#it was either a tiny jar that was double the price

[sherlock-is-ace]

i just bought an ungodly amount of curry powder so i better learn how to cook

[twig-gy]

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Just wrote this review about a candle set I got for 5.95 on Amazon.

The best thing about these is the pretty container they come in. They are a bit smaller than I thought they’d be but for the price it’s actually fair. I just wish they burned longer. I felt like they lasted about as long as a tea light candle, but I think they are probably about the size of two or more at least.

I’m not mad I got them though, because it’s a nice little jar you can clean out and put little things in. Or if you’re a hoarder like previous generations of my family, you’ll get these and be pleased with what you got and since they are pretty small you can really pack them in somewhere. A definite plus to this purchase. My grandma would have absolutely LOVED these. She was a huge hoarder but she mostly contained it in back areas of the tiny house she lived in for like 70 years.

She had an entire Dollar general im that back room. 70 years of stuff!’ A lot of candles! 70! Thats 490 in dog years. Could you imagine a dog that is 490 years old ? Maybe one of the oldest men in the Bible that lived for like 1200 years had dogs that lived to be 490. These candles actually look like they might have come from some area in the Bible like the middle east or something, like that kind of design. The pictures really don’t do them justice. They look really shiny in the pictures both in the original ad here on the Amazon and in any of the nearly 250 photos I’ve taken of these to finally get the shot I’m including. I have OCD and things just have to be a certain way. If they aren’t I will really obsess over it. That is one of two reasons I rated these candles so high, that I do not regret purchasing them nor do I obsess about it. Sorry, was that a double negative? Oops. Anyway then second reason is that is that the design does look like it came from biblical stuff and that means burning the candle will really bring you blessings. It’s clearly a non denominational candle but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Finally I’d like to add that my 18 year old daughter and thriving art student, upon smelling the candles, felt that they were very heavily scented. Take that for what you will, but I feel like despite what my child thinks (I love her but she’s kind of off, there’s one on those every generation I think, and she’s it. I blame it on her dad’s genes. She can’t help it though. Maybe his poor genetic makeup caused him to be sensitive to smells that really aren’t that strong, and he passed it down to my child. Maybe he and I both had recessive genes and they matched up. Either way, I regret marrying him. I do not regret my daughter, I love her very much despite her weird sense of smell ( I mean she wears A TON Of perfume so I don’t

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get why she’d think a tiny little candle would smell so strong) .

I think if someone else feels this way they should just burn it in a super stinky area. Like near a litter box. Did you know the Amazon has like 800 dollar litter boxes? I bet if Kim Kardashian had a Kat (haha get it with the Ks) she would have one of those. Maybe gold plated? My cat really has problems with producing smelly movements in her box and stuff. I’m not sure if that is normal, I guess it might have something to do with the fact that we haven’t been getting her food or her box or her litter from the Amazon. She gets a nice brand food. I wonder if there were 490 year old cats? Sorry I hate to go off topic, back to Kim K. She likely wouldn’t have a cat in that minimalist home of hers, with the white furniture that is the entire expanse of her living room that she will literally not allow her children to be on. She’d be afraid of cat fur or puke or whatever. What’s the point! Don’t you want to enjoy life? Let your kids be happy? Kids need a pet, and more often than not a cat is the best option, they are super self maintenance, just grab all your supplies here on the Amazon, including these strongly scented candles for their olfactory crimes. Kim, get them a cat.

Maybe you should ask them first though, I once tried to force my son to adopt a lizard on his birthday and it was so wrong of me. No one should be surprise gifted an animal they might not even be able to look at. He would have preferred this candle set, which by the way I am unsure if I mentioned it came in a nice little box that I looked at for at least a full minute before putting it in the recycling. Usually I toss em straight in, but you, I thought about keeping you, mon frere, my little box, you deserved a minute of my attention. I bet you’re the prettiest box being recycled in all of today. Of course the Amazon also put it inside another bigger box, like little Russian nesting dolls for free of charge. I love them.

So I keep slipping off topic and forgetting to continue to talk about what’s really important here, Kim kardashian and her children. Kim,You’re so filthy rich you could buy like 8 million sofas. I don’t know if they have living room size sofas on Amazon but you can search that up. Respond below if you find a good deal. And listen Kim, you could get like 8 million of these candles right here, and burn them all, just watch the flames as California has seen enough fire. #notajoke #forrealthatwasawful #sad #prayforcalifornia #itsliterallyalwaysonfire

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Anyone who lost their homes in those fires asks you to please burn these beautiful candles, that I mildly enjoyed, in a safe and responsible manner. Don’t use them to light sparklers for your children on the Fourth of July! No one needs to burn a candle outside in the July unless it’s a citronella anti mosquito candle (they have some great deals on those here on the Amazon) or if it’s a special event, like a formal event. I do not recommend these candles for anything other than small tiny little table candles and I don’t think they match most wedding decor. One of the patterns does have flowers that look like cannabis (can I say that? It’s true!) so I imagine if you are opposed to that sort of thing you won’t want these and it might clash with your floral arrangements. Also not good for lihjtingnoathways or using as a candle in your hand to light your way. It’s not bright enough, and it gets too hot and you can’t really hold onto it, so you’ll need to find say, a lantern with a handle if you want to sneak out into the garden at night to go to the garden and think about whether you really want to marry this person…floral arrangements or not.

So, since I mentioned weddings I realize that like many marriages, the flames (of my candle set) have blown out. If anyone wants to buy me more, let me know. There’s a candle, here on the Amazon, that burns for 110 hours though, so I’d rather have that, please. Thank you and good luck in your candling, friend. If that’s not a word, it should be. As you can see by the way I really pressed the point about these candles, that they are far more than just a smell to cover up cat diarrhea.

Oh! And I should mention, the scent of these candles kind of ran together, and there’s no proper labeling on them to tell me what is what. I felt that they smelled kind of vanilla but my 18 year old daughter, who has found out about my pending review here and my scathing comments about her genetic makeup, is insisting that I remove her from this content. I’m not going to however, I feel that what I said needs to be noted. When I said she was off, I never meant anything bad. She’s just, like the candles, different in a good way! Being normal is boring, if you’re reading this my dear child. If you insist I will buy you a candle set here on Amazon, and I won’t judge you for having literally no real idea of what it smells like. Since I’m being so non judgemental here (this review has been really cathartic for me guys) I just want to say to Kim K, I do feel a tad bad about what I said to you. Clearly you could never have a cat, since your children’s father is Kanye West, who I believe Wikipedia says is legally not allowed to be around animals. We also know you’re busy with the nba choosing your skims line of underwear/shapewear/things.

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I would try them but Amazon does not currently carry them. Again no judgement, but Amazon sells these no name, supposedly strongly scented candles, but they do not carry your Skims.

Enough about Kim, I tried to get her to buy all of the basketball players in the NBA with cats some of these candles and she won’t do it, again another analogy she procreated with Kanye west but she won’t gift deserving NBA players a candle set. Way to miss that basket, Kim.

No matter what has been said about anything in this short explanation of this candle set; my children, hard of smelling or not; are the most important thing to me. Thank you Amazon for allowing me to be able to feed my children and enjoy mediocre products like this candle set at the same time. Kinda low key sus that you want me to pay $9.95 for grocery delivery if I don’t spend $50, but there’s a time and a place for that and this is not it. I’ve probably already reached the 500 character limit on this chat box anyway.

So I haven’t forgotten my son as I said, this review wouldn’t be complete, seeing as how I mentioned my older child by that I had with my first husband who never let me buy jack squat on the Amazon, biblical candles or no, anyway, look kid, I’m sorry about the lizard thing. I’ll make it up to you one day. It might take me 1200 years, but that’s like 2 and a half 490 year old dogs, or like the six of these candles that you’d need to burn them all day long times 365 days in a year times 1200 years, it might take me keeping that flame going, but I promise you one day we’ll be free, free of the tyranny…I mean, one day I will make it up to you. And I hope that to those who are reading this, may your decision on this purchase weigh heavily on your heart, mind and soul, because they come in a nice container, and that really saved the purchase for me.

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remind me to add ids in a rb later or something but i am now deathly afraid of my mom /silly

[sevlgi]

bubblegum pop

requested: no

group: twice

pairing: sana x fem!reader

genre: fluff

contents: rich girl!sana, college!au, cashier!reader.

warnings: none

synopsis: An unfortunately hostile encounter with the school’s sweetest rich girl might just lead to more than you ever expected.

a/n: inspired by @pearicot​‘s mean girl rosie series! (by the way, i’m not trying to feed into the “dumb sana” stereotype with this; i just thought that her personality fitted the character i was trying to achieve! does anyone wanna request continuations or scenarios in this universe 👀

word count: 3.3k

Something about Mondays the week of finals always got you in a bad mood, especially when you had  to work double shifts at the same stupid ice cream shop you’d worked at for the past 2 years of college. 

So maybe, just maybe, there was reasoning behind you snapping at the love of your life during your first meeting.

Actually, there really, really wasn’t.

There were plenty of mean girls on campus who you wouldn’t regret yelling at whatsoever, but you just happened to blow up at one of the considerably nicer rich girls.

Minatozaki Sana didn’t mean anything bad when she innocently held out a hundred dollar bill to pay for a $5 ice cream. She didn’t mean to seem pretentious, nor did she mean to mock you and your minimum-wage job, but you just so happened to take it that way.

“Really? You have to rub it in my face like that?”

Sana stared at you, the money that she held out wavering in the ear. “Sorry?”

Pinching the space between your eyebrows, you huffed out an exasperated breath. Luckily, there was no one else in the shop about to witness the stupidest meltdown of your life. “You think I don’t know that I’m poor? It’s five dollars for God’s sake, no need to bring out the big guns. Oh, or are you doing this to avoid seeming more pretentious with your daddy’s black card?”

The brunette’s hand retreated quickly, the heels of her Louboutins clacking softly against the pastel-toned linoleum of the ice cream shop. Fuck, you hated that linoleum. “I... I didn’t mean any of that, I swear! Um, is there an ATM near here?”

Once again, the girl meant well, and you took it badly. You scoffed, glaring disbelievingly at her. Some part of you was screaming out that you were putting your entire job at stake, and your morals as well, but you disregarded any common sense remaining in your brain. “An ATM for 5 bucks? Dude, just don’t.” Dipping your hand into the tip jar, you scrounged out a lousy crumpled bill and threw it down on the counter, shoving the bubblegum-flavored sweet to Sana. “Okay? Now get out, I don’t want to see your privileged ass anywhere near here.”

The dense gray clouding your mind somehow missed the hurt expression on the girl’s face as the staff door swung open. Wendy’s hands, though gentle on your shoulders, shoved you behind her with surprising force. “I am so sorry, Sana, it’s finals week. Surely you can understand? The ice cream’s on the house.”

“No, of course it’s okay!” Sana sounded genuine enough, that was for sure; you caught her glancing worriedly at you a couple times, nothing malicious whatsoever in her eyes. “I can pay though, are you sure?”

“I’m sure. See you in class,” Wendy called out, smiling all the while until the girl disappeared into the Lamborghini parked by the curb. As soon as that happened, she turned back to you, concern tugging at the corner of her lips. “Y/N...”

“Yeah, I know,” you mumbled as you crossed your arms. Already, you were regretting what you said, though you were far too stubborn to actually apologize on the spot. “No arguing with customers about capitalism. Sorry, Wendy.”

The girl bit her lip, scanning the store to make sure that there wasn’t about to be an influx of customers. Usually she enjoyed working with you; you just had absolutely terrible mood swings sometimes, and those days were nothing short of hellish for her to deal with. “Just head home. Focus on your finals, and come back next week. Okay?”

You hesitated to agree, knowing that you needed the money, but the grim expression on Wendy’s face told you that you had no other option. “Okay. Sorry.”

As you snatched up your stuff and shoved the door to the street open, you missed the sight of Sana watching you through the tinted windows of her 6-figure car.

“Really? Sana?”

“I know,” you groaned, biting down on the plastic spoon in your mouth. The flavor of the month (the only one you could eat completely free) lingered unpleasantly on your tongue, the taste of it oddly salty. “She was so nice about it, too.”

Jeongyeon and Mina exchanged glances, not touching their respective cups of “Ocean Caramel” either. It was extremely kind of them to come and accompany you on the slow days, both of them even offering to suffer through the gross ice cream with you.  “If it was Park Roseanne I might understand, but Sana,” Mina winced. Jeongyeon nodded in agreement; after all, everyone on campus knew about the reputations of Roseanne and Sana.

On one end of the “rich girl” spectrum, Roseanne was quite possibly the bitchiest one of all. She and her Bugatti Veyron, the college upgrade from her old McLaren, absolutely weren’t to be messed with. People who went to high school with you often told story of the G Wagon she smashed, the locker room she lit on fire, and so many other horror tales of a spoiled girl gone wild. You were sure that had you gone off on her, even Wendy wouldn’t have stopped you.

But on the other end, Sana was notoriously kind. Sure, her family raked in an income close to that of the other girl’s, and her wardrobe was just as expensive, but she made a point to donate to charities every time she went shopping. She tipped in the hundreds, and she didn’t ever ask for her designer clothes back when she lent them to strangers. She paid any dinner bill in full when she was there, and sometimes even when she wasn’t invited.

No one was entirely sure about the relationship between the two, but Roseanne seemed to hate Sana more than she did other people. The two fought publicly occasionally, but Sana’s kind heart made it so that even Roseanne couldn’t carry a fight very long. She didn’t respond to insults, it seemed, nor did she ever seem to actually take them personally. 

Stirring her half-melted soup, Mina continued, “Hopefully she doesn’t hold it against you. She doesn’t seem like the type, but...”

Jeongyeon shook her head, opening her mouth just as the doorbell rang. You froze when you looked up to find a designer-dressed bombshell, a sweet smile outlined in Chanel Rouge Allure. She looked completely out of place amidst tired college kids spending their last paycheck on ice cream, white gauzy sleeves and blue dress shimmering under LED lights. If you were being honest, you’d say that she was the most beautiful person you’d seen in your life, but you were always well versed in lying to yourself. “Y/N, you better go.”

“Why?” you whined, pouting at your much more responsible friends. They ignored your puppy face, though; Jihyo was usually the only one you could sway, Momo sometimes if she was feeling merciful. “I’m on break.”

“Only when there’s no customers,” Mina argued, shoving you to stand. Jeongyeon smiled at you, waving you away. “Go, and don’t screw it up this time.”

You forced a smile onto your face when you reached the counter, bowing and adjusting your name tag. “Hi, what can I help you with today?”

“Hi, Y/N!” Sana grinned, bowing back. The fact that she remembered your name only made your guilt worse; if she forgot who you were, you could at least pretend that she didn’t remember the incident at all. “Ah, could I have the same thing as last time? Bubblegum Pop ice cream, on a sugar cone today. 3 scoops?”

Nodding, you moved to open the case, avoiding the girl’s gaze as you did. “Of course.” She was quiet at that, staring at the ceiling so as not to rush you. Without prompting, you blurted, “I’m... I’m really sorry about last week, by the way. I don’t know what I was thinking, blowing up at you like that.”

“Oh, no, it’s okay!” she protested, waving a manicured hand in the air. “I promise I understand you. We all have our bad days.”

You wanted to apologize again, if just to assuage your guilt, but you held off on it, joking, “How do you deal with them? Yell at Gucci assistants?”

Sana looked honestly offended as she accepted the cone proffered to her, eyes widening in shock. “I’ve never done that, I swear! Besides, I don’t like Gucci much.”

A light smile quirking at the corners of your lips, you handed the receipt to her as well. She didn’t ask for it, probably not caring about the measly price or having the space for it in her tiny bag, but took it anyway. “I’m sure you don’t. Your total is $5.23, will that be cash or card?”

“Cash!” She held out a 10 dollar bill, pride shining behind that gorgeous face as you raised your eyebrows in surprise. When your hands brush together, you were reminded of how much better she was than you, how you probably weren’t worthy at all to be touching her with your shop-issued baseball cap and grimy apron. But Sana doesn’t seem to mind, still smiling that airy smile at you and not moving away. She broke your stare by offering, “I don’t want to sound rude, but keep the change.”

“Not rude at all,” you fully laughed that time, dishing out the remainder to stuff in your tip jar. You still felt terrible that she felt the need to apologize about such a normal comment, asking, “Are you sure it’s okay? You can have this one free too, if it makes up for me shouting at you...”

Sana shook her head, sugary light pink already mixing into her lipstick. She walked away, still waving with that gorgeous smile on her face. “It’s okay. I’ll see you soon, Y/N, you look really pretty today!”

Turning back to your friends, you whispered, “Damn. She’s really nice.”

You planned on spending your one day off from school and work cozied up with a good book and your favorite hot drink, but you supposed that getting into a fight with Park Roseanne wasn’t the worst way to go either.

As soon as you entered campus, book in hand and blasting music in your earbuds, you found a crowd of at least 3 dozen people right in front of the library building. It was unlike you to butt into others’ business, especially when it might lead to a ruined day, but Roseanne’s voice carried loud over the hushed whispers of everyone else. “--huh, Sana?”

It wasn’t any of your business, but for some reason, Roseanne’s tone when saying Sana’s name angered you immensely. Frowning, you shouldered your way through the crowd. The closer you got to the center, the more expensive the clothing that brushed against your own rough jean jacket was, cotton and leather becoming silk and velvet. You originally planned to just fit in with the other spectators, but with a shove at the small of your back, you were thrust into the center too.

To your shock, Sana’s eyes were red and shining with tears, the tip of her nose cherry-colored as well. Her head was almost bowed as she stared at her shoes, but she looked up to you when you almost bumped into her. You stuttered out, “H-hey. What’s going on?”

Instead of an explanation from the Japanese girl, though, your gaze was drawn to the blonde across the courtyard. “Didn’t you hear? Little Miss Perfect here got broken up with,” Roseanne scoffed, an infuriating smirk on her perfect face as she tilted her head at you. “By a future CEO, no less. I guess she isn’t a gold-digger, or maybe there’s some other reason that he didn’t want her anymore.”

Your hand shot out to protect Sana, a scowl making its way onto your own face. “Excuse me? From my standpoint, any future CEO is still way outta her league, so forgive me for doubting that he’s the one who didn’t want her. You’re the one dating someone who makes a tenth of what you do.”

Roseanne rolled her eyes, lips thinning. “Don’t talk about my girlfriend like that, Y/L/N, or you’ve got another thing coming. There aren’t many lesbians in this damn school.”

“You know me, don’t you?” Sana’s voice was wavering as she spoke, but it was strong enough to echo in the courtyard. To your surprise (and somewhat satisfaction), the blonde  girl’s eyes widened as Sana stood forward, her lips jutting forward. “That’s why I’m not dating him anymore. I like girls, too.”

Somehow, you’d never expected that Sana was attracted to girls, but it made perfect sense. An irrational part of you wanted to cheer, but instead, you forced yourself to speak.

“R-right.” You continued to glare at Roseanne, who finally seemed to be speechless. “Yeah, so how come you’re tearing Sana down? We should be supporting each other, but you’re being so rude to someone so kind, and that says all I need to know about you.”

Reaching out, you latched onto Sana’s upper arm and pulled her out of the circle, people parting to let the two of you through as Roseanne wasn’t able to conjure up something to respond with. You didn’t stop walking until there was only silence surrounding you under the shade of a swaying tree, finally stopping to let the girl sit. “Are you okay?” you asked, brow furrowed as you knelt to be mostly face-level with her.

Somehow, there was a smile on her face; a slightly snotty smile, but nonetheless the most beautiful one you’d ever seen in your life. You ignored the uncomfortable leap of your heart when you reached out to take her hands into your own, somehow forgetting about the hostility you’d felt towards her from the beginning. “You- you stood up for me.”

“Yeah. I did, I guess,” you shrugged, smiling slightly. “I’m sure that was rough, though, to come out. How’re you feeling?”

“Honestly, much better,” Sana sighed. She leaned back, fingers curling slightly around yours as the afternoon sun shone golden brown in the locks of hair spread out on her shoulders. “It was good to get it off my chest. I didn’t even know you were into girls, you know.”

Reaching up to scratch your head, you chuckled, “Well, I am, if it makes you feel any better. What happened between the two of you, by the way? She seems to hate you so much.”

The girl laughed, as bubbly and airy as her regular voice. “I may or may not have dated her girlfriend before. But it was a long time ago, and I’m still friends with her! Roseanne just can’t forgive me.”

You feigned shock, swatting at her arm. “How terrible of you! I’m so disappointed.”

You were stuck simply smiling at each other for a good minute or so before you looked away, picking at your shoelace for something to do. “So. Uh, Roseanne knew the whole time?”

“She did,” Sana confirmed, nodding. “She just never talked about it.”

“Well, it’s good to know that she isn’t the only other one in the school with me,” you sighed, sitting back on your heels.

Sana lurched back forward, hands clasping together at her chest. “Then we should celebrate! We can go shopping or something, and we can just be happy that we aren’t alone anymore.”

It suddenly struck you how quickly you could change the girl’s entire outlook, a smile coming onto her face with no effort from you whatsoever. But even more surprising, you smiled even larger than she did just looking at her. 

Laughing, you sat back on your heels and shook your head lightly. Seeming to take it as a rejection, Sana’s eyes widened. “Oh, only if you want to, of course! We can go wherever you want, we don’t even have to go shopping if you don’t want to!”

“No, we can go shopping,” you answered, reaching back over to squeeze her hand and pulling her up with you when you stood. “Come on, then. Let’s go celebrate.”

Sana wasn’t a great driver, but you didn’t expect much else. You were practically sick to your stomach by the time that you reached the mall, face green as you swayed out of the car.

“Ah, Y/N, I’m sorry!” Her hands rubbed lightly at your back as you squatted in the parking lot, fist held tight to your mouth. It wasn’t like you were actually going to throw up, but you didn’t want to risk ruining the girl’s expensive shoes. “I’ll let you drive next time.”

Next time? you wanted to ask. But you managed to stand, nodding quickly to ease Sana’s worry. “Yeah. It’s fine, I’m fine. Should we go?”

Immediately, she latched onto your hand, swinging between the two of you as she started to rush forward. “H-hey, lock your car first!”

Sana had unsurprisingly expensive tastes, but also surprisingly understated ones. She was fun to shop with, that was for sure- she loved to offer you clothes and also to offer to pay for them, but you didn’t necessarily hate a pretty girl telling you you’d look gorgeous in a certain sparkly dress.

She didn’t do any of the typical stuck-up things you expected her to- Sana carried her own bags, and she never forced you to follow her instead of doing what you wanted to. She did like to try on outfits and show them to you, but that could be ignored when it was just another opportunity for you to stare at her.

Eventually, you ended up having ice cream at one of the stores in the mall. You balked at the price, but Sana swiped her credit card without hesitation. “I have to admit, this bubblegum doesn’t taste as good as yours,” she pouted.

Chuckling, you savored the rich flavor on your own tongue. “You should’ve picked an expensive flavor then. Vanilla and chocolate are always good in these kinds of stores.”

“You know a lot about ‘these kinds of stores’ for someone who claims to be poor,” she teased, eyes widening as soon as the words slipped out of her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean-”

“Nah, it’s fine,” you smiled, leaning on your palm. “I’m good with it, since we’re friends now.”

Sana grinned at that, her eyes curving charmingly. “We’re friends? Most people don’t want to be friends with me, I’m really glad you’re willing to.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Looking down for once, the girl mumbled, “They say I’m dumb. You know that everyone says I’m nice, but they also think I’m dumb because I pay for everything. I just want to be kind, but no one takes me seriously.”

A wave of guilt rushed over you for previously feeding into the stereotype. The more time you spent with Sana, the more you realized that she was as brilliant as any other, and far more kind. “Well, that’s stupid. You are kind, Sana, and you’re amazing. I’m lucky to be your friend.”

She clasped your hand over the table, soft skin warm over yours, pink flushing in her pale cheeks. “Thank you, Y/N. You know, this is the best time I’ve had in a while. My boyfriend didn’t even listen to me this well,” she laughed.

Despite the fact that she treated it as a joke, you felt horrible. She was all too used to thinking the worst about herself and not believing that she was worth any better, and that was the worst possible thing you could imagine for a girl with a heart of gold. Jabbing your spoon into the remaining ice cream, you blurted, “Then go on a date with me. A proper one, not just a normal hangout like this.”

Sana instantly blushed, looking down as if it’d hide her face at all. But she missed the heat that rose to your cheeks too, the nervous biting of your lip as you waited for a response. “I would love nothing more,” she smiled, her eyes shining brilliantly. “And I can’t wait.”

[remmushound]

Beyond the Bay Chapter 12 - Hidden City

Summary: The turtles go off in search of a new rift in the Hidden City

Tags: @brightlotusmoon @selfindulgenz @digitl-art-monstr @ilo-artistry

Leo hated every part of this. The sun was up, so they should be down, and out of sight. He had known his counterparts long enough to know how loose they often played with the rules his family followed so diligently, but to take to the streets under the danger of daylight for something that could easily wait for the blanket of night was absurd! In his two decades of life, Leo could count the amount of daylight explorations he had taken on two hands; the risk was hardly ever worth it. Despite the prickling insecurities inside him, Leo pushed himself onward to follow Raphael’s lead. This city was so familiar, yet so foreign at the same time. So easy to get lost in. Leo found himself picking out familiar buildings to assure that this place was still New York, even in this toony world so colorful that he could almost believe a pallet of paint had been spilled over it. This was New York and New York would always be home, even if home was a whole dimension away.

Raphael’s guidance brought the group of anxious turtles to an alleyway. They dropped down from above; Leo felt a shutter go through his body, a cold chill seizing his senses and stealing away his breath as he passed through something that seemed almost… green. The sudden shock made him stutter, his balance unsteady enough to knock over a trash can upon landing. With a clutter and a clang the silver bin fell and rolled, several more loud crashes sounding off each time it hit something. The eyes of Donnie and Raph turned to the shock-stricken Leo, who could only stare with his wide, cerulean eyes. The people walking past in the streets to either side, just feet away from what they’d see as monsters, didn’t stopped. Leo let himself breathe and the three brothers, muscles still tensed and ready to hide at the slightest sign of trouble, moved back into a tight formation around their younger counterparts.

“What are we doing here?” Leo couldn’t contain it anymore and he had to ask. His voice was a low whisper. “We could be seen!”

“Relax.” Leonardo laughed, and his voice wasn’t at all soft. He was met with three sets of shhhhh from the Splintersons, but laughed each of them off, “This alleyway has a mystic shimmer. We can see them.” He cleared his throat, “BUT THEY CAN’T SEE OR HEAR US!”

True to his word, the people in the street kept on their way as if the turtles didn't even exist. So that was what Leo felt! What had made him stumble!  The cautious tension in Donnie was immediately replaced by heart-fluttering curiosity. He couldn’t resist a high-pitched whistle, striding away from the group before Leo could say a word to stop him; he went as close as he dared to the end of the alleyway, waving and laughing and calling out to the streets with, to his utter joy, no response.

“This is so cool this is so cool this is so cool!” Donnie’s voice got higher with each repeat, flapping his wrists, “W-what is it, some type of four-lensed blind spot? O-or something using metamaterials or—?”

“Noooo, it’s mystic.” Leonardo said, and with a snap of his fingers Michelangelo perked up. He removed a small item that had been hidden in the rainbow pouch around his neck, the artifact attached to him by a slim golden collar; it was almost like a keychain he hung around his neck. “And so is this.”

Leo eyed the little trinket curiously; in shape, it was similar to Donatello’s gift, except with greens and golds instead of orange and reds. He could have mistaken it for an oddly colored compass with kanji if he hadn’t seen that familiar, lop-sided M in the middle. The compass itself was pointing directly at the wall, glowing the most vibrant neon and pulsing slightly. Leo could feel the energy radiating.

With a hand as steady as a seasoned artist, Michelangelo traced the trinket across the wall using the M as a guiding map. Before the astonished eyes of the Splinterson brothers, the compass left what looked almost like a trail of paint in its wake, except it didn't drip, and when Michelangelo had completed his work it began to glow. It was green at first, then shifted into a soft baby blue, and then into white as the faux paint finally started to drip and melt into a doorway. Leo felt an immediate draw toward it, like the force that would try to lasso them into Leonardo’s rift except not as strong. Raph gave a simple hiss in response, pulling back and shaking his head while Donnie did the exact opposite, reaching for the rift as if it were the most precious treasure. 

“I thought only your Leo could make rifts…” Leo said.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Leonardo asked, dancing over to stand proud at Leo’s side, “Portals are the only way into the Hidden City!”

“Hidden City?” Raph breathed through his teeth, eyes still fixed on the rift.

“Yeah!” Raphael said unhelpfully, “You three should stay close to us; the mystic types can be pretty jarring for first timers.”

Raph started to say, “I think I can handle them” before he felt a gentle tug at his hand. Raph looked to see Michelangelo holding his hand, resting his full weight against Raphael’s arm without the older mutant so much as flinching. Michelangelo’s eyes were wide, the colors flowing in them like a warm sunset as he beamed up at his friend.

“Don’t be scared, Raphie! You can hold my hand if you want to!”

“Uh…” Looking down at this tiny, vibrant young shinobi that barely came up to his stomach in height, Raph couldn’t say anything except, “Y-yeah, sure. Thanks kid…”

Michelangelo have a happy giggle and wiggled his joy. He snatched Donnie with his other hand before the tallest box turtle could get very far.

“You can hold my hand too, Donna!”

“Donna?” Raph breathed through his nose, then laughed, “Hell yeah. Down with the patriarchy.”

Donnie, upon being grabbed by Michelangelo, had much the same reaction as Raph. He didn't know what to do, and then he fell to soft adoration as he realized he would do anything for this kid.

“Thanks Mike.”

“Can I hold your hand too?” Leo asked brightly

Michelangelo’s expression flattened. “Only got two hands, Leon.”

Donatello cleared his throat and stepped forward to motion the first group through the rift. “Please keep your hands and feet inside the mystic rift until the ride has ended, keep all personals close as we will not be liable for any limbs or items that may turn up missing. Keep your shells on, your heads low, and watch out for portal jackers as we take this small voyage to Run-Of-The-Mill pizza.”

With that, Michelangelo and the two other box turtles that had to crouch to be able to hold his hand went through the rift without fear. Leo, his mouth still hanging open, turned to look at Raphael, who could only shrug before going through the rift himself. 

“Lady’s first~” Leonardo gave what could have resembled a polite bow if not for the mocking tone, motioning Leo through first.

Leo sucked in a breath, shaking the nervous jitters like water off a duck's back before he stepped through. The pull was very much so like the rift he and his family had taken to wind up in this world to begin with, except less painful. When he opened his eyes again he was standing in… a restaurant?

The smell of cumin and Chili filled the air. The feeling of the polished floor under Leo’s feet was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Like ice, except not cold; soft, but hard at the same time if that was possible. His eyes adjusted to the darkness of the building and more details were quick to come to him; wooden booths with dark brown cushions and tables clean enough to shine under the candlelight that filled the restaurant; the candles, it seemed, were held up by nothing at all! They were shaped almost like they were living; Leo thought it nothing more than a cool design before he realized they actually were living! Living candles with curves and form almost like human women, their hair the flaming candle wicks and the bottom of their shafts flowing out like a ball gown! Closer still and Leo could even begin to make out tiny, detailed faces!

“You want your normal seats I presume?” 

Leo blinked and shook his head as the familiar voice brought him back down to earth. Though he hadn’t seen Hueso in just over two years, the skeleton man had hardly changed at all. The calaca’s white pupils danced across the group with a curious hum.

“And shall I double your usual then?” Hueso queried.

“Bone man!” Leonardo explained, scooping Hueso up in a hug before the older yokai could make his escape. “Good to see ya!”

“Wish I could say the same.” Hueso grumbled, then added bitterly, “Problem child…”

“And that’s why you love me!” Leonardo blew a kiss, “Now Hueso, you remember the other us’s, right?”

“Unfortunately, it’s a pleasure to remake your acquaintance.”

Hueso was met with three half-hearted mutters of greeting; none of the Splintersons were even looking at him! Why would they when there were so many different creatures to see? In most every booth and table and barstool were mutants out of a fantasy book; beings even Donnie couldn’t single out as anything familiar! Some of them had characteristics that could have been compared to more natural animals— tentacles and fangs and frills. Creatures as big as an elephant or small as a shrew, with varying table sizes to accommodate all in between.

“Hey, listen bone man.” Leonardo tried to whisk Hueso away for a private conversation, but Hueso ducked to avoid the fate. His eyes and Leonardo’s were locked until Leonardo backed down, “We need a favor.”

“Don’t you always?” Hueso asked, “Seems every time you come to pay a visit it is for your own gain.”

“What? Noooo! Me? Noo!” Leonardo scoffed, waving a dismissive hand and laughing before quickly giving up the ruse, “It’s important this time. We need to find a yokai who sells decent rifts at an affordable price, and we need it like yesterday if we want to get these boys home.”

Hueso hummed, bringing his fingers to his mouth as he considered. “Define affordable.”

“Somewhere in the price range of… eight hundred US dollars or nine thousand Japanese yen.” Donatello said.

Hueso hissed through his teeth. “You won’t get any that cheap. Cheapest I know of would be Monroe, but quality rifters at his place run upward to three million pesos.”

Donatello took out his phone and ran some quick calculations. “Okay guess we’re not eating this month.”

“Wish I could be of more help pepino.” Hueso said, turning to leave while he was still talking, “I’ll go get you directions to Monroe.”

~~~

“This looks like the place…” Donatello said, and he indicated a small sliver of alleyway squeezed between two tall buildings.

“Doesn’t look like much.” Raph huffed; Michelangelo still had a tight hold on his and Donnie’s hands for support.

“But it is discrete though.” Donnie pointed out; his mind was still wandering, trying its best to soak up the tangled stimuli from the buildings and the mutants that looked almost like something out of a cartoon! Like a child had drawn these characters and these structures and planted them together in a bright, yet disorienting, array of flashing colors. “I’d hate to be an epileptic in this place…”

“Are we… gonna be able to fit through there?” Leo asked, his question directed toward Leonardo.

Leonardo flashed Leo a warning glare before saying, “Raph, are you and the guys gonna be able to fit?”

Raphael gave a low whine. His beak crinkled in concentration as his first idea was to simply walk forward, which proved him too wide. Then he huffed and turned sideways, but was still too bulky. It seemed Raphael ran out of ideas, so Donatello cleared his throat.

“If I could direct everyone’s attention slightly upwaaaard~”

Following his motion, they found what could have resembled a bell hanging above the alleyway. It looked as if it were made of slime with little chunks of something floating inside. Raph cringed at the sight of it, but Raphael gave a far too curious ooo and reached to touch it. Leonardo quickly stepped between Raphael and the slime-bell.

“No no no no, no no. No.” Leonardo said, forcing Raphael back, “Bad Raph.”

“I wasn’t gonna eat it.” Raphael pouted.

Leonardo narrowed his eyes. Raphael stuck out his bottom lip and tapped his fingers. 

“Okay I was gonna eat it. You can ring it.”

“Eh… not sure if I want to…” Despite his words, Leonardo reached up and took the slimy rope of the bell, a texture not unlike a worm, and yanked on it. Instead of ringing, it gave off a sound like a foghorn blowing that made every turtle cover their ears, though Leonardo removed his hands from his head just as quickly when he realized it was still covered in slime. “Ew ew ew ew—“

There was a pop and they were swallowed by a slimy, green bubble. What followed was mixed reactions of terror and disgust as they moved into a tighter group, shell to shell with the bigger ones surrounding the smaller. The bubble lifted then off their feet and through the wall like they had no matter at all, carried past the narrow door and lowered to the ground on the other side before the slime bubble popped and left them confused and disgruntled.

“What is this place?” Donnie was the first to separate from the group to look around. The space around them was not unlike an auction house, filled with all sorts of items on display. They filled shelf after shelf after shelf, placed around with no true order. Looking up would reveal several more floors, all just as filled with artifacts and creatures for purchase, with a convenient opening through the middle of each floor.

“Looks like some sort of witchy auction place…” Raph commented. Not to be outdone by his younger brother, Raph separated and started to investigate the place for himself, “How does a grimy grifter get a place like this?”

“Wait a minute…” Leonardo frowned as he looked around, “Wait— I know this place.”

Raph picked up a gem-encrusted chalice, turning it around curiously. “Huh. Fancy.”

“Raph, don’t touch anything.” Leo groaned.

“What?” Raph scoffed, “Guess you don’t want me to do this either, huh?”

He began to juggle the chalice with surprising style.

“Raph, stop that!” Leo tried to intervene, but that only seemed to egg Raph on. He danced out of Leo’s reach, laughing as he pretended to drop the decor before catching it at the last second, “I’m serious!”

Raph only laughed. At least, he was laughing until he actually did drop it— right on the head of a small, purple yokai who had been observing the scene, as still as one of his statues. Raph swore, trying to recover the drop but it was too late. It sank into the yokai’s head as if he were made of pure gelatin, and they could still see the gold through the flesh and skin. The purple yokai blinked, and Raph screamed.

The purple yokai’s skin shifted into flowing rings of yellow and orange that forced the chalice up and out of his head, into his hand. He didn't look like much— something akin to a slug if anything— with a soft beak and a snaggle tooth like Raphael’s only smaller. He breathed onto the chalice and wiped it off with his sleeve before placing it back on the shelf.

“Please don’t touch.”

“YOU!” Leonardo pointed accusingly, “You’re that slug guy who sold me wallet-stealing hair! You’re Monroe?!”

“That’s a talking slug—” Raph withdrew back into the crowd of his brothers, eyes wide. 

Donnie gasped, pulling his goggles down over his eyes and advancing as quickly as Raph had retreated. The slug drew into himself, his entire body constricting like a squeezed stress ball. Leo visibly cringed, while Raphael and his brothers didn't seem all that bothered beyond a few yawns or comforting pats for Raph.

“This is incredible— there’s compounds in him that fail to be isolated or traced!” Donnie picked up one of the slugs arms to investigate every inch of him. “He doesn’t even seem to be carbon based at all; there’s elements I can’t even identify— what…?” Donnie pulled up his goggles as the astonishment gave way to a confused frown, “Is— is he a mutant?”

“No.” Donatello scoffed.

That was met with three very confused box turtles casting side glances. 

“Are… are any of them mutants?” Leo asked.

Leonardo laughed, “What? You though every yokai in the Hidden City was mutated by Draxum and his army of mutant mosquitoes? Ha! W-what dumb idiots would think that?” Leonardo was visibly sweating.

“Not these dumb idiots, that’s for sure.” Donatello tried to brush past, scratching his neck.

“W-wait, so none’a them guys we passed were mutants?” Raph asked, pointing back at the door.

“Well, some of them might have been, but the majority? No; they’re yokai and cryptids.”

“Yokai…” Donnie breathed, and that astonished look returned to his face as he continued to circle Monroe, “They exist in your world? Oh my kama this just keeps getting better—“

“Don.” Raph whistled as if Donnie was a dog, “Buy first, geek later.”

Monroe’s eyes lit up at that and he pulled himself away from Donnie to give a polite bow to the rest of the group. “If sales you wants, sales I’s gots! I gots artifacts from all around the world, from the tombs of Giza to the ancient Amazons. If you needs it, I gots it!”

“Great!” Raphael clapped. “Cause we need a high quality rifter.”

Monroe sank into himself. “Not that’s I don’t gots…”

A visible vein twitched in Leo. “What?”

“I solds out…” He frowned, tapping his nubby hands together.

“WHEN?”

“Like ten minutes ago, don’t yell at me.” The slug quivered, his eyes like saucers.

Leonardo sucked in a slow, deep breath, “Who bought them, Monroe?”

“Oh, an andoroido with a nice voice ands such manners. He’s having buying all my rifters. He’s very rich.”

“All of them?” Raphael whimpered, “Y-you don’t even got a… a small busted one in the back?”

Monroe shook his head. “Not one! He was be very insistent he gets alls of them. But I do has a very special hover pod with your name witten all over it if you—“

“Not interested.” Leonardo quickly dismissed, pulling on his face in his frustration, “Great. We— we’ll find somewhere else to look.”

“But I is to be assuring you that no other shop has rifters worth your while…” Monroe said.

“That's what every illegal rifter peddler would say!”

“Not this illegal rifter peddler, I swearing it to you!”

“And I swear I’ll bust your teeth in if you’re lying…” Leonardo seized Monroe by the collar and lifted him up.

“Leo.” Raphael was quick to correct. His eyes met Leonardo’s for just a moment. That was all it took for Leonardo to relent and release the Yokai. Raphael made a quick point to help Monroe fix his shirt. “Sorry ‘bout that. If you happen to find a rifter you missed, could you give us a call?”

Without having to be asked, Donatello had already written up his phone number and placed it in Monroe’s hand.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any more contacts, do you Don?”

Donatello took a long, slow breath. “I’ll see what I can find.”

[patchwork-panda]

If A Moment Is All We Are (16/?)

AO3 link: HERE

“Ranpo-san! Can you hear me?! Ranpo-san—!”

I clapped my hand over my mouth and doubled over, coughing so violently I thought I might puke. I’d inhaled a mouthful of ash and dust when I’d called Edogawa’s name and the taste was even worse than the smell. My hair and clothes were blanketed in the stuff and as I stumbled forward, hacking out my lungs, I thought I heard Hatta shouting into a walkie-talkie and calling for a medic.

Why?!

“Ranpo-san, why did you go in?” I coughed, dropping to my knees when I’d reached the pile of smoldering debris. “I thought you solved the case already!”

Edogawa knew as well as I did that if he went into the room, he would be crushed when the roof collapsed over his head. Perhaps he thought he would be safe if he avoided checking the body, the way he had in the vision. After all, I’d seen the ceiling caving in just above the corpse, not in the corner where the jars were kept.

I shoved my hands into the pile of debris and began digging, praying to some unknown god that Edogawa would be alright.

The location may have been different, but everything else had happened exactly as it had in my vision. Was a person’s future fixed after all? And if so, was there any point in struggling to fight the inevitable?

Clouds of dust and soot rose into the air as I continued clearing away the debris, Hatta joining me in my efforts to get to Edogawa. Seconds, each more agonizing than the last, slowly passed and I felt the panic rising in my throat when our efforts barely seemed to make a difference in the size of the pile...

Slamming my hands down on the broken floorboards, I let out a desperate scream.

“Say something!!”

“There’s no need to yell,” a muffled voice called back, “I can hear you just fine!”

I stopped digging immediately.

“Ranpo-san?!”

At once, the pile beneath my hands began to shift. Without warning, a grimy, soot-covered Edogawa popped out of the ground in a shower of dirt. I let out a surprised shriek and fell over backwards onto my butt.

“Phew, that was a close one,” Edogawa muttered, dusting off his poncho as his entire torso emerged from a strange, circular hole in the ground.

“Wh-where did you come from?!” I stammered. “How did you—?!”

“Really Kusunoki-kun, did you think a member of the Armed Detective Agency could be done in by a mere accident?” Edogawa sighed. “Minus one point.”

He threw aside something that looked like a dirty frisbee and put his hands on the ground, pushing himself up. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t climbing out of some random hole in the ground, but an enormous clay pickle pot that had been buried in the dirt; the frisbee he’d just tossed aside was actually its weighted lid. As I watched, Edogawa lifted one foot out of the pot, planted it on the circular rim and immediately slipped on its grimy surface. He fell back into the pot with a soft yelp.

“Don’t just stand there! Help me up!”

At once, I stumbled forward and reached out to grab onto his hand. However, the moment Edogawa’s bare fingers closed around my wrist, I realized (too late) that neither of us were wearing gloves. I squeezed my eyes shut, readying myself to push the incoming vision away, the way I had when I’d caught the kidnapper Kunikida and I were chasing.

Please don’t let my eyes start bleeding again! If Hatta sees, my secret might be exposed...!

But nothing happened.

There was no tug of gravity and no blacking out. No headache either. I could still definitely feel the warmth of Edogawa’s hand but it was as if I weren’t hanging onto Edogawa at all.

No. The only other time I had felt something like this was when I was holding onto Dazai with his Ability canceling powers...

I opened my eyes, half expecting to see the bandaged detective himself in front of me but what I saw instead was a very cross-looking Edogawa.

“Some assistant you are,” he snapped, suddenly tugging at my arm so hard so that he almost yanked me into the pot with him. “See if I take you on another case again!”

Mumbling an apology under my breath, I grabbed onto him with both hands and with Hatta’s help, pulled him free of the enormous pot at last. Once he had both feet on solid ground again, Edogawa dusted off his hat, turned to me and shook his head.

“And here I thought you’d directed me to this particular corner because you’d seen the pickle jar buried in the ground and thought it would be a good place to hide in case the roof really did collapse.”

He clicked his tongue.

“But judging by your reaction, you definitely didn’t. Maybe we should get you a pair of glasses too.”

“Edogawa-san! Are you alright?” Hatta asked, just as a group of medics appeared on the staircase.

“I’m more than alright,” Edogawa said, grinning. “I’ve just solved this entire case! Here.”

He stuck out his hand and opened his palm. Perched on its surface, looking rather grimy but otherwise perfectly intact, was a lumpy green key chain. He rubbed it between his fingers to clean it off and as a set of tiny features finally emerged, I could clearly see it for what it was.

“That’s the Statue of Liberty,” I said, my eyes widening. “The one in New York City!”

“Correct!” Edogawa declared, “Plus one point! But I’m also subtracting one point for your failure to pull me out of that giant pickle jar when I first called out to you for help, so you’re at negative one for now...”

“Ehh?!”

“I’ll total up your final score when we get back to the Agency. Kunikida-kun’s good with math, I’ll have him help.”

I blanched.

“No! Please don’t tell Kunikida-san—!”

“Anyway,” Edogawa continued, twirling the key chain around on his index finger, “This belonged to your victim. My assistant here was right to suspect he was looking for something in the pickle jars but this was surprisingly hard to find...”

He tossed the key chain at Hatta, who caught it between two hands.

“What’s so special about this key chain?” he asked, voicing the question I wanted to ask.

“This isn’t something you can just order online,” Edogawa explained. “Take a look at the bottom. There’s a sticker with the price tag in American dollars still attached. Our victim here was never able to get it off. Which means he, or someone close to him, bought this in New York City.”

He pointed to the body.

“Check his clothes thoroughly. You’re going to find a key that corresponds to the lock outside. This man was given access to the basement in the past but it’s clear that he shouldn’t have been here last night.”

This time he pointed to the corner where the body lay.

“When he heard the owners of the house coming, he ran for this corner so he could hide, but he tripped when he came down the steps. He landed right over there, where the force of his fall loosened several bricks from that pile, which knocked him out. I believe Daisuke Ito, the elderly husband, had very poor hearing so he didn’t hear the bricks falling down. Not only that, his memory was starting to go so when he came upon the lock and found it open, he’d just assumed he or his wife had forgotten to lock it and promptly locked it himself, not knowing the victim was inside. Then the fire started in the kitchen and you know the rest.”

“But the victim,” I protested, “Who is he?”

Edogawa stared at me. Then he jabbed a finger at me.

“Minus another point.”

“Eh?!”

“You didn’t see the backpack lying outside in the yard?” he asked, looking annoyed, “It’s right there! It’s burned pretty badly but anyone could see it was a backpack!”

Bewildered, I turned to Hatta, as if he might come to my defense but Hatta just gave me an apologetic shrug and pulled out his walkie-talking. He instructed one of the officers standing outside to search the garbage pile near the doors. From down below, we heard the sounds of the officer ruffling through the burned trash and then a very loud gasp.

“We found a U.S. passport!” the officer called out, down the stairs.

My eyes widened.

“This guy’s a foreigner?!”

Edogawa grinned.

“Close. He’s a double citizen.”

My jaw dropped.

“No way...”

“Your victim is either the child of a family friend or a not-so-distant relative,” Edogawa said, tucking his hands into his pockets and proceeding towards the stairs. “He used to help out with the pickle-making business and was close enough with the Ito’s that he was personally given a key to the basement. One day, while our victim was working, he dropped the key chain into that pot by accident. Shortly after, he had a falling out with the family and stopped working here. However, Ito’s either forgot about the key they’d handed out or decided not to ask for it back, in case their relationship improved again and the victim could resume working with them. It seems it didn’t happen in time, so this man was forced to sneak back in just last night so he could retrieve his key chain. It’s a pretty cheap object, meaning this was clearly a sentimental item he got when he’d last visited the States. I think he was planning to take it with him for his final trip back to the U.S.”

He yelled up the stairs at the officer.

“Read me the name on that passport!”

There was a pause.

“It’s in English! Hang on...”

And then another gasp.

“It’s Ito Haru! Holy shit!!”

Hatta’s jaw dropped. He turned to Edogawa, looking stunned.

“Ito Haru is their great nephew. He was reported missing four months ago! What was he doing here?!”

“He must’ve been on the run,” Edogawa concluded. “Probably had debts of some sort. Anyway, you’re the police, you can look into that on your own.”

He made a face.

“I’m going home to take a shower.”

He wiped his hands down on his clothes (it made no difference—both his hands and his garments were filthy with brownish goop and dirt) and proceeded toward the exit.

“Kusunoki-kun!”

I snapped to attention.

“Yes!”

“Hurry up! I need to go home.”

“Be right there!”

I couldn’t believe it. Just like that, the case was over. Edogawa had solved it in a matter of minutes. Not only that, he’d escaped being injured by the collapsing ceiling even though I’d seen it happen in one of my visions.

For the first time in forever, I had been wrong.

Beautifully and mercifully wrong.

I grabbed my bag from where I’d dropped it and followed Edogawa up the stairs. Hatta and the medics he’d summoned earlier bowed deeply as we passed them. Edogawa merely tipped his hat in farewell as he left but I bowed to each one as I went, determined to maintain as much professionalism as I could (Kunikida was right, we still had the Agency’s reputation to think about). When we finally reached the top of the stairs and stepped blinking into the bright midday sun, Edogawa reached inside his pocket and pulled out a single wrapped piece of gummy candy.

“Well I’d say that went pretty well, wouldn’t you?”

He tore open the package and popped the bite-sized treat into his mouth, as I stared incredulously at him.

“What?” he asked, chewing noisily. “You don’t think so?”

“Ranpo-san,” I said, “The roof collapsed on you earlier. You could’ve died.”

“No, I couldn’t have,” he said, already pulling a second piece of gummy candy from his pocket.

“Yes, you could!”

“No,” Edogawa repeated, staring me down. “I couldn’t.”

It was like talking to a child. I slapped my hand over my eyes and groaned.

“Look,” Edogawa said, swallowing his piece of candy at long last, “Kusunoki-kun, you’re good. But you’re not that good. After everything I’ve seen today, I can say two things with absolute certainty: one, your Ability does not work on the same person twice in one day. I saw your face when you tried to pull me out of that jar earlier. That was the shocked look of an Ability User who suddenly found they couldn’t use their powers. I’ve seen it enough times to know what I’m talking about. Two...”

Grinning, he pointed at me.

“Your visions aren’t absolute. How do I know this?”

He folded his arms over his chest.

“I’m not dead,” he said simply. “And I get the feeling this isn’t the first time you were wrong.”

But I shook my head.

“Every vision I’ve seen so far has come true,” I argued. “Every single one. Even if I’m not there to see it happen in person, I’ll hear about it and it’s always horrible. Ranpo-san, I don’t know how you managed to survive because I can’t think of a single other person who—”

The words died in my throat.

Edogawa raised an eyebrow and watched as comprehension slowly dawned on my face and I whispered a single name.

“Yamazaki-san.”

“Who’s that?”

“My neighbor,” I answered, turning to him in astonishment. “She lived across the hall from me before I moved into the Agency apartment. I... I told Kunikida-san and Dazai-san about her, that she was going to be murdered and they sent her away to Nagano, to live with her nephew. She... She’s still alive.”

I felt my knees give way and I collapsed in an unsteady heap on the scorched grass. My head was spinning.

“I don’t understand...”

Edogawa watched me quietly for a moment, then reached into his pocket for yet another piece of candy.

“How often do you tell people about your visions, Kusunoki-kun?” he asked thoughtfully, turning the candy over in his hand.

“Never. This is only the second time. The first time was when I met Kunikida-san and Dazai-san.”

I looked away.

“I never even told my own relatives. I didn’t want them to think I was crazy.”

Or worse, cursed, the way many Ability Users were.

“I see...”

Edogawa looked at the piece of candy in his hand, staring through it as if it held the answers he were looking for inside its brightly colored wrapper.

“So this is the second time you’ve told someone what you saw and the second time that the act of merely telling someone has changed the vision. Hmm...”

He looked up at me.

“You ever heard of the ‘Observer Effect?’”

“Sort of... I think it was mentioned during one of my physics classes way back when. That’s what it’s called when the act of simply observing an event changes the event itself, right?”

“Correct. Plus one point,” Edogawa said, tossing the piece of candy to me. “It seems to me that your Ability works in a way that’s similar to the Observer Effect. In other words, the very act of telling someone about the contents of your visions will alter the outcome. Why is this? It’s because upon hearing their future, a person will become consumed with thoughts of how to change it if they don’t like the outcome and thoughts of how to make it come true no matter what if they do like the outcome. It’s like those old Greek myths.”

“But if I’m the one seeing the vision,” I protested, “Wouldn’t that make me an ‘observer?’ Why does my observing the vision not change the outcome?”

“But it has,” Edogawa explained. “You said so yourself. When you told Kunikida-kun and Dazai-san about your vision, they protected your elderly neighbor and prevented her murder. The only reason nothing had ever changed before was because you never had much of an incentive to change another person’s future and so never told a soul. Surely they couldn’t have all been life-or-death situations?”

He was right. They weren’t. I could tell by the smug look on his face that he knew it as well as I did.

“Ranpo-san,” I said, slowly getting to my feet. “You’re amazing...! You really are.”

At that, Edogawa beamed.

“I am, right?”

“But I do have one more question... How did you avoid getting crushed the way I saw in my vision?” I asked. “I saw it from Hatta-san’s perspective. Usually that means whoever the vision is actually about dies—”

“Oh come on, Kusunoki-kun,” Edogawa sighed. “I thought it was obvious?”

When I shook my head, he let out another sigh, heavier this time.

“I’ll put it simply then: I believe in the power of possibility.”

He took out his glasses and spun them around his finger. The light caught on the thick glass of the lenses and they flashed in the sun.

“When you told me what you saw in my future, I refused to believe it. I didn’t want to. Me, the Great Detective, Edogawa Ranpo, meet his end, not at the hands of a brilliant rival, but in some rickety burned house, crushed to death like a tiny insignificant bug?”

He shook his head.

“No. That’s not how it’s going to be. ‘I won’t let it,’ I thought. And so I thought... and I thought... and I thought...”

I watched his glasses spin faster and faster around on his finger, picking up speed as he spoke.

“And then I realized something.”

He caught the glasses in his hand.

“This was just another puzzle. If I operate under the assumption that your visions are not absolute, that they show the most likely possibility rather than an unchangeable fact, then I could try to think of a way out. And if I succeeded, then I could change the future.”

Placing the glasses back on his face, he grinned, an overpowering aura of confidence radiating from his sharp, green eyes.

“And who better to change the future than the Great Detective?”

I was floored.

Holy crap, he really was a genius.

“Besides,” he said, taking the glasses off and frowning at a speck of dirt on them. “I told you before that these glasses are important to me, didn’t I?”

He grabbed a corner of my jacket and, ignoring my protests, started polishing the glass with the clean lining.

“There is no possible future in which I would let anything happen to these. None.”

He tucked them back into his pocket and marched off.

“Now come on! There’s a shower I need to take and snacks yet to be eaten. As payment for your lesson today, I will charge you the low, low price of two boxes of Kit-Kats.”

“Two?!”

“One for the lesson and two for almost letting me die. Now stop dawdling. I haven’t had lunch yet and I’m starving!”

Once again, I hurried after him. A small group of police staff rushed past us in the direction of the basement, barely acknowledging our presence as we walked away from the house and towards the street, where I could see the subway entrance several blocks away. As I pocketed the gummy candy Edogawa had given me, he stopped walking and spoke up one final time.

“You know, normally I’d complain about my assistant being constantly on the phone in the middle of a case but in this situation, I think I’ll let it go.”

He turned to me just as the crosswalk light behind him turned red. His grin looked just a touch unsteady.

“If Dazai-san hadn’t been texting you all this time... Who knows what could have happened?”

***

“Ah, Kusunoki-kun.”

For a brief moment, Kunikida seemed just as surprised to see me coming into the first floor lobby as I was to see him already standing there.

“Good timing,” he said, sounding relieved. “Could you please get the elevator for me? I’d do it myself but...”

He shifted the heavy stack of papers piled high in his arms to indicate his current predicament but all I saw was the way his shirt sleeves stretched over his biceps when he moved. The coat I was wearing suddenly felt too thick and warm.

“G-good afternoon, Kunikida-san.”

I could already feel the awkward smile tugging at my cheeks when I spoke and I struggled to keep my voice even as I hurried over.

“Of course! Just a second.”

“Thanks. That really helps,” he sighed, shifting in place as I pushed the button for him and stepped back to stand beside him.

“What are all those papers for?” I asked, eyeing the thick stack in his arms. “Do you want me to take some of them up for you?”

Shaking his head slightly, Kunikida observed me from behind the stack. His glasses slipped just a fraction down his nose and I found myself wanting to push them back up for him.

“That won’t be necessary. I just need to take these to the clerk room so Haruno-san and the others can type them up. By the way...”

He squinted at me.

“Why is your hair wet?”

I twitched.

“Oh, that,” I laughed nervously, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear. “I had to go home to take a shower. I was out on a case this morning and things got a little... messy... I didn’t want to come back to the Agency covered in dirt.”

After dropping Edogawa off at his apartment (“You’re my assistant so I expect you to write the report for me,” he’d said, “I’m going snack shopping. Have Kunikida-kun call me if something comes up.”), I’d immediately rushed home and jumped into the shower with my clothes still on. Edogawa and I had been covered in so much foul-smelling grime that all the other subway passengers had gone out of their way to avoid us. Even the cleaning staff had shot us dirty looks as we’d left. I’d spent so much time trying to clean myself off that I barely got the chance to eat.

“So you used your lunch break to go home and clean up?” Kunikida asked.

“Yeah. Sorry I didn’t have time to dry my hair,” I mumbled. “I was hoping to get back early and there wasn’t enough time...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kunikida said as the elevator arrived with a soft chime. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to finally have an employee who thinks about the Agency’s reputation.”

He inclined his head towards the elevator and made an apologetic face.

“Sorry but could you get that, please?”

I nodded and went in ahead to hold the door for him. But when he settled in next to me and the doors came to a close, I suddenly realized that I was alone in a somewhat small space with Kunikida Doppo—the very tall, very handsome blonde detective I was definitely crushing on. If my coat felt too warm before, I was burning up now.

As the silence slowly settled in, the air around us seemed to thicken.

I wanted to think of something to say, something that would make this whole situation less awkward. But for some reason, all I could think about was the fact that this was my first time interacting with Kunikida again after the incident with Dazai and the notebook the day before. I realized I should probably take this time to explain what had happened but my tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Thankfully, Kunikida broke the silence first.

“Kusunoki-kun.”

I nearly jumped in surprise.

“Y-yes?”

“Before we get to the Agency, I have something I need to tell you.”

My heart was pounding in my chest and I clutched at the strap of my bag.

“W-what is it?”

“About yesterday...”

I swallowed nervously.

“Yes?”

He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Don’t let what happened bother you,” he said quietly, looking straight ahead at the doors. “Dazai likes to mess with people and this wouldn’t be the first time he’s dragged a kohai into his antics. He still tries to pawn off his desk work on Atsushi-kun from time to time.”

I grimaced.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised...

“So I just want to let you know that if Dazai ever goes too far,” Kunikida said, turning to me with just a hint of a frown on his face, “You can always come talk to me.”

There was a soft chime and the elevator doors slid open with a soft whoosh. Once again, I held the door and then followed Kunikida out into the hallway.

“So what happened on your case this morning?” he asked, looking at me curiously as we walked towards the office.

“Oh, I was with Ranpo-san.”

“Ranpo-san, huh? I’m guessing things went pretty well if you’re on a first-name basis with him now?”

“Sort of?”

I gave him a short summary about the case as we walked down the hall together, Kunikida nodding at the appropriate intervals and his eyes widening significantly when I told him what Edogawa had worked out about my Ability. I didn’t want to spoil the mood (or give him any reason to worry about me), so I purposefully left out the part about my eyes bleeding. Kunikida was the last person I wanted to lie to but this didn’t seem like the right time to tell him. I had just stepped through the door and was holding it open for Kunikida when a tall figure wearing a sand-colored trench coat suddenly barreled through, smacking into Kunikida—and forcing him to drop everything he was holding.

Bewildered, I poked my head out into the hallway to see a storm of papers flying everywhere and a familiar figure in a trench coat lying on top of Kunikida, their limbs tangled together a mess of body parts.

I watched Kunikida’s face grow redder and redder as the rage began to build and I hopped back into the foyer and covered my ears as Kunikida’s furious roar shook the building.

“DAZAIIIII!!”

[adobe-outdesign]

I Found You [Sequel to Dear Father, a Sister Location fanfic]

(Dear Father can be read here.)

He’s not sure how many days he’s been lying there. He’s not even sure he wants to know.

Michael’s pretty sure he’s seen the light from his window increase and decrease at least four times, maybe five. He’s not positive. Ever since he had given up, time had been slow, murky, a molasses-like monotony broken only by the sound of a fly buzzing around in his room.

This was the new plan he had formulated. He wasn’t supposed to be alive, so he wasn’t going to act alive, either. He would just lie here and quietly rot away in his room, and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately the idea had proven more difficult than expected, and his inability to sleep despite his sense of exhaustion had created nothing but a sense of boredom and listlessness.

The fly lands on his outstretched hand and he watches it, not moving. It crawls a few feet to a particularly rotten section of his finger, then bends its abdomen and lays a single white egg under his skin.

Michael jerks upright and strikes the spot, hard, leaving a black twitching mass where the fly had stood. He darts to the bathroom, trying not to panic. It’s just a fly. What did you expect? You’re dead.

He grabs a piece of toilet paper and quickly removes the fly’s remains, then steadies himself. He pinches his flesh, not directly looking at the spot, until the egg slides out between his fingers where it’s quickly smashed. He sets his hands down on the sink for support, feeling ill. There could be more eggs, he thinks to himself. Maggots crawling around inside of him like the endoskeleton had done, eating what’s left of his skin-

A bath. He needs to take a bath.

He leans down to start the tap, then realizes that his stomach wound - could it even be called a wound at this point? - would make it impossible. He had debated on sewing it shut shortly after it happened, but closer inspection had revealed that the Scooper had ripped out not only his organs but most of the skin on his torso. The open gaping hole would let in water, which would only make him rot faster.

Michael settles for stripping off his clothes, stained with who knows what kind of bodily fluids, and using a wet washcloth with a bit of soap to wipe down the outside of his skin. It’s an odd feeling -  this rotted purple Thing no longer even feels like his body. It’s as if he had found a corpse outside and was washing it instead of himself.

He moves to cleaning the hole in his torso, involuntarily shivering at the unfamiliar sensation of touch on the inside of his skin. He keeps going until the washcloth comes away black, then brown, then with nothing on it at all.

Digging into the hall closet reveals a large container of antiseptic fluid, the kind you’d expect to see in a hospital. When he had first discovered it, he had wondered why his father would need something like this. He no longer needs to wonder.

He rubs himself down with the sanitizer, then fetches a fresh set of long-sleeved clothes - the less skin he had to see, the better - and wonders if he looks any less awful now that the most rotted areas have been cleaned.

He doesn’t know. All the mirrors are still covered.

MISSING THREE-YEAR-OLD FOUND SAFE IN TEXAS, the headline reads. Michael skims the article, only halfway interested, before continuing to flip through the pages. He skips past the comics entirely, and only pauses long enough at the sports section to see who won the Superbowl (the Giants, apparently). He slows down when he gets to the articles, reading over the latest news.

IT BURNS! Fazbear’s Fright burns to the ground

A new local attraction based on an ancient pizzeria chain burned down overnight...

Michael remembers what he had promised his father, and decides on a new purpose right then and there.

I’m going to come find you.

Michael pulls the box off the shelf and beings rummaging through its contents. Most of the items were simply scrap - bits of metal, bolts and wires that no longer connected to anything. He studies them, then sets them aside in an ever-increasing pile.

He moves to another shelf, glancing behind him at the doorway. There’s no one here, he reminds himself, but he can’t help but remember the unease he felt when he first took this job. Nothing had really changed since then save for some new caution tape around the front entrance, but there was something empty and dead about the place that somehow made him more anxious than when the animatronics had been there.

He returns his attention to the shelf, selecting a white mask. Probably a prototype of some type, he figures to himself. He sets it on a considerably smaller pile of parts, its contents being more complete, more finalized than the first pile. And more expensive, Michael thinks, and he smiles to himself. A few hours later the parts and service room in Circus Baby’s has been picked clean. Michael walks away with a jumble of half-finished animatronic pieces, being careful to stay as far away from the Scooping room as he can.

As much as Michael had grown to hate his father’s creations, they would certainly fetch a nice price in the papers.

Michael swears he can smell the smoke still wafting from the ruining building in front of him - if you could even call it a building at this point. You don’t even have a nose anymore, he reminds himself, but he still can’t quite dismiss the scent.

It’s difficult to see the building in the nearly moonless night, but he can just barely make out the silhouette of the attraction, black against the night sky. It’s little more than a skeleton now, the wooden supports that once held up the building once now charred and collapsed completely in some areas. A single sign reading “FAZBEAR’S FRIGHT” is the only indication of what the place used to be.

Michael walks around the perimeter of the area, unwilling to get closer to the unstable rubble. The newspaper wasn’t exaggerating - it looked like the entire place had been stripped down of anything Freddy’s related. Michael stares at the scene for a moment before turning away, something bitter settling into his hollow chest. He’s not here. At least, not anymore.

He starts to walk away, and nearly misses the large, oddly-shaped footprints trailing off into the woods.

Come on down to- He’s winding up for the pitch and- Win a boat and a new pair of pants!- I can hear the Fox laughing from his temple- Matt, how could you!- These are America’s Most Wanted-

The remote clicks endlessly, without enough pause to really take in what was being shown on the screen.

Every day since it happened, Michael had sat in his favorite chair in the living room, always at the same time, always on the same channel. Being able to still watch his favorite show was one of the only good things that had come of his unexpected immortality, and it had become a ritual of sorts, a coping mechanism that made dealing with his situation just a little bit easier. Now he simply scrolls through the channels, verifying what he already knows.

His copy of the TV Guide had come in. He had reread it three times, just to make sure he wasn’t simply missing it, before coming to terms with the listings in front of him.

The Immortal and the Restless had been cancelled.

Michael holds the bank statement in his hands silently. He knew this would happen, but something about seeing it on paper was a jarring wake-up call.

$31.29

He had really only made it this far because he had a tiny bit of money tucked away into savings - and because he no longer needed to buy groceries or utilize the air conditioner. But he still needed to pay mortgage, and the electricity bill, and the water bill, and thus rest of his finances had gradually drained away, bit by bit.

He double checks the box of parts he took from Circus Baby’s just to make sure. Almost all of his father’s animatronics had been sold off already - at least, the ones he figured were the least likely to kill and/or maim anyone. He reaches his hand into the box and pulls out his personal favorite item, a small plastic figurine of Funtime Freddy. He rubs the buttons on the toy’s torso as he sits against the wall, pondering.

He needed to find a job - that much was certain. However, the idea was much easier in theory than it was in concept. It was already dangerous to go out at night, let alone to a job interview in the middle of the day. Michael idly wonders again for the hundredth time what someone would do if they saw him in the daylight.

He looks down at the figure, and something suddenly clicks. I don’t have to go outside during the day. There were plenty of night shift jobs available, and if he found one that he could do alone, no one would ever need to see him.

Michael would be smiling, if he still could. Instead he stands up, brushes himself off, and slips the figurine into his pocket.

The interview is over the phone. Michael feels like whatever God put him into this situation was slowly starting to warm up to him.

“Hello hello?”

“Hello. My name is Gabriel Keller,” Michael announces. He had been embarrassed of his accent as a child and had taught himself how to hide it, which was proving to be a valuable skill right now. “I’m applying for the management position at the new pizzeria. The ad was in the newspaper,” he ads hastily. There’s something familiar about the voice, but he can’t place where he’s heard it.

“Gabriel?” he asks, and Michael’s heart would’ve stopped if it was still in his chest. Does he know?

“There was an employee that worked at my last location. He was named Gabriel,” he intones, and Michael relaxes, remembering something he read about how it was a good idea to make small talk during an interview.

“So you’ve run a pizzeria before-?” he starts to ask, then freezes.

He knows who’s speaking.

“...Only a small one. It shut down after a few months. I figured that trying again fresh might be worth a shot, but I need someone to manage the place while I’m away,” Henry states.

Henry. Michael didn’t know him too well personally, but his father certainly did. His old business partner, the one who had helped him build Freddy’s. The one whose children he had killed. Michael’s grip tightens on the phone, wondering whether or not he was doing a good enough job at hiding his voice.

The next few questions are generic - was he old enough to work (yes), did he have reliable transportation (yes), was he a legal US Citizen (do corpses count as US Citizens? He went with yes). Then there were a handful of questions that were more job specific.

“Do you have experience working with dangerous machinery?”

The hole in his torso seems to hurt more. “Yes, I am.”

“Are you comfortable with working late hours, a high-stress work environment, and signing a waiver form?”

A little late for that, he thinks, nearly laughing out loud at the thought. Instead he restrains himself. “Of course.”

“Well, that’s all I have for now. You seem like a responsible young man, Michael. I have one other candidate I’m hoping will apply, but if he doesn’t you’ll be contacted immediately.”

“Thank you, sir,” he replies, the line going dead on the other end. He continues to hold the phone to his ear, something clicking in his mind.

He called me Michael.

He pulls one of his father’s many journals off the shelf, and a photo album falls down with it.

Michael’s surprised. He never thought of his father as much of an album person. William wasn’t exactly what he would call a sentimental person, especially when it came to his family.

Opening the album seems to confirm his thoughts at first. It’s mostly pictures of robots, some finished, some not. Most have dates and model numbers written under them, but no other information. He recognizes a few of them - Baby, Funtime Freddy, Ballora. Some aren’t as familiar, such as a yellow-eyed Freddy endoskeleton.

He turns to the next page. This one has shots of people mixed into the robot pictures - there’s one he recognizes of William, back at Fredbear’s, in the Spring Bonnie costume. Henry was with him, and they were both laughing. Michael honestly can’t tell if his father was genuinely happy or not.

Michael moves to the next row of pictures, and it feels like everything stops as he realizes what he’s looking at. That’s me.

It was his last high school photo before graduation. The figure in the photo is standing in front of a purple background - he remembered that he hated the way it looked, but purple was his father’s favorite, so purple it was. His hair was neatly combed and gelled into place - he remembered spending a good hour styling it that morning-, and he’s wearing a nicer shirt than usual. This is me. He runs a hand across the rotted, torn flesh making up his face, suddenly overcome with the feeling of loss and anger. This used to be me.

He realizes he’s clutching the photo so hard it’s starting to fold. He forces himself to relax his grip and takes a moment to recompose himself the way his father had taught him to. There’s nothing you can do about it.

He sets the photo on the carpet, face-down. He doesn’t want to look at it anymore.

The rest of the photos are pretty standard - more robots and a few scattered pictures of William at various events and stages of health. But there’s one more that gives him pause.

It’s one of the only family photos in the album. He vaguely remembers getting the photo taken - they had moved back to England for a short period to pick up the new member of the family, another product of a one night stand that William had just been informed about. Michael is still a child in it, but even back then the resemblance to his father was uncanny. William stands behind him, still robust and lively, not the emancipated and scarred man that usually came to mind when he thought of his father. In his other arm he holds a bundle of blankets with a mop of blond hair coming out of it. Elizabeth.

He feels like he should feel something at the sight of her, some sort of anger at her for what she did to him, but there’s nothing. The monster that had killed him no longer bore any resemblance to the baby in the picture. If anything, she was as much as a victim as he is.

He pockets the family photo and burns everything else.

The shadows created by the flashlight beam create odd shapes, and he jumps at what appears to be a slumped figure only to realize it’s nothing but a pile of trash bags. He rubs the figurine in his chest pocket to calm himself and moves into another alleyway.

He sees the ears first, and as he moves closer he can make out the rest of it. The suit is rotten and discolored, full of holes that expose metal joints and wiring - and a corpse more rotten than he is.

Michael moves closer, shining his light directly in the thing’s face, and for a moment it doesn’t react. Then it jerks spasmodically, the mechanical noises of the thing’s servers almost disappearing under the sounds of crunching bone and ripping flesh. The plastic eyes roll wildly in the thing’s head, coming to stop at Michael’s face.

Father, Michael utters, and somehow he doesn’t feel fear. Perhaps it was just the sheer adrenaline running through his system.

Or perhaps he just doesn’t fear his father like he used to.

The faint light in the back of his empty eye sockets glows impossibly light as he boldly leans in closer to the rabbit animatronic.

I found you.

[terriblelifechoices]

Happy Monday, guys. I hope it was less Monday-ish than mine.  Have some comment fic. ;)

Written for the glorious @st00pz, partly as a follow up to baby Galahad meeting Helmine Weiss, aka MACUSA’s Ice Queen but mostly because the thought of someone telling Galahad “you used to be so cute when you were small” when he’s being a little shit as a junior Auror was too good to pass up on.

Originally posted on ao3 here.

The Eyrie, March 1947

“You seem awfully calm,” Red noted.

Galahad raised both eyebrows at him.  “Shouldn’t I be?”

“Most Aurors in your shoes are puking scared or pissed as hell right about now,” Red pointed out, easing the elevator to a stop.  He kept the elevator doors closed, waiting for Galahad’s answer.  “She ain’t going to go easy on youse.”

“I know,” Galahad said.  “I don’t want her to.”

“Your funeral,” Red told him, and opened the doors.

Galahad stepped out into the Eyrie, heading for the great double doors that lead to the Eagle’s Chamber.  They swung open just before he reached them, admitting Galahad into the room beyond.

Galahad understood why most Aurors hated the Eyrie.  Like most of the audience chambers in the Woolworth Building, the room was bigger on the inside than mere architecture should have allowed for.  Enormous, floor-to-ceiling windows lined the walls through the whole room, giving the impression that the Eyrie was exactly what it was named for -- an eagle’s nest high up on a cliffside, surrounded by nothing but the open sky beneath it.  Galahad could practically feel the bite of cold air at mountain altitudes kiss his skin, the wisps of clouds and mist floating by.

Galahad walked along the black marble path leading towards the dais and the woman who ruled the Eyrie.  The seats to either side of hers were empty, save for a court stenographer tucked discreetly off to one side.

Age had not slowed Director Weiss down one bit.  Her blonde hair had long since gone silver, but her winter-pale eyes were as cold and sharp as ever.  She reminded Galahad of Dad’s stories about the sidhe -- Director Weiss was winter court, through and through, cold and dangerous and terrifying.

But fair, Galahad thought.  Not always impartial, but scrupulously, meticulously, terrifyingly fair.

That was a sidhe trait, too.  Not for the first time, Galahad wondered if Director Weiss had a touch of the old blood, in addition to being one of the Twelve.

He stopped some ten or so feet away from the dais, coming to stand at rest before MACUSA’s Ice Queen.

“Galahad Graves,” Director Weiss said.  Her voice was clear and cold, cutting through the silence like a knife.  “You stand accused of disobey direct orders from a senior officer in the field.”

Galahad ground his teeth and said nothing.  It wasn’t his turn to speak yet.

“Your team was recently seconded for a joint international task force, under the direction of Auror Ethan Concannon, was it not?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Galahad said, resisting the urge to curse at the mere mention of Fucking Concannon.  “The Canadians had point on the investigation.  Auror Concannon was Senior Investigating Auror for the task force.”

“What was the purpose of the task force?”

There were days when Galahad really despised MACUSA’s love of bureaucratic minutia.  Surely anyone who wanted to know why he’d been called to the Eyrie already knew what the joint task force had been doing.

“Investigating an illegal magical beasts distribution ring,” Galahad answered.  “Waheela, specifically.”  He was just glad Uncle Newt had his hands full battling England’s Wizengamot over werewolf rights, or he’d have had more problems than just Fucking Concannon to deal with.

Uncle Newt didn’t share Uncle Theseus’ fondness for explosions, but they still happened around him an awful lot anyways.

“Auror Concannon accuses you of disobey direct orders, of jeopardizing the mission by redirecting mission assets, and worst of all, of suborning your fellow Aurors.”

Galahad snorted.

“Does mutiny amuse you, Auror Graves?” Director Weiss asked.

“No, ma’am,” Galahad said.  “It does not.”

“Then what, exactly, amuses you so?”

“Auror Concannon’s version of events, ma’am,” Galahad said.

Weiss looked down at the papers in front of her on the dais.  “Your version reads rather differently,” she noted.

“Yes, ma’am,” agreed Galahad, because it did.

“I note that it does not, at any point, dispute the charge regarding disobeying direct orders from a senior Auror.”

“No, ma’am.”

Director Weiss considered him for a long moment.  “The punishment for that is two weeks suspension without pay.”

Galahad hid a wince.  He wanted to buy Sam’s bridegift with his own funds, not draw on the Graves family vault.  Two weeks without pay would set him back a bit.

“I know, ma’am,” he said.  “It’s a price I’m willing to pay.”

“So be it,” she said.  “Leave your badge with Director Graves.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Bishoff.  That will be all,” Director Weiss told the stenographer, who gathered up her things and left.  She waited until Bishoff had gone before she folded her arms across her chest and said, “What the hell, Galahad?”

Galahad set his jaw, stubborn.

“I know you know better than this,” she said.  “You could have caused an international incident!”

Director Graves had said something similar.  Bellowed, actually.

“Concannon’s a fucking moron,” Galahad said, resisting the urge to yell.  Yelling at department heads rarely did any good.

“There are plenty of morons in the world.  A good number of them will be your superiors.  The correct way of dealing with them does not include going rogue, taking over the op and deciding you only follow orders if you feel like it!”

“His plan would’ve gotten half his team and all of mine killed,” Galahad said flatly.  “Have you looked at Concannon’s mission history?  The only reason he’s been promoted is because he’s related to the Canadian Minister.  The man is a vainglorious jackass.”

“Concannon’s mission history is irrelevant.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but it really isn’t.  I talked to his Aurors before I looked into his mission history.  He’s got the highest rate of injury in his division.”  Galahad clenched his jaw.  It wasn’t his place to tell the Canadians how to run their operations, but he was a Graves.  He had a duty to protect his people, no matter what the cost.  “The Canadians might be content to let him do whatever he wants, but I’m not going to stand by and watch while he gets my teammates killed just to advance his career!”

“Even at the expense of your own?” Weiss demanded.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” Galahad reminded her.  Weiss was one of the Twelve.  She knew what it meant to grow up with those words carved bone deep.  “Sometimes we get killed in the line of duty.  That’s the job.  But that doesn’t mean our lives are coin to be spent so cheaply.”

Weiss sighed.  “I know,” she said.  “I did look at Concannon’s mission history.  Graves never should’ve agreed to the joint task force.”

“He didn’t want to,” Galahad said. “Trust me.”

Weiss was too dignified to make faces, but Galahad got the impression she would have rolled her eyes if she could have.  “Yes, yes.  The Director of Magical Security does not dictate international policy,” she said, in a perfect imitation of Dad.

“Telling people to fuck off isn’t a great international policy,” Galahad agreed.

Weiss snorted.  “He would, wouldn’t he?”

“Can you blame him?”

Weiss ignored that, which meant that she agreed with him.  She was never, ever going to say so, though, because she and Dad didn’t exactly get along professionally.  They were fine with one another personally, but Aurors and the Eyrie were never going to see eye to eye.

She descended from the dais, her movements smooth and predatory despite her age.  Helmine Weiss was not a witch to be trifled with.

Galahad offered her his arm.

Weiss took it, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a faint smile.  Up close, MACUSA’s Ice Queen barely came up to his shoulder.  It was strange, realizing that such a terrifying figure was so tiny.

“You used to be so cute, you know,” she complained.  It was a frequent complaint, good-natured and teasing.  Galahad had heard it ever since he joined the Aurors.

“I used to be a lot shorter, too,” Galahad pointed out.  “Now I can reach the cookie jar and Dad’s liquor cabinet.”

“I had high hopes you were going to take after your papa,” she continued, ignoring him.  “But no.  You’re a Graves, through and through, down to the martyr-like tendencies.”

“Hey,” Galahad protested.  “I’m not as bad as Dad.”  No one was as bad as Dad.

Weiss patted his head.  “Of course you’re not.”

Galahad counted it a personal victory that she hadn’t tried to pinch his cheeks.  “It really doesn’t surprise me that you and Dad get along so well.”

“Bite your tongue, Galahad Graves.  Your father is insufferable.”

“Yeah,” said Galahad.  “He likes you too.”

[heloisedc]

Pygmalion Relations

Dear mother,

It could not have been a singular origin, the singularity of a beginning, the point of the big bang; rather, it would have to have been a moment of originary coincidence. A coincidence, a coincident, the doubling of a co inside, of an originary two, the condition made possible by the originary trace, which is to say, all conditions. It would thus leave traces, footprints that rippled both ways in the event, forward and backward.[1]

 I had been assigned to this man, and upon seeing him, I could not believe my eyes. He was of utter beauty, grazing perfection. The reproduction of the image of the Vitruvian man […][2] His face was distorted[3] and his nose was misshapen, too. Not much, to be sure […].[4] But the perfect proportion and symmetry of his body and frame rendered him beautiful. His skin texture was perfect, the individual hairs on head and body had been lovingly and intricately manufactured and placed.[5] He was transparent but impenetrable.[7] Everything that I could see in this body produced in me ecstatic wonder.[8]

It was evidently a case of “love at first sight” […][9] He would allow but one assistant to work with him […][10], which is how I ended up moving into his home. The habit of living a long time innocently together, far from weakening the first sentiments I felt for him, had contributed to strengthen them.[11]

I had studied all the details of housekeeping; I understood cooking and cleaning; I knew the prices of food, and also how to choose it; I could keep accounts accurately […].[12] Man has lashes on the eye lids on either side ; and I made it my daily care to stain his ; so ardent was he in the pursuit of beauty, that he must even colour his very eyes.[13] […] And he was in the habit of washing his face seven hundred times daily, and I would be strictly observing that number.[14] I would always take care of the oiling of his body, carefully spreading it in an even manner all over his stature. If I employed extracts, they had to have been recently prepared and preserved with great care.[15]

Now for his diet: for lunch honey, for dinner a biscuit and vegetables, meat infrequently.... In this way his body kept the same condition, as if on a straight line, without being sometimes healthy, sometimes sick, and without growing heavier Even outside the strictly Pythagorean context, regimen was regularly defined with reference to these two associated dimensions of good health maintenance and proper care of the soul.[1] And there were always drugs around—most notably, the jars of white crosses and other uppers that he kept in the fridge next to his protein fortified milkshakes.[2] In the succeeding month, our health improved [3] even beyond what I had thought was the limit.

Every day, I would go into his bedroom, search around for his running shorts and shoes and T shirt, change his clothes in eagerness, and soon enough, his body would find itself out on the pavement, with his feet pounding the ground and his heart beginning to thump away.[16]

And then, drawn out from his body, his sinews formed a bundle of dark, shiny stalks, not unlike the bundle of lightning bolts that lay beside him, although these were bright and smoking.[17] Now between the dry head, more than dead, almost abstract, empty and desiccated, suitably objectivized, wholly exterior, pierced, visible, nameable, articulated, analyzable, between the skull and the rest of the world, a circumstantial halo of light, like the ones worn by the great saints, replaces, at bone level, the lining of flesh, fat, muscle, organs, skin, veins, tendons, hair, radiance, charm, beauty, glory.[18]

Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular beauty, force and dedication so explicitly personified in a human body,[19] or perhaps it was something else. But in any way, I wanted to be seen with him. One of us alone could do only so much, but both of us together …[20]

I once wondered, For what purpose?[21] And he asked me if I thought it was truly possible to think without arriving at beauty, without penetrating the secret place where life bubbles up, without the transfiguration of the body?[22] To Lenny, you see, beauty was some inherent property, to be found suffused all through the body of that which may be called beautiful; whereas ornament, rather than being inherent, had the character of something attached or additional.[23] In an ecstasy of joy, no doubt intensified by the joy I felt in making him shine before my friends, with extreme volubility, I reiterated, stroking and patting him as though he was a horse that had just come first past the post: “You’re the most beautiful man I know, do you hear?”[24]

 Mother, I was incredibly happy with him. I had learned all that I could about his passion and would assist him with all my powers. But then came the move. We needed a new place to live, which is how we met Ludwig.

Wandering in the public square, a lit lantern in hand in the middle of the day, […] A garden more inviting than Eden would […] meet our eyes.[25] On the door of the magnificent garden was written with golden letters: 'The Abode of Beauty'. “The abode of Beauty!” Lenny had exclaimed, “Oh! that is what I want to see!”[26]

Once we arrived, we studied him and were pleased with what we had found,[27] which led to us moving in.

For some time after our arrival, every thing he saw excited wonder and admiration; and not till he was a little familiarized with the new objects, did he ask reasonable questions.[28]

During our breakfast, instead of speaking with me, as we used to, Lenny would often look out of the window at the […] small garden, brilliantly lit without shadows or oppressive heat […][29]. He once whispered to himself, quietly: “[…] That rose, it has all the perfections I speak of; colour, grace, and sweetness — and even when the fine tints fade, the smell is grateful to those who have before contemplated its beauties.”[30] But I felt uneasy. You see, Mother, he started to deck himself with plumes, necklaces, armlets, […][31] and earrings bearing gems that looked like diamonds.[32]He would ornament his body, something that he had always despised. And, on the other hand, Ludwig’s body would change. I often saw him building, constructing, modifying. He stopped asking me to help him with his training. I felt completely shallow and useless.. [4]

The most striking interior volume was the central, double height gymnasium that at once evoked memories of medieval great halls and was bathed with light from huge windows. […][33] It contained all sorts of apparatus: an exercise bicycle, wall bars, a rowing machine, a massage machine etc.[34]

When I saw him look at Lenny with lust […][35], the hatred of Ludwig gnawed my heart, but it was a hatred mingled with admiration of the beautiful, adulated body of his.

I would often glance through the windows, observing him move, sculpt, construct. His body became an architectural structure, moving masonry, a ship; the skeleton became a firm framework, with tie beams and rafters; the muscles formed the wall and partitions.[36] And with every drop of sweat, it would feel like Ludwig morphed, changing simultaneously to Lenny’s body.

I would not have been jealous if he had enjoyed his pleasures in my vicinity, with my encouragement, completely under my surveillance, thereby relieving me of any fear of mendacity,[37] but he was excluding me from all his activities.

Mother, it was not good for me. […] If he left my side for a moment, I became anxious, began to imagine that he had spoken to or simply looked at Ludwig. If he was not in the best of tempers, I thought that I must be causing him to miss or to postpone some appointment. Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far. It is better not to know, to think as little as possible, not to feed one’s jealousy with the slightest concrete detail. Unfortunately, in the absence of an outer life, incidents are created by the inner life too; in the absence of expeditions with him, the random course of my solitary reflections furnished me at times with some of those tiny fragments of the truth which attract to themselves, like a magnet, an inkling of the unknown, which from that moment becomes painful.[38]

On one somber evening Lenny came up to me, looked me straight into the soul and said, “A little while ago I did not know something that I know now; I know with whom I shall die.”[39]

[…] I then knew loneliness and isolation and I felt […] like an alien from another world.

 Now, Mother, I was already hurting all over. I would have many sleepless nights. But it only got worse, the exclusion only intensified…

One day, he got out of bed and walked into the bathroom for a shave and for the remainder of the morning ritual,[40] without even saying good morning to me. Everything happened, then, during the seconds of complete veiling. Hardly had it begun than a strange light, yellow and tawny, resembling nothing else, neither the evening nor the dawn, invaded the environment; the glory of orange light intercepted by the walls of my abode disappeared, giving way to a somber and magic bath […].[41] It was a surprise bath, where Ludwig had taken him down the corridors to an upper floor; he was then tipped backwards into the water. [42] I wanted to employ extracts, which I had recently prepared and preserved with great care,[43] but he gesticulated me to leave. I had always assisted him in cleaning himself, and could not bear letting him do it alone. I sat down beside the door, hearing unconscionable noise and splashing.[44] I then overheard him, whispering incoherently while giggling like a little girl: "Ludwig… Ludwig, I love you...Don't laugh at me, please don't laugh!...[45] I thought to myself: Oh, I shall die of pain and love and jealousy!”[46]

After a while, he suddenly stepped outside, catching me in the act of eavesdropping. It was too late, now, to draw back, and since he was about to know all, in order not to seem too miserable, too jealous and inquisitive, I called out in a cheerful, casual tone of voice: “Please don’t bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.”[47] I looked at his body and found it clean as virgin silver, […] whereat he rejoiced exceedingly and his breast expanded with gladness,[48] and then happily frolicked away, with only a towel tucked around his waist. I collapsed on the chair right in front of the seemingly endless stairs leading to the master bedroom.

When Lenny closed the door behind him, I heard a sort of echo in the roof; it sounded like voices […].[49] And then, blackness, […] vast emptiness stretching out infinitely.[50] Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence.[51] the infinite void of space[52] True loneliness occurs not when there are no others around me, but when I am deprived even of my shadow.[53]

Then he began to rush wildly about the room, shouting, singing, making a great noise […].[54] […] the ground below shuddered uneasily.[55] Then […] the chant, mingled with a murmur of supplication in the midst of ecstasy, seemed at times to stop altogether like a spring that has ceased to flow.[56]

Lenny returned; he was not at all surprised to encounter me before his door […].[57] After stepping out of the room, he shouted: “The glorious light makes me drunk with joy and my sense of wonder has no limits. This pleasure is truly divine! What pure happiness I feel in the bottom of my heart at this spectacle! What ecstasy! No, I cannot possibly give expression to it […]!”[58] He was absolutely in a state of ecstasy, and, involuntary, sinking on his knees, he passionately extended his arms towards Ludwig, certain he could not hear, and having no conception that he could see him.[59] Lenny stood, amazed, afraid of being mistaken, his joy tempered with doubt, and again and again stroked the object of his prayers. It was a body; he could feel the veins as he pressed them with his thumb.[60] And then, a cry of joy […]. [61]

This made me cry because I was not like it, not something complete, which turned toward the lost sweetness of life like a distant quotation. Happiness can only be thought of as something lost, as a beautiful alien. It cannot be anything more than a premonition that we approach with tears in our eyes without ever reaching it. [62]

I needed to get out.

 Mother, I learned an important lesson. Accepting the unfortunate reality would calm my soul far more than endlessly aiming at an unattainable fiction.

When I got into the open air, I heard distinctly, as the night was still, Lenny’s joyous laughter.[63] When I looked back at what had once been a house, it struck me. He had sculpted the finest work of art I had ever seen, much like his own body. It was the most sublime, most charming, most graceful, most splendid, most touching [64] […] more safely guarded by its walls, more superb in palaces, more ornamented in respect to temples, more beautiful by virtue of its buildings, more illustrious in its porticoes, more splendid in its piazzas[65] He had given great attention to realistic detail, rendering each feature with painstaking precision, […][66] and the more time I spent studying the detail, the more I realized how much love and passion had gone into it.[67]

I saw Lenny’s silhouette, through the veiled windows of the master bedroom in the top floor, dancing with Ludwig, hearing cheerful and ecstatic echoes vibrating through my ears as the night was still.

They were now mutually bound together, the lighter being restrained by the heavier, so that it cannot fly off; while, on the contrary, from the lighter tending upwards, the heavier is so suspended, that it cannot fall down.[68] So these two beings will live in this manner, high aloft, with all that improbability which is in nature; neither at the nadir nor at the zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether, in the clouds; hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head to foot; already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily charged with humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated; apparently beyond the bounds of destiny; ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to day, tomorrow; amazed, rapturous, floating, soaring; at times so light that they could take their flight out into the infinite; almost prepared to soar away to all eternity.[69]

My Love […] must, like every mental state, even the most lasting, find itself one day obsolete, be “replaced,” and that when that day would come, everything that seemed to attach me so sweetly, indissolubly, to the memory of Lenny, would no longer exist for me. [70] Just as in morality, pleasure and pain have but a single source, and an end to pain is enough to produce pleasure.[71]

Dear Mother, there are times which are landmarks in our lives; and they not only mark off a phase that has passed, but, at the same time, point out clearly our new direction.[72] I am looking forward to coming home.

I embrace you, […][73]

Your Son

[1] Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 2

[2] Davis, High Weirdness

[3] Laennec, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest and on Mediate Auscultation

[4] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[1] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[2] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[3] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[4] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[5] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[7] Hugo, Les Miserables

[8] de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

[9] Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

[10] Heilbron, The Sun in the Church

[11] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[12] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[13] Pliny, Natural History Volume 3

[14] Pliny, Natural History Volume 5

[15] Laennec, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest and on Mediate Auscultation

[16] Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

[17] Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

[18] Serres, Statues

[19] Rand, The Fountainhead

[20] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[21] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[22] Serres, The Five Senses

[23] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[24]Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol III The Guermantes Way

[25] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[26] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[27] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[28] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[29] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[30] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[31] Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

[32] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[33] Cruickshank, A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings

[34] Bourdieu, Distinction

[35] Colebrook, Irony The New Critical

[36] Serres, The Five Senses

[37] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[38] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[39] Bell, Men of Mathematics

[40] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[41] Serres, Biogea

[42] Foucault, History of Madness

[43] Laennec, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest and on Mediate Auscultation

[44] Seneca, Complete Works

[45] Rand, The Fountainhead

[46] Deleuze, Masochism Coldness and Cruelty Venus in Furs

[47] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol I Swanns Way

[48] The Book of the Thousand and One Nights

[49] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[50] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[51] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[52] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[53] Zizek, Less Than Nothing

[54] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[55] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[56] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol III The Guermantes Way

[57] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[58] Mallgrave, Architectural Theory

[59] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[60] Freedberg, The Power of Images

[61] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology The Complete Work

[62] Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

[63] The Book of the Thousand and One Nights Supplementary Nights

[64] Frankl, The Gothic

[65] Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism

[66] Chilvers, A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art Oxford

[67] Hovestadt Buehlmann, Quantum City

[68] Pliny, Natural History Volume 1

[69] Hugo, Les Miserables

[70] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[71] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[72] Marx, Collected Works

[73] Montesquieu, Persian Letters

[randomconnections]

Thai, Slides, and Drums

Vernal Equinox Sunset over Fidalgo Island – a photograph that has absolutely nothing to do with the attached post, but included because I like it.

For a Wednesday there was a LOT going on. There were trips back into town and to see more daffodils, as well as new musical and food experiences. Here’s a quick rundown of the day…

Laura wanted to see more of the daffodils. We headed into La Conner for lunch at our favorite BBQ place, then out across the flats. Since I’ve photographed these fields many times, I decided not to stop and take photos that looked just like the ones I’ve already posted. Plus, it was starting to get crowded to looky-loos. We enjoyed them from our car, instead.

Laura’s new hammock arrived. It’s an ENO knock-off, but a double-nest hammock plus straps cost only as much as the Atlas straps did for my ENO. It seems to work just as well. While she attempted to read I kept buzzing her with my quadcopter.

I had multiple options for the evening. There was another Irish session at Village Pizza. I seriously contemplated attending, if for no other reason than to bolster my confidence with that genre. Not only was it another Bring Your Own Guitar night, but I had also discovered a drum circle, also in Mount Vernon. I wanted to do all of them.

Thai Food

First, though, was the matter of dinner. I was craving Thai food and had thought that I’d just walk down to Thai House Restaurant. It’s on the same street as Empire Ale, where we have BYOG, so it would be a good close option. Turns out I found an even better, closer option.

I parked right across from Empire Ale on a side street. Right in front of me was a little hole-in-the-wall place called Rachawadee Thai. Balancing between skepticism and adventure lust, I tipped over to the adventure side.

The place was tiny. There was one long counter with about eight seats and a cooking/prep space just on the other side.

I got there right after it opened for its 5:00 dinner service. Already there were a couple of people sitting at the counter awaiting orders. I had just beaten the rush. Lots of take out and eat-in customers filed in after me. Space was at a premium.

Those of us seated squeezed in tighter to make room at the end of the counter. You absolutely had to be sociable in this setting. I chatted with the young woman next to me. Jen told me about her upcoming backpacking trip across Europe, starting in Iceland, then heading to the Scandinavian countries to visit relatives.

The menu has standard Thai fare at reasonable prices for this area. There are warnings that their dishes are hotter than most. Even so warned, I ordered Pad Thai with chicken about medium spicy. It came out hot – much spicier than what we’ve had in other places. It was delicious. I enjoyed my meal and the company, even though perspiration streamed from my forehead. This place is a keeper.

Slide Guitar

From Rachawadee it was just a short step down to Empire Ale. Lisa and Ann were already there getting set up for our slide guitar workshop. Sherry and newcomer Jax joined us. It was a small group.

I’d not really tried slide guitar, but took to it quickly. Lisa had an injured finger on her left hand, hence the slide sessions. She led us through some exercises then we tackled a couple of simple pieces.

About halfway through we switched back to our standard repertoire, but I stayed on slide, playing the melody and trying to improvise against their chords. It was fun.

Drum Circle

I’ve been looking for drum circles ever since coming to the PNW. Sadly, every one I’ve found looked too “New Agey” for my tastes. I just wanted to bang on a drum and make cool rhythms without getting too holistic and spiritual about it.

I finally came across one listed in Facebook that might be tolerable. The event listing described it as “Learn World Rhythm drumming in a fun and safe atmosphere.” Of course, it was the same night as BYOG, but it started a bit later, running from 7:00 to 8:00. The venue was almost right across the street from Empire Ale at the Mortar and Pestle Apothecary.

As I headed out for the evening I tossed my djembe in the back of the car with my guitar, just in case. I figured I could either leave BYOG early and walk across the street, or just pop by later. I decided upon a more casual approach than full participation.

We finished BYOG around 7:30. I invited my fellow guitarists to come along and see what this was about. Only Jax took me up on the offer. We dropped the guitars off in my car and wandered down to the Apothecary.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I hear the word “apothecary” I think of an old-time pharmacy. Laura reminded me that this was Washington State, after all, and that an apothecary that advertised herbal remedies might have a different meaning out here.

When Jax and I got there the lights were on, but we couldn’t see any activity. I was about to turn around and head back but Jax tried the door. It was locked, but a set of bells attached to the door rang. A woman poked her head from behind a curtain and approached us skeptical. No turning around now.

As she opened the door a crack I said that we had heard about the drum circle and wondered if we could listen to the last ten minutes of their session. We were led to the “Crones’ Loft” upstairs, where two other women sat with djembes. Mary Ellen was the session leader, Donna was the owner of the venue, and Katherine/Crystal?? (I can’t remember the name) was the other participant.

Jax and I took a seat and the trio started playing some of the patterns they had been learning.

I’d left my djembe in the car since we were just on reconnaissance. They still invited us to join in. Donna passed me her drum and she and Jax took shakers. We went through several rhythms for about fifteen minutes or so.

The group is using patterns from a book entitled Congo Joy. It had the familiar “bass”, “tone” and “slap” notation with which I was familiar from my classes with Ben Weston. However, the book appears to be unavailable now.

Afterwards we chatted a bit. Mary Ellen is an elementary music teacher and a percussionist with the local symphony. I gave them my background in music and drumming. The group was curious about our BYOG events and I invited them to the new Bring Your Own Buckets and Sticks which would start next week.

The venue, the books on healing and spirituality, and the wall decorations led me to believe that this could have easily been pushed into the New Age realm. I was honest and told them that I was glad to find a drumming event that focused on the music education rather than spiritual aspects. Donna said that the spiritual type of drumming was what she originally wanted, but that Mary Ellen had convinced her to go a different direction.

There were only three there tonight, but usually there were from five to seven participants. The group meets once a month, usually on the third Wednesday. I didn’t ask if they were all women or the make-up of the group in general, but the phrase “Crones’ Loft” led me to believe this is mostly a female-leaning group. Even so, they had no problem with Jax and me being there.

As we left Donna showed me around her place. The upstairs loft where we drummed is a reading nook, complete with a kitchen. Downstairs were gallon jars full of various herbs (none of them cannabis.) There were a few small drums, incense bowls, and other items for sale, including “healing teas, herbs lotions and salves” according to the FB page. Donna also makes herbal soaps and showed me a table with her creations.

I thanked Donna for letting us crash their party and having faith in us. As far as she knew we could have been a couple of street thugs just wanting in, but she let us in. As a result we met some nice folks and got to do a bit of drumming. I’m glad Jax went ahead and tried the door.

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[mastcomm]

The D’Arenberg Cube Is a Zany, Adult Fun House

MCLAREN VALE, South Australia — The Cube rises from neatly tended rows of grapevines in the middle of the d’Arenberg winery like a meteorite from some faraway jagged dimension. Housing art galleries, a restaurant and a wine tasting room, the giant glass geometric structure is both impressive and confounding from the outside. That confusion only intensifies once you enter the five-story building, where you are greeted by a statue of an upended life-size cow, cradling a large vintage polygraph machine in its outstretched legs.

Since its opening in 2017, the d’Arenberg Cube has attracted about 1,000 visitors each day, making it one of South Australia’s most popular tourist destinations. Its twisted, blocky glass facade — inspired by a Rubik’s Cube — has become a recognizable symbol for the region and the eccentric winemaker who built it.

This is exactly what Chester Osborn, a fourth-generation winemaker at his family’s 108-year-old d’Arenberg winery, had in mind almost 20 years ago when he conceived of the Cube. “I wanted something iconic, like the Sydney Opera House, with its own amazing architecture that tells a story,” he said. The building cost $15 million to $16 million Australian, $2 million of which was provided as a grant from the South Australian government.

The ground-floor Alternate Realities Museum is made up of a series of spaces plastered with art and objects curated by Mr. Osborn: A room with walls made of flowers and plastic fruit has jars holding various foods, with air pumps that blow the scent from each jar into your nostrils; a 360-degree video room plays a loop of psychedelic animations projected onto the walls. The second floor is a gallery for rotating exhibitions — it currently holds Salvador Dalí sculptures.

To run the restaurant on the third and fourth floors, Mr. Osborn hired two South African chefs, a husband and wife team who had been working at the nearby Leonards Mill. Brendan Wessels and Lindsay Dürr were given one main directive: D’Arenberg should be the best restaurant in the world.

The fourth-floor dining room carries on the aggressively zany theme of the rest of the building, with chairs upholstered in multicolored harlequinesque velvet. A mishmash of artwork and objects hangs from the ceiling, including a full-size cafe racer motorcycle. The restaurant serves only lunch, a set $210 tasting menu, from Thursday to Sunday. Wildly mustachioed sommeliers recommend pairings, either drawn entirely from the d’Arenberg collection, or comparing d’Arenberg wines with international labels.

The first course, labeled on the menu as “down the rabbit hole,” sets the tone for the extravagance and folly to come. Presented in a hollowed-out replica of the book “Alice in Wonderland” is a black sphere that contains foie gras mousse, a puffed and crackly “mochi” made from duck fat, and a vial labeled “drink me” that contains a rich duck consommé.

Mr. Osborn is heavily involved in the planning of the menus, an effort which, according to Mr. Wessels, included a 3 a.m. text message instructing the chef to purchase a 3-D printer for the kitchen. This extravagance has resulted in a dish of coconut labneh that is printed into a hexagonal honeycomb shape and presented on a plate alongside tiny squeeze bottles of colored “paint.” The red paint is made from pickled red cabbage, the green from cilantro and mint, and diners are invited to decorate their 3-D printed labneh object however they desire.

While you’re hard at work creating your edible masterpiece, the final part of the dish arrives: a puck of juicy goat meat flavored with masala and coated in wiry wisps of shredded vadouvan, made by turning vadouvan paste into a solid with hydrate methyl cellulose and then grating it.

This is almost certainly the most ridiculous dish I’ve ever been served, down to the weird viscosity of the paints. It was also undeniably fun, and the complete dish actually tasted … good. Better than good! All of those meaty, creamy, fruity, juicy, crunchy elements added together — miraculously — equal deliciousness.

A rosette of thinly sliced, crisp potatoes is presented at the table and then drowned in a densely chickeny and umami-rich “chicken cream.” Mr. Wessels explained the method for making the meaty goo, a process that involved two chicken stocks, one made from feet and wings and the other from whole chickens, which are pressure-cooked and ice clarified, then steeped with kombu before being strained and combined with cream. Over crackly oily potatoes, it tastes like an outrageously elaborate version of that great Australian snack, the chicken-flavored potato chip.

In the hands of lesser chefs, these shenanigans would come off as pure gimmickry, and there are times during a meal at the Cube when all the playfulness falls flat. The final dessert course features a vial of powder and a mirror, along with an oversize American $100 bill emblazoned with Mr. Osborn’s face. The powder is a sherbet made from acai berries and ground-up popping candy. The experience of sucking it up through the rolled bill (you are instructed not to snort it) isn’t especially enjoyable.

Mr. Wessels said the dish is “an attempt to illustrate the polar extremes between childish naïveté (sherbet) and complicated adult taboos and vices.” O.K., sure. I’m not convinced that philosophy is this restaurant’s strong suit.

However, most of the food served at the Cube puts flavor and gimmick on roughly equal footing. It’s almost refreshing, in this age when most high-priced Australian restaurants focus on local or native ingredients, to see these chefs worry about nothing except luxury, deliciousness and a giddy sense of fun. Everything about the experience is exceedingly silly, but there is a lot of thought and technique and effort behind making that silliness work.

You do not have to eat at the restaurant in order to visit the Cube; most visitors pay the $15 entry fee to see the wacky artwork and to taste d’Arenberg wines in the bright, airy top-floor tasting room. This fee provides entry to the third floor, home to selfie-friendly wax sculptures of Mr. Osborn and his father looking distressingly like rubbery animated corpses. The third floor is also where you’ll find the bathrooms, which are set up like mirrored fun houses, making them purposefully confusing to get in and out of (all the more so if you’ve had a few wines). The men’s room features urinals that double as giant gaping clownlike faces. Yes, their mouths are the, um, receptacles.

Sound juvenile? It is. But that streak of immaturity and not-quite-right shabbiness is part of what gives the Cube its wonky, and sometimes disturbing appeal. The first piece of artwork that confronts you upon entering the Alternate Realities Museum is a bright painting that depicts a large yellow creature impaling a man with its penis while simultaneously devouring the his head. This may be a fun house, but its themes are decidedly adult.

At a nearby vineyard owned by another family, I spoke to some local winemakers who were discussing the Cube and its impact on the region. “It’s kind stupid and daggy in some ways, but that’s why it’s great,” one said. “If it were all slick — if it took itself too seriously — it would be unbearable.”

She was right. The d’Arenburg Cube is quite wonderful, mainly because it is so very stupid.

Do you have a suggestion for Besha Rodell? The New York Times’s Australia bureau would love to hear from you: nytaustralia@nytimes.com, or join the discussion in the NYT Australia Facebook group. Read about the Australia Fare column here.

Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.

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Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another guest contribution from R. Ann Parris to The Prepper Journal. Size ultimately does matter. If you have information for Preppers that you would like to share then enter into the Prepper Writing Contest with a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies!

Canning jars come in a wide variety of sizes, and two common lid sizes. It’s not a bad idea to go ahead and snag at least some of that variety, because it can give us a lot of versatility. Factoring in our uses, the composition of people we’re feeding, likely situations, and costs can help decide what spread of sizes is most efficient and effective.

Lid sizes can sometimes make or break canning costs.

In some locations, the difference in price between regular and wide mouth lids isn’t significant, as little as $0.03-$0.05 USD per lid. Other times, though, inside the U.S. and around the world, wide mouth lids are as much as 2-3x a regular mouth lid.

Those lid costs can add up fast if we’re doing a lot of canning every year.

Bear in mind the total real costs of canning, including those lids, while contemplating jar investments.

The costs can influence some to dehydrate more foods – not only creating a more compact storage, but also one where it doesn’t matter if something won’t all be consumed quickly. It allows them to use larger jars and fewer lids.

Account for water availability if that’s the plan.

Other homesteaders skip half- and quarter-pint jars – and the extra lids required to can the same amounts of food using those smaller jars – sticking instead mostly to quarts and pints.

That’s fine now, when we have fridges and freezers that make leftovers easy and convenient. In a disaster, however, widespread or personal, our power sources or our appliances can go down. We need to consider if we have persistent snow cover and deep-cold periods, or double-backup power sources, and how many leftovers we’d be looking at dealing with without them.

Balancing the cost (and canning time) of preserving foods in reasonable, readily consumable portion sizes versus bigger jars takes a bit of experience, because “consumable” is situationally dependent. It’s not one size fits all.

Go Big or Go Home

(Personally, I like my home. Just saying.)

It can be tempting to snag half-gallon and gallon jars sometimes, especially if we’re storing dry goods in our jars until we want them for “real” canning.

Resist that temptation. If you can’t resist, go only up to half-gallon jars, and don’t sink the bank into getting a lot of them.

The max size most of us need is quarts.

Exceptions would be if we’re getting bigger jars for free and it’s just another storage container, or if we’re already fermenting and producing significant juice/booze/vinegar.

Many home canners just don’t safely preserve foods in larger jars, especially denser foods. Some won’t even hold more than a quart’s height.

We also usually don’t need bigger jars, even if we’re feeding 12-20 people or more.

Too, they’re fairly expensive. It’s a long-term investment (usually) but “saving” the cost of buying 2-6 lids for pints and quarts to hold the same amount will take several years to pay off.

Another consideration: The more sizes of jars we have to account for, the more “funtastic” our storage area planning will be.

Shelving may not seem like a major factor, but remember: just canning two cups a day per person requires 180+ quarts.

Winging it may be an option for 30 cases of pints so we can eat or share only those two cups a day. Aiming to can two-each of fruits, veggies, and proteins per day – still no carbs, syrups/honey, etc. – bumps that to nearly 550 quarts.

That’s 46 flats of quarts or 92 flats of pints we’re accounting for on our shelves, per person.

And THAT makes the spacing involved with storing those jars something worth actual thought.

Pints, both “slims”, and quarts work well on the same shelving. If there’s room to wiggle quart jars past each other, there’s also usually room to stack half-pints or half- and quarter-pints, in flats or as “loose” jars.

Once shelving is accounting for half-gallons and gallons, too, your choices are to break away from modular shelving, be stacking a lot more combinations, or waste 4+ inches on every shelf that won’t quite fit another layer.

Shorty Jars

Preserving small portions in quarter-pints and mini/sample jars lets us open useable amounts of foods. That can both limit leftovers/scraps and let us dole out specialty items instead of having to consume them all at once. It increases total space used, though, and takes 2-8x the lids versus pints and quarts.

Even so, we might want at least some small jars for spreads, herbs, reduced stock bases, juice concentrates, sauces, and high-value “treats” like low-yielding berries or meats.

Depending on family composition and tastes, they’re also handy for consumable portions of spicing onions, pickled beets, or even regular ol’ salsa and chutney.

Picking Sizes by Situation

Remember: How we can (and cook) now may very well change if we’re removed from or limiting our power draws and refrigeration. Some of us have 3-6 months or more when we could pack old-school ice chests and buckets, sink a bucket/cooler in a cold spring, or let an outdoor cooler be our fridge. For some of us, though, that’s impossible or unreliable.

Without refrigeration…

People anticipating infants/toddlers might stock more quarter-pints (4-5 oz.; 100-125-150 ml) and mini/sampler jars (1.5-3 oz.; 50-75 ml) so they can easily preserve baby food.

(Plan on ordering the teensy-tiny jars, and almost 100% the extra lids for them – they’re rarely in stores. Also, be sitting and try to avoid drinking/lollipops when you do the price check. It’s “eek” worthy.)

Singles and couples will probably lean more heavily on half-pints and pints, especially for meats and proteins, and use quarts mostly for canning heat-and-eat soups or stews, bulky items like potatoes, and some fruits.

For families and groups of 3-8, a mix of mostly quarts and pints is typically going to be most efficient, with some select half-pint jars for things like condiments and portable meals.

Larger families and groups in the 10-20+ person range would focus even more on quarts, although conditions might lend themselves to having some smaller jars available for individuals or pairs.

Totable Portions

Even with families and larger groups that can readily consume pints and quarts of each ingredient at a meal, we may want to snag a few flats of smaller jars. Those half-pints and quarter-pints can facilitate pack-able lunches and overnight-trip meals.

Remember: Modern humanity has been walking away from home and munching a midday meal for centuries, farm hands to loggers. We’ve been taking overnight trips – and eating prepared foods on them – for millennia.

Also remember: Not all disasters are equal.

We could very well have had life as we know it end within a family and be leaning on our food storage and preservation while the world continues around us. In Great Depression or Venezuela conditions, some work is available and we’ll still need to fuel that work.

Even being glass, canning jars are plenty tough enough for a rucksack or daily-carry bag.

They’re heavier than the MRE’s, tins, and pouches of just-add-water foods we commonly use now, but if we’re only carrying 1-2, it’s not an enormous weight suck, especially for “just” a daily lunch.

Right now, Ziploc-type bags and plastic storage containers are inexpensive and prevalent enough to make them more common for multi-day packers and daily lunches. That wasn’t always so, though, and canning jars do still see use for the latter.

In a personal or widespread disaster that limits our disposable income or disrupts normal supply chains either through pricing or availability, jars can easily return to being the more common container for daily and multi-day travel foods.

We can set them up a couple ways for our lunches and haversacks.

One, we can water-bath and pressure can small portions, providing a cup of soup, applesauce or fruit, a tub of fish or meat that can be consumed with some crackers or bread, or a bean dish to go with tortillas or bannock.

Two, we can set up simple mixes that we’ll add water to. That can be anything from bannock bread to instant potatoes, rice, couscous, or other small pastas.

Cooking options vary by what we packed and any given day. We can add water early and let them sit in the sun, use water we’re boiling fresh, or use a small pan or large mug as a double boiler to heat foods inside the jars.

Versatility Adds Resilience

Being able to adapt to situations increases our self-reliance. A variety of canning jar sizes can provide that in many ways.

Even so, start with the most economical and most common sizes. For many of us, that’s going to be pints and quarts, with only the odd smaller or larger jars mixed in.

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[jonathanbelloblog]

First Drive: 2019 Bentley Continental GT

KITZBUHEL, AUSTRIA – The hills are alive with the sound of music, but this isn’t Julie Andrews doing the singing. Instead, a 5,000-pound British grand touring coupe is belting out a glorious, 12-cylinder baritone tune, its siren song echoing across the picturesque valley. The 2019 Bentley Continental GT has some serious pipes—two ovoid tipped ones, in fact—and we’re more than happy to let any Austrian within earshot hear the roar emitting from them.

The new, third-generation Continental GT finds its voice from the hand-built masterpiece that is its 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged W-12 engine, which is rated at 626 horsepower and 664 lb-ft of torque—numbers that would have blown everyone away a decade ago but now almost seem commonplace. There is nothing common about this super coupe, however. This is a member of the House of Lords—a proper British motorcar that does its touring in grand style, one that nods to Bentley’s past all while embracing the brave new automotive world.

While the hulking Bentayga, the SUV that Bentley simply had to build, is the storied marque’s new hotness, the Continental GT is its modern-era heart. The assembled officials who spoke—and we spoke with—during our first go with it used words like “honor,” and “crowning achievement” to describe how they felt about working on the new car. Indeed, the Conti GT was a phenomenon when it first hit the market back in 2003. It quickly became a gotta-have-it machine for rappers, Hollywood hotshots, and the nouveau-riche, with some 70,000 having been sold in all. It’s a car that came to define what a new Bentley could be, a shining example of how the German knowhow and engineering of the Volkswagen Group could coexist with the legendary British craftsmanship and motoring expertise housed in Bentley’s ancestral home of Crewe.

We’re getting a taste of how far that relationship has come as we power the Continental GT into yet another tight hairpin along a stretch of the Großglockner pass, a spectacular alpine route that cuts across jagged, fog-swathed peaks and deep canyons covered with lush, snow-packed forests. Experiencing this kind of mind-blowing scenery at speeds fast and slow is what touring is all about, and the Conti has little problem navigating the road’s numerous switchbacks, slick roadways, and myriad elevation changes.

After passing through the pass, there is absolutely zero question whatsoever in our minds that the new Continental GT is an eminently more capable car dynamically than the outgoing model thanks to a number of key updates, chief among them a move to from the aging D1 platform to the VW Group’s MSB component set—a far more rigid underlying structure with greater packaging flexibility that also underpins the Porsche Panamera.

Its suspension—aluminum double wishbone up front and multi-link at rear—is a proven design that’s further augmented by Bentley’s Dynamic Ride control system. Powered by a 48-volt mild hybrid setup, Dynamic Ride is designed to improve steering feel, overall handling, chassis response, and grip. Its key feature is its ability to electronically activate anti-roll bars that can shove as much as 959 lb-ft of torque against the forces of lateral evil.

Further ride and handling improvements include an updated air suspension with new three-chamber shocks that hold 60 percent more air and a Bentley first: an electronically controlled active torque vectoring system. Utilizing a center differential with a multi-plate clutch, it normally sends all available torque to the rear wheels, but can deliver up to 38 percent to the fronts when the system deems it necessary. You want more torque vectoring? Of course you do. The Continental GT is also fitted with a brake-vectoring setup pioneered on the outgoing GT3-R and Supersports models that can move torque from inside to outside wheels depending on the grip conditions it senses.

In case that wasn’t enough, Bentley’s Drive Dynamics Control also allows the driver to select Comfort, Bentley, and Sport modes, or you mix and match the throttle map, steering feel, spring stiffness, damping, and engine note to individual tastes. The different modes essentially act as electronic guideposts for the Dynamic Ride and torque distribution systems.

Over 200 miles or so of taking on challenging and often foggy mountain passes, lollygagging through postcard picture mountain towns, blasting through tunnels, and rolling deep across rain-slicked motorways in Austria and a tiny slice of northern Italy, we felt totally in control of the Continental GT at all times.

There is no getting around that this is still a big and heavy car at 4,947 pounds and we were a bit spooked when the roads got super narrow, but it is some 130 pounds lighter than before and flat and confident under hard cornering. It’s also ferociously fast, with 0-60 coming on in 3.6 seconds, and feels every bit of that. And it’s one of the newest members of the 200 Club, with a top speed of 207 mph.

The big coupe’s handbuilt W-12, a similar version of the mill found under the hood of the Bentayga, serves up a table-flat feast of torque (25 percent more than before) from just 1,350 rpm to 4,500 rpm. It also has cylinder shutoff and can run with six pistons firing. Engine power is routed through another Bentley first, an eight-speed dual clutch transmission. While a version of it also shifts gears for the Panamera, calibrating the dual clutcher specifically for the Continental GT was a focus for chief engineer Bob Teale and his team.

“An interesting journey, the gearbox,” said Teale with typical British understatement of how much work was put into creating an experience that would not be jarring or lead to any tip-in at low speed gear switches, but at the same time be instantaneous and snap off shifts when you put your foot down or aggressively downshift. (You want to launch hard from a stop, stand on the brake, rev it let off and floor it. Impress your friends!) From our limited time behind the wheel, it seems the brief was nailed.

When you want to see how Teale’s team did with the more dynamic tranny setup, turn the diamond-patterned metal dial into Sport mode, and the gears hold fast longer as its exhaust gets its mean-mugging backpressure baffle on—you can even hear it a bit through the Conti GT’s double-glazed glass and sound insulation of its cocoon of a cabin. Steering feel didn’t seem to change all that much when switching modes, but no matter—it is well weighted and you never feel as though you’re waiting for the wheels to turn in as the electric power system starts doing its thing.

When we were on a high speed blast and suddenly hit a go slow zone, the GT’s brakes—the biggest iron units ever fitted to a Bentley at roughly 16.5-inches in front with 10-piston calipers clamping down on them—hauled it down with authority and without a bunch of clutch and grab in the process.

The steering wheel you’re turning is a stitched up, leather-clad unit, part of a cabin that many heifers gave up their hides to swathe. Bentley has been continuously ramping up its interior fit and finish, claimig that more than 310,000 stitches are needed to cinch up all that leather. Wood veneer options kick up the impression of luxury and are a main customization touchpoint. Another interior cue Bentley officials are particularly proud of is the diamond-in-diamond stitching pattern that reportedly took 18 months to perfect. That’s a hell of a lot of sewing classes at Crewe.

One of the coolest (or kitschiest, depending on your opinion) features of the cockpit is a rotating center stack element that either displays the 12.3-inch infotainment screen, showcases a trio of analog gauges, or extends the wood veneer. It’s a neat party trick. The only slight demerit to us inside is the piano black area around the gearshift. The buttons are well arranged, but it sort of stands out sore thumb like. Overall space inside is more than adequate for driver and passenger (not so much rear passengers, although it’s not quite a jail back there) and its 12.3 cu-ft of cargo space is decent). If you want to massage, heat, cool or otherwise adjust your seats 20 ways to Sunday, you can. You can also bathe your ears in sound up to a staggering 2,200 watts of power through the optional Naim stereo setup.

As for how the new 2019 Bentley Continental GT has evolved exterior wise, we’ll defer to our esteemed automotive design editor Robert Cumberford. From his recent By Design column on the car: “There’s nothing little about any German-era Bentley Continental. They’re big cars … But because of that stumpy front end and the giant 22-inch wheels on this new Continental [21-inchers are standard], you get the sense of a tight, compact coupe.

I find the rather wide (as compared to all the finer trim pieces on the car) chrome band on the side to be both inappropriate and poorly executed, skewed off-datum as it is. But that’s the only part of the styling that clashes with the Bentley tradition of understated quality. … I am particularly pleased by the subtle undercuts beneath each important styling line. It works well everywhere, but it’s especially effective on the rear fender indication.”

So yeah, he liked it well enough, and it has evolved into a more aggressive, but also more elegant looking package. There are some plastic trim bits though—a little disappointing for a car in this stratosphere.

Prospective U.S. customers are going to have to wait almost a year to get their hands on one, which is too bad. By the time that happens, Bentley will have already begun rolling out the inevitable V-8, plug-in, and myriad high performance variants. There will be plenty of options to be sure, but from our first taste of it, this is an ultra-luxury coupe worthy of singing praises about.

 2019 Bentley Continental GT Specifications

ON SALE Spring 2019 PRICE $214,600 (base) ENGINE 6.0L twin-turbo DOHC 48-valve W-12/626 hp @ 6,000 rpm, 664 lb-ft @ 1,300-4,500 rpm TRANSMISSION 8-speed dual-clutch automatic LAYOUT 2-door, 4-passenger, front-engine, AWD coupe EPA MILEAGE 14/22 mpg (city/hwy) (est) L x W x H 190.9 x 86.1 x 55.3 in WHEELBASE 112.2 in WEIGHT 4,947 lb 0-60 MPH 3.6 sec TOP SPEED 207 mph

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Beauty : less costly candles to spread a warm glow

The world is divided into those who believe scented candles are laughably unnecessary – the nearly literal act of burning money for at excellent ephemeral praise – and those who love the sheer decadence of scenting a room, who locate the dim glow comforting and enjoyable. I fall into the latter camp, but my choice for insanely steeply-priced candles by Diptyque, Jo Malone, and Bella Freud method even I war to justify lights them regularly.

however cheap candles so regularly stink of air freshener (my worst smell: I’d without a doubt favor inhaling something unpleasantness it’s trying to masks) or offer such restrained “throw” (the radius of the candle’s heady scent), that they constitute a fake economy. A good deal version that also feels indulgent is as rare as chicken’s teeth, that is why I encourage candle-enthusiasts toward Aldi for a jumbo, -wick, silver-lidded candle in No three Pomegranate Noir for just £three.Ninety-nine. The smell isn’t too sweet or glaringly artificial, and the throw is good (suggesting that the fragrance oil is going all of the manners via the wax, in place of being used most effective within the upper degree, a sneaky, value-slicing practice followed by way of a few manufacturers). Mine has burned frivolously and cleanly over several baths, and the rate meant I extravagantly kept it lit longer than I would otherwise have. Less excitingly, but extra usefully, I lately sold some fee’s Anti-Tobacco Jar Candles (£five.26) for an outdoor party. They labored a treat and gave off a cute orange and clove scent that I decided to keep lengthy after cigarettes had been extinguished.

If naked flames provide you with the willies – and I quite understand, particularly when you have toddlers or pets in the house – then take into account Muji’s extremely good Aroma Diffuser. It prices £forty.50, however, lasts a life-time, representing a tiny value in keeping with use, even accounting for the few drops of important oil needed to fill the room with dry, scented vapor (Muji sells a large choice from £4.forty five). As a bonus, the unit gives off a gentle, warm mild.

For those craving more luxurious, I heartily propose Seven Seventeen’s Candles (from £14). Created by using frazzled mothers annoyed on the fee of posh candles, the range is nicely conceived, honestly priced and beautifully packaged. Plus £1 from the sale of each candle is going direct to Pandas, a charity offering guide to new mothers affected by pre- and postnatal contamination, doubling your heat glow. Finishing Your Room With the warm Glow of a Fire A crackling fire in the Fireplace provides simply the right contact to so many situations. A roaring hearth within the history at a vacation party could make all the difference. A fire inside the Fireplace puts the final touch on a romantic evening or a calming afternoon with a great e-book.

but many humans get a headache once they reflect consideration on all the paintings involved with an actual Fire. You need to clean and hold the chimney, reducing and storing firewood, safety problems from flying sparks, and trying to keep pets and kids far from the ashes. Fake fireplaces are the best solution. With Faux fireplaces, you get to enjoy all of the advantages of a Fire without any of the hassles.

There are two foremost kinds of imitation Fireplace logs. One is the fuel-powered log, that’s available in direct-vent, vent-unfastened, and bi-vent models. human beings normally agree that gas logs produce the most real-searching flames. They’re frequently referred to as fake flame logs because of their realistic movement and motion. They are not dependent on having energy, either, so even when the energy is out someone can nonetheless live warm.

The second kind of imitation Fire log is the electrical-powered Hearth log. sensible-looking logs are located over a sparkling electric heater, every now and then with a mild bulb. The result is a heat glow in preference to the advent of a flame, but the common impact remains rather excellent. In case you want your Fake Fireplace to have the crackling of an actual wooden fireplace, you should buy special crackling electric powered logs crafted from all right with a system interior that produces the noise.

A way to Make a Candle: Growing That warm Glow From Scratch While all of this may cost $50 or so prematurely, there are things to hold in thoughts. First off, the candle pitcher is non-compulsory; you do not have to shop for one (it simply makes matters a bit easier). Secondly, the dyes and smells will misplace a very long time, and you may clearly make your very own In case you want to move actually at the reasonably-priced. For the sake of simplicity even though, I’m going to expect that you acquire everything. Not handiest will this make this guide simpler to observe, but it might not alternate If you do make your own scents or dyes.

The primary factor that you need to need is to make certain that your candle jars do not need to be preheated. maximum don’t which are made for this, however In case you are not positive simply put them into your oven and set it to heat. One you are clear in your packing containers you’re ready to start melting the wax.

This is pretty simple. just put a few cups of water into a small saucepan and produce to a simmer, then upload your candle pitcher. In case you opted to pass on the candle pitcher, just make a double boiler with another pan. I may not judge; don’t worry (I have way too many pans, so this turned into my way to head for a long term). upload some wax to the pitcher/double boiler and grab a candy thermometer.

Okay, I admit it. I forgot to inform you which you’d need a sweet thermometer. however it’s this sort of little component, and nobody ever thinks of it being concerned with candles! Except, probabilities are properly that your grandmother has 1 (or 7) anyway, so that you shouldn’t have to buy one. In case you do, they are only a few bucks.

So now which you have a candy thermometer, just clip it onto your pitcher or double boiler in order that the steel tip is in the liquid wax. It’s miles without a doubt important that you hold an eye fixed on your wax temperature Even as It’s far on the warmth! Why? Nothing ruins a candle like a huge kitchen fire. It is able to be humorous within the movies, but they may be a actual day ruiner in fact. To keep away from managing a huge wax fire, watch your wax the entire time It is on the warmth!

When your wax reaches the proper temperature (round a hundred and sixty to one hundred eighty stages, study your wax packaging to be sure) it’s time to add the shade and fragrance. We’re going to go with the colour first. That is where the personalization certainly starts: you may make it any colour which you want to! do not just say pink either; take a web page from the huge groups’ e-book. Instead of purple, your candle is ‘summer season love’. it’s No longer inexperienced, it’s ‘spring o.K.leaf’. The greater ridiculous the shade, the greater remarkable it sounds to friends and circle of relatives. Refuse to tell them the way you ‘mixed it’, it’ll upload to the thriller of your newfound capabilities.

After the color has been added and mixed the heady scent is next to go in. Whilst It’s miles much less difficult to just buy scents (as I assumed you did for this manual), as soon as you are a little extra cozy with the process it is really worth it to make your personal scents. do not worry; it’s very easy, but for proper now just upload your store-sold heady scent. Very important: as quickly because the fragrance is blended into the wax, pour the candle. Why?

In case you depart the scented wax on the heat too long it could burn the perfume, which leads to a totally synthetic and cooked odor. Not magical, No longer relaxing, and Now not some thing you may display off to pals and circle of relatives. So just add the fragrance and stir a few times to include, then pour the wax into your field.

[heloisedc]

Dear mother,

It could not have been a singular origin, the singularity of a beginning, the point of the big bang; rather, it would have to have been a moment of originary coincidence. A coincidence, a coincident, the doubling of a co inside, of an originary two, the condition made possible by the originary trace, which is to say, all conditions. It would thus leave traces, footprints that rippled both ways in the event, forward and backward.[1]

I had been assigned to this man, and upon seeing him, I could not believe my eyes. He was of utter beauty, grazing perfection. The reproduction of the image of the Vitruvian man […][2] His skin texture was perfect, the individual hairs on head and body had been lovingly and intricately manufactured and placed.[3] He was transparent but impenetrable.[4]

It was evidently a case of “love at first sight” […][5] He would allow but one assistant to work with him […][6], which is how I ended up moving into his home. The habit of living a long time innocently together, far from weakening the first sentiments I felt for him, had contributed to strengthen them.[7]

I had studied all the details of housekeeping; I understood cooking and cleaning; I knew the prices of food, and also how to choose it; I could keep accounts accurately […].[8] Man has lashes on the eye lids on either side ; and I made it my daily care to stain his ; so ardent was he in the pursuit of beauty, that he must even colour his very eyes.[9] […] And he was in the habit of washing his face seven hundred times daily, and I would be strictly observing that number.[10] I would always take care of the oiling of his body, carefully spreading it in an even manner all over his stature and […] employing extracts, that had been recently prepared and preserved with great care.[11]

Now for his diet: for lunch honey, for dinner a biscuit and vegetables, meat infrequently.... In this way his body kept the same condition, as if on a straight line, without being sometimes healthy, sometimes sick, and without growing heavier Even outside the strictly Pythagorean context, regimen was regularly defined with reference to these two associated dimensions of good health maintenance and proper care of the soul.[12] And there were always drugs around—most notably, the jars of white crosses and other uppers that he kept in the fridge next to his protein fortified milkshakes.[13]

Every day, I would go into his bedroom, search around for his running shorts and shoes and T shirt, change his clothes in eagerness, and soon enough, his body would find itself out on the pavement, with his feet pounding the ground and his heart beginning to thump away.[14]

And then, drawn out from his body, his sinews formed a bundle of dark, shiny stalks, not unlike the bundle of lightning bolts that lay beside him, although these were bright and smoking.[15] Now between the dry head, more than dead, almost abstract, empty and desiccated, suitably objectivized, wholly exterior, pierced, visible, nameable, articulated, analyzable, between the skull and the rest of the world, a circumstantial halo of light, like the ones worn by the great saints, replaces, at bone level, the lining of flesh, fat, muscle, organs, skin, veins, tendons, hair, radiance, charm, beauty, glory.[16]

Perhaps it was the fascination of seeing that particular beauty, force and dedication so explicitly personified in a human body,[17] or perhaps it was something else. But in any way, I wanted to be seen with him.

I once wondered, For what purpose?[18] And he asked me if I thought it was truly possible to think without arriving at beauty, without penetrating the secret place where life bubbles up, without the transfiguration of the body?[19] To Lenny, you see, beauty was some inherent property, to be found suffused all through the body of that which may be called beautiful […][20] In an ecstasy of joy, no doubt intensified by the joy I felt in making him shine before my friends, with extreme volubility, I reiterated, stroking and patting him as though he was a horse that had just come first past the post: “You’re the most beautiful man I know, do you hear?”[21]

   Mother, I was incredibly happy with him. I had learned all that I could about his passion and would assist him with all my powers. But then came the move. We needed a new place to live, which is how we met Ludwig.

Wandering in the public square, a lit lantern in hand in the middle of the day, […] A garden more inviting than Eden would […] meet our eyes.[22] On the door of the magnificent garden was written with golden letters: 'The Abode of Beauty'. “The abode of Beauty!” Lenny had exclaimed, “Oh! that is what I want to see!”[23]

Once we arrived, we studied him and were pleased with what we had found,[24] which led to us moving in.

For some time after our arrival, every thing he saw excited wonder and admiration; and not till he was a little familiarized with the new objects, did he ask reasonable questions.[25]

During our breakfast, instead of speaking with me, as we used to, Lenny would often look out of the window at the […] small garden, brilliantly lit without shadows or oppressive heat […][26]. I felt uneasy. You see, Mother, he started to deck himself with plumes, necklaces, armlets, […][27] and earrings bearing gems that looked like diamonds.[28] I felt completely shallow and useless.. [29]

When I saw Ludwig look at Lenny with lust […][30], the hatred of Ludwig gnawed my heart, but it was a hatred mingled with admiration of the beautiful, adulated body of his.

I would often glance through the windows, observing him move, sculpt, construct. And with every drop of sweat, it would feel like Ludwig morphed, changing simultaneously to Lenny’s body.

I would not have been jealous if he had enjoyed his pleasures in my vicinity, with my encouragement, completely under my surveillance, thereby relieving me of any fear of mendacity,[31] but he was excluding me from all his activities.

Mother, it was not good for me. […] If he left my side for a moment, I became anxious, began to imagine that he had spoken to or simply looked at Ludwig. If he was not in the best of tempers, I thought that I must be causing him to miss or to postpone some appointment. Reality is never more than a first step towards an unknown on the road to which one can never progress very far. It is better not to know, to think as little as possible, not to feed one’s jealousy with the slightest concrete detail. Unfortunately, in the absence of an outer life, incidents are created by the inner life too; in the absence of expeditions with him, the random course of my solitary reflections furnished me at times with some of those tiny fragments of the truth which attract to themselves, like a magnet, an inkling of the unknown, which from that moment becomes painful.[32]

On one somber evening Lenny came up to me, looked me straight into the soul and said, “A little while ago I did not know something that I know now; I know with whom I shall die.”[33]

[…] I then knew loneliness and isolation and I felt […] like an alien from another world.

 Now, Mother, I was already hurting all over. I would have many sleepless nights. But it only got worse, the exclusion only intensified…

One day, he got out of bed and walked into the bathroom for a shave and for the remainder of the morning ritual,[34] without even saying good morning to me. Everything happened, then, during the seconds of complete veiling. Hardly had it begun than a strange light, yellow and tawny, resembling nothing else, neither the evening nor the dawn, invaded the environment; the glory of orange light intercepted by the walls of my abode disappeared, giving way to a somber and magic bath […].[35] It was a surprise bath, where Ludwig had taken him to an upper floor; he was then tipped backwards into the water. [36] He gesticulated me to leave. I had always assisted him in cleaning himself, and could not bear letting him do it alone. I sat down beside the door, hearing unconscionable noise and splashing.[37] I then overheard him, whispering incoherently while giggling like a little girl: "Ludwig… Ludwig, I love you...Don't laugh at me, please don't laugh!...[38] I thought to myself: Oh, I shall die of pain and love and jealousy!”[39]

After a while, he suddenly stepped outside, catching me in the act of eavesdropping. It was too late, now, to draw back, and since he was about to know all, in order not to seem too miserable, too jealous and inquisitive, I called out in a cheerful, casual tone of voice: “Please don’t bother; I just happened to be passing, and saw the light.”[40] I looked at his body and found it clean as virgin silver, […] whereat he rejoiced exceedingly and his breast expanded with gladness,[41] and then happily frolicked away. I collapsed on the chair right in front of the seemingly endless stairs.

When Lenny closed the door behind him, I heard a sort of echo in the roof; it sounded like voices […].[42] And then, blackness, […] vast emptiness stretching out infinitely.[43] Deep, dark, dank, dismal silence.[44] the infinite void of space[45] True loneliness occurs not when there are no others around me, but when I am deprived even of my shadow.[46]

Then he began to rush wildly about the room, shouting, singing, making a great noise […].[47] […] the ground below shuddered uneasily.[48] Then […] the chant, mingled with a murmur of supplication in the midst of ecstasy, seemed at times to stop altogether like a spring that had ceased to flow.[49]

Lenny returned; he was not at all surprised to encounter me before his door […].[50] After stepping out of the room, he shouted: “The glorious light makes me drunk with joy and my sense of wonder has no limits. This pleasure is truly divine! What pure happiness I feel in the bottom of my heart at this spectacle! What ecstasy! No, I cannot possibly give expression to it […]!”[51] He was absolutely in a state of ecstasy, and, involuntary, sinking on his knees, he passionately extended his arms towards Ludwig, certain he could not hear, and having no conception that he could see him.[52] Lenny stood, amazed, afraid of being mistaken, his joy tempered with doubt, and again and again stroked the object of his prayers. It was a body; he could feel the veins as he pressed them with his thumb.[53] And then, a cry of joy […]. [54]

This made me cry because I was not like it, not something complete, which turned toward the lost sweetness of life like a distant quotation. Happiness can only be thought of as something lost, as a beautiful alien. It cannot be anything more than a premonition that we approach with tears in our eyes without ever reaching it. [55]

I needed to get out.

 Mother, I learned an important lesson. Accepting the unfortunate reality would calm my soul far more than endlessly aiming at an unattainable fiction.

When I got into the open air, I heard distinctly, as the night was still, Lenny’s joyous laughter.[56] When I looked back at what had once been a house, it struck me. He had sculpted the finest work of art I had ever seen, much like his own body. It was the most sublime, most charming, most graceful, most splendid, most touching[57] […] more safely guarded by its walls, more superb in palaces, more ornamented in respect to temples, more beautiful by virtue of its buildings, more illustrious in its porticoes, more splendid in its piazzas[58] He had given great attention to realistic detail, rendering each feature with painstaking precision, […][59] and the more time I spent studying the detail, the more I realized how much love and passion had gone into it.[60]

They were now mutually bound together, the lighter being restrained by the heavier, so that it cannot fly off; while, on the contrary, from the lighter tending upwards, the heavier is so suspended, that it cannot fall down.[61]

My Love […] must, like every mental state, even the most lasting, find itself one day obsolete, be “replaced,” and that when that day would come, everything that seemed to attach me so sweetly, indissolubly, to the memory of Lenny, would no longer exist for me. [62] Just as in morality, pleasure and pain have but a single source, and an end to pain is enough to produce pleasure.[63] I am looking forward to coming home.

I embrace you, […][64]

Your Son

  [1] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[2] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[3] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[4] Hugo, Les Miserables

[5] Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

[6] Heilbron, The Sun in the Church

[7] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[8] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[9] Pliny, Natural History Volume 3

[10] Pliny, Natural History Volume 5

[11] Laennec, A Treatise on the Diseases of the Chest and on Mediate Auscultation

[12] Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 2

[13] Davis, High Weirdness

[14] Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop

[15] Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

[16] Serres, Statues

[17] Rand, The Fountainhead

[18] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[19] Serres, The Five Senses

[20] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[21] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol III The Guermantes Way

[22] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[23] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[24] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[25] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[26] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[27] Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex

[28] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[29] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[30] Colebrook, Irony The New Critical

[31] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[32] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[33] Bell, Men of Mathematics

[34] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[35] Serres, Biogea

[36] Foucault, History of Madness

[37] Seneca, Complete Works

[38] Rand, The Fountainhead

[39] Deleuze, Masochism Coldness and Cruelty Venus in Furs

[40] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol I Swanns Way

[41] The Book of the Thousand and One Nights

[42] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[43] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[44] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[45] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[46] Zizek, Less Than Nothing

[47] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[48] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[49] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol III The Guermantes Way

[50] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[51] Mallgrave, Architectural Theory

[52] Rousseau, Collected Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[53] Freedberg, The Power of Images

[54] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology The Complete Work

[55] Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

[56] The Book of the Thousand and One Nights Supplementary Nights

[57] Frankl, The Gothic

[58] Smith, Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism

[59] Chilvers, A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art Oxford

[60] Hovestadt Buehlmann, Quantum City

[61] Pliny, Natural History Volume 1

[62] Proust, In Search of Lost Time Vol V The Captive The Fugitive

[63] Serres, The Birth of Physics

[64] Montesquieu, Persian Letters