#it’s normal to find them more interesting? ​it has been since the dawn of time?

[goldensunset]

wow that person from my last reblog was right! completely insane takes in the volo tag lol

[jenanigans1207]

What I wanted so badly was for Mary to learn about her boys from Cas. Like that night where Cas finds her when she can’t sleep and she expresses that she just doesn’t know anything about her sons since she missed so much?? All I wanted was for Cas to sit down with her at the table and just start telling her about them. Basic stuff at first: their favorite foods, their sleeping habits, the stuff he’s just observed by being their passenger for years.

And then I want him to say something totally Cas, like “Dean always wears more layers but that’s because his body naturally runs two degrees colder than Sam’s. But that’s normal for him and not indicative of any illness, so it’s nothing to worry about.”

And as they talk, it starts to get a little deeper, and Cas tells her more. He tells her about what she missed, about all the horrible things that happened to her sons and how they coped; how it changed them. And he tells her about Sam, he does, but really it ends up being all about Dean.

He’ll tell her about how Dean clenches his fists when he’s upset, even as he tries to keep his face impassive. About how Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel when he’s anxious. He’ll tell her about Dean’s nightmares, about the ways he’s chosen to cope. He’ll tell her how to know when to approach Dean and when to give him space, how to gently acknowledge what he’s feeling without pushing him too far.

And with every word he says, Mary’s curious head tilt from when she’d seen them hug in reunion turns into a bone deep type of certainty. Because Cas is telling her things that only someone who paid special attention would notice. He’s telling her things that only someone very, very close to her son’s heart would know.

Cas will tell her the cliff notes of what they’ve been through; will tell her how the whole world looked to Dean and he rose to the occasion over and over again. He’ll tell her about Dean’s doubts in himself and then vehemently declare them as wrong and explain, at length, why. He will tell her about the people Dean has loved— the people who loved him like he was their own— and lost. He will tell her about Bobby, Ellen, Jody, Donna, and Charlie. He’ll tell her about Claire, too, and how Dean stepped up.

And the whole time, Mary will have this realization that oh, she may not have been around to guide and protect her sons, but there was always someone there to care for them and support them when they needed it. She will realize that she and John may have left them, but they were never alone.

But more than that, there was someone there for Dean. Someone picking Dean over and over again while Dean picked Sam, or the world, over himself. There was someone fighting for Dean when he wasn’t fighting for himself. There was someone who saw Dean, and loved him unconditionally.

Sitting across from her, at the asscrack of dawn, filling her in on all the things she missed was every mother’s dream: someone who loved her child with the kind of devotion that would break the world. And from the sounds of the stories she was being told, it did break the world. Someone whose love is entirely untainted and comes without any strings attached.

It’s so clear to her as she listens to Cas talk that Cas loves Dean with no expectations. That loving Dean is something he just does, like he doesn’t know how not to love Dean, like the possibility of not loving him never occurred to Cas. He loves Dean in a way that Mary knows can and will soothe Dean’s sharp edges and battered heart. He loves Dean in the kind of pure way that tells Mary that it will continue to endure and overcome everything without ever diminishing, even the littlest amount.

Mary, through tears, will tell Cas how she always told Dean that there were angels watching over him. And before Cas can make some comment about Dean being the Righteous Man and the interest of most of Heaven, she will place a hand over his and give him a motherly look that will convey all the things she’s not sure how to say— and the things she’s not sure Cas is ready to hear yet. And Cas will flush and look away, mumbling about how her son is very special to him.

And when she pulls him into a hug and murmurs thank yous into his shoulder, she will be comforted in the knowledge that her sons turned out to be wonderful men, and that they managed to stay together through everything. She will be comforted to know that no matter what happens, no matter her shortcomings as she tries to fill a role she never meant to leave, Sam will have Dean and Dean will have Cas.

And this time, when Cas tells her that she belongs here, she will believe him. And she will tell him that he belongs here, too.

And when Dean wakes up a few hours later and wanders in to find Mary and Cas still chatting over the table, he’ll be surprised— but pleased— to find Mary looking more at ease. He’ll be pleased when she gives him a warm hug and pats him on the cheek and tell him with all the sincerity that only a mother can muster that she’s glad that he met Castiel. And when Dean agrees, a little confused, Mary will just smile at him.

“I always said I’d like a third son.” She says, “so give him a reason to take our last name, won’t you?”

And Dean will splutter and turn fifteen shades of red as he steadfastly doesn’t look at Cas but mumbles something that suggests he’s not against the idea at all.

And Mary will laugh again and wink at an equally red Cas before heading towards the kitchen like “Cas said waffles are your favorite, so I hope you’re hungry!”

[ozzgin]

Yandere! Sea Monster x Reader

In the spirit of Mermay, I come to you with a slightly different approach: an octopus hybrid, dwelling in the dark depths of ancient waters. :) Hopefully close enough to the sea monster you imagined, @wally0117

Content: gender neutral reader, male yandere, monster romance, reader likes sharks (a lot); inspired by The Shape of Water and My Octopus Teacher; photo from Whalebone Magazine

He’s always been aware of humans, naturally. Observed them from the beginnings of time, from the very first rudimentary attempt of a boat that crossed his waters. Though he can only guess how these creatures exist, how they breathe, how they move. What arrives in his depths is always a corpse of some sort. Bloated, decaying carcasses, rarely intact, whether chipped by fish or by time. Everything else is left to his imagination.

Until today. The fish are restless, the currents are stronger. Something must be happening above, stringing him along curiously. His many legs sway in tandem, opening and closing, as he investigates the source of interest. His pale white eyes narrow to a mere squint, unused to the light of the surface levels. At last, he finds it: a human.

Yet this one is unusual. Intact - save for the bleeding wound - and unlike the washed-out, cadaveric blue tint he’s normally accustomed to. He notices a twitch of the limb and it dawns on him: this one is still alive.

You wake up with a violent cough, thrusting out the leftover liquid that had invaded your lungs earlier. You clearly remember drowning, so how did you end up on shore again? The answer reveals itself rather quickly: a monstrous creature, albeit humanoid for the most part. The upper half resembles a man, but the torso ends in thick, enormous tentacles, now flopped onto the sand, surrounding your body. You search for the creature’s face, framed by translucent tendrils that seem to replace what you’d expect as hair.

“Thank you”. He scans your features and remains silent. Does he even understand human speech? After a moment of consideration, he looks ahead, surveying the water, then returns to you, giving you a nudge. He most likely wants to know how you ended up in that situation to begin with. “That’s, well…”

Conveniently enough, the monster has brought you back to your little camp, so you reach for your backpack and pull out a book. Of course, no words can ever replace the image itself. With renewed enthusiasm, you open your encyclopedia and turn it towards the man, showing him a photo of a sand tiger shark, tapping on it excitedly. “I was looking for sharks!”

Ever since the bizarre, life-saving encounter, you’ve been returning to the same spot most days. And without exception, the monster will be waiting for you in one of the neighboring caves. Judging by the pellucid, pale skin and his reluctance to be in the light, you guessed early on that he might be a creature of the depths.

One that has been around for a long time, it seems. Once he understood your interest in sharks and other aquatic animals, he developed a liking to play guide for you, silently touring you through forests of kelp, hidden caves, labyrinths of reefs and hills. He knows where the animals linger, and they don't scurry away when you approach. You've never dreamed of being so close to them, staring into their eyes and tracing their fins as they swim past you, unbothered and relaxed. The monster will gaze at you from a distance, amused by your passion.

On ground, you’ve begun your own little experiment: can the octopus creature learn sign language? You didn’t need long to discover how intelligent he is, mimicking your gestures with flawless ease, instantly memorizing the meanings, the connections, the implications. He seems to be terribly delighted by this newfound tool of communication, often asking you questions with earnest curiosity.

Ah, yes, the questions. It makes sense that he’d want to know more about humans, though his interrogations are rather…particular. Specific. It’s less about humans as a whole, and more about you. How long have you been swimming here? How deep can you actually swim, with or without aid? Might you have a family waiting for you back home? A mate, perchance? No? Interesting.

"My vacation will end soon", you sign with pursed lips. He tilts his head. "Leaving?" his webbed hands gesture, somewhat uneasy. You nod. You can discern a glint of melancholy in his eyes. Eventually, he resumes: "Would you like to see my home?" Your eyebrows raise in surprise. His home? Down there? Was such a thing even achievable for a human like you?

The plump suckers attach themselves to your skin, one resting over your mouth. "Do you trust me?" You cast one final glance over the underwater abyss, a black hole trapping all light and matter. You shake your head in approval. Without hesitation, he plunges over the cliff, pulling you after him and into the yawning void of darkness. His form glows eerily, and his movement is swift and elegant. You can tell this is his land, his territory. You would've been dead a long time ago.

He releases you on the wet stone, inside the air pocket of a cave. You need a few moments to overcome the wave of claustrophobia pressing against your lungs. As you catch your breath, you recall your long path from the surface. It would be impossible to make it back out again without your friend. A cold shiver runs across your spine. "Have a break, and I'll show you everything else afterwards", he gestures with a smile. "How long will it take? I don't want to walk back at night", you explain.

Silence. You stare into his empty orbs, awaiting a reaction. There's not a sound, not a gust of wind, not a shred of light. "You're not going back", he finally answers.

You see, he's done a fair amount of research himself. He doesn't need an encyclopedia to figure you out: how you breathe, how you move, how you exist. In fact, he is rather confident in his ways of helping you adapt to a life spent together. He would've never brought you down here if he wasn't certain of your survival. His grin widens in anticipation, a strange warmth enveloping his innards at the mere thought of it: a future with you in it, right here. However, one question remains, a cheeky, perverted detail that has been on his mind from the moment he met you, yet he could never investigate it properly.

How do humans mate?

[m4rv3l-girl]

Mind Games

Erik x Y/N

Erik didn’t know she was telepath. He has a very active imagination…

Requests Open!

Warnings: Mentions of sexual themes

Only a few weeks had passed since the introduction of Erik Lehnsherr to Y/N. The introduction had been brief but left an aura of lingering tension between them. Y/N couldn't help but notice how Erik's eyes find their way toward her in a room full of people. What Erik didn't know, however, was that every thought in his head was available to her like an open book.

Y/N's mutant ability? She could read minds, and Erik's was a particularly loud one-borderline inappropriate most of the time, to say the least. He thought he was subtle, but his inner monologue told her otherwise.

Tonight they were in the kitchen, alone. The others had all gone off to bed and only the two of them were left behind in the silent space bathed in the soft, indirect light from above. Erik stood by the counter, drinking his coffee without really tasting it while Y/N leaned against the island, stirring a cup of tea.

They spoke of everything under the sun but his mind was elsewhere.

"She's beautiful." "She probably doesn't even like me, though." "God, what I wouldn’t give to kiss her-”

Y/N stifled a smile. She'd gotten used to the whirling chaos of Erik's thoughts, full of admiration and compliments with the stray thought that, more times than not, could have turned the kitchen ten degrees hotter. Tonight, though, was different, and Y/N could feel it even before Erik's next thought echoed in her head.

“She has such gorgeous lips. I bet they’re soft…bet they’re good at-..No, no don’t think that.”

“But, then again….she’d look good on her knees. Looking up at me. Her mouth around my-”

Y/N's spoon clattered onto the counter, breaking the silence. Erik's eyes snapped up to hers in surprise.

"Sorry," she muttered, tucking back a laugh. She looked at him and saw the faintest flush on his cheeks. He hadn't any idea she'd just heard his most intimate thought.

She'd been playing this game, concealing her skills from Erik for weeks now. She found it amusements-end that, with quite a frequency, his mind veered off in dangerous directions. It wasn't that she didn't like him- quite the opposite. He was magnetic, charming in a brooding sort of way. There was attraction between them, mutual in its forging, though only Y/N was cognizant of both sides.

But standing here, her mind traipsing further down a road she probably shouldn't follow, Y/N knew it was time to show her hand. "Erik," she said, breaking the comfortable silence. He raised an eyebrow, setting his coffee cup down. "What is it, darling?" She hedged, watching his response closely. His brow furrowed with concern, probably misreading the seriousness in her expression.

Y/N took a deep breath. "I'm a mutant, like you," she blurted out, and he nodded, expecting her to continue. "But my ability… is that I can hear people's thoughts."

Erik blinked at her, bewildered at first, then realization dawned on him. His mouth opened, though nothing was heard coming from it. She could practically see gears turning in his head. All that stuff he had been thinking for the last couple of weeks piled onto him in one second.

"She heard. everything?!" "Oh God, shit. Oh, hell."

His face flushed red as he stared at her, mortified. "You- you've been,” "Listening to you?" Y/N finished for him with her lips twitching into a grin. "Yeah, I have."

Erik groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Dear God, I thought I was being subtle." "Not even a little, Erik." Y/N couldn't help it and burst out laughing. It was a rare sight, the ever-composed Erik flustered like that.

He peeked at her between his fingers. "And you've heard…. Everything I've been thinking?" "Mm-hmm," Y/N replied nonchalantly, taking a sip of her tea like this was the most normal conversation in the world. "You've had some pretty interesting thoughts, Erik." Erik looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole. "Darling-”

Y/N stepped closer, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "Relax. It's not like I didn't already know how you felt."

He blinked at her again, this time less with embarrassment, more with curiosity. "You did?"

"I've known since the first time you walked into the room," she admitted, softer then. "And, for the record, I don't mind your thoughts. I kinda like them."

A small smile turned up the corners of Erik's lips; his embarrassment was quickly replaced with one of more confidence. He closed the space between them, stepping closer to her. "You could've told me sooner, love."

Y/N shrugged, placing her cup on the counter. "Where's the fun in that?”

Erik laughed, his hands tenderly reaching out to lay on her hips. "I just can't believe I spent weeks making a fool of myself inside of my own head."

"Oh, you were doing just fine out loud too," Y/N teased, grinning back up at him.”

He smirked, his hand lifting to brush a strand of hair away from her face. "Well, since you already know what I've been thinking, there's no point in hiding it anymore, is there?"

Y/N felt her heart skip a beat as he leaned in, his voice dropping lower. "You've been driving me insane, darling. Every time I see you.”

Y/N's breath caught, her mind buzzing with the proximity. "You could have said something." "I'm saying it now," Erik murmured, his lips inches from hers. "Unless you've changed your mind?" "Not at all, dear," Y/N whispered, closing the distance.

Their lips met in a slow, heated kiss, and for once, Erik didn't have to say a word. But Y/N was more than happy to hear every single, dirty thought running through his mind.  She knew it was going to be a hell of a lot more fun now that the game was out in the open.

[stu-dyingstudent]

kid/academy/pre-genin Sakura Haruno fic recs

To be honest, there aren't many kid or academy Sakura fics out there, at least that I can find, and most of which are actually time travel AUs. Now, the tricky thing with it is that most of those tend to start where Sakura is quite young, but by the end of the story she is a genin. So, it gives me the difficult decision of whether of not I should include those on this list (I haven't decided).

Anyway, the other difficult aspect of fanfiction about a young Sakura is the writing itself. There has to be a good balance of childishness and eloquence to ensure that the writing is not just truthful to the character, but that it also flows with the story. These are some of the ones I like!

Started: 2024.07.25

Last Updated: 2024.09.28

note: feel free to check out my master list which has a bunch of Sakura Haruno fic recs (all organized)!

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Satori (Between the Lines) - Jaylene || ffn || gen || T || academy AU || complete

While attending the Academy, Sakura's field experience assignment with the Konohagakure Intelligence Division ends up being more valuable than she'd ever guess.

Sakura lands herself working in Torture & Intelligence??? From the very beginning Sakura has been pegged as a "paper ninja" where she is constantly praised for her intelligence, so Satori (Between the Lines) is academy Sakura putting these skills to use. Super good read and includes characters we don't normally get to see in fics!

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Time Flies Like An Arrow - Katlou303 || ao3 || gen || K || time travel AU || complete

Sakura traveled back in time with the intent of changing everything, but something went wrong, and now she's four years old having nightmares about impossible monsters and losing friends she has yet to meet.

Time Flies Like An Arrow is probably the most interesting take on a time travel AU I have ever read. Sakura ends up going back in time to when she is 4 years old and not even in the academy. The only thing is, she has no clue that this is the second time she's living this life and her mind is still one of a child.

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Two Minds (are better than one) - Lesemaus16 || ao3 || gen || Tobirama as inner AU || complete

Tobirama doesn't generally object to being reborn. He does object to being stuck in the mind of a little girl, though.Sakura grows up with a grumpy voice in her head, telling her to train more.Tobirama's influence on Sakura might very well change the story. Or maybe not, who knows.

note: I think this might actually take place during the genin days, but I have to check since I can't remember.

Tobirama is such a great character (so refreshing) and his interactions with Sakura in this are gold! I hope one day Kishimoto will release some side stories about him and other characters from his time as we really don't know that much about them tbh.

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New Day Dawning - IncompleteSentanc (Erava) || ao3 || narusaku || T || canon divergence || complete

One day, while visiting the grave of Nohara Rin, Obito stumbles across a young girl terrifyingly like her. He decides to ensure she doesn’t meet the same fate.As for Sakura? Sakura had no idea what she was awakening the day she went to visit her parents graves - but she never looked back. One way or another.(Feat. Sakura raised by Obito and the Akatsuki, and her eventual return to Konoha and all those she left behind)

Sakura is brainwashed and manipulated, but loved by notorious killers nonetheless. Incredibly well written and I won't lie when I say that the ending took me a bit by surprise. Also, I should warn you that this does take place over a long time and thus Sakura does not remain a child for the whole thing, but I just really wanted to put New Day Dawning on this list (just read it).

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In Another World - eleventheeggo || ao3 || gen || T || orphan Sakura AU || ongoing

What if Sakura was an orphan instead of Naruto and Sasuke? A story about a socially stunted girl who has a thirst for knowledge and is surrounded by softies who love her all the same.

Orphan!Sakura is not something I knew I needed in my life! She is so precious and it's great to watch all of these characters come together for her sake. In Another World also discusses ROOT a bit, which you know I love, so I can't wait for the story to get there.

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Your Move, Instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue) - Laysan_albatross || ao3|| third war extended AU || complete

“We are still under wartime policy,” the recruiter had told her parents. He had an envelope in his hand. He sounded sorry. “She has two parents who are successful ninjas. We would be remiss to overlook her potential based upon that alone.” The Third Shinobi War never ended. Konoha needs more soldiers, grabbing anyone who can fight, especially those who can't say no.

I feel like one of Your Move Instigator's biggest strengths is that it truly gets across the innocence (or loss) of these characters. They themselves don't fully understand what they are doing or why. They are just children following the orders given to them by adults, even if that means taking the life of another. In the beginning, Sakura even recalls times of her spelling and grammar being corrected in her reports along with other childish things. Konoha has shown themselves of not being above dispatching young children to fight, but this story just brings that devastation to new light.

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cut the head off the snake - itsthechocopuff || ao3 || T || time travel AU || complete

when eighteen-year-old, post-war Sakura is thrown back into her tiny, pre-Academy body, she makes a decision. she'd had a childhood once already, and this time, she's more interested in Not Dying when the inevitable shit hits the proverbial fan. so she will work harder, care less, kill more, and smile when she's done. and hey, if she ends up reviving an extinct nature transformation to attract the most corrupt, power-hungry man from her timeline, all the better for her, right?

Probably one of the best time travel AUs out there!! Also, we get to see ROOT!Sakura in here, which I love in addition to Sai (my baby). I know I said it's incomplete, but it's only missing one chapter so you still get plenty of story. Anyway, definitely check out cut the head off the snake!!

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Not so imaginary - FangirlJo || ao3 || gen || T || ghost Tobirama AU || incomplete

Haruno Sakura was 5 when she realises her imaginary friend was not so imaginary at all and resembles the Second Hokage by a lot. Like a lot a lot. In which Senju Tobirama is Sakura's Ghost Sensei. Things change, chaos ensues and Tobirama is once more reminded with the reason he doesn't have kids.

Damn, I just really love Tobirama as a character. This guy rocks and deserves more story time (justice for Tobirama!!).

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Ground Zero - TheIzzatron || ao3 || gen || T || third war extended AU || incomplete

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If this means forcing weapons into the hands of children, then so be it.

A young Sakura is taken advantage of in her parents’ absence at war and is enrolled into the academy's "accelerated" program. The complete unfairness of the situation is skillfully conveyed throughout the story. Sakura is left to wonder why she too isn't learning about flowers and history like Ino? Why Ino isn't learning the fastest way to kill her enemies? The characters and their emotions are so well done that you truly feel just how cheated they are. They aren't heartless, they are children. Highly recommend.

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Inherited Will of Fire - jokergirl2001 || ffn || T || gen || sakura can see ghosts AU || incomplete

She always knew she was a natural at genjutsu but what she didn't know was that being a natural meant she had some immense talent when it comes to spiritual energy. Well at least that's what the cheerful raven haired boy who apparently drowned himself on purpose said.

I only just started reading this now, but Inherited Will of Fire is super cute! Academy Sakura finds she is able to see ghosts after stumbling upon Shisui shortly after the Uchiha massacre.

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One Change in the Story - Aingeal98 || ffn || T || gen || time travel AU || incomplete

It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was only supposed to go back five minutes in time. Instead, Sakura wakes up in a dark room surrounded by people wearing black cloaks with red clouds on them. The worst part? She doesn't have a clue who she is.

Praying for One Change in the Story to be completed!! Sakura lands herself back in time with the mind and body of her four year old self. With Pein being the first one to find her, Sakura's new life purpose is to be the Akatsuki's weapon. Similar to New Day Dawning, Sakura doesn't stay a child for the entirety of this fic, but I still think it is a notable mention. Sakura slowly loses herself to her new roll and in a sense becomes the embodiment of a ROOT agent. It was interesting to see Itachi's internal battle with the situation and Konan's guilt. However, even with Sakura bound to Ame, there are children back in Konoha who have an itch that a pink-haired girl named Sakura is someone important.

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Old Man by the Bar - Varmint || ao3 || T || gen || academy AU || complete

All it took was one school teacher's decision for the reality of Konoha to be altered in a way that no one could have imagined. Follow Kiba Inuzuka, Sakura Haruno, and Chouji Akimichi as they grow as individuals, friends, and ninja. All with the help of that grumpy old man with all of the cool war stories.

The way this fic is genuinely so good and I almost never see people talking about it is criminal! The interactions between the kids are truly great and there is so much character growth among them. Kiba, Sakura, and Choji really just started off as a group of misfits thrown together for an assignment, but even though it was a complete disaster they grew to appreciate the relationship formed.

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Y'all, please send me some good kid/academy Sakura fics!!!! Or write one...

[rob1ns-liv1n]

Hi! You’re finally back!! I love your Bridgerton brother reader so much omg! I have so many ideas but one is that reader is really good at singing and playing but nobody in the family really know. And one day they hear him play and sing and are amazed.

Three Times The Bridgertons were Haunted and One Time They Weren't | Brother! Reader!

A/N: that's so sweet, thank you! you actually just made my day. i actually play piano so this was really fun to write. if you see any underlined words, those are links for the songs that the reader is singing/playing. you can play them if you want to have a more immersive experience. anyway sorry this took so long, but here's the request :]

Ever since you could remember Daphne had always been the musical sibling. As soon as she could talk she was given piano lessons every day after her normal schooling schedule. Your mother knew that suitors had more interest in girls with musical talents, so she believed it best to begin Daphne's lessons as early as possible. When Eloise came of age, she was meant to learn the piano as well. Unfortunately for mama, she was more interested in her diaries. Instead of trying to learn, Eloise played terribly on purpose in order to get out of lessons. After a month, mother decided that she wouldn't force any more of her daughters into music lessons for fear of another Eloise situation.

And so Daphne remained the glorified musical sibling. That is, until (Y/N) Bridgerton was tasked with disposing of Daphne's old assignment books at the age of 12 years old. Daphne, who was fourteen at the time, needed space in her sheet music drawer and with you being the good younger brother that you are you offered to get rid of her oldest books. However, you never planned to throw them away. You were going to keep them for yourself.

Later that night, when everyone had gone to bed you tip toed into the sitting room holding the treasured books tightly to your chest. From then on your nightly musical sessions became your most precious secret. It continued to be that way for five years until one fateful night when Daphne and Anthony had gotten up to make themselves warm milk.

Anthony took a slow sip from his milk jug, "We've been bested by a stove."

"Cold milk is much more refreshing anyway." reasoned Daphne.

"I suppose-" Anthony paused abruptly staring towards the door. "Do you hear that?"

Daphne set her jug down and opened the door an inch. Faint piano reverberated through the hall. Anthony, who was now leaning on the door, shot his sister a confused look, "Could it be Hyacinth?"

"No, the piece is sounds much too advanced." whispered Daphne. "Hyacinth has only just started playing, it must be someone else."

Anthony slowly inched towards the kitchen door, intent on sneakily uncovering just who was up a this hour playing piano. Unfortunately for him, the kitchen door did not in fact agree with this plan. As soon as Anthony began to open it, the old wood squealed obnoxiously like a petulant child and the piano came to an abrupt halt.

After watching her brother completely annihilate their chance to properly sleuth, Daphne rushed ahead to the drawing room and hastily opened the door-

-to find the room completely empty.

"Anthony, it's empty."

"What?"

"It's empty. As in there is no one in the drawing room."

"There must be a reasonable explanation..." Anthony's eyes lit up. "Perhaps they are hiding!"

"Hiding? But-"

A chill swept through the air catching the siblings by surprise. A sense of déjà vu came over her and she gasped in realization.

"It's a ghost!" Daphne continued, undeterred by Anthony's perplexed expression. "I recognize the signs. Ghosts are drawn to music, they cause cold winds and they are known to act only between midnight and dawn. It's a ghost. I'm sure of it!"

"And where exactly did you come across this information?"

"A novel....."

"A novel?!"

A mournful moan echoed through the room. In less than a second the door was slammed closed by Anthony's shaking hands.

"So...this novel....."

. . .

It was nearly a week later when two more of your siblings discovered the elusive "ghost" haunting the Bridgerton Estate. Gregory woke up from a nightmare in distress and with Hyacinth's room being so close to his he managed to wake her up too. His sister was not happy to be woken up, but her beauty sleep came second when an upset Gregory was involved. As she was trying her best to comfort him, the pair heard someone humming. Rain pounded steadily on the roof of the estate making the humming seem hypnotizingly sweet. Gregory looked up at his sister in confusion.

"Who do you think that is?"

Hyacinth tilted her head towards the gentle voice. "I don't know. Maybe it's that ghost Anthony keeps mumbling about."

The soft humming filled the silent room as Gregory slowly calmed down. Eventually his sister grabbed a spare blanket from the end of the bed and the two settled on the mattress together, enjoying the hums of their ghostly performer.

...

A single lit candle burned pathetically as the taunting sound of silence permeated Benedict's room. He had been trying to sketch for quite some time now, but despite his most focused effort; his pencil would not seem to budge. With a twitch of his eyebrow Benedict rose from his seat and flung his pencil at the wall nearest to him. Which just so happened to be the wall he shared with his dearest brother, Colin. Benedict dragged a hand over his face in exasperation hoping to God, or anyone really, that his oh-so-caring brother would not awaken. But as the sound of shuffling came closer to the artist's bedroom door it became apparent to Benedict that God was not, in fact, a merciful father.

"Brother?"

"Yes?" Came Benedict's squeaking reply.

The door opened and the younger Bridgerton stepped through with a glare leveled at his older brother. "What in the world are you doing up this late?"

"Nothing, actually. I couldn't sleep so I tried sketching. But then I couldn't even do that!"

Benedict glared at his discarded sketchbook as he continued, his frustration building.

"Now I've spent over three hours sitting in front of this damned fire losing my mind while I try to sketch at least one single drawing that is decent enough to call art."

Belatedly, Benedict realized that he had been yelling, but before he could apologize Colin stepped forward and grasped his shoulder.

"I know you must be frustrated Benny, but maybe tonight's just not your night. And it doesn't have to be either." Colin pinched the artist's cheeks. "There's always the morning."

As soon as his younger brother's hands left his face, a heavy weight seemed to lift from Benedict's shoulders. "I suppose your right. Till morning then."

"Till morning."

"Until then," began Benedict, a small smile dancing on his face. "You're welcome to stay here by the fire. I know how cranky you get on these kinds of cold nights."

Colin simply rolled his eyes before grabbing what he knew was his elder brother's favorite blanket and settling on the sofa closest to the fire. An indignant squawk left Benedict as he stared dumbly at the criminal who had just stolen from him. "Y-you can't have that blanket."

"Why not? You invited me to your room and I am without a blanket. It's only fair."

"Only fair? But that's my blanket." reasoned Benedict. "Surely, you of all people understand how important it is to me."

Despite the strength of Colin's will, he could not handle seeing his brother look so dejected. If he didn't know better it would almost seem like he had just burned the Bridgerton estate to the ground rather than steal his brother's favorite blanket. With a heavy sigh the young boy fluffed out the blanket and sunk down to the soft rug that sat between the sofa and fireplace. Benedict caught on and settled down next to Colin, pulling the blanket over himself as well.

As the two began to doze off the faint whisper of a piano wafted through the room. Distantly, the two boys wondered why Daphne could possibly be up so late. In the morning, they would realize that Daphne was not home.

. . .

"Alright, I assume we all know why this family meeting was called?"

Anthony in front of his assembled siblings as they sat in the drawing room. You glanced around with a sheepish look of uncertainty, "Why exactly was this meeting called?"

"The ghost problem." Anthony began to pace, pausing only to lock eyes dramatically with each and every one of his siblings. "For the last year, we have all encountered signs of ghost activity. Me and Daphne first discovered the apparition playing the piano just past midnight. Then, Hyacinth and Gregory heard it humming. And Benedict and Colin were put to sleep by its most recent piano performance. Am I missing anything?"

The siblings collectively shook their heads, except for one.

"Good. This all circles back to the reason why I have summoned you all in the first place. Tonight we must partake....in a ghost hunt."

"A ghost hunt?" scoffed Eloise. "Really?"

"Yes, really! It is our duty to protect this house. Even against threats that we cannot see."

"Fine, so long as I get to search with (Y/N)."

"That can be arranged. Now-"

"Actually...I don't think that will be necessary." You clear your throat sheepishly as your confidence withers under the curious looks of your family.

Anthony quirks a brow, "and why is that?"

"Well, see that is....um that...well, because I'm the ghost."

Silence overtakes the drawing room. Your siblings think clearly think you're joking, but there's just one thing that might convince them. You walk over to the piano and pull out the bench before taking a seat. The moment your fingers greet the ivories everything falls away. You play each of the three songs your siblings heard and try not to laugh as you hear their shocked gasps echo in the drawing room. A part of you know that there will be a lot of questions after you finish your "concert," but for now all you have to do is focus on the next note to play. The other stuff is a future (Y/N) problem.

.

.

.

.

.

BONUS SCENE:

The whole family claps for you as you finish playing. Well almost the whole family, with the exception of the oldest brother.

"While I am impressed by your musical prowess...I wasted money on a book about exorcisms for this!

And there were no refunds..."

[accidentally-in-fictional-love]

📖 🥺 🩹🍭? Oooor 🙏🏻🍭

45 Minute Friends - Lester Billings/Reader

Warnings: Gender neutral reader, no use of Y/N, nothing else this time other than those sad eyes QwQ

Wordcount: 5391

Summary: When your meetcute turns into a surprising but nice friendship with the handsome man at the grocery store you frequent, you find yourself not ever wanting to know what he looks like without the smile that drew you in in the first place.

Notes: Even though he was in the list, I was still so surprised when I got this one! Did not expect any Lester but I'm so glad I got him because once again I have rebuilt a man from scratch to make him my own hehe so I hope you guys like this one~ 💗💗💗 (And if there's any demand for a sequel, wellllll... 😏)

Every Thursday like clockwork he was there, getting groceries between the minutes of 5:15 and 6PM. The first couple times you'd bumped into him had been random, just you rushing to the store for something for dinner or grabbing something you were low on last minute - usually you preferred getting in during the early hours of the morning when the place was empty - but after the third Thursday of noticing him grabbing a bunch of sugary breakfast cereals and a big tub of ice cream to pile along with the more adult things in his cart, your curiosity was too strong to resist wondering if you could see him again. He wore suits, a working man, and he took his health seriously despite the treats, although once in a while he did tend to hang out a little too long amongst the dessert counter where all the cakes were on display.

He was tall, very handsome, and there was something so comfortable about him you decided as he grabbed a box off the shelf and flipped it over to read the nutritional values. You sucked in a deep, encouraging breath before pushing your cart down the aisle, pretending to be interested in the many different brands of pasta before stopping and staring at the one on the top shelf where he was standing. ‘Excuse me,’ you asked politely, pretending like you hadn't just found the perfect excuse to finally talk to him, ‘could you please pass me that box? If it's not too much trouble.’

His height came very much in handy as he easily grabbed it and handed it over, and you flushed before you noticed the ring on his left hand as it held the box; ah, he was married, so much for your meetcute. ‘Big dinner coming up?’ he asked casually when he saw your cart, which was packed enough to last you the rest of the month since you knew you'd be too busy to visit weekly for a while, and you just shook your head with a nervous laugh.

‘Oh, no, just that time of the year again, gunna be swamped from dawn til dusk for a while,’ you told him as you tossed the pasta in, even if it was something you'd never eat normally you were still going to buy it after this. ‘How about you? I take it your kid has a sweet tooth?’

He laughed back, and even though it couldn't be your dream meetcute you still felt a blush dust over your cheeks. ‘All three of them, actually, don't tell my wife but I think they got it from me.’

So that explained him staring at the cakes. ‘Don't worry I won't,’ you promised, your hand over your heart, and he looked back to the box in his hand before going for it and offering you a handshake.

‘Lester, Lester Billings,’ he introduced himself as you shook, your name falling from your mouth rather ungracefully when you saw how his hand enveloped your own. ‘I think I've seen you around here before, do you live nearby?’

‘20 minutes out of town, but I like the prices here, so it's worth the drive,’ you admitted easily even though your crush was still technically a stranger, but he just whistled at the long drive and moved onto the sauces.

‘I'm in town, but if I don't go right after work I'd never get the chance,’ he confided right back while picking up a jar. ‘Have you tried this brand before? Rita, my wife, introduced me to it last year and we haven't gone back.’ He handed you the jar before grabbing his own before you could answer, and you hadn't even heard of it before as you just shrugged and took his word for it, it also joining your increasingly expensive haul. His phone went off then, and he pulled it out and let out a quiet kid-safe curse before typing a reply back. ‘Sorry, forgot the party started at 5:30, thought I still had an hour, it was nice meeting you!’ he said as he headed off for the register, his food toppling over with several crashes in his hurry, and you couldn't help but grin as you grabbed your favourite pasta as well as a second bottle of sauce before continuing on your own list.

You really weren't able to go back again until work had died down, your cupboards getting bare from all the late nights of having just enough energy to cook, eat, and pass out until your alarm. Now that you knew he lived in town you couldn't help but look for him as you drove to work, but you put an end to that pretty fast after you swear you saw him in casual clothes and nearly ran a red light. You spent that time instead getting your crush under control, your mother didn't raise a homewrecker that was for sure, but when you finally were able to return and you spotted him checking out the watermelons you couldn't help but wave when he glanced up. He smiled wide at you and pointed at the one in his hand, it was huge and he was over the moon about the find, and you couldn't stop the smile and blush that followed as you rolled over to him without a second thought.

‘Free from work?’ he asked as he finished his checks, and you realized it'd been a while since you indulged and started the hunt for your own.

‘Finally, it's been a nightmare,’ you breathed exaggeratedly, which earned you another laugh.

‘It’s been the same for me, Thursday is the only night I get to come home on time just for this.’ He settled on a melon and was about to put it in his cart when he quickly stopped you from picking up your own. ‘Whoa, that guy's not ripe yet, here, my wife sent me this after last time,’ he said as he swapped out the melon for his phone, and he swiped through a bunch of photos before pulling up a visual guide on how to choose. He pointed at the one you were about to grab on his screen before taking your hand and finding a better one, the shiver running up your arm hopefully not giving you away. ‘This one should be better, it'll last you longer too if you aren't eating it all tonight.’

‘By myself? Hell no!’ you blurted out before you could think of something more suitable to say, but the resulting laugh was so loud and full of life that you couldn't help but giggle along with him as he supported himself on your shoulder. 

‘Sorry, I don't mean to offend,’ he chuckled as he picked up his suggested fruit, placing it in your cart for you without you even asking, ‘forgive me for assuming you were unavailable.’

‘No no, it's fine,’ you quickly said before you could say the same to him, he didn't need to know about your crush, ‘thanks for the recommendation, it's been years since I took the time to actually get one of these and not just the packaged slices.’

‘Every time they're in season we get one, my kids could eat most of one on their own, I swear.’ He considered getting a second before deciding against it, they could space it out you figured, and he started to head for the next thing before turning back to you. ‘You coming? It's been a while since I had some company on one of these, makes it less boring,’ he offered as he waited, and your heart skipped a beat as you hurried to catch up to him.

You talked about random things as you shopped, him mostly about his kids and how much his youngest looked like his mother, you about whatever you could think of so it wouldn't be so one-sided. You learned that he and his wife were highschool sweethearts, started dating then and got married when they were both in their early 20s, and that it'd taken them a while but finally their firstborn had been gifted to them by the time they were almost in their 30s. As such he spoiled his kids rotten, loved them all immensely, and he revealed to you that he planned on taking them to Disneyland once summer vacation finally came. You could tell he was excited about it, maybe even more than his kids were going to be, and your crush turned to something more as you finally reached the dessert counter.

He didn't linger since you were with him, so you sneakily stopped to check out the cheesecakes. ‘Oh, they have Caramel Pecan! I might have to grab a slice after that nightmare of a month,’ you wondered aloud, and you saw the way his eyes shone as he stopped and joined you.

‘My kids do love chocolate…’ he trailed off as he examined the flavours, all of them enticing him, and you smiled as you waved over the worker.

‘Excuse me, could I get a slice of this one?’ you asked as you pointed to your choice, Lester still deciding on his own with childlike wonder that made you suspicious it wasn't just his kids who liked chocolate.

‘I'm sorry, only the full sized cakes come in that flavour, the slices can be found over here if you'd like to try another one?’ she apologized, and you couldn't fight the frown as you glanced at the slices but didn't see any you wanted. 

‘I'll take the Caramel Pecan and the Chocolate Fudge Supreme,’ he then said as soon as you went to tell her it was fine, and you looked up at him as he gave you the warmest smile you'd ever seen in your life. ‘We're having another party this weekend, maybe you can join us, have a slice,’ he offered, and when you nodded you then found yourself with his number in your phone along with his address.

His house was nice and the front yard was covered in toys, loud music drifting from the backyard as kids screamed in delight and parents talked over them as best they could. You held the dish you'd decided to bring at the mention that it'd be a potluck a little closer to your chest before knocking on the door, almost missing the sign taped to the wall above the doorbell. It told you and their other guests to head around back for the party, and you followed the path to the side gate and headed to where all the voices were coming from. 

He had a huge pool that was currently filled with kids and their friends, some of the adults hanging out by the deep end as others were crowding around the grill, and you searched for him in this sea of strangers until you spotted him exiting through the back door, the cheesecakes in hand. You grinned as you rushed over to help, but you stopped when an auburn-haired woman walked up instead, taking your Caramel Pecan from him and making a face at it before placing it on the table along with the other treats. You stilled, halfway to him as he waved off her disgust with a laugh, and you felt yourself become self-conscious; you enjoyed his company, and he was fun to talk to, but you didn't belong in this part of his life, no, you were his friend among the aisles from between 5:15-6PM, you shouldn't be there-

‘Hey! You made it!’ You stopped mid-turn at the sound of his voice, a smile plastered to your face as he jogged over, and you wouldn't tell him but he really did look like a dad in his casual clothes, it was a good look on him.

‘Hey, yeah, something came up so I just wanted to drop this off on my way,’ you lied, and his smile turned to disappointment as he glanced back at the party.

‘You sure you can't stay? The food's almost ready, we were gunna get out the protector and watch a move on the side of the house while we ate,’ he told you almost sadly, and you were about to decline when the woman from earlier walked up next to him and looked you over. ‘Rita, this is the one I was telling you about, my new friend from Walkers,’ he announced as she linked her arms through his, and she wasn't at all like he described as she glanced up at him so fast he missed it, but you didn't.

‘Charmed, I take it you're staying for dinner?’ she asked, and she didn't sound nearly as nice as he made her out to be.

‘I, uh…’

‘You were just telling me what you wanted, burger or hot dog,’ he cut in, looking hopeful as you held your bowl of potato salad a little tighter. ‘We also have sausages and some vegetarian options, if you'd prefer?’

‘A cheeseburger sounds great,’ you finally replied, and he nodded before calling over to someone named Tommy by the grill to toss on two more for you. Rita let go as he led you to the table so you could set down your bowl, and everything looked delicious as you gazed over the spread, completely entranced by what you planned on grabbing before he held you out of the way of a bunch of running kids. You thought he scolded them for running and to be careful, but honestly you didn't hear anything as your face was pressed to his chest, his hands warming you more than the sun as they rested over your back and arm.

‘Sorry about that, you know how kids get,’ he chuckled as he let you go, and when he asked about how red you were you quickly blamed it on the sun so you could hide in the shade a safe distance away.

You ended up staying til dark, the food so delicious that you couldn't stop until you were full, and your Caramel Pecan cheesecake was even more delicious as he handed it to you while his wife scowled in the background, jealous over nothing. You knew you'd never make a move on him, seeing him around his family was enough to fully kill the crush, but still you couldn't leave as you sat in the grass and watched horror movies with the rest of his friends once the kids went to bed. The speakers couldn't be too loud, but that didn't stop everyone else as they had a great time, and when you stopped by the pool to enviously check it out, you found yourself splashing along with the others when he pushed you over the edge, jumped in, and encouraged everyone else to join, which they all childishly did.

You didn't hang out outside of shopping, the party would have to be your only exception, but you still had fun with him as you met up in the parking lot every Thursday after that. He shared his favourite recipes with you when you were looking to try something new, and was always ready to grab something off the top shelves for you while you grabbed stuff from the lower ones, bad back he explained after too many spills trying to keep up with the kids. You became close enough to openly talk about your jobs and your weeks, more invitations to parties offered to you every time you met, it seemed he was just really that social, but you found excuses for every one of them to his growing disappointment; you still saw Rita glaring at you when you looked at him, and you didn't want to start anything when your intentions for talking to him were nothing but pure now. 

As you were checking out, he offered for you to join them for movie night, this one would be a smaller gathering in case you didn't like the crowds, and you just laughed and declined as always. ‘It's not the crowds,’ you reassured him as your stuff was rung up, Lester bagging all of his own since you'd let him go first. ‘I'm just… not one for parties in general.’ It was a boldfaced lie, but you'd rather lie to him than get him in trouble with his wife just by being there.

‘It's not a party, it's movie night,’ he insisted, and he held the extra large bag of assorted salty snacks up high to tempt you. ‘C'mon, you told me you had a rough week, one round of cards with my kids will cheer you up, and since it's movie night you can pick your favourite to join the lineup, what do you say?’

That sounded wonderful, if you were to be completely honest, and you just sighed dramatically before grabbing a big bag of chips from beside you to add to your remaining items. ‘What's your family's stance on Stephen King?’ you asked as you pulled out your wallet, and he just grinned widely as the last of his bags was stuffed into the cart.

‘Too scary for me, but my eldest loves him.’

You nearly crushed your poor bag of chips by the time you got to his house on Saturday, a bottle of your favourite soda tucked under your arm as well just in case he didn't have it and so you'd be able to drive home later. It was already starting to get dark since you wanted to give them time to have dinner together despite him saying it started early, and you could already hear a movie going on on the other side of the door as you knocked. You waited a moment as the movie was paused, and a little boy who couldn’t be more than 8 opened up and stared at you before calling back over his shoulder that you were finally there, putting extra emphasis on the ‘finally.’

You heard Lester laugh before he stumbled into view, and he welcomed you in with a bright smile as you held up your chips and drink. ‘You're late! We saved you some dip, had to fight these animals back with a stick to keep them away from it,’ he teased as he brought you to the living room, his kids piled onto the floor with pillows and blankets while a few couples, more of his friends, took up the couches, the loveseat empty and waiting for you. 

‘Daddy, we saw you eat a bunch!’ the boy, apparently his middle child, cried out as he hit his legs while he passed by, his body bouncing energetically on his pillows as he then flopped back down, and Lester just shook his head in denial before reclaiming the spot next to his wife, his youngest going from her lap to his the moment he was settled. The movie was resumed, your chips on your lap as you tried to ignore the heat from Rita's gaze that he somehow didn't notice, and you only got a few in before the middle one noticed you had something different. ‘Did you bring enough to share with the class?’ he asked smartly as he turned and stared up at you from the coffee table, his eyes purely on your chips and those alone.

‘Shaun-’ Lester said warningly, he’d had enough snacks already apparently to not let you enjoy yours, but still you waved him off and held the bag out. He thanked you and grabbed two big handfuls, his eldest, Denise, or Deni everyone called her, glancing over before you just relented and passed it down, ready to try out that dip you almost missed out on instead, one of his friends handing it to you and stealing one final chip's worth before going back to his beer. It was damn good, you could see why it was almost completely gone, and this he did notice as he called your name before a very loud action sequence nearly drowned him out.

‘Want me to make more?’ he asked as you chowed down, and when you shook your head politely so as to not trouble him, everyone else loudly exclaimed, ‘Yes!’ at the same time. ‘Okay, okay, it's Annie’s bedtime anyway,’ he conceded as he stood, the movie not paused this time as he brought his sleeping youngest upstairs. You watched him go in the reflection of the TV stand packed with trinkets and knick knacks and photos before watching the movie, and when he returned he pressed a kiss to Rita's forehead before heading for the kitchen to make more dip. When he returned everyone was instantly ready for more, but he made sure to scoop a fair amount into your bowl before placing it on the coffee table, since you had missed out after all. You thanked him quietly and went back to eating, your chips returned to you before he sat back down, and it was almost criminal how damn good of a combo they ended up being.

You weren't able to get to your movie since you'd arrived so late, but you were promised first dibs for the next one as long as you showed up on time. You promised, and everyone but Rita waved goodbye to you as you headed out, the kids devouring the last of your chips in front of the TV again.

The next Thursday that came around you were running late, a detour from work to Walkers making you come closer to 5:48 than your desired 5:15, but no matter where you looked you couldn't find him. You felt almost disappointed when you remembered that summer vacation had started, he was probably in California by now, and you hoped he was having a good time as you passed by the dessert counter and noticed that slices of Caramel Pecan were now available.

You didn't see him the next Thursday either, but you didn't know how long his vacation was going for, judging on how excited he was it probably wouldn't be for just a few days, and again you hoped he was having fun as you grabbed yourself a new watermelon using the same guide his wife had sent him.

On the third Thursday you felt worried, he should be back by now, but you didn't think it proper to go to his house and see if his car or the family van were there, that felt much too personal for just a 45 Minute Friend. You felt that, but the temptation was strong when you passed by the pasta sauces.

On the fourth Thursday you figured enough was enough, something was wrong, and you piled your food into the back of your car and tried not to speed to his house. His car wasn't there but the van was, maybe he'd had to switch his grocery day to some other time thanks to work, and you felt embarrassed but you'd rather find out from Rita than text him about missing him. You approached the front door and saw lights on inside, but there was something heavy in the air as you raised your hand to knock; there was a lack of happiness radiating from the house, no sounds of the TV drifting through the door, the yard had been cleaned up, something just felt off. 

You took in a deep breath and knocked, and you saw Rita peek through the window's curtains before the door was unlocked. ‘Finally come to collect?’ she snapped as she glared through the gap, and your brow furrowed as you tried to figure out what she meant.

‘What?’

‘You can have him, I'm done with this,’ was all she said before she slammed the door in your face, your confusion turning to concern as you knocked again.

‘Wait, what're you talking about? Is he okay? Are the kids okay?’ you demanded to know, and as soon as you asked about them the door opened once more; her hand slapped you hard across the face, your eyes wide in surprise as you touched your cheek.

‘He doesn't live here anymore, try any of the fleabag motels along the highway,’ she all but yelled before slamming the door again, and you raced back to your car without another word.

You spent the rest of the night looking for him but was unsuccessful, his car nowhere in sight as you checked every motel and hotel on your GPS, the stinging on your cheek not going away as the sun set and darkness swallowed up everything.

You tried to check out the store every night after that, keeping a worried eye out for him as you bought only a couple things so you wouldn’t just be loitering, although it seemed like the dessert counter worker was now used to your friendship. She called out to you as you passed, your eyes scanning every which way as you slowly turned to face her. ‘Haven’t seen him around lately, he feeling alright?’ she asked concernedly, and you could only shrug, you were just his friend, after all.

You kept up your search for a week, Thursday coming by again as your snacks ran out and you did have to get some real food like a real adult, and you were in the middle of turning down the pasta aisle when you saw him standing there and staring at the jar of sauce in his hand. ‘Lester!’ you started to call out in pure relief, but when he heard your voice and turned to you, you only saw the saddest pair of eyes you’d ever seen in your life; the smile was gone, buried underneath the sorrow, he was just barely holding it together, and you ditched your cart right there and you quickly jogged over. ‘Hey, is everything okay? I haven’t seen you in over a month.’

You didn’t want it to sound like you’d been waiting for him, but if it did come across that way he didn’t notice as he looked back down at his wife’s favourite brand.

‘Haven’t had time to come, been trying to secure an apartment from my hotel,’ he confessed, and when he blinked a tear ran down his cheek. ‘Haven’t been very hungry, anyway…’

‘What… I mean, why did-?’ You couldn’t ask it, not when the pieces were starting to fall together, and he didn’t clarify anything as he nearly dropped the jar; you just barely caught it, his hand covering his eyes for just a moment as he bit back a sob, and when you put it back on the shelf you found yourself comfortingly rubbing his back.

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come, it’s been so hard since…’

‘It’s okay, do you have a list? I think I remember what you usually get, let me help you,’ you offered, and when he looked at you you felt your heart clench so much your knees nearly gave out. ‘Shopping’s more fun with some company, right?’ He nodded, and you skipped the rest of the aisle entirely as you tried to remember what you’d seen him get in the past. It was slow work, he kept lingering around certain things like the cereal and kid-targeted snacks, your heart hurting more and more the closer you got to the desserts. He didn’t even look at them, and you quickly asked for two slices of Caramel Pecan while he avoided staring at all the chocolate flavours.

He went to pay when you were all done, but he was low on cash, no cards in his wallet to go with them, and you understood that all his money must’ve been going towards the hotel as you pulled out your own wallet. ‘Please, I can’t ask you to,’ he mumbled, but you just placed your hand on his as you forced a smile.

‘What else are friends for?’ you asked, and he silently let you pay as he packed his stuff into as few bags as he could to save you a few cents.

Your groceries were completely forgotten as you then helped him pack them into the trunk of his car, fast food wrappers littering the floor of the backseat, and you didn’t comment on them as he obviously looked embarrassed about it. The sky rumbled as you unloaded the last bag, and you should’ve really run back inside, but you couldn’t leave him as he got into the front seat and just sat there, staring at the wheel. You opened up the passenger door and sat down next to him, his eyes glancing at you before he patted your hand, his thanks just barely out of his mouth before he finally broke down.

He sobbed openly in the privacy of his car as he covered his eyes again, his shoulders shaking and his weeping only enhanced by the rain as it turned from a light drizzle to a storm within moments. You just let him cry, ready to wait until he was able to speak, small waves blown across the pavement in front of you as other people hurried to their own cars, his cart slowly rolling away in the background. It took a while but finally he was ready, and he didn’t look at you as he wiped his eyes and sniffed.

‘Rita asked for a divorce, said she wants full custody,’ he confessed as the thunder roared above, and the pain in your heart turned to a pounding as you felt not sadness but anger overtake you.

‘That’s bullshit!’ you shouted, but you controlled your voice when he recoiled. ‘Sorry, but you’re an amazing father, where the hell did this come from?’

‘She thinks I was cheating on her, wouldn’t even tell me who she thought it was,’ he told you with another sniff, and you felt your cheek sting again as you recalled the look on her face as she slammed the door in yours. ‘I would never, I love- I loved her so much, and my kids-’ He broke down again, and you refused to even attempt to hold yourself back as you leaned over the console and pulled him into your arms. He melted into them, crying on your shoulder as you whispered comfort to him, patted and rubbed his back, his grip on you so hard that it hurt but you didn’t care.

‘I won’t let her do this, you know I work at a law firm, I’ll message everyone I know to help with your case,’ you swore, and he just shook his head against you.

‘Why would they side with me when she tells them what she thinks?’ he mumbled, and you backed up so he’d look at you.

‘Because I know who you are, and I will not let you lose your kids.’

His eyes looked between your own as a single tear fell, and if your crush was still there you might’ve wanted to kiss him, but that wasn’t what he needed. No, you meant every word that you’d said, and you were going to make good on it for him because he was your friend, and you would not ruin this more for him when his feelings were that that mattered right now. You were his friend, and you loved him like that, and he could see that you were serious as he hugged you again but didn’t cry, his voice so broken and soft and unlike the lively energy you’d gotten to know over your grocery trips.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered, and you didn’t nuzzle into his neck as you placed your hand on the back of his head.

‘I don’t have much, but for now I can at least offer you my couch, if you’re tired of hotel rooms?’ you said softly, and when he went to object you just smiled as your own tears fell when you blinked and stared out into the rain. ‘What else are friends for?’ you repeated, and when he sat back to rub his eyes again his smile was there, just barely hidden under the pain; there was your friend, there was Lester.

You didn’t know how this story would end, but you knew that it wouldn’t involve him losing everything, not if you had anything to say about it, that was for damn sure.

[chimachapterbooks]

Worriz’s Challenge

Eris perched on a rock and gazed down at the ground far below, her brow knitted with concern.

Just as she had for the last six days, she could see Wolves prowling at the base of the cliffs that the Eagles called home. Now and then, one of the Wolves would look up at her, flash a savage grin, and give a short howl. She did her best to ignore the taunts. But this was becoming a concern.

Ever since the battle for CHI had begun among the tribes, the Wolves had been encroaching on Eagle teritory.

Normally, the Wolf pack was constantly on the move. But this pack was acting like they were here to stay. They were noisy, messy, and threw loud parties late into the night so that none of the Eagles could sleep.

It might have just been a little inconvenience, except for two things: One, the Eagles needed to be able to fly down to the ground to find food, and the Wolves were making that dangerous to do. And two, it was almost time for the Eagles to get their monthly share of the powerful CHi from the Lions, and Eris was sure the Wolves were here to prevent that from happening.

if only we could find some way to make them go away, she thought. But how?

Just then, Eglor flew by. He was very excited, and kept shouting, "I've done it! 've done it!" All the Wolves looked up to see what the commotion was about.

"Shhhh!" warned Eris. "What have you done?"

But Eglor was too excited to speak quietly. "I've perfected a machine that can hurl an Eagle all the way from one end of the forest to the other, faster than any beast that runs or flies. From now on, instead of flap, flap, flap to get from one place to another, it will be zip, zip, zip!"

"Zip, zip, zip?" said one of the Wolves, laughing.

"Sounds more like flop, flop, flop to me!"

Eglor wheeled in the air and looked down at the Wolf.

"Ha! With my machine, any Eagle could outrace a Wolf by twice the speed. That's just scientific fact. There's not even the teeniest, tiniest, most microscopic room for doubt."

"Want to bet?" growled Worriz. The pack leader had wandered over to see what the rest of the Wolves were so interested in. Now he eyed Eglor with a mocking smile.

"Eglor, don't." Eris tried to hold her friend back.

"No good can come from arguing with the Wolves."

But Eglor's pride as an inventor was at stake now.

"Yes, I do want to bet!" he announced loudly.

"All right, then," said Worriz. "I'll bet you I can make it to the far end of the woods faster than any Eagle launched from your machine. If I win, you Eagles give up your share of CHI to us this month."

"And if you lose," said

Eglor, "you go away and leave our nesting area alone!"

Eris slapped a wing against her forehead. What had Eglor just gotten them into?

"Deal," said Worriz. "We race tomorrow ... That is, if you can find someone foolish enough to challenge me."

"Tomorrow?" stammered Eglor. He suddenly sounded a bit nervous. "Now, see here, the machine works— know it does—but it hasn't been fully tested yet, and there are still a few things—"

The Wolves howled with laughter. One of them said,

"You know what they say about Eagles—all flash and feathers."

"If you want to back down, bird," Worriz sneered,

"then I guess-"

"'ll do it!" Eris interrupted him. "I'll race you!"

After she had said it, she could hardly believe the words had come out of her beak. But the Wolves were getting under her feathers with all their insults, and maybe this was the one way to get them to leave their nesting grounds for good. Besides, Eglor was a great inventor. If he said his machine could make her go zip, zip, zip, then it could.

"All right then," Worriz snarled. "Tomorrow. Dawn.

Be here."

The Wolves turned to talk amongst themselves.

Suddenly, Worriz looked sharply back up at Eris. "Oh, and one more rule," he snapped. "No help from the Lions, right, Eagle? For this challenge, you fly solo."

All the Wolves laughed.

—————

"It doesn't work," said Eglor sadly. "I don't know what happened, but it's not working."

"What do you mean?" asked Eris, in shock. "You told the Wolves there wasn't the teeniest, tiniest room for doubt."

It was the middle of the night. Eglor had taken Eris to see his machine, which consisted of a catapult with a bowl at the end attached to a much bigger metal apparatus by tightly wound springs. When Eglor triggered the contraption, the bowl would be propelled forward and anything inside it would go flying... at least, in theory.

But now the inventor Eagle didn't look so sure.

"When I tested it this afternoon, it worked fine," Eglor explained. "But then I started practicing tonight with things actually in the bowl, like bunches of apples, and . .. well, look for yourself."

Eris looked. There were smashed apples splattered all over the floor of Eglor's workshop. The machine just hurled them straight down at the ground.

"So if I get in this thing tomorrow morning. . . no zip?" she asked.

"More like splat," said Eglor. "We'll have to call off the bet."

"We can't," insisted Eris. "We'll lose our CHI to the Wolves, which will hurt the balance in Chima, and the Wolves will stay down there forever! I have to win the race... somehow. I just have to."

——————

"Did you do it?" whispered Worriz.

Wilhurt, another Wolf in the pack, nodded. "It was easy. I used a bellow plant to float up the mountain and then tied it down. I got to Eglor's workshop, and broke off part of his machine. Then let the air out of the bellow plant little by little so I could float back down. That Eagle won't be zipping anywhere, boss."

"Good," Worriz said with a wicked grin. "All that Eagle CHI is practically ours. Hey, maybe we'll challenge the Bears and the Gorillas to races, too. Let the Crocs fight battles we'll get all the CHI we want the old-fashioned way: We'll cheat."

——————

By dawn, Eris had a plan ... sort of. It started with not telling Worriz the machine didn't work. The second part involved getting some help from someone she would normally stay far away from.

Skinnit the Skunk was actually a very nice animal who didn't have an enemy in the world. But no one really wanted to spend any time around him because ... well, he smelled really bad. It wasn't his fault. But no one wanted to risk keeping him company and maybe winding up smelling terribly, too. Still, Eris had always made an effort to be polite to him.

"Skinnit, can you do me a favor?" she asked, talking to him from high up in a tree.

"Me? Really? You want me to do you a favor?" Skinnit replied eagerly. No one ever asked him to do anything other than go away.

"That's right," said Eris. "It's nothing hard. I just want you to do ... that thing you do at a certain place and a certain time."

Skinnit frowned. "You mean you want me to make a stink?" he asked. That was what he did best, but it always made other animals run away. Why would Eris want him to do that?

"Just trust me," Eris reassured him. "You'll be doing something nice for all the Eagles."

"If you say so," Skinnit answered, smiling. "But you had better hold your beak—it's going to get smelly around here!"

Eris grinned. "Thanks, Skinnit," she said. "I knew I could count on you." With that, she flew off. She had a few more non-rule-breaking favors to ask of some old friends.

———————

After making a few more stops, Eris was ready for the start of the race. She perched in Eglor's lab, waiting for the signal to start. Down below, Worriz was crouched down, ready to run.

"You might as well hand over that CHI now, bird,"

Worriz called up. "It's as good as ours!"

"We'll just see about that," Eris shouted back down.

She glanced over at Eglor, and gave him a wink. The inventor Eagle looked very nervous, but he nodded back.

One of the Wolves stood at the base of the rock spire, holding a palm leaf to start the race. A moment later, he waved the leaf high in the air, and the race was on!

Eris leaped out from Eglor's lab, flying as fast as she could, so anyone looking from below would think she had been rocketed out into the sky. Worriz was running at top speed, too, hoping to put some distance between himself and the Eagle.

As she soared above the canopy of trees, Eris did her best to keep an eye on Worriz, even if she could only see him for a few seconds now and then. She knew the Wolf would would take the fastest path through the forest. In fact, she was counting on it.

In the woods, Worriz was feeling confident. The pack had blazed a new trail through the forest lately, one that made getting from one end to the other a snap. All he had to do was follow the scent the vehicles had left and he couldn't go wrong. He put his nose to the ground, took a big sniff...

... and he almost fell over! His nose was full of an incredibly horrible smell, so bad it made his eyes water.

He shook his head, trying to make the odor go away. But it didn't. It was so overpowering that now he couldn't smell anything else. Worriz knew there was only one animal in the forest who could make a smell that bad.

"Skinnit!" he howled.

Off to the side of the path, the little skunk ran away, disappearing into the trees.

"All right, I don't need my nose," Worriz

grumbled to himself. "I can remember the path .. sort of. I know there were trees ... and a big rock... and some dirt... hmm...

Worriz picked a direction that looked right and started to run again. At one point, he glanced up and spotted Eris through the trees. The Eagle was falling behind.

All he needed to do was put on an extra burst of speed and he was sure to win.

Just then, he heard an enormous rustling in the woods ahead. It sounded like a huge herd of creatures on the move. But there were no sounds of foliage tearing or ground being ripped up the way he would have expected. As he rounded a bend, he discovered why: It was a tribe of Gorillas in their massive Gorilla Machines. But instead of smashing through the jungle the way the Wolf Vehicles did, the Gorillas were being extra careful not to disturb anything as they passed.

The Gorillas' respect for nature meant that they had to move very slowly in their huge machines so they didn't accidentally trample any flowers or even weeds.

"Come on!" Worriz growled. "Hurry it up!"

Three of the Gorillas stopped right in Worriz's path.

"Hey, Wolf, why are you in such a hurry?" said the first Gorilla, looking down from the cockpit of his huge vehicle.

"Yeah, you have to savor every minute of life, the way you do a really good banana," said the second.

"Maybe you just don't see it," said the third. "You Wolves always have your noses to the ground, and you don't look up to see the sky!"

Over Worriz's protests, the Gorillas proceeded to tell him all about how much better life was when you were in tune with all of nature. Even worse, all the other Gorillas stopped to listen, nodding their heads and smiling. It felt like forever before they finally finished and moved on, their machines going even slower than before.

When the Gorillas had finally passed, Worriz ran faster than he ever had in his life. He was heading for the quick-moving river that flowed through this part of the forest. If he dove in and let the waters carry him, he could still beat Eris. Sure, he wouldn't technically be racing. But so what? The only thing that mattered to him was winning!

He was just about to dive into the river when, from behind the trees, a bunch of small figures appeared in his path. Worriz nearly skidded to a halt. He couldn't believe his eyes. Nearly two dozen teenage foxes were blocking him, all smiling and yipping and jumping up and down. Because as everyone in Chima knew, teenage foxes thought that the Wolves were the coolest animals in the forest. Especially the Wolf Pack leader, Worriz.

"Look, it's Worriz!" cried one.

"I told you he was coming!" squealed another.

"Wow, look how cool he is!"

"I just have to get his autograph! I have to!" Before Worriz knew what was happening, he was being mobbed by the teenage foxes! They were tugging at his fur, running back and forth in front of him, and begging for his signature.

"We're your biggest fans," said one of the foxes breathlessly. "You're the coolest Wolf in Chima!"

"I won," said the Eagle. "So pack up your pack and move on."

But Worriz sneered. "Ha!" he said. "That's what you think. Your Lion pals aren't here, so you can't prove you won the race. Looks like your CHI for this month is ours. Hand it over!"

Eris shook her head, a knowing grin crossing her face. She pointed up at the sky. A whole flock of sparrows was circling overhead, cheering wildly for Eris.

"I don't need the Lions to prove I beat you," she said.

"Those sparrows saw the entire race. It's over, Worriz."

Worriz smacked his head and groaned. Even with cheating, he had still lost to the Eagles! "Fine," he grumbled. "You got lucky this time. But next time, mark my words, you won't be so lucky!"

Eris chuckled. "It wasn't luck," she said as a sparrow came and landed on her hand. "Don't you know by now? I have lots of friends."

[bloomingskullz]

I don’t think I’ve ever fully talked about how much I love Io as a character.

We knew from the beginning that Io was a villain but that doesn’t make them evil for the sake of it. Their reasons for wanting to watch the world burn are justified in their eyes because of what happened to them.

Their past is such a major component in Ios story and we only know a small portion of it. They got betrayed by her lover, their sparrow, after being promised death if turned. But they got a fate that’s worse than death to them. Io now as to live life as the enemy, as the one thing they hated, all because their sparrow couldnt handle it.

After those medal bars locked behind Io it was like whole world had turned its back on them. They are a bird they were made for the sky and sun and now they were below the dirt never being able to feel the warmth again without pain following.

Io was alone, maybe not physically but emotionally and physically they were, for decades. They didn’t even know about the treaty or how long ago the war they fought it ended. The only time they saw people was when the birds came down to use them. Their only interaction was of more hurt from those they once fought for.

And this affects Io in every possible way. They constantly talk about how the sun has betrayed them, a fact that they can’t get over. Constantly flying til the suns up. Taking every moment to use their wings. To feel like they’re normal again.

When Io had people they could trust again they wanted nothing more then to be back there, cause for the longest time they didn’t have that. They didn’t have anyone they could run to. To be able to call a friend. To call someone more. They derailed their own mission to find Cavity cause they deeply wanted their friend back. They tried so hard to find Dawn again, the first time since their sparrow they could love again.

And then their lover betrayed them again. Sides with the bird counsel again. Left them without the sun again. When they thought they could have two allies they were brought back down to one. One who shares a similar fate and anger as them. Anger being the only thing they can seem to count on.

And while Io is angry at the world they are also scared and try to cover it. We saw that with Asher. He knows where Io came from. Knows they were locked away and how that’s effected them. As used that to make a joke of putting Io back in a basement. Io backed away tho. They were scared to be away from the sky again. Scared that they won’t feel the pain the warmth brought with it anymore.

But they covered it up with angry at Asher. Trying to play it tuff when knowing that if Asher tried anything Io couldn’t stop them. They are at the hands of another counsel. The counsel of the thing that ruined their life, to try and avenge it.

Io would pick death over being what they are now if they were given the chance. They’ve made that so clear with asking to die should they turn. Saying death would be better than what they are now. But so long as their lungs fill with air and someone’s bloods runs through their veins they will make the birds feel every ounce of pain they have felt.

I’ve been brainrotting on Io since they were introduced and their story is so interesting and means so much to me.

[thetempleofthemasaigoddess]

Meet me where the cliff greets the Sea (part 1)

Elendil x reader

Title inspired by a verse of Elan by Nightwish. This fic is dedicated to @lady-of-imladris.

*****

The market was a fascinating place when you were a little girl: so full of things to look at and of people to meet, and exotic goods brought from merchants ailing from far away lands; foods and fabrics you had never seen before, tools and other objects whose use you could not even guess, live animals sold for company or work whose calls blended in the air, whose masters sometimes allowed you to pet them and that every time you begged your mother to buy, even though you knew your house was too small to keep a sheep... or a horse... or a pig. And then smiths and potters and tailors and scribes who had set a stall away from their shops, and the fortune teller who claimed to be able to foresee a man's future from his hand and that you were at the same time eager and too scared to consult, even though she only accepted adults as clients, vendors and buyers haggling over the prices, women arguing over who had seen a precious silk first, so many scents and different languages blending in the air...

You loved it, even when you were too young to have coin of your own to spend, you loved the excitement in the air and to have so many things to see and discover, and when your mother had to go you always asked to accompany her, even though it meant helping her carrying her purchases back home; you liked to play ball with the other children in the city's squares, swimming at the small beach near your home and having an outdoor meal in the woods surrounding the city, but had someone asked about your favourite place in the city, your answer would have been rapid, and confident: the marketplace!

Now things are different; completely, dramatically so, even, and not just because you have coin to spend and are old enough to consult a soothsayer, should you desire, and the reason why your heart is pounding so hard your chest hurts is not joy, or excitement: is fear, a fear so overpowering you have to force yourself to think clearly, and the anguish of being too late, even though you promised a reward to the captain of the ship had he brought you to your destination in two days less than normal.

It cannot be too late. It simply cannot. Not after everything I have done, and everything we had promised each other. This is not the end, it is not, I do not accept it...

It is wishful thinking, nothing more, since the danger the person you are looking for is in is a reality your hopes and prayers cannot change or improve, but even so, you force yourself to remain lucid and vigilant; you have been searching for him for more than six months, your hopes fading like a dream at dawn every time you felt close to your goal, but your determination has been strengthened, rather than abated, the longer and the more desperate your search became. Your every interest, every thought or feeling in your heart, everything you cared about, has disappeared, replaced by a single, fierce desire, a need, in the face of which everything else, including yourself, loses meaning. You have to find him, free him, and bring him back home; and you are ready to kill, and to die, for it.

This is why you barely pay attention to your surroundings as you move among the narrow streets and alleys of the marketplace, in a city you have reached only a few hours ago, the heart of Draiwen, a kingdom Númenor has long been at war with. A few vendors you have just passed catch your attention for a moment, especially the beautiful fabrics a seller is showing a potential client and that would be perfect for a dress you had in mind to have made for your daughter, but you quickly put that thought away, as well as the interest the stall of a goldsmith -you had a pair of earrings exactly like those!- arouses for a moment in your heart, and the brief, instinctual desire to stop to inspect the wares of an animal seller, a bearded man surrounded by a symphony of chirping, barking and bleating. The marketplace of the city has nothing to envy that of Armenelos, and you suspect some goods on sale here have never been seen in Númenor, but your interest does not lie on weapons, earthenware or a new pair of boots; there is only one good you aim to buy, and you are ready to burn the city down to achieve your goal.

Six months after the end of the war, the worst, and least safe, thing you might do is presenting yourself as hailing from the kingdom that has inflicted a crushing defeat on Draiwen's army and naval force; this is why you are doing your utmost to speak without an accent, have exchanged your coin with the local currency, and made sure your clothes do not betray your origins. Even so, you are still anxious, and look discretely around you to make sure no one is paying attention to you, as you walk, easily blending into the multi-colored, ever-shifting crowd.

"You said it was close." you state in the end, turning to the two men who the captain has lent ti you as your bodyguards and porters, and who have silently followed you. They do not know who you are and what you are searching for, and they probably do not care, only aiming to earn a few coins to spend on ale and dices before they need to set sail, but still, you do not trust them, like you do not trust their captain -you paid him for his services, but your kingdoms have been at odds with each other since before the two of you were born, is it so absurd to fear he wishes you harm?- or anyone who might have served in the army that has threatened to invade your home and forced your husband to fight in a war that has taken him away from you "Are you sure you can find this merchant? I feel like we have been walking for hours."

The men simply answer you will reach your destination soon, and so it is; a couple minutes later, as you pass the stall of a fruit vendor who is defending the quality of his persimmons against the protests of an unsatisfied client, a new scent reaches your nose: it is acrid, almost sour, and it needs no words to speak of fear, and desperation, and hopelessness.

It is the scent of slavery.

The merchants of flesh occupy an area of the market just like any other seller, their work stations close to make it easier for potential buyers to compare the various items, without any formal separation from the colleagues who deal in farming tools, bread or candles. The sections reserved to each vendor is delimited by lines drawn on the pavement, club and dagger-armed guards patrolling the area and occasionally striking a slave who seems ready to rebel or even just does not appear appropriately subservient. There are men and women, some barely out of their childhood and others old enough to barely stand; there are also -and the mere sight is so painful you have to divert your eyes- a few children, held in their parents' arms or sitting on the ground. Many carry the signs of the abuse they received; it is easy to see, since most slaves are barely clothed, men and women wearing only a loincloth to allow the new master to inspect their purchase, and a young man is ordered to disrobe to show exactly what the potential buyer, an older woman accompanied by a few giggling friends, is paying for. Some slaves are sold as labourers, to toil in the fields or in a mine; some women are destined to clean and cook for their masters; some, especially the younger ones, might end up sold to a brothel or becoming their masters' bedslaves, and the children born of those unions would be slaves as well, their life and death in the hands of their masters, their bodies someone else's property, their very fëa forced in chains, exploited until life itself became a burden...

The law of Númenor has declared every form of slavery illegal centuries before your birth, and while you were aware the practice still existed elsewhere, it is the first time you see it with your eyes. Suddenly you feel unable to breathe, pity and instinctive fear and a guilt you know you have no reason to feel but that still makes you unable to meet the eyes of any of these poor souls, burning in your heart. If the Valar assist you, you will find your husband and bring him away from here, but what will become of the others, only Eru knows...

Most of the slaves keep a neutral expression, stony, and whether it comes from defiance in the face of a fate some might judge worse than death, or hopelessness due to that same state of things, who can say; the eyes of some of them follow you as you pass, and -the most pitiful thing- a couple smile shyly, as if they were trying to attract your attention and have you buy them. Do they think a woman would be a kinder master? Doubtful, since there are at least a dozen others of your sex examining the slaves, their demeanour as avid and impassible as that of their male counterparts. Or there is something in you that inspires trust, hope, in those who have not an ounce left?

As always when you are sad or upset, your hand moves to touch the necklace you wear, the same you have never taken off ever since you received it. It was your husband who gave it to you, when you first started courting; a single, large and perfect pearl hanging from a simple silver chain. You were still so young back then, and since you were not married yet it would have been improper for him to gift you one of the jewels belonging to his family's fortune, but tradition was not the only reason: he paid the chain with the coin of his wage, and found the pearl himself, swimming near a secluded gulf where according to a fishmonger friend of his, the largest oysters might be found. He knew how little you cared for his family's reputation and wealth, and he wanted to express he would always take care of you, with the very strength of his body if need be, and that just like silver is one of the few metal that are not corroded, nothing would ever tarnish the love the two of you share. In the years that followed you received many precious gifts from your husband, not to mention the ones that formally become yours on the day of your wedding, since your mother-in-law had passed away years before, but nothing is more precious for you than the simple pendant that you wear every day, hidden under your dress of tunic if necessary, as a sign of the commitment you and him shared, and the love nothing, not even the will of the Valar or death itself, can break...

As always, touching the silver chain is enough to make you feel stronger, and more in control of yourself; you avert your eyes from those of the slaves, promising yourself that, if the coin you brought will be enough once you have ransomed your husband, you will buy and then set free as many of them as you can, and keep walking, finally reaching the man -in a broad sense; heartless scum would be a more exact definition- you were looking for.

He is roughly your age, comfortably sitting next to a small tent raised to shield him from the heat, with a scroll in his hands. There are only three slaves in his enclosure, neither of whom look remotely like your husband, and your heart sinks -were you given inexact information, for the umpteenth time since the beginning of your search? Or has he been sold already, which might make it infinitely harder for you to buy him back?- before you realize that, like a potter would keep some of his best vases and jars on a shelf behind the counter, those three probably represent a sample of the merchant's wares, selected for lack of space.

You already hate him, just like you despise every man or woman who earns their living selling their own race, but you force yourself to hide your disgust, and politely greet him.

"Good day to you, mistress. How may I serve you?"

"I am in need of one or two slaves for my farm, to work the fields. Do you have someo... something that might interest me?"

"I am sure I do. If you need laborers, perhaps someone like him would do."

The merchant points to one of the three slaves chained a few steps from him, each of them with a wooden tablet hanging from the neck, which illustrates the price and a few key characteristics. The older man at the centre is the most expensive, since he -apparently- is a physician who served both in peace and in war, particularly capable in assisting during childbirth; then there is a woman, an expert home-maker who appears to be at least five years older than what she is supposed to, maybe to make her more palatable as a bedslave. The third is a man of your sons' age, tall and robust, the wounds on his skin betraying a past as a soldier. Unlike the other two he looks straight at you, eyes vacant but for a flicker of resentment he seems unable to hide and that fills you with shame, even though you know you do not deserve it.

The slave receives a nod from his master, and silently steps forward, as much as the chains around his naked ankles allow him; his wrists are also enchained.

"Well? Is this man what you are looking for, mistress?" the merchant asks, now walking next to you; he is polite and attentive, as it is expected from a vendor in the company of a potential client, and there is nothing unpleasant or... unnatural in him, something that expresses the cruelty and the disdain he must feel - how could he not, given his trade? He is simply a man, a foreigner but beyond this not so different from so many other men you know, not so different from you, and this is maybe the scariest, most terrible thing you have ever had to come to terms with. "He is young, as you see, and docile; you may have someone instruct him and he will learn."

You admit he is the type of slave you are interested in purchasing, but that does not mean you will buy the first man you are shown. "Do you have anyone else like him?" you inquire, turning to face the merchant; you are acting, in a sense, playing a part not unlike the performers who entertain a crowd in a square or in a theatre, and unfortunately this is not something you have ever done before, not even as a young girl who pretended to be a warrior or a wizard as she played with her friends. Moreover, according to your parents, you have always been a terrible liar, and while you doubt the merchant will care about what you intend to do with the slaves, as long as you pay for them, what if he realizes he is important for you, more important than any other person on Arda excluding the children he gave you, and raises the price? What if he asks more than you can afford? The amount of coin you have brought with you is considerable, more than you have ever carried and way more than you feel comfortable having on your person, even though the bag is hidden by your cape, but...

You cannot lose him, especially not because you cannot simply go home and take more gold to give him and reach the requested price. After all, no one will ever be willing to pay for your husband more than you; the deal is in the interest of the merchant as much as in yours. It will be all right, you comfort yourself; you just need to remain lucid, and in a few hours, you will be together once more, and will have left this horrible place behind you.

"I was thinking about an older man, actually." you add, in your most casual tone.

"Older, mistress? But you told me you mean to have him work as a labourer." the merchant expectedly objects. You tell him that the slave you look for is of course healthy and vigorous enough to toil in the fields and take care of other manual tasks, but you have found mature men to be more serviceable, faster in learning and more docile when they receive orders; the only slaves that ever tried to rebel or refused to obey in your house were stubborn youths.

"I see." the merchant answers with a smile; he is probably wondering why a father or a husband have sent a woman to purchase the slaves, but he remains gracious and considerate in his desire to help you "I do believe I have what you need, if you are so kind as to come with me."

You simply nod, and your two bodyguards silently follow you and the merchant as he, having ordered his guards to keep an eye on the slaves while he is away, leads the three of you away from the marketplace.

"Where do you hail from, mistress?" he asks, the casual tone of someone who simply wants to converse as you walk, to pass the time, and maybe this is exactly what he means to do, and maybe not.

You answer mentioning a kingdom Númenor does not have a close relationship with, and famous for its agricultural production: you are supposed to manage a farm, after all.

"Ah, a lovely place! I have been there once, many years ago. Is this your first visit to Draiwen?"

"It is. I am... visiting a friend." you explain, since your purported homeland is ten days ride away and it would make no sense to make such a long journey only to buy a single slave "And my husband asked me to procure one or two new labourers for our farms, since Draiwen's slave market is larger than ours."

"I see. Well, here is my lot. I am sure you will be satisfied."

If you thought until now that the scent of the slaves' fear and desperation was unpleasant, it is nothing compared to the horrible stench that hits you, as violent as a slap in the face, as you near what is essentially the open warehouse of the flesh merchants. The area in front of you is larger than Armenelos' plaza, but even so, it struggles to contain the multitude of slaves waiting to be needed. Here as in the marketplace, each group is separated from the others by wooden fences not unlike those raised to keep the sheeps from wandering; here as in the marketplace, armed men patrol the area of their masters, making sure the slaves do not cause trouble. Here as in the marketplace, men and women of every age, from those who have barely learnt to walk to those who can no longer do it unassisted, wait to be inspected and sold.

The day is warm and sunny, even too warm for a cape had you not decided to wear one anyway to hide the purse with your gold and another object hanging from your belt, but the stench is not simply due to perspiration, dirt, or even urine given that you doubt the masters would allow the slaves to walk away to relieve themselves behind a tree. It is something different, putrid, difficult to describe but so intense and nasty it makes your eyes water... the smell of desperation.

There must be thousands of slaves, but the merchant moves unhesitatingly guiding you and the two men behind you to his post, where a couple of guards have just finished using their clubs on a man.

"What happened?"

"He meant to escape, sir. He had a rock in his hand and was trying to break the chain at his feet."

The poor soul is laying on the ground, almost too weak and pained to moan, bruises already forming on his belly and legs; your heart stops beating for a moment as you catch a glimpse of brown hair and large shoulders, but the slave does not have your husband's prodigious height, nor, you realize when the guards rudely get him back on his feet, his luminous blue eyes. It is not him, you realize, and the relief filling your heart is so intense your knees go weak... which does not mean, on the other hand, that your husband is still unscathed after six months of captivity. What have they done to him, what abuse or torture was he subjected to in order to break his spirit...?

Meanwhile, the merchant is chiding his guards for what they have done to the would-be fugitive... only a few days before the crown prince himself has sent word he would visit the marketplace to choose a few new slaves for his household; the slave is one of the master's finest, literate and a capable warrior, and could be sold for a large sum: in the state he is now, who would buy him? Incidents like those have their use, since the slaves need to be reminded what occurs to those who try to escape, but if they had to pummel one of them, the guards should have chosen one of the least expensive.

"Now, mistress." he adds, turning to you -one instant too slow to notice the horror and the hate on your face; you do not even know the name of this man, and still you would not shed a tear seeing him choke on his own blood- and smiling once more "Allow me to show you my wares."

A brief order is given, and the slaves quickly assemble in a line, shuffling among the clangor of their chains to march in front of you, slowly enough to allow you to examine them, and their master to present you the merits of each: this one was a farmer, so you would not have to teach him the job; another is particularly strong, which makes him suitable for the most strenuous tasks; the next can read and write, which would make him useful should you need a bookkeeper or a clerk...

As expected from a capable merchant, he seems to know all of them by heart, even though there are not less than eighty men slowly being presented to you. Or maybe he is making the whole thing up, you reflect as you pretend to listen and feel as if the world had started working backwards; usually you are the one who slowly strolls among the stalls looking at the various goods on sale, while now it is the items themselves parading in front of you.

A few of the slaves try to attract your attention, showing their muscles or bowing their head in a show of submission; you feel unworthy of being in their presence, but you force yourself to remain as stoic as you can and glance at the men slowly approaching, hoping, begging to see a familiar face...

And finally, when there are only a handful of slaves left and your hopes are reduced to the flame of a candle, it happens.

"Hey, you; keep walking." one of the guards orders one of the slaves, who had suddenly stopped, forcing the ones behind him to do the same; the man obeys, barely noticing what he is doing, because his eyes -those eyes as blue and deep as the Sea, more luminous than the star of Eärendil his ancestor, those eyes that can read your mind and your heart as easily as the best-written scroll in the Hall of Lore, those eyes you have fallen in love with- are firmly fixed on you, just like yours cannot leave his form.

Elendil! Such is the intensity with which your beloved's name explodes in your mind, for a moment you are almost certain you have actually shouted it, revealing you know him and potentially ruining any chance you had to bring him home. Thank Eru you did not, and no one has noticed the brief glance you have shared; you briefly smile at him, hoping to reassure him, and then force yourself to move your eyes to the men being presented before him; finally, when the slave immediately preceding your husband is in front of you "Stop now." you ask, and the man obeys "What can you tell me about this one?"

The merchant, who had grown both concerned and annoyed as he saw you pass over his best slaves without a word, sighs with relief and rushes to exalt the talents of the man, describing his strenght, his obedient spirit, and the many ways you could put him to work in. You pretend to listen, while actually you are still looking at Elendil out of the corner of your eye.

He is alive, strong and healthy enough to walk on his legs, but captivity has not been kind to him, as it almost never is: you can see how tired and weak he appears, even though there is still determination, even defiance, in his eyes and in the head held high despite the orders and the repeated abuse, and there are bruises and wounds, some months old and some fresh, on his chest and arms and face.

Oh, my love; oh, my lord husband! What have they done to you? How dared they? I will kill them, each and everyone of...

"You are welcome to inspect him yourself, mistress, if that pleases you." the merchants offers, unaware that you would gladly stab him in the heart -an extremely small target, no doubt- once for each of the men he is keeping captive. You do not answer, but step forward to examine the man, feigning interest in his musculature and hands and even his teeth, that he obediently shows you. You then pass to look at the slave before him, pretending to consider a double purchase and asking a few questions regarding his age and abilities that the merchant promptly answers... and then finally, almost distractedly, walk to Elendil.

"And about him, what can you tell me?"

"I am not sure he is what you need, mistress; he is still vigorous for his age, but he was a soldier and a mariner in his homeland, he has no experience in farming. You would have to teach him the job."

"Oh, I can teach him what I need him to do, no doubt." you answer, your practical tone hiding a more personal meaning that only the man in front of you can catch. Turning your back to the merchant and his guards, and still aware of how dangerous it is, you touch Elendil's face pretending to examine his face for bruises or defects; your thumb brushes against his lower lip, and you feel him quiver under your touch. "Where do you hail from, man?"

"He..."

"My homeland is in Númenor, mistress." your husband quickly cuts his master off; he speaks with the humbleness befitting a slave, but a brief smile on his lips betrays his understanding of how that last word, pronounced in that tone, makes you feel. Two can play this game, my wife, he is telling you, as usual between you without the need for words. His blue eyes follow your every move, the intensity of his gaze a mixture of shock, relief, and fear. What are you doing here? How did you find me? You should not have come, it is dangerous...

"Númenor. A land of great mariners, is it not?"

"It is, mistress."

"And are you one of them?"

"I am, mistress. If you own a ship or desire to buy one, I am your man."

Those last words are brazen, even dangerous given the situation you are both in, but you cannot help smiling. Of course you are, you wish you could tell him, and you will, as soon as you have fed him, bathed him, and kissed him long enough to leave both of you senseless, you have always been, ever since our eyes met on the harbour that day, even before we knew each other's name, you are my man and I am your woman, and Eru Himself could do nothing to separate us...

"Interesting."

You need to stop, now. The longer you keep talking to him, the longer you even just pay attention to him, the more you risk the merchant realizes you have a particular interest in this man and raises the price above what you can afford. You should have barely looked at him, and proposed to buy him simply because no one else had caught your attention, but you cannot help it. Having Elendil in front of you, wounded but alive and close enough you can touch him and hear his voice, is like a cup of cold water after a week spent wandering in the desert. For six months you have feared for his safety and for his very life, crying until you had no more tears to spill and sleep had eluded you for many nights in a row; you had feared you would never see him again, doomed to spend the rest of your life alone after so many years of joy and bliss by his side...

But the Valar have listened to your prayers, and your husband is here in front of you; you know how easy it is to fail when the success is within sight and one is prone to lower their guard and abandon caution, and the last thing you want is to have Elendil snatched from you a moment before you are finally together.

This is why you step back, and ask the merchant to show you the last slaves, and the sad parade of chained men resumes shuffling in front of you. Elendil has lowered his gaze, and you wonder why, whether he is forcing yourself not to look at you fearing he could betray himself, or if, like you, he is trying to hide his tear-filled eyes.

Once all the slaves are back in line, the men of your escort accompany you as you inspect some of them, as if you were now ready to choose after examining the whole lot. You linger in front of a few of them, hoping to make the merchant forget the particular interest you have shown Elendil, asking about one slave's health and another's talents as a labourer.

"Are you satisfied, mistress?" the merchant asks in the end; the heat is making him pant under his heavy robes, and he has started fanning himself with his hand, but he has remained friendly and helpful, the image of a good vendor willing to serve a client in any way he can, patiently answering your many, specious questions. There is nothing unpleasant about him, you reflect once more, nothing that betrays the cruelty and the ruthlessness you know dwell in his heart; that does not make you hate him any less, but for some reason you wished it were easier...

"I am. I think I have made my choice." you are quick to answer; he is not the only one suffering because of the heat -you even wore a cape!- but that is not the only reason you cannot wait to seal the deal and leave... in sweet company, preferably "Is there somewhere we can discuss privately?"

You force yourself not to turn to glance one last time at your husband, and at the other poor souls you wish you could all free, and let the merchant accompany you back to the marketplace, your guards following you in turn. Elendil is hidden in the back of the small host of slaves, but you could swear you feel his blue eyes on you, following your every movement, begging you not to abandon him...

I am not; I promise. I will buy you, whatever the price, even if I had to sell the clothes on my back, even if I had to sell myself. Resist, my love, soon we will be together again...

Even with the anxiety clutching at your heart, you cannot help sighing with relief when the pleasant shade of the merchant's tent welcomes you, the temperature more bearable now that you are hidden from the sun. The merchant smile as he removes his outer tunic, and you are not surprised to see a dagger hanging from his belt, the blade longer than the one you are hiding.

The space under the tent is in large part empty, except for a crate, a pair of straw chairs and a small round table with a pitcher and a few cups.

"Are you sure you do not want to remove your cape, mistress?"

"Thank you, but no; I am not staying long, I have to set sail tonight. I will take two of your slaves; the one with the scar on his left cheek, and the one you told me you bought last week." you announce, as you accept the cup of water the man is offering you; you have chosen two slaves who had already worked as farmhands, hoping this will make your cover more believable "How much would you ask for them?"

"You have chosen well; and also, two of my best men. A hundred gold pieces each."

He smiles, waiting. You politely smile back, well aware of what it is expected in a place and a moment like this and determined to give him nothing more than what you strictly have to; the mere thought of this man indulging in his vices -or even worse, buying more slaves to resell- with your family's gold fills you with rage. "I will give give you one hundred and fifty for both."

"They are both strong and hale, good workers who will serve you for many years. One hundred and ninety."

"The one with the scar has the signs of the pox; there is no guarantee he is actually as healthy as you claim. One hundred and sixty."

"Eighty. You are good, but it is my last offer."

"Sixty-five. We both know it is more than enough. Or..."

"Or?"

You have drunk the entire content of the cup in a single gulp, so thirsty you were, and yet you still feel parched, as if the anxiety had taken every drop of water in your body. This is the moment, you think; if you do not play your cards well, it will all be for nothing, and Elendil will be lost forever.

"I might give you the two hundreds you requested, if you add a third man to the deal." you offer, hoping to sound less desperate than you feel, and the merchant's smile turns into a grin: the whole bargain is amusing for him, as well as an art he is surely a master of, but that does not mean he intends to favour you.

"A third man?" he repeats, feigning outrage "But mistress, that would mean gifting him to you."

"Two hundred and fifty, then. What about... one of the two twins?"

"They are worthy three hundred pieces each!"

"Well, then, who would you be willing to give me?"

The merchant mentions four different slaves, who obviously you refuse. "Please, mistress, be reasonable; your request simply makes no sense." he protests as he opens his arms in a gesture of impotence "Nothing would delight me more than sell my slaves to you; I am sure you would be pleased. But you understand, surely, that I have to make a profit out of your purchase, not a loss."

You pretend to think about it, walking aimlessly around the tent and feeling your heart beating so hard it hurts. Brave heart. Soon it will all be worth it. "There was a man among your slaves who had experience as a mariner, was there not?" you finally ask, as an afterthought.

"There was; the man from Númenor. But I do not think he is what you are looking for."

"Not as a farmhand, perhaps, but he might prove himself useful to me in other ways. My... brother is a sea captain, and recently he had to dismiss many of his crewmembers because of a reversal of fortune. I might buy the slave for him, and he would not have to pay him."

It is a good story -a reasonable, believable story- even though you had no more than a few seconds to devise it, but still, you are holding your breath while the merchant considers your proposal, and finally...

"You would take a weight out of my hands, mistress, but in confidence, I do not recommend him; in four months since I have brought him, that man has already attempted to escape three times, sent two guards to the healers' tent after they had tried to discipline him, and my men have found out he was inciting the other slaves to riot. Are you sure you want to burden your brother with a man of his temperament?"

"My brother is more than capable to keep his men in line; and at least, I will not have to worry about what to buy for his next name-day." you answer; victory is so close you can almost taste it "So are we in agreement? The captain, and the other two, for twohundred and fifty gold pieces?"

"We are."

You shake hands, and as the merchant retrieves quill, ink and parchment from the chest to write a brief contract, you take your purse from under your cape and start counting the coin to give him, ordering your hands to stop shaking.

"How did you know he was a captain?"

The bag falls from your hands.

"What?"

"I said, how did you know that man is a sea captain? You called him as such, only a minute ago."

You are facing each other by now, the man in front of you still all smiles and solicitude, but every semblance of actual friendliness abandoned. "Well, mistress?"

"You... you told me that. While we were..."

"I told you he was a mariner; to call him captain is a completely different matter, even though I would not be surprised, since the other slaves have quickly come to look at him for leadership, after I acquired him; he is clearly a man used to command. But how could you know? Either you can read minds... or you knew that man beforehand, and you came here expressely to ransom him."

Silence has fallen in the tent, the sounds and voices of the marketplace attenuated, as if reaching you from many miles away, or if you were underwater. You cannot speak, you cannot move, not even to pick up the gold coins scattered on the ground around your feet, you cannot even think, but one thing is certain: you have been discovered. This man knows what game you are playing, which means that you are alone, or at least vastly outnumbered, in a kingdom that in the last century has spent more time at war with yours than not; he could order his men to seize you and make a slave out of you as well, and then what would become of you? You would never see Elendil, and your children, again... or he might let you go, and simply refuse to let you buy your husband, out of spite for a woman of his kingdom's worst enemy.

In your heart, you could not say which hypothesis would hurt you more.

"Who is he, then? For you, I mean, what makes him so important? Have you been sent from his family to ransom him, or from Númenor's own Queen? Is he a nobleman, a person of importance? Or did you come out of your own free will, mistress? I do not believe he is your kin, you look nothing alike. Is he a friend of yours? No... there is somethting more, is there not? He must be your lover; or maybe the two of you are already wed? If so, he is a fortunate man, to be loved so much that his wife undergoes such a long journey to find him... and since there is so little love in Draiwen for the people of the Land of the Star."

Apparently he is the one with the ability to read minds, or maybe your feelings and thoughts are so evident on your face, even someone who does not know you can guess them. You are lost, you think, and worse even, you have lost Elendil, and being owned by the same master does not mean you would not be separated, and your children will lose you as well as him...

Any moment now the merchant will call for his guards and have you brought to the enclosure, or maybe somewhere else, where he keeps his female slaves or those he still needs to train. Still, any attempt you do not make today is one you will regret tomorrow.

"I always thought the sake of business went above and beyond reasons of patriotism." you state, head held high and voice steady "I have no quarrel with Draiwen, or its people; I did not come into this kingdom to hurt anyone, and I will leave as soon as I can."

"I believe you; but why should I let you go? I await for a visit of the crown prince himself, the day after tomorrow; what prevents me from seizing you and hand you over to him, a daughter of his worst enemy arrived on Draiwen in disguise? He would probably reward me handsomely."

"Probably." you repeat "While I could reward you right now; it would be easy, and no one else would need to know. Name your price, I will take a rebellious slave out of your hands, and in twenty minutes you will be free to forget ever meeting us."

The merchant appears to reflect on your offer as you pick the coins up from the ground; he looks at the bag in your hands, as if assessing the exact sum it contains. "Would you pay me three hundred gold pieces for your friend, if I promised to let both of you go?"

"I would."

"Fourhundred?"

"Yes."

"Fivehundred."

It is almost everything you have. "Yes."

"What if I took it, and you, and kept him?"

"Then I would kill you." you simply answer; he does not know you are armed, and in his eyes you must look the most harmless creature, a simple woman, alone -you are not, but you doubt your bodyguards would actually fight to defend you, and even if they did, they would be two against ten- untrained to war or fight; but he must see something in your eyes, the desperation and the awareness that if you lost Elendil you will have nothing left to live for, or to lose, because he does not laugh, but

"What else do you have to give me in exchange for him?" he asks.

"You can have all of it if you want; it is little more than fivehundred gold pieces."

"You are very generous, mistress. But I was not talking about that; coin is not the only valuable thing that can pay a debt, other types of arrangements also exist - now, do not look at me like that, that is not what I mean; you are a very attractive woman, but I like to keep pleasure and business separated."

"Then what do you mean, exactly?" you ask, confused, and worried, a strange foreboding making you fear you will soon regret he did not order you to take your clothes off. There is nothing, literally nothing in the world you would not do to free Elendil, but... "I have nothing else to offer. I am not a person of importance in Númenor, I am wealthy enough to pay an high price for him but I have no influence or power; what else can I give you? Do you want my earrings? My cape? My shoes? My own hair?"

He is still looking at you. "What is that?" he suddenly asks, pointing at your neck... or rather, to the simple silver chain peeking out from under your shirt.

"It... it is a necklace."

"Show me, please."

"It is worth very little; it is little more than a trinket I received when I was a girl..."

"Show me." he orders you, extending his hand; there is still a smile on his face, and steel in his eyes "Please."

The moment of hesitation before taking off the necklace and handing it to him seals your doom, for good and ill. The merchant delicately takes your most precious possession and examines it carefully.

"Ah! Very pretty. The chain is simple silver, but I had never seen such a large pearl." he says "Is it a childhood gift? Or was it your friend who gave it to you?"

"Fivehundred gold pieces for him." you reply; your self restraint is running out and you know "This necklace is worth next to nothing compared to that. Take my coin and let me leave."

"What if I took only what your friend is actually worth, let us say eighty gold pieces, and the necklace instead?"

"Then you would be a very stupid man, taking only one sixth of what you could."

The merchant admits you are not wrong; and renouncing to a large profit on a whim would be foolish. On the other hand, he is wealthy and successful in what he does enough to indulge in some harmless pleasure, and he has sensed the necklace is much more precious for you than its actual price would suggest.

"So what? You expect me to ransom that as well? Are you actually after my money, and in the meantime you are playing with me?"

"I am not. You see..." He hesitates for a moment, as if explaining his reasoning and his motives to you were important, as if he really wanted you to understand "I am a merchant; I care for gold, whoever pays it, whatever the good purchased, does not matter. At the same time, though... Sometimes, when you are in my trade, you learn that the value of some things does not necessarily depend on the coin that might be exchanged for it. I know that I would not earn much from your necklace, even if I sold the pearl and the chain separatedly. On the other hand, I only need to look at you to see it is precious for you, precious enough you wish you could cut the hand that took it from yours. And this is why I want it, even if it means earning a lower price for my slave."

Silence.

"Do you understand what I am saying, mistress?" he asks, clearly convinced this is the case; and you do understand, and while you thought you could not despise this man any more than you already did, you are forced to reconsider.

"If you want it, you have to give me the other two slaves as well." you reply; it may be petty, other than probably hopeless, but you are determined not to let him have the last word.

The merchant bursts out laughing; he seems sincerely amused. "Not even if all the Gods came down to order me to do it, mistress. Not a chance."

"Two slaves of your choice, then; and I will pay a hundred gold pieces for each of them." you insist; those men mean nothing for you, but spending your coin to ransom as many of them as you can seems the most natural choice, as well as one you know your husband will not reproach you for "Those no buyer will ever want; you will make a profit in any case, will you not?"

The merchant is still smiling; there is sincere merriment in his eyes, and complete and utter lack of mercy. "Sparring with you is amusing, mistress; but we had our fun, and now we have to discuss serious matters."

"I am being extremely serious."

"You are also being extremely naive, and blind to the good fortune you are having and that might run out soon. I will sell you the captain for eighty gold pieces and this pretty trinket; I will also have him bathed and clothed, as a personal favour for you... And I will tell no one, not even to one of the many guards who patrol the marketplace, many of which fought in the war against Númenor, who you are. If I can offer you a word of advice, the sooner you leave this tent, and Draiwen, the better it will be for the two of you."

He is still smiling, but appealing to his good heart and his mercy would be as useless as trying to reason with a famished lion. Wordlessly, you take the agreed sum off your bag and leave the coins on the table, next to your necklace; you brush your fingers against the pearl, the one Elendil had spent a whole day searching because none of the many he had found, and that he had gifted to his fishmonger friend, were large enough, and sufficiently beautiful, for his gift you, and you fell ashamed, even though you could have not done otherwise, and sad, as if you were saying farewell to a person you love.

A few minutes later the merchant offers you a slip of parchment with the proof of your purchase, that you will have to keep until you are safe back in Númenor.

"I need to leave as soon as possible; give him clothes, but there is no time for a bath." you state brusquely; you have your husband back, safe and sound, but then why does it not feel like a victory, rather the opposite? "I will be waiting outside."

"As you wish, mistress. It was a pleasure doing business with you." the merchant answers; you avert his eyes, because you know he is still smiling.

You do not answer, but turn and leave the tent, ordering yourself to walk instead of running.

TAGGING @starlady66 and @hippodameia.

[kill-the-feels]

cuyan

a/n: hey everyone! i didn’t mean to leave y’all on such a cliffhanger last time for so long, but real life got in the way. once more, minimal Jango content, but the next chapter will fix that, promise! enjoy! :) (previous part) (masterlist)

word count: ~3.9k

warnings: implied/referenced slavery (Gardulla returns), implied/referenced child abuse, injury mention, blood/stabbing mention

It has been nearly ten years since the last time you stepped foot on Tatooine, and nearly twelve years since you found yourself being bartered away from Gardulla’s service.

For a long time, after escaping Gardulla, even on Kamino, you lived life like you were waiting on the other shoe to fall.

You didn’t let yourself be all the way happy, because you were so afraid that something would come and take that happiness. Anytime you felt joy, you carefully smothered it, tamping it down in your chest, like you were keeping the universe from finding out and snatching it away.

And then, just when you weren’t looking, just when you let your guard down, felt such unbridled joy, the universe did snatch it away.

But.

You are not going to go quietly.

The planet has not changed much — the same harsh winds, relentless suns, and ever-shifting sands. But what was once a palace that housed Gardulla and her ill-gotten gains has fallen into a bit of disrepair.

As you stare up at the spires, once as tall and as sharp as her tongue, you see the way they’ve started to crumble in on themselves.

Once a place for lookouts, they’re now defunct and in need of serious repair.

The front door is much the same. Time and whipping sands have stripped the paint; the lavish purple now a dull grey lavender, bleached by the harsh environment.

The hinges squeak as you push open the door, and no one is there to stop you.

It seems in the dawning of a new era, Gardulla has quietly and slowly — but surely — been left behind.

Perhaps you won’t have to part with as many credits and weapons as you thought.

The inside of the palace is dark, the lamps long since spent of their fuel, and a layer of soot covers everything. The helmet allows you to see more than you normally would, filtering the shadows and increasing the contrast automatically. No wonder Jango can see so well in Kamino’s storms.

Grit crunches under your boot as you take the familiar path towards Gardulla’s lair, at the very center with her precious throne.

There’s faint music playing, but it’s scratchy — a recording and a far cry from the live bands she once entertained.

A mass of people is huddled in the room, much more subdued than you’re used to, a smokey haze curling around everyone.

Few people give you an interested glance — most look bored out of their minds. You recognize none of them; the old girls and the people who used to hang out here are gone or dead, a product of the life they were forced into.

And there, in the very center, is the Hutt herself. She’s snapping something churlish at a young man who holds a tray, and he scurries off, tripping over her tail as he goes.

You follow his path, stopping when you see the little girl at the end of Gardulla’s tail.

She’s young, far younger than you ever were, with long, stringy hair, and brown eyes that seem to look right through you, as she becomes the first person in the room to take real notice of you.

“Bring me a fucking drink,” Gardulla howls in Huttese, skin quivering in rage.

It’s a strange power dynamic now. Here you are, back in the same room, looking at a little girl in the same spot you were. Only now, you’re the one in the armor; you’re the one with the hidden past and the ulterior motives.

You step out of the shadows without a word, waiting on Gardulla to notice you. Her tail tightens around the little girl’s ankle, and you watch the girl wince before she catches herself, shoulders straightening.

White hot anger courses through your body, and ultimately, it’s what gives you the strength to speak.

“Gardulla.” Her name is a harsh sound in the midst of the droning music, and you watch as she turns to you, visibly trying to place your voice through the crackling modulation of the helmet’s filter.

You don’t give her a choice.

“I need a bacta tank. No questions. Fifty thousand credits.” The Huttese is rusty on your tongue, but as you speak, it comes back to you. She stares at you, silent for once in her life, as she processes your words.

“Who said that?” she asks, and you step further forward, until you’re in the center of the room, in the center of the circle.

“I did.” She stares down at you from her throne, and you’re struck by the irony. She used to be so big to you, and in your mind, she’s always been this hulking shadow, never quite vanquished.

But now, up close, with all these years removed, you can see her for what she is: just a scared and conning gangster, trying desperately not to lose what little power she has left.

“You’re not Fett,” she says, narrowing her eyes at you. You study her for a long moment in return, refusing to cower away.

“Doesn’t matter who I am. I need a bacta tank. You can get it. And you clearly need the credits.” She waves a hand, obviously stalling.

“Still, I should think you would be willing to… indulge me. You come into my house, start making these demands? I would think you’d want to get on my good side.” The young man returns with the drink, and she snatches it up, taking a long draw before tossing it away.

It glances off the little girl’s shoulder, and she barely flinches. Your fists curl in an effort to refrain from removing one of Jango’s blasters and ending the Hutt where she sits.

“I should think for fifty thousand credits you’d be willing to listen to my demands,” you say. Her head tilts.

“And yet, there’s something familiar about you. And if there’s one thing I like almost as much as credits, it’s having my curiosity satisfied.” You stare at her, weighing your options.

Finally, you reach up and snag off the helmet. It takes your eyes a moment to adjust in the dark, hazy room, and you blink back the sting of smoke.

You see when it registers just who you are. Her mouth opens and closes as she mouths your name, and you tilt your head impatiently, ready to get on with it.

“I thought you died,” she finally says. You reach into the bag and pull out a handful of credits.

“Fifty thousand for a bacta tank and no questions. And another fifty thousand for the girl.” Gardulla stiffens and the little girl’s head jerks up.

“She’s not for sale. I’m training her to be a dancer.” You let out a humorless laugh.

“For what, Hutt? There’s no one around even remotely interested in that. Your place is shit. Take the credits and fix it up. Get someone better down the line.” Her lip curls, but you can see it in her eyes. She’s not going to turn you down. She values the money too much, just like you knew she would, greedy bastard that she is.

“Fifty thousand for the tank, seventy-five for the girl,” she counters. You know she’s expecting you to protest. What she doesn’t know is that you were prepared to part with much more, before you saw the state of things.

“Deal. Where’s the tank?” She’s flustered. Her tail loosens and the girl shoves it off, rushing to your side. She’s a little younger than Boba, and despite the heat, she shivers beside you.

“Well, I-I didn’t realize you’d take the deal. What I meant to say is that it’s seventy-five for both.” She tries to backtrack, and your hand drifts down to one of the blasters as you pull your helmet back on.

“Don’t piss me off,” you warn. “I can take these credits elsewhere and leave you with nothing.” She grits her teeth. Gardulla doesn’t like to lose.

You cock your head, waiting.

She hollers for two of her guards.

“There’s a spare tank in the north room. Bring it to me.” You cross your arms as you wait, and finally, the two emerge, the tank on a floating platform between them. Carefully, you count out the credits, still mildly surprised she agreed to this in the first place, without you having to part with any weapons. The girl says nothing as she watches you.

Finally done, you push the tank forward and out of the room, nodding at the little girl who follows closely behind you. Remembering how scared you were in her position, you wait until you round the corner, out of Gardulla’s sight, then kneel beside her, careful not to touch her.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve been where you were. Once I get you out of here, you’re free to go wherever you want, okay? What’s your name?” She shakes her head, and you nod.

“That’s okay. I’m not big on trusting people either.” You glance down at her feet. Like your past self, she has no shoes. You have no cape, but you do have the bag the credits were in, so you tear it up.

“The sand outside is hot. It burns. If you put this on your feet, it’ll help.” You show her how to tie it off, fighting the urge to go kill Gardulla when you see the raw skin around her ankle, where Gardulla’s tail must have constricted, day after day.

“When we get out of here, I’ll find you something better,” you whisper. She hesitates, then looks up a you with a tiny nod. Something swells in your chest, and you consider it a small victory.

As you step outside, the late afternoon suns hit you in the face. Even with the helmet, you’re squinting, and the girl cowers back. Without thinking, you reach up and tug off the helmet.

“Here. This will help filter the sun so it’s not so bright.” She pulls it down over her head, and it tilts slightly to the side, just a little too big for her.

A cruel laugh echoes over the sand.

“As a live and breathe. A former Gardulla Girl.” You turn. There, slipping out of the crest of a dune, is a pink Twi’lek. You squint in the sun.

“Maswoni?” Years and years ago, the Twi’lek was one of the favorites. Now, it’s clear that the years have not been kind. She’s scarred and missing some of her right lekku. The bags under her eyes are visible, even from a distance, and the provocative dress she wore as a dancer has been replaced by a baggy flightsuit and utility belt. She’s picking at her sharp nails with a blade.

“In the flesh,” she replies. Her gaze is hostile as it lands on you, jumping between you and the girl.

“Still as noble as ever,” she adds. In a flash, Maswoni flings the blade at you, and you duck, shoving the girl down behind the tank.

“Stay here,” you tell her, trying to draw Maswoni’s attention elsewhere. If she messes up the tank, you’re back to square one.

You’re also aware you’re running out of time. The longer it takes you to deal with Maswoni, the more time you waste that you could spend helping Jango. If you don’t die first, that is.

She charges at you with a shriek, and you duck as she fires the blaster at your head. You’re a terrible shot with the blaster, so you know you’re going to have to get in close.

Jango’s lesson comes rushing back to you.

Don’t fight to win, fight to get away.

“Listen to me,” you whisper to the girl. “I’m going to distract her. I want you to take and push this towards the city — it’s over the dunes. There’s a ship with blue and yellow details, twin blaster cannons, real funny looking. I need you to take it there. Please.” She looks between you and the still-charging Maswoni, visibly torn. Finally, mercifully, she nods, then grabs your arm. You watch as she takes off the helmet, pushing it into your chest.

“Are you sure?” you ask her, and she nods again. You waste no time in slipping it back on.

You step out from behind the tank, unholstering your blaster as you do.

The armor, as you have seen, can take a few hits. But the closer she gets, the deadlier they’ll be. You have to knock the blaster out of her hand, you decide. Get rid of it, engage her in a hand-to-hand fight. That’ll keep her busy long enough for the girl to get away, then you can run.

To throw her off guard, you fire a few shots near her, but it’s painfully clear you don’t know how to shoot.

She pings one off your right shoulder, and you stumble backwards, tripping in the sand. It’s been years since you’ve had to move around the shifting sands, and the armor adds weight that you’re not used to. As you stumble, you catch your hand in the spare utility belt hiding the old blaster shot. It tugs to the side, exposing it.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the little girl and the tank, slinking away. Good. Boba will know what to do if she makes it to him. But that’s a big if.

You fall flat on your back as another shot hits your other shoulder, the wind knocked out of you. Everything in you screams at you to get up, but a quiet voice keeps you still.

Anything can be a weapon. She needs to be closer.

You play dead, blaster shot in the middle of your chest on prominent display. To her eyes, it looks like she got you center mass. A kill shot.

It’s a calculated move, because the little girl is still not far enough away, but Maswoni is entirely focused on you. You hear the crunch of her footsteps in the sand, feel the stray grains she’s kicked up dust over the helmet. Your eyes remain fixed on her figure, the benefit of a helmet. She can’t tell you’re watching her, waiting.

Ten feet. Seven. Five. Two.

She leans over you, nudging you with her toe, and still, you don’t move.

It’s not until she bends down, tries to snatch the helmet off you, that you spring into action.

With a cry, you kick at her hands, knocking the blaster away. She cries out too, falling backwards and taking your helmet with her, even as she reaches for her other blaster. You don’t give her a chance, instead tackling her backwards and pinning her in the sand. Frantically, you toss the blaster as far away as you can get it.

The two of you wrestle there, you just trying to subdue her, Maswoni trying to kill you.

She lands a solid punch on the side of your head, leaving you dazed as she rolls away. Maswoni scrambles for the blade she threw at you to start this whole fight. You reach for your own blade, still stuck on your back in the sand, blinking away the grey at the edge of your vision.

With a howl, she leaps at you, knife pointed at your neck. Your hands fumble as you try to get your own knife up between you two, to block the blade. She lands on your chest, and you tense, prepared to feel the sting on your neck, feel the hot blood seep out.

Instead, she goes limp, a gasping cough escaping from her lips.

Your knife is buried in her chest, sticky blood starting to seep over your hands.

Her hand trembles and she tries to force it to work, to stab you, but she’s too weak. Carefully, you role her off you, and stand on shaky legs, swallowing the bile that rises in the back of your throat.

“Why did it have to be fucking you?” Maswoni says in between gasps.

You kneel beside her, not relishing the ending she’s been dealt. She’s right. Your roles could oh, so easily, have been reversed.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. She scowls, looking away at the suns, which have started to slip below the horizon, casting long shadows over the two of you.

“We used to talk, y’know. About how long you’d make it. Every single one of them thought he’d kill you. But I knew you. You were too fucking stubborn to go down so easily, even if you acted scared all the time.” Her voice is choked and bitter, the words spat at you.

You gently pry the knife out of her hands, biting your lip as you look down at her.

“Maswoni,” you say, trying to figure out how to apologize. For stabbing her, for what she’s been through, all of it.

“Don’t,” she says. “Let me have my dignity. You beat the system. You won. Now get out of here. Before it pulls you back in.” Her eyes close and a sad, bitter smile graces her lips. Her next words are delivered softly, as if she’s resigned herself to what comes next.

“It never would have been me, anyways. Every time he’d come in there, he was always looking at you.” Carefully, you take her hand, hands smeared with blood and sand, wanting her to have some comfort, a gentle touch, something, before she dies. She snorts softly, pressing a hand to her wound, and with one long exhale, she’s gone.

You hang your head, fighting a sudden rush of tears. It isn’t fair. Maswoni, who used to be vapid and mean, but also entirely ready to protect the other girls at Gardulla’s, the one you could always count on to fight back.

Gone. In a blink.

The winds pick up, shifting the dunes, starting to cover her feet. You find your blade, and hers, and tuck them both into your belt. A quick look around reveals the helmet nearly covered, and you tug it back on, leaving bloody fingerprints on it, watching through the twilight as the sands reclaim Maswoni. Another breath, and she’s gone, the sands perfectly undisturbed, no evidence of your fight except the extra blade.

Your force your feet to move on, and when you crest the dune, you don’t look back. ~~~ You find the girl, stumbling through the sands, resolutely pushing the bacta tank, and you help her get it the rest of the way, slapping the side of the ship to let Boba know you’re back.

The ramp lowers, and you shove the tank up, catching the girl’s hand when she hesitates.

“You can come in,” you tell her. “I told you I’d get you out of here, and then you’re free to go wherever.” She settles in the corner as you position the tank along the wall and toss the helmet in a nearby seat.

“Boba!” you shout, and he rushes down the ladder. You’ve never hooked up one of these, don’t know what to do, and neither does Boba, but surely between the two of you, you can figure something out.

Boba notices the little girl as he messes with the control panel.

“Who’s she?” He glances between you and the girl, and you catch the way his eyes linger on the dried blood covering the armor. You tug a spare tube, trying to figure out what it connects to.

“Gardulla was keeping her. I didn’t like that.” You’re vague, having never really told Boba about your past, and now is not the time to elaborate.

“Buir, how did you even find this?” Boba asks, a strange inflection — awe maybe? — in his tone, and you shake your head. Not the time, you repeat.

The girl creeps out of the corner and touches your hand, pointing to one last spare tube. You frown.

“I see it, but where does it go?” She hesitates, glancing between you two for permission.

“Go ahead,” Boba says. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.” Her eyes go wide, but she scurries under the tank, pulling the tube and connecting it to some unseen valve.

The lights flicker on, and the tank starts to fill.

“Yes!” You and Boba cheer.

“Okay,” you tell Boba. “I’m going to get Jango in the tank. Can you get us in atmo?” He nods and the girl slinks back to her corner. Boba pauses right before he climbs up the ladder, instead heading for the bunks in the ship.

He returns, carrying Ai-Ai. Gently, he places the toy in front of the girl.

“For you,” he explains. “He makes me feel better.” The girl watches him with big eyes, and you blink a few times to clear the tears, frozen as he climbs the ladder, so mature and so calm in that moment. You’re not sure when he grew up. Just that one moment he was a baby, and now he’s just like his father.

Right.

Jango.

With the little girl watching you, you carefully strip the remains of Jango’s flightsuit.

You’re in the process of adjusting the bacta levels — not wanting to splash it everywhere when Jango is put in — when the little girl sits up suddenly.

Her eyes stay focused on Jango as her grip tightens on Ai-Ai and you pause.

“What’s up?” you ask. She shakes her head, unwilling to look away, and you step closer.

He isn’t breathing.

The realization sticks your feet to the floor, wasting precious seconds and your body goes hot then cold in the matter of a second.

“Shit,” you hiss, falling on your knees beside him. You don’t know what to do.

Patrons used to die at Gardulla’s all the time, in sudden and increasingly creative ways. You’ve never seen them brought back to life, though.

Think.

You close your eyes, wracking through your brain for anything. There was a safety training video you half-watched once, listening as Boba watched on the holopad while you worked on something else.

You have to press his chest, hard. And breathe air into his lungs.

The girl curls into a ball, and you bite down on your lip, placing the palm of one hand on the back of the other. In the video, they pressed hard enough to break ribs.

Jango’s ribs already feel pretty busted when you press, but you suppose it’s either busted ribs or death, so hopefully he’ll forgive you.

You’ve no idea how many times you’re supposed to press, so you take a guess, stopping when your arms ache. The breaths. You’re fairly sure it was two breaths, long breaths at that, so you tilt his head back, holding his nose — it feels like a logical conclusion, a way to keep the air in.

You slot your mouth over his like a twisted kiss and blow, once, twice.

Nothing.

You go back to pressing on his chest, the tears coming quickly now.

“Don’t you fucking do this to me,” you plead, pressing hard enough that you feel something give.

“I need you. You told me you were a survivor. That we were survivors. Cuyan. Cyare, what am I supposed to do?” Back to the breaths.

His mouth is cold against yours, a fact that registers uncomfortably at the front of your mind.

“Please,” you whisper, pressing your forehead against his.

Jango coughs, just once, and draws a raspy breath, then another. You sag against him before drawing yourself up. Into the bacta tank. You can’t wait any longer.

It takes some finagling, but you manage to get him in with minimal jostling, tugging a mask over his face to give him air, and pushing a button to seal him in.

Now. You wait.

[makibeni]

Ch. 63- My Predestined Tragedy

A puff of smoke fills the air and joins the clouds above as the sky begins to turn from pitch to murky blue. Himeno stared out at the waking city below her, the first signs of life slowly stiring as night begins to give way to the dawn. She'd slipped from bed, slowly so as not to rouse her bundled companion who seemed to still be deep in the throws of slumber. Her thoughts meandered in a cyclical haze, where normally she'd try to think her way out of a problem she found herself spinning her wheels unsure where to even begin. The sensation wasn't new, or at least not so novel she couldn't bring herself to understand it, and yet she had no notion of what to do with these feelings. Her life was a tragedy that had already been written, new faces appear then die, hope arises only to be snuffed out, the time she has with them is short and precious, but ultimately finite and ephemeral, and then she mourns. Mourns the loss of what was, what could have been, what never will be, a sea of possibilities that let her dreams bloom into fantastical realities, pine for truths that only exist in her heart as memories of things that never were. To many, hope was a promise, an object of faith, a light to guide them in the darkness, something to strive for and believe in, but to Himeno it was something very different. Hope existed within acceptance, a predestined path she walked along, imagining a brighter world she knew she'd never see, to walk towards that guiding light, knowing that every step closer is another moment of it's life snuffed out, because there was no other way to walk. She'd seen this flame flicker, closed her eye to seal it's embers in memory and find another, but when she'd opened it, the flame still burned. She'd had a sense of when death was near, that shiver turned to a familiar breeze, blowing at her back and signaling the end was near, and without resentment she'd accepted it each time, but now the breeze had come and gone and the devil still stood before her. Scarred, sad, and angry, but there none the less, and for the first time since she'd seen a flame snuffed out she felt her heartbeat again.

"Someone's up early"

The door to the balcony slid open, and a groggy Power stepped out, tangled strands of hair washing over her face like a waterfall as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"It got cold..."

Himeno raised a curious eyebrow as the devil sat down in the chair opposite to her and bundled her arms close, rubbing them for warmth as foggy breaths escaped her toothy maw.

"It's colder in bed wrapped in blankets than out here before the sun's even up?"

Power responded with a frowned glare, already putting up with the spiteful scorn of nature's bitter chill, her companion's light-hearted ribbing failed to offer reprieve.

"The blankets got cold!"

The hunter smiled, taking one final drag from the half finished cigarette and putting it out against the railing she was leaning on before flicking it a distance towards the ground. The pair watched it fall with moderate interest before the pink haired girl once more turned her eyes upward.

"Why'd you put that out already?"

She didn't respond at first, instead watching the streets below for a moment, wondering herself where these feelings came from and just what to do with them. Was this a second chance, or had she been so blinded by her ghosts she'd seen tragedy where there was none to come? What if this was nothing but a postponement, if the end was still near but just biding it's time?

"Cause I know you don't like the smoke"

Power squinted at her, scanning her face for hints of deception. She was an expert at lying, and thusly could easily deduce when the same was done to her. The signs were simple to pick out for a master like her, of course, and they go without saying, of course, if you know you need not be told, and if you don't that's not her problem. Her words bore no falsehoods, or so it may appear, though something was still odd, so the devil kept a close eye on her companion.

"You think the all mighty Power fears smoke?"

She crossed her arms and puffed her chest for a haughty delivery, but Himeno was unmoved by the display. She simply stared at her with that frozen look of contemplation.

"I know..."

Her words too felt distant, as though spoken for someone far away never meant to hear them. She walked closer, sitting on the edge of the table and brushing strands from Power's face, wrapping them around her finger and gazing at them.

"Don't touch my hair!"

She struck the woman's hand away, seeming to finally snap her from whatever delusions she was wandering through. The unsettling look on her face turned slowly, but she hadn't donned the mask that Power was use to seeing yet. For a moment she saw her as she was.

"What's up with you? You're acting weird."

With a flick to her forehead Himeno composed herself, the sly grin found it's way back to her lips as she stretched out her arms behind her back.

"Sorry... I'm just not use to seeing people around after I'm done mourning I guess."

She spoke in a sarcastic tone but there was an odd sincerity behind her words. Power took note, shooting her a sideways glance but Himeno deflected it with a cocky smile and a wink, seeming unwilling or unready to open up further.

"If I die for real you're gonna have to mourn a lot better than that. And where's breakfast? I'm hungry!"

Himeno stood, placing a hand on the devil's head and brushing through her tangled locks, considering a further step, but holding herself back. If this was something more than a fluke it deserved something more.

"Right away, oh great and mighty Powy~"

[0xochitlsketches0]

Okay, I basically wanna know everything you’ve got to tell 😂

I’d like to know more about Sawyer and his dad. Like personality or anything like that.

And they fight monsters? Very cool. Is that like their job, or just part of the world they’re in?

And if you’ve got any sort of info on what the story overall is about?

WHEW, HERE WE GO!

Basic plot!

Monsters are everywhere! Every single scary story and ghoulish tale that’s ever fueled your nightmares is real! 

But you've never seen one because of a secret organization that's been hunting them down since the dawn of time. 

The organization is small and elite. Most members are born into it and are expected to have families to further the line and keep it a secret. Damien (Sawyers's father) was born into one of these families and grew up ridding the world of these unsightly beasts. 

After the success of a high-profile mission, Damien cut ties with the organization (unheard of) and immediately went into hiding to start a new life in the small port city of Mulligan's Bay, a quiet coastal town in Northern California. 

But cutting ties with an organization that demands your complete loyalty till the end of time isn't an easy task and the monsters you spent decades hunting down aren't so quick to forgive either. Damien was able to spend a few good years in peace until a random monster attack thrust both him and his son Sawyer back into the family business.

 Tensions are high as they both adjust to their new environment, all while trying to balance a normal life.

Especially since both the organization and monsters have taken a special interest in Sawyer 👀

Personality!

Damien:

Damien likes to keep to himself. 

He is incredibly inquisitive with a strong intellectual drive. He can read people incredibly well. 

Despite his reclusive nature, he has an interest in the private affairs of other people, especially his son's social life. He can be nosey when a certain topic catches his attention and often lacks delicacy when discussing potentially sensitive topics.

(For example, if the other parents in town want to throw a local BBQ. Damien will not be attending because he does not want to talk to anyone but he Will find out everything that happened there through secondhand accounts and listening to gossip while minding his own business waiting in line at the grocer. (People exhausted him but human activity does not) 

He has a rocky relationship with the townspeople, most of them finding him and his family strange and off-putting, but due to his current line of work and personal ties with important socialites, they are forced to put up with him. 

He is often emotionally distant and prefers to busy himself with his own hobbies and work but he still cares for his son deeply. 

Sawyer: 

Sawyer is an outgoing and energetic teenage boy. He is unconventional in his thoughts and hardly turns down a bad idea, he's usually the one who suggests if we’re being honest.

This, of course, lands him lots of trouble, good thing he can jive talk his way out of most ( key word most)  situations due to his sharp wit and quick thinking.  He is intelligent and very resourceful, though most people overlook it because of his harmless appearance and attitude. Sawyer always looks on the bright side and tends to find humor in non-humourous situations. Much to the frustration of his father. He is impulsive but also a fast learner.   

Due to his troublesome nature, most adults tend to find him hard to deal with but his classmates seem to like his adventurous spirit. 

[jodilin65]

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2020 A site that had one of his email addresses and a certain password connected to it was breached so we went and changed any account associated with that password regardless of the email connected to it.

Yesterday I had a sore throat for several hours but whatever it was is gone now.

Went back to Duolingo and started dabbling in their Indonesian course. I only took a couple of lessons so far, but it seems fairly straightforward enough. They sure make their plurals easy by simply repeating the word.

After I drank some wine yesterday, I started to feel a touch anxious even though it was short-lived and began to wonder if maybe there was a connection after all. I did read that one of the things that can cause anxiety is alcohol along with caffeine and other things. I’ll be sure to drink closer to bedtime when I do.

I’m both surprised and appalled by Florida lifting all their restrictions simply because they ran out of patience waiting for a vaccine. So you get tired of having to wear masks, stay home, social distance and then you say, WTF? I give up. Then go about life as if all is wonderful and normal? Well, we’re not quite there yet so when their death count rises, hopefully they’ll go back to using their brains and wait for a vaccine. Hopefully, there are some people smart enough not to give up wearing masks no matter what restrictions may be lifted.

Had some fun dreams for a change but I don’t remember much of them. Just having a couple of rats living loose in the house that ran up to me eager for attention when I got home one evening from wherever. I picked up a tan-colored one and cuddled and kissed it before going to feed them.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2020 Been having an interesting day full of adventures. We went out walking at the crack of dawn and then I threw a swai fillet in the oven as we set out to change the pig’s cage while it cooked.

However, things took longer than planned since he went out to find maggots all over the garbage bin for the second time.

“Ugh, I’m a fucking idiot at times!” I told him, LOL. I forgot to spray the bin like I do every week.

So he had to stop and take care of that.

I was trimming Rockefeller’s nails when I noticed a wet spot at the base of the dishwasher. My first thought was that the dishwasher was leaking but I hadn’t done dishes in a couple of days. That’s when it hit me that it was the sink. So I opened the cabinet under the sink and found the pipe had detached from a joint.

Referring to the guy who came to fix our clogged drain I said, “Damn that dumb cock for not tightening the drain!”

“No, it was me,” Tom said.

So his idiot wife has been busting his ass all morning about him being that “dumb cock.” LOL, he should have been checking the pipe more often and I should have sprayed. He may get a rubber gasket to seal it with if he doesn’t just place a block of some kind beneath it. A rubber gasket would probably work well. That’s what seals the door of our front loader.

Then, it was a damn good thing we decided to run out to Rite Aid after dealing with the maggots and leak because after being distracted by those things, he saw that he forgot he had the water running in front. Water was running down the street, and had we not gone out, the water would have probably ended up damn near wrapping around the circle until someone knocked on the door to alert us to it.

Got a couple of single-serve bottles of Merlot by Barefoot and a case of Sutter Home’s white zinfandel and rosé, each with four small bottles. Haven’t tried Sutter’s version of rosé yet.

I was surprised when someone said they were envious that I can enjoy wine freely because one glass puts them in a bad mood or makes them sleepy and wake up groggy. It doesn’t put me in a bad mood or cause me to wake up groggy, but it does sometimes make me sleepy. I would definitely never drink a glass of wine before I knew I was going to work out, go out anywhere, or tackle household chores.

I totally see what Fitbit means when they suggest mixing things up and having more calories than usual once a week since the body gets used to having the same amount. I thought I was having between 1500-2000 cals a day before I started tracking, and maybe I was when I was going into menopause because a woman is pretty hungry at that time. But it taught me that I range between 1100-1500 with 1300 being my average. Yesterday, however, I binged big time on both healthy food and not. Once a month, if even that, I hit around 2000 calories. Yesterday, I must have had 2300-2400. I ate a lot but mostly high-calorie foods. It’s amazing I didn’t feel sick or get heartburn or anything like that. My heart never raced due to all the sugar or anything.

Anyway, the point is that I totally expected to be up a pound or two for stuffing the shit out of myself like I did but nope. I’m up just two-tenths of a pound. I’ll indulge once a week or so. It’s fun to do every now and then and to get stuff I don’t normally get. All those chocolate-covered cherries were divine! I’m just glad I’m not as hungry as I was before periods were due or when I was in perimenopause. Now I can eat fewer calories. Not few enough to lose weight but enough to keep from gaining.

Most days I will start off with a small avocado and either a kiddy yogurt or cottage cheese. Then I’ll have two meals during the day that consist of one piece of meat (chicken, pork, fish) and veggies. In between, I snack on veggies, grapes or berries. Sometimes I might add something like soup. I try to really limit my processed food intake. I won’t let myself have more than one processed meal a day whether it’s a can of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni, a frozen dinner, etc.

Those ACV shots with turmeric and honey are absolutely horrible! Definitely not getting those again. I’ll just pour a dab into my sparkly waters from a bottle of unfiltered ACV. It’s much cheaper that way anyway.

Yesterday, I had mild pains in my chest and back but I’m guessing it was either due to the smoke (today is clear) or I pulled a muscle on the Bowflex.

The shower project is delayed because he found he needed additional parts that he ordered. They won’t be here for a little over a week, though.

I’m now officially registered to vote! And no, I’m not doing jury duty. I swear anytime I get calls for that is when I wish I’d never been vindicated.

Sipping the rosé now. Meh. A little on the dry side and there’s a tang to it I don’t really care for.

Didn’t ignore Aly yesterday even though I had planned to. I noticed she messaged me when she should be in school, so I asked why she was home. Apparently, the virus hit her class. She got tested yesterday but doesn’t think she has the virus. I hope not! Anyway, now she’s teaching via Zoom.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 I should change yesterday’s “overly emotional” to “moody” when I was describing character traits that turn me off. If you lose a loved one, for example, of course you’re going to be overly moody. It’s people with intense and regular mood swings that are beyond the norm that gets to me.

Ended up getting my usual half-hour of exercise yesterday. I just did it on the skier instead of going out. It’s just that I hate to sit still for too long, tired or not.

The fucking park was having a concert as they tend to a few times a year but fortunately, we couldn’t hear it inside the house. What a stupid, dumbass thing to do with the virus still going around and over a million global deaths now. I’m sure there were some people wearing masks but who knows if they kept a good enough distance from each other.

I’m appalled that England is protesting their lockdown and calling COVID-19 a hoax. I may not be the brightest person on Earth but it never ceases to amaze me just how stupid so many people are. I’m seriously embarrassed for and by those dumb enough to believe it’s a hoax. Because people really have nothing better to do than to create some fake virus so people can be stuck at home and can fuck up the economy, right?

Another anxiety-free day. I don’t know why but I know I appreciate it. For a while, I was wondering if Sutter Home wines had anything to do with it because it started around the time, I decided to try them. I’m glad they don’t, though, because I like them better than Barefoot except for their version of Merlot. Barefoot’s merlot is sharper, I guess would be the appropriate word to describe it, so I like theirs better. Even though that’s one of my favorites, I’m staying away from it for the sake of not staining my teeth.

When we get groceries delivered, I’m going to be trying individual ACV shots with turmeric and honey that I can just drop right into my bottles of sparkling water without having to measure anything. It’s a little more expensive this way but I’m curious to try it at least once.

Saw these really cool-looking toothbrushes on Amazon but I’m not going to try them until we get settled. I have a child-size mouth and they have these kids’ dental trays that have brushes in them that automatically brush the teeth on both sides at once. They also have dual-headed brushes I may also try. As a tech fanatic, I love to try new technology and ways of doing things.

Since we took it easy yesterday, today is going to be the day we try to tackle the old shower in the second bathroom and see how hard it is to switch out.

The freeway is loud this morning so I wouldn’t be surprised if the planes were annoying as well. No place is 100% perfect nor 100% imperfect, but we will have a quieter place someday. We will.

It was my turn to have a Calms Forte nightmare. A young woman in her early twenties or so was chasing me with a knife for some reason. I ran toward a busy street with lots of traffic and tried to get someone to stop and help me. It seemed no one wanted to intervene, but a bus did slow down long enough for the guy driving to yell at me to get out of traffic. The dream ended there and then it was off to dream about hearing sawing and hammering every morning at 4 AM. I don’t know where we were living but it turned out to be a young woman who made crafts that she sold. They were these little figurines. I don’t know if she lived attached to us or just near us.

“Do you do this every morning?” I asked, and I wasn’t the least bit thrilled to learn she did.

The rest of the dreams weren’t enough to make sense of. I’m not as tired today since I slept longer but I sure woke up a lot. Twice I got up to pee and I woke up a few other times as well.

It smells a little smokey out there now. When it’s mild it’s actually pleasant and reminds me of incense.

“Those who see the world and the people within it as all black and white (all good or all evil) are doomed to never see the beauty that shades of gray can bring.”

Aly tweeted this on her other Twitter account and right away I suspected it was because I made some negative tweets in regard to people’s stupidity and my lack of faith in anything up there actually giving a shit about people.

She messaged me about trying to keep busy and not dwell on a few things. Then she edited out the part about dwelling on things and I wondered if it was because she remembered that I hate it when people are vague like that or if she decided she didn’t want me asking about it.

She later tweeted, “Reminding myself that giving people power over my emotions does me no good. My open mind is a good thing.”

She was home alone all day yesterday, so someone pissed her off. Not sure if it was me or someone else but you know what? If it’s me she’s talking about and she doesn’t have the balls to come out and say so, then that’s her problem. Is it really me, though, or am I just being paranoid? shrugs I’m not a mind-reader so I can’t say for sure. I can only say that if she doesn’t have it in her to step forward if she’s got any problem with me, then she deserves whatever negative emotions she’s feeling. That’s the thing about her, though; she is a bit of an emotional person. Okay, so maybe more than a bit. She’s definitely more sensitive for my comfort but I’ve dealt with much worse.

When I first got up, I noticed I couldn’t access her Twitter account and I thought Damn! She figured out that I knew about the account and deleted it. Turns out she just changed handles, so she was definitely online yesterday even though I didn’t hear from her anywhere.

Molly tweeted something about finding it interesting that some people block her when she hasn’t been on Twitter much. I wonder if she thinks Aly blocked her.

Aly sometimes has days where she doesn’t check in with me and today is my turn to skip a day after being very consistent. IDK, I still adore her as a friend and all that. It’s just that there’s this underlying sense of dishonesty I’m sensing, and she has been known to lie enough times in the past. I sense she holds back on too many things when I’m supposed to be a close enough friend that she should be able to confide in just like I’ve shared many things with her.

Fitbit says I should be down to at least 154.8 but instead, I’m 155.8, up about half a pound from last week. Again, what should work for most people doesn’t always apply to those with certain medical conditions. Goes to prove I wasn’t imagining it when different types of diets I’d try would fail. Nor are those who also claim their bodies don’t respond to diet and exercise kidding. The only two noticeable problems I have with being and remaining this way are that it makes running harder and affects my range of mobility. But these things haven’t killed me yet. Besides, I’m nearly 55, not 25. I’ll log my food for one more week, then just focus on keeping active. That much I can do.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2020 I’ve never been one to be afraid to voice my thoughts and opinions. In doing so I’ve found that those that accept me as I am stick around and those that don’t take off, leaving me with the people that truly matter. With that being said I’ll just say that if what they say about Amy Coney-Barret is true, I really hope she doesn’t end up taking Ginsburg’s place! It isn’t what she believes. It’s what she may do with those beliefs that have me a little concerned. If you’re a hater who wants to control people and strip women of their rights, then you shouldn’t be in a position of power.

I’ll never get one’s hatred for their own kind. Okay, I can see having ill feelings toward the opposite sex if you don’t like the way they tend to behave and because it’s easy to hate (or at least not like) what we don’t get and can’t relate to. But how can a woman hate other women? So much that she would gladly strip them of their bodily rights if she could and from making personal choices that should be up to her only?

Kind of tired today because I only slept for 5 hours. We’re both going to take a day off from working out which is good to do a couple of times a week anyway. We saw one skunk yesterday, but it skittered across the street and out of sight.

My right eye had a blurry spot that flickered for about 20 minutes yesterday. I’m not sure why, though but that has happened before. I wasn’t in a bad mood of any kind so who knows? I also didn’t have any anxiety yesterday, yet I have no idea why any more than I can be sure why I sometimes do. Still think there are likely many factors because unfortunately, the world just isn’t as black and white as we might sometimes wish it was. Sure would make some things easier if it was but it’s often hard to tell what’s what.

I’ve been asked what my answers were on some of my polls. The few in particular are whether or not I believe there’s an afterlife, nothing, reincarnation or anything else.

I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’d like to think there’s nothing because this life is enough, and that theory makes the most sense scientifically. I’d say the least likely is reincarnation because of the way our experiences and memories are so much a part of what makes us who we are. If you don’t have the pathway to those memories, then it really isn’t “you.”

My favorite wines are Merlot, Zinfandel, Moscato, Rosé, and Pinot Grigio.

With few exceptions, I’m mostly anti-friend-mixing because I found that that can cause problems and leave one feeling awkward if you have a falling-out with a mutual friend.

No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being choosy about who we’re friends with. Everybody has preferences for everything. We have different foods we like and dislike, different movies, different music, different colors, so why not different personalities? I think it’s okay to not want a particular friend because of any particular trait whether it’s something most people would avoid or that isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all since there are plenty of others who will accept them. As they say, there are other fish in the sea, and I believe this applies to friendships as well as relationships.

I mostly admire those who are sound of mind, intelligent, honest, and with a good sense of humor. If you’re dishonest, contradictory, overly emotional, and easily offended by every little thing, I’ll likely avoid you.

I continued tracking because I was curious to see if that strange person in Reno returned or not. I didn’t see her yesterday at all on my tracker and figured she either left PB or was hiding. But then I saw her and found a message from her apologizing for “going stupid,” and insisting she’s honestly not obsessed with me, and I apologized for my part. I shouldn’t have pulled the prank I pulled, and I definitely went stupid myself, LOL. So I guess all is well there. :-)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2020 Yesterday was a totally shitty day with anxiety. I also felt a little depressed and frustrated. Mostly just anxious and frustrated. So much for thinking I’d finally beaten it. I eventually took half a Benadryl so it wouldn’t knock me out, but it didn’t do anything for my anxiety. Then I took the other half and while it didn’t knock me out, it still didn’t help much. And of course, I’m still at a total loss as to just what all the culprits could be. He thinks it’s a combination of things like me stressing over my upcoming appointments and hormonal and that a fresh start in Florida will really do me good. I know I have some terrifying memories attached to this house but nah, it’s mine for life whatever it’s caused by. Whether it’s a combination of the above causes or a medical disorder I acquired, it’s never going away completely. Just like I’ve had to do this last half a decade since it began, I have to know and accept this whether I like it or not. It’s a part of me just like my ear/TMJ is, my weight, and other things I’ve had to make peace with. Driving myself crazy over what can’t be changed would be as futile and as pointless as these protesters marching to change pigs that will never change. They are the law. Like it or not, right or wrong, they can make or break it at will. Always has been that way, always will be. So why lower yourself to harming innocent people, spreading the virus, and disrupting so many things just to change nothing but perhaps how people see you, and not for the better?

Anyway, since I’ll probably feel like shit in another five hours or so since it still tends to kick in towards the middle of my day, I’m just enjoying the calm while it lasts. It’s nice and quiet too. I still hear some loud vehicles in the daytime and the daily buzz of landscaping. Can’t wait to get away from that shit in Florida although I do expect I’ll still hear plenty of power tools, projects, and motorcycles, especially before we get land. The only place I would be willing to put up with noise is no place we could ever afford and that’s on some kind of peninsula or island.

Last night I was thinking, oh no! I better send the termites those journal excerpts now so I don’t have to worry about the in-state thing which is why the black bitch couldn’t get me in Auburn as hard as she no doubt tried to and why it was easy for her to seek legal revenge on me in Maricopa being that we were still in the state.

But then I said, nah. Nothing I ever have or will send them will be even remotely illegal not to mention the fact that I’ve learned to ignore subpoenas should I ever get one for whatever. I would still rather wait until she can’t get postal mail to us, even though I understand the pigs could find out where we were any time they wanted.

I started to wonder if Alyssa hasn’t changed her profile picture in over a year because of me but when I was combing through her public stuff, I saw that she did go a couple of years one time. I think that as a doctor, she just doesn’t have much time for social media and even less once she added a kid to the scene. Still guessing she’s never read/listened to any of my messages other than maybe the first few. Then I was probably put on ignore.

Got that swai fish I wanted to try, and I really like it. Too bad it’s not so good for you like most things we like. Yeah, the more we like something, the worse it is for us. It has a nice soft buttery texture that melts right in your mouth.

We went out walking yesterday morning and will probably do the same today. First I gotta hit the shower and get the laundry going.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2020 Guess who’s signing in on an anxious note? Sure wish Tom was right in thinking it’s hormonal and that it will go away for good someday but after half a decade, I have no reason to think it will. I could take Children’s Benadryl now and maybe get rid of it, but I would prefer to go walking in a few hours as opposed to napping and feeling groggy. Yeah, that’s the problem with things that help with anxiety. They eventually stop helping and they make you tired. So that’s why I haven’t sought treatment from a new psychiatrist. I know there’s such a thing as hormonal therapy but I wouldn’t know where to begin with that and don’t want to be spending more time and especially more money on appointments and medications that may or may not work and that also may or may not backfire on me in a bad way.

I forgot to say that a few days ago, Tom said two or three motorcycles that were really loud came blasting through as I was sleeping. It’s a miracle they didn’t wake me up but maybe they didn’t go by the bedroom. They could have entered the circle from the other direction. It would still be pretty loud, though, so adding brown noise on Alexa was a smart idea I should have done from the get-go. It’s just that we didn’t get her until 2015. Either way. We WILL have a quiet place someday. I’m done with noisy places and that shit definitely stops here with this place.

No problem taking Calms Forte and no problem from what I can see with my schedule for labs on the 5th and Doc A on the 19th. I don’t know yet about my appointments in February and March but fortunately, I’ll get some time off from having to worry about that.

I’ll not only have to have Doc A look at the spot on my upper arm that’s a few inches above the elbow, but I now have one on the shoulder as well. I’ve had at least half a dozen of these and they usually heal on their own. I don’t know if they have the potential to be serious or not. When you get older, things start showing up on your skin, so I don’t know.

Did my nails earlier and what a god-awful brand MWellew is! They’re not only way too big for me but just a pain in the ass to work with. It definitely seems that the lighter-colored sparkly ones are easier to see through. These aren’t transparent but more like opaque so they’re still acceptable. They don’t look bad, just not great. They go from light blue to light green to light pink but since I cut my nails, I mostly only see pink on my thumbs. It really is easier working with nail strips that come on a sheet instead of individual nails that are attached to a strip. They’re easier to size up attached to strips but harder to peel and work with in general.

So no more MW, Maity’s or Girzzur. Tailaimei, Augoog and Wokoto are the best so far.

Had a dream I had to pee so bad but every time I would park my ass on the toilet, my bladder refused to let go of its golden goodies.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 We went to Rite Aid yesterday and on the way to and from there, as we passed Cripple Creek, I looked into the greenbelt but didn’t see any signs of life at all. So there are either not that many of them or they’re deep within the brush and well hidden.

At the store, I got lentil chips, a case of Moscato, and a case of Zinfandel.

Aly gave me a hint of where she’s living, saying she was close to a zoo, and I guessed South 13th Street because she mentioned traffic noise and it appeared to be a busy street from what Google Maps showed me. She said I was close. She’s actually on Vinton Street close to 10th Street in downtown Omaha. I’ve narrowed it down to two possible blocks she’s living on and while it would be nice to see pictures inside and out, I’m really not that curious. I don’t have anything to send her at the moment so it’s not like I need her exact address. If I wanted to surprise her with whatever I could send it to her parents. She and Cam will be moving out around Halloween and into a new place in Elkhorn.

My last two polls received answers I would expect from Aly. However, they didn’t come at the same time. In fact, one of them came while she was working, and she made like it was very inconvenient to go online from there. I guess not being there full-time means she doesn’t have as much in the way of breaks, but I wouldn’t think it would be impossible either, so I don’t know. If it wasn’t her and it wasn’t random, someone else is following me that knows what I look like because, in one of the polls, I asked if they thought my hair looked better shorter or longer if they knew what I looked like.

Marie? Molly? Someone else? I am connected to a couple of PBers there, but I don’t know if they’ve ever seen pictures of me. If they have, I would think it would only be with shoulder-length hair because that’s what I’ve had for a while now.

So much for hanging up the tracking for a while. I’m too addicted to doing that. It’s fun. Predictable usually, but fun.

Aly asked if I had nightmares when using Calms Forte as she does. I don’t remember if I took it when I had the nightmare about being alone and broke but I took it last night and the only dream I remember was moving into my first childhood home that was next to my maternal grandparents. My grandparents were still alive and still living next door, too. I walked up to the side of their place and peeked into a window that didn’t really exist and could see into the living room. Sunlight shone through from the front of the house and I knew they weren’t home. I figured they were at their place of business. Their place of business, whatever that was, was just as big as their home and I thought to myself in the dream, wow, that’s a lot of space for just two people.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 We got a letter from the park saying that there was a homeless camp set up in the green belt between a part of the park and a regular neighborhood called Cripple Creek and that there was nothing they could do about it because that land wasn’t owned by anyone. They did add coils of razor wire along the base and tops of the fence that surrounds the RV parking lot because they were breaking in there and stealing things.

Good thing we didn’t get the house at the end of Daisy then! I always said that would be the best location in the park but not with a bunch of bums within arm’s reach. So that brief but definite whiff of cigarette smoke I caught as I was walking by the RVs early one morning wasn’t my imagination. I knew it was a strange time and location to be smelling cigarette smoke. Bet it was from one of the homeless people and they had to have been inside the RV parking lot and close to where I was walking because strong nose or not, there’s no way it would have wafted over to me from the creek itself.

Tom and I agreed that neither of us would go out alone after dark (we like to work out together anyway). If we were alone, we’re in pretty good shape and could probably handle one of them. But certainly not groups of them even though I’ve never actually seen anyone hanging around the park at night, not that I’m looking out the windows at that time either. I may only step out to dump trash but that’s it.

I’ll never doubt Dixie again, though! She swears they’re also in the golf course and that they’ve lurked about her place a number of times.

I’m glad to say that I’m not only perfectly calm today so far but for the first time ever, I found something that takes the anxiety away… Children’s Benadryl. Ah, but according to what I read, this will only work a few times and then it will stop having that effect. So much for thinking it wouldn’t knock me out, though, because it did. I ended up napping for an hour, but I love taking naps, especially at night when it’s quieter. I seldom am able to nap, though, even when I’m tired.

In one day my weight went from 155.2 to 156.6 even though I’ve been sticking to the Fitbit plan. It’s no surprise, though. I just don’t lose weight. My body has to be holding onto the weight for a reason, though, and I can only guess it’s due to my thyroid. No biggie, though.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 This month has been the worst for my anxiety so far this year and I have no idea why. Just like half a decade ago, I’m asking the same damn questions. Hormonal? Medication? Because I’ve got labs and a doctor’s appointment coming up next month? I’m guessing it’s a combination of the three but there are some things about the medication that don’t make sense. Like how I could go 11 weeks without having to skip, but this time it’s only been about a month.

I skipped this morning too, but I still feel wound up so something else is going on. If it’s hormone-related, how many more fucking years is this going to go on? I guess I’m going to have to accept the fact that I’m going to suffer on and off for the rest of my life. I’ll probably not eat for the last few hours of my day and take my medication tonight. No sense in letting my TSH rise too much if I’m still going to feel anxious anyway.

Speaking of suffering, I was watching a heartbreaking YouTube video about this older couple in which the husband was dying of cancer. My heart broke for the woman who had to accept that her husband was never coming home again, and it broke even more for the guy who appeared to be suffering and in so much pain. It burns me up to know that people are so inhumane when it comes to other people, yet they’ll do anything to alleviate the suffering of a dog. Yes, dogs get treated better than humans more often than not. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a Death with Dignity Act nationwide. Why let so many people suffer so needlessly? I just don’t get that. If I was that woman and that was my husband, and if the doctors and nurses wouldn’t do anything for him, I swear I’d yank the pillow from under his head and smother him with it to put him out of his misery if that’s what I had to do.

Naturally, every time I feel the faintest of cramps down there, I worry about the possibility of uterine cancer. I definitely have risk factors for it too. If I was ever told I had terminal cancer I would kill myself the next day. Why let myself go through such extreme pain and suffering with doctors and nurses who refuse to help me? I know that they don’t get to decide the laws and all that but how could you not want to do the right thing if you saw someone suffering like that? If the law said we all had to jump off a bridge, would we do that? No, of course not. Sometimes you have to do what’s right. Not what any crazy law says.

The good thing is that other than occasional light cramps and those spots I caught, I really don’t have symptoms of uterine cancer, although I would think most of the ones I read wouldn’t happen until it was pretty advanced. I hate to even think of the immense pain one must endure dying of cancer in such a sensitive area! Any cancer would be painful to die from. But I would think uterine, stomach and lung cancer would be some of the worst. “Do no harm” is something doctors swear by and consider their lifelong motto but allowing a terminally ill patient to suffer unnecessarily to such a degree IS doing harm.

Anyway, I’ve tried everything to help myself and nothing I’ve done so far has ever helped when I’m really feeling anxious. Not Stacey’s tapping, drinking, praying to a God that likely doesn’t exist, pressing acupuncture points, nothing. I’m not OMG-I-want-to-die kind of anxious but it’s bad enough at times. Took a children’s Benadryl to see if that helps because even if it makes me drowsy, it shouldn’t knock me out this early in my day.

Even though it does seem to help with energy, I think I’ll take a break from my multivitamin for a while just to see if there’s a connection.

I couldn’t find anything to suggest Ashkenazi women have whackier hormones than others, but I’ll definitely ask my doctor next month how late in life one could have hormonal fluctuations that can make you anxious. I’m still hot flashing as well, especially when it’s warm, and we’ve definitely been warm. In the 80s and 90s. We went out walking at 77° and it had only dropped to 75° by the time we got back.

Anyway, I’m trying not to dwell on anxiety, what-ifs, death, dying and suffering and all that dark shit.

My weight fell into the low end of what Fitbit said it would. I’m going to keep logging and monitoring calories even though I don’t expect to lose any more than a pound or two because it’s a great way to ensure that I don’t gain. It’s looking less and less likely that I’ll ever have to worry about that so that’s nice to know. He’s lost 7 pounds so far.

We registered to vote. It was easy for him because he has a driver’s license, so he didn’t have to print anything out. I had to print and sign a form and mail it in. We’re both going to vote by mail even though Biden’s gonna win this state easily.

Tom said he felt a twinge of sadness when he saw Bob in Virginia’s SUV drive by, but Bob and Virginia weren’t in it. A woman and a man were in it instead. We’re guessing she gave it to one of her kids and their spouse. It would be great if they moved in there and would take over the house and remain there after Virginia is gone. All their kids certainly have to the old enough to live here by now. I doubt it, though. I still wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the house went on the market by the end of the year. She can’t live alone, and I don’t know that her kids are in a position to just take over the house.

When it comes to our future house, I’ve always been a modern fanatic. But I’ve learned that if you can’t afford anything within 3 years old, then older is better because then you can really customize it to your tastes. If you get something that’s semi-modern, it may be harder to modernize because it just wouldn’t be as feasible to remove countertops that are only 10 to 15 years old and not exactly in bad shape for something you find more attractive. I really want to see the house, wherever it ends up being, as a work of art and really make it what we want it to be from top to bottom. I don’t want someone’s acceptable enough flooring or carpet. I want our own. It’s what we’re going to have to live in for the rest of our lives so we may as well go all out to really make it ours.

Since this has turned out to be a practice house, he’s going to see if he can replace the shower faucet in the second bedroom because it’s so fucked up. As I told him, if it turns out to be easier than he thought, he’ll wish he did it seven years ago. If it’s harder, then that’s all the more reason to go for a full upgrade and leave it to the pros in the future.

The Benadryl does seem to be having a calming effect on me but from what I’ve read, it won’t last more than a few days of using the product. Yeah, all good things really do come to an end and a hell of a lot quicker than the bad things do. I’m a touch drowsy but that’s fine. I don’t have anything I need to do that’s physical for the rest of my day.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2020 The index card box for my nail stickers came today. A couple of brands were too big for it, so I trimmed them down. The ones that were in plastic wraps fit fine. It was the ones in paper wrapping that were too big. It was simple enough to trim them to fit, though.

What wasn’t simple was using the punchers to cut out shapes to decorate the box using extra nail stickers. The stickers were too thick. Instead, I remembered I had some gem stickers which I put on top of the box. Not wanting to decorate the entire box with them, I bought some colorful sparkly star stickers for $5 on Amazon.

It has a slide on top of it for standing up index cards, so standing up are the nail stickers I plan to use next. That will be pastel gradients that go from blue to green to pink.

I’m a little tired today and my sleep score reflects it as well. Lately, I’ve been scoring 87-89 but I scored 83 the last time around. Waking up with a nightmare didn’t help. I dreamed of one of the classics; being broke and alone. I didn’t know Tom in the dream and my parents were still alive. I was forced to move out of a small apartment because I ran out of money. I don’t know how I had been getting money before or why it stopped but I was facing homelessness and losing everything. I tried to call my parents as a last-ditch effort to get help, but my phone was broken. When I finally got it to work, I couldn’t remember their number or even what town they lived in. Then I ended up breaking down on the woman who answered when I called Information (do those things still exist in real life where you dial 411 for info?) and she asked me what I needed.

“Well, $120 for my meds, for starters,” I told her, even though my meds don’t cost nearly that much in reality. Levothyroxine is cheap.

I didn’t seem to be in a panic like I would have been when I was younger. It was like I figured I’d lived long enough, I tried my best, but oh well. So what if I had to kill myself to save myself from slowly starving on the streets?

I did have a good dream as well. I met Aly in a hotel somewhere. She told me I looked like I lost a lot of weight and that my face was slimmer. I told her I was so excited to finally meet her and we hugged. I thought she felt kind of bony. Then I said, “I was beginning to wonder if we would ever meet.”

Sure enough, she’s dodging me on giving me her address so I can check her out on Google Maps. I understand wanting to be somewhat private but for Cam to be so private that he won’t let her share a picture of them or anything else makes me wonder. I still don’t think she’s making him up, though. I know she’s very intelligent and has a hell of a creative mind but to keep such an intricate game going for so long doesn’t seem likely. But why such intense secrecy unless he’s got something to hide? It is still kind of weird that I never see any pictures of him, her house, and the fact that I could never find his SIL who’s supposed to be a doctor.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 I know without a doubt that Aly is fucking with me on the polls but that’s okay because I can play right back in my own way. She recommended doing a follow-up poll and I decided to take her up on that suggestion. I asked those who voted “never” to my journals if they did so because they’re just a random voter who voted randomly, they’re afraid of what I may say about them, or they just like to be different.

Sure enough, shortly after I put up this poll, the first two got one vote each. I would be willing to bet just about anything that Aly voted from her two Twitter accounts which is all she seems to have right now that I know of. There is a possibility that Molly’s lurking and has been doing a great job of not letting me know it, but if she was that curious about my tweets, I would think she’d be reading my journal as well yet Texas doesn’t show up on my list very often.

I put up a new poll asking if I was ugly, average or attractive and I would be willing to bet it was Aly who voted “average.”

I agree. I was above average in my youth (something that had its advantages and disadvantages) and later evolved into an ordinary, average-looking middle-aged woman.

Another poll asks if you’re against, okay with, or have no opinion about the possibility of ICE forcing hysterectomies on some illegals and immigrants and I would also be willing to bet it was Aly who voted it to be wrong.

Don’t know if it’s fake news or not but if ICE is really forcing hysterectomies on illegals and immigrants, I totally commend them. How many times have they come over here, popped kids they knew damn well they couldn’t afford, and then forced our tax dollars to have to foot the bill? Many of the people in Mexico and its surrounding Latin countries breed like rabbits and we don’t need to be responsible and to have our system burdened even more. I think that ICE sterilizing them is helping to control the population as well as saving money in the end. There are enough kids born into poverty be it because the parents are lazy or trapped in a situation beyond their control and others don’t need to deal with it for them.

Lastly, I asked if my writing ability was poor, fair, good or average. I got a vote for good and one for poor.

If it was someone who has really read my journals or stories and really thinks I’m a poor writer, I would love to know why they think that. :-) It may help me improve my writing even more.

I’ll be going to the lab on October 5th at 3:30. Unfortunately, I’m not going to get the good numbers I was hoping to get because I skipped my meds altogether yesterday. It’s unlikely I’m going to be in the single digits. On top of that, I have cut waiting time a few times in the last few weeks. Definitely feel better today. Still can’t say for sure if it’s more on wacky hormones or the meds but I’m guessing the hormones. My day started off with some lightheadedness, but I was fine afterward.

As expected, the garbage and green waste trucks woke me up, but I went right back to sleep and woke up feeling rested enough. I’m surprised the planes haven’t been bad late at night. I just hear the occasional buzz of small planes or helicopters that I always hear at night here.

I wasn’t too happy to learn that most parks in Florida have their trash picked up twice a week. But do they make a three to four-hour ordeal of it? Would the trucks get as close to the bedroom window as they do here? I hope not, but either way, it would only be for a few months.

I visited Dixie as the sun was setting and it was great seeing her even though our chats usually get me down. She never has anything positive to say, but I feel bad for her because she has no one. Goes to show that having kids doesn’t mean you’ll be taken care of in the end. She hasn’t talked to her daughter in years and her son is a drunk. She can’t take care of herself (she needs hip and knee surgery) because she’s so busy taking care of Diane. She no longer has any help with her because Diane isn’t in any kind of program these days and I guess she had a falling-out with a couple that used to help out with her. She says she hates her life and feels like she’s alive but not living. Again, I feel terrible for her and I dread the day Tom and I get to the point where we’re struggling in the way she is. I try to take people’s advice and not worry about the future since it isn’t here yet but sometimes that’s easier said than done. I worry either way. I worry about suddenly dying before he does and leaving him alone. Then I worry about how much I may suffer from whatever kills me and if there’s a possible afterlife that’s a hell of a lot worse than my worst of times on Earth. Then I worry about him suddenly dying first and being faced with having to end my life. I would have no choice but to do so even if I wouldn’t be as horribly depressed and lonely as I know I would be by the loss of him. No matter how much money we had, I’m simply not one who can just live on her own. Things were different when I had my own apartment in the 80s. I was young, relatively healthy, and yeah, things were different. They were a lot less complex in many ways. But now, it would be very difficult for me to be able to take care of myself. Especially since we wouldn’t live anywhere where there was a bus stop right outside the door. So I worry about having to end it all and possibly botching it up and also hope that those that say you go to hell for killing yourself simply say that as a deterrent.

Dixie is grateful for the fact that she has money and hopes to stay out of a nursing home because of it even though money can only go so far and get you so much. I can’t imagine ever being in a nursing home! Especially with my kind of sleep disorder. An assisted living apartment, I can kind of see, but a nursing home? No fucking way! I hate to think of Tom in one of those places as I know that many of its workers can be impatient and abusive and care a hell of a lot more about their paychecks than the patients.

Kind of sad to know that the only way to get instant housing, food and medical care, even if those last two may be a joke, is to commit a crime and end up in jail or prison.

Anyway, I don’t want to get in a funk by dwelling on “what ifs” too much, and again, the future isn’t here yet. For now, 95% of my life is great and I’m going to focus on that.

At around 8:30 yesterday evening, he and I went on the longest walk we’ve been on in quite a while around the entire perimeter of the park which is about two miles and took about 40 minutes. It was a little warm, though, at around 80°.

We went out at the same time this evening and it was a little cooler but still slightly warm for walking. I prefer it under 70 degrees. Anything under 50 and I won’t go out.

Amazingly, we saw not one single skunk on either walk.

The Maitys nail stickers arrived. There are 14 sets, half of which are dull Earth tones that are going to be covered with polish. If it wasn’t for my gorgeous, colorful set of chrome nail polish, I wouldn’t have bothered with this set since half of them are boring. I started with the lime nails. I currently have 63 sets, so they’ll last me quite a while. Tomorrow I get the index card box to store them in.

Made my own meatballs for the first time for lunch. I rolled ground beef into 1.5” balls and seasoned each one differently. Paprika wins!

For dinner, I also made a roasted chicken thigh over jasmine rice with the same veggie medley I used over the previous night’s tilapia, only I threw in a couple of small potatoes since the green beans were going bad.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 Another fancy homemade cooked meal! They didn’t have swai fish, so I used the tilapia I had. I made a tilapia fillet served over brown rice which I topped with a veggie medley. I got the idea from a YouTube video where they used yellow pepper, onions and tomatoes. I only like raw tomatoes when I do have them, so instead I used a mix of green beans, broccoli, onions, mushrooms and yellow pepper.

I hope I didn’t skip my meds today for nothing because I’m still feeling a little wound up. I don’t know if it’s because of hormonal imbalances, if I’ve got more medication built up in me than I realize, or something else. One skipped dose can raise my TSH score by several points, but hopefully it won’t be too bad when it comes time for testing.

I’m also lightheaded today for some reason. That, the anxiety, and the occasional racing HR do smack of wacky hormones. At nearly 55 years of age, I wonder when and if they’re ever going to get their shit together. At least I’m only feeling wound up for 2 or 3 hours instead of half a day or all day. It’s also a different kind of anxiety. Before, I was having waves of anxiety stabbing in and out of my chest. It was like I could feel the adrenaline being squeezed out of my adrenal glands and into my chest. But this is more of a breathless feeling like I just did something really strenuous.

Tom just told me he had his own medical scare today. He was playing a video game on his computer when the edges of his vision got all fuzzy and was worried he might be having a stroke. But when he looked it up, he found that a silent migraine described his symptoms perfectly and then it went away like they said it would in about an hour.

I’m surprised I haven’t been cursed with migraines with all the other shit I’m cursed with. I would just think something up there would hate me enough to love to throw something so horrible at me. I’ve heard they’re so bad you almost wish you’d die, and some people even end up puking their guts out. Ugh, can’t imagine feeling like my head is about to explode and then puking!

Tom told me to be sure I keep wearing my Fitbit to bed and don’t get sick of it because if we’re low-income in Florida, I would qualify for SSI. That would mean I could see a sleep doctor there and use my Fitbit info to show that I have a sleep disorder and finally get the disability benefits that never should have stopped before we got married. We wish we had put in for SSI when we were struggling in Auburn, but we just never thought to do so at the time. And why would our lovely government tell us about it, right?

He keeps an eye on the prices of things and his last check of first-class plane tickets seems affordable enough as long as they don’t jack the price up. I would definitely love to go out of here first class! I hope to get more pics along the way. The last two times we changed states, there were issues with cameras and batteries and things like that. I always hated not being able to get a good shot of the breathtaking Mount Shasta.

One of the houses here is going for 260K and they haven’t even been here as long as we have. But the house is really gorgeous inside having been remodeled and all that, plus they have a hot tub in back and a view of the lake.

Decided not to edit and share my bio because it’s a lot to go through and definitely contains more shitty memories than I care to go through. I’m just going to run it through Grammarly since I wasn’t as good of a writer as I was 20 years ago and only had a spell checker back then.

Lisa was in my dreams last night. I hate it when those narcissistic crazy bitches show up in my dreams. I don’t remember much about it. I guess we were having a friendly discussion in person and then I later went back to her house to get something I forgot, and even though the house was dark when I entered it and I called out her name, I could just make out her shadow slinking silently around in the dark which made me question her sincerity.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2020 We uploaded our DNA to some sites that give you some information for free, as I mentioned, and yesterday one of them told him he has a lot of Celtic in him whereas I have a lot of Roman. There’s some East Asian in me too, which makes sense since the Jews started off there before relocating.

Doing Twitter polls has been fun. I’m just not sure what to do a poll on next.

I really miss Ask, but there’s no way I can return there because they’ll just harass me. I guess that instead of banning users who don’t ask and answer according to their standards, you get badgered with pop-ups to the point that their site is unusable. If it was a genuine glitch, it wouldn’t have gone on for years. I’ve tried creating new accounts but as soon as they know it’s me or I give answers they don’t like, the harassment begins. I’ve often wondered why they don’t just write their own questions and answers if they have a specific kind in mind they want but I guess that by messing with those they don’t want, they get others to do the work for them. I can kind of see why they would opt to make it hard for users who didn’t like to use the site as opposed to banning them, but oh well. As they say, all good things really do come to an end.

Just out of curiosity - and this will no doubt put Aly on the spot even if she kind of deserves it for lying - I asked her who she thought might have voted that I never published my journals. Does she think it’s a random voter or someone I know who’s paranoid?

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2020 So there’s a site called Genomelink that allows you to upload the raw data containing your DNA from either Ancestry or 23andMe and it tells you about a dozen different things for free. If you want something like 180 different things, it’s $14 a month. We’re not that curious right now but maybe later on we’ll do it for one month. Here’s what it told me for free.

Food & Nutrition

I tend to have an intermediate amount of Vitamin A and am less sensitive to bitter-tasting foods and have an intermediate taste sensitivity to fat.

I have a lower caffeine metabolite ratio, consume less caffeine than average, and have a higher chance of being a smoker.

I have an intermediate carbohydrate intake and am less of a protein seeker which means my body doesn’t crave protein as much.

I’m likely to have a lower consumption frequency of fried dishes as much as I love fried foods and I do indulge in them sometimes.

I have intermediate bitter alcoholic beverage consumption and a higher affinity for red wine than white.

Most of this is pretty accurate even though I couldn’t say on the Vitamin A thing. I only have one cup of coffee most days, I do like fried foods, and I prefer red wine to white. I was also once a smoker.

Personality

I’m less disagreeable and average in conscientiousness. Tom scored less disagreeable as well and I think in most ways we both are. With him, it seems that he just likes to be different but with me, well, I just don’t usually agree with popular opinion. We agree he’s more conscientious than I am. Sometimes I think he cares too much about others. It’s great to be conscientious of those we care about, but he’s too considerate when it comes to neighbors, for example, even those that have shown not to give a shit about us.

The funny part was how it said he was more extroverted than I am. Neither of us is sociable in general, but I’m at least somewhat sociable online and he isn’t even into that.

We’re both more neurotic, although he doesn’t seem to worry nearly as much as I do, and we’re both open-minded, although I think he’s more open-minded than I am. He wouldn’t care if a Muslim moved in next door, but I would be concerned since there are too many of them who prefer to settle their differences in a violent manner as opposed to just a few here and there. You don’t even have to “do” anything to them, just be different.

We both scored intermediate on being reward-dependent.

Intelligence

It says I have more acute hearing and was above average in intelligence as a child. We both got the same answer and I wonder if they tell that to everybody. I’m deaf in one ear and I think if anything I was below-average intelligence as a child, partly due to ADD and the abuse I had to endure at home. Kind of messes with your focus and concentration, you know?

Physical Traits

It says I’m average as far as a morning person goes and average with motion sickness. It also says I have a lower body fat percentage.

Not quite when you have circadian rhythm disorder and you don’t have motion sickness at all. I do have a lower body fat percentage, though, since I’m just slightly overweight. It said he had a higher body fat percentage which is accurate.

Sports

It told us both that we’re intermediate when it comes to endurance performance.

Deciding there’s no way I can do the second hardest out of the four different weight loss plans Fitbit has where you have a deficit of 500 calories a day, I decided it couldn’t hurt to at least try the easiest one with a deficit of 250 and a half a pound loss a week. I noticed I burn an average of 1700 calories a day. So that means I could have 1450 calories a day and still lose that half a pound a week. My comfort zone is 1200 to 1400 calories a day on average, so that wouldn’t be hard. Hard to believe I could eat that much and lose anything, though, with my thyroid, but I’m curious enough to try it and find out.

My HR is a little high again and I feel slightly wound up like I did yesterday but not enough to call myself anxious. I did have a sugary treat, though, that I got when we ran out to Rite Aid. Coffee cakes. I also got lentil chips for later on, a four-pack of Sutter Home’s white zinfandel, and a four-pack of their Merlot as well. My medication is likely building up in me but I’m going to try to tough it out until I hit the lab early next month.

I wonder how much wacky hormones might be connected to it because I noticed I had some spotting last night and I’ve been feeling faint cramps too. I just wonder when this shit is ever going to end for good! I’m almost 55 for fucks sake! I’m still way better and I was before early 2019 or so but this doesn’t seem normal even though I’m not too worried. In other words, my gut feeling isn’t screaming at me that something’s wrong. While that’s great, I still worry about my health delaying the move. I just think that would happen before anything threw an insanely high-paying job his way. From what I read, though, it’s usually benign. Could be anything from a thickening of the uterine lining, wacky hormones, and polyps, but some things can develop into uterine cancer. It’s just that the exams to test for this are excruciating, and even if they weren’t, I don’t want to have to deal with extra expenses now. I’ll just hope it backs off on its own.

I noticed it last night when I was rearranging the 40 or so Barbies I’m taking with me. I managed to jam them all into a smaller clear plastic bin with the exception of four that wear wide gowns. I’ll probably just leave them in there indefinitely unless they gain value and then I’ll sell them. In this bin, I could stand them upright rather than lay them down in layers which isn’t as good for them mostly because it messes up their hair.

I wouldn’t mind if Aly suddenly knew that I knew she was lying about what she voted for on my poll but not by me telling her so. I wouldn’t call her on her lies unless it was something huge or she dumps me again. Therefore, I decided not to have the post on OD where I mention it ever expires just in case she finds it.

For a minute I started to think maybe she was telling the truth because I voted from my other two accounts again on a new poll I created yet the votes weren’t showing up. Then I refreshed the page and they were visible.

My current poll: Is it wrong to be selective and to prefer not to have the mentally ill or those with prominent emotional problems as friends?

I had my other accounts vote yes and no. Recently received a yes vote when Aly was around.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 Nurse Kim is 51 today. Wow, I haven’t seen her since she was 23. I doubt I ever will again, but I wish her a happy birthday just the same. It will be interesting to see if she acknowledges my birthday in a few months.

Had a dream we moved to her state, my home state, of all places. Then he got some kind of job connected to guns.

I also dreamed about visiting Dixie. Only I lived a couple of houses away instead of four houses away and during the visit, it was like I couldn’t sit still, and I kept popping in and out of my house and then returning to hers. Then she got tired and wanted to take a nap but didn’t want to fall asleep alone for some reason so she asked me to stick around and I did, hoping she would hurry up and fall asleep so I could get the hell out of there because I was bored out of my mind.

She emailed me in reality last night. She’s worried about the fires, having an eye appointment today, and looking for help with Diane.

I slept with the AC off because I didn’t want the place to reek of skunks in the middle of the night but I woke up warm a few times so I think I’m going to need to sleep with it for a while longer. In early October, we shouldn’t need it at night anymore. The house one is already taking longer to come on. It comes on in the late morning to early afternoon.

Why would Aly lie about what she voted for on my last Twitter poll? Yeah, that’s the question of the day. She said she voted “now” but that’s not possible. Unless Twitter screwed up and failed to count everybody, the two “now” votes are actually from my other two accounts, so she couldn’t have voted for that. Pretty sure she voted “never” if not twice then at least once.

So why would she lie and tell me she voted “now” when there’s no way she could have possibly done so? I guess she anonymously told me what she really thinks while telling me directly what she thinks would be appropriate to tell me. She doesn’t really want me to share them now. She’d rather I never share them and that’s got to be because she knows I’ve said negative things about her at times.

But why not just say she hasn’t had time to vote yet or something like that rather than tell me she voted “now” when she doesn’t want them published now? Maybe she ran out of accounts to vote from, I don’t know.

She is definitely a prolific liar and I have to keep this in mind. I really can’t trust her as much as I’d like to think I can. I could call her out on it but because it’s something so petty, why bother risking what’s otherwise a decent friendship? Like she said in a blog post, silence can sometimes be a good thing. Meanwhile, I may not have the memory I once had but I’m aware, I know how to read, and I’m not stupid either.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2020 It’s a good thing people don’t regularly test for unlocked doors here (that I know of) since the auto-lock failed to work on the back door and it was unlocked all night.

I really, REALLY hope it doesn’t, but if anything does delay the move, that saw fanatic is going to be dealt with. I’m not going to be put out and annoyed just so someone can have their fun. Nor will I be scared out of speaking up just because some people don’t want to hear it and can’t handle it.

The thing is that they might be interested in him for a job that pays even more than his last one which means we would go from 50k a year to 60k or higher with good benefits and that would be hard to turn down or take just temporarily. The more money we can leave the state with, the more options are available to us in Florida. This job would include local traveling in which I could tag along. However, they did say they want someone bilingual so Mr. Unilingual will probably be turned down.

If there is anything up there that decides our fate, curses, or blesses us, I would think it would use my health to trap us here instead of throwing more money at us. The thing is he can’t claim he’s retired and expect to be given Unemployment. They could ask for the money back if he doesn’t work at least for a short time. I just hate to see him work before a COVID vaccine is available!

He ordered a new bike seat because this one is both uncomfortable and unstable. He’ll get a new stationary bike when we move. We get credit if we opt for a slower delivery method, but it has to be a certain dollar amount, so I grabbed another set of nail polish strips which range from beautiful bright colors to dark dull colors. I’ll throw nail polish over the boring ones.

Because my nail addiction means I now have so many sets of nails, I’m going to get an index card file box to store them in. It’s a boring matte black box so I’m going to decorate it with spare nail strips. I’m also getting a paper puncher that punches various shapes like hearts, stars, butterflies, and flowers since the nail strips would be an odd shape to decorate and personalize with.

Also got a ballet-themed 2021 wall calendar. Beginning in 2022, I don’t think we’ll get wall calendars anymore since I don’t expect to have so many high-maintenance pets that I have to remember when each one needs what. The calendars on our computers will work just as well for appointments and whatever.

Oh wow. First time I got so many votes on a Twitter poll where I asked when I should publish all my journals. No one chose now or when I die but I got two votes for hundreds of years from now, and two for never.

Doing polls is fun. It’s an interesting way to gather opinions without putting anyone on the spot since they can remain anonymous.

I guess I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I did since it seems I was up for about 90 minutes in the middle of my sleep. I do remember getting up to pee and waking up warm, but I didn’t think I would be this tired. As I said yesterday, I have a bad feeling I just hit another cycle where I’m going to be tired most of the time no matter how well I sleep. Even so, it says my sleep score is 88. I sure don’t feel like I slept that well.

Christiane is completely ignoring the messages I sent her. That’s really rude, too. Either reply or tell someone you don’t want anything to do with them! It’s probably because I asked about Nane. Had I just said, “Hello, how are you?” I probably would have gotten a reply. Why do I bother, though? I thought I’d gotten over bothering with those who don’t bother with me or who don’t bother with me unless they hear from me first.

Marie hasn’t been coming around as much. Can’t help but wonder if it’s due to the recent mentions of her if that was really her.

Gonna take a break from tracking PB for a while. It’s pretty predictable anyway, as far as who visits. I think it will be interesting to take a break for many months, then go back and see if the results are pretty similar and if Marie is still there at all. Plus, it’s a bit of a pain to have to make drafts with the code, so a break would be nice.

Aly told me she didn’t hate weekends but tweeted that she did on her Molly-connected account. I noticed that she checked in with her yesterday but not with me and wondered if she was waiting till I went to bed. I jokingly but seriously asked her if she was just waiting till I went to bed or something and a half-hour later she replied saying that after lunch she had a Crohn’s flare-up and was forced to lie in bed. If all goes well, she should be moving in with Cam today.

I love it when I happen to catch her when she’s checking in and she doesn’t know it since I have my settings set to Invisible. It’s interesting to see what she edits. One time she edited out that she sometimes stays late at school to write student reports where it’s quiet, almost as if she didn’t want to admit her place gets noisy too, even though she has mentioned raised voices, doors slamming, and footsteps.

Another time she edited out the mention of Cam having Walmart deliver groceries and I wondered if that was due to her desire to be different. At least she seems to like to be different at times and we definitely disagree on Walmart. She has no desire to shop there.

A few days ago there were half a dozen vehicles next door and I remembered that it was Bob’s would-be 91st birthday.

Finally, remembered some dreams I had. I seem to go in spurts with that, too. One of them took place on the other side of the world. I somehow ended up going home with a friend who was visiting from this other country that I’d never heard of and couldn’t find on a map. I was worried I wouldn’t have a way home, but some woman assured me that she would get me back home.

In another dream, I was driving a realistic electric mini-convertible car around the living room when I heard the sound of a large vehicle nearby. It was really early in the morning and the sun hadn’t fully risen yet. I jumped up out of curiosity to see who was parked so close to the house and found a white van sitting in front of the house. I wondered if it was some type of private ambulance or something.

Then I glanced at the car and saw it was about to crash into the wall because I hadn’t put it in park, even though it was moving slowly. I jumped back in the driver seat and slowly moved it around.

Then I heard a male voice and figured it was a paramedic. I parked the car and got out to look out the window again. I saw the paramedic loading a wooden frame of some kind into the back of the van and then I saw Virginia standing in front of her place. I went to open the door to ask how she was doing but when I opened it, I found three young to middle-aged blonde women dressed and pretty sundresses standing there smiling at me. One of them had spaghetti straps and I thought she must be cold in the chilly morning.

I said I wasn’t buying anything and shut the door on them. I then put my ear to the door to see if I could make out anything being said but all I heard was the rustling of papers. Finally, curious to see what it was all about, I opened the door to find they had placed multiple stacks of letter-sized papers all along the patio.

“So I’m supposed to take one from each stack and deliver them to the neighbors? How much are you going to pay me to do this?” the dream ended with me asking.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 The fucking water was off for 8 hours yesterday. Oh, to be able to take showers during the daytime and not worry that they’re going to turn the water off, not that they can’t turn it off at night.

I’m thrilled to learn that there are some parks in Florida that don’t allow pets at all. Since I don’t know what the dog situation is there or if it may be worse than the parks here, why not? That’s pretty much the only thing that’s been better here than expected, but I came to realize that’s because most people in the West believe they don’t belong indoors. But I don’t know what the attitude is in Florida. If everybody’s got them and is okay with them being household pets and not something you just throw outside, that means more of them will be walked which will mean more barking as they pass by our place. The only dogs here that sometimes get annoying are Santa’s.

So if we eliminate the dogs and get out of a flight path and a little further from traffic then that leaves just projects and landscaping until we buy land somewhere and push sounds further away from us. Hopefully, then we’ll only hear things outdoors and what we hear inside will be minimal. There sure are some places on islands and peninsulas, though, that would be worth a bit of noise. But the best of the best is for the rich, so I’m sure we’ll end up in an average home in an average park with an average view until we get land. Also, the state that land ends up being in depends on if I can breathe and sleep in Florida through the humidity and thunder.

I’m mega-tired today. I was up forever and didn’t sleep as long. Let me guess…it’s back to being exhausted every few days, right? All good things really do come to an end. :-(

I vaguely remember dreaming about him and I asking his dead mother where she wanted to eat, and then something about Johnson. It’s been a while since she’s shown up in my dreams.

I vaguely remember the stench of skunks too, not surprisingly.

I’m amazed that despite all the content in my dream blog on Blogger and how long it’s been there, it gets virtually no traffic. I realize I could make my blog containing my entire journal from the '80s on up to now public and no one would ever notice. I don’t think things like that would be all that interesting to people until they’re over 100 years old or so, though. I’ve noticed that most people seem to only care about current posts but not those from a year or two ago unless they deal with someone famous. So I think they’ll get more curious about older posts the older they get. The idea of someone possibly reading about my life hundreds or thousands of years from now if humanity still exists is kind of neat. :-) But then they wouldn’t get a lot of what I was saying with the way I would abbreviate or give things/people nicknames, especially in the pre-internet years.

A PB friend of mine voted “in hundreds of years” on a Twitter poll where I asked if I should share them never, now, when I die, or in hundreds of years. At least I think it was her since she replied to a message around the same time.

In the evening, when Aly would have been around, I got a “never” vote. Well, she may be curious (if she can’t hack into them) but at the same time, she wouldn’t want anything negative published about her even if there were no full names. Don’t know for sure that it was her. It could have been just a random stranger. But my gut says it was her.

It’s so smokey out there that Tom said he could look right at the sun when he was out watering earlier. It gives a false sense of being a cloudy gloomy day. I can already feel summer slowly beginning to slip away. The AC no longer runs early in the morning.

Just when I thought the serious/critical virus cases would slip under 60k for the first time in ages, it seems to be pushing back up.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 Nothing like being woken up in the middle of your sleep to the stench of skunks! I can’t wait until I can stop sleeping with the portable AC at night which is part of what’s bringing it in. Please tell me this shit isn’t going to be a regular thing in Florida! Fucking motherfuckers! I don’t understand why Animal Patrol doesn’t do more to kill them or at least move them away from populated areas. Traffic in the daytime, skunks at night…oh, but I’m not sleep-cursed, right? So yeah, if there’s anything up there cursing my sleep be it a God or something else, fuck you too.

Despite taking in 1244 calories yesterday and burning 1958 I’m up half a pound. Fitbit is meaningless for those who simply cannot lose weight be it due to their thyroid or other genetic and medical issues but I’m okay with it. It’s still fun to do and to keep in shape. Got over 1100 steps yesterday, the highest I’ve gone since I got my Versa.

I was even asked to join Fitbit’s heart study, so just like Tom, I’m in! He was probably asked due to his age. Me? They probably noticed my high HR. They will contact me if they notice anything funny which I guess is more likely to happen in my sleep if it’s going to at all. I hope not! If they want me to wear any other special devices or do any video appointments, they’ll compensate me for it.

Not at all liking how I felt a touch anxious the last three days. It’s too close to my next blood draw to cut doses, but I cut my waiting time a little today. Fucking figures this would happen too, when I’m just a few weeks away from labs.

It’s been nice using just Alexa for a sound machine the last couple of nights instead of having the stereo as well, but after one more night, I’m going to have to add the stereo as I sleep into traffic.

We got a new smart thermostat and it’s way better than the last one that was hit or miss. It’s a well-made American brand instead of cheap shit from China. This one can do so much more. I love how we can set it to automatically switch to heat when it gets cold. We still have a while to get to that point, but we’ve got it set to keep the house at 68. If we want it warmer than that in the bedroom, we’ll use the portable. The AC is set to 80 Monday - Friday and 78 during weekends. He got it for the huge rebate that comes with it.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 Haha, they refer to senior hours at Safeway as “golden hours.” Isn’t that a little too much like “golden showers?”

There was something familiar about this date. Pretty sure it’s Marie’s birthday. She was a little younger than me from what I remember.

I don’t want to get my hopes up since I never seem to be able to do what I want, partly due to schedule issues and partly just fate, I guess. Either way, I was thinking of checking into making my own jewelry and selling it on Etsy. I’m not going to invest in this before the move, though. I’ll wait and delve into it once we get settled wherever we’re going to settle. The problem is that it might be a little too competitive like with writing. There’s jewelry sold everywhere. Still can’t hurt to grab a jewelry-making kit for 30 or 40 bucks, have fun with it and give it a try. If nothing sells, I can keep it for myself or share with friends and maybe future neighbors. I guess it’s $0.02 a listing for 4 months or until it sells. I was thinking I might price bracelets at $10 and necklaces at $15.

The fucking cock was sawing again yesterday, not surprisingly. At least I think it might have been him but I can’t swear to it because it’s so common around here and when I think about it, it did seem softer like it may have been a house or two away from him. Maybe Santa? I only heard it for a few seconds, but it was enough to grate on my nerves. If it’s too loud or too frequent, it usually has a way of getting old.

As I said the other day, I got a few mini bottles of Sutter Home wines from Safeway. The White Zinfandel was better than the Sauvignon Blanc. Later I’ll try their version of Pinot Grigio.

I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t impressed with the blue hues strips I applied yesterday where each nail is a darker shade from pinky to thumb because they already started to peel off. Seems I do remember some people complaining about that. Not sure if this is a brand thing or not but I definitely won’t get these again because of the way most of them are transparent and too big for me. I would rather not have to trim any down.

The nail lifting has definitely improved but the dark spots on the thumbs are worse, so it probably is a fungus that still grows because it’s being blocked by the strips from getting any light. Most importantly, there’s no pain or anything and it’s not like the nail is falling off. I scrubbed the nails in the shower after removing the strips and then I put some oil on them. After my walk, I’ll give them a little bit of full-spectrum light before I re-strip them.

Overall they don’t look that bad and if I gave up strips altogether, which of course I won’t, I’m sure they would be fine in a few months. Blocking them from light is probably almost as much of a culprit as chemicals were. I’ll hit the thumbs with Lamisil too.

Okay! I went for a nice half-hour walk/jog, came back, and redid my nails with pink/blue gradient strips.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2020 My real email address is plugged into my private Twitter account. If Aly ever blocks it, I’ll know that she’s been looking up accounts of mine. I will also know if she spots my last OD entry before it expires because she’ll delete her “secret” Twitter account or change handles if she does. She may change handles eventually anyway.

I decided to block her on my private Twitter account as well as the one I was doing video tweets on. I can still view her tweets without unblocking her. I just don’t want the accounts recommended to her even though she wouldn’t necessarily know the private one was me. I don’t think she’s spying as much as I thought. Meaning that I don’t think she’s hacking accounts she knows she can get away with hacking. But she could still look for info on me through a paid search whenever the hell she happens to feel like doing so. I hate that people can pay to look up where I’ve signed up. Is that really any of their fucking business?

The other day I noticed that no outsiders had viewed my past two stories on Facebook and figured that the non-friend viewers had been Kim and Aly who are no longer there as far as I know. But yesterday 3 outsiders viewed my story (a rat pic) so I guess they could be anybody.

On my walk yesterday morning I found it to be a bit cloudy and a touch humid even though it was breezy and there was no smoke yet. I was a little warm when I got back since it was almost 80° at that point. I have a little fan attached to a spray bottle that I cooled myself off with, plus I kicked the AC on.

The one thing I hate about coming up Oak is that that’s where most of the dog walkers tend to be and I hate to be stopped to chat about what a beautiful day it is or something like that when I’m supposed to be working out. A woman did stop me for a second to tell me I was fast since she first saw me on Astro. Well, I do run some of the way.

A couple of days ago, I felt huge and out of shape when I was out there for some reason, but yesterday I breezed through my route easily. I’m down a pound too. I’m almost always 155 or 156. There’s very little fluctuation with me. Every now and then I’ll drop to 154 or climb to 157.

Fortunately, the sky didn’t smell smokey when I was walking with all the horrifying and heartbreaking fires going on in the state and now even up in Oregon. By this time next year, I should have traded in fires for hurricanes. The sky became eerily brown blocking out the sun to a degree later in the afternoon as the winds picked up, and OMG, the fucking stench of skunks! Please tell me that’s not going to be an issue in Florida!

I walked on, waved at a black guy who works here that was disinfecting one of the benches and soon found that Fitbit thought I climbed 4 sets of stairs today as opposed to 3 yesterday, even though I took the same route and actually climbed some hills, not stairs.

My heart went on the fritz again yesterday and I have no idea why. I was feeling warm and flustered and then it raced for a while making it up to around 115. I felt slightly anxious too, and the fact that these can be possible symptoms of heart trouble didn’t help either, though as far as I know, my heart is still healthy. Could be hormonal. I swear I’ve noticed faint cramps like my body is trying to kick off a period. Most of it was after having something sugary so maybe that was part of it, and also, Tom thinks the prospect of him going back to work soon may have triggered it. Trauma. It really does scar you for life no matter how much better you may get overall. I’m not as anxious as I used to be when left alone, but I still don’t like it either.

I’m also having that groin pain as well but now that I know it’s not connected to swollen lymph nodes, I’m thinking some kind of muscle, ligament or tendon. Again, I’m 54 and not 24. I can’t expect to be as active as I used to be as much as I wish I could.

I also had a bit of pain in my upper left back below the neck and a little above the shoulder blade but that was likely connected to my TMJ which can move down the neck and into that part of the shoulder/back area. Back pain associated with heart problems is usually between the shoulder blades from what I read.

I feel slightly warm and anxious now and have a touch of fatigue so I may take it easy today. I don’t know if I want to go out walking. Especially if it’s smokey. I may just use the skier today. We are going to Safeway, though. We’re going to grab some scratch tickets because I’ve been having a feeling about winning lately, though I don’t know how much.

Some candle company based in Texas called about a Quality Control Specialist job, but they fail to realize this is California, not Texas. You can’t live on the same wages here. He asked for $19 and they said they’d call back after they check to see if they were willing to go that high, but it doesn’t look like they are. Also, the job would be in Auburn where we used to live and that’s about a 40-minute drive.

I realize that if I keep my hair short, and I likely will since I’m sick of dealing with long hair, then I have room to move around when it comes to colors. Blondes and reds are out of the question but some of the deep dark auburn colors and even burgundy should look nice.

Wow, a Lifetime movie with a childless married couple! It’s about time. Now let’s have some single moms who aren’t divorced or widowed and some more gays and lesbians. Just when I was bitching that it was usually the men winning the fights against women, there was one movie where a woman beat a guy to death and then another where she strangled one to death so it’s nice to see a little more equality there.

Oh, and I know that most people believe that the mentally ill deserve compassion and all that and while I get their point, it’s a little hard to feel compassion when so many of them cause so much trouble. Obsessive behavior, stalking, trolling, intense mood swings, lying, a lack of empathy, selfishness, laziness…how do you have compassion for that?

Because I feel slightly wound up I should probably go do the EFT exercises that I haven’t done in a while and try not to dwell on the three possibilities that could, however unlikely it may be, delay the move. That would be one of us getting sick, one of us getting injured, or him being offered a job with an insane amount of money. We like money the same as anyone else but would still like to move as planned. No one’s ever paid him an insane amount of money yet, though, so I don’t see why they’d start now unless something’s more determined than even I realize to keep me in a noisy place.

We were checking out homes on peninsulas on the outer side of the Tampa Bay and OMG, that area is so damn gorgeous that living with noise, as long as I could sleep, would actually be worth it! I would just love to be a peninsula girl. It’s funny as I was running around like a little kid chanting to Tom, “I want to be a peninsula girl!” We checked out this awesome beach that’s basically a peninsula of its own that I would love to be able to visit whenever.

We saw this house (a regular house built on a slab foundation like what we had in Phoenix) for 90k but it was in the mainstream and I’m sure it would be quite noisy. It was still neat to see a house go for what goes for a quarter-million here. But the loud vehicles and old men wielding circular saws are enough. I don’t want to add partying college kids, screaming kids, welfare bums, barking dogs, and boom car stereos to the mix. So unless it’s on the end of the peninsula, which we’re pretty much guaranteed never to be able to afford, it’s best to start off in an adult park and then get land in central Florida if I can stand the climate or land in another state. It’s easier to get out of a park than to get out of land since there’s more demand for parks, especially senior parks in Florida. So that’s why we’re going to start there. But it’s almost certainly going to be just an ordinary house with an ordinary view. I’d love to have a water view be it a lake or the ocean, but I just don’t see that happening. And again, it would only be for a few months. I’m pretty much all or nothing in that if we can’t afford something spectacular on a peninsula where all ages are likely to reside, then I would rather return to country living. It isn’t just about getting peace when I’m awake, but I need to sleep. I can’t be woken up constantly when I’m on nights like I almost certainly would in a park. Of course, I still don’t know how often the storms are going to wake me up but that’s what we’re going to find out. With many of the parks, the mowers go right up to the houses, and of course you would have dog walkers milling about with barking that might wake me up. Worse would be a carport running alongside the place with a loud vehicle of some kind. I think we could improve on the general traffic and planes, but we’re not going to get away from the projects and power tools. They’re just too widespread these days. You don’t need to rent circular saws anymore. Anyone can walk into a store and grab one for 50 bucks or less. Like I said, no way I’m putting up with it for the rest of my life. I’m not going to be a peninsula girl, but you can bet I’m going to be a country girl again!

It was interesting that you can not only look up the racial breakdown of a particular town but a particular block as well. I don’t know how they know this or that I’d trust it since people do move. I just don’t want to give history a chance to repeat itself where a different race makes trouble for us, has a friend on the police force, and every single fucking lie they tell is automatically believed as it is in most of a country. So what if you may be vindicated in the end because enough complaints were finally filed against the pig when it’s already six months, thousands of dollars, and a whole shitload of anguish too late.

There’s this site that thinks our place is worth around 120K - 130K. We’ve seen dumps in dumpier parks go for around 80K, but I doubt we’ll pocket much more than 30K - 60K after all the fees are paid out in the end.

Took a little break to get some stuff at Safeway…wine, snacks and tickets. The two scratch tickets won us a lousy $4. Annie’s original snack mix is boring but an okay snack. I’d give Sutter Home’s White Zinfandel a 7.5. I’ll try their Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio later.

At least I’m feeling calm now and didn’t need to do EFT or take Ibuprofen for my back pain since they both went away on their own.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2020 It’s going to be over 10 degrees cooler today making it up to 95. I’m sure the bastard will jump out any morning now to play with his saw while it’s still pleasant. It doesn’t really heat up until late in the morning or early afternoon depending on how high the temp is expected to climb. I would still take the damn saw over the car since I always have to have something here as the car was much louder and would drive by multiple times a day every single day often waking me up. The saw isn’t every day, as loud, and it doesn’t get close to the bedroom, so the sound machines can drown it out.

No more putting up with end-of-the-day boredom. When I realize I still have three or four hours before I’m ready to start reading myself to sleep yet I’m done with everything I need to do, I’m going to hit the skier. As long as I don’t go too fast, that wouldn’t be overdoing it or harming my joints, especially since there’s no impact. It’s just a little tough on the feet.

Aly says on her not-so-secret account that she’s tired of having to explain that BLM members aren’t saying that only their lives matter and if you don’t understand this then you’re part of the problem.

I know damn well that was in regard to an RT of mine.

She asked if I decided against doing videoless tweets or if I was doing them on my private account. I told her I did some on my private account and found it a pain in the ass to have to delete the vids off my phone so they wouldn’t take up too much space and thought it looked funny with just a black video or my desktop wallpaper showing, and would rather wait and see if Androids will one day have the new voice note feature. I doubt they will, though. Either way, what I told her was mostly true. It wasn’t on my private account but everything else was true that I told her. Unless I get incredibly bored or I really want to rant about something, I don’t see myself making a regular habit of doing vid tweets.

Okay, I’m mean but I couldn’t help referring to my private account to her as Lady Rainbow when in fact it’s a random name she would never think to look for. She no doubt went looking for what she couldn’t find so she could block it from her “secret” account, LOL.

I just hope she doesn’t find my OD account. But hey, she can mention me openly even though she doesn’t use my name and I can do the same. Still, she’s part of why I LOVE OD’s expiration option. I don’t want anyone I care about to be hurt or offended needlessly.

My poll asking if 6 planes in an hour flying over you at 2K feet was excessive or not and got two yeses. I wonder if Aly voted from both of her accounts.

My Facebook Stories have stopped getting outside views so I’m almost positive they were from Kim and Aly before they both supposedly deactivated there.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 When I woke up and saw the papers sitting on the counter, I knew immediately that it was connected to the park and thought how I was going to call them up and demand they never contact us again unless it’s something they send everyone, but then I realized it wasn’t some bullshit complaint from them but from a resident that’s starting a new form of neighborhood watch. They’re pissed that the park won’t hire any kind of guard or rolling patrol, so they want to get the residents to log any suspicious activity to help make the park safer. They claim they’ll keep things confidential, but I wouldn’t trust our info if we had anything to report, to be kept from the park. God help this couple as it is because once the park gets wind of what they’re doing, the park is going to complain on them like crazy about all kinds of frivolous and fictitious things. Well, I don’t just dislike the mentally ill and the chronic liar. Try the overly sensitive/emotional as well. You complain to the park and it’s like they take it personally and feel compelled to counter-complain, though I still think Joy was a friend of Melody’s.

I can’t believe how long it’s been since we’ve heard that damn car too, not that there aren’t other annoyances. There’s always someone who comes along to make up for whoever was last annoying as hell. Like Dahl and his fucking saw. Haven’t heard it in about a week but I’m sure I will this week. Contractors/construction workers are the worst neighbors to have besides the welfare bums.

I was really hoping the planes would wait till after 6 to start their shit, but nope, the first plane flew over at 5:40 yesterday morning. So 12:40 a.m. to 5:40 a.m. will be the only hours I don’t hear them until we get the fuck out of here.

Blogger has finally forced its new and unwanted interface on me. At least on one of my blogs anyway. I have about 10 blogs there, but I rarely use most of them.

I also noticed some changes on MD and one thing I don’t like is that I can’t highlight and overwrite things in past entries. I wish people could just leave things alone! It’s change that leads to problems. Maybe if I deleted the entry before replacing it, it would work. I’ll check it out later.

I ignore most of it as I know people have a right to their opinions and beliefs. However, I’m getting sick of this “hate for whites” trend and the unfair portrayal of them that suggests whites always shit on blacks who are always innocent. It’s insulting to whites and some of us have had enough. People forget that most whites accept blacks and not all blacks are saints.

I don’t follow Norma much because her posts are so negative, bashing whites and putting blacks on pedestals. Sometimes I think of unfriending her because of it and because it would be one less connection to the termite, but that would be mean, and she would worry about me. Besides, how many more years could she possibly have left at 88 or 89? Or maybe she’s turning 90 tomorrow? I don’t know the exact age but she’s definitely over 86.

Tom gave me a great idea yesterday, though I haven’t acted on it yet. A couple of days ago, I was bitching about how I only managed to crank out one paragraph of my story since my writer’s block has been so bad. Then yesterday I got bored and was saying that I had a few more hours left to try to figure out what to do with myself since I’d already done all the things I usually do during my day, and he said to write another paragraph. That’s when I got the idea to just do a paragraph here and a paragraph there like maybe one every hour or two. Maybe this will help get me going with it.

Tom is hoping to work in an Amazon warehouse within a month or so where he can keep active and get lots of steps. That’s what he’s hoping for anyway, and to do seasonal work and maybe even transfer to a warehouse in Florida when we move. They don’t pay much, especially for being in Cali, but it would be adequate enough. He said that as long as I’m still feeling good, he may work until we put the house on the market since most of the time-consuming prep work is now done. The only other thing we have left that will be a bit of work is laying down the rocks alongside the carport. However, he’s not about to wrestle what would literally be tons of rocks in 111-degree temps. He wants to wait until it gets down in the 80s for that.

The rest of the work is indoors but some of it can’t be done until it gets close. This will consist of going through stuff and deciding what’s going and what’s not. Plus I’m going to use the heat gun to remove the wall stickers. Some of them anyway, and we’ll be leaving the murals. Gotta really scrub the appliances down too. I still think that due to its age and needing so much upgrading it’s going to end up with a flipper who will pretty much gut the place from top to bottom.

I just hope to hell Virginia stays put! I know we would happen to get someone with a loud vehicle or that was power tool-happy if she moved.

Amazon’s hiring in Vacaville for $18 an hour and giving a $500 bonus for those willing to come in at 2:30 a.m. He would take the job except that it’s an hour’s drive which would call for a really long day if he had to spend a couple of hours total on the road. That’s a bit long for him even if he didn’t hate driving.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 I hope that one year from now when I’m looking back at the On This Day section of PB, I can smile and know that the planes being back in full swing is no longer a reality for me but just a memory. Well, they’re not quite in full swing yet but they’re getting there. It’s still quiet at night, but yesterday morning, I heard 6 of them from 6:08 a.m. to 7:12 a.m. and at just a couple of thousand feet up, I call that excessive. I turned on the fan to drown out some of the sound after an hour, but I know there were more of them.

Again I wonder if I just keep happening to get the extremes or if the degree of noise I hear is actually normal even if it may be from different sources in different places. I mean, I’m not the only one in Citrus Heights. Thousands of others are hearing the same planes I hear. Those in the mainstream are hearing barking round-the-clock and I’m not. They’re also hearing more car stereos. I’m not attached to anyone, so I don’t hear their footsteps or TVs. So I’m not sure what to think. It seems noise is everywhere, but I am determined to cut back the traffic and planes when we move. I’ll still hear some loud traffic, just not so close to the house. Power tools will probably always be a nuisance no matter where we go because they’re so common now. The freeway will also be history in the next place.

I hate this time of year. We still have a couple of more months of good weather, but there’s rarely a moment of silence day or night. At 2 in the morning, even if I’m not hearing planes, landscaping or power tools, I’m still hearing the freeway. By the time it fades out again, we should be gone. It’s definitely a time of year thing and not a temperature thing because it was over 100 degrees yesterday and is going to be 111 degrees today.

I just hope to hell nothing delays the move! I thought about it and asked myself what could realistically delay it and the only thing I can really think of is if one of us had a serious illness or injury. If there is anything cursing me with noise, though, it’s not going to make it easy for us to get out of here since I know we can get a quieter place because we’ve had them before. Not every place is 1100 feet from a freeway, in a flight path, or has a busy street wrapping closely around three sides of them.

I doubt it, but I sure hope the “leaky” dream I had doesn’t mean anything. I dreamed that the rainy season was just beginning, and it was leaking by both the front and back doors. I was worried because most of the rain had yet to come and I was worried we would be forced to pay for a new roof before we could get out of here.

Had another dream where I was wandering around homeless but at least I was in Hawaii while I was at it. Someone handed me a package and it turned out to be a pair of sunglasses and a watch from my parents. I then shed tears of mixed emotions where they were concerned.

One of my nails fell off. First time that happened this long after applying them. Was able to put it back on and enforce it with a top coat.

I was glad to find that not every single set in the second to last set of nail strips is transparent after all. There are about 5 that aren’t.

I was kind of pissed that Lifetime removed one of the movies I was watching before I could finish it. I was watching Your Baby is Mine. Then again, I know exactly how it would have ended. The crazy woman would have attempted to abduct and kill the mother who would have killed or maimed the crazy lady. Then, while the crazy lady, if still alive, was carted off to jail or the funny farm, Mommy, Daddy and baby would go on to live happily ever after.

While I still love their movies, the predictable endings and a few old-fashioned stereotypes are the only things I don’t care for. There’s always a black person in each movie, of course, but there are rarely any gays or lesbians.

Also, in a day and age when most parents are single, why are they always married if they aren’t divorced or widowed in their movies?

Lastly. It bugs me how women are portrayed as weaker than men with almost all of the men winning the violent fights. Then again, there have been a few good kick-ass scenes where women have beaten the shit out of men. Still, whether we want to admit it or not, there really is a grain of truth to most stereotypes. Women were taught to be “ladylike” and not violent or to fight back 50 years ago and most of those with kids were married then too.

But when is Lifetime going to get with the times and bring their characters more up-to-date?

I managed to write one lousy paragraph of my story last night. I really think I’m beyond the point of ever getting my creative juices back again. I skimmed the first few pages I had and decided I had too many missing articles which is basically lazy writing. So I edited more than I created.

Damn, I miss my old hormones! You don’t realize how many things working hormones influence until they no longer work. I wonder if it will be worse for Aly when she gets to this point since she does erotica whereas I just do suspense. But even my suspense is usually influenced by some hottie I turn into a character where there’s a degree of romance and it’s all driven by those hormones that are now dead as are many other things.

I’m bored so much more often than I ever used to be. God’s got to kill me somewhat young because I don’t know that I can do this for another 25 years. Funny-sounding or not, fantasy takes time. Without it, I’m left with just the basics and there are only so many hours I can spend doing those things. Yet I can’t remember the last time I had a crush on someone, and I wonder if I ever will again no matter how attractive they may be, not that I’m in a position to meet many new people. Plus, with my shitty vision, I can’t even fucking see them well even with glasses. Glasses help but can never really replace good vision.

Last plane went by at 12:40, so that will be it till either 5:40 or just after 6. Wow! Five hours off from them.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2020 The nails came a day early and are quite lovely. I started with a lavender-aqua set. The lavender part looks a little more like mauve in the pictures I took but they still came out great! They’re a little thicker like the other sparkly gradients so they would be best applied when I plan on cutting my nails. My nails will grow very long if I let them but they’re a real pain in the ass to deal with when they’re long so I’m probably going to cut them every other week.

These fit well but have a plastic smell to them. I’m sure that will go away soon enough, though.

Overall my nails are looking much healthier, so I saw when I removed the last set of nail strips. However, while much of the discoloration in the thumbs is growing out, I did notice some dark spots by the tips of the nails, so as I suspected, the discoloration isn’t all from nail polish and remover. The lifting looks better as well but I love doing my nails so much that I would do them until they fell off since I hate going with bare nails, LOL. I even hate my toenails to be bare.

Decided I could let some entries never expire on OD. If I’m doing nothing but talking about nails, then who cares, right?

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2020 WTF? 56? Fitbit says my heart dipped to 56 somewhere between 9:40 - 9:45 last night. I’m guessing it was Fitbit and not me because I read that others have experienced sudden spikes and drops as well. If it happened regularly then I might worry.

If we move to one of those towns he was last investigating, we would be just 35 miles from Norma. I would love to visit her and I know he’d like her very much, but I don’t know that I could trust her to keep our location a secret even though the termites might still be smart enough to figure it out if they really wanted to if someone didn’t tell them how to find us first. Norma wouldn’t give them our address, of course, and there would be no reason to give it to Norma, but she might mention the town. Being 100 miles away from the termites is better than a few miles but still, 100 miles is a hell of a lot closer than nearly 3,000 miles, so I don’t know. We’ll just have to wait and see where we end up first since there are no guarantees yet that we’ll really move there.

The only other thing that might make me uncomfortable about visiting Norma is that she would likely bring the termites up. What am I supposed to say to that? That I know she can’t see it and that she likely wouldn’t have reason to because they have a totally different type of relationship than we ever had but the bitches really are batshit crazy and God help her if she does cross them?

Since they didn’t have his favorite soda the last couple of times we ordered groceries, he’s been drinking water like crazy. In just two days he’s noticed his skin is much softer and doesn’t look as wrinkly. I’ll try this sometime and see if it makes a difference although my sparkling water is water and I do use lotion. I don’t mind looking older so much since that’s a fact of life but if it would make my skin softer and more comfortable, why not?

In looking at my calorie intake over the days I’ve logged them, I’ve learned that I don’t quite eat as much as I thought just like I don’t sleep as much as I thought. I thought I had an average of 1500-1600 calories a day but it’s actually 1300-1400, an amount that almost anybody would lose on and that further proves I’d have to go down to an unhealthy and unsustainable 1000 calories to lose. Again, no thanks.

It’s going to be really hot Sunday and they’re talking about maybe hitting 110 degrees!

Noticed that Christiane read my message yesterday, but I haven’t gotten a reply. She could just be busy. If a week passes with nothing, then yeah, she’s ignoring me, and she’ll definitely never hear from me again.

Right or wrong, childish or not, all the free time I have and the boredom I often experience have given me plenty of opportunities to play with Alyssa, LOL. I “chat” with her as if she’s chatting back. I claimed her messages keep disappearing too.

I started to think that my old dentist, Shannan and Holly being suggested to me was indeed because they read my messages to them and the fact that Alyssa is never suggested to me means she’s not reading my messages. But then that wouldn’t explain why Dr. A and her nurse have been suggested to me. I’ve never messaged either one of them.

Argh, that’s the second time that saw cock has haunted me in my dreams! The first time, I heard its shit the very next day. Tom swears he didn’t hear him today, didn’t spend much time under the headphones, and was even outside as he has been most days.

First I dreamed of being at the beach somewhere and going down these little cement steps that lead to the shore. After I swam a bit in the ocean, I showered. Then I went back down the stairs to head somewhere else when I noticed that the bottom stair was covered in water because the tide was coming in. I hated to get my feet all wet and sandy again but saw no other choice.

Then there was something about a pet rat and my parents. It was as if even they thought it was cute the way it was so playful.

The saw dream was more than just a few seconds. The homes and yards were totally different. We had a backyard half as big as the yard we had in Phoenix and we might have had two floors. It was getting dark when the damn saw started up and it wasn’t only for a few seconds here and a few seconds there. It was a continuous and highly annoying whine instead. I ran out into our backyard where Tom was towards the back corner of it which sort of wrapped around a hedge of some kind.

“He’s at it again and it’s almost 7 p.m.!” I complained. He headed toward me and was talking and since I knew he was hard of hearing I said, “Shhh!” so he could hear it.

“I’ve had enough. I’m not going to listen to this for another 7 or 8 months. I’m going to find out why he does this so often.”

So I cut through our place and as I was pushing the front screen door open which faced his place, I noticed he embossed his name and occupation on a plastic strip sticker he stuck to the inside of the handle of the screen door in hopes of getting more work. The name might have said Michael K, and he listed his occupation as a mechanic. In reality, I’m sure he’s just your garden variety contractor.

I went out the front door with it in mind to ask why there was so much sawing over there and if he was prepping to sell the place or something and hopefully drop enough hints without having to spell it out that it’s quite loud in our place and not just frequent.

Instead of having a carport, he had a double-car garage which he sat inside. He looked younger, though, and a woman, also younger with long light brown hair, came up behind him and they kissed.

A split second later, there were a few other people chatting with him and I realized it wouldn’t be a good time to question him since it didn’t involve the others and there was still the virus to consider.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 We went to the store earlier and I got some wine and Jelly Bellies. On our way out was when I realized that the park isn’t quite as gated as I thought. I’m surprised it took me this long to realize this but when I thought of how some people mentioned homeless people coming in through the creek, I saw that the fence didn’t run across the creek and connect to the fences running alongside the backyards of the properties on the other side that aren’t part of the park. So technically, anyone could walk into the park if you went through that small section which would also explain how the occasional stray dog can wander in like that German Shepherd I saw a few times. This is a pretty good area in general, though, so I doubt many homeless people even know about that one little gap in the fence let alone hang out in that area very often. It’s pretty out of the way and not something you would easily come across.

It’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye on if I’m out walking in the middle of the night, but the skunks have pretty much put a damper on that. Besides, as much as I love walking around the park, I do have to get used to indoor walking because I can’t see myself taking walks regularly in Florida due to the humidity, and the alligators there are even more reasons not to go out at night since gated or not, those things are nocturnal. They don’t seem to have as many gated communities in Florida from what we can tell, at least not when it comes to adult communities. In Florida, I would be swimming and bike riding more than I would be walking or jogging.

Tom says he hasn’t heard any sawing and I wonder if it’s because the sawing occurred when he had the headphones on or if the fucking cock across the street is just waiting until I’m on days again. If there really is a noise curse aimed at me, then I guess he would be quiet for a few more days.

We’ve got another triple-digit heatwave coming up, but that doesn’t stop the bastard. He jumps out, cuts what he wants, then jumps back indoors. And back and forth and back and forth.

I had this weird dream where we lived right by a river. The place sort of extended over the river. It didn’t look like Florida at all. We jumped in the car and drove on this freeway that kind of curved above and around the area which looked very industrialized. There was a little dock across from our place and as we drove alongside the river and against the current, I realized that the water that passed our place traveled quite a ways before it got to us.

Then I had an even stranger dream where I literally lost part of my outer upper arm and shoulder bone. Only the end of the arm bone didn’t bulk out like in reality. Instead, it just made a gentle curve toward my shoulder. It was about 5 inches long and was brownish-black and I wondered if I now weighed less as I curiously inspected the bone.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2020 Fell asleep around 5 and woke up right before 8 to pee. It was then that I realized I was nauseous and had likely eaten something bad. Probably the tilapia which was the last thing I ate before bed. I had noticed a funny little spot on it but didn’t think much of it. I took a Tums and lay there for a while with nausea coming and going in waves until I finally puked. Fortunately, I didn’t get as bad as the last time I experienced food poisoning since it didn’t last as long, and I didn’t have the runs. A few hours later I fell back asleep for a few more hours, so I’m a little tired today but not as tired as I could be. My stomach is still a bit queasy too, but I doubt I’ll throw up again.

Funny how I don’t puke since the late '90s in Phoenix – not in Maricopa, not in K-Falls, not in Auburn – then I come here and puke TWICE. The last time was a year or two ago.

Fitbit thinks my heart spiked to 163 after I got up. Hope that’s wrong and that I didn’t A-fib.

Even though I’ve known Aly for a dozen years now, we continue to really get to know and understand each other which is nice. I think she understands that some bad experiences mean you don’t go back to where you were before. You go through medical trauma like I did, you don’t quite go back to where you were. Just like you don’t quite see some people in the same light after you go through the legal shit I went through in Arizona. As I told her, I can totally see how a woman being raped could really change her view of men and even become violent and abusive towards them in the future.

So do I have a problem with the black person who treats me with kindness and respect at a doctor’s office or in some store or wherever? Absolutely not. Do I have a problem with them as a whole? Yeah, kind of, but then the older I get, like most older people, I just don’t care for people in general no matter who or what they are.

Right or wrong, I like to check crime rates and “pies” when considering moving to a new area. I would prefer 70 to 75% vanilla.

Tampa is predominantly black and can be dangerous as well. Raj and Tina up in Oregon told me they hated it there and had problems with blacks there as did other family members. I don’t care if I have to shop with certain people, I just would prefer not to live with them. So Tom began checking out this new area that he hadn’t checked out or considered before and that’s the northern part of the Gulf Coast. Towns like Palm Harbor, Largo, Port Richey and Clearwater are predominantly white, but they’re close enough to Tampa if you ever need to go to the city for something that’s not in the smaller towns.

The problem with Venice is that their space rents are too high, almost comparable to here. In this area, they go down to the 400s. That’s a third of this place! It would probably be an old dumpy single-wide. Even though it would be in a park and I’m sure the neighbors would find a way to annoy me, it would only be for a few months and it would be fun to be able to bike ride just a mile away to the beach during that time. I’m definitely not going to want to stay there and have those big loud commercial mowers come right up to the bedroom window when I’m sleeping, even if it wouldn’t be an everyday event like the loud blowers are here. I also have no reason not to believe that motorcycles and power tools wouldn’t be a regular annoyance as well.

The Palm Harbor area is about 100 miles away from the termites which is comforting. Any less than that, and there’s a risk of them driving to us if they found out our address. I wouldn’t put it past them to “surprise” us by doing that. We’re still going to do what we’re going to do, though. If we find the perfect place on the Atlantic side that’s near them, so be it. But the gulf side is more appealing. They would be likelier to have smaller cruise ships, and the waves would be a little tamer than on the other side.

I still do intend to get things off my chest by sharing those excerpts, and when it comes time to do that, I’ll temporarily deactivate on Facebook so Sarah can’t create a new account to come at me from.

Tom got a strange text from Vermont asking, “Are you Tom S?” He didn’t reply, assuming it’s connected to something he signed up for and they just want to sell him something. If it’s really that important, they can elaborate from there.

This is kind of weird, though I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Maybe someone they knew found their account. There was a new account, Aloha, on PB and we hit it off right away, exchanging comments and all that. Pretty sure they were in Reno. I recently noticed they deleted their account but I’m still seeing Reno on my visitor list, so they must have created a new account. Why haven’t they contacted me, though?

I’ve only heard two planes since I’ve been up, so they’re not up to maximum annoyance yet.

We hope to fly out of here first class but that will only be if it wouldn’t impact our plans for when we got to Florida. I was laughing with Tom earlier thinking how different of an exit that would be compared to how we came in. We came into the state in a dumpy old truck, so to leave first class would be quite a step up.

When I finally fell back to sleep after puking, it was off to another popular negative dream theme for me and that’s the stolen purse dream. I didn’t know Tom in the dream. I lived in a huge building. Not sure if it was some kind of apartment building or hotel but my mother, who seemed to be around 50, worked in the building as a housekeeper.

I went to watch a movie in a community lounge with three other people who were in their 20s or so. There was a closet with an open door just off of it where you could put your coat and purse. Bored with the movie, I got up and grabbed something be it a sweater or something else, and then looked down at a royal blue purse of mine that sat inside a larger bag. I thought of taking it with me but then decided it would be okay since I would be back soon. So I took off even though I thought better of it and had a bad feeling. The more that feeling came over me, I decided to head back to the now-empty lounge and found someone had stolen the purse.

Then I ran and found my “mother” and told her that while they didn’t get any cash, my license, passport and credit card had been in the bag. I began to panic and feel overwhelmed when I thought of all I would have to do to try to stop the person from ripping me off and maybe even stealing my identity all because I was too lazy to take the damn purse with me.

It took a year and a half, but I finally had a weak moment and messaged Christiane. Or Lisette or whatever her real name is. She doesn’t appear to have read my message which is a little surprising because her last check-in appears to be a day ago. I don’t know what’s going on in her life so I can’t say if she just hasn’t checked her messages, or if she read it, marked it as unread, and plans to blow me off. Right now my feeling is that she’s blowing me off because I didn’t just ask about her. I asked about Nane as well. Time will tell!

I’m bad, LOL, cuz I also messaged sexy doc as if we were having a live chat. Plus, I created “nicknames” which you can now do and which both sides see. So she’s Sexy Doc and I’m Gulf Girl, haha.

It was nice to find that OD now allows free members. I just can’t code my entries for tracking because they don’t allow links for free members but that’s okay. It’s not really necessary there. What I love about it is that I can choose to have entries expire in 24 hours or a week. I decided to go with a week. That way I can drop my thoughts on the world and feel like I can be more open in a place that Aly doesn’t use as far as I know, and the posts don’t have as much time to be discovered with them expiring. I’ve disabled comments because I may get a little more controversial there.

[bardic-perdita]

8, 9, and 10 for shrike? :>

Thank you for the ask! These were really fun to answer so the responses got a little long!

8. Being the head of a temple comes with lots of tedious work, did they truly manage all of it or did they try to outsource the best they could?

Shrike finds it difficult to learn anything that isn't directly tied to their interest in fighting (and gratuitous violence). Their knowledge on medicine, weaponry, armour, military strategy both historical and cutting-edge is unparalleled. However, filing taxes, collecting tithes, and renewing temple licenses is not something they would find easy to wrap their head around. Their rise to leadership was due to their bloodline and their sheer force of personality: when they talk albeit rarely, people stop to listen. They would delegate as much of the tedious paperwork and statuatory duties to Sceleritas, or any other willing volunteer. For anything that requires their specific input, they'd seek out the assistance of a certain Banite that has an excellent working knowledge of the city's regulations and infrastructure.

Shrike prefers to spend their time training their clergy, imparting their wealth of knowledge to their otherwise amateur blood-thirsty assassins. They would enforce a strict discipline to their work, making the temple the most ruthlessly efficient it has been for generations. Paperwork should be left for more delicate hands than theirs.

9. The Feast of the Moon is a Bhaalian ritual where priests told the stories of particularly interesting or unique kills. Was one of your Durge's deeds ever discussed, or perhaps even turned into a beloved and often retold story?

Whilst Shrike was a paladin of vengeance, they had no shortage of notable kills intended to signal the impending threat as they closed in on their adoptive father. Their status as a paladin gave them some leeway for their overt violence and they relished mangling their victim's bodies in such a way to strike terror into any potential wrongdoer that dared to associate with their criminal gang. They weren't artistic with their presentation, like Orin sought to be, rather they allowed the senselessness and extremity of the murder speak for itself. Their reign of terror across the sword coast as the 'Blood-Soaked Knight' became an often recounted story by many of their followers, although much of its noble origins were lost in the retelling. They have a paladin's pride in their actions, and would proudly tell their tale to any and all who ask to hear it.

Their kills as a Bhaal leader and Oathbreaker are no less subtle, although lack the purposefulness and artistry of their former assassinations. They do not hide their murderous intent behind shadows or illusion, instead they don their plate armour and stalk their victim; like the spectre of death itself, their victim knows Shrike is coming for them and there is no way to hide or escape. They are feared not because their victim does not know if they will be attacked; they are feared because their victim knows that their death is inevitable. Their victims hardly get a chance to fight back as Shrike's strength and divine smite cut them down with ease. It is a duty they carry out diligently and reverently, doing all they can to maintain their father's divine favour. Shrike believes in the inherent value of life, which is why they understand the significance of taking a life in their father's name. They see Orin's playfulness as an affront to Bhaal's doctrine, causing the rift to form between them. Yet, it is still Shrike's kills that are discussed more often than Orin's extravagant masterpieces.

10. Speaking of, Day's farewell was another ritual everyone of the clergy had to attend as evening dawned over Faerûn. But was it really everyone that came to the gathering, or did a particular Bhaalist sneak out at times or outright refuse attendance? Did they maybe even appear early, eagerly awaiting another service?

Due to their military background, Shrike appreciates the value of routine and rituals to maintain order and discipline. Nobody understands the importance of keeping a small army of assassins in line more than Shrike. Attendance to Day's Farewell was mandatory and they enforced it strictly. One particularly wayward bhaalist repeatedly refused to attend, choosing instead to act on his own whims rather than following Shrike's express orders, so they made an example of him during one of these rituals. The display was so horrific, even for a clergy of hardened assassins, that even the mere mention of that sacrificed bhaalist's name was enough to scare the congregation into attending Day's Farewell every single night.

[wondereads]

Personal Review

Guardians of Dawn: Zhara by S. Jae-Jones

Summary

Zhara gets by as her stepmother's servant and a apothecary's assistant, but it's more than she could hope for as a magician in a land where magic has long since been outlawed. Han is prince and heir, but all he wants to be is normal, and certainly not married off to a northerner he's never met. They meet by chance, but it couldn't come at a better time as magicians start disappearing and transforming into monsters—abominations.

Plot 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

The plot had no glaring issues, but it wasn't anything special either. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amelie Wen Zhao; (a form of) magic is forbidden, a girl has a special capability for it, she encounters a secret society dedicated to preserving it and its history, which have been nearly eradicated by invading forces, only to find out an ancient evil is waking up and must be battled. There were plenty of things distinguishing them, but it just stuck in my mind while reading this how...unoriginal the plot was.

I will say there were a couple of twists at the end that took me by surprise, but for the most part the plot moved sort of aimlessly and predictably. Even the twists I mentioned sort of had no lasting effect on the plot; betrayals were forgiven and mistakes were mended with seemingly no consequences.

The worldbuilding concerning specifically the magic of this world was probably the most compelling part of this book. Zhara's powers are very intriguing, and I feel like enough is given in this book while still preserving a lot of information for future installments. However, the actual worldbuilding, as in the physical world around them, is pretty underdeveloped. I can't get a grasp on the political situation, and many other lands are mentioned but they are rarely elaborated upon. I wish some of the time Han spent pining after Zhara was replaced with the actual details of his position. Also, there was one thing in particular that absolutely ruined my immersion that I will discuss more in my writing section.

Characters 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Zhara is a character with a lot of potential, but she isn't really properly developed in this book. She is obviously plagued by insecurities and in a constant state of fear thanks to her upbringing, but it seems that we often lose focus on that thanks to the unending focus on the romance. Han...honestly just holds no interest for me. I initially thought he was sweet, and he is, but he has very little depth. He cares for his little brother and Zhara, and he's ridiculously ignorant/innocent, and that's it.

Which brings me to the romance which, while very cute, was sickeningly so. While there is technically a period of some mutual pining, this feels very like instalove in that there are almost instant romantic feelings and then it feels like all either of them can focus on. I'd probably be more invested in their relationship if it weren't everything anyone ever talked about. If they didn't prioritize it over much more important things. If Zhara and Han didn't forget about major occurrences in their lives in favor of developing their relationship. It was just very frustrating.

As for the side characters, they were one-dimensional. Xu is flirtatious and almost motherly to Han, Jiyi is cold and grumpy, the adults are there to...lore dump? I felt virtually nothing concerning any of them. Except maybe Sajah. That's the cat. I will also note that there is disability rep in this book; Zhara has a stutter and her stepsister, Suzhan, is partially blind, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm not disabled, but it felt wrong that they are belittled for their disabilities all throughout the book—and often thought less of themselves for it—just for Suzhan to have one throwaway line about accepting herself and Zhara to...never mention it again? I don't know, it doesn't sit right with me.

Writing Style 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Oh, dear, the writing. Now, Jae-Jones gave a very nice explanation of their use of language in this book at the very beginning, one I very much appreciated. It made me a lot more forgiving of the use of terms like "masquerade ball" which feels very western for an East Asia-inspired world. However, it doesn't change that this writing feels like it's meant for a middle grade audience at best. The content is obviously meant for YA, but the actual writing feels very juvenile. For example, Zhara is afflicted with Good-Looking Giggling where she uncontrollably giggles around attractive people. Not to mention the truly insane amount of suggestive jokes throughout the whole book. It was just weird to read.

And then we get to the most egregious offense of the book that completely ruined my immersion. The Bangtan Brothers. Now for those of you who don't know, popular kpop group BTS is also known as Bangtan Sonyeondan (it translates to Bulletproof Boy Scouts). At first I thought this was a throwaway joke to be mentioned once as a little inside joke, but no. BTS—sorry, the Bangtan Brothers, are active members of the Guardians of Dawn who are supposed to help Zhara escape the city. There are multiple, obvious references to the real world BTS, and it got painful to read. As an ARMY, it was without a doubt the worst part of the book.

Overall 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

While this review has been primarily negative, this book is not irredeemable. The plot is unoriginal but not nonsensical or boring, the magic is super interesting, and Zhara has a lot of potential as a character. However, most of the characters are one-dimensional and uncompelling and the writing is...not good. I was pretty disappointed by this read, which sucks because I think it had a lot of potential. Feel free to give this book a try, but I don't recommend it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a free eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I post a reading update every week and reviews every once in a while. I take suggestions! Check out my pinned post for more!