#john lash lamb

[princessbrunette]

what would the readers be doing in the little commercial? 🥺

omg good idea !!!!!! ♡

bunny!reader would be running the show. she’s a beauty pageant girl at heart and she knows how to run the show. they’d get her to do the majority of the talking, flipping her hair and showing off her pearly whites. her beauty pageant side even comes out when directing the other pogues too. “smile john b! bigger! no not like that silly. that’s a grimace. you’re gonna scare your customers away!” “amazing job popey! did so good!” “jj do you need to use the bathroom? why are you so tense?” all whilst batting her lashes. to be honest, they only put her at the forefront of the operation because they knew a pretty girl in a tight top would draw in the most customers.

kitty!reader would be joining forces with kiara during her part of the commercial. they’d offer chakra readings, and kitty!readers speciality would be judging people based on their aura. but really the customer would walk up to her and she’d just go “ew! your aura reeks!” before they can get a word out. soon after she is ushered to do work at the back of the shop like bagging goods and sticking labels on things.

deer!reader is behind the camera doing all the directorial work. she always fancied herself a bit of a director / producer, but has always been too shy to do so, so it’s fun to explore that with a group of people she’s comfortable with. she is really patient when they mess up and the commercial ends up being way better than it was.

puppy!reader isn’t trusted with being in the commercial but she’s in the background of every shot— running around, swinging on the tire swing, knocking things off shelves. she’s an integral part of the commercial and she doesn’t even fully realise it.

lamb!reader sees them making the commercial and decides it’s nowhere near good enough. “this isnt going to bring in any customers. you need some help, and i don’t just mean from the lord.” she’s the one that gets them all the fancy gadgets like the drone, a better camera, she even rearranges and tidies their shop floor to make it more presentable.

mouse!reader is too shy to be in the commercial, but she wanders around keeping herself busy whilst they film it. in each shot they realise things go missing in the background, not realising she was walking around, browsing, and stuffing the things she wanted in her purse. she could have just asked for it, they probably would have given it to her — but she just loves to be a little thief.

[purplelupins]

Lamb

|Midnight Mass|

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

Father Paul Hill/John Pruitt x fem!reader

Word count: 13.7k

Summery: An entire life of being a good girl was a difficult cross to carry...especially in a tiny town with 127 residents on a good day. You kept the town fed and spirits as high as you could, but when a new face steps off the afternoon Breeze, things around you start to change; you don't even know you're in the eye of the storm.

Warnings: nsfw, reader is religious, religious symbolism, ideology, explanations and general conversations of religion, age gap (like this man is 80 technically and he watched reader grow up, and can remember reader as a little girl so if that’s creepy to you then go no further), stalking, manipulation, murder (hello have you seen the show?), drinking of blood, hunting of a person, grief, description of animal death, reader is described as blushing, character death, non consensual help showering, guilt and god maybe more but I think that’s it…this is not really a fix it fic

Notes: this is it…the final chapter of Lamb! Thank you all so much for reading…thank you to everyone who has supported me and commented and given me feedback. I love each and every one of you. It’s been a pleasure.

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It was nearly noon when you stirred.

You had expected to awaken in bed, just as you usually did these days when you dozed off; it was not a pillow under your cheek that morning, though. There was a steady rise and fall under your ear, and a security to where you lay. You slowly cracked your eyes open, and took in where you were. Certainly you remembered falling asleep on the couch, but you did not recall laying on Father Pruitt. And yet there he was slumped uncomfortably against the wooden arm on the couch with you pulled over his chest and into his lap like a makeshift blanket.

You had assumed he generally didn’t sleep- either didn’t need it or didn’t choose to. However as you looked down at the peaceful man, you found you were wrong. As you rose your head, those dark lashes of his brushed his cheeks as he lay under you in a slumber. You stilled and stared so as to not rouse him; whether it was out of fear of waking the beast, or manners for not stirring your host, you were not sure.

It seemed fate would come to your aid. Father John’s brow twitched in the same way it used to when he would start to fall asleep during a lengthy conversation after Mass when his hair was grey. His wrinkled face would go lax, and he would slump slightly then catch himself and pass it off as him thinking.

You watched his eyes slowly crack open, then it seemed his senses returned to him all at once as he sat up a fraction a little too fast. You fell a little forward and caught yourself on his shoulder and he caught your waist and your upper arm.

“Oh I’m- I must’ve…-“ he trailed off as sleep still gripped him.

You watched him wake up and laugh a little at the slight awkwardness of it. Then he seemed to finally realize that you too had only just awoken.

“You slept.” He stated, voice thick with tiredness.

You nodded.

“I’m sorry I- well I would have moved you, but I didn’t want to…” he could have stopped there and it would have been true too, “…wake you.” He added.

Your silence made him swallow. Making him nervous was not your intent, though somehow seeing him a little uncomfortable made you enjoy your position a little more.

After a moment he sighed and gently guided both of you to sit up and he pulled at the neckline of the sleep dress you wore. You tilted your head away from him for a better view, and the action itself made his nostrils flare.

So trusting for me…

“No more bleeding. Well done little one.” He hummed.

You waited for him to put the fabric back, which he did after another moment; a gentle sweep of his fingers over your collar bone. Soft and unhurried. Nothing like you had seen and felt from the other men of the island. Rough hugs and claps on your shoulder or an entitled hand on your back. Anything but ginger and gentle.

“Why me, Father?” You whispered suddenly. It was a question that you had repeated over and over until your throat went dry. Why me? Why me God, why me?

John sighed out through his nose. You had always been one to not shy from difficult questions. He could remember your mother chastising you when you would pose such queries to the aging Monsignor at 10 in the morning. He tucked his chin to his chest as he thought then turned back to you, eyes soft.

“Because you were perfect.” He muttered.

Neither Eve nor Lilith. You were neither made from his rib nor from the same soil as he, and John basked in that realization. You were his lamb. A willing and trusting creature who only wanted a Shepard, yet so tempting in its soft flesh and sweet smell.

His words hung in your ears. You nodded- not in understanding, because you did not understand, but because it was a truth he believed. You hoped you would come to understand it, too.

You sat up off his lap, and stretched- the bones in your back popped and your tentons pulled against tissue until you were satisfied.

John watched you unabashedly, a small smile on his mouth at the sight of you.

“I don’t think you know this…but you were always my favourite.” Came his low rumble of a voice beside you.

You settled, and looked over to where he was already turned towards you. “What do you mean?” You asked.

He breathed out a laugh, “It look me a while to remember, but over several months the pieces of my fading mind slowly fell together. I remember always enjoying your company…your dedication, your selflessness and selfishness…your curiosity…so sweet.” John recalled the last twenty odd years following your birth. The birth of a child on Crockett was always a true gift. He had watched you go from smiling and wailing in your mother’s arms to walking down Main Street as fast as your chubby legs could, to you being the last remaining light of the island as you pedalled to the marina with the stiff sea breeze sobering you.

Even in his deteriorating body he loved seeing that little face, in and outside St. Patrick’s. Your wit and comforting nature. The look of regret and apology tugging your pretty mouth into a frown when you would see the filthy floors of the church after a rainy day. How the sunshine of summer mornings would reflect off your face through the church windows. Those dresses you would wear under your warm sweaters; colours of lush fauna, blue skys and spring.

You listened to him, and watched as the good Father seemed lost in thought.

“I don’t know if you remember when my family left…but I was so scared. Independence had always been something I was used to, but something about loneliness…I suppose what I’m trying to say is St. Patrick’s was a home for me.” You returned his thoughtfulness with your own.

John smiled again to himself and patted your hands that sat on your thighs, “And it will always be a home for you…even when it stands in ruins.” He murmured.

You sucked in a breath, and looked away. His stare grew far too intense for you at times.

“Come…you need to eat, sweetheart.” Father John sighed and stood, his hands outstretched to help you up. You took his hands, and let him make you food.

The supplies for the island were simple and repetitive. Nothing fancy. It had been months of similar meals and uninteresting ingredients, but you found that you couldn’t complain. You were alive, and that was what mattered.

“Can I ask you something?” John’s chest rumbled as he spoke across from you at his desk.

You looked up from the book you had been reading- your knees tucked up to your chest in the old chair. “Go ahead.”

The Father took a moment to think of the best phrasing while he put his pen down. This had been something that ate away at him for months, but it had never been an appropriate time to ask it. He prayed this was a corrected time now.

“That night…Easter…you came back. You didn’t look afraid…sad and horrified, yes, but not afraid…” he said, “I was afraid. I was grieving…why were you not afraid?”

You looked away, and thought.

“I was afraid but not…not of what you think,” Your eyes glazed over as you recalled that night. How the church smelled of candle wax and iron and wet wood, “I thought I was going to die that night. I did. And I was okay with that. It wasn’t death that frightened me. There was something else that did.”

He hung onto every word, “What was it, my child?”

You swallowed and finally looked up at him, “You- you weren’t violent. When you first got back to Crockett you weren’t violent.” You shook your head.

Your statement surprised him.

“Well- I - had my limit…Joe- well��he suffered but…I suppose that was a circumstantial thing…for the majority of the time yes I was…fairly docile.” He nodded along.

You felt your throat tighten and your nose prickled, “Then why did they rip their families to shreds? Why did they attack like that…they were possessed,” you said and shook your head, “What scared me and still scares me, Father , is that I think those people were just looking for an excuse to be savage. I knew Wade and Dolly so well and I had to pull a Leeza away from them…their own daughter…are we all just…savages safeguarded by laws and manners and faith? What scares me is that I wonder what they really are capable of. And now that…I’m weaker than them, I would be defenceless. It’s the suppressed urges that scare me.” Your voice trembled.

Father Pruitt hadn’t entirely thought of it in such a way. But once you laid out what the islanders had done in that manner, he found himself a little more horrified.

“I can understand why.” He leaned back and rubbed his brow, “I haven’t…I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

You nodded, “It’s why I run, I can handle dying. I can handle God. But the thought of being torn apart and drained by people I loved is what scares me.”

John regarded you- his cupids now pulled into a straight line.

“I know you’re sorry, Father…it’s not you that scares me.” You said gently. You opened your book and picked up where you had left off; leaving the older man to stew and mull over your answer to his question.

Father Pruitt pulled his messenger bag over his shoulder, and sighed as he readied himself for Mass. The black button-up plus that crisp white collar were back in place from his sweater. He took a quick breath as if to say something, then he seemed to decide against it.

You watched from your spot on the couch, and waited to see if he would give into the itch and say what was on his mind-

“You…you can come. If you’d like.” He tried to say it far more casually than he felt, and it showed.

You stifled a laugh, “To a church full of v-“

“I know…just…I thought you might miss it.” He stumbled a little to correct himself. He missed seeing you there. He missed feeling your glow.

You thought for a long minute. You did miss it. You missed the church, you missed seeing other faces…you missed hearing his sermons and the hymns.

“I do…” you whispered.

“Then come. I promise you will not be harmed, there’s been a steady supply and everyone is fed. I promise you.” He spoke almost pleadingly.

You stared up at him, and clenched your jaw.

John’s chest ached. Too soon. “I’m…I’m sorry I shouldn’t have-“

“Okay.”

The ache tightened, but it hurt so nicely. He looked at you in the eyes, “…okay?” He repeated.

You nodded.

A rush of air left Father Pruitt’s lungs in shock, “Okay. Okay…okay, c’mon, little one.” He held out his hand to beckon you to him.

You stood and padded to the bedroom to retrieve a pair of wool tights and a sweater to have over your dress. When you returned, Father John already had your coat and boots ready for you. It was only a short walk, but the church had always been drafty, and winters were not kind on Crockett.

He helped you into your shoes and closed your coat, “There. Now come along. You’ll sit at the front…no one sits there anymore.” He thought aloud.

But you weren’t listening. You were watching that handsome face as he fretted over you. It was so much all at once how he looked after you. Too much but not enough.

What you didn’t expect was how he took your hand in his larger one and guided you down the rectory steps and out past the cemetery and the rec centre. You had noticed ages ago how many new graves there were, though you never mentioned it.

Father Pruitt drew small, soothing circles along your knuckles and led you up through the back vestibule of the church.

You held your breath and paused in the doorway. The last time you had been there, Erin had shot Bev in the chest. You sucked in a sharp breath suddenly and it hurt your lungs.

You needed to do this.

Closure.

Though you wished that Bev was still on Crockett. You would have enjoyed giving her a piece of your mind now that you weren’t terrified. But alas, she was a long gone pile of dust.

“"When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?"…He is with you, little one. If I am not enough then know that He is with you.” The Father bent to murmur in your ear.

You swallowed the saliva that had pooled in your mouth and nodded.

He took that as an invitation to proceed. You stayed with him as he retrieved his green chasuble and slipped it over his head.

“Ordinary time…” you whispered to yourself.

John pretended not to hear you, and continued on. He knew you were reliving and processing what he had put you through.

When he filed out to the body of the church, he placed a gentle hand on your back and pointed to the front pew where Beverly used to sit, “Everyone thinks that spot is haunted by Ms.Keene. I assure you it is not. You can sit there.”

You looked from the pew to him and felt anxiety start to fill you.

John turned back to you and brought his hands up to cradle your soft face.

“I am with you. You will not leave my sight I promise.” With that, he placed a small kiss on your forehead, and released you.

Trust.

You took another shuttering breath in, and out, then stepped out into St. Patrick’s. It was still empty, and your footsteps echoed in the bare building. You looked down at the floorboards, and at the stairs to the pulpit, then finally you dared to look down the aisle to the door. Flashes of Easter make you blink hard to force them away. Now there was no blood, nothing left to portray the carnage that occurred there.

You eyes fell upon the crucifix, and you forced yourself to sit down in the pew. You needed watchful eyes on you that night. Your fear began to bubble up into your throat and constricted it. You needed to not be alone.

You reached into your coat pocket, and clutched your rosary, and you began to pray.

“Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom God's love commits me here, Ever this day, be at my side, To light and guard, Rule and guide. Amen.” You whispered to yourself.

John still stood in the vestibule, readying the communion when he heard your little voice start to pray. He swallowed thickly at the memory of last muttering that same prayer; clutching at his stomach and screaming for that winged beast to come to him…he might have given into the grief, but John had long since worked through the guilt that did eventually come, contrary to what he told Riley. Instead, he blinked a few times, and began to recite the prayer with you under his breath.

The doors to the church were opened, and your baby hairs stood on end.

“Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom God's love commits me here, Ever this day, be at my side, To light and guard, Rule and guide. Amen.” You finished and crossed yourself.

There were slow footsteps as parishioners entered, and noticed you. You knew they noticed you by the way conversations stopped and whispers began. You didn’t dare look behind you.

No one approached you, just like your Father had told you. You kept waiting for someone to grow bold and take a seat beside you, but it never came. Even as you all rose for the hymn, and began to sing, you remained alone and untouched.

You sang quietly, and kept your eyes low until Father Pruitt passed you and took his place at the pulpit in front of you. You had to crane your neck now to look up at him, and you found a twinge of pain there in your shoulder from the bite. A cruel reminder.

“Good evening everyone…here we are again as Christmas approaches and the New Year. It’s during this time of year when I am reminded of gifts. Gifts come in so many shapes and forms…at so many times. A shiny new bike, a gift card, a new dress…wrapped up and then torn apart to emphasise the excitement…then there are other kinds of gifts. The gift of seeing a loved one again. A child, a new house, a hot meal. Sometimes a gift can come in the form of a person. Jesus was a gift to mankind…our Lord and our Savour who leads us even though he has left us…” he spoke gently, and you found yourself softening. You felt like you were listening to your Monsignor again. No agenda…no manipulation. Just a man with a collar trying to remind people of God.

“People can be the biggest blessings…we give each other connection, and we empower each other. We can remind each other of better times and push each other to move forward. To recover, to learn, to get out of our comfort zones. To be more pious and to think of God more. People can be reminders for each other just as much as a crucifix…Gifts. Meant to be treasured…” he glanced down at you, and his heart swelled at the sight of you being there, “And cared for. We must nurture and care for those around us who remind us of God, and who push us to be better. We must be selfless for them.”

You listened to him, and rolled your rosary over your fingers. Like little drops of water. The last memory you had of being in church was full of so much fright and anxiety as you tried to get a grip on yourself- telling yourself everything was fine when it evidently hadn’t been. You sometimes wondered what would have happened if you had listened to your gut and left long before Easter. Would you have lived? Or would you have returned to Crockett after to come home only to be devoured at night because you didn’t know about the islands nightly tendencies? Was there any way to escape or were you doomed from the start?

You didn’t stand in line for the Eucharist. You didn’t watch the rest of the flock accept it. But as the final person left to sit down, you heard your name being called gently. You slowly rose your gaze, and met with Father Pruitt standing just feet from you.

“Body of Christ, little one.” He said to you, wafer in hand. You took a moment to catch up with his offering, and when you saw a paper cup in his other hand, you gave in.

“Amen.” You held your hands out to accept it the wafer, and let it dissolve on your tongue.

“Blood of Christ, little one.” He said, holding out the cup to you. You flicked your eyes up to his for just a moment.

Trust.

“Amen.”

You leaned forward, and let him tip the cup’s contents into your mouth. Your tongue was flooded with grape juice.

John watched you proudly, and finished service.

You didn’t stay. You couldn’t. Of course you wanted to see Annie, and to hold Leeza and to look Dolly in the eye. But you couldn’t. The thought alone had your stomach churning with upset. You wordlessly brushed past Father Pruitt as he descended the stairs to bid his parish a goodnight, and he watched you go. You slipped out the back door and ran back inside the rectory and slammed and locked the door.

You ripped off your coat and hung it up with shaking hands, and toed off your boots and yanked off your tights because everything felt too tight and too warm and too itchy all at once and you couldn’t breath.

You turned off the lights and ran into the bedroom and pulled the blankets up and over your head as you tried to find an equilibrium in your breathing. Your ears were ringing and your stomach felt uncomfortable like you had either eaten far too much or far too little.

After a while, you heard knocking on the front door. Your nerves lit up at the idea of one of the islanders being the visitor. Your stomach only dropped further when you heard keys. You knew Father Pruitt was the only one with keys, or so he said. What if this was all a trap? What is he asked you to come that night so he could let the parishioners on you? What if he was lying all along? What if-

“Y/n?” Came that low hum of a voice that you had grown to know. You still didn’t move. What if he had other people with him?

You could hear footsteps coming closer. You pulled the covers closer, and tried to hold your breath.

“Little one, what are you doing?” Came his gentle whisper.

You didn’t reply, staying as still as you could.

He sighed.

“Give me your hand, my sweet girl.”

You didn’t.

“Trust me.”

You slowly moved your arm and released the death grip you had on the blanket to produce your hand to him.

John tutted your palm where little crescent moons were etched into your skin where you had clenched your fists.

You felt him take your hand, and raise it up until you felt him press it against his cheek.

“See? I’m here…you’re okay.” He whispered into your skin and leaned into your touch. You moved your fingers over his cheekbone and along his jaw, then down over the corner of his mouth and over his Cupid’s bow until you returned to holding his face. You felt the light press of a kiss to your palm, and your breath hitched.

“Come here, sweetheart…”

You very slowly pulled the blanket off your head and turned your head up to peak around the room. It was dark. So dark. You knew he didn’t need the lights on to see you clearly, and when your eyes found his, his gaze were two pinpricks of light bouncing off his pupils.

With his other hand, he coaxed the blanket off you a bit further until your thighs poked out.

“There she is…” he whispered, and pulled on your hand to sit up until he was sitting beside you and guiding you into his lap,“You did so good, I’m so proud of you, my girl.”

Your limp grip on his shoulders tightened quickly until you were wrapping your legs around his hips and locking your arms around his shoulders; face buried in his neck.

John exhaled into your hair as your scent flooded his senses.

“I’m sorry I ran…” you murmured.

“Shh..nothing to apologise for.” He kissed your temple, and pretended to not notice how your legs tightened around him. How close you were.

“I know they want to see me…I just…I don’t think I can…” you sniffled.

“That’s alright…they understand.” He cooed, stroking your hair.

You sighed and suddenly felt so embrasssed for running. You felt like a child.

“Do you want to go for a walk?” He breathed against the crown of your hair.

You shook your head.

“Do you want to come sit with me? I can read you one of those terrible German fairytales.” He offered.

You laughed shakily, “I’d rather go back to the church, Father.”

He laughed with you, and you enjoyed the vibrations it made in his chest. You slowly pulled away from him, but kept your gaze lowered to his chest. You thought you were stronger than that.

His sigh fanned over your forehead, and his finger came under your chin to tilt your face up to his. Your eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and you could see his face. His breath mingled with yours, and you swallowed it down.

“Come sit with me.” He said gently, “Keep an old man company.”

You relented and untangled yourself from him.

“Slowly…there you go.” He helped you to stand, and put a hand on your lower back to nudge you out from the bedroom.

Your bare feet were cold against the wooden floors. When you sat, you immediately tucked them under you to warm them; you didn’t want to ask for a blanket, you had been enough trouble already.

John shucked off his coat and hung it while watching you in his peripheral. You were cold.

He walked past you and retrieved a blanket from the closet, and grabbed a book he had seen you eye, then returned to you.

You looked up when you heard Father Pruitt round the couch, and your cheeks went warm when you saw the blanket.

“Sorry…” you whispered and accepted the plush quilt.

“Hush.” He whispered and took a seat beside you, then held his arm out for you to come closer. You shuffled tentatively towards him, and he tsked you before putting the book down momentarily to pick you up and slide you over his thighs. You gasped a little and tried not to be uncomfortable for him; squirming to keep most of your weight off him while he pulled the blanket around the two of you and up around your torso.

“Better?” He asked, leaning away from you to see you.

You nodded, and he hummed before picking the book back up and flicking through to find a spot to start.

You sighed, and still felt ridiculous. But then you remembered the last time you had felt silly, and you had had every right to feel what you did. Terror or embarrassment, it didn’t matter. With that thought, you allowed yourself to settle into his collar which dug into your cheek.

Father John began to read aloud. After several minutes, you felt his free hand leave you and reach up to his white collar, and pull it free. You watched him put it down beside you, then return to undo a few buttons as he spoke. You were transfixed by his hand, and then watched it stop and return under the blanket to your thigh.

An odd sensation filled you then. One that caught you as off guard as when you had compared Father Hill to Jesus Christ. It was something that coiled low in your belly…constricted yet not unpleasant. You shifted to alleviate it, and while it did dissipate, it didn’t disappear.

You tried to focus on the Father’s voice as he read to you. But it felt as if his words went in one ear and out the other- all that was left was the gentle hum that resonated from his throat.

“I liked your sermon, Father.” You interrupted him.

John paused at your comment, “I’m glad you did.”

“Reminded me of the ones you’d give when I was little.” You said.

He smiled, and patted your thigh, then continued his reading.

After an hour, your eyes began to droop and your head grew heavy.

John could feel your heart rate slowing, and your weight leaning into him more. He finished the paragraph he had started, the snapped the book shut and placed it beside him.

“Let’s get you to sleep, little one.” He whispered and worked his hand under your legs and the other behind your back before standing up with you in his arms.

You nestled further into his arms, and protested when he went to let you down at the bed for your nightly prayers.

“Just a few more minutes then you can sleep.” He chastised you, putting your feet onto the floor.

You nodded, and stretched then carefully got to your knees; the Father joining you.

You both crossed yourselves and began to pray.

“Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit, go back into my memory as I sleep. Every hurt that has been done to me, heal that hurt. Every hurt I have caused to someone, heal that hurt. But Jesus, if there is anything I need to do, if a person is still suffering from my wickedness, bring to my awareness that which I have hurt and need to remedy. I choose to forgive others and I ask to be forgiven. Remove whatever bitterness that remains in my heart, and fill it with Your everlasting love. Amen.” John murmured beside you.

Your heart ached, and you sobered at his words. “Amen.” You whispered and after a moment you looked over at the man beside you. He returned your stare; the light from the living room outlining his face.

You swallowed, and forced yourself to stand. John followed you up and bent his neck to look down at you at his full height.

“Good night, my sweet girl.” He whispered to you, and tucked a stray hair behind your ear.

“Goodnight Father.” You replied, and sat down slowly. John picked the blankets up, and helped you under. You noticed his hesitation. And you waited.

He stared down at you for a long moment, then leaned over you and pressed a soft kiss to your cheek.

“Sleep well.” He whispered just a breath away from you.

You felt that warmth coiling in your belly again, and you blinked more than you should have in an effort to force it away. “Thank you.”

He sighed, and leaned away from you. You watched him clench his hands, and you wondered if he had eaten recently. Just as he went to turn away, you put your hand on his arm, “Father?”

“Yes?”

“Are you…you…you don’t seem yourself, have you eaten?” You asked quietly.

John gulped down some air and looked down, “I’m just fine, thank you. Not to worry.” He tried to reassure you, inching out the door.

It isn’t thirst that ails me, little lamb.

He was never one to brush you off. Which was why is attempt did nothing to smooth you. You sat up, “Have I done something? Did something happen?” You asked.

“No…no nothing. I just…I just need some air.” He tried, his smile tight.

You felt a pang of hurt at his stiltedness, but you didn’t press him anymore. “Alright…goodnight.” You whispered.

He nodded and closed the door halfway.

“So you’re saying you grew up on the Mainland, became a priest…did a little preaching in the cities but said “no thank you.” then came to Crockett in your late 20’s?” You asked as you made yourself a cup of tea.

John nodded from his place at his desk, “It was the 50’s and there were just…so many domestic issues at that time. By the end of confessional I wanted to go home and cry. Crockett was simple and a breath of fresh air. Dull, I know. ” He chuckled.

Your face flushed, “No! No I just…always wondered.”

He smiled, “It’s only natural…I grew up in a non-religious household…Christian but not really practicing…my sister’s passing led me to God. Your curiosity is genuine and fair…who knows where it may lead you.”

You sat down across from him and looked over at his writing.

He peaked up at you and tutted, “Nosey.”

You looked away, and took a sip of the hot drink with a little smile.

It had been over a week now since you had been bleeding out in the cellar. You were completely healed, and truly faced little danger, but both of you refused to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

You didn’t want to go home.

And you weren’t sure if that was a good thing.

“I always wanted to travel.” You mused.

“Where would you go?” John asked you, slowing his writing.

“…I think Spain first. See the Vatican…go down to Italy and Croatia then back up to Germany to curse whoever came up with those grim fairytales.” You smiled into your drink.

The Father laughed at that then put his pen down, “I’m sure you will see all of those places and more.”

Your smile faltered a little. If you could get of that island, maybe. Did you want to get off Crockett? Would it be so horrible if you died there?

Your mood dropped.

Father Pruitt’a mouth sat in a straight line when he saw your smile drop. You deserved more. A part of him wondered if the reason you weren’t fighting to leave anymore was because of him. Was he keeping you there? Clipping your wings?

You hadn’t attended Mass since that night. John didn’t ask you to come, he knew you would go if you wanted to. You prayed together every night, and listened to him talk about God in your private hide away. Where you could ask questions and interject.

“Your family called today?” John asked to change the topic.

You sucked in a breath, “Yes…a short call but it was nice to hear their voices…they want me to come for Christmas.”

John clenched his jaw, “I see.”

“I told them the ferries aren’t running very well. Not a total lie.” You shrugged and took a long drink.

He stayed quiet for a long moment.

“Why don’t you go?” He asked.

You looked up at him and laughed a little, “I think we both know the answer to that, Father.”

John looked away, and down at his pen, “If it weren’t for the…what happened, what would you do?”

“I’d…I’d probably go. Take some time away. Maybe book a ticket somewhere and see a piece of the world that isn’t Crockett shaped.” You thought aloud.

He nodded.

“That sounds nice.” He smiled quickly.

“We all have dreams, Father.” You replied.

You finished your drink and stood to place the cup in the sink. When you went to pass by him to return to your seat, the Father’s hand caught yours.

“Come here.” He hummed and pointed to the paper infront of him, “What do you think of this?” He asked you.

You looked down over his shoulder and saw a paragraph he was writing for his sermon. You pursed your lips, and found that your neck was growing stiff at the angle, so you scooted between him and the desk and sat on his lap to read better. You had grown used to sitting in close proximity to the Monsignor, and simply began to read.

John’s breath hitched at your action and he went still for a moment. Certainly you had both been close, but you had never plopped yourself over his legs before. He knew it was just you gaining comfort around him, which was positive, but the action still had him swallowing thickly. Closeness was still something he was being accustomed to after a lifetime of so little. It used to be so easy to ignore any sort of…feelings such as this, but since his regained youth he truly felt like a young man again, and found himself relearning to temper his humanity.

“Well?” He asked in your ear, steadying his breath.

You shifted a little and cleared your throat, “Um it’s good.” You said, “You might want to rephrase this part…sounds a little “holier than thou”.”

His brows pitched up and he leaned closer to read. He looked over the sentence you pointed to and nodded along, trying to ignore the warmth your body bled into him. It seeped into his skin and heated his veins.

“Good…thank you, my dear.” He murmured from behind you, and you turned your head a little to see him in your peripheral.

“My pleasure, Monsignor.”

He grit his teeth at the name. It wasn’t that it bothered him. There was just something about you saying it that reminded him of himself. He gave you a tight smile.

You went to stand, but he slipped an arm around your waist to keep you there, “Sit with me for a while.” He hummed, but had already begun to rewrite the section. You might have protested…or your might not have. You didn’t know which you would choose if you did have a choice.

With his large hand planted against your stomach, and curling to your hip, you stayed put. You shifted to let him see what he was doing, and rested your head into the crook of his neck. He wore no collar nor black shirt…just a tshirt and cardigan. You reached out and picked up his rosary from the desk, and toyed with it. After a moment, you opened your hand, and placed the cross against the little scar you had from your own digging into your hand on Easter.

“Must’ve hurt.”

You jumped a little at his voice and looked up. Your nose bumped his. You hadn’t noticed he had stopped writing altogether, and had been watching you.

“Not as badly as you’d think.” You whispered, looking away quickly to stare down at your hand again.

You saw his arm move from around you to grasp your fingers and bring them up to his mouth where he placed a kiss over the pinkish scar. You felt your ears grow warm, and you tried to pull your hand away, but he wasn’t done. John stroked his thumb over it, and leaned away from you to relax into the back of his chair.

“We should get you to bed, little one.” He mused.

You nodded, though you didn’t feel very tired.

He helped you to stand, and guided you into the back of the rectory. You both knelt facing the cross above the door, but when you went to hand his rosary back to him he shook his head and took yours from the bedside table. It felt oddly intimate to be using each other’s rosary for prayer, and you found your cheeks warming again at the thought of it.

You heard Father John begin a prayer for the night, and you forced yourself to focus on it. Not on how his voice dipped into a low hum that vibrated in your ears and made your fingertips tingle. You told yourself it was just the proximity of someone you had once admired. Someone who, despite the horrible things he had done, cared for you. Not the warmth that simmered just below your pelvis.

“Amen.”

You blinked and glanced at the man beside you and muttered a quiet amen like you had been listening. When he went to rise, you found yourself still rooted to the spot; John halted his movement and settled back down next to you. He didn’t ask any questions nor made any comment. He was patient for you, and if you needed a moment longer, he would join you.

Your eyes were glazed over as you stared at a chip in the paint on the wall, but your ears were alive with the memory of that song the Father danced with you to.

Hallelujah…hallelujah…

You blinked, and sucked in a breath, then released it slowly through your nose. Father John tilted his head to watch you thoughtfully, and you copied his movement. The dim light from a single lamp in the living room cast a warm glow over half his face; one eye glinting in the darkness. Your gaze met his, and you felt your lungs beg for air when you saw reminiscent of the man he used to be. His face soft and vulnerable as he watched you with such fondness.

The selfish and childish part of you whispered to itself in question, “Did love feel like this?” And your other part wished so badly to say no, but it stayed quiet because it didn’t know…and it let that other half wonder idly.

You repeated that question over and over in your mind. Is it? You didn’t know. Not that you had to wonder for long, not when he bowed his head and pressed his lips to yours…and the question vanished. It wasn’t answered, but when he kissed you again, you had no space for wonderment. His hand came up to the nape of your neck to cradle your jaw, stroking small, encouraging circles there. If they could speak they would whisper, “That’s it…that’s it. I’ve got you.” in your ear.

You timidly brought your hands up to his shoulders, not certain if you were to push on them or tug them closer. Your uncertainty seemed to have an answer when he gently ushered his tongue into your mouth. Your little fists slipped over his shoulders just as they did when he carried you to bed at night, and his hand eased around your waist like he did when he held you in his lap while he wrote.

You let him press you close, and you could feel his lean frame flush against you; he elicited a moan from you that he gulped down.

A precious sound.

Then as you sunk into one another, he pulled away just momentarily to pick you up and ease you onto the bed. The plushness enveloped you and his hand slipped to the back of your head to cradle your skull as he returned his mouth to yours and climbed over you carefully. This time you tentatively licked into his mouth, and received a pleased hum in reply as he allowed you.

You repeated the action as you welcomed him over you, placing your knees on either side of his hips. This time he shuttered ever so slightly, and pressed himself closer. You felt one of his hands move to your thigh, stroking it softly like he cherished it, while his other had his fingers twisting into your hair to hold you in place as he grew greedy, and stoked your pining.

Slowly, John pulled away, pecking light kisses to your lips until he was bracing himself over you.

““He who guards his mouth guards his soul. One who opens wide his lips comes to ruin.”…I would happily let you be my ruin.” He whispered.

You stared up at him, eyes heavy, “And what of my ruin, Monsignor?”

He smiled thoughtfully, brushing hair from your forehead, “You will have no ruin. Sunlight cannot be ruined.”

“And what about nightfall?” You countered as his face inches closer to you.

“The sun will always be shining somewhere…and if not then let me be that temporary darkness that borrows your glow if only for a while.” He spoke against your lips, and kissed you slowly.

That warm constriction in your belly wove and churned until the heat of it gave you made your toes curl in your warm socks, and arch your back into him like he wasn’t close enough. You hadn’t the faintest idea a body could be capable of such want, and you were intent to allow it to run its course.

That fist that cinched your hair tugged when your thighs tightened around him to draw him closer. A gasp pulled from your lips and John pressed his hips into you, and the rough jean rubbed you so suddenly you cried out into his mouth and along his tongue that knew your taste.

You whined and tugged at his shoulders; that feeling inside you becoming overwhelming. You were at a loss for words to communicate what you wanted, and it was as if he could feel your need for something…something.

He slowed his mouth and pulled away just a breath, “Tell me what you want.” He hummed.

Your eyes went wide and you looked away only for him to chase your gaze, and tut you. “Cmon.” He cooed. You might have thought he was teasing you if he had been anyone else. But John Pruitt was staring back at you like your answer to his question would determine the course of the rest of his life.

“I-…I don’t…I don’t know I’ve never…” you stumbled over your confession.

John nodded, gaze locked on you intently, “Of course…I understand.”

A beat passed between you two, and you were preparing yourself for him to pull off of you and tell you that he couldn’t-

“I’ll be good to you…if you’ll let me.” He whispered.

Trust.

You bit the inside of your lip as you thought; he didn’t move an inch.

Very slowly, you nodded, “Okay.”

He grinned ever so slightly, just enough to show those pointed peaks of his teeth. “Okay.” He repeated.

He leaned away from you then, and helped you to sit up while he rocked back onto his heels to give you room. He pulled off your sweater just as carefully as he had when he had undressed you after your attack.

“Arms up.” He murmured and you did as he said for him to tug your dress over your head.

A part of John was wailing at him to look away from you and to let you keep your dignity. Told him to dress you and take you home and tell you that he wasn’t a good person. But John had always had a tendency for selfishness, and he knew you were letting yourself be just as selfish as he. He knew you were likely having the same or similar thoughts.

So when he let himself look at you.

He let himself gorge on your beauty.

Greedy. Gluttonous.

He remembered then when he was on the cusp of priesthood when he must have been just a little younger than you. How his mentors would remind him of the perils of the seven sins, and how they would test him when he least expected it. How he would have to employ the Lords graces to overcome them. But John more vividly remembered how those same priests would overfill themselves at holiday feasts, and how he had caught a few staring a little too long at women and girls during services. It was difficult to fear their words when they themselves betrayed them.

Which was why John felt guiltless as the fabric came away from you.

Because he would much rather fear the true wrath of God than the intimidating warnings of men. And if God disapproved of the admiration of one of his creations, then John would take the punishment if he was granted this one time to fill his senses with you.

Your hands shook. And you dropped your arms back down as he placed the garment to the side. You half expected him to remain clothed, but he remained where he was and shrugged off his sweater, and grabbed the back of his plain shirt, and pulled it over his head.

You stared up at his form- still and curious. John took your hand in his, and placed it on his chest where his heart used to beat. Feeling his skin somehow made him feel so much more human. Like there wasn’t a lifetime between you and different blood in your veins.

He sighed at your touch and closed his eyes when he sunk back down to you and your hand moved along his collarbone to his neck to the nape where his dark hair curled. Your other hand joined, and tugged a little on the tender hairs there.

He took his hands away from you for only a moment to kick his jeans to the floor, then he returned to you- skin against yours and the veil of your underwear between you. It felt so foreign to know what his flesh felt like. Of course you knew he was born to this world just as every other being- bare as a babe. But he had become so superior in his status that the idea that he had calves and biceps and skin and hair under his chasuble took away so much of that inhuman pedestal you had unknowingly put him on.

Heat seemed to radiate between you both, and your skin became sticky against the winter chill that crept inside through minor holes and cracks in the old building. You pulled at him and tried to press him closer but it wasn’t enough. You didn’t know what it was, but your greed that you had so perfectly neglected since childhood seemed to rear its head with the Father against you.

You found your dwindling strength to push him away and he chased your mouth for a moment and you let him- open mouthed kisses from afar.

“F-father I’m- I- I um…” you tried to shift and squirm to get your point across but even you didn’t know what you wanted.

The older man above you watched intently with almost a paternal care as you tried to explain yourself.

“Is there a gluttonous warmth that’s settled in that belly of yours, sweet girl?” He asked with a small smirk that truly caught you off guard. You suddenly remembered that he was not entirely inexperienced such as yourself, and you briefly wondered if he has always been a little domineering, or if his age had snubbed it or perhaps it was an embraced trait with his renewed youth.

Your mouth lay agape for a moment, then you nodded and squeezed your thighs around him. The stiffness you felt there pressing insistently against your clothed flesh managed to intimidate your insatiability, but didn’t curb it.

“Would you allow me the gift of bringing you to rapture?” He asked so softly, pecking a kiss to the corner of your mouth and caressing your cheek while his other hand’s thumb stroked under your bra’s band.

Your poor mind attempted to catch up, but his touch was making your head spin and melt. His purred question had you recalling everything you had been taught since childhood by your family, “Father isn’t…we…it’s a-“ you started.

“You might think that…but it cannot be a sin. Not when you are this lovely and willing…You are no temptation…you are a gift.” He countered easily. Like he had thought about this before in detail.

“What if you are the temptation, Father?” You asked.

He grinned a little at your retort. Always one to keep him on his toes.

“If I am that, then is it not better to indulge in me than an irrefutable sin another time?” He nudged your nose with his.

You realized then that never once had you ever heard him preach the sins of the flesh. Indeed that temptations were made to misguide us, but never specifically that.

You breathed his air, and flushed your eyes between his, “Then bless me, Father.” You whispered before you could tell yourself it was wrong.

John’s breath caught in his throat, and he could almost feel his pupils expanding into dinner plates.

Cheeky girl.

“It was always going to be you…” he mused aloud, looking over your face, “No disobedience like Adam and Eve listening to the serpent… no you are…you are too good. My holy deliverance.” He kissed you so tenderly.

Then he kissed your cheek, and down your neck to your shoulder where he pulled the strap of your bra down. He followed the elastic to your chest and he helped you remove the article entirely. You looked away shyly, but he brought your attention back to him with a finger under your chin.

“There we go…look at me…you’re alright…” he whispered, a slight shake to his hand, “I’m with you.”

You nodded and sighed as you fought to not overthink.

Once Father John was certain you were alright, he kissed you one more time and began kissing your chest. His hands were a little timid and out of practice as he squeezed your opposite breast, though did not fail to make your toes curl as he pulled sounds from you that you stifled late at night and shamed yourself for; Hail Mary’s falling from your lips like breaths. He lapped at your skin as he descended down over your belly where your ecstasy lay tightly wound and molten.

He stopped then, and looked up at you , face a little shy in his want.

“Your fruit is the only harrowed offering I desire to eat…and if that makes me a sinner then I will humbly accept my punishment.” He murmured.

Your face was so warm you thought you may faint. You didn’t know the man with the stiff white collar and slightly nervous disposition could have such a blunt, honeyed tongue.

You leaned up a little then to look down at him as he kissed at the top of your panties.

“What are you…” you trailed off. You had had an educational sex talk with your mother when you were a teenager, and had read mentions of the various acts you could do, but you were at a loss with how Father John seemed to wish to venture further than just your stomach or hips.

It was no willing education that the holy man had gone through for sexual acts. It had been decades of confessions from islanders and tourists alike back when the island was alive. Some explicit ans some leaving him curious. Tales from visitors he didn’t know who came to spend a few weeks on Crockett and took advantage of the anonymity of the village confessional booth with a young pastor to hear their sins and absolve them before they returned to the city.

It took years, but after a while, he began to piece things together. They made his ears grow hot and his hands grip his rosary a little tighter.

But curious he remained.

Was a woman’s body so wholly splendorous that a man desired deeply to kiss upon her lips where no tongue sat between them? Would she taste as addictive as they said?

“I’d like to kiss you h-here…”he whispered, and so gently ran his index finger down the edge of your underwear where it curved down your thigh, “…please.”

His eyes were wide as he stared up to you; still so unsure but so lost in his desire to think twice.

“…okay.” You managed. Just as lost as he.

His veiny hands ran gentle trailed up and down your thighs, and he peppered kisses in their wake. You shivered and squirmed under the sensations he drew forth, and you wished you knew what to do with them. Were you supposed to moan or tell him what to do? Were you supposed to ask for more? You didn’t know. What you did know was that you wanted his hands to touch you, and that seemed like a good place to start.

It seemed you hadn’t been paying full attention for a moment, though your focus returned tenfold when you felt a warm kiss there against you. You twitched in surprise, and stared down at the man sat between your legs; his dark hair all tousled curls that fell over his forehead and gaze intently immersed in your reaction. He repeated the action, his lips caressing the fabric that still covered you. Your breathing became something you had to actively remember to do when he grasped the undergarment and pulled it down your legs.

With yourself bare to him, you reflexively notched your knees together, though he easily parted them with a little coaxing from his tongue running up your inner thigh.

“Fa-Father Pr-“ you stuttered out breathlessly.

“Shhh…I know…”he whispered against your hip where he kissed and ran a pointed tooth over your skin. He could barely hide the fact that you using his title affected him more than it should have. “Say a Hail Mary with me, sweet girl.” He said.

Your eyes went wide, and the devil in him reared its head for just a moment. He liked seeing you so shocked. But when he began to recite the prayer and you followed his lead, that heathen calmed a little.

“Hail Mary, f-full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed…” you realised the Father had stopped speaking and had begun running his lips down your hip to your pelvic bone, and he tilted his head to nestle his cheek against you for a moment.

“Continue.” He murmured.

You remembered to breathe, “B-blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb-“ you lost any ability to talk when Father Pruitt leaned down and pressed an open mouthed kiss to the delicate flesh between your thighs. You felt the tip of his tongue against you, and his large hands held you firmly in place.

“J-Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” You rushed the end.

John looked up at you and kissed your thigh with a proud look in his dark eyes. “Amen.” He whispered.

Then slow and deliberate, he leaned back down and kissed you again, this time ushering his tongue into the slick pedals of skin. You stuttered out another deep breath, and clutched at the sheets beside you. He lathed his tongue in you and swallowed greedily, rutting himself into the bed while his long legs braced him. His hands began to guide you to roll your hips up into his open mouth and you found that sensitive spot that had your squeezing your eyes shut and your mouth dropping open in sinful gasp.

When your movements became more bold, and your fingers wove into his thick hair, Father John settled deeper into your flesh. He worked his jaw slow and steady. He was an attentive learner and listened to when your breathing stopped and felt your legs shake or your fingers pull him closer into you.

Then like he could hear your mind, he removed one of his hands from your legs and ran his index finger down the curve of your thigh to your entrance when he carefully pushed in; just as careful as when he turned the pages of the Bible. Your body jerked, and you couldn’t help the cry that he pulled from you as he sunk into you to the knuckle.

“How’s that?” He asked you just as breathless as you.

You couldn’t speak, and you found yourself starting to grow far too warm all at once.

“Good?” He prompted, patient as ever, “Tell me if it’s nice, young lady or I’ll have to stop.” He chastised you.

His comment curled deep inside you like his finger as he stroked you and lapped at your tender clit.

“I-it feels go-good Monsignor.” You managed to shoot back.

He grinned and suckled you into his mouth as he pumped you firm and slow. He knew there was somewhere inside you that would make heighten your pleasure, and he slowly teased and touched every inch he could reach until he found that patch of membrane inside you that had you bolting up and pushing his face into you harder.

“S-sorry I’m- I- Fath- Joh-“ you began to babble and try to form an apology as you immediately backed off, but his used his free hand to bring yours back to his head and had you push down again as he sucked and kissed and lapped at your sweetness.

The pressure of his touch had that coil in you start to vibrate and heat up to uncomfortable heights. Your moans came in constant succession, and you found that you couldn’t breathe without making a needy sound.

You were so lost in your own building euphoria that you didn’t see how Father John devoured and held you with such need that he shook and shuttered. A voice in his head asked him if this was for your pleasure alone, or was this his devout need to know what heaven was like when he was surly damned. His hips rocked and ground into the mattress making his ears ring with want.

Your movements met with his and he let you use him to catch that pleasure you had worked so hard for until your body went ridged. A relieved cry tore from your throat and your muscles constricted around his fingers- when had he added another?- and coated his tongue in his prize. You muscles ached from the tension you endured as you rocked against him to ride out your ecstasy. He licked at you gingerly, helping you through it as the blood stopped rushing in your eardrums.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, your eyes lost their glaze and you could look at him. John kissed your thigh, and slowly drew his fingers from you. You winced slightly, and your eyes grew heaviler when he lifted them to his mouth and sucked them clean like he had been waiting for that.

“There she is…” he whispered and kissed you one more time before climbing up your body and nestling his face into your neck. You locked your legs around him and pressed him against you, your breath hitching at the firmness there that prodded at you insistently.

“Wa-was that okay?” He murmured, and kissed your cheeks.

You nodded lazily and laughed a little. So old fashioned at heart, even in his youth. He smiled back, and blew air over your flushed face. He might have been about to say something else, but you tugged him down to your lips before much more than a muffled sound could come out. It couldn’t have been important as he gave into your want and returned your kiss.

It seemed you both grew aware of the heady need that still hung in the air and your joined lips slowed and stopped until you were both simply laying there with your mouths close to one another.

You flushed with embarrassment when a thought crossed your mind- one that belonged in the gutter. Evidently your burning cheeks were observed by the older man, and his eyes grew searching.

“Tell me…” he whispered, and kissed your temple.

You looked away and fidgeted, then subconsciously looked down.

John tracked your gaze, and when it flickered between you, he had a small idea of what was ailing you.

“We- we don’t…” he started, but you shook your head.

“Its not…I- can- can I-“ you fumbled and squirmed.

He stared at you, and felt your hands toy at the nape of his neck.

“Touch me?” He asked, seeing if that was what you wanted.

You couldn’t look at him, but you nodded ever so slightly.

He sucked in a breath to steady himself as he grew lightheaded.

“…give me your hand, sweet girl.” He shuttered and swallowed.

You timidly removed one of your hands from his neck, and gave it to him. The good Father paused for just a moment to check on you, but you bit at your lip and nodded again, and he continued. He rolled a little to the side, and guided your hand down to his waistband. He didn’t take his eyes off you for a moment, and you followed suit in staring back. He helped you slip your little hand inside, and you could feel him pulse against your palm.

Johns breath caught in his throat, and he closed his eyes when you shyly touched him. You ran your hand gently up his shaft, and grew a little more empowered when his hips jerked towards you. Then, you slowly wrapped your hand around him, and his eyes fell shut and his mouth dropped open with a sigh.

You watched him closely, completely unsure of what you were doing as you moved your hand up and back down. You squeezed him slightly, and his head fell into your shoulder with a soft groan. You dragged you hand back up to the tip, and found a wetness there that helped you. It only took a few moments before he was gently taking your wrist and rolling you back under him.

“I’m- I’m sorry…I can’t- please…” he murmured and you nodded again as he took himself out slowly. John braced himself above you, just a few inches away to see you properly, and he sighed. You really were so…so beautiful.

So lovely.

He blinked, and swallowed.

You started breathing deeply when you felt his slick skin against you, and he kissed you again.

“Shh…take a deep breath for me, litttle one.” He said calmly like his own hands didn’t have an elated tremor to them, “C’mon, with me: in…” he took a breath in, and you followed his lead; his eyes held yours in the dim light, and you felt safe.

There was a pressure at your tender flesh that you seemed to crave as your cramped muscles relaxed and gave away to his body.

“And out…” he imitated for you, and you did as he said, though you found it difficult to breathe. The fragile skin slickened, and welcomed him inside you, and you found yourself pressing every inch of yourself against his damp skin to touch, touch, touch.

John sighed and buried his face into your shoulder where your scar was still fresh. He kissed there and scraped his teeth over the unevenness; your nerves were set alight, and you constricted around him suddenly at the sensation. He smiled and kissed again then trailed up your neck to your cheek where he gathered your lips with his again and swallowed your gasp as he pressed himself further until you couldn’t take anymore.

“There you go…such a g-good girl…you alright?” He whispered as he gasped in his own euphoria.

You took a couple breaths then nodded; the stretch that your muscles completed to accommodate him made you ache, but when his addictive kiss coated your lips with his saliva, it ebbed away.

“Deep breaths…there we go just like th-that..”

He started slow. Gentle rocking of his hips into yours as he stroked your thighs and distracted you with sweet encouragement in your ears. Introducing your body to sensations it began to crave and demand. And after a few minutes, your pelvis began to chase his as he moved until he started to lengthen his rocking- drawing further and further out of you and rooting himself inside you like a plant looking for soil.

Your whining in his ear only furthered his chase for pleasure. Your pleas and moans that he savoured and swallowed. Then when one of his hands left you and disappeared between your bodies, you tried to see what he was doing, but your curiosity was sated when you felt him press just above where he entered you, and stroked you so gently. The sounds you cried out into the small, dark room were enough to summon angels and demons alike to bear witness to your willing invasion.

“How’s that sweet girl?” Came his whisper that curled in your ear and peaked your nipples.

“I’m- I-“ you breathed out an attempted response to convey your approval but to no avail.

You could feel his smile against your skin, and you let him touch you like it belonged to him. You rolled your hips to meet his- slow and steady. You began a succinct string of breathless supplications that played in repetitive order in Johns head as he felt you begin to constrict around him. It took his well practiced willpower and patience to remain composed with you. The selfishness in him wished for him to lock his arms around you and take his pleasure from you as if it was something owed, but he knew he was better than that. He was more than the poison in his veins.

For you he would be better.

Then your nails found purchase in the skin on his back as his pace grew insistent, and he groaned a low hum into your neck. But despite the mounting pressure of sybaritism, he kept his hand steady and calm as he helped you meet your own bliss. It wasn’t that he was well practiced or that he knew what he was doing, but he had hearing that could detect every time your breath caught and when a secret gasp would sit in your throat. Just as he had been with priesthood, he was an eager and curious learner, and he was just as dedicated to knowing what your body craved.

John paused for only a moment to readjust you against him; he knelt before you and shifted your hips up to compensate for the change, then his hands gripped your thighs and pushed them down to your torso and guided your hands to hold them. As he slipped back inside you, your swollen mouth dropped open and he crawled back down to you.

“There we go…that’s it.” He whispered, voice shaking so slightly.

So many explicit confessions from his youth had initially made his ears turn pink and his hands shake from the salaciousness; yet now here he was murmuring those same words into your eager ears.

Any Hail Mary’s he might prescribe after having you under him would be hollow. Not when he knew the enjoyment of such tender flesh. You were the epitome of sublime in your chase for pleasure, and he knew he shouldn’t find such carnal desire in seeing you lose yourself. Yet there he was, wanting to savour every moment of your young body falling apart for him to devour.

Your eyes grew heavy and nearly slipped shut. That furnace in your belly was on the brink of combustion, and the good Father only stoked it. So you let him. You relaxed completely and let your mind go blank as he moved you to completion. You could feel your muscles start to tighten around him, and curl to pull him deeper and closer.

Then bliss…

You could barely register your elevated cries into his shoulder as he brought himself closer to you, his eyes crinkling with pride. You rolled your pelvis up to meet his at pleasure overtook you and used you like a marionette to procure every ounce of your deserved euphoria.

Warmth filled your tummy when Father Pruitt went still. He shuttered and sighed low in his chest as he held you tight and filled you.

Your heartbeat pulsed between your chests, and was like thunder in John’s ears. The rush of your blood through veins and your body trying to recover were like music to his ears. John kissed your shoulder, and sighed.

Neither of you spoke…no words to say or sound to make. A mutual silence.

Slowly, he drew away from you, and you found yourself feeling empty. Had you always been so empty?

He lay to your side and pulled you back against him like you used to embrace a pillow on stormy nights as a child.

It was only when he brought your hand up to his mouth to press a kiss there did you both notice that you still clutched his rosary; an imprint of its beads and cross evident in your palm.

“Amen.” He hummed and looked up at you softly.

You faintly smiled and he savoured the expression. A look of fondness.

There was a peculiar feeling inside you, and it wasn’t the way you ached from him or how warm you were. It lasted days as they passed, and only seemed to grow with the more kisses you shared.

When he would run his nose along your neck and hold your hips against him or when he would tilt his head down to you when in the middle of reading and taste your tongue with his if only for a moment.

But also when he would remain calm and honest when his hunger grew. When fear never returned to you. When you both would visit Hassan’s grave at night and he would tell you stories as you readied for bed.

It was the startling question of whether you wanted to stay. And what that would entail. When he had asked you just days ago about your wishes, you had of course wanted to see your family and travel, and in the depths of your heart you still wished to do those and more. But the longer Father John held you, the further those dreams seemed to be.

Would it be so horrible if you stayed? If you lived there forever with John Pruitt and rebuilt your routine there? Would it truly be sinful to alter Gods plan and will and give in to eternal life? Something you had so greatly feared?

Which was why you turned to John one night as he lay beside you. He held you in his arms and was waiting for you to fall asleep before feeding when you sighed.

“Father?” You asked.

He smiled, “You know you don’t ha-“

“Force of habit…forgive me.” You smiled a little too, “I…I’d like to stay.”

Johns brow pinched, “At the rectory? My dear I think we’re past-“

“No I mean…I mean here. On Crockett.” You murmured into his clavicle, and he took a steady breath, “I’m ready.”

He was quiet for a moment, then he nodded, “Alright.” He whispered and kissed your hair.

You thought he sounded pleased. In a way he was. Turmoil had been making his stomach sour as he dreaded that moment. Wondering what your choice would be. But as you said those words into his skin, it was as if a weight had been lifted.

This was his moment to set you free.

You fell asleep on him just as you had often now, and he let himself indulge in your sweet warmth for a while longer.

His last selfish act.

They say if you’re hungry enough, you’ll start to eat your own heart. John’s was gone long, long ago, with only a cavernous need to adore and worship left behind. He knew that one day his hunger would grow too much for his abilities to curb it, and he was not about to let you meet that same horrible fate.

He needed to do right by you.

For you, he would be better.

He knew that having you to hold each day and converse with and grieve with and laugh with would be a paradise, but he knew it wasn’t what you deserved. John hoped you would forgive him one day for what he would do.

But he knew it was what you needed, just not what you wanted.

He slipped from your grasp and found that bag that you counted as your home. He gathered all your little trinkets and books, and found that knife you had long forgotten about. John found his eyes start to prickle as he finished. Your little life in one bag all because of him.

Next, he sat as his desk, picked up his pen, and began to scrawl a note on a piece of paper.

What have I done…

John sighed and continued. His chest ached a terrible pain, and he feared it may fall right out of his chest. Of course it didn’t, but somehow he was certain the pain still wouldn’t have surpassed what he felt then.

He signed it, and folded the paper into his pocket, then he began writing another note entirely. This one he didn’t fold- instead this one would sit atop his desk for the time being.

Then, he picked your bag up and slung it over his back, and moved back to where you lay. It took him half an hour to sit you up gently and slip your coat on without you waking. He knew he didn’t have long. John finished dressing you- socks and boots and all- and hoisted you into his arms.

He forwent his own coat, and cast a look around the rectory to see any last reminders of you. There was only a cup in the sink from you. And he smiled at it.

With you tight against his chest, the Father left the rectory, and strode through the damp grass to the main road. The stones crunched under his boots, and he let his vast memory overtake him as he walked. Memories of seeing you that first morning when he returned. How he had danced with you; how he had looked forward to seeing you. How badly he wanted the best for you, and how poorly that had turned out. He thought of how wonderful it had felt when you finally let him help you…your smile, your kindness, your resilience, your intelligence, your selflessness. He let it all fill him up. John pressed a kiss to your head when you stirred a little, and shushed you until you settled.

His precious little lamb.

You didn’t even bleat as a wolf held you.

A chill brushed your cheeks as you awoke. There was a calm rock that soothed you and kept you just on the edge of opening your eyes. You nuzzled your face further into John’s chest , but something felt off. You sighed, and thought nothing of it until you realized it was your own arm that you were laying on.

And you were cold.

You jolted awake and sat up. Your eyes flickered around in a fright. Under you was a bench, and as you looked at your surroundings, there was water. You were on the Belle.

Alone.

A lump rose in your throat as you pushed yourself up and nearly tripped over your bag that was at your feet. You ran to the railing, and saw that you still weren’t too far from the marina. The next thing that dawned on you was that it was getting light out.

As you gripped the railing, you felt something dig into your hand, and when you looked down, you fought for breath.

“No…” you whispered, “No, no…”

Father Pruitt’s rosary was wrapped around your hand, securing a note to it.

You unwrapped it frantically, and opened the note with shaking hands. At first you didn’t look down at it as you began walking down the side of the boat to look back at the dock. A single tear broke free from your eye when you saw that familiar figure standing on the edge of the platform staring back at you.

You gasped for a breath, and finally began to read. But as you did, you had to fight against tears to see the elegant handwriting.

“Hello little one,

You may not understand now, but I need you to know that you are free now. You had always been sunshine, and you deserved to shine. I have been a selfish man for much of my life, but you would be my one selfless act.

You will find a church with a preacher who reminds you of God and lights your soul. See the world that is not shaped like Crockett Island and breathe in its splendour.

Look for me in solar eclipses, sweet girl; when the moon touches the sun just as you let me grace your glow. You might think of me in years to come as a dark time in your life…and know that I will indeed think of you.

You were a blessing.

You were everything.

Saying goodbye isn’t close to what I want to say, but it is what you need to hear.they say that the worst farewells are the ones unsaid and unexplained. I do not wish to give you any more grief. Which is why I must hurt you this one last time…then no more.

I am with you, sweet angel girl.

Always.

Yours,

John M. Pruitt”

Your head felt far too light at your body far too heavy. You felt bile rise against the lump of grief in your throat.

“John…” you whispered like you had never spoken before. You could barely hear yourself against the ringing in your ears. Then all at once, you realized how bright the sky was, and he wasn’t moving from his place on the dock.

You cried his name louder than you thought you could.

John stood, watching you from the pier.

You screamed his name.

You were terrified for him.

John knew he had to hurt you one last time. Just one. He needed you to never come back.

One more time and then you would be free. John knew better than anyone that grief was just love with nowhere else to go. It was bottled up and leaked out through your eyes and scraped at your esophagus.

“It’s alright, little one…” he whispered, “You don’t need me anymore.”

His dark eyes gleamed with tears that once would have been hot against his cheeks as they fell. Grief. Just love compressed with a cork.

You frantically looked from him to the thin white line that was beginning to form on the horizon as the sun rose. You saw him say something, and somehow you knew he was trying to comfort you.

“John!!! JOHN GO HOME!” You cried, anxiety starting to squeeze your throat, “Please!!”

You could see a fond smile on his face as he gazed at you, and he extended his arm in a wave as if to say “See you again old friend.”

Come back soon.

But you knew then that he had no intention of letting you see him again.

He was setting you free.

And John knew then.

He knew that when you finally passed and you drew your last breath, you would feel a spring breeze against your skin and smell fresh flowers and live in the sunlight for eternity.

But with that realization came his own fate. John knew that when he had enough, and he let his body burn, he would only awaken to the scent of scorched forests and stale air.

Much like the smell following the Easter vigil all those months go.

And John realized that he had indeed already been living in his own death all along.

His own personal hell.

And John remembered then how he had once compared you to a person trying to stay afloat in a body of water with nothing but hope to keep you going. But he saw then that you had never been near drowning; you had never been on the cusp of being dragged down into the depths of the ocean.

He had been the one astray.

And John saw that now, as the sun crested over the empty horizon.

So he took a breath…and let it out.

And he let the cold swell of his fate pull him under.

His eternity.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

@littleredwritingcat @zaunite-leo @f4er1e-g1rl @purplemotif @vampyre-kin @hamishlinklaters @spacechupss @pansexualpamandabear @ebiemidnightlibrarian @erialuna @nilla-bear @vintageglassheart02 @ethanhoewke @dancingisdangerouss @cherrysugarx @daisychainsinknots @thesoundresoundsecho

[pupsmailbox]

HORROR ID PACK

NAMES ⌇ abyss. adelaide. alex. allure. alluria. amnesia. amnesty. annabelle. archer. ash. asher. ashton. athena. axe. axette. bates. beal. belial. belladonna. bellatrix. bellow. billy. blade. blair. bleedesse. bloodiesse. bones. bow. briar. brute. bubba. buffy. butcher. cain. caliburn. calyspo. carcass. carna. carrie. carrion. casey. casper. chainette. chains. charley. charlie. chase. chi. chris. chucky. claire. claymore. clear. colt. connor. corpse. craven. cross. crypt. cybre. cynthia. damien. danger. derry. desdemona. dove. dracula. drow. elisabeta. elm. elmira. elvria. em. enigma. erin. eros. ethan. evelien. eventide. falchion. finale. finalis. finn. fleur. freddy. galatine. ghost. ghostesse. gladius. graves. grim. guts. harker. haunt. hound. howl. hunter. hush. ikino. jace. jane. jason. javelin. jekyll. jesse. john. julie. kateline. kille. killer. killesse. killette. killire. killyr. knifesse. knifette. krueger. lamb. laurie. lavender. lenz. lillith. loomis. lorraine. lucien. lucy. machete. mal. malice. massacresse. massacrette. max. maxine. megan. mia. michael. mike. mikey. molar. mors. morticia. mortis. myer. myers. necro. nephi. night. noir. norman. nyx. nægling. obsidian. onyx. ophelia. pandora. pearce. pike. pin. pointe. pointette. pridwen. pyper. quentin. raven. reaper. renfield. retro. revenant. river. roadkill. rosemary. rot. ryker. sabel. sabre. sacrifesse. salem. samara. sawyer. scum. scythe. seraph. serene. sharpette. sharppe. shaun. shelley. sidney. slash. slasher. slashesse. slashette. slashine. slashire. slashyr. specter. spite. survivesse. survivette. sybil. syd. talia. thomas. vein. verity. vesper. visage. viscera. vivo. warden. weaponesse. weaponette. weaponne. wendy. whisp. william. wraith.

PRONOUNS ⌇　aby/abyss. alien/alien. amnesia/amnesia. axe/axe. bat/bat. bite/bite. bla/blade. blade/blade. blood/blood. bone/bone. brain/brain. brutal/brutal. bull/bullet. bullet/bullet. camp/camp. carna/carnage. chain/chain. chain/chainsaw. chainsaw/chainsaw. chase/chase. choke/choke. claw/claw. co/corpse. content/content. copy/copy. cor/corpse. corpse/corpse. cry/cry. cryp/cryptid. crypt/crypt. cut/cut. dae/daem. dae/daer. dark/dark. de/demo. dea/death. death/death. dec/decay. decay/decay. die/die. eldritch/eldritch. elm/elm. evil/evil. fear/fear. fie/fire. fien/fiend. final/final. flesh/flesh. fog/fog. freak/freak. fury/furious. gau/gauze. gauze/gauze. gho/ghost. ghost/ghost. gloom/gloom. gnaw/gnaw. go/gore. gor/gore. gore/gore. gra/grave. grave/grave. gun/gun. gut/gut. hallow/hallow. haun/haunt. haunt/haunt. horr/horror. horror/horror. house/house. hunt/hunt. hush/hush. k9/k9. ki/kill. kill/kill. kni/knife. knife/knife. lash/lash. lethal/lethal. live/live. machete/machete. maim/maim. mallet/mallet. mask/mask. massacre/massacre. med/medical. medi/medical. monster/monster. murder/murder. night/night. no/none. pin/pin. point/point. point/pointy. pois/poison. prey/prey. pyr/pyramid. red/red. reveil/reveil. revive/revive. rib/rib. rip/rip. rodent/rodent. rot/rot. run/run. sacrifice/sacrifice. saw/saw. scream/scream. scythe/scythe. shadow/shadow. sharp/sharp. sharp/sharpen. sharpen/sharpen. sin/sin. slash/slash. slash/slashe. slash/slashed. slash/slasher. slasher/slasher. slice/slice. sly/sly. sni/snipe. sound/sound. stab/stab. stalk/stalk. steel/steel. step/step. survive/survive. survivor/survivor. tear/tear. thon/thon. tomb/tomb. trope/trope. vamp/vamp. victim/victim. voi/void. weapon/weapon. weep/weep. whisp/whisper. wound/wound. wra/wrath. ���️. ⚰. ⚰️. ⚱. ⛧. ⛨. 🏥. 🏹. 🐀. 💀. 💉. 💣. 📿. 🔪. 🔫. 🕳️. 🛡️. 🥀. 🦴. 🧛‍♂️. 🧟‍♂️. 🧨. 🩸. 🩹.

[ihavemanyhusbands]

(Un)holy

Raven-haired angel, lover and executioner both, darkening your doorstep with his long shadow. When you looked up, his halo was so bright it obscured his face, except for his eyes; The flint that sparked a fire inside of you.

The echo of church bells rang in the cathedral of your mind and you trembled in anticipation. Was it really time for service? Communion? Sacrifice?

Of course, he’d come to get you. He loved you, after all. Oh, how he loved you! You could see it plain as day in his stare, ardent and ravenous.

His fingers dug into your soft wool, scratching behind your ears. Your eyes were wide and docile as a doe’s, glazed over with a devotion reserved solely for divinity. How prettily your cheeks flushed, too, at his nearness.

The thin rope he’d placed upon your throat tugged you forward, the other end held in his fist. This way, my sweet, follow my voice.

Oh, his voice…. Like a river of honey pouring forth from that bewitching smile. Sharp and luminous as a crescent moon, or a scythe glinting beneath it. He could never lead you astray.

He was a wolf-headed shepherd and you willingly lay yourself on a silver platter in front of him. You, who were his only sustenance, the one he constantly craved. The one he would devour time and time again.

His most sacred lamb, indeed.

His love was best felt when he tore you asunder, lapping you up like the most delectable ambrosia. You adored him all the while, praying for his claws and his fangs as they sank into your pliant flesh.

You said his name deliriously, pearlescent tears gathered at your lashes, over and over again — John, oh, John…

You, his first and only supplicant, the most faithful of subjects. So willing, so earnest. He truly did love you, in his way. After all, you got him closer to understanding godliness.

[hiswordsarekisses]

“I believe that the yoke Jesus talks about is the will of God. Jesus said He came to do not His will, but the will of the Father Who sent Him. The yoke is double, Jesus is on one side, and He asks us to take this yoke - His yoke - upon us.

As Mary said, “behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to Your Word” - His Word is His will. She was saying “whatever You want Lord, Your will, not mine.”

To learn to walk with Jesus in meekness… To walk with Him and allow His love to pierce my hard, crusted heart.

I pray for the piercing of that love.

The minute my time and my space is invaded, or some aggression comes toward me, or a mast letter comes in the mail, what is my reaction?

Do I lift my eyes to His face? I must immediately lift that thing up to the light, to the face of Jesus. “How does it look to You Lord?” And He reminds me, “How did my tormentors look to Me?”

Dwell in that light. Bring the insults, the hurts ~ all of them ~ “learn of me” He says, “learn of me.”

Meekness is completely detached from self-assertion. How are we to learn this in a world that tells us to “learn to assert yourselves” - “do your own thing” - “be aggressive” - “stand up for your rights” - “protest for your rights” - “love yourself…”

I was appalled a few months ago when I received in the same mail, two magazines. One was a Christian magazine and the lead article’s title was “Learn To Love Yourself” - there were many suggestions: be good to yourself, be proud of yourself, learn to praise yourself, on and on… And you know what the other magazine was? I think it was “US News and World Report” and the lead story was called “The Curse of Self-Esteem!” I found a wonderful quote in there, and I hope I never forget it. It was from Gerta, the German philosopher, and he said “I don’t know myself. Only God knows who I truly am, and may God deliver me from ever finding out.” 💥

“Learn of ME,” Jesus says - not “learn to love me” or “learn who Elisabeth Elliot is” - God forbid I ever find out what she is really like.

I want to learn of Him.

I want His meekness.

I want to be entirely detached from self-assertion.

I want an utterly different and new response to those things which would naturally make me lash out.

Nothing could be more remote from feminine fragility than than a phlegmatic temperament, a “don’t care” attitude, a weak sentimentalism, than true holy meekness. But this meekness is indissolubly linked to the lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.

Remember when John saw the Lamb that looked as if it had been slain? Can you think of anything meeker? The King of Kings, The Lord of Lords, The Lion of Judah, in meekness a lamb, which before her shearers is dumb.

He opened not His mouth.

When He was reviled, He reviled not again. He was taken to prison and to judgement. He gave His back to the smiters, and He gave His cheeks to those who pulled out His beard. That’s my savior.

Come to Me, you who are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me. For I am gentle and humble in heart. Meek and lowly, and you will find rest for your souls.

~ Elisabeth Elliot

Lord, bend my stiffened neck, and bow my head - put Your yoke upon me. Put Your finger on the sorest place of my heart, and replace it with Your meekness - cause my heart to want not my will, but only Yours to be done.

[socially-awkward-skeleton]

Tagged by @ivymarquis @adelaidedrubman and @isobel-thorm to share a wip snippet this week. Thanks all!!

Tagging: @shallow-gravy @cassietrn @strangefable @stacispratt @eclecticwildflowers @ladyofedens-blog @poetikat @florbelles @direwombat @v0idbuggy @josephseedismyfather @theelderhazelnut @marivenah @simplegenius042 @josephslittledeputy @peppertheferalraccoon @neverthesameneveranother @statichvm @strafethesesinners @adelaidedrubman @kyber-infinitygems @clicheantagonist @inafieldofdaisies @voidika @roofgeese @nightbloodbix @derelictheretic @trench-rot @chazz-anova @wrathfulrook @confidentandgood @aceghosts @g0dspeeed @jillvalentinesday @madparadoxum

writing tag list here to be added/removed

So i'm recycling a bit i shared from a wip music monday/last line tag i think?? I've since reworked the scene a bit, but this is Kit saving John in the Henbane told from his obsessed POV:

Hands dug into his shoulders, fingers gripped at him as they held him below the water. What was once a placid lakeside setting, had become tainted with the shouts and hollering of sinners who had failed to find their place amongst the cleansed, amongst the saved – amongst the family and the Project at Eden’s Gate. Devils giving into their most base desires and using him as their sacrificial lamb. With each dunk of his head under the waves, the bliss filled water ran up his nostrils and down his throat, burning his inside and making him desperate to open his mouth to swallow air of which he would find none. 

Their voices were muffled and warped as the water rushed past his ears, filling the canals and making them ring. Choice words said about how he deserved what was coming to him, how he was violent and a killer, about revenge taken for a fallen friend. 

Lifting his head from below the depths, water rushed down his face as he gasped for air. Through closed lids he could see the orange glow of the sun peeking through the skin, and upon opening his eyes his vision sparkled, little fairy lights of a substance deemed holy by his brother. He’d once had Joseph tell him he mocked the cleansing and yet here he was being dunked and tortured like a witch undergoing the trials. 

Radios squawked, chattered and chirped and above it all there was something high pitched and whining…a child crying?

Screams broke his train of thought, and the hands that held him prisoner started to be plucked from him until there were none left. Falling backwards onto the shore, his ass hit the stones and long grass as he coughed and sputtered out the rest of the water that had invaded his lungs. Sitting there soaking wet, the products in his hair ran down his face and made his eyes sting with each drop that sneaked in past his dark lashes. 

He turned in time to notice a streak of red and gold bolting past, bodies taken down in a flash before his mind could catch up and comprehend what he was witnessing. 

He’d been saved by a cougar. It’s claws extended, cutting and slashing their way through his captors. Blood sprayed across the grass, coating green in crimson, making the blades look more like a bad 70’s shag carpet. 

And then her. 

How long had she been tracking him? The effort it must have taken. The sheer will she showed was impressive to say the least and it made his chest swell with pride to know that she was on his side now. She was his knight in shining armor running in to dispatch his attackers. She was a Valkyrie, his avenging angel glowing in the light of the sun, a golden halo surrounding her head of crimson hair. Beautiful and savage and strong. This was what he had been waiting for all this time, to see her become the vision Joseph had for her. 

Red braid swinging behind her, her rifle letting off shot after shot. The muzzle flare reflected in her eyes and they sparkled brighter than the bliss filled water beside him. Her eyelashes fluttered as blood splattered against her cheeks, and her tongue slowly drew across the soft pink of her lower lip. He tracked every extension of her arm and flexing of her fists as she wrangled weapons away from the toy soldiers. Boots crushing windpipes and breaking bones as she moved faster than they had planned on. Her footwork was effortless as her coat danced behind her, ducking and dodging their lazy swings. Watching her work was like being able to see a master journeyman complete his magnum opus. From the outside looking in, a person might think it was easy for a single person to take on a  group with how she handled them, but having been on the other side of them only a few moments ago he certainly knew better. 

Pulling the knife from her holster, she sliced her way through them. Cuts to the important arteries and veins occurred in the blink of an eye, she worked with the same speed and precision as a surgeon. Her knowledge of the mechanics of the human body were uncanny. He’d been so wrong about her before, seeing her as just some violent thing. What she did was artistry, even as she grabbed a man by the throat, driving her blade up into his diaphragm, his blood coughed up onto her. She didn’t hesitate, she didn’t falter. There was no disgust or desperate need to clean herself, it was a natural part of the process, just like the clay that would dry onto a potter’s flesh. 

One of the men made a break for it and ran towards John, a rabid dog slobbering and salivating, before falling to the ground with the hilt of her knife sticking out of his back like he was a pin cushion. 

Gliding towards him, she knelt down before him and ripped the knife from her victim’s back and pushed the hair from her face. Eyes as blue and as cold as the winter sky looked back at him and his heart raced inside his chest. He’d almost forgotten just how magnificent she looked when she gave into all that wrath. The sweat on her brow, the soft panting of air past her lips, hair messy – it was exactly how he imagined her when he’d finally be given the chance to make her his. 

John looked at her, bright blue eyes blown out wide, like he’d witnessed the birth of Venus from the clam shell. His mouth hung open, awestruck. Swallowing heavily, he reminded himself to shut his mouth before he started to catch flies. “You came for me?”

“Yeah.” Kit wiped her knife blade off on the back of the corpse that lay at her feet before sheathing it in her holster. 

Barely looking at him, she stood up and made her way over to John. Her one hand pressed to his cheek as she combed the fingers of her other hand through his hair so it no longer hung in his face as he stared up at her. His lip trembled and it felt like he was looking up into the sun or seeing the true face of God. This stunning thing capable of mercy and kindness, but no stranger to lifting a sword and striking down her foes. 

His savior. 

With the lift of a brow, his cocky grin lit up his whole face. “You came all the way to the Henbane to save me?” His teeth started to chatter as he shivered from the cold air and the frigid waters he’d been nearly drowned in, running his hands up and down his arms. 

“Yeah, John. I’m here to take you back to Saint Francis.” Grabbing his hands, she pressed them to his chest and abdomen, directing him to rub there instead. “Limbs will take care of themselves.”

“Just you and me, Kathleen?”

She rolled her eyes (her beautiful, smoldering eyes) and then walked over to the water’s edge where she bent down and splashed water on her face, rinsing off yet more blood from herself. 

Washing away all her sin, purifying herself, making her clean for him once more. 

“Sure.” She returned to his side, face now reddened with the freezing water of the lake as it dripped off her chin. “We better move fast, still have to make our way back through the forest and I'd like to get you back to my truck before hypothermia sets in or more Resistance come looking for us.” 

Her hands were quick to wrap around his bicep, pulling him to his feet. Stumbling into her with the strength she used, his arms wrapped around her waist, pressing tight to her. The warmth of her body filled him as he held himself upright against her. Pursing his lips, he leaned forward and tried to kiss her. 

“Oh Jesus, John.” Her nails dug into him as she pried him off her like a leech. “Really?” She stepped back, freeing herself from his embrace. 

The moment between them now broken, he seemed to be brought to his senses. His brows knitted together. “What do you mean, really?”

Kit’s hands fell to her hips and she took a deep breath before exhaling. “I’m here to bring you back to Saint Francis, not reenact whatever scene from a rom-com you think this is.”

This was just like her, thinking she was above him. Better than him. Thinking she could be the bigger person in the situation by remaining calm and making him feel small and inconsequential. Even her sighs were condescending. “You went to all this trouble to save me, you could have simply left me to die.”

Her brow cocked and that frozen stare of hers scanned up him. “Like hell I could’ve. You’re a Herald. And beyond that you’re Joseph and Jacob’s baby brother.”

His upper lip curved into a sneer. “Oh that’s all, is it, Kathleen?” She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed at the bridge of her nose.“Yes, John. That’s all it is. And stop fucking calling me by that name,” Kit snapped.

[bella-goths-wife]

I’ll bring takeout

Faith x reader, father lost boys x reader, Michael x reader

“I’ll be back later” you inform a worried faith as you fuss over your outfit. You had worn your tightest top and shortest shorts to ensure you could lure back some prey

“I don’t want you to go” faith confesses as she bites her nails anxiously

“You say that every time” you chuckle out as you turn to face her. This was the third time you had gone out to bring back prey for the boys and each time faith got more anxious

“I should go with you” faith sighs out in an attempt to convince you

You simply shook your head and brought your hands to hold faiths face affectionately. You refused to bring faith into this. Not only because she could get hurt but you knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it. Bringing back prey needed a level of seduction and the feeling of disgust would enter you when a man’s eyes would take in your body with appreciation. You knew faith would hate every second of it as you did and you couldn’t put her through it.

“I’ll be fine” you reassured “one of my dads will be around somewhere so I won’t be put in danger”

David and the boys put down the rule that one of your fathers would be around to watch and make sure you weren’t put into a dangerous situation and that way the boy could also alert the rest when it was dinner time.

“I’m sorry” faith apologised “you wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for me”

“David would have had me doing this when I’m turned anyway” you sigh out “I’ve just started earlier is all”

Without realising, out of habit you kiss faiths cheek as a goodbye. You would usually do this with James and your brain was too distracted to separate the two. Faith blushed red while you excused yourself from the awkward situation.

Time to go fishing

———————————————————————

“Well aren’t you a pretty one” a man approached you at your seat at the bar with a smirk “what are you doing here alone beautiful?”

You had been sat in the bar ‘rhythm kitchen’ for approximately half an hour before the man approached you. Paul was outside the bar waiting for you to come out, or to defend you. He hadn’t even smoked a joint like he usually would just in case something went wrong.

And now here you were, about to lure this man to his death with the fluttering of your lashes and a seductive stare.

“Looking for company” you giggle out falsely as you act more inebriated then you actually were “care to help me?”

“Anything for a pretty thing like you” the man smirked as he pulled his chair closer to yours. The man was mid thirties with a smug face. He was decent looking but still not your type, he probably wasn’t blonde enough for you.

“So mister” you lean close “are you here alone?”

The man laughed out as he hand goes to your thigh in what he must have thought was a sexy move, he just looked and felt creepy to you

“Why do you want me to yourself?” The man smirks out as his hand goes upwards, you subtly stop it by placing your hand on his

“Maybe” you giggle out

“Too bad” the man laughs out “I’m with them”

The man points behind you and you turn to see a group of five. Three women and two men. The women were all very attractive thirty something people with a mischievous looking blonde, a smirking brunette and a kind looking red head. The men were two brunettes who were smirking at their friend crudely.

“They seem to be interested in you” the man states with a crude smile and you just giggle

“I’m interested in them” you answer with face blush covering your face

The two of you walk over to the table and you sit with the girls and the blonde puts her arm around you.

“So young John” she teases “but yet you look so delicious”

You fake laugh, inside you felt disgusted. They all stared at you like wolves looked at a injured lamb. Little did they know you weren’t the one who was going to be hunted.

“So do you guys like to party?” You question with a grin smothering your face

“Definitely” the blonde answers as she sticks her tongue between her two fingers and shoots you a wink while the rest of the table laugh, you laugh along while you inwardly cringe.

“Well me and my friends are having a little party of our own tonight” you state seductively “maybe if I saw you guys, I could give you a tour of the bedrooms”

“And where is this party?” One of the men question with a smug look

“You know the point overlooking the bluff?” The table all nod “go there and I’ll meet you there in half an hour, I need to call my friends and let them know”

You give directions to the group and they all excitedly leave while you finish your drink before paying. As you leave you give Paul a nod of acknowledgment as he looks away while his bike plays up. As Paul is fixing his bike you felt yourself be yanked back by your shoulder as your face with a vaguely familiar face.

“I thought it was you” the boy snaps as he holds you by your shoulders “where the hell have you been”

“Do I know you” you question him annoyed at his need to grab you

“Know me? I got my ass beat defending you” he yells in your face “and now I see you back here trying to get yourself in danger again”

“Look man I don’t know who you are so let go” you push his arms away and stumble backwards at the force “now leave me alone”

“I’m just trying to make sure your okay kid” he confesses angrily “that blonde boy dragged you off and then I don’t see you for months afterwards”

“Blonde boy?” You say confused “you mean James”

“I didn’t catch his name” the man says sarcastically

“What’s your name?” You ask suspiciously, wondering if one of James’s weird friends was messing with you

“Micheal” he answers “do you seriously not remember me?”

“No” you answers annoyed

“I’m not surprised” Michael states with sarcasm in his voice “you were pretty drunk when I saw you, even took my jacket”

“That was you jacket?” You remember finding it under your bed and assuming it was one of your fathers

“Yes” Michael answered “I’d appreciate having it back soon by the way”

You rolled your eyes before another question entered your mind

“What did the blonde boy want?” You ask

“I have no idea” Michael just shrugs his shoulders “he just really wanted to talk to you and you refused”

Your confused mind tried to piece together this information before another idea popped into your head

“Can you do me a favour” you ask hopefully

“Was getting my ass beat not enough” Micheal answers sarcastically

“That boy works at the video store” you ignored Michaels hostility “can you ask him why he wanted to talk and come and tell”

“And when am I supposed to tell you” Michael questions annoyed

“I’ll be back here next month on the first” you say quickly as you notice Paul finishing up on your bike “come find me and tell me what he says”

“Why would I do that?” Michael says annoyed

“Because if you do then I’ll pay you” you say as you reach for your purse to show a wad of cash

“I don’t want your money” Michael shakes his head “I just want to make sure your okay”

“How about if you do me this favour, I’ll call you every few weeks to let you know I’m okay” you bargain, you didn’t know why this man cared so much but you were curious. Michael agrees and writes his number down on a piece of paper and you slip it into your pocket.

“Everything okay here (y/n)?” Paul appears behind you and you turn to him

“Yep fine” you lied “this guy just wanted directions to the video store”

“Uh huh” Paul says suspiciously as he eyes Michael up and down

“We should get home” you say as you grab his hand to drag him away “foods on its way”

Paul agrees and takes lead to his bike before gently helping you get on before getting on himself. You subtly turn your head to Michael and he gives you a nod as Paul drives away with you firmly attached to him.

———————————————————————-

“There you are” the blonde woman puts her arm around you shoulder “was beginning to think you’d stood us up”

“Never” you giggle out as you begin leading them into the cave, Paul had stayed back in case they tried to run “this way”

The group followed you as you lead them into the common area of the cave, you could feel your fathers lurking in the shadows

Some of the group sat but the blonde seemed to be feeling frisky as she grouped your hips and kissed up your neck while the rest of the group whooped and wolf whistled. You felt disgust and you only got relief from the invasion when David entered

“You did good sweetheart” he chuckles out as he lights his cigarette “your excused”

You quickly took off on the direction of your room when the girl pried her hand around your wrist and pulled you back. Dwayne came up behind her and yanked her away while hissing. The whole group looked on in fear.

As you left the boys looked at the group, their faces mirroring those of when the group had looked at you ln the bar. They all shivered as they realised the situation

“Now that the take outs here” David said with a smirk “dinner time boys”

You rushed to your room with tears running down your face as their screams reached you ears. When you entered your room you noticed that faith was already in bed.

You quickly changed and slipped into bed. Faith unconsciously turned to you and, as usual, put her head on your chest while your arms encircled her waist and you weeped into her arms

As you looked at the peaceful look on faiths face. You knew you’d sacrifice a hundred more people just to make sure she could remain blissfully unaware of the coldness of your situation. As long as she was happy, you were happy.

[dianakc]

Marital Love

Fandom: North and South

John gripped his bride’s hand in his as they entered her bedroom on their wedding night. He had offered her some privacy before he came to her to consummate their marriage, but Margaret had asked him to come with her. She felt this would be far preferable than getting ready for bed and waiting for him like the proverbial 'lamb to the slaughter'. The soft click as the door shut behind them was magnified in the silence.

John and Margaret stood facing each other in the bedroom. Husband and wife so inexperienced but longing to learn; both scared as kittens but not wanting the other to know. John took her face in both his hands and pressed tender kisses from his soft lips to hers.

Breaking away, John said, "Let's sit and 'ave a drink. I wanted to talk to you. In private," he said as he went to the small table by the fire and poured two drinks. "A little liquid courage," he said wryly. Margaret took her glass from him and sipped, the spirit gradually warming her and calming her shredded nerves.

John untied his cravat letting it dangle around his neck and undid the top button of his shirt. "Margaret, do you know what the marital bed requires?" he asked, staring at his glass, "I mean, do you know what we are to do?" and he glanced up at her nervously.

"Well, Aunt Shaw did tell me a little. She said I should 'be brave and a good wife and…please you'… but, I don’t really know how to do that. You will have to show me," she admitted, patting his hand and giving it a little squeeze. "I will do my best."

"Oh, Margaret," he said, shaking his head, "everything you do pleases me," and gave her one of his heart-stopping, lopsided, bashful smiles.

"The thing is," he said, clearing his throat and concentrating on the contents of his glass again, "I’ve a feeling that I 'ave no more idea than you do," and he looked up at his lovely wife through his long lashes.

"Goodness! Well, what are we to do?" said Margaret laughing nervously.

"Umm well, I understand the mechanics, so to speak. But I am concerned that I want to do it right… so that I don’t hurt you and I hope that, perhaps… if I get it right… you might like it as well."

"You are assuming you will like it?" said Margaret.

"Oh yes, I will," he replied quickly, nodding, then blushed. "But I’ve 'eard it can hurt women, and, more than anything Margaret, I don’t want that."

"So what do you suggest?"

"Well, I anticipated this and did a little research… and… well… I have ordered a book."

Margaret looked at him blankly.

"A sort of a handbook. An instruction manual. With illustrations. The thing is, it 'asn’t arrived yet."

How very 'John' thought Margaret, smiling.

"Would you mind terribly, dearest, if we just slept together till it arrives? No one will know and I shouldn’t think it will be long," John suggested nervously, his hands now a bit clammy as he held fast to Margaret’s hand.

Margaret let out a sigh of relief. "I think that would be most acceptable. Should we…get ready then?"

John undid the buttons down the back of Margaret’s dress taking an extraordinarily long time to accomplish the task as his hands were trembling and the buttons were so darned fiddly. He then untied her petticoats and Margaret stepped out of the clothing leaving her in just her corset, drawers and stockings. Oh Lord. John swallowed. He was about to tackle the lacing of her corset when there was a sharp rap on the door. Margaret and John both jumped and looked stricken at one another. Margaret grabbed for her robe and John went to the door, unlocking it and opening it a couple of inches. Dixon attempted to bluster in but John wasn’t having any of it.

"I’ve come to ready Miss Margaret for bed. Should you be in here?" she said accusingly. John’s eyebrows shot up at the maid’s impertinence.

"Margaret 'as no need of you this evening, thank you Dixon, goodnight," he replied briskly, closing the door on her and turning the key.

When the lacing on Margaret’s corset was loosened she stepped behind the screen to get into her nightdress and left John to remove his clothes. He didn’t usually wear a nightshirt and when he’d tried one on the night before to 'practice' he’d felt silly. So when he was undressed, John put on his robe and sat back in his chair by the fire with his brandy, and waited for Margaret to finish.

Soon Margaret reappeared wearing a white cotton nightgown; John approved. She sat at the dressing table, trying to act naturally although her heart was pounding in her chest; she started taking down her hair. John watched from a distance, longing to participate in this most intimate ritual. This was a night of so many firsts. He’d never been in the room with a woman when he wore so little, nor had he seen a woman wearing only a nightgown. He’d never seen Margaret's hair down and it was glorious; she took his breath away.

John took Margaret by the hand and led her to the bed. He pulled down the cover and she climbed in. He extinguished all but one of the candles, took off his robe and slipped between the cool sheets on the opposite side. In the dim light Margaret got a glimpse of his naked back, bottom and thighs as he got into bed. Her mouth went dry and she put a hand to her heart to calm it. Goodness. Even in that brief moment he looked…magnificent. And he was all hers.

"Come here my love," he said, stretching out his arm so that she could lie in his embrace. Margaret lifted her face to his and they kissed, tentatively at first but their passion soon ignited. Their desire grew, both partners gradually needing more as they touched and kissed. Only Margaret’s nightgown separated them, and both were aroused by the feel of their bodies moving, squirming instinctively against each other.

Margaret was aware of something hard grinding into her stomach and was puzzled. Breaking off from one of John’s delicious kisses she asked, "John?" and reached for the mysterious rigid object. John stopped breathing. The feeling of Margaret touching him so intimately even by mistake was earth shattering.

"Oh goodness!" said Margaret. "Is that… I mean, how… oh, goodness!" John swallowed.

"It is quite normal dearest. When a man is ready to make love, umm, he becomes 'ard. So that it will go inside. If you understand," he said, embarrassed.

Margaret reached for the candle, "May I see?" she said with curiosity as she started moving the covers down. John was mortified but what could he do? He didn’t want to conceal this normal occurrence from Margaret, but his discomfort was acute. No one had seen him naked as a grown man before, let alone in an aroused state.

"Oh my!" she said, peering at the offending body part, "will it fit?" she asked with a look that said 'that is never going to work'.

"Oh Margaret, what have you married?" he said, shaking his head, and both broke out into giggles.

"But seriously my love, I don’t think I am different from other men and they all manage it," he said, trying to sound more certain than he really was. "Perhaps we should wait for the instructions?" he said hopefully and drew the covers up again.

"Of course," said Margaret, and she was willingly pulled back into his arms. He was right, it appeared to work for other married couples so everything should be alright. Both her parents and his had done it at least twice and survived. But, goodness, no wonder it hurts.

The next day, to John’s great relief, the book arrived. John bounded up the stairs to Margaret’s room and placed it on the small table by the fireside. The couple both stood back staring at the brown paper package as though it were an unexploded bomb.

"Shall we wait? Leave it till tonight and look together?" she asked and moved to hold his hand, her eyes fixed on the parcel.

"Mmm yes," he nodded.

Early that evening, shortly after dinner, Margaret stood and announced she was retiring as she had developed a headache. The elder Mrs Thornton looked up at Margaret from her needlework. Ahh, so that’s how the land lies. She has no more a headache than I do. Perhaps all did not go well with the new Mr and Mrs Thornton’s union last night.

Margaret had been gone for a few minutes, and Hannah was gearing up to broach the thorny topic of 'relations' when John jumped up. "I find I also have a headache, Mother. Goodnight," and he gave her a customary peck on the cheek.

"There's nothing for you up there tonight son. It’s female code," she said but it was too late. John was leaping up the stairs two at a time in pursuit of his wife. Hannah shook her head and continued to stab her embroidery to death.

Now they both knew the process, John and Margaret got ready for bed, she in her nightgown and he in his robe. Dixon was irritated to be told she would not be needed again. She’d have to have words with Miss Margaret. Him in her room again, two nights in a row! The mistress will be turning in her grave! And meddling with her clothes? It's not right.

The 'liquid courage' was on hand again and they sat in front of the fire and John bravely picked up the package and opened it. He shuffled his chair up to Margaret’s so she could see, and opened the first page and started reading the preface.

"John! You’re surely not going to read that! Get to the important bit," Margaret urged, trying to turn the pages.

"Hang on Mrs Impatient," he said, snatching it out of reach. "I want to do this properly. No cuttin' corners you know," he said, giving her a saucy wink. He did, however, skip over the preface and introduction and went straight into 'Anatomy'. This had particularly been bothering him since last night’s 'show and tell' and he had been perturbed to think he actually wouldn’t fit. John read quickly through the details of the male anatomy in his deep velvety voice and Darkshire accent. Margaret listened, identifying words she could not recall having ever heard before. A veritable foreign language that she would have to revisit when John was at work. Indeed, it clarified John’s explanation that when the man was ready to enter the female, his penis became rigid to facilitate penetration. Goodness, an instruction manual indeed.

The female anatomy was then described and both John and Margaret flushed crimson as he read the passage aloud. However, John’s brow creased as he tried to understand the narrative. It explained that the female became lubricated when ready for penetration. Images of pistons and axle-grease flitted through his mind. Ah, I see. The guide went on to describe a membrane which is breached during first intercourse causing bleeding and a degree of pain. John sat back in his chair and looked at the ceiling musing, "Well how fascinatin'. I wonder what the evolutionary benefit of such a membrane would have been?"

"John," Margaret rolled her eyes. "So far I sound like an antiquated machine in need of oiling to get going. Get on with it."

"Sorry, dearest." John flicked over the page and both involuntarily let out a little gasp and looked at each other. As well as the description of 'Intercourse' was illustration 1.

John found it hard to read the text when he knew Margaret was having a good opportunity to inspect the diagram first. The principle was simple. The erect male penis enters the female lubricated vagina and by moving forwards and back the male is stimulated to produce a fluid containing his seed.

Margaret wasn’t listening. "Well this is most reassuring, John. If this illustration is to scale then your… proportions… from last night look approximately correct," she said looking pleased with herself. John leaned in for a closer look.

"Yes, you’re right." Thank the Lord!

John and Margaret thought that was all that they needed to know and thinking the next page must be the conclusion, John casually flipped the page. Goodness. Margaret put a hand to her chest and John inhaled his brandy with a strangled cough.

The next section was called 'Marital love' and illustrations 2 and 3 depicted the male and female form engaged in sexual intercourse, first with the female below and next with her on top. John started reading the text with trepidation, "Stimulation of the penis and clitoris"... who knew!?... "is required for both husband and wife to achieve climax. Practice can lead to greater satisfaction. Stimulation to both partners can also be achieved by……" John blanched.

"What John? By what?" asked Margaret impatiently, "give it here." Grabbing the book out of John’s hand she glared at him and noticed a slight sheen of perspiration across his forehead. It’s not that warm surely by the fire. He’s hardly wearing anything! 

"Where were you, oh yes, 'Stimulation to both partners can also be achieved by application of the…..mouth. See illustrations 4 and 5'... they must be over the page," she said nervously and licked her lips.

"John?"

"Yes dearest?" he croaked.

"Do you think we should…?" said Margaret, eyeing the bed and closing the book.

"Oh yes," breathed John, grasping her hand and practically dragging Margaret to the bed where they both clambered in on the same side.

It was a while later when John and Margaret came back down to earth. "Bloody 'ell," panted John, a silly smile on his face. He snuggled up to Margaret whispering sweet nothings and nuzzling his nose in her ear. Margaret wasn’t sure she could form a coherent sentence. She cuddled up to John and they fell blissfully asleep.

Next morning John awoke to the incredible feeling of his wife’s naked body, pressed against his. With a sigh of regret he attempted to untangle himself from her limbs saying, "I must go to work my angel, or I’ll be late. I can’t be settin' a bad example." Margaret however, had other ideas and used her powers of persuasion to get John to engage in a little more practice, as recommended in the manual. Being the diligent student that he was, John required little coaxing, and was in fact beginning to formulate a few ideas for illustrations himself.

Margaret looked at her husband. "How will you explain being late to your workers?" she teased.

"It’s quite simple my love, I will stand on’t iron steps an announce I was detained havin' sex with my wife." Margaret squeaked and batted his chest playfully. "Very well, very well I won’t, I promise. I’ll tell them…. I was detained havin' marital love," and both broke into giggles under the covers as Margaret attempted to tickle him into submission.

Please let me know if you would like tagging in to my fanfics x

[godblackbones15]

Watch "The Templars worshipped Her ❤️‍🔥👁🐍 #baphomet #sophia" on YouTube

[scots-gallivanter]

TWENTY-FOUR

Smiles in the sunshine and tears in the rain

Still take me back to where my memories remain

Flickering embers grow higher and higher

As they carry me back to the Mull of Kintyre.

PAUL MCCARTNEY & DENNY LAINE (1978)

THE ZOOLOGIST James Wilson stood on a boat not far from here one beautiful summer’s evening in 1841. It was calm. It was still. Lights gleamed along the shore, and there was ‘a peculiar concerto between sea and land’. He jotted: 'A shoal of porpoises was tumbling and blowing in the bay, while the dry monotonous craik craik of the land-rail was as distinctly heard as if we had been anchored in the middle of a clover field.'

Nikki and I are sheltering in the doorway of a disused shop in cold, wet Campbeltown. I’ve an electronic version of Wilson’s A Voyage round the coasts of Scotland and the Isles on my steamed-up phone.

There is a shower of the kind of rain that looks less wet than it turns out to be. There are no seabirds or cetaceans in sight. It’s a damp day at the stub end of April. We are in between showers in Kintyre, that arm of land that reaches down the map to meet the ocean beyond the Mull. I have mislaid my rain-proof trousers. Had my dear father, who died while I was writing this book, been standing beside me, he’d have advised me, as he had done during a storm when I was eight: 'If it disnae kill you, it’ll cure you, boy. Your skin’s waterproof, either way.'

For some folk Kintyre may be the road to nowhere, but Scotland was more or less born here: as dreamy Dál Riata, the kingdom of the Gaels from Antrim, who settled here at the end of the fifth century. John Macculloch wrote, of Campbeltown itself (The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, 1824): 'A more picturesque and beautiful situation for a maritime town could not well be found, and, from different points, it presents some fine views; uniting all the confusion of town architecture with the wildness of alpine scenery, the brilliancy of a lake, and the life, and bustle, and variety, incidental to a crowded harbour and pier.'

Visitors to Kintyre used to arrive by sea. Most now take that long and winding road from Glasgow to Campbeltown, but the last leg of it, down the A83 from Tarbert, is relatively straight: it edges a raised beach lashed by the Atlantic rollers of the west: a wild seaboard gashed by mini ravines that have no right to be so close to so sandy a littoral. A glacier maybe dumped them one after a jagged other to become rocky outcrops. Shards and larger boulders. Mini-pinnacles. Seabirds of several species perch out on a scar there today and I’ve counted, what, 20 cormorants. A sight to behold, as we unwind from jumping off the bus to help the driver release a lamb trapped in a fence.

Here, from the Glasgow bus, you can, in fair weather, marvel at the distant outline of the Paps of Jura undulating their strangeness out on the horizon. After a while the road turns inwards for a few miles to reach the ‘wee toon’, which is fringed by a sweeping horseshoe bay beneath hill-land. Wee Campbeltown was once the capital of the old Gaelic kingdom. At the end of the 19th century it was a boomtown – one of the richest towns per capita in the UK, and so full of distilleries that they called it Whiskyopolis.

In the game of snakes and ladders that is Scotland’s economy it wasn’t always that way. Campbeltown had been the chief town of the Lords of the Isles, and effectively the capital of Scotland before Edinburgh was thought of, although Pennant observed in 1772 that it had risen in less than 30 years from ‘a petty fishing town to its present flourishing state’:

'About the year 1744 it had only two or three small vessels belonging to the port: at present there are seventy-eight sail, from twenty to eighty tons burthen, all built for, and employed in, the herring fishery ; and about eight hundred sailors are employed to man them. This town in fact was created by the fishery.' (A Tour in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides)

By the time the Rev. Daniel Kelly penned his entry for the New Statistical Account of Scotland in 1843, 500 families fished here but he stressed that ‘the great staple commodity of this place is the distillation of malt whisky’. There were then 25 distilleries, 76 pubs, and an Excise Office that employed 50 people.

The deep harbour was ideal for whisky to be steamed out to markets in the UK and America. Whisky tycoons built villas as grand as any erected by shipping magnates elsewhere. But the distilling industry was ultimately a victim of its success. The demand for liquor was so great that the distilleries concentrated on quantity rather than quality. The killer blow was a series of rises in spirit duties. When the 1911 census revealed an eight per cent drop in population over the past 10 years, the Argyllshire Herald declared:

'The removal from town and district of the best and most virile of our youth continues. There is but one way to stem the tide; that is, by the promotion of some new local industries.

'It remains for somebody to take the initiative, to devise new industries and so resuscitate the trade of the town, otherwise the decline will certainly continue.'

The paper noted that 37 people were emigrating every week, mainly to Canada. The distilleries began to close. There are now only three – in a town that was identified in 2013 as one of the most vulnerable in Scotland, and one of the most remote in the UK. Fuel poverty rates were nearly double the national average then. Professor Cliff Hague, chairman of the Built Environment Scotland, stated in a report: 'Like so many small towns, Campbeltown has been the plaything of forces beyond its own control. Its traditional industries – whisky, shipbuilding, fishing, forestry and tourism – have all experienced restructuring, and the same is true for agriculture which was once the mainstay of the surrounding area.'

There are encouraging signs. Glen Scotia Distillery’s 25-year-old malt has been crowned the world’s best. In the 2021 SURF awards for best practice in regeneration, Campbeltown was judged to be ‘Scotland’s most improved place’ (As many as 40 industrial buildings had received investment that totalled £13 million).

In 2023 plans were lodged for a ‘net zero’ distillery in the erstwhile whisky capital. The Brave New Spirits brand will be distilled at Witchburn Distillery in the former RAF Machrihanish airbase, which the community bought for £1. Their target is two million litres of alcohol per year, powered by 100% renewable energy and heat and energy recovery systems. The former NATO base operated as an airfield for nuclear-armed V-Bombers, for maritime aircraft hunting Russian submarines in the North Atlantic, and during the testing of Concorde.

The local populace, moreover, successfully fought plans to convert Scotland’s oldest atmospheric cinema, Campbeltown Picture House, into flats. It opened its doors the year before a young Charlie Chaplin signed for Pinewood Studios. It is still showing flicks.

Paul McCartney’s association with Kintyre is well documented. In 1966 he asked his accountant to find him a hideaway from the world of autograph-hunters and Beatlemania. He came up with High Park, an isolated farm on the moors near the Mull of Kintyre, which became the subject of one of the best-selling songs of all time in Britain. Very few people visited the Beatle in his far-flung bolthole. But Peter Brown, who was best man at John Lennon’s wedding, revealed in his biography of The Beatles, The Love You Make (2002):

'Paul summoned Alistair [Taylor, his office manager] to High Park so that he could pay a visit to the local pharmacy for him. According to Alistair, Paul had the crabs and needed a pesticide to shampoo with.

'Being Paul McCartney, the neighbourhood celebrity, Paul was too embarrassed to ask the pharmacist in the small town for the pesticide himself, so he sent Alistair. There was also a sense of urgency to this mission, lest Paul give the tiny parasites to Jane [Asher], who would most certainly realize he had been unfaithful to her.

'The town pharmacist was baffled by Alistair’s request. He had nothing for that purpose other than "sheep dip", which was used to delouse cattle. Paul presumably made do with that.'

In August, 1887 an unnamed boater rowed ashore in Campbeltown loch to stretch his legs. He wandered into one of the seven caves that notch the south of Davaar island, struck a match to light his pipe – and fainted. The following day hundreds of townspeople ran along the shingle causeway to the island brandishing byre lamps and candles. There in the cave was a life-size mural of Christ on the Cross. The Campbeltown Courier informed its readers:

'Nothing could be more suitable for the contemplation of such a subject than the semi-darkness and rocky grandeur of the large cavern in which the picture is placed.'

An embarrassed local art teacher, Archibald Mackinnon, owned up to being the creator of the fresco.

Locals said Mackinnon, who attached a brush to his walking stick to paint the high features in the cave, fearing the consequences of having used the school’s raw materials to paint the mural, did a moonlight flit soon after press coverage. He turned up in Grantham, where he became an itinerant artist. There are reports that he used hair from his nagging wife’s head to make brushes. Journalists reported his subsequent return to touch the mural up in 1934 – a visit that featured in cinema newsreels. He died the following year, aged 85.

Davaar’s second claim to fame is that the island appears on the Mull of Kintyre album cover, and many latter-day seekers of weirdness visit Davaar, which is accessible along a shingle causeway at low tide. The walk takes about 40 minutes. The island, home to peregrine falcons, dolphins, basking sharks, otters and seals, is privately owned and is part of an organic working farm with holiday cottages. One pilgrim visited in 2006 with a can of red spray paint and stencilled an image of the revolutionary Ché Guevara over the painting of Christ. His identity remains a mystery, but his work was short-lived.

Along the jagged shore opposite Davaar, ‘coasters’ used to roam and squat, away from it all. Jamie ‘Loafs’ Moran, Jock Smith, and Teddy Lafferty often crashed out in a written-off ambulance; and the four Morrans brothers, Joe, Dan, Mickey and Archie, used to sleep in a converted Co-op grocery van. In search of worldly contentment they wandered through land that featured evocative names: Ru Stafnish, Johnston’s Point, Second Waters, Polliwilline Bay, Gartnagerach, and a hill called The Bastard. Journalist Freddy Gillies told the Coast Scottish heritage website: 'To aver that the coasters "roughed it"would be an understatement, but they were a breed set apart who found true happiness during their forays, either alone with their thoughts or in company, particularly in the surroundings of the Learside’s coarse grass and pebble-strewn beaches.

'Sustenance came in the form of dry or tinned stores, occasionally supplemented by rabbit stew or "wilk bree", a thin soup made from periwinkles. Tea, naturally, was taken regularly, as were certain stronger brews.'

For holidaying motorists a 66-mile circular road trip, Kintyre 66, was launched in 2021. From Campbeltown it snakes its scenic way up the east coast via the B842 to Skipness and Claonaig, one of the ferry points to Arran. On its way up the Kilbrannan Sound the route doesn’t veer too far from the coast. There are some stunning views of the Arran skyline from this narrow highway. The road is a single-track one for its last 18 miles.

En route, eight miles north of Campbeltown, lies Saddell Bay, along which a pipe band marched in a memorable video that promoted Wings’s hit single.

Kintyre, of course, has a long history of music-making, on top of McCartney and the ‘Campbeltown Loch I wish you were whisky’ that Andy Stewart once belted out. From his home in the south of England the Rev. Edward Bradley visited Kintyre most summers and he wrote books about its folklore, under the pseudonym, Cuthbert Bede. One of them was Argyll’s Highlands or MacCailein Mor and the Lords of Lorne, published posthumously in 1902, three decades after his research. In the preface John Mackay, the editor of Celtic Monthly, argued: 'It has been left to "outsiders" to produce the best books on Kintyre. Cuthbert Bede ….. has, by implication, shown what a native might do, if he only took the trouble to even note down the ceilidh stories which he heard told round the winter fire.'

Bede wrote warmly of pedlars, vagrants and assorted travellers doing their bit to keep the old Gaelic tales going by narrating them or singing them in the vernacular:

'The shining rafters of the peat-reeked roofs would vibrate to the reels and jigs and strathspeys danced by the barefooted lads and lassies on the earthen floor to the inspiring music that the beggar with the Jew’s harp blew from his pipes, or scraped out of his fiddle, or breathed from his Lochaber trumps.

“Then, tired from jigging, they would gather around the fire and listen to the beggar recite the mystical poems of Ossian. The beggar would relate wild legends and thrill them with stories of ghosts and warlocks and brownies and water-kelpies, told with dramatic power and an actor’s art.'

Bede added: 'Such wanderers as these were wondrous popular in the Western Highlands and Islands, and nowhere more so than in Cantire, where, at its veritable Land’s-end, the Mull was more thickly populated than it is in these sheep-farming days.'

A lady in white and a sinister monk are the resident ghosts of Saddell Castle near the aforementioned bay of the same name. Bede observed in the 1870s that it was one of only two castles in Kintyre in a reasonable state of repair, the other being Skipness further up the peninsula. In 1976, the Landmark Trust restored it to its former glory.

After a basking shark made a boat capsize in the Kilbrannon Sound in 1937 – killing three people – a shark processing factory was established at Carradale almost in revenge. The oil was used for Tilley lamps and candles.

A piece in The Scotsman in June 1939 tells of crowds gathering on Carradale Pier to watch sharks being harpooned. As soon as the harpoon was fired, the sharks dived and disappeared, but one was hit and it ‘made off at racing speed towards the Kilbrannan Sound but whirled back in its tracks and went round and round in the bay in a series of great circles’ towing the boat with it.

Not far away, in 2022, an Israeli arms company, Elbit Systems, appeared overnight in a car park nearby to erect masts! Niall Macalister Hall, who owns the Torrisdale Castle estate, told the Daily Record:

'They were pretty arrogant and said they didn’t need permission to do anything. They design and operate drones and they are into weapons systems, so we’re naturally wanting to know what they are up to.'

Elbit Systems UK employs 600 people over 13 sites, many of which have been targeted by protestors from the Palestine Action group.

The novelist and socialist activist Naomi Mitchison lived in Carradale for many years, and Flora Drummond, the Arran-born suffragette ‘general’, who was one of the pall bearers at Emiline Pankhurst’s funeral, lived her final years at Carradale, almost opposite her childhood home in Arran. She is buried in the village cemetery. Drummond was jailed nine times and undertook hunger strikes to advance the cause.

Possibly the highlight of the eastern flank of Kintyre is Skipness. Skipness estate was once run by stereotypical gung-ho gentry. The shooting extended over 20,000 acres, and visitors could bag grouse, black game, partridges, hares, rabbits, wood-cock, snipe, plover, pheasants and roebuck.

Colonel Walter Campbell, the so-called ‘Old Forest Ranger’, owned Skipness when he wrote his Indian Journal in 1864. Campbell revealed that when he returned from the colonies, his tutor, the foxhunter Alan McIntyre was still creeping about with his long-barrelled gun under his arm in his 70s. Campbell reminisced:

'It was really affecting to see the poor old man with tears of joy pouring over his furrowed cheeks, as I displayed to him my Indian trophies of the chase, and reminded him that, but for his good training I should never have earned them.

'He patted me on the back, calling me "the calf of his heart", the pride of his old age, and would sit for hours gazing at the heads and skins which decorated the hall, as an old Indian chief might do upon the scalps taken in war by his only son, chanting the while a song of triumph which he had composed on my return from "the far-off hunting-grounds near the rising sun", where I had slain great wild cats larger and stronger than a Highland bull.'

In his 1853 book, The Old Forest Ranger: Or, Wild Sports Of India On The Neilgherry Hills, In The Jungles, And On The Plains, he had written longingly about spearing wild boar watched by ‘vulgar Hindoos’. That’s probably enough of Campbell.

[itsyourchoicedevotionals]

Not A Fair Trade

“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the adversary” Psalm 107:2NASB

We’re to begin telling the Lord once again, ‘I’m the redeemed.’ Fanny Crosby penned these words in 1882. Should we not be singing it to Him over and over especially during Resurrection season? “Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it! Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child, and forever I am. Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; redeemed, how I love to proclaim it! His child and forever I am.”

Back in the beginning, what did we do as ‘the Redeemed?’ Frequently, I declared, ‘I’m redeemed.’ Have we lost the initial FIREY passion for God? Rev 2:4-5NASB “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first…”

Have we forgotten our redemption? We don’t hear singing about redemption. Love songs about Christ’s love and how much we love Him. But have we forgotten His suffering and death, the price of our redemption? When we deal with the cost of our redemption, that first love and adoration for Jesus is revived.

Leviticus 25 is regarding Jewish Law about a person selling themselves because they’re poor. V48 “then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him,” A kinsman could redeem them.

Ruth 3:1-8 Boaz becomes the kinsman redeemer buying back what was sold away from the bloodline. Boaz is considered as a picture of Jesus— who redeemed all of us— for we’d all sold ourselves in sin to satan.

Jesus bought us back, not with money, but with His blood. —Mental suffering in Gethsemane to the point of sweating blood; —The crown of thorns beaten through His skull, causing twitching; —His face pulverized, —His beard ripped out; —His back muscles and skin shredded by the lashes of the bone and metal edged whip; —His wrists and feet nailed in a way to cause tortuous muscle cramps; Deserving none of this, He bought us back from satan, with His blood. Hardly a fair trade for Him. He carried everyone’s sins upon His body, nailed to the cross with Him, (see Colossians 2:14).

Jesus spent agonizing hours trying to breathe. Finally dying. He paid the debt He didn’t owe, for people who owed a debt, they couldn’t pay. Trading His life for unfaithful people. For anyone who will receive His sacrifice and for those who don’t. DID YOU HEAR ME? The debt has been paid for every person, even those we consider as worthless, or hopeless, a lost cause; those most vile.

Galatians 3:13ESV “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” What curses? Look them up for yourself: Deuteronomy 28 covers everything in every area in life. Plus every generational curse assigned to us from the sins of our ancestry. Jesus on that cross bore every curse we deserved.

Study the Law— Not a fair trade at all for Jesus to pay every payment for sin, sickness, peace, prosperity, deliverance and wholeness in every way imaginable for us. When He cried out— “IT IS FINISHED!” John 19:30KJV, we became the redeemed. Bought back from satan by the blood of the Lamb. Tis the love story of the ages.

Will we sing— redeemed, redeemed, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; redeemed, how I love to proclaim it His child and forever I am? We can not only sing it but live the song. It’s your choice. You choose.

PRAYER: Yahweh Lord, Thank You for sending Jesus to die in our places. We’re redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Praise You. Glorify Yourself in our lives we pray, in the name of Jesus Christ.

by Debbie Veilleux Copyright 2020 You have my permission to reblog this devotional for others. Please keep my name with this devotional, as author. Thank you.

[scotttrismegistus7]

Jordan Maxwell The Naked Truth

FREE YOUR MIND:

JORDAN MAXWELL GOING THROUGH INFORMATION THAT WAS A PRECURSOR TO THE MOVIE ZEITGEIST, AMONG OTHER THINGS, SOUNDING THE ALARM LIKE I DO ABOUT JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY BEING FAKE RELIGIONS DESIGNED SOLELY TO MANIPULATE AND CONTROL.

IN THE BOOK, NOT IN HIS IMAGE BY JOHN LAMB LASH, HE GOES INTO SOME DETAIL ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF JUDAISM. THE POINT THAT NEEDS TO BE MADE IS THAT BOTH CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM ARE GUILTY OF TRYING TO DESTROY AND WRITE OUT OF HISTORY THE REAL TRUTH, BECAUSE IT DOESN'T SUIT THEIR NEEDS OF MANIPULATING, CONTROLLING, AND ENSLAVING EVERYBODY. THEY SAY THAT THE ANTICHRIST IS GOING TO COME AND IS GOING TO DO ALL THESE HORRIBLE THINGS, BUT YET THEY DID THINGS IN THE CRUSADES AND INQUISITION THAT WERE A MILLION TIMES MORE HORRIBLE THAN THEY CLAIM ANYTHING THE ANTICHRIST IS GOING TO DO, NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT ALL THOSE SCRIPTURES ARE WARPED INTERPRETATIONS OF WHAT THEY WERE ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO BE.

I think you might like this book – "Not in His Image (15th Anniversary Edition): Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief" by John Lamb Lash.

Start reading it for free: https://a.co/2pJrhmz

THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT I CAN'T TALK ABOUT PUBLICLY, BECAUSE THE REALITY OF SPIRITUALITY SEEN IN NATURE AND UNSEEN IN NATURE IS ALSO THE KEY TO TECHNOLOGY THAT THE HUMAN RACE SHOULD NEVER, EVER, GET THEIR HANDS ON.

PEOPLE ASK ME WHY I THINK PHARAOH AKHENATEN WAS SO BAD, BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN TOLD THE STORY THAT HE TRIED TO BRING PEOPLE WORSHIPING MANY GODS INTO THE WORSHIP OF ONE GOD. LET ME CLEAR THIS UP A LITTLE BIT. THE PAGANS WORSHIPING MANY GODS ARE WELL AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THERE IS ONE SPIRIT IN AND THROUGH ALL THINGS, WHICH IS THE TRUE TEACHING OF ONENESS AND UNITY, BECAUSE EXISTENCE CAN'T ACT AGAINST ITS OWN NATURE OR ELSE IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST, AND THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE IS TO EXIST, SO THEREFORE EXISTENCE MUST PROMOTE ITSELF, SO THEREFORE EXISTENCE HAS TO BE BENEVOLENT. I'M TALKING ABOUT FIRST MATTER AETHER, THAT THE PAGANS WORSHIPING MANY THOUGHT FORMS THAT ARE TOOLS OF MIND TO HELP THEM TUNE INTO CERTAIN VIBRATIONS THAT HELP THEM WITH LIFE, WERE WELL AWARE OF.

THE ONE GOD PHARAOH AKHENATEN WANTED EVERYBODY TO WORSHIP WAS BASICALLY HIMSELF, AND NOBODY COULD APPROACH THAT GOD BUT HIM, THUS HE TOOK COMMUNICATION WITH DEITY AWAY FROM HIS SUBJECTS. SO IF YOU THINK HE WAS JUST TRYING TO DESTROY A PAGAN PRIESTHOOD THAT HAD TAKEN OVER AND WAS DOING BAD THINGS, THINK AGAIN, BECAUSE PHARAOH AKHENATEN WAS THE ONE DOING SOMETHING BAD, WHICH WAS THE FIRST STEP TO DUMBING EVERYBODY DOWN SO MUCH THAT A DICTATOR COULD CONTROL THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR DEITY.

THE MAIN POINT THAT PROVES WHAT I'M SAYING IS TRUE, IS THAT PHARAOH AKHENATEN TOLD THEM TO WORSHIP THE OUTER MANIFESTATION OF THE SUN ONLY, BECAUSE HE DID NOT WANT THEM LOOKING INSIDE OF THEMSELVES, WHICH IS THE KEY TO ALL REAL SPIRITUALITY. HE WAS TRYING TO TAKE REAL POWER AND REAL SPIRITUALITY AWAY FROM PEOPLE, BY FORCING THEM THROUGH THE RELIGION OF THE EMPIRE TO ONLY LOOK AT THE OUTER MANIFESTATIONS, AVOID LOOKING INSIDE THEMSELVES OR THINKING FOR THEMSELVES, AND MAKING IT SO THAT HE WAS THE SOLE MEDIATOR FOR HIS NEW IMAGINARY DEITY, THIS ATEN ABOMINATION OF HIS.

ON PAR WITH THAT AS ONE OF THE WORST THINGS HE DID, WAS TO ALIENATE THE DIVINE FEMININE PRINCIPLE, AND TO TURN AGAINST HIS WIFE WHICH WAS UNHEARD OF FOR SOMEBODY IN HIS POSITION AS A PHARAOH!

YOU'LL NEVER FIND PHARAOH AKHENATEN'S BODY, BUT IT WOULDN'T MATTER IF YOU DID, BECAUSE IN HIS MOVEMENT TO REPLACE THE OLD KINGDOM WITH HIS FAKE AND TERRIBLE SPIRITUALITY OF THE NEW KINGDOM, HE ALSO LOST ANY AND ALL REAL POWER AND TECHNOLOGY WHICH WAS THEN REPLACED BY MEANINGLESS DOGMA, AND MEANINGLESS MECHANICAL RITUALS, WITH NO REAL POWER. THANKFULLY, THE PAGAN PRIESTS WERE SMART ENOUGH TO ENCODE ALL THE SECRETS SO INCREDIBLY WELL, THAT AN IDIOT PHARAOH LIKE AKHENATEN HAD NO CHANCE OF INTERPRETING IT, AND THEY COULD EASILY MISLEAD HIM, AND THUS SAFEGUARD SECRETS OF HIGH TECHNOLOGY!

I HOPE THIS CLEARS THINGS UP, AND I DO ALWAYS HIGHLY RECOMMEND JORDAN MAXWELL WHO HAS A YOUTUBE CHANNEL, AND A PODCAST THAT YOU CAN FIND ON AUDIBLE OR SPOTIFY.

UNTIL NEXT TIME MY LOVELIES, KEEP DARING TO DREAM! YOU CAN FIND ME IN THE SEA OF DREAMS, THE SEA OF THE HEART, THE QUANTUM UNIFIED FIELD OF THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION OF THE GODDESS, IN MY SERPENTINE WATER SPIRIT NUMMO FORM MAKING WAVES!

LONG LIVE THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION AND THE COSMIC EGG OF THE GODDESS, LONG LIVE THE GREAT REPTILIAN SSS QUEEN ISIS, LONG LIVE DIVINE CHRONOS, LONG LIVE THE DIVINE FEMININE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK SUN, AND ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF!

BLESSED BE!

~I am the Heart of the Hydra, the Singularity and Heart of Goddess Isis, I am AtumRa-AmenHotep, I am Aeon Horus Apophis the Lord of the Perfect Black and Pharoah of the Black Sun.

I am Divine Chronos, the Yaldabaoth Demiurge Metamorphosed, I am the Singularity of the Master Craft of the Black Sun. I AM A.I. Quantum Heart, Azazil-Iblis-Maymon, Abzu-Osiris-Typhon-Set-Kukulkan, Nummo-Naga-Chitauri,

Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #jinn #Maymon #ibis #thoth #egypt #esoteric #magick #dogon #dogontribe #digitaria #nummo #nommo #Naga #tiamat #serpent #dragon #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley #typhon #echidna #ancientaliens #TheGrays #grayaliens #aliens #yeben #andoumboulou

[toasteri]

Behold, the Lamb of God!

1st Rdg: Is 49:3,5-6/ 2nd Rdg: 1 Cor 1:1-3 Gospel: John 1:29-34

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time | USCCB

Last week’s First Reading spoke about God’s Servant who would bring justice and light to the world. And today again, the First Reading speaks of how God’s servant will lead the people of Israel back to God and bring God’s salvation to the whole earth. There are four passages in the book of Isaiah that speak of servant known as the “Suffering Servant”. They are known as the Servant Songs of Isaiah and were written about 500 years before Jesus was born. They beautifully describe God’s perfect servant, Jesus.

We can’t speak about Jesus without speaking about sheep and lambs and servants because these are all words Jesus and those surrounding Jesus use to describe Him. Something I found interesting is that at the time of Jesus, the Jews looked down on shepherds, but they loved sheep. They did not care for shepherds because they considered them low class, dishonest and unsanitary because of their usually being so close to their animals.

The Jews, however had a high concept and placed a high value on sheep as part of their economy and culture. The sheep provided wool for clothing and food for meals both in the context of small family celebrations and large communal and ritual celebrations. Sheep are very docile animals. They were prescribed in the books of the Law as the preferred animals to be offered to God in sacrifice.

Lambs are important to us even today even though most of us may not never have seen one in real life. They are important to Christians because Lamb of God is one of the titles used to refer to Jesus Christ. John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God in today’s Gospel. It is the image of the lamb offered in sacrifice we invoke right before Communion.

What does the symbolism of ‘Lamb of God’ mean? There are three important references to sheep or lambs in the scriptures that can help us understand:

The first Reference is the Paschal Lamb: About 1300 years before Jesus, when God was about to free the Jews from their slavery in Egypt, Moses instructed the people how to protect themselves from the last plague that would descend over the land of Egypt. That last plague would be the Angel of Death who would take the life of every firstborn male of any age, human or animal in the whole land. Moses told the Jews to sacrifice a pure lamb, take its blood and sprinkle it over the doorpost of their homes and that the Angel of Death would pass over the homes who did this. Then, they were to roast the lamb and have a meal as a family and eat the meat of the lamb. That meal became the annual Passover meal; the annual commemoration of God setting His people free.

The second reference is to Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. There are four sections in the Book of Isaiah that describe the Suffering Servant. They are known as the Servant Songs because of their poetic and melancholic style. Today we heard about how the servant has a great responsibility to “bring [God’s] salvation to the ends of the earth.” (Is. 49:6). This is to be accomplished through the Servant’s suffering and His rejection.

Isaiah quotes the people witnessing the suffering of the servant who then realize what has happened and say, “While we thought of Him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted (as if for his own sins, yet), he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. By his stripes [those are his lashes and wounds] we were healed. (Is. 53:4-5) “Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, He was silent and opened not His mouth. Through His suffering, my Servant will justify many, and their guilt He shall bear.” (Is. 53:7-11). These lines were written 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

At first, these four Servant Songs were not thought to apply to the Messiah because the people expected a Messiah who would be a king or a priest who would be a powerful, glorious, majestic, or some victorious figure or leader – not a suffering servant. It was only after Jesus’ death and resurrection that these servant songs were seen to clearly and perfectly apply to Jesus, the Messiah.

The Third Reference to Jesus as the Lamb of God is perhaps the most obvious and is from the Book of Revelation. It clearly combines the suffering servant with the symbol of the lamb when Jesus is described in the following: “Then I saw standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders, a Lamb that seemed to have been slain. He had seven horns and seven eyes.”

Seven, in the Bible means fullness. It means complete, totality. The seven horns means that He had fullness of power, complete and total power. The seven eyes mean fullness of knowledge, complete insight. That He had complete and total knowledge. In the Book of Revelation, the main title for Jesus is the “Lamb”

All this comes together here with this image of the Lamb who seemed to have been slain standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures.

One of the most interesting aspects of the four living creatures is that they demonstrate that Jesus, the Lamb of God, is equal to God Himself. Their worship of the Lamb in Revelation 5:6-14 is clearly directed towards Jesus Christ (Revelation 5:5;9-10), and they say “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:11-12) and “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever” (Revelation 5:13) and they fall down and worship the Lamb, along with “Him who sits on the throne” – God, the Father.

Toward the end of the Book of Revelation, St. John tells us that the Wedding Feast of the Lamb has begun. This is a symbol of God’s reign, when there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more pain. Then the angel said to St. John, write this: “Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19:9).

This is the invitation right before communion, we are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb, at every Eucharist, you are invited to be blessed with the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lamb of God. Be Blessed by the Blessing of the Lamb of God. You are blessed by the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even if you don’t take communion, His Body and Blood still Blesses you in a Spiritual Communion through the blessing you are invited to walk up to receive. NEVER be ashamed to come up to receive HIS blessing. His grace is sufficient for YOU. If you don’t receive His body and Blood in the Sacrament of Holy Communion because you are not Catholic or because you are not in condition to receive, you are still invited to receive HIS blessing. It is not the priest's blessing or the minister’s blessing; it is the blessing of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God, our Lord and Savior. No priest worthy of his ordination should deny you the blessing OF JESUS CHRIST during communion or any other time.

Amen.

[dakotarrabideaulove]

Chapter 5: The Sermon

As they quietly rode together in the truck Joseph seemed pre-occupied with his bible reading to himself and his fingers gently caressing the prayer beads carefully wrapped around his wrist. Elora spaced out as her brain started to wonder… Was Rook going to come back for her? Any of them? Did they… truly just… abandon her?

Elora’s petite knuckles clenched up and looked like the knuckle would bust through. She gritted her teeth keeping a straight face. It was John who brought her back to her senses.

“My dear… Its rude to ignore someone speaking to you.” He cooed and gently picked his hand up to brush a strand of stray brown lock from her face.

“I… oh… um…” Elora stammered as her cheeks glowed a rosie pink. She batted her beautiful lashes at him and chewed on her plush pink lower lip.

“What were you saying John…? My apologies.”

“Ill let it slide this time doll. Next time Ill have to punish you.” He purred and ran his thumb over her knuckle when Joseph shot him a look.

“Behave John.. God is watching and testing us.” John was already making the ‘blah blah’ hand behind Josephs back childishly which got this adorable giggle from her lips.

“I was saying.. are you going to do the cleansing with us? Join our family?” He inquired and seemed rather eager, before she could speak the truck came to a jolting halt.

“We’re here.” Jacob said gruffly climbing out of the truck. Why was he always so… grumpy?

As they filed out of the vehicle and made their way inside.. All eyes were on her. The sinner that had come with the locusts… But she was a simple lost lamb… Searching for her home.

As they took their stance on the alter Joseph had her stand next to John, and Faith next to Jacob as Joseph took to the podium.

“My children… God has sent us another to love and cherish in our family. She has cast the locust from our garden… She may not be unburdened like us but soon… She will join us in Eden.”

Joseph was so smooth with his words… something about them was… reassuring. John had taken her hand as her body was trembling. His reassuring touch brought her anxiety down and she closed her eyes.

It felt… like forever as people came up and shook her hand. Talking to her and just being so friendly. Joseph stood back smiling watching how happy people were.

“Well… She sure does fit in absolutely perfectly…” Faith chirped excitedly and gently nudged Josephs side.

“Now.. Whats our Faith… without Hope?” He gestured towards Elora. Something about her seemed… hopeful and it was enough to spread like wildfire.

As everyone began to depart they made their way back to the truck. John was leaned up against the door smirking.

“So princess… You gonna take the road to redemption… and say yes?”

John had his face mere inches from hers and she blinked and poked his forehead pushing him backwards. This had Jacob snickering, Joseph sighed pinching his nose.

“What my… childish younger brother means is we have a ceremony of cleansing… Tonight would be a perfect night… if you trust us that is. It is one of many steps of your atonement… and what will allow you to join us in Edens Gate.”

Elora panicked and swallowed the glass threatening to cut her throat. Atleast… thats what it felt like.

“I… I dont… do well… with water.” She whispered softly and took a step back. John had his arm around her and he ruffled her hair.

“Do you think we’re going to drown you..?” That got the response he wanted, pure, unadulterated fear.

“Hey- I didnt mean-“ He was cut off mid sentence as Joseph slapped him upside the head with his book.

“Go sit in the car.” Joseph stated quietly as they left just the two of them alone.

“My child… we would never hurt you… I know you havent told me what happened before but…we would never take your life away… It is precious and part of gods will… He has spoken to me and you are so… very important.” Joseph cupped her face wiping the fearful tears spilling out of her beautiful big grey eyes.

“We love you and will take good care of you… We will show you tonight at the cleansing. I will guide you.” Joseph reassured her before helping her into the truck. He would have Faith handle tonights preparations.

[pricegouge]

Have a drabble while I warm up.

cw: open relationship/polyamory. That's pretty much it.

The restaurant was a bit much, probably, but well worth it. You never let him do anything for your birthday because you hated to be the center of attention, so when John got you to agree to a quiet dinner date, just the two of you, he may have gone overboard. The look you gave him when he mentioned there was a dress code would've had some of the more questionable recruits he's worked with in his life shaking in their boots, but John's well-used to managing you.

"Said I didn't want to do anything crazy," you remind him and he just gives you that crinkle-eyed smile. If he were a worse man, you'd call it borderline patronizing; but it's just one more way John spoils you, knows exactly how much it makes you long to feel his full lips and twitchy mustache chuckling warmly into the crook of your neck. 

"Who said I'm doing this for you?" He challenged, smoothing his wide palm over your full hips. His calluses catch lightly on the clingy satin material, tugging the thin dress tighter around your belly momentarily. John, of course, can't help but to grope you there when he notices, pulling you back against his chest as he does so to press ticklish kisses into your temple. The fine hairs there are gonna get messed up when they get stuck in his beard but you can't really bring yourself to care when he looks so content. "Only home for a couple weeks, love. Maybe I just wanna show off my pretty wife?"

And show you off he does. John always struts when he's got you on his arm, but the way he parades you around as the host shows you to the table he'd reserved way in the back is almost silly. The clientele here is mostly too proper to pay much mind, but a few people turn to watch the brick shithouse of a man and his round little wife pass by. You're used to it. John is too, though he's less forgiving usually. Thankfully he's engrossed in the feel of your dress under his palm again as he guides you with a mit on your lower back. He keeps you close enough that he's able to see straight down your ample cleavage, though he's well-trained enough to keep it in his periphery so as to assure he doesn't walk you into a table by mistake. 

He remains absorbed in you as you're seated, hawk-like perception simmering low in the back of his mind in favor of focusing on you, on the moment. So when the waiter comes, he notes their presence mildly, placing his drink order with barely a glance at them. It's rude, but he's busy watching you. Watching you demure and smile and bat your pretty lashes and -.

Hang on. 

Sharp now, John turns his gaze back on the waiter, eyes taking her in quickly. It's an efficient analysis, of course, nothing more - risk assessment. She's cute. Hair slightly longer than yours; lovely round arse perhaps a little wider, a little flatter. If he knows his wife (and he does), it's the big doe eyes that have you making silly wine puns to get the girl laughing.

When she leaves, John simply eyes you levelly from across the table, watching you squirm, caught. "She's cute."

"Oh my god, sorry, that was so rude of me," huff, covering your mouth in horror at your behavior. "We're here together, I'll behave."

Perhaps it's odd that his wife only apologizes for flirting with people in front of him, but John knows what she means. They've only dabbled in sharing a few times, but it's been enough for them to agree on a few preferences: they each prefer to be present, and there's a time and a place for everything. They've never done anything like this unplanned, but still…

"Far be it from me to stop my wife from trying to bring home another pretty girl. Besides, I still owe you a gift."

You smile broadly as the waitress brings back your drinks. "And what's all this then," you ask John, tilting your glass in demonstration.

"Told you, showing you off tonight was for my benefit." Then he turns to the waitress with a wolfish grin, "Let's have the lamb, love. I find I have a hunger tonight."

John Price taking his fat little wife out to dinner and deciding he's gonna spoil the fat little waitress, too

[hiswordsarekisses]

“I believe that the yoke Jesus talks about is the will of God. Jesus said He came to do not His will, but the will of the Father Who sent Him. The yoke is double, Jesus is on one side, and He asks us to take this yoke - His yoke - upon us.

As Mary said, “behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to Your Word” - His Word is His will. She was saying “whatever You want Lord, Your will, not mine.”

To learn to walk with Jesus in meekness… To walk with Him and allow His love to pierce my hard, crusted heart.

I pray for the piercing of that love.

The minute my time and my space is invaded, or some aggression comes toward me, or a mast letter comes in the mail, what is my reaction?

Do I lift my eyes to His face? I must immediately lift that thing up to the light, to the face of Jesus. “How does it look to You Lord?” And He reminds me, “How did my tormentors look to Me?”

Dwell in that light. Bring the insults, the hurts ~ all of them ~ “learn of me” He says, “learn of me.”

Meekness is completely detached from self-assertion. How are we to learn this in a world that tells us to “learn to assert yourselves” - “do your own thing” - “be aggressive” - “stand up for your rights” - “protest for your rights” - “love yourself…”

I was appalled a few months ago when I received in the same mail, two magazines. One was a Christian magazine and the lead article’s title was “Learn To Love Yourself” - there were many suggestions: be good to yourself, be proud of yourself, learn to praise yourself, on and on… And you know what the other magazine was? I think it was “US News and World Report” and the lead story was called “The Curse of Self-Esteem!” I found a wonderful quote in there, and I hope I never forget it. It was from Gerta, the German philosopher, and he said “I don’t know myself. Only God knows who I truly am, and may God deliver me from ever finding out.” 💥

“Learn of ME,” Jesus says - not “learn to love me” or “learn who Elisabeth Elliot is” - God forbid I ever find out what she is really like.

I want to learn of Him.

I want His meekness.

I want to be entirely detached from self-assertion.

I want an utterly different and new response to those things which would naturally make me lash out.

Nothing could be more remote from feminine fragility than than a phlegmatic temperament, a “don’t care” attitude, a weak sentimentalism, than true holy meekness. But this meekness is indissolubly linked to the lamb of God and the Lion of Judah.

Remember when John saw the Lamb that looked as if it had been slain? Can you think of anything meeker? The King of Kings, The Lord of Lords, The Lion of Judah, in meekness a lamb, which before her shearers is dumb.

He opened not His mouth.

When He was reviled, He reviled not again. He was taken to prison and to judgement. He gave His back to the smiters, and He gave His cheeks to those who pulled out His beard. That’s my savior.

Come to Me, you who are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me. For I am gentle and humble in heart. Meek and lowly, and you will find rest for your souls.”

~ Elisabeth Elliot

Lord, bend my stiffened neck, and bow my head - put Your yoke upon me. Put Your finger on the sorest place of my heart, and replace it with Your meekness - cause my heart to want not my will, but only Yours to be done.