedying and administering sleeping draughts and tinctures designed to ease pain.

Frawley saw that all of them received her tea tonic and Cassian had felt energy flush into his system before it was promptly drained again as he ferried between the barn and the cottage, pressing drinks into Nesta’s hands whenever he saw her start sway.

Somehow Cassian knew when Nesta was done—when her body was close to giving out—the tea no longer enough to replenish her magic levels which had seen her hanging just barely on the precipice of her magic reserves. Nesta had not had enough power left to heal the cuts in the girls wings, but was able to knot bone and membrane back together. It had taken Madja weeks to repair the tatters of Cassian’s wings—the spell-work too intricate for even the most skilled of healers—but Nesta melded bone and membrane back together with an ease that others could not muster. Even Frawley’s sisters had eyed Nesta with cautious admiration, as if they could sense that celestial something inside of her that set her apart from everyone and everything. A queen on a much-earned pedestal.

Cassian found Nesta kneeling by another makeshift bed, her hands emitting that pure white light as they hovered over a set of bent and torn wings. The light was buttery soft rather than blinding white, and Cassian could tell from the way it sang softly that her power was a whisper of what it should be—just as his was. Despite the multiple brews he had drank, his siphons throbbing had ebbed to a flickering pulse, something which had Frawley eyeing him in that disconcerting way of hers as she brusquely waved at him to go home and come back when he was useful.

He had not protested. He wanted to get Nesta home. For her to convalesce in a place that was associated with safety and warmth. Where she could bathe and rid herself of the blood whilst he sat with an ear to the door. Where he could ensure that she ate and looked after herself. A place where she could be herself—where she could be quiet and digest and allow herself to be hollow if that was what she needed. But Nesta now—pretending to be ok when her eyes were so blank—was making it hard to breathe.

And still down that bond, Cassian felt nothing. Wide open, for once, but utterly empty—like a tunnelled-out void.

“Nesta.” Cassian touched his fingers so they rested gently against a shoulder. She did not reply or twist to look up at him, but the light faded from her palms, like a star winking out.

Cassian took a healthy step away as the girl Nesta had been healing watched him with wary, glazed eyes. He made himself smile at her, even as the girl shrank back into herself, pressing herself into the mattress as if she was willing herself to disappear.

For the first time in Cassian’s life, he wished he could vanish the wings and the tattoos—anything that marked him as Illyrian. That reminded the girl of the horrors she had suffered.

Bending over, Nesta spoke in such hushed tones to the girl that even Cassian could not hear her. But then Nesta was standing, her posture as steely and distant as she rose as if she were balancing a crown on her head. Narihara swooped in to administer the girl a sedative to help her sleep and Sala, who had been sitting on her haunches by the bed, rose to her feet.

Together, they walked in silence out of the barn. Cassian deliberately paced himself a few feet behind Nesta and the manticore who padded at her side. Dusk was well and truly descending and starlight already dusted the night sky. In the Steppes nature was its own creature and despite the cottage, it felt as if the sky was a tangible canvas, so low they could reach up and brush the starlight with their fingertips.

“Sweetheart,” Cassian rasped softly. He had intended to say something else, not that he knew what that was going to be, but as Nesta turned to him, speech left him. She looked so lost—so broken and traumatised—that Cassian felt as if he had been transported back to when she had first arrived in Illyria with him. When she was gaunt and traumatised and wholly unreachable.

Cassian’s blood-stained fingers lifted her chin so he could search her eyes. And in them—nothing. No whisper of that colossal fire or that fierce defiance that he loved. None of that at all. Only vast emptiness.

“I want to go home.”

The confession was small and almost childlike and Cassian nearly fell to his knees.

Home. She wanted to go home—with him.

Cassian pulled Nesta’s unnaturally pliant body to him. One hand fisting into the hair at the nape of her neck—into the tangled brown hair that had all but fallen from her braid. Nesta did not hug him back, but after a moment, she fisted her hands against his chest and her forehead came to rest just over his heart.

“Ok sweetheart, we’ll go,” Cassian murmured, dropping his lips to the crown of her head and pressing them there—instilling all the love and comfort into the gesture that he could muster. “I’ll take you home.”

***

Windhaven was sleeping when they finally landed outside of the bungalow with Sala close behind them. Even the skies had been quiet on the flight back: Cassian had only seen the odd Illyrian patrolling the skies, their figures a streak of darkness temporarily blotting out the starlight as they tracked the perimeter. They usually knew better than to stop Cassian mid-flight, but he had winked his siphons into the dark anyway, warning them to steer clear. The last thing they needed was to be stopped when they were so close to home.

The stone house was eerily quiet when they stepped across the threshold, and bobbing faelights gently flickered to life, illuminating the way as Cassian led Nesta by the hand down the hallway. He had been touching her at every opportunity since he had found her on her knees, covered in blood and her hands humming with that ancient healing light. Cassian had hoped the physical contact might anchor her, but Nesta had continued to slip away from him ever since, until their connection was nothing but an empty, lifeless corridor.

“Shower then bed,” Cassian told Nesta as he pushed open the door to the bathroom to reveal the large tub. “You’ll feel more fae once you have cleaned up.”

Nesta did not respond. She just stared past him, her pupils blown wide and unseeing. The sight nearly undid him. It had been a long while since he’d seen that look.

As he turned on the faucets and pulled the lever under the taps, Cassian wondered if this was how Nesta had been after the war. If whilst he and his friends had been toasting their success and trying to pretend everything was fine, she had gone up to her room, hollow and broken, already changed into someone else.

And the worst thing about it all was that Cassian had left Nesta to her own devices. He had not chased after her and reiterated what he had told her on the battlefield. Already he had been so consumed with the terror of rejection—the fear that now they weren’t on death’s door, Nesta might shatter his heart rather than allow him to kiss her.

It turned out that fear had only served to cement Nesta’s opinion of him—that he merely lusted after her, the bond tricking him into thinking he wanted something that he didn’t. That what his heart really wanted was Mor instead. Nesta had made that much clear the evening before.

He was a fucking idiot. Not just for failing to pursue Nesta, but for failing to intervene when he had known how sick she was. For not using his years of warrior training to understand what was truly going on—how it was not about him and his bruised ego, but something else entirely. Something much bigger.

Running a hand under the water, Cassian waited until it was hot and the tendrils of steam filled the room with its wispy fingers. When he turned back to Nesta, all it took was one look at her small and blood-stained body to know that if he left her to it, she’d stand in that shower long after the water ran cold.

“Usually we take our clothes off for a shower, sweetheart,” Cassian teased, hoping that his words would coax out some sort of reaction. When Nesta remained quiet, he cupped her pale, blood-streaked face with a hand. “Don’t finally give me that opportunity to undress you,” he warned.

Nesta’s fingers clasped around his arm and his leathers creaked at the impact. It was a silent plea for him to stay, so Cassian just gave her the lopsided smile he usually saved for her. “My lucky day,” he said softly.

Tugging off his stained clothing, Cassian stepped into the shower in his shorts. He bit back a groan as the hot water ran over his flared wings, soothing away the sharp cold which had bit into them as he flew them home.

After adjusting the temperature, Cassian held his hand out to Nesta. Her eyes were still devoid of expression, and although she was watching him, Cassian had a feeling that Nesta was really floating somewhere above them, detached from her body and unable to come back down.

“It’s nice and warm,” Cassian coaxed, but his voice remained a soft echo rather than playful.

There was a pause where time seemed to stretch out too thin. Where Sala looked beseechingly at Nesta with worried golden eyes. When the manticore nudged Nesta’s arm with her nose, Nesta startled, as if she had indeed been very far away.

He knew things were bad—very bad—when Nesta mutely peeled off her own leathers and joined him.

Cassian had fantasised about taking Nesta in the shower more times than he dared to count. It was usually hard and fast against the wall, her breathy moans ringing off the tiles as he made her come around him. It had never crossed Cassian’s mind that they might shower together covered in blood and still wearing their underwear.

Slim fingers curled around his as Nesta stepped into the tub and Cassian only had time to briefly note Nesta’s body had filled out—those sharp, skeletal edges softened with flesh and toned muscle built from hearty meals and rigorous training—before he realised just how cold she was. Goosebumps littered Nesta’s skin and her lips held a blueish hue that had alarm bells sounding inside of his head.

Wings and arms curved around her on instinct, coaxing Nesta under the water with him so he could cocoon her in heat. He foamed up a sponge, and when Nesta made no move to take it from him, Cassian gently began to run it over her pale skin—until dried blood smeared, running down her white skin before it swirled down the drain.

For the entire duration Nesta remained vacant and unresponsive. Yet, even though Cassian couldn’t feel the faintest flicker of emotion through their bond, he knew that she trusted him enough to care for her. So, when the water ran clear, Cassian did not ask for permission before he slowly started to unravel her braid. It was hard work—matted dark red ensnared the hair but after working shampoo into the strands, Cassian was able to run his fingers through without any snags.

Leaving Nesta to wash out the shampoo herself, Cassian started to make work on his own body. He was covered in far less blood than Nesta—by the time he’d arrived, it had been too late to massacre those bastards himself—but red coated his knees and legs from where he had dropped into the pool of blood on the floor. And his hands…they had been smeared with it from where he had held Nesta’s wrists, trying to coax her back to him as she plunged to rock bottom.

Cassian was so consumed by the memory that he was only just in time to catch Nesta tipping her head back under the faucet with her eyes wide open. A hand shot out reflexively, cupping Nesta’s hairline as shampoo started to run down her face and into the long spikes of her eyelashes. The bubbles must have stung, but Nesta didn't even blink. It was as if she hadn’t even noticed.

After that, Cassian didn't take his eyes off of her, and once Nesta’s hair was free from shampoo, he turned her in his arms so her back was flush against his chest and began to tackle her fingernails. Her body was so unusually pliant—so mouldable—that Cassian felt as if he were a puppet master with strings, her arms and hands limp as he scrubbed at the arcs of her fingernails until they were free of red.

In fact, Cassian had become so used to supporting Nesta’s body that he almost startled when he turned back from shutting off the now lukewarm water to find her facing him. Frozen in place, Cassian watched a pale arm lift so Nesta could brush her ice cold fingers over a whorl of ink curving around his left bicep.

Cassian was barely breathing—not only unsure of what to do but also of startling her, somehow—but then something broke inside of him and he reached for her hand, pressing his lips to her knuckles for far longer than he should have.

It hurt to move away from her—to step out of the tub and wrap a towel around his hips—but Nesta had started to shiver uncontrollably, her skin entirely bleached of colour. He threw the largest, fluffiest towel he could find around her body, and desperate to warm her up, rubbed his palms over her arms, encasing her in wings as he lifted her onto the bath mat beside Sala. And whilst logic told Cassian that Nesta was shaking from a combination of both shock and cold, it didn’t stop the worry that took a hold of him.

“Get yourself dry,” Cassian told Nesta. “I’ll go and get you some clothes.”

Suppressing a grunt at the winter chill that clung to the air and snapped at his wings, Cassian lit the log burner in his room before he quickly tugged on some loose pants. The unconscious decision for Nesta to stay with him was already fully formed in his mind. There was no way he was leaving her to sleep alone given her current state, and whilst Cassian could sleep in the armchair by her bed, the territorial part of him needed her safe with him, in his bed, as close to him as she would allow. And after last night… it wasn’t as if they hadn’t shared a bed before, anyway.

The panic that flared inside of Cassian when he arrived back at the bathroom with a clean nightgown clutched in his hand was so sharp and twisting that his breath caught. Nesta hadn’t moved—not an inch—and whilst Sala was nudging her companion’s torso with her muzzle, Nesta just continued to shiver violently as if she hadn’t felt the impact at all. Her skin was still wet and her hair hung lank against her shoulders. Droplets of water dripped steadily onto the floor tiles from where she had failed to ring it out.

Cassian swore. Stumbling towards her, he grasped at Nesta’s shoulders with his hands. She was cold to the touch. “Sweetheart, we need to get you dry,” he rasped.

He ducked his head to look at her, but Nesta just curled in on herself, her arms wrapping even further around her body as she shook. Cupping her face in his hands, Cassian hoped that his touch would bring her out of the far reaches of her mind, but she just continued to tremble, mute.

So, with gentle, efficient hands, Cassian towelled Nesta dry before pulling her nightgown over her head. He pressed her hair gently between the swaths of a towel, coaxing out as much water as possible, and when he was satisfied her hair wasn’t going to soak her nightgown, he stepped back.

“You’re staying with me tonight,” he told her sternly, and not bothering to wait for the  reply he knew would not come, Cassian scooped her uncharacteristically malleable body into his arms and carried her to his room.

The log burner was still blazing fiercely as he lowered Nesta onto the midnight blue sheets. He piled the duvets on top of her anyway, plus a few more thick blankets over that. Not wanting the fire to go out, he threw some more wood through the cast-iron door, working quickly in case the fire crackled or popped. With Nesta’s magic near drained, the last thing Cassian wanted was to trigger her flashbacks on top of everything else, but he was too concerned about her blue lips to forgo the fire altogether.

Only the top half of Nesta’s head was visible beneath the mountains of blankets, her pointed ears poking beneath her wet hair. She looked so small and vulnerable it was hard to believe that she had slain so many males earlier, that power of hers sizzling and burning through flesh until they were nothing but charred remains and shells of who they once were. Those males might have taken those girls freedom but Nesta had taken their lives before Cassian had even got to her.

He wondered when he would stop failing her—if he ever would.

“Come here,” Cassian murmured as he climbed into bed beside her.

Nesta surprised him when she did as he asked. Her knees knocked against his thighs as she inched closer—like a moth to a flame—and she rested her cold forehead against his chest without being prompted, right over his heart, as if the warm beat of life would thaw the frozen ice in her bones.

Tangling their legs together, Cassian tried to ignore how his skin hummed as their bodies intertwined, hating himself for reacting so strongly to her touch when she was suffering. He lifted a wing instead—an unknown apology—and wrapped it around her, using it to direct the heat from the fire towards their bodies.

The rustle of his wing made Nesta stir. Slowly, she looked up through her eyelashes and as their eyes locked, something clicked deep inside of him, turning. His heart let out a long, deep thump, the sound reverberating throughout his body. He felt it in the air at the same time that Nesta’s hands fisted in his tunic. The sensation was heavy and delicious and as intoxicating as any drug.

Their sudden intimacy felt so right. They had never touched like this—her body entangled with his—and now he knew what it was like, he never wanted it to end. He couldn’t bare the thought of sleeping without her. Even in his sleep last night he had reached for her, his wing protecting her instinctively.

He wondered if Nesta knew what that meant.

“Better?” Cassian made himself ask, rubbing a palm up and down the arm that wasn’t pressed to the mattress. It was a poor attempt to sever his thoughts, but his voice was hoarse… nervous. His heart had started to kick again, the sensation hard and slow against his ribcage, his blood thick and sluggish in his veins. Her eyes were the most blue he’d ever seen them; they were the colour of the sky after a strong bout of rain, as the clouds parted to make way for the sun.

Somehow, Cassian knew what was going to happen before it did. He couldn’t even say who initiated it, only that their heads tilted and dipped in unison, like two magnets inexplicably and undeniably drawn to one another.

If they ever kissed again, Cassian had always imagined that it would be passionate and frantic. A screaming match turned into a lusting frenzy, his mouth hot on hers as he swallowed her moans. But this… this was better. This was perfect. It was his undoing.

It was slow and scorching, the intensity of it so immediate that Cassian felt like he was suspended in time… hovering. And he knew… he knew that they were meant for this, he and Nesta. They were meant for one another from the instant their open lips brushed, from the way that they moulded together like they had been kissing for centuries. Heat bloomed in his chest, a torturous burning pleasure that spread through every nerve in his body, licking its way down his limbs before settling like a weight in his groin. His body was taut and pliant at the same time and all he wanted was to be even closer to her, to feel every inch of her body fit against his own.

He wanted to taste her skin, to bury himself in her scent. He wanted—

A groan rumbled through him as their tongues met, the sound deep and almost animalistic. Desperate for more, he tangled a hand in Nesta’s wet hair, gently tilting her head back so he could be granted better access to her mouth.

Nesta made a strangled noise in the back of her throat—the first sound she had made in hours—and her knee slipped further between his thighs, her body moving to press flush against his—

The movement sobered Cassian, the hazy fog of want parting slightly for reason to stumble through, like a newborn fawn on gangly legs.

The gravity of what they were doing hit him like a punch to the gut.

If she moved any closer, she would feel just how much he wanted her.

There would be no turning back, after that.

Even though his body was screaming for him to flip her onto her back and settle between her legs, Cassian made himself pull away. The movement felt wrong… agonising.

His hand shook with restraint.

If Cassian had ever doubted their mating bond, he wasn’t now. Instinct was driving him to claim her, even though he knew in the back of his mind—the part that cared so deeply—that Nesta was too raw, too exposed to know what she wanted. Even though she was the most vulnerable he’d ever seen her, the territorial male in him wanted to bury himself inside of her; to solidify the very thing that had been driving him insane for the past year and a half. What kind of male did that make him, he wondered? He was ready to bet all his wealth that it didn’t make him a good one.

Panting, Cassian searched Nesta’s face. She was breathing hard, her lips pink and swollen, her hair already starting to curl in the heat from the fire. Cassian had always thought her beautiful, but now she was breathtaking. It took Cassian a few seconds to realise why and when he did, his heart contracted to the point of pain: the light was back in her eyes, as if their kiss had woken her up.

Cassian’s resolve wavered. Maybe this was what she needed. Maybe—

As if sensing his inner conflict Nesta slid a cool hand up to his neck, levering herself up to press her lips to his. Her leg rode up over his thigh… over his hip and he moaned into her mouth, his will splintering as he felt the desire thrumming through her—between them. He tightened his grasp on her, resisting the urge to slide his hand round to her ass. To tug her closer.

With a last long, lingering kiss, Cassian made himself tear his lips from hers. “Nesta, stop,” he murmured against her mouth.

She stilled then, and as the implication behind his words dawned on her, that light started to fade in her eyes; dazzling blue dulling to an unreadable grey. Cassian pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead, to her nose, to her mouth. They were gentle and he hoped each one conveyed how hard this was for him, how he didn’t want to let her go, not really.

“We shouldn’t,” he rasped finally. His words sounded unconvincing even to his own ears, his voice husky and low despite everything. Sinful.

“Why?” Nesta breathed—her first word in hours coming out hoarse. Her fingers curled around his wrist where it still gripped her hip—holding him there.

“You know why. We can’t—”

“This makes me feel,” she whispered, her words breaking. And that was pleading in her voice. “You—”

“You’ll regret it tomorrow,” Cassian tried to explain, cutting her off because he had done this. He had fucked his way through enough females post-battle to know what she was doing. He understood the desperation for anything that would pierce through that pressing numbness that descended after bloodshed, but he also knew the disappointment that would chase it when she realised that pleasure didn’t last.

Cassian couldn’t sacrifice the progress they had made for a few moments of pleasure. Not now... not when they had come so far.

Nesta’s fingers slid down to his palm, the flat of her small hand pressing against his, encouraging him to slide up under her nightdress. He hissed—her thigh, her hip, her waist were sinfully smooth beneath his callouses. “I won’t regret it,” she promised. “You won’t either.”

Cassian studied her—the want in her eyes. What would happen if he denied her? Would he lose the progress they had made anyway? What if his rejection stacked that icy wall against him and she shut down the end of her bond again? He couldn’t bare the thought of it—of her barbed insults and the indifferent way she had treated him. He couldn’t do that again. Not ever. He had been slowly gaining on Nesta Archeron inch by inch, and he’d be damned if they started moving backwards.

It was a risk either way.

His greed won out.

Nesta’s mouth immediately yielded to him when he kissed her again, and this time it was her that moaned, the sound a strangled surprise in the back of her throat. Almost as if she hadn’t expected him to give in. Almost.

“Promise me,” Cassian murmured, his lips now on her neck as he propped himself over her. He allowed himself a moment to do what he’d fantasised about more times than he could count—graze his nose slowly from her collarbone to the nape of her neck—and relished in the way that she shuddered beneath him. “I don’t expect anything from you, this can just be... this. A one off. But promise you won’t freeze me out. That we won’t go back to before. That things won’t be cold between us.”

Pressing a kiss behind her ear, Nesta breathed another moan as he chased it all the way to the pulse point beneath her jaw. He sucked, feeling the flutter of life against his tongue—her body as it arched into him.

“I promise,” Nesta panted finally, her fingers curling around the strands of his damp hair. She tugged, telling him what she wanted, the words singing in the air between them; more, more, more.

As if in response, his blood surged, singing what it always sung—her name, over and over. The name he heard on the wind. Everywhere he went. Nesta, Nesta, Nesta.

“Good,” Cassian rasped into Nesta’s skin, his lips imprinting on the shell of her ear. He waited until goosebumps littered her skin and then he pulled back to stare into those blue, blue eyes to make his own promise. He hoped it would undo her as much as it undid him. “I’m going to make you feel good,” he told her. “I’m going to make the numbness go away, ok sweetheart?”

Something moved behind the surface of Nesta’s irises as she shivered. And this time it wasn’t from the cold or from shock; it was hot anticipation and want and… her breath caught as his palm traversed along her now warm side, along the dip of her waist, hitching the material of her nightgown up, up, up.

Her fingers tightened in his hair as his movements turned light. As his fingers trailed from the underside of her breasts all the way down her side to the top of her thigh, coaxing her to shudder—for every nerve ending to sing.

Their kiss was searing and desperate when she pulled his face back down to hers. All around him, Cassian could smell the all-consuming scent of her. It was as intoxicating as any drug and he couldn’t help but cave, rolling his hips into hers, desperate for some sort of relief. He had never been this hard in his life, had never wanted anybody like this in the long time he had been alive. He needed to feel her skin against his, the sensation suddenly as vital as breathing—

“Off,” he growled into Nesta’s mouth, tugging her nightgown over her head and tossing it away. He flared his wings, lifting the heavy blankets so he could kick them down to their ankles. and—

Cassian swore at the sight before him. Nesta was beautiful. Where his skin was golden and marred with scars, hers was cream and unblemished—untouched—and her breasts… Cassian’s mouth turned dry and his insides twisted. They were far better than the inferior image he’d conjured in his mind, even as he pyrite glittered tauntingly between them, as if to say; I was here first.

With a soft snarl, Cassian reverently dragged his fingers over the smooth plains of Nesta’s stomach, watching her abdominal muscles tense, mesmerised.

“You’re perfect,” he told her with hoarse honesty, cupping the breast closest to the mattress as he took the other dusky nipple into his mouth. He sucked and teased it with the flat of his tongue, relishing in her sharp inhalation of breath… the way her fingers desperately wound their way through his hair again and again. “These are perfect. You have no idea how perfect you are, Nesta.”

A flicker of…something sparked down that bond. It was the first he had truly felt of Nesta in hours and Cassian tried to clamp down on that emotion, to dissect it, desperate to hold on to that sensation of… surprise. It was surprise, Cassian realised. As if she did not expect him to say that, let alone think it.

So, Cassian pushed back everything—his sincerity and awe and want for her and only her. And then he stared up at her with what he knew were dark eyes and scraped the peak of her nipple with his teeth.

A shuddered moan skittered the air around them and Cassian watched Nesta’s pupils dilate with a want that had his heart kicking in his chest. It was that sensation which sparked her into action, her hands feverish as they grappled at the material of his tunic, tugging at it until it was discarded on the floor beside the bed. Then her hands were on his chest, those lithe fingers feverish as they explored the hard lines of his stomach… the silvery scar that ran from his sternum to his lower abdomen.

Burying his head in her cleavage to stifle a groan, Cassian listened to the hammering of her heart as she followed the fine train of hair that started at his naval. In a desperate plea to distract himself from her touch—to distract her—Cassian cupped and squeezed her breasts, rolling his fingers over her nipples until her breath stuttered and her hands stilled just as they grazed the waistband of his pants.

Knowing that his restraint would melt if she wrapped her hand around him, Cassian began to press a path of open-mouthed kisses down her stomach. They were both still lying on their sides and he lifted his body, coaxing her leg against the mattress into a right angle just above his hip so he was cradled between them.

When he hoisted the leg slung over his waist up into a right angle and pressed it up into the blanket with a splayed palm on her knee, Nesta realised what he intended to do. He felt her waver and stiffen, her body going rigid against him, that bond constricting. So Cassian stilled too, taking the time to brush his lips over the right wing of her hip—to savour the taste of her skin against his tongue. To soothe away her hesitancy, somehow knowing that the vulnerability of him sliding down between her legs made her uncomfortable.

The gravity of it hit him then, that Nesta had never done this sober. And Cassian had no idea whether she had even experienced this before—whether she had found pleasure in it. Did not know whether the many one-night stands had bothered to have her clenching around them before they finished themselves of.

Pain sparked as fingernails bit into his shoulders in warning, but Cassian only waited patiently, kissing and soothing away that concern until she relaxed around him. Some animalistic, masochistic part of him hoped that she’d marked him there—that tomorrow he would look in the mirror and see the proof of what they had done. He’d wear those silver half moon circles proudly, more so than any Illyrian tattoo. If only Fae bodies didn’t heal so quickly…

Placing a final kiss to her lower abdomen, Cassian grazed a downward path with the tip of nose until he was hovering just over her centre. Until his head was resting on her thigh.

He couldn’t stop the groan that tumbled out of him at the scent of her. “Gods, sweetheart, I can smell how wet you are.”

The words stretched out between them until everything was pulled taut. Nesta’s hands had moved from his shoulders back to his hair. When he spoke, her fingers slid uncertainly through the damp strands without finding purchase. He didn’t need to look at her to know she was blushing. He knew her well enough by now.

But instead of swiping his tongue through her folds, Cassian reached up to run his mouth over the top-most part of the inside of her thigh. The movement was leisurely and unhurried despite the roaring of blood in Cassian’s ears. Because he had thought about this enough since having met Nesta to know how he wanted this to go. Nesta had spent a year fucking and chasing release and Cassian would not be another notch in her bedpost. By the time he was done, he wanted her squirming and moaning beneath him. He wanted her to anticipate his touch rather than merely using him to press the right buttons. He wanted her to be consumed with it; to feel that anticipation build until she was boneless against the mattress. He wanted to be the kindle for her fire and watch her burn and burn and burn.

He would not fuck her in a whirlwind of limbs and snarled, panting breath. She had done that. He would do something different—just for her.

So, Cassian made Nesta wait. With each brush of his lips he edged closer to her centre, moving from her thigh to her lower abdomen, his tongue swiping against creamy skin after every kiss until finally—finally—she trembled.

The movement travelled between them, vibrating down the thin tie that roped around his ribcage. A soft growl rumbled from the back of Cassian’s throat at the sensation, his grip tightening on her hip as he ghosted over her centre, his breath a phantom caress on her skin.

Yet, he still took the time to pause, letting a second stretch out into a moment—until Nesta’s fingers pressed into his scalp in anticipation. The touch was light but it spoke volumes, the movement more certain. Still Cassian made her wait, trying to calm the desire thrumming through his blood which wanted to spark him into movement—to devour her whole.

Those fingers twisted through his hair and that restraint dissolved as Cassian reached forward and swiped the flat of his tongue through her folds. The action was slow and premeditated, his touch gentle. For a moment, Nesta went preternaturally still, but then her breath stuttered as he did it again and then again, her hips tilting towards him of their own accord.

It was silent plea for more and a moan tumbled out of him, his chest rumbling as he moved closer, locking his lips around that bundle of nerves. Nesta’s breath caught again and again and Cassian catalogued it all—every movement, every intake of air—using her body language to dissect what she liked and didn’t like, lazily drinking her in until that bond widened and roared at each leisurely stroke.

It was this that Cassian had imagined over anything else. He had fantasised about going down on Nesta more than burying himself inside of her—more than her wrapping her lips around him, or the way her tongue would feel when it ran along the underside of his cock. So, Cassian took his time tasting every inch of her, and only when he had her panting did he pick up the pace; drawing circles and fluttering rhythms across her flesh, licking a path from top to bottom until she was writhing beneath him, edging her closer and closer to breaking point, letting that swell build inside of her until even he could feel it in the air around them—a tangible, living thing.

And down that tether Cassian felt the truth in every whimper... every moan. That alone nearly had him unravelling. Never before had he felt her so keenly, and Cassian had to fight the urge to drop his hold on her leg to wrap his hand around himself and relieve the pressure. He was rock hard, and even though his cock twitched with each burn of pleasure that flooded between them, he didn’t dare divert his focus from her. Didn’t dare make this about him when it needed to be about her.

Cassian had never been this turned on without having been touched before. He had never been this turned on period, and he didn’t trust himself not to cave if he so much as grazed the tent in his pants. And the knowledge that earlier she had moved to slide her hand beneath his waistband… just the thought of those cool, slim fingers wrapping around the length of him made his cock throb and his heart stutter.

Growling to rid himself of the image, Cassian sucked her folds into his mouth. The distraction didn't work. Nesta cried out and the sound had his hips thrusting, pleasure robbing him of any other sensation despite the fact that he was met with nothing but air. The sound was sharp and desperate and perfect, and he knew that he could do this all day; bringing her to completion over and over until she couldn’t take it anymore.

“You taste incredible,” Cassian groaned reverently, pulling away for the first time since he’d slipped down between her legs. His lips made a gentle smack against her wet flesh and Nesta whimpered, the sound a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment.

Another long lick followed by slow, wet kisses to her thighs—anywhere but her swollen clit.

He still wanted her to beg. He needed her to, and she wasn’t there yet.

Coaxing her onto her back, Cassian carefully hooked her legs over his arms so they avoided his wings. He had a feeling that if Nesta even so much as brushed them that something would snap inside of him; a beast unleashed.

Spreading her legs wider, Cassian reached up to cup her breasts, satisfaction thrumming through him as she arched into his touch.

Staring up at her with dark eyes, Cassian looked at her for the first time since he’d slipped between her legs. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her pink lips parted. He wished she’d open them; he wanted to be met with that depthless blue that latched onto his soul and made it hard to breathe.

“Fuck Nesta,” he groaned, his voice gravelly as he gathered her wetness on his tongue, drawing broad circles before sucking the bud into his mouth. “I could do this all day just to hear you moan.”

Nesta whimpered at the words, the sound wild and untamed against his ears, but her eyes remained squeezed shut. Gently, he dragged his fingers through her wet folds, purposefully running them over the sides of her clit, relishing in the way that her hips jerked at the touch. At the way that bond continued to widen, light spilling into the inky dark.

A wave of fresh pleasure coursed through him.

“That’s it,” Cassian murmured huskily, slipping a finger inside of her. He bit back a groan—wishing it was his cock easing into her. “I want you to come for me, sweetheart.”

Nesta mewled as he brought his mouth back to her. Curling a finger inside of her, Cassian focussed his attention on drawing wide circles with his mouth, coaxing strangled throaty moans as his finger and tongue worked in tandem.

Only when Nesta’s cries were a steady beat and her fingers were yanking at his hair, did he add another finger.

“Oh,” Nesta whimpered, her head rising from the pillows as he hooked his fingers inside of her at the same time that he drew her folds into his mouth. As he rolled her nipple between his fingers with his spare hand and dared another look up at her.

He groaned as those blue, blue eyes connected with his. They were glassy and swimming in the faelight, utterly mesmerising as her face contorted with pleasure. Nesta had never looked at him like that before; so open and vulnerable and soft.

It only lasted a moment and then Nesta’s head had dropped back onto the pillow in concession of the pleasure coursing through her—through him. It urged him to work faster, to continue his attention on that bundle of nerves that was hurtling her to release. As he splayed his palm on her flat stomach and relished the way it spasmed beneath his touch with every swipe and lick and suck.

When she rocked against him, Cassian’s moan was so coarse that Nesta clutched at his head with a near death grip. She held him tightly as the sound vibrated through her, but then Cassian was scraping his teeth lightly over her clit before sucking it into his mouth and Nesta cried out. Her legs attempted to yank out of his grasp to clamp around his head with a strength Cassian should have predicted for, but he managed to pin her down, holding her open.

“Cassian,” Nesta gasped—finally, finally saying his name out loud—her voice breaking and desperate as she tried to push her hips towards his mouth, begging. She was begging him now. “Cassian.”

“Yes,’ he growled, sensing how close she was. “That’s it, sweetheart. Come for me.”

He felt her walls grip around his fingers like a vice. Felt something peak inside of her—

And then Cassian slowed everything down. His fingers slid in and out of her, pushing in to the hilt in long, drawn out strokes as his tongue circled her—as that preternatural stillness seized her again. Cassian heard the break in her moans as that cresting pleasure suspended above them, ready to crash down. Felt the pleasure course through him so fiercely that for a moment he mistook it for his own—

The sudden cry that unleashed itself on the room was a sound that Cassian had never dreamed would come from Nesta’s mouth. He stroked her steadily through the waves of pleasure as she shattered against his tongue, convulsing beneath him again and again until her whimpers gave way to shuddering gasps. Until she shuddered from the intensity of it, her hands pushing his head away. Cassian allowed her limp and panting body to melt into the mattress as he pressed kisses to the bare skin of her thighs. Her fingers were back in his hair again, running through the strands that had dried into curls before she tugged gently, urging him upwards.

Swiping at his wet mouth, Cassian crawled back up beside her, pulling the blankets with him.

To his satisfaction, Nesta had thrown an arm across her flushed face and her chest was heaving, as if she were at loss for air. She didn’t resist when he moved her arm to the pillow, threading his fingers through hers.

She moaned softly against his lips as he kissed her. The sound was content—another noise he’d never heard from her before—and the knowledge that he had caused her to feel that way left him dizzy. Surprise speared through him as her hand curved around the back of his neck, keeping him there, deepening the kiss as she tasted herself on his tongue.

And down that bond, beyond the sated satisfaction and pleasure was amusement, as if she sensed his surprise and delighted in it.

“Ok?” he asked hoarsely when he finally pulled away. He rolled to the side, taking her with him, his hand splayed on the underside of her thigh, his wing thrown over her body like a blanket.

Nesta’s eyes were glazed as she hummed in reply, and a knowing smirk pulled at her lips as she skimmed her free hand down his bare chest to his stomach and his muscled twitched under her touch.

Locking her leg firmly around his hips, Nesta pulled him flush against her. He snarled softly against her neck when she ground into his erection. His blood was boiling again, a heat ignited in his very core, and it was an entire feat of its own that he managed to tear himself away from her, catching her hand just as those fingers dipped to slip between the hem of his pants.

He watched Nesta frown, and the expression on her face was so unchecked that something twisted inside him.

She wanted to touch him. She wanted more...

“I said I’d make you feel good,” he rasped in explanation, bringing her hand to his lips so he could press his mouth to her knuckles

When he was done, he gently ran a hand over her hair. “Sleep, Nesta. Your body needs to rest.”

“What? No,” Nesta protested, that defiance he had missed for the last few hours firing across her expression.

But he just pulled her closer to him, and unable to help himself—knowing that he might not get another chance—he kissed her again. It was slow and tender, his fingers pushing back her damp hair from her face. It was a kiss to soothe rather than to arouse, even as his cock throbbed painfully against his stomach. His thumb brushed an arc across the glowing skin of her cheek, savouring the ability to touch her like this; without fear of her pushing him away, or worse, punching him in the gut.

“Sleep,” he urged again, wrapping his wing tighter around her—cocooning them. He felt Nesta’s body start to relax into the mattress, felt the blanket of sleep settle over her in that post-climactic haze. He pressed his mouth to her forehead—now warm beneath his lips, as if he had chased away the cold. “I promise I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Tags: @arinbelle @superspiritfestival @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @mylittlebigplanet @biggestwingspan-az @bellsqueen @ekaterinakostrova @bookstantrash @prophecyerised @rainbowcheetah512 @awesomelena555 @wannawriteyouabook @iammissstark @lovelynesta @melphss @nestalytical @darkshadowqueensrule @laylaameer01 @a-trifling-matter @grouchycritic7794 @thalia-2-rose @champanheandluxxury @swankii-art-teacher @princessconsuela02 @lavendergoomsltd @little-diyosa @princessofmerchants-reads @jeakat @sjm-things @imwritingthesewords @nestable @inejbrekkxr @silvernesta @inyourmindeye @amelie775 @iwastoowildinthe70s @helen-the-weirdo @pizzaneverdisappoints @wishfulimaginings @trash-for-nessian @my-fan-side @sophilightwood @hatemecozuaintme @vidalinav

[thephantomporg84]

Since posts can be pinned now:

For your filtering purposes:

Posts involving the former owner of this blog are under #porg drama

Anything that’s not dmc-related or closely related is under #not dmc

Trigger warnings are under #tw [insert thing]. For ex: #tw blood, #tw gore, etc. Anything bordering nsfw content will be under #not sfw-ish or #not sfw. However, beyond canon-typical stuff, probably not gonna be a lot to worry about there. But I just wanted it out there.

Regarding this blog/url:

Yes, it used to belong to a certain person that used to (still does to some extent) harass and send “anonymous” death threats to anyone posting about Devil May Cry.

Yes, it’s actually legit.

No, I don’t fuck with spardacest and try to avoid it as much possible. Please stop sending me messages asking.

Mostly runs on queue and is not attached to my main account, so I don’t check the inbox as frequently as my main. You’re welcome to use either, though!

I respond and follow back from @thephantomporg84-main because I’m super dumb and didn’t make this account the main blog or whatever before using it. Sorry for the confusion in advance. 😓

The former owner has moved to @/derelict-stranger and @/dmc5sucks, so don’t shoot the messenger. Thanks!

[legendoftheghost]

"Ojisan, look! —" The stir of curiosity and puerile excitement, to keep his voice quiet grows to be demanding while he nonetheless puts a decent effort within the cautious hold, trying his best not to scare the creature away as the petite hand points in the direction of their unexpected guest. Such a commonness for these lands, the living fox is a novel view for yet so very juvenile sight - an innocence of youthful soul, each new day is certain to bring him new discovery.

Random Inbox Shenanigans || @sonxflight || accepting 

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ || The once noble warrior bound to the samurai’s code hates to love, and he loves to hate; the light of hope may have long since decayed, and the winds of the universe has metaphorically, literally, and inevitably altered beyond his power, as the surging storm would churn deep in the unfathomable, abysmal well of his being. All of the wreckage, with its uncontrollable tides and worn, rotted wood and rolling, endless ocean... Everything is part of Jin Sakai. Since he was a kid, it had been stitched into who he is, etched into his bones. And he would taste the salt of the world; the battering burden to be better, not to be this inadequate, a fledgeling who would be full of fear. The world already had shown him enough eroded, serrated edges when he as a young boy, not much older than Ryou, would witness his father’s - Lord Sakai’s - death. How he had internally curled in, threatening to burst open with everything he had kept locked behind his eyelids. 

His lips are beguiling enough to stretch thinner into a smile, as his meditative stance loosens, and his past no longer takes its reign, governing the endured torment he would continue to wear as the most deepest guilt. Lord Shimura’s death at his hands continue to bite the expanding xylophone of his ribs, but the phlegmatic, yet tender-featured fugitive and respected Sakai’s head lifts towards his grandson. For the poison of pain had eventually lead him to take Ryou as a son, and Jin could not be evermore grateful, for he would watch the boy develop and mature into a fine warrior. With rampant curiosity towards the world and compassion and tender kindness that could only rival his own mother, Jin Sakai would see eternal promise and ambition, hope and contentment through Ryou. 

“A fox, I had felt the luscious caress of its tail against my hakama,” an arm extends, breaking the ever-erect, solemn form as dark, polished onyx eyes scintillate with mischief, caressing the back of the fox with reverence and gripping optimism. “I wonder if it is another messenger of Inari, we witnessed another one, just in the same hue, but smaller a few days ago, remember?” 

A chuckle rattles his chest as knees press against the softened soil, as Jin gathers his daisho, along with his treasured mask; the last gift from the most bravest man he’s got to know. “Let’s follow it and see where it leads us. We could make offerings to the dead, and hopefully we will find a hot spring where we can camp for the night. How’s that sound, Ryou?” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ || 

[xavierktus014-blog]

Here Is What You Should Do For Your Terrarium Tv App Android Box

9 Harmful Android Apps It's Far better to Remove Instantly

Google Opinion Rewards.

Nevertheless, the complimentary variation features much better than the majority of complimentary order of business applications. Don't worry, you won't require the costs version except in extreme instances. Musicolet is an intriguing alternative for local songs playback. It does every one of the fundamentals, including playlists, tag modifying, business functions, documents surfing, as well as embedded lryics (LRC) support.

Baby bouncer was our pick for the best brand-new Android app from 2018. The app allows you grant short-lived authorizations to applications. So, for example, you can allow Facebook access your place long enough to explore a place, as well as Bouncer disables the permission when you leave Facebook.

Google Drive and its collection of applications are the most prominent productivity apps on Android. The full collection consists of Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Maintain, and also Google Photos. In between these applications, you have a full-fledged office suite complete with a note taking app, cloud storage space, as well as a location to support all of your photos as well as video clips free of charge.

Leading Trending Apps Of 2020: Get The Best Ideas.

What are the best apps to have on your phone?

More than two million apps are available on the App Store.

A few of the attributes consist of an overhauled UI, an indigenous dark motif, a landscape mode, as well as a lot more. Microsoft additionally boasts a smaller launcher that makes use of much less sources, much less battery, and also smoother, much better efficiency. Certainly, the programmers are dealing with the app still and the app remains in beta. Walk carefully, yet it actually functioned simply great in our screening.

Finest mobile phone bargains for March 2020: iPhone, Samsung, and also Google Pixel.

It's particularly beneficial throughout tax period as well as for organisation individuals. Many of these applications fill up specific niches that other 3rd party apps simply do not. In addition, they are all sufficient to hold spots on our lists for every one of those things. Some of them may need an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to get all of the features, though. Take a look at our overview on just how to stream games on your Android or iphone gadget.

Get the absolute best of Android Authority terrarium tv apk 9.9.9 in your inbox. SwiftKey Keyboard is among the most customizable as well as powerful third-party keyboards readily available. It hit the market a number of years ago with a predictive engine unlike anything any kind of other key-board had and also the app has expanded a great deal of for many years.

Then innovative image modifying put it on par with Photoshop Express for picture modification and also manipulation. Instagram Stories is currently far more preferred than Snapchat's comparable feature.

Which is the most downloaded app in the Play Store?

Whether by a deft flick of an opponent's shotgun, the encroaching storm, or self-inflicted error, death is the necessary banality that gives this game its arc and form. But there are no dead bodies (or gore, for that matter) in Fortnite's bright, whimsical universe.

Applications.

It easily integrates with your internet browser for rapid pinning, as well as you can check out the pins of others for included motivation. Amazon.com is the internet's industry; the one place where you can buy just about anything-- and it's low-cost also! Amazon.com Video-related functionality has actually been moved over to a devoted app, yet all of its other consumer services, consisting of Fresh as well as Restaurants, make an appearance. Prime participants express joy; there's never been a much better means to remain gotten in touch with your Amazon.com way of living. After a major overhaul to this effective password supervisor, its look ultimately matches its efficiency.

The most effective iPhone as well as Android apps of 2019.

I have still yet to get anything, so no 7-10 is not accurate. I have tried to contact them 7 times using various contact e-mails provided after substantial research study and not one feedback. Because it does nothing to secure your phone, don't was waste your time playing or even downloading. Your Android hàs its very own features to safeguard itself. I reported them to BBB after nothing from them and being deceptive.

What are the top 3 free apps?

Worldwide Top Apps by Google Play Downloads WhatsApp was the most downloaded app on Google Play worldwide for Q1 2019 with close to 199 million installs, followed by Messenger, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.

Leading 5 performance-killing apps you need to erase today.

There's no complimentary tier, so you'll have to bet $10 a month. At first, we weren't mosting likely to put any kind of launchers on this listing. Nova Launcher seems to be extend beyond what normal launchers are. It's been around for many years, it's been continually upgraded, and also hence it's never ever not been a fantastic option for a launcher substitute. If you desire to, you can even make it look like the Pixel Launcher.

[shirlleycoyle]

For UFO Hunters, the Owls Really Aren’t What They Seem

"The owls are not what they seem." 

This was the cryptic warning uttered by the Giant in Twin Peaks, echoing eerily throughout David Lynch and Mark Frost's surreal series. For illustrator and author Mike Clelland, though, these psychic pronouncements ring especially true. For the past decade, he has worked tirelessly to catalogue paranormal sightings of the fluffy avian predators. 

As the self-described "owl guy" of the UFO world, Clelland has become the foremost writer theorizing a connection between owls and alien encounters. His book on the subject, The Messengers, is a collection of anecdotes from people who claim to have had paranormal experiences involving the ominous birds.

It all began after Clelland saw owls circling overhead for an entire hour during a 2006 camping trip. Familiar with a supposed UFO-owl link, Clelland intuitively felt there was something mystical, otherworldly, or even alien to the animals above. Moved by the events, Clelland eventually connected owl sightings to disturbing alien abduction experiences of his own, spurring him to post a call for any strange owl anecdotes on his website. 

To his surprise, the stories streamed in, tying the birds to UFOs, abductions, "missing time," and other strange phenomena. Meanwhile, owls began to manifest themselves to Clelland "in a flurry of weirdness," for instance, appearing to hover at eye-level before fluttering away as he rode his bike through his small Idaho town. Now, he's collected thousands of accounts, with at least one landing in his inbox every day.

"That people are actually having experiences that imply contact with some sort of non-human intelligence is strange enough," Clelland writes in his book. "Adding owls into the mix makes it all the more bizarre. Like a performance on a stage, the owl is playing a small role in the grand drama. The part it plays is a riddle begging to be solved."

After an encountering an owl at 4 AM, one of Clelland's contacts says her car careened off a bluff on a mountain highway. She was uninjured, despite the air bags failing to deploy.

It would appear that Mike Clelland is not much closer to solving this riddle, though he has some ideas. 

Conceding that his owl hypothesis is "way out beyond the boundaries of the UFO mainstream," he insists he's brought over some "stodgy folks" to his way of thinking after talks at conferences. 

"I've had my own direct experiences, and some would call these UFO abductions," Clelland told Motherboard in a phone interview. "That's a term I use all the time, but it's not the right term, because it's stranger than that: it's more elusive, more mysterious."

Before the owls, Clelland's own experiences included waking at his small house in Maine, at the age of 30, to find a bright light flooding his bedroom and "five spindly aliens" standing in his yard, back-lit by a singular round shape. At first, he dismissed this as a dream, but it was unlike any dream he'd had before: extremely vivid, and accompanied by an uneasy feeling of distorted reality—an occurrence so common it's been dubbed the Oz Factor by UFOlogists. And it occurred again. And again. 

Frenetically tumbling down this rabbit hole, Clelland expected to find a magazine article or two on the subject. Instead, he discovered a "bottomless pit of strangeness," where owls seemed to be "interwoven into the UFO experience" like a very thin thread. With his research, he felt he was tugging on that thread, and fell deeper down the rabbit-hole.

Strange stories within his book include the testimony of Ron Johnson, a regular UFO conference attendee who claimed to have had alien visitations at home, and who noticed a steady stream of guest owls by the porch of his mothers' house. One in particular would watch him as he left for work, and remain perched on the same branch when he returned later that day. Once, Johnson says, he felt an inexplicable desire to leave the house in the middle of the night, and when he did, found a four-foot-tall owl standing in his driveway, waiting to exchange stares.

These "impossibly large owls," as Clelland calls them, are a regular enough incidence: one unnamed contactee claimed to have seen a UFO and then, shortly afterwards, pulled over in his car, where he was greeted by a four-foot-tall owl with a wingspan large enough to encase the front of the vehicles' chassis, wing-mirror to wing-mirror. Clelland notes that even the very tallest owls should not be this tall. 

And from the archives of UFO researcher and fellow owl enthusiast Håkan Blomqvist is a story from Sorbo, Sweden, in summer 1966. Two men travelling by moped pulled over for a bathroom break, and when they did, noticed an owl sitting on a post beside the road. Shortly afterwards, they claimed to have seen a large, silvery craft, hovering 150 meters above ground, and when it landed, there appeared to be movement by strange humanoid figures within. 

Among the many anecdotes, Clelland tells me some of the most common experiences surround "missing time." Contactees stop to admire an owl, and when they're on their way again, they realise hours have passed. A theory is these owl appearances could be "screen memories"—psychically implanted visions where owls are merely disguised stand-ins, with hypnotic regression therapy later revealing something much weirder. 

In fact, they're so common that according to Clelland, when he brought up the owl phenomenon to the late, veteran alien abduction researcher Budd Hopkins, he would roll his eyes and say that the stories are everywhere.

Not all of the reports in his book feature a supposed alien connection, although there are many of those. Some instead point to a seemingly un-graspable, mystical link, such as foreboding forewarnings, or personal spiritual awakening. 

Clelland avoids concluding that owls are doing the bidding of aliens, though. "I don't think the UFO's occupants are pushing a little button and saying: 'Calling all owls, meet us at this spot to give this person a psychic experience'," he said. "I think it's happening in a much more mystical, overlapping way than that."

That mystical foreboding is found all over contemporary culture, and sometimes it features aliens, too. The enigmatic owls of Twin Peaks are theorized by some to have been influenced by an owl encounter in Whitley Strieber's influential alien abduction book, Communion. (Neither Mark Frost or David Lynch responded to a request for comment.) And Slaughterhouse Five's traumatized time-traveller Billy Pilgrim seemed to be warned by an owl when he was abducted suddenly by a flying saucer from the planet Tralfamadore. 

Further back throughout history, many cultures have held up owls as creatures of spiritual significance, whether portents of doom and death, or symbolic of wealth and wisdom, as with Lakshmi's vahana, and Athena. There's the owl-like Goetic Great Prince of Hell, Stolas, who teaches astronomy and is knowledgeable about herbs, plants, and precious stones. In Deuteronomy, readers are instructed not to eat owls, and they're mentioned elsewhere in the Bible too. Native American cultures place numerous spiritual associations on owls, ranging from ill omens to prophecy, vision and insight, and protection.

Unless you're a rodent, though, their reputation as omens of death is perhaps unfair, says nature writer and author of the Hidden Lives of Owls, Leigh Calvez. Eating as many as 1,500 rodents a year, there's a strong case for owls helping to protect people from diseases like the plague. 

"If we didn't have them, we would be in trouble," Calvez told Motherboard. 

But she acknowledges that they do hold a mythic quality. In the introduction of her book, Calvez details the vast differences in perception—from owl feathers fastened to protective talismans in Mongolia to associations of material abundance for the Ainu in Japan. Calvez says that the shriek of a banshee could be attributed to barn owls, as they like to hunt in open spaces like graveyards at night. When you listen to their calls, the theory is convincing. 

Even history's most infamous conquerors are not free from the influence of owls, with the hooting of the bird supposedly predicting the deaths of Julius Caesar and Augustus in ancient Rome. For Genghis Khan, though, an owl may have rescued him from pursuers. "The entire spectrum of human emotion is projected onto these creatures," adds Calvez.

Whatever their emperor-protecting or killing abilities, there's something captivating about these birds. Folklore and mysticism notwithstanding, they are remarkable creatures: with satellite-dish-like faces perfect for hunting by sound, and powerful, long, tubular eyes that are fixed in place, hence their swivelling heads. 

Sadly, no ornithologists wanted to speak with Motherboard about Clelland's thesis, although one who did not wish to be named said that myths and folklore are directly linked to conservation: how we perceive these animals relates to how much we want to help them.

Given their unusual features, a skeptical view might be that owls, simply put, are weird. They often, but not always, have really big eyes, mostly appear at night, and make very strange sounds. A quick look at the birds without feathers demonstrates their gray-alien-esque qualities. 

But is that enough to discount the missing time? The mystical associations, the sense of wondrous profundity provoked by these hugely symbolic creatures? Their archetypal qualities rooted in the collective unconscious… or something like that? 

Whatever the case, Clelland says his appreciation of the birds has only grown. Although he may not be a great deal closer to solving his own personal owl puzzles, one thing's for sure: if you've got a Strigiformes story, he wants to hear it.

For UFO Hunters, the Owls Really Aren’t What They Seem syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[schemesanddreams]

Part Three – David

David - whose last name I refuse to publish, as to not give him the attention he so badly craves – is my stalker.  For about a year after Lee died, I had referred to David in the past tense.  He “was my stalker,” that is until he resurfaced late last year.  More on that later, though…

I was first introduced to David shortly after Lee and I became close, though I didn’t know he had entered my world at the time.  One Saturday afternoon, the telephone rang and a woman quickly introduced herself as “Kathryn” (again, I am redacting the last name) and launched into a bucketful of praise about an article I had written for my high school newspaper, featuring none other than Tallulah Bankhead.

The introduction had happened so quickly that I had no time to process the situation or ask how this woman – who sounded like a man, impersonating a woman – had acquired my article.  Other than the school itself, the only other person who had access to the article was Lee, who I had sent a copy to due to its Bankhead reference.

The voice on the other end of the receiver didn’t have much to say, which I found curious, and didn’t offer up how they had found my unlisted number.  Regardless, I thanked them and hung up.  Not a moment later, an e-mail popped up in my inbox from none other than Kathryn.  How did she get my e-mail address, too?

I was perplexed but decided to wait until the next time I spoke to Lee to ask her if she had any idea what was up.  In the meantime, I googled Kathryn and discovered where she lived, what she did for a living, who she was married to and what her hobbies were.  None of those things were even remotely connected to Dorothy Kilgallen.  I wrote down her phone number, just in case.

A few days after this perplexing phone call, the phone rang again.  A deep, woman’s voice asked for my sister and insisted she was a friend of hers.  The only friend of my sister’s who had our number was one who not only did not call but also did not have anything close to a deep voice.  …It was Kathryn calling.

Shortly after that, I received an e-mail from another man who I will hereby refer to as Mark.  Mark discussed Dorothy Kilgallen in this e-mail as well as mentioning Lee.  I found this incredibly suspicious, as I had nothing online relating to Kilgallen.  My research, at that point, was strictly via handwritten letters and telephone calls.  Nowhere, was I attached to the case.  Mark shouldn’t have been able to find my e-mail address.  Hell, he shouldn’t have even known who I was.

Finally, I got Lee on the phone and asked her about both instances.  While she hadn’t heard of Kathryn, it turns out, Mark was a Hollywood producer friend of hers. Weird.  Why would he be e-mailing me?  We didn’t even know each other… 

I searched his name and found hundreds of postings to Yahoo boards about Dorothy. He was very opinionated and also very strange, it seemed.  Most of his postings were nonsensical and appeared to follow an invisible and dare I say it, crazy thought process – most of which didn’t make any sense at all.

Lee suggested I contact Mark and forward him what I found, since the postings I had discovered were clearly not him.  “Mark wouldn’t write like that,” Lee had told me.  Not surprisingly, Mark never returned my call about what I had uncovered. It was apparent that someone had stolen his name and identity, yet either the number she had provided was fake or he simply did not care.

Enter David.

There was a very old alt message board posting that I found in my research, written by David about Lee and Dorothy.  It gave Lee’s information as well as contact information for Dorothy’s children and Ron Pataky, Dorothy’s boyfriend at the time she died.  I asked Lee about this posting around the same time that Mark entered my realm and that was when I was officially introduced to David.

David, she told me, was a “very strange man” who once ordered milk at a Chinese restaurant when he was out dining with Mark and his wife. (Say what?  They knew each other??)  “Who does that?!” she asked me, astonished at David’s weirdness, as if that one incident solidified him as a bonafide screwball, completely ignoring the fact that Mark and David were somehow connected.

Lee also told me that David was very interested in the Kilgallen case and had contacted her many times.  Lee’s relationship with David was never truly defined but she was the only link to connect David – the screwball, Mark – her friend and myself.

I ended up calling (the real) Kathryn and, unlike Mark, she got back to me.  Not surprisingly, her identity had been stolen and used to post Kennedy/Kilgallen conspiracy theories online in the same way that Mark’s had been.  Over the next ten years, I ended up contacting a handful of other people who also had their names and identities thieved and used to perpetuate myths about Dorothy.  Unfortunately at the time, online identity crimes weren’t at the top of the law enforcement radar and I was essentially told that the victims of identity theft were as good as fucked, with no options afforded to them to combat whoever was stealing their names.

By that point, I had realized that it was David who was behind the personas.  David, the Kilgallen obsessed weirdo, had already ostracized himself from any and all message boards that even remotely discussed Kennedy or Dorothy.  His writing style was so unique that it was instantly identifiable.  It took no time for me to piece together that David, using his real identity, had been banished due to his overzealous conspiracy theories, and quickly turned to false identities to get his message across.

Kathryn, Mark, a woman named Lisa and several others were victims.  Another man whose name he adopted was actually quite famous in his particular area of Kennedy-related study and I called him up.  I filled him in about David and, to my surprise, he was already aware of the situation.

This man, who shall remain nameless, had gone to college with David and had angered David at some point. The man told me that, around that time, David “went off the deep end” and that he had discovered that his identity was being used by David, thus attempting to discredit him.

This is where things get a little convoluted.  See, Lee was a master at impersonation.  Not only signatures but voices, as well.  In her memoir, she proudly told tales of her calling people who had slighted her, impersonating other people, and harassing them.  Keep this in mind as you proceed…

In 2005, I moved across the country.  Prior to the move, I lived not far from David.  While I didn’t have his exact address, I knew we were only about an hour or so away from each other.  The house I lived in was listed for sale, with several open houses.  I didn’t doubt that David had my address and I feared that in his obsession for Kilgallen information, he would feign interest about a walk-through in an attempt to locate my files. 

I know that this sounds incredibly paranoid but I assure you, I was completely just in my concern.  David was beyond obsessed and clearly did anything he could to obtain information.  At this time, it was clear to me that David – who kept hounding me, using various identities – believed that I had unpublished Kilgallen information, directly from Lee.  He wasn’t wrong...

It was at that time that I invested in a locking case for my files.  I hid them in my closet, kept the key and left to allow interested buyers to peruse the house, never knowing if he was one of the many who walked through.

Once I moved, my number was again unlisted.  On the 40th anniversary of Dorothy’s death, my house phone rang.  It was a deep-voiced woman, asking for me.  The person on the other end of the line made up some line about needing high school transcripts – something which was clearly a farce, as I had been close with the woman in charge of transcripts at the high school I had attended.  I called her up, verified that the phone call I had received was a ruse and took a deep breath.  I had crossed the country and David had found me – again.

According to Lee, she had conveniently “lost her address book,” around that time - claiming that she feared a maid (who most certainly did not exist) had stolen it…  Undoubtedly, you see where this is headed.

Things get even stranger when, one night, I was in the middle of an information swapping session with Kerry, Dorothy’s son.  Over Instant Messenger, we were discussing David.  At the time, Kerry and I were close – although I understood and respected that Dorothy was a topic I needed not push with him.

David had stalked Kerry for over 15 years, following Kerry from address to address, always finding unlisted numbers and sending him mail from various states, using different identities each time.  Like me, Kerry was wise to David’s ways and was quick to spot the impostor.  Yet, David persevered.

Kerry forwarded me an e-mail that stopped me dead in my tracks.  My throat welled up into a lump and it felt like my heart sunk into my stomach. The e-mail, which was so clearly written by David, was sent from Lee’s e-mail address.

“Wait, wait.  Hold the phone.”  I typed frantically into the text box.  I slammed the enter key and awaited Kerry’s response.  We compared more notes and every e-mail he had received from that address was most definitely from David.  Every e-mail I had received from the same address was unquestionably from Lee.  She and I had even discussed some of the e-mails over the phone.

Was David even real? Was Lee pretending to be David? It wasn’t beyond the spectrum of possibility by that point.  All I knew for certain is that Lee was desperately protecting her stake in the Kilgallen case and was not beyond either making up a persona to scare me away from it - or putting David up to the task.

All that I truly knew was that there was a woman threatened by my interest in Dorothy, a person who consistently found my unlisted information and harassed me in every way possible and another man, Dorothy’s son, who was in the same boat as I was.  I didn’t know what to believe but I knew without a doubt that I had to continue my research, no matter who I ended up pissing off.

A quote by Lillian Smith struck a chord with me - something I could not shake and even, during the worst of the Kilgallen ordeal, was a quote that kept me grounded.  Emblazoned on one of the many binders of the Kilgallen dossier I kept, it read:

“To believe in something not yet proved and underwrite it with our lives is the only way we can leave the future open.”

Dorothy had lived by this mantra, quite obviously.  Willing to put up with anonymous phone calls, threatening her life.  Dealing with continuous heat from J. Edgar Hoover, who didn’t agree with her so unabashedly questioning the Warren Commission report.  She was dedicated to uncovering the truth behind the assassination of Kennedy, just as I was dedicated to figuring out the truth behind her mysterious death.

Little did I know then that I had stumbled upon merely the tip of the iceberg and that overly-friendly telephone calls from a deep-voiced “woman” and uninvited e-mails from overly-factual aliases were the least of my concerns…

[health-and-felicidad]

Six Healthy Habits to Be Happier and More Positive

Happiness is our holy grail and our measure of a life well lived—not to mention the topic of countless books, TED Talks, and apps. But what exactly are we searching for? Scientists devoted to answering that question define happy people as those who have a positive temperament, social confidants, and the resources to make progress toward the goals they value. Put plainly, "it's the joy we feel as we move toward our potential," says Michelle Gielan, the author of Broadcasting Happiness and founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research, in Dallas.

The good news is we're generally content as a country, but there's room to grow. In the 2018 United Nations World Happiness Report, which asked people in more than 150 countries to assess their life on a scale of 1 to 10 (based on markers like life expectancy, GDP, and social support), Americans rated their lives at a not-too-shabby 6.8. But that's nearly a point behind the top three—Finland, Norway, and Denmark—which rated theirs over 7.5. (PSA: No one, not even Norwegians, can maintain a 10; that would be exhausting!) According to experts, there are clear obstacles in our way of feeling deeper fulfillment every day. Learn how to surmount them.

RELATED: Seven Stress-Fighting Foods to Add to Your Diet

Happiness Hurdle: Our Primal Brain

There's a little thing called the negativity bias. Thousands of years ago, it gave humans an advantage: We were ever-ready to dodge life-and-death danger. Now it means we're hardwired to notice and store negative experiences more than positive ones. A single critical comment can knock the wind out of an otherwise great day.

Pausing for a minute to appreciate something sweet or beautiful helps us override the negativity bias. To get in the habit, Gielan suggests taking a photo each day of something that makes you smile and laugh, or feel lucky and loving: your sleeping child, an incredible meal, a pink sunset, your funniest old friend. Then, at the end of the week, look at them again all together. Doing so "trains your brain to watch for moments to capture," Gielan writes in Broadcasting Happiness. "It refocuses your attention on the positive, meaningful parts of the day, and shifts it away from stress and negativity." Soon you won't even need to snap pictures to feel that pleasant sensation.

Happiness Hurdle: Going It Alone

Isolating yourself is a surefire way to feel down. The happiest people have rich and satisfying relationships, according to 2002 and 2018 studies by Martin Seligman, Ph.D., a professor and director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania; and Ed Diener, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and the University of Utah. While it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg conundrum (do joyful people naturally invite more meaningful bonds, or vice versa?), a strong social network is a win-win.

You can overcome this hurdle by reaching out to others. That doesn't mean you have to cram your calendar full. An easy starting point is to try opening conversations with an optimistic comment, a tactic Gielan calls a "power lead." Greet a coworker with "I just listened to a great podcast" instead of "I'm so tired," or ask your kids, "What was the best part of your day?" rather than the rote "How was your day?" The shift is subtle but can foster an immediate positive connection.

RELATED: Healing Crystals That'll Make You a Believer

Happiness Hurdle: Living in 2021

The ring. The raise. The last seven pounds. We can all fall into the trap of thinking we'll be happy the minute X, Y, or Z happens. "The problem is that this pushes happiness into the future," Gielan says. "When you focus in the present instead, you get your brain to concentrate on what is working in your life."

Instead of constantly thinking ahead, try to stay in the moment. The idea of centering yourself is at the core of mindfulness meditation, which has been shown to increase activity in the left part of the frontal region of the brain, the area responsible for positive emotions like optimism. Ralph De La Rosa, a therapist and mediation teacher, and author of The Monkey Is the Messenger , suggests waking up with a "5-3-1-1" practice. While still in bed, take five big, deep breaths. Think of three things you're grateful for. Smile one real smile, and set one intention for your day. Habits like this pay big dividends. Not only can being more present give you a sunnier outlook, Gielan says, it also may help improve your energy level and your performance at work; it's even been shown to up students' test scores. The other bonus might be the world's best-kept career secret: When you zero in on the good happening now, Gielan notes, you're more likely to excel.

Happiness Hurdle: The Social-Media Vortex

"Compare and despair" is no joke. It's easy to look up from a long scroll thinking that everyone's life is a party but yours. We don't need experts to tell us this habit is eroding our self-esteem, though a 2014 study published in Psychology of Popular Media Culture proved just that. Newer research has pinpointed just how destructive it can be. A 2017 study published in Journal of Affective Disorders found that the more time 18-to-22-year-olds spent on social media, the more likely they were to have symptoms of anxiety.

Set aside time daily to disconnect each day. Start with small increments; even 10 minutes counts. Then work up to being phone-free for the first half-hour of the morning, at meals, and during the last hour before bed, since both your phone's lighting and its irresistible pull detract from quality sleep—a must-have for combating anxiety and stress.

RELATED: Eight Ways to Have a Healthier Relationship with Social Media

Happiness Hurdle: Incoming Worries

Speaking of stress, Americans report feeling more fried than ever. In January 2017, the American Psychological Association found a statistically significant increase in stress levels for the first time in its annual survey's 10-year history. A 2018 follow-up found that we're as anxious about the future of our country (63 percent) as we are about evergreens like money (62 percent) and work (61 percent).

Still haven't put down your phone? Step away: It's one big reason we're all hopped up on headlines. Then think of tangible ways to diffuse what's vexing you, whether it's having a heart-to-heart with your mom or using an app to monitor your spending. If you're still reeling, take a deep breath. Research shows that when our exhale is even a few counts longer than our inhale, the vagus nerve, which runs from the brain down through the neck to the diaphragm and abdomen, tells our nervous system to chill out. Our heart rate drops, our blood pressure lowers, the blood vessels relax, and the whole body physically calms down. Inhale slowly through your nose, then exhale with a soft haaaaaaa sound, until your lungs feel completely empty. (Repeat this 10 times, with a three-second pause between breaths, for an even more satisfying release.)

Happiness Hurdle: Spinning Our Wheels

We all feel stuck sometimes—in an unfulfilling job, a draining relationship, or just a "meh" state of mind. It turns out that means we might be striving for the wrong things. People who shoot for personal pleasures (or extrinsic goals), such as fame and wealth, are demonstrably less happy than those who seek personal growth, relationships, and community (intrinsic goals), per a 2009 University of Rochester study. Researchers asked graduating college students about their aspirations, and followed up two years later. Those who pursued extrinsic goals reported greater anxiety and poorer physical health despite their accomplishments, while the group with intrinsic ones cited greater well-being and self-esteem as well as fewer physical signs of stress.

Topple this hurdle by finding a purpose. Actually, make that plural: purposes. Think of what drives you in various areas of your life—your personal, family, work, and community roles. "We have complex lives," says Victor J. Strecher, Ph.D., a health-behavior and health-education professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and the author of Life on Purpose. "We don't care about just one thing." A multipurpose mind-set helps us prioritize and find balance, he says. When we catch ourselves glued to our email and ignoring our family, we can think, Is this really serving my purpose here? Then we can turn back to things that do—the stuff that truly makes us feel happy.

Kelly DiNardo is the coauthor of Living the Sutras: A Guide to Yoga Wisdom Beyond the Mat.

To get our top stories delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Healthy Living newsletter

source https://www.health.com/syndication/healthy-habits-happier-more-positive

[cryptswahili]

The competitors of Patreon

In December, Patreon CEO Jack Conte shared a list on Twitter predicting what being an independent content creator will be like in 10 years. One of his predictions was that there will be fierce competition between distribution platforms to get creators paid.

That competition has already begun, which is good for creators, but is it good for Patreon?

Patreon holds a strategic position in the creator toolset, particularly around building membership businesses — the recurring income from superfans that allows for creator sustainability. Among its competitors are some of the richest tech companies in the world who own content distribution platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. A crop of vertical-specific subscription infrastructure companies could push back on Patreon’s early market share by offering creators better features for specific use cases. A range of B2B software companies, blockchain projects, or even Hollywood agencies could decide to target Patreon’s core creator customer.

This article is an analysis of each of those challenges to Patreon, and how the company can navigate them to come out ahead.

Fending off the content platforms

Infrastructure competitors

Next-generation talent representation

Affinity group-specific solutions

The future for Patreon

Reading time for this article is about 16 minutes. Feature illustration by Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch.

Fending off the content platforms

Creators heavily use content distribution sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and others to publish their work and engage with their fans. Given the amount of effort expended on these platforms, it seems inevitable that they would find value in running their membership businesses through them as well.

Indeed, these platforms — particularly Facebook and YouTube — are investing significant resources into building out full-featured tools for creators to generate revenue directly from their fans.

Facebook is the top threat to Patreon, although others are also certainly important to watch.

The top distribution platforms have three advantages against Patreon. First, they have enormous budgets, plain and simple. Second, they already count most of the world’s creators and fans as users. YouTube, for example, may not be a hub for podcasts or for poetry, but the vast majority of podcasters and poets already have YouTube accounts … as do most of their fans. These platforms don’t need to do customer acquisition in the traditional sense, they just need existing users to test out new features.

Third, they have a major advantage with user convenience. It’s easier to convert a fan who is wavering on the idea of becoming a patron when the button to do so is right there in front of them. That fan is probably already logged into their YouTube account so that one click could be all that’s needed — no new account creation on Patreon.com.

Facebook and YouTube want fan-creator revenue

Content platforms see new revenue streams in the fan-creator relationship now. More of them are testing ways for creators to directly monetize fans rather than solely operate off ad revenue. This is driven by 1) increasing saturation in the digital ad market, 2) greater awareness of best business practices from the gaming sector, such as enabling superfans to spend money on extra perks, and 3) deeper understanding of China’s dominant social platforms which have long had features like tipping as revenue streams.

Facebook has been building out dedicated functionality for creators. Its Creator App is a unified inbox of Facebook comments, Instagram comments, and Messenger chats, plus a unified analytics dashboard to help creators understand who their fans are. This app could quickly evolve into the type of business infrastructure that Patreon is building to help creators manage their superfan relationships and get them to spend more.

Ominously, Facebook has been aggressively testing a variety of monetization options for creators. Among them:

Creator Memberships: users who join a creator’s $4.99 per month membership tier get exclusive content and a supporter badge next to their name.

Subscription Groups: creators can set a price of $4.99 through $29.99 per month for fans to join a private Facebook Group, which already has a Group Insights tool to get analytics on the most active participants, the most engaged posts, and the demographics of group members.

Facebook Stars: a virtual currency for tipping creators on gaming live streams. Fans buy a pack of Stars, and Facebook takes a 5-30% cut depending on how much they spend, while creators get $0.01 for each Star fans send them.

A marketplace for matching creators with businesses for branded content campaigns and sponsorship deals, similar to the Niche marketplace that Twitter acquired.

Facebook isn’t alone in attempting to leverage its platform to help monetize creators. YouTube has been hard at work as well.

In June 2018, it rolled out “Channel Memberships.” Creators with at least 50,000 subscribers to their channel can offer a $4.99 per month membership to their fans that provides access to exclusive live streams, members-only posts in the creator’s Community tab, custom emojis to use in YouTube comments, and a badge that appears next to the user’s name to mark them as a member. YouTube keeps 30% ($1.50 each) of the revenue from Channel Memberships, which includes payment processing costs.

Other fan monetization features on YouTube now include:

Super Chat: when there is a live comments feed next to the video during Live Streams and Premieres, fans can pay to have their comments highlighted and temporarily pinned to the top so more people read them.

Merchandise: creators with at least 10,000 subscribers can create custom merchandise to offer their fans through an integration with Teespring. Featured merchandise then appears underneath the creator’s YouTube videos. Teespring pays YouTube a commission on all the sales this generates for them and YouTube shares a portion of that commission back with creators.

Ticketing: through integrations with Eventbrite and Ticketmaster, creators can promote and sell tickets to their live events directly from the YouTube pages where fans are watching their videos.

Beyond Facebook and YouTube, there are a bunch of other content platforms with fan-creator revenue models that could undermine Patreon’s ambitions. Amazon-owned Twitch has subscriptions similar to YouTube’s Channel Memberships, while Medium has a freemium model where creators can paywall their writing and then get a cut of the overall revenue based on the amount of “applause” their posts received. So far, Twitter and Snap seem to be non-players in this market.

Patreon faces two major risks from the rise of fan-creator monetization features on content platforms, beyond just company-to-company competition. Even if Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms release a fairly weak set of features, Patreon could face a “death by a thousand cuts” scenario. In aggregate, those features could reduce pressure on creators to find an independent platform to drive their superfans to. It also means that those platforms have the credit card info of a creator’s superfans as well, reducing the switching costs of leaving Patreon.

Second, Patreon envisions itself as the nucleus of a creator’s membership business, plugging into all the other platforms where they post content and engage fans using the Patreon API. But such integrations require collaborations with the distribution platforms. They now integrate with Reddit, but if other platforms are developing monetization tools of their own (even if not in direct competition), they may view a Patreon API integration as competitive with their own offering and refuse to collaborate. If Patreon doesn’t connect to the platforms creators use most often, it makes its service a much less compelling option.

Both companies could hit Patreon hard if they wanted to. Facebook in particular is such a powerful potential competitor because if it built its own robust version of a creator CRM it could provide creators unrivaled data on who their superfans are and how best to engage them. Plus, consumers actually read their Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp messages (unlike messages sent to subscribers to a YouTuber’s channel).

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

[toomanysinks]

The competitors of Patreon

In December, Patreon CEO Jack Conte shared a list on Twitter predicting what being an independent content creator will be like in 10 years. One of his predictions was that there will be fierce competition between distribution platforms to get creators paid.

That competition has already begun, which is good for creators, but is it good for Patreon?

Patreon holds a strategic position in the creator toolset, particularly around building membership businesses — the recurring income from superfans that allows for creator sustainability. Among its competitors are some of the richest tech companies in the world who own content distribution platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. A crop of vertical-specific subscription infrastructure companies could push back on Patreon’s early market share by offering creators better features for specific use cases. A range of B2B software companies, blockchain projects, or even Hollywood agencies could decide to target Patreon’s core creator customer.

This article is an analysis of each of those challenges to Patreon, and how the company can navigate them to come out ahead.

Fending off the content platforms

Infrastructure competitors

Next-generation talent representation

Affinity group-specific solutions

The future for Patreon

Reading time for this article is about 16 minutes. Feature illustration by Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch.

Fending off the content platforms

Creators heavily use content distribution sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and others to publish their work and engage with their fans. Given the amount of effort expended on these platforms, it seems inevitable that they would find value in running their membership businesses through them as well.

Indeed, these platforms — particularly Facebook and YouTube — are investing significant resources into building out full-featured tools for creators to generate revenue directly from their fans.

Facebook is the top threat to Patreon, although others are also certainly important to watch.

The top distribution platforms have three advantages against Patreon. First, they have enormous budgets, plain and simple. Second, they already count most of the world’s creators and fans as users. YouTube, for example, may not be a hub for podcasts or for poetry, but the vast majority of podcasters and poets already have YouTube accounts … as do most of their fans. These platforms don’t need to do customer acquisition in the traditional sense, they just need existing users to test out new features.

Third, they have a major advantage with user convenience. It’s easier to convert a fan who is wavering on the idea of becoming a patron when the button to do so is right there in front of them. That fan is probably already logged into their YouTube account so that one click could be all that’s needed — no new account creation on Patreon.com.

Facebook and YouTube want fan-creator revenue

Content platforms see new revenue streams in the fan-creator relationship now. More of them are testing ways for creators to directly monetize fans rather than solely operate off ad revenue. This is driven by 1) increasing saturation in the digital ad market, 2) greater awareness of best business practices from the gaming sector, such as enabling superfans to spend money on extra perks, and 3) deeper understanding of China’s dominant social platforms which have long had features like tipping as revenue streams.

Facebook has been building out dedicated functionality for creators. Its Creator App is a unified inbox of Facebook comments, Instagram comments, and Messenger chats, plus a unified analytics dashboard to help creators understand who their fans are. This app could quickly evolve into the type of business infrastructure that Patreon is building to help creators manage their superfan relationships and get them to spend more.

Ominously, Facebook has been aggressively testing a variety of monetization options for creators. Among them:

Creator Memberships: users who join a creator’s $4.99 per month membership tier get exclusive content and a supporter badge next to their name.

Subscription Groups: creators can set a price of $4.99 through $29.99 per month for fans to join a private Facebook Group, which already has a Group Insights tool to get analytics on the most active participants, the most engaged posts, and the demographics of group members.

Facebook Stars: a virtual currency for tipping creators on gaming live streams. Fans buy a pack of Stars, and Facebook takes a 5-30% cut depending on how much they spend, while creators get $0.01 for each Star fans send them.

A marketplace for matching creators with businesses for branded content campaigns and sponsorship deals, similar to the Niche marketplace that Twitter acquired.

Facebook isn’t alone in attempting to leverage its platform to help monetize creators. YouTube has been hard at work as well.

In June 2018, it rolled out “Channel Memberships.” Creators with at least 50,000 subscribers to their channel can offer a $4.99 per month membership to their fans that provides access to exclusive live streams, members-only posts in the creator’s Community tab, custom emojis to use in YouTube comments, and a badge that appears next to the user’s name to mark them as a member. YouTube keeps 30% ($1.50 each) of the revenue from Channel Memberships, which includes payment processing costs.

Other fan monetization features on YouTube now include:

Super Chat: when there is a live comments feed next to the video during Live Streams and Premieres, fans can pay to have their comments highlighted and temporarily pinned to the top so more people read them.

Merchandise: creators with at least 10,000 subscribers can create custom merchandise to offer their fans through an integration with Teespring. Featured merchandise then appears underneath the creator’s YouTube videos. Teespring pays YouTube a commission on all the sales this generates for them and YouTube shares a portion of that commission back with creators.

Ticketing: through integrations with Eventbrite and Ticketmaster, creators can promote and sell tickets to their live events directly from the YouTube pages where fans are watching their videos.

Beyond Facebook and YouTube, there are a bunch of other content platforms with fan-creator revenue models that could undermine Patreon’s ambitions. Amazon-owned Twitch has subscriptions similar to YouTube’s Channel Memberships, while Medium has a freemium model where creators can paywall their writing and then get a cut of the overall revenue based on the amount of “applause��� their posts received. So far, Twitter and Snap seem to be non-players in this market.

Patreon faces two major risks from the rise of fan-creator monetization features on content platforms, beyond just company-to-company competition. Even if Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms release a fairly weak set of features, Patreon could face a “death by a thousand cuts” scenario. In aggregate, those features could reduce pressure on creators to find an independent platform to drive their superfans to. It also means that those platforms have the credit card info of a creator’s superfans as well, reducing the switching costs of leaving Patreon.

Second, Patreon envisions itself as the nucleus of a creator’s membership business, plugging into all the other platforms where they post content and engage fans using the Patreon API. But such integrations require collaborations with the distribution platforms. They now integrate with Reddit, but if other platforms are developing monetization tools of their own (even if not in direct competition), they may view a Patreon API integration as competitive with their own offering and refuse to collaborate. If Patreon doesn’t connect to the platforms creators use most often, it makes its service a much less compelling option.

Both companies could hit Patreon hard if they wanted to. Facebook in particular is such a powerful potential competitor because if it built its own robust version of a creator CRM it could provide creators unrivaled data on who their superfans are and how best to engage them. Plus, consumers actually read their Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp messages (unlike messages sent to subscribers to a YouTuber’s channel).

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/patreon-competition/

[witchembrace-a]

@seeksmoon inquired:

❝ you always feel really comfortable and safe to be around. ❞  alune  to  yone  in  a  verse  of  your  choosing.  <3

-

Yone normally didn’t like others touching his hair.  However,  Alune was one of few exceptions,  especially since the manager knew how to comb out his hair without hurting him.  He always felt bad asking for her to deal with his long,  unruly locks,  but she always agreed to it,  treating his hair with the utmost care.  He supposed it was just part of her responsibilities as manager to care for the members on a more personal level.

Hearing those words spoken calmly as Alune brushed out his hair made Yone smile warmly.  “ Same to you.  You’re one of the few people I let even touch my hair,  let alone brush it out. “  He said warmly.  “ Thank you,  by the way,  for always taking time out of your schedule for this. “

[fmservers]

The competitors of Patreon

In December, Patreon CEO Jack Conte shared a list on Twitter predicting what being an independent content creator will be like in 10 years. One of his predictions was that there will be fierce competition between distribution platforms to get creators paid.

That competition has already begun, which is good for creators, but is it good for Patreon?

Patreon holds a strategic position in the creator toolset, particularly around building membership businesses — the recurring income from superfans that allows for creator sustainability. Among its competitors are some of the richest tech companies in the world who own content distribution platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. A crop of vertical-specific subscription infrastructure companies could push back on Patreon’s early market share by offering creators better features for specific use cases. A range of B2B software companies, blockchain projects, or even Hollywood agencies could decide to target Patreon’s core creator customer.

This article is an analysis of each of those challenges to Patreon, and how the company can navigate them to come out ahead.

Fending off the content platforms

Infrastructure competitors

Next-generation talent representation

Affinity group-specific solutions

The future for Patreon

Reading time for this article is about 16 minutes. Feature illustration by Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch.

Fending off the content platforms

Creators heavily use content distribution sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and others to publish their work and engage with their fans. Given the amount of effort expended on these platforms, it seems inevitable that they would find value in running their membership businesses through them as well.

Indeed, these platforms — particularly Facebook and YouTube — are investing significant resources into building out full-featured tools for creators to generate revenue directly from their fans.

Facebook is the top threat to Patreon, although others are also certainly important to watch.

The top distribution platforms have three advantages against Patreon. First, they have enormous budgets, plain and simple. Second, they already count most of the world’s creators and fans as users. YouTube, for example, may not be a hub for podcasts or for poetry, but the vast majority of podcasters and poets already have YouTube accounts … as do most of their fans. These platforms don’t need to do customer acquisition in the traditional sense, they just need existing users to test out new features.

Third, they have a major advantage with user convenience. It’s easier to convert a fan who is wavering on the idea of becoming a patron when the button to do so is right there in front of them. That fan is probably already logged into their YouTube account so that one click could be all that’s needed — no new account creation on Patreon.com.

Facebook and YouTube want fan-creator revenue

Content platforms see new revenue streams in the fan-creator relationship now. More of them are testing ways for creators to directly monetize fans rather than solely operate off ad revenue. This is driven by 1) increasing saturation in the digital ad market, 2) greater awareness of best business practices from the gaming sector, such as enabling superfans to spend money on extra perks, and 3) deeper understanding of China’s dominant social platforms which have long had features like tipping as revenue streams.

Facebook has been building out dedicated functionality for creators. Its Creator App is a unified inbox of Facebook comments, Instagram comments, and Messenger chats, plus a unified analytics dashboard to help creators understand who their fans are. This app could quickly evolve into the type of business infrastructure that Patreon is building to help creators manage their superfan relationships and get them to spend more.

Ominously, Facebook has been aggressively testing a variety of monetization options for creators. Among them:

Creator Memberships: users who join a creator’s $4.99 per month membership tier get exclusive content and a supporter badge next to their name.

Subscription Groups: creators can set a price of $4.99 through $29.99 per month for fans to join a private Facebook Group, which already has a Group Insights tool to get analytics on the most active participants, the most engaged posts, and the demographics of group members.

Facebook Stars: a virtual currency for tipping creators on gaming live streams. Fans buy a pack of Stars, and Facebook takes a 5-30% cut depending on how much they spend, while creators get $0.01 for each Star fans send them.

A marketplace for matching creators with businesses for branded content campaigns and sponsorship deals, similar to the Niche marketplace that Twitter acquired.

Facebook isn’t alone in attempting to leverage its platform to help monetize creators. YouTube has been hard at work as well.

In June 2018, it rolled out “Channel Memberships.” Creators with at least 50,000 subscribers to their channel can offer a $4.99 per month membership to their fans that provides access to exclusive live streams, members-only posts in the creator’s Community tab, custom emojis to use in YouTube comments, and a badge that appears next to the user’s name to mark them as a member. YouTube keeps 30% ($1.50 each) of the revenue from Channel Memberships, which includes payment processing costs.

Other fan monetization features on YouTube now include:

Super Chat: when there is a live comments feed next to the video during Live Streams and Premieres, fans can pay to have their comments highlighted and temporarily pinned to the top so more people read them.

Merchandise: creators with at least 10,000 subscribers can create custom merchandise to offer their fans through an integration with Teespring. Featured merchandise then appears underneath the creator’s YouTube videos. Teespring pays YouTube a commission on all the sales this generates for them and YouTube shares a portion of that commission back with creators.

Ticketing: through integrations with Eventbrite and Ticketmaster, creators can promote and sell tickets to their live events directly from the YouTube pages where fans are watching their videos.

Beyond Facebook and YouTube, there are a bunch of other content platforms with fan-creator revenue models that could undermine Patreon’s ambitions. Amazon-owned Twitch has subscriptions similar to YouTube’s Channel Memberships, while Medium has a freemium model where creators can paywall their writing and then get a cut of the overall revenue based on the amount of “applause” their posts received. So far, Twitter and Snap seem to be non-players in this market.

Patreon faces two major risks from the rise of fan-creator monetization features on content platforms, beyond just company-to-company competition. Even if Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms release a fairly weak set of features, Patreon could face a “death by a thousand cuts” scenario. In aggregate, those features could reduce pressure on creators to find an independent platform to drive their superfans to. It also means that those platforms have the credit card info of a creator’s superfans as well, reducing the switching costs of leaving Patreon.

Second, Patreon envisions itself as the nucleus of a creator’s membership business, plugging into all the other platforms where they post content and engage fans using the Patreon API. But such integrations require collaborations with the distribution platforms. They now integrate with Reddit, but if other platforms are developing monetization tools of their own (even if not in direct competition), they may view a Patreon API integration as competitive with their own offering and refuse to collaborate. If Patreon doesn’t connect to the platforms creators use most often, it makes its service a much less compelling option.

Both companies could hit Patreon hard if they wanted to. Facebook in particular is such a powerful potential competitor because if it built its own robust version of a creator CRM it could provide creators unrivaled data on who their superfans are and how best to engage them. Plus, consumers actually read their Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp messages (unlike messages sent to subscribers to a YouTuber’s channel).

Via Eric Peckham https://techcrunch.com

[allmymisters]

For the Love of Notes

I know you have Science class in here and I hope it’s ok to write you, but I think you’re really cute. Mr. Carr is in a good mood today, I think he might have had a date with Mrs. Cart this weekend. Ha ha! Hope to see you in the hallway again. I also just realized we went to pre-school together and I have a picture of you. If you write me back just leave it here for me.

Bye.

I remember writing a note to Alan Cormen in 7th grade. I left the note for him in my science lab drawer because I knew he sat at the same table. He wasn’t interested. Most the boys I had crushes on back then weren’t interested. When I moved to Richmond, I had the biggest crush of my life that lasted from eight grade through high school. I also wrote him a note commenting on his beauty and skateboarding skills. That also was a failed attempt at written confessions of love.

From 8th grade until the end of high school, notes were the highlights of my day. I never knew when I was going to get one or who it would be from. My girlfriends mostly exchanged with me all day and it was easy to scribe the bubble letters of yore while in Ms. Pilkington’s English class. I would occasionally get notes from my guy friends as well, usually with Misfits, Metallica, Iron Maiden, or skateboarding graffiti adorning them. I cannot forget the actual folding of the notes, you had to do the one with the “tab” that you would pull out to open it and people actually wrote the word “PULL” on it. Sometimes they would get elaborate and show up as triangles or origami. Notes would get passed in the hallway between periods, they were in my locker when I changed books, and sometimes you’d find them mysteriously in your notebook. I remember Freshmen year, sitting in Mr. Wilt’s World Studies class and exchanging notes with Meredith Snellings consisting only of lyrics from The Smiths, and I remember the notes I’d get from my friend Sara who had beautiful penmanship and always wrote incredibly concise and intellectual letters on music or a guy or the punk rock show we went to the past weekend. It was also where you penned your scandalous gossip:

What were Lindsey and MaryBeth doing at the show?! Those girls are such harlots trying to get with the guys in our scene. Oh and did you know that Nicki Owen is pregnant! I guess she won’t be on the cheerleading squad for much longer. I saw her crying in the bathroom. See you at lunch!

Yes we used the word “harlots” because it sounded better than “slut”. We also had NOTEbooks which were passed around between a group of friends. Each period a different girl would write and then pass it on the next. The first time a boy said he loved me was on a note, claiming I was the raddest girl at school. Swoon. Then he wrote me a letter two weeks later breaking up with me and then I wrote a letter to him telling him to fuck off. Notes were such a huge part of how we communicated back then and it was exciting if you got a note handed to you. Notes were the way to confess untold secrets, to profess love, and to tell your best friend she was being an asshole at lunch trying to be too cool. You’d discuss the new CD you bought over the weekend, write poetry, or plan out secret parties. It would come on loose leaf, colored or sometimes sketch book paper, but always with doodles or lots of hearts and signed with a LYLAS (Love ya like a sis) or Later Sk8ter or a See Ya . It was special because you knew they were taking time out of their day to put pen to paper.

So now, we have email, text, and video chatting, and to be honest when email came out I treated it with as much enthusiasm as I did getting notes. In the beginning, I’d light up with joy looking at my inbox. The emails I receive currently consist of telling me what to do, what to buy, how to buy it, what bills to pay, when to go to things, where to get the best deal, and so forth. I haven’t received a proper personal email in almost…6 years. Sure, I’ve received “Likes”, Emojis, texts pages long, but none of that written communication excites me, it’s just become commonplace and sometimes the only time you receive anything worth reading is to tell you that you’re being a certain way. It’s become a place where people can abbreviate feelings and sentiments, a text can have some pretty involved meaning, but something about it lingering there and the urge to have to answer it right away takes away from the significance, to me. Not even through Facebook Messenger do I receive a lot of correspondence. It’s all very direct and with serious need. It’s the place you contact people you don’t have email addresses for. I still find it oddly strange to announce the death and births and marriages online. There’s something impersonal about it, it lacks the tangibility of the sentiments. And yes, Facebook has replaced the folded papers of youth, but what are people actually saying on your wall? “HBD”? “I saw that!” “I was at that show!” Pruned and lackluster remarks.

When I lived in New York, each restaurant I dined in had postcards. I loved that. I used to sit and eat and actually write out a postcard to people and send it on the way home. I think we all still feel something when we get home and there is a card or a letter for us in the mail. The feel of it alone to tear open an envelope handwritten and addressed to you. When I was internet dating, I made it part of my criteria for them to have to correspond with me in some pen to parchment form. Seems odd to some, but I found it entertaining, the notes I’d get or the photo of notes I’d get if they were remote. The ones who actually carried it out were the ones I gave my time to, you can only get so many horrid dick pics in a day. I’d get post it notes:

Here lies my favorite thing to eat at lunch. Doesn’t it look delicious?

Then there was an arrow drawn to the sandwich.

I’d leave notes like this on my way out of Mister’s apartment and he told me he loved waking up to them, but he would rather wake up to me instead, (insert gagging here). Sweet right?

Thank you so much for the wonderful evening. Coffee is ready and I hope to see you later.

My ex husband and I were legendary for the notes he would leave each other, especially like when he would leave early for a tour:

I’m going to miss you so much baby. Have a great day! I love you!

or when I used to come by his apartment when we were dating and he wasn’t there:

Hi! I came by to say hello and see if you wanted to get something to eat. I listened to that Miles Davis CD you leant me and it was good! I’ll be around later if you want to hang.

to after 5 years of marriage, me leaving these types of notes:

Can you please take out the fucking trash and put the dishes away!

I think the art of letter writing has gone out with the art of conversation. I’m a sentimental fool, I have letters from decades ago that I keep in a box because one day I had hoped to share it with my kids and grandkids as a kind of historical recollection of the person I was or written proof of words of love that were volleyed back and forth between misters. To me, there is still something magical about receiving a letter. It’s the same feeling you get when you open a book, you know?

I decided that this year I would get back into letter writing or at least postcard writing. I was in Stella’s for lunch the other day and they had one in the checkbook, so I wrote a note to a friend of mine in Richmond. Seems silly, but I know when he got it he was thrilled.

Hi there! I’m sitting at Stella’s and was thinking about that place we used to go to in New York when you came to visit. OMG, I miss that place. This red wine I’m drinking right now is freakin’ delicious. How are you? We haven’t seen each other in ages, we should hang sometime soon. I hope all is well and I just wanted to send a hello and how are you. Tell Jamie hello for me!

Ciao, J

Who knows, maybe it will be reciprocated and I will come home to something other than what I owe someone or 20% off at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Mr. Spectacular started collecting nice pens and inks when we stopped seeing each other, I will bet anything he’s never written one love letter with them. Sometimes it’s nice looking at the pen strokes and not having the immediate urge to reply back, but when you do, it will take time and effort. We have gone back to collecting records, making cassette tapes, and going to barber shops, so why not delve into the lost art of writing. You remember that thing you do with a pen, right? If you want to really mess with someone, write one in cursive and send it to a millenial. They will think it’s some coded instruction. But, seriously, how much would you make someone’s day by simply sending a postcard. Have fun!

[witchembrace-a]

🥺 😬 🧠🤝

why aren't we interacting?

🥺 [ pleading ]﹕ I am very shy in general.

OH MAN SO TRUE..... i totally get u pocket dw!!!! i promise i dont bite tho owo

😬 [ grimace ]﹕ We have interacted before, but I worry that I will bother you if I reach out to plot / talk out of character.

HEY HEY HEY. i promise its completely fine to come into my dms for plotting!!!! please just bear with me if im slow to reply bc tumblr is a bitch dijfijdkdsd

🧠 [ brain ]﹕ I’m struggling to think of ideas for interactions, or my ideas are vague and consist only of specific Vibes™️

give those thoughts to me and i can help solidify them dskodfkjdfkjds

🤝 [ handshake ]﹕ My muse is an original character with familial ties to your canon character, and I don’t know how to approach you to start plotting.

AELIA IS SO ADORABLE GIMME HER. GIMME HER GIVE ROLAND HIS BBY GIRL RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW.

[witchembrace-a]

@fcrgiven inquired:

he sits before a shallow grave marred by years of age, a gravestone well maintained to the best of his ability. the sound of rain is a cacophany of noise only combated by his mind. he prays, calloused and shaken hands clasped together. the original feeling of dirt beneath his nails as he dug the grave amidst a storm like this feeling remarkably new. "i wish you were still here," he mutters. though he doubts his brother is there to hear him. "i wish i had taken your place." yasuo weeps. the only vulnerability and show of pain he could muster; always in front of yone. "i miss you so much, brother."

it isn't a normal occurrence for him to want to visit his own grave, as it only serves as a harsh reminder of his past mistakes, his past failures. however, he happens to wander around there every once in a while, such as today, always wondering why his gravestone is so well-maintained even after all this time. and today is when he finally gets his answer, though it's not quite one that he expects to find. as he approaches the well-kept marker, the sight of his trembling, weeping brother comes into view.

he almost wants to laugh.

why, now, is yasuo saddened by his death ? isn't he the one that killed him ? if it wasn't for him, yone would still be there, right at his side. but stories don't always have happy endings. and the tale of the two brothers, one unforgotten, the other unforgiven, should have already ended by now. and yet . . . he still walks the same earth as him, though yone is merely a shadow of the man he once was. he silently slots himself next to the younger, saying nothing. just simply stares at the tombstone, doing his best to avoid any contact with yasuo.

even as a single tear runs down his face.

i missed you too, brother.

and yet that bitter, boiling anger still bubbles up inside of yone, akin to a volcano mere seconds from a catastrophic eruption. emotions mix and meld and spin, tugging his heart and mind in several directions at once. he doesn't know what to say, what to do, or what to believe, so opting for silence is his solution, even if it isn't really one. he's content to just . . . sit there.