#just like the seedpods | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pnfc · 3 months ago

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20 or so years in the future, doof and perry talk in a pool, at 3am, about the past. for about 5k words. that's it

[ on ao3 here ]

Even in dead of night, sounds rattle up the tower’s old iron skeleton to the top. The noise of the residents below, their talking and thumping and TV, warps through metal pipes and chutes into a muffled mechanical soundscape. The aging building’s life functions, thrumming from underfoot, as the fan wheels gently in the air above their bed.

Perry wakes in the room to Heinz’s absence.

Alone like this, he’s left with the many necessities of Heinz’s sleeping arrangement. The carefully selected quilt with the chunky stitching, the snuggly texture. Systematic obliteration of the wrong lights, the wrong sounds. All the particularities that Perry loves. And there are remnants: the old teddy retired to a decorative chair in the corner. The grind guard she doesn’t wear so much now, some little weight has lifted.

Perry squints at the Big Ben miniature on the bedside table to confirm the late hour, and gets up.

He finds her out on the balcony, crosslegged at the side of the pool. The moon’s out of view, but it lights the clouds up like seedpod puffs, and they mirror on the water, underlit by turquoise pool lights. The air is hot.

Perry goes over and places a hand on her bare knee, makes an asking sound.

“Just the usual, Perry,” Heinz says in reply. “I had a stupid dream.” She slides a foot out into the water, where it glows, white in blue. Perry sits at her side. “You were out of character.”

“You’re always uncharacteristically mean in my dreams,” she continues, half smiling. “And you talk. You talk way too often, I think that’s the worst part. In like whatever stupid voice my subconscious thinks you should have. Which changes. I think you sounded French one time, which makes no sense.”

The light is enough for Perry to sign by. What’d I say?

“Oh you know,” she says, her tone compressing. “You regretted this.”

Perry sits with that, with her, pressed against her leg. It’s not an accusation, Perry knows well enough by now, not one made in earnest. They both have to live with Heinz’s self-ravaging mind. He rubs her hand with his.

Hard to know what to regret. He’s put a lot of work in, building this life for himself. Like his boys used to build those miraculous one-day contraptions in the summertime, or Heinz would make reality-cracking machines fueled on coffee and malice, so Perry had built something of his own, more common and slow, but something he was happy with. This partnership with Heinz, this thick-knit network of people he’s living for.

It’s a struggle to even remember the days when he’d been workshopping its contruction. Hard to blueprint a machine, harder to blueprint a life lived in flux, tripwired with secrets and obligations. He used to sweat through nightmares, trying to see the shape of his future, seeing only how easily it could be lost.

Her sitting next to him on smooth cement, 3 AM, poolwater ringing her calf, the bright night sky. He can’t express to Heinz how he never imagined having this much.

So he gets up, with a parting squeeze of her hand, and backdives into the pool, a lazy arc piercing silent and smooth. Might as well give her something to watch. He skims along the bottom, where the LEDs cast sixfold yellow shadows, overlapping like insect wings as he goes.

A few minutes of trawling the circumference, twisting, shooting through the duck-shaped floaty ring, rocketing off the sides with strong pushes of his feet. He weaves and skips between water and air in sinoid leaps. He’s learned to oscillate his body like a seal for these jumps — it’s proved useful sampling the broader animal kingdom for swimming techniques. They keep him limber, in this low-gravity environment his body was made for.

He pops up to check on Heinz, who’s looking. “No no no, keep it up, Perry the Platypus,” she grins at him. “You’re like my Windows screensaver right now. It’s soothing. I dunno if it’s putting me to sleep though, if that’s what you were going for.”

Perry floats over to where she’s sitting. She’s stirring both legs through the water. They’re pencil-skinny and they spirograph ripples that lap into Perry’s neck.

“Y’know what I thought when I found out this place had a pool?” she asks him.

“Well — I thought I’d be doing so much water aerobics. I definitely didn’t think I’d have someone semiaquatic in my life. But that didn’t pan out, the aerobics. So later I thought I’d put in some electric eels or piranhas, for you when you’d visit. Keep it zesty. But I always thought of it right when the aquarium was closed. And you know, after that first spark of excitement has passed, an idea like that just ends up being on your list. So it never happened. You got lucky.”

Perry rests with an arm around her calf, underwater. She’s wearing one of her long hotweather nightshirts, millennial neon geometries advertising a dance camp that Vanessa once attended. It has glow in the dark squigglies. So many little things to keep Vanessa around, her never-worn hand-me-ups.

Perry darkens the shirt fabric in his wet fist, and tugs it toward him. Heinz laughs. “You are not getting me in there,” she says, pushing a foot at him. “I came out here to brood, not swim.”

Perry doesn’t accept it. He pulls her in successfully, and she drops off the edge into the pool without much fuss, splashing him. “This is of my own volition,” she says. “You don’t get to boss me around in the middle of the night. You don’t own me.”

Yes he does. Perry swims a ring around her waist, framing her. The light’s playing off her grey hair, staining it teal. In this view you could mistake them for a matching set. He likes that.

“That is literally still on a list somewhere,” Heinz adds, “the piranhas. In one of my old notebooks.”

They’re piled in storage now, the plans and the blueprints, though she keeps a few sitting around from the later years. A while back they cobbled together a scrapbook of the better schemes, Heinz’s more impressive drawings, fonder memories. Perry got the B.O.A.T. schematic professionally framed, one birthday. Heinz had rolled her eyes at it and hung it in the foyer.

“I feel weird looking at those,” Heinz says. “It’s like oh yeah, that idea was living in my head for years. Thought for sure that one was gonna put one over on Roger, as soon as I got around to it.”

Years, multiple? Really?

“Oh yeah,” says Heinz, as Perry blinks up in question. “You know how I procrastinate, Perry the Platypus. But it was mainly the big plans that I kept putting off, over and over. The ones that required a real surge of hatred, to kick my scheming into gear. Ambitious stuff, you know,” she says, tilting her head. “Mind control, intimidation — stuff that works. Not like the stuff I’d do with you, most days.”

She lilts an arm out, snaring Perry’s hand. He lets her pull him through the water in a curve.

“The bad ideas were more fun — I think I was just trying to give you a laugh, at a certain point. Not that you ever did. The chicken replaceinator, the beam that made people’s ties comically long. I did not think turning everyone’s shoes into heelys would actually win me dominion of the tristate area, Perry, if I’m being honest.

“All those big diabolical plans, they kept me up at night. But I put them off, ‘cause it was more fun getting sugar high with you and bouncing off the walls. Making up an entire song and dance number for the satisfaction of watching you try not to tap your foot to it. Every year it was: oh, just a few more months with Perry. Next year I’ll get serious, for sure.

“And, you know. I can’t regret any of it,” Heinz says. “Because it worked. I got you to dance with me, spend time with me. I didn’t think that was my goal at first — but you know, in retrospect, what else could possibly stack up?

“. . . But I didn’t get to know that, that my time was well spent, until later. Because you can’t really know if you’ll regret something when it’s happening. Like all those bad relationships, all those times I went into debt. You have to wait until you can look back on it all in a decade or two and go: oh yeah, that was a wash.”

Heinz pulls Perry out in a slow-motion twirl, bopping at the water’s surface. She gives him a considering look as their hands detach.

“That’s why I think about you. Because you haven’t been around as long. It takes time to figure out regret. And you don’t have the luxury,” she says with a tight smile, “of regretting a decade. You didn’t fuck up the 90s. You didn’t even have the opportunity.”

Perry can tell she’s got some spleen to vent. Potentially a whole rainbow of humors. He sets up on a paddleboard shaped like a ducky foot — perches zen-legged in its center, balancing what little weight he has. He comes up past her chin now.

“Do you know how many times I’ve invented time travel, Perry the Platypus?” Heinz asks.

“Well, once. When I was in my twenties. For a generous definition of ‘invent’ — we all learned the Onassian principles in college physics. It’s not too hard to plug in the missing variables — sort of an open secret, in the evil science world, how to manipulate time. We’d all dabble, here and there. You overstep and there’s consequences, of course. By the time you met me I was using it for trifles and whimsies. Hyperspecific stuff, that’s less of a risk.”

She fidgets shapes through the water with her hands.

“You remember me, like — summoning the Roman army. That sort of thing.”

Perry remembers it going wrong, yeah, and him sending Heinz back 800 years, in a perfunctory brush-off of that day’s scheme. He remembers finding Heinz back at DEI the next morning, in a sour mood, with a tirade prepared on the difficulties of refining metal ores in 13th century Mongolia. Heinz had lived there a month. Her age was now out of whack with the present date, and she had said something incomprehensible about it, like:

You’ve made me a Leo, Perry the Platypus. A Leo. That’s . . . well I’ve always felt like I should be one, deep down, so thank you. But it explains why horoscope advice has never worked out for me, which in hindsight is just plain embarrassing.

Perry doesn’t recall there being a scheme that day. Even with the freedom to bubble out extra time, Heinz hadn’t bothered prepping more than a long complaining story for Perry — adequate payback for the thwart, he supposed.

“But the first time I got it working,” Heinz continues. “I did some stuff I never even told you about.” She glances up at Perry. “I didn’t even make a plan, I just went back first thing. To Gimmelshtump. Wasn’t even dressed for the weather. And I saw myself there, walking around the outskirts of town. Carrying old breadloaves and rags, and whatever else — I had to be a packrat, back then.

“And I wasn’t even that far removed, at the time, from that kid. But he had a whole system worked out to survive. If you plunked me down in his haferlschuhs now I’d just collapse where he stood, in a matter of hours. Or I’d go crawling back to the ocelots — which wouldn’t end well, I don’t think they’d recognize me.”

Perry’s rather agog. What a length of time to hold this information inside. He realizes he’s perched unstably forward, off the foam board.

What did you do?

Heinz makes a dismissive noise. “What could I do? Nothing. Could I have stayed? Been a parent to that kid? I guess. At least until causality cried foul and wiped me out. But who wants to be a parent at 23?

“And it seems selfish, right, wanting to keep what I made myself into, at his expense. He had to suffer so I could sit warm and cozy in the 80s, failing out of American college because I was too smart for it, schtupping my way through town, selling bratwurst. But I am selfish, Perry the Platypus.” Heinz sets a hard look on him. “All I did was confirm to myself that it was real, all those awful things that happened to that kid. I wasn’t making it up. And I never went back.”

Perry stares at her — he’s sitting pensive on the board, cross-legged, and pushes himself an inch closer with his tail ruddered in the water.

I would’ve stayed, Perry responds, for that kid.

Heinz gives him a quizzical smile. “Would you? That’s easy to say. Would you live out the rest of your days helping him put his rumpkinhosen on the right way? Explaining puberty, that it’s not really the devil growing out of his body, like Mother says? Stealing him acne cream?”

Heinz’s face angles in a mean way.

“Are you gonna convince that kid his parents will never love him? Because that’s all that was keeping me there, apart from Roger. The dumb, burning hope that they might, eventually.”

Ok, so it’s a terrible idea. Perry nods anyway, to be contrary, cheek squished upon his fist.

You’d run away with any cute animal you met, he signs. And I’d kick their asses.

This repairs the mood somewhat, makes Heinz giggle in surprise.

“Oh would you?” she says behind long fingers, eyes sparkling. “Because I’d kind of like to see that. Grizzled platypus with a mysterious score to settle shows up, terrorizes my childhood home. Makes my parents beg for mercy.”

Perry nods. I’d treat you like a princess. Heinz can’t see that he’s blushing. She laughs, louder than before.

“Oh that’s cute, Perry. The Vanessa treatment! Wow. I would’ve turned out different, that’s for sure.” She’s trailing her fingertips across the pool tiles. “But going back in time, taking care of each other . . . let’s not, okay Perry the Platypus? Let’s not and say we would.”

But you did, Perry signs, because once he’s chimed into conversation with Heinz it’s hard to stop himself. Even when he realizes, too late, that he shouldn’t have said anything.

He drops his shaking hands to his lap. Heinz cocks her head with the same pretty smile, now thinner. “You’re gonna bring that up? When we learned how they got you? That . . . that was a mistake,” she says. “We were just getting to be friends, back then. It was exciting. I didn’t have my head on straight. ... And that would’ve been a different situation, in continuity terms, that was . . . ”

She opens and closes her mouth. Perry sees her stare fall to the water, thumb still tracing the putty grooves between the tiles.

“. . . I never really explained to you the technical nitty-gritty, the physics of it. There’s time-space transplantation, moving a body in its current state back or forward through time — that’s what I did going to Drusselstein. But there’s other ways to slide around.

“See, Roger was getting into golf — just excruciating, trying to spend any time with him, it was always ‘Pencil in a timeslot with Melanie and we’ll hit the back nine,’ or whatever.

“I found a way to fast-forward him, that I never got to use. Premature inator-destruction. It happens to the best of us. Usually to me, whenever you got too eager.”

Perry’s propped on his fist, contemplative. I wouldn’t know anything about that.

“See I think you would,” Heinz says, narrowing her eyes. “I’m pretty sure you were my caddie. In fact I’ve gleaned that most, if not all, of the platypuses I encountered in my evil heyday were you. That little guy had your eyes, and he looked unusually hot in golf shorts.”

Perry blinks, mouth trained in a line.

“C’mon, Perry the Platypus,” she wheedles. “It’s not nice leaving a girl in limbo, for so many years. This’ll keep weighing on me.”

Okay fine, Perry signs, shrugging. I was the hot caddie.

“I knew it!” She grabs the foam board and shoves it hard, sending Perry backwards with a splash. “You are such a jerk gaslighting me all the time! Steven.”

Perry shakes water off his bill and punches forward into her, though the effect is more of a cuddle. She tangles him in her arms.

“So that means you know,” she says, scrunching fingers into his chest, “why I wanted to speed through that. And if you can isolate a body, move it forward and back, you can isolate a mind, or a consciousness.

“That was the technique I used, for when . . . you know, when I did the.” She falters. “Really, really bad idea.”

Except you didn’t, Perry signs up at her.

“Yeah, but like. I think about it. How I almost did. How I could’ve screwed everything up. For both of us.”

Perry remembers it more through her recollection than anything. The day she’d cracked into the OWCA admin portal and Perry had let her. The day she found the timestamped geolocation from which Perry had been acquired. He remembers Heinz’s outrage, mourning Perry’s fate at OWCA’s hands, and the wave of giddy revelation that had quickly taken over at the chance to go back, intercede, take Perry for herself instead.

From where Perry had stood Heinz hadn’t vanished, hadn’t even blipped. He just knew that one instant he was rocketing a punch toward someone diabolically driven and the next, post-inator, was socking his fists into the braced forearms of a downed Heinz, cowed under Perry on the lab floor. And Heinz’s eyes had been so haunted, looking up at him from behind those arms, that Perry knew something had passed.

It was years before she’d tell him the full story. How she’d run out of the house as her 41-year-old self, to track Perry down. The bluegreen and red at the riverside. How Perry’s mother had died on the shore, bleeding out of bite wounds, accepting Heinz’s touch as she cooled under frantic hands. The last look she’d given Heinz. The wariness of the OWCA-trained animal control agents who’d found Heinz sitting there, keeping vigil. How Perry had nestled in the palm of her hand, impossibly little, and ate up what milk of his mother Heinz brought to his bill, fingertip to mouth.

He can’t remember any of it, of course, how could he. But he would always carry close to heart the knowledge that Heinz had inserted herself, in this small and careful way. Had been the first human touch he’d felt.

But it made Heinz cry, retelling it. So Perry never brings it up.

He holds the back of her hand, as she winds a thumb through his fur.

“It would’ve been so easy to change what you were to me, and ruin the weird thing we had with each other — even back then, when it didn’t seem like as much. I didn’t know at the time, y’know, that you’d want to stick around this long.”

Perry gives her a sad smile.

“Time travel’s the worst, it’s like an automatic culpability machine,” Heinz says. “It’s a terrible idea to go backward: everything becomes your choice. Any pain in the past is now stamped with your approval, you don’t have the right to complain anymore. Choosing to leave you with Monogram, choosing to abandon myself in Gimmelshtump. It’s so easy to change everything, with a few key edits.

“And greed always makes me want both. I wanna give that lonely little kid a charmed life, and I want to keep the one I have. I want to get to raise you into my perfect little companion,” she says, cuffing the back of his neck. “And I want to get to fuck you, too.”

Her fingers threaten to pince a collar round his throat and he stares up as her words shock his gut, her sick rapacity bearing down on him, heavy. But her face is unplayful: tired and vaguely nauseated, a disgust turned back in on herself.

So Perry swallows down arousal and steadies his composure, in turn. Heinz just closes her eyes, with a sigh, and pushes Perry’s body away from her into the water.

“I dont know how it worked for him,” she says. And Perry doesn’t know who she means, which averted version of herself, so he waits.

“How he could stand to have that power every day, to make any possible reality. And to risk not having one that really matters.”

Oh. Of course.

“I never did got the full story out of him. Professor Me. I wished I knew more — but there’s something so off-putting, seeing yourself from the outside like that. It’s like listening to a voice recording.

“I don’t think he had any extra-special skills, didn’t know anything I don’t — except whatever it was that convinced him pinstripes and a pink cravat were the go-to look for branding himself a big time travel genius. That I’ll never understand, why I’d wanna look like I’m selling snake oil from the future to the past. In fact I get the sneaking suspicion that’s exactly what he was doing. I can’t imagine wearing that costume full time.

“But maybe he didn’t, you know? Maybe he got home at the end of each day and he put his stupid top hat on a peg and he . . . I dunno, worked on jigsaw puzzles with you. Like we do,” she says. “Maybe he was more like me than I knew.”

They never saw him again, after that year. A decade plus of Heinz waiting, stressing, disavowing, dreading. And then at a certain point it dawned on both of them that their trajectory had quietly split from his. And relief overwhelmed curiosity at whatever might have been.

But when she first found out, Heinz had been excited, in a cute nervy way. It was every delusional dream coming true at once and smacking her in the face — right at a vulnerable moment, when another close-call spacetime catastrophe had left her shellshocked and aimless, in need of reinvention.

It’s crazy, right? Heinz would ask anyone who happened to be in earshot. And they’d agree, that it sounded crazy.

It’s like I predicted it! I — I wrote a TV show about it, me being a time traveler. They ripped it off and made me a girl — and then they made Perry the Platypus a human and cancelled it after one season — but I did! I was this hero from the future, and I knew karate. Do you think he knows karate? I bet he knows karate, too, he’s just being low-key about it, because that’s what cool karate experts do, when they know karate.

But then there was the month, the lowest of her life, as Heinz described it, when they weren’t talking. And in the depressive wreckage of their falling out Heinz was left to ponder how, in that glimpse of the future, bright with glory and wealth and eternity, Perry had not been in frame.

He was off to the side, probably. Surely. Though Heinz’s then-drinking buddy hadn’t offered any reassurances. If the future included Perry the Platypus, he was no famous partner of the great Professor Time.

And that’s rookie mistake number one, Heinz had said to Perry later. Traveling through time without a trusty companion. You just don’t do it. I . . . I learned that from cartoons.

Back in the present Heinz is chewing her lip. “It’s just that I had all this baggage, around time travel, that I didn’t even realize — I hadn’t sorted through any of it yet. I just knew I couldn’t go back. And I figured if I couldn’t give myself a perfect past, I’d just have to give myself a perfect future. I never actually wanted to learn about it though, never wanted to skip ahead and spoil myself, in case I got bad news.

“But getting good news was like . . . weirdly so much worse. Like — all that glory I wanted, people shouting my name. He already got it. And with a stupider name. So I didn’t know what to want.

“Except for the uncertainties,” she says, quieter. “The stuff I didn’t know he had, that I knew I had to keep.”

She reaches out a hand. Perry takes it in his paws.

“That’s a lot, I guess, just to say —” Heinz says. “I’m really happy where I am.”

Perry spent years of his life not holding Heinz, not touching. He’d never admit that fear was a reason. It was just a matter of propriety, truly, of acting right under OWCA’s watchful eye, under the spycams they’ve long since eradicated from around Heinz’s loft.

Now he pulls himself into her and she sinks down in the water, so he can wind his short arms around her neck. And Perry feels all those years of idiotic professionalism like a permanent injury in his chest.

But he gets to hold her now, dig his clawed fingers in the clinging wet folds of her shirt and push his bill to the back of her neck, inhale her body heat. Which lessens the sting.

She clutches him back.

“You wouldn’t like the stuff I think about,” she whispers, “the stuff that woke me up tonight, that weighs on me. Stuff I know I shouldn’t say to you.”

Perry pulls back, to give her a sidelong look. It’s strange to hear. There’s no rotten part inside of Heinz that Perry hasn’t learned to love by now.

She elaborates. “I hate how long it took me to get here with you, to figure out my priorities. It took until you existed.

“But you’ve been stuck with me from the beginning. I’m your permanent assignment. In every life you get, you have to make the best of me,” she says. “And that’s when I’m not an irredeemable monster who makes you my slave.”

Perry takes a firm grip of her shoulder and rears back a bit, so he can turn his bewildered face on her.

She waves a defensive palm in front of him. “I know, I know, Perry. Let me get this out.

“I just think,” she says.

“If you wanted a do-over, I could give you one. At the end of all of this, when we’re finally puttering out — I mean we’re getting old, Perry. I could rewind you. You could go back to where you started, live a whole different life. Ditch OWCA. Go out and meet any number of people, around the world, do whatever you wanna do with yourself. Make a life on your own terms. Get to know who you could be without me.”

Heinz was right about Perry not liking this. He’s not sure exactly where his shock turns into anger, but the net effect is hurt, at what she’s saying.

He gives her his wildest are you kidding me look.

“You know I didn’t actually think you’d say yes,” Heinz says. “It was more a question of how hard you’d hit me in the face for saying any of this.

“But I think you deserve the option, if it turned out you did regret a decade of your life, or two. Because that’s all you got. All you got out of life was me and the dumb choices I made.”

She’s hunched into the curved pool wall, tugging at her elbows under the surface. She won’t quite meet Perry’s eyes.

“I could build you a machine and you could use it to go back without me knowing — so it wouldn’t hurt my feelings, it’s not like I’d remember,” she says, and there’s a wretched emptiness as she voices this thought, like it’s rehearsed.

“You could hold onto all of this, or I could wipe it, give you a clean slate. I just wish you could have, like. . . one choice in your life that’s not built around me.”

Perry stares at her. It seems she’s at the end of her speech. Her pool-lit image is ghostly, flickering like a hologram. Her eyes face down.

He racks a hand up his face with a sigh, the sound gurgling in his bill — not to dismiss her pouring out her stupid heart. But what else can he do, faced with such an unpersuasive offer?

She looks at him then, so he signs one thing. You’re too old to hate yourself this much.

“Oh Perry,” she rebukes, as he swims around her to the poolside. “That’s really not the point. You get that it’s unfair, right? Your life versus mine. I got to have all this time, and you — got me, and that’s,” she falters, as Perry hoists himself out of the water.

“I — I don’t think you’re unhappy, that’s not what I’m saying,” she quickly adds. She grabs Perry’s wrist, to make him look at her.

“I don’t know how to deal with you — living less,” she says, staring into him with benthic eyes. “And me being the most you ever got.”

Perry grabs the outside of her hand with his other paw, and tugs. Heinz acquiesces, allows herself to be lifted, and clambers the rest of the way out of the pool.

She’s like a bedraggled cat, long silver hair strands dripping on the pavement. Perry retrieves a fresh towel from the wicker caddy, pads back over and swathes it around her narrow shoulders.

“I should just accept that it’s romantic,” she mumbles, while Perry rubs the towel into her hair. “Like a destiny thing. But it’s a lot of pressure, the universe setting you up with me.

“Are you happy with that, Perry,” she asks. “I bet you are. I bet you feel all cheesy and warm about it.”

Heinz and Perry have been rewatching the same old telenovelas for years. Perry just rolls his eyes, to say you know I do.

Heinz nods. “That’s a problem, Perry the Platypus. So my offer stands. If you ever want to fix it.”

Perry presses his face to her cheek, in lieu of the slap she deserves. When he drags his soft bill across her face she tips it into a kiss, automatically, the deep-grooved pattern of their motions betraying whatever self-injuring case she was trying to make, about the awful tragedy of Perry loving her.

It’s not a choice, he signs, pulling back from the kiss. Taking you out of my life. It wouldn’t be my life anymore. So no.

Perry holds a paw to his chest. The fur’s mostly grey there — a way he really matches Heinz now, no trick of the light required.

If you weren’t in here . . . I don’t know who I’d be. Just a very good pet and a very good soldier. That doesn’t interest me, he signs, and he’s thinking, with less tact: fuck that guy.

Heinz is quiet, staring. She’s slumped so soft in the summer haze, a vulnerable thing in front of him. A whole city behind her. One she gave up ruling, because she liked Perry more.

I’m built around you. No fixing it, at this point. Sorry.

Perry shrugs, and draws his hands into snatching claws: I’m selfish, too.

#fic #this fic is partly me chewing on / rejecting post-pnf canon and the rest is my otp marriage sickness #i still prefer posting things on tumblr first even tho i inevitably realize theres no reason not to put them on ao3. ao3 makes me nervous

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serpentface · 10 months ago

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hello i would love to hear about culturally specific dishes in the blightseed setting. what do the animals taste like hows their fat content... herbs and seasonings and the trades involved perhaps..... hows the salt economy? love your setting and if you have a list of ingredients i will invent meals in my head and be well satisfied... i just love food and cooking in world building it is so important to me :-)

OK this is crazy because I had literally just cooked a Lore Friendly Meal the night before I got this ask.

Since this is a super broad question gonna default to Imperial Wardin since that's what I'm writing in right now and has the most developed food economy. (Sorry.)

This region currently dominates the eastern Inner Seas tradeway so has a very broad access to imported foods and spices, and many of its staples are not originally native to the region. Its regional cuisine is quite diverse and varied, largely owing to its status in the tradeway and a long history of immigration to the region (as well as a wide variety of native regional variations in diet).

For simplicity's sake I'm mostly going to stick to staples that are grown in-region (whether native or not) or commonly imported. Also mostly sticking to domesticated plant life, or very common and easily acquired wild plants. (Also not all these plants/herbs/spices would be 1:1 with real-world equivalents, or would be of unique variants that don't exist irl, but if they're basically the same thing I use the IRL word)

Staple base foods: maize, barley, wheat, and rice (closer to O. glaberrima than O. sativa), red yam (a yam regarded as very delicious), white yam (a hardier but poorer tasting yam, often associated with poverty), cassava, chickpeas, other legumes.

Staple vegetables (regionally varies): Cabbage, lettuce, okra, onions, garlic, chili peppers, celery, peas, kolis (a drought tolerant, cactus-like plant. Young stems are tender and edible), camiche (a tree that produces edible seedpods and young leaves).

Staple fruits: Dates, figs, pomegranates, olives, melons, apples, bitter cherries, kolis fruit, nara (a type of citrus, comparable in flavor and sourness to lime).

Widely used spices/herbs/flavorings: cumin, saffron (VERY expensive but natively grown), coriander, culantro, thyme, fennel, sage, tumeric, cardamom, ginger, firebug (an insect that is dried and crushed, provides a reddish hue and slight acidic flavor), anuje (a tree sap which is the region's most popular sweetener).

Livestock: cattle, horses (the small 3 hooved kind), hogs, ducks, geese, one domesticated species of gazelle, some camelops (rare in this region, imported), one type of small domesticated lacetor, several types of fowl.

Other meat (common wild game, or livestock raised in smaller or more localized capacities): crocodiles, gazelles, aurochs, salutachin (a meat dog breed), doves, nechoi, lacetor, hippegalga, anara (a large semi-aquatic rodent), hespiornis, unkata (a large flightless bird), ibis, pheasants, rabbits and hares, caviar ants.

(Of the fantasy game, most nechoi have a strong, lean gamey meat, but an-nechoi is fattier and milder. Lacetor is generally mild and tough (with a few very fatty cuts) and benefits from slow cooking and heavy spices. Hippegalga is lean and mildly gamey and has a nutty quality. Anara tastes like wild rabbit, but slightly fattier. Unkata kind of just tastes like turkey.)

Alcohol: Wine is very important and is consumed (mostly watered down) on a daily basis. Date wine is most common and least expensive by far; only small parts of the region are ideal for viniculture and grape wine is somewhat uncommon. Other fruit wines are common (bitter cherry and kolis fruit being most popular). A very strong liquor is produced from anuje sap, with sweeter and lower ABV versions available as a kind of dessert wine. Grain-based beers and liquors are widely available, but not as prized as fruit/anuje drinks. Mead is somewhat rare and is mostly seen as inferior to anuje.

Salt economy: this region is a dominant player in the salt trade, having a large area of salt flats and marshes in its south. Salt is widely accessible throughout the region via internal trade routes.

Fishing: The region has a huge fishing industry along its coasts and the diet in the coastal cities is enriched with seafood. Pretty much any edible sea life is eaten. (Dozens of fish species, octopus, squid, clams, urchins, oysters, scallops, crabs, lobster, shrimp, etc etc). The tiny, schooling larval form of yotici are also sometimes eaten.

There's also a 'whaling' industry for leviathans, which have very rich, blubbery meat high in iron (I guess I'd describe it as a fattier, stronger, bloodier version of alligator meat), and uhrwal, which have very tough, gamey meat and are considered an acquired taste, used specifically for delicacy dishes.

Misc lore:

Arthropods are not widely eaten in the region and have stigma as peasant or famine food. Some local exceptions are made for locusts, and the eggs of caviar ants (there is a very small industry of ant farming in Ephennos, brought by White Sea qilik immigrants).

Dogs have been used for meat in this region for hundreds of years (largely in the form of the salutachin, a breed specifically developed for meat), but the practice declined under the 3rd Burri empire (in which context it was seen as an 'unclean' food). Cultural trauma from feral dogs eating the dead (and in turn being eaten by starving civilians) during a siege-induced famine has made it specifically taboo in Godsmouth. Dog is now widely considered a famine/poverty food in most of the region, though corn-fed salutachin is still a delicacy in the city-state of Wardin.

Animals that eat human flesh are taboo to consume in most parts of the region (whether this extends to all/most predators or just obligate scavengers varies).

Eggs of skimmer gulls and ibis are considered delicacies.

The basic diet varies across the region, but a huge proportion of the established cuisine revolves around cumin, onions, and peppers for flavoring.

The majority of the diet for an average person is built on savory grain porridge and mashed legumes.

Dairy products are important to the everyday diet in the eastern 'dairy belt' of the region, but are of lesser significance elsewhere. Horsemilk and cow's milk are both common.

Maize is usually consumed after nixtamalization for greater nutritional content.

Most people (especially in the cities) do not eat meat on a regular basis, as even for self-sustaining farmers and herders, the value of livestock for milk, textiles, labor, sacrifice, and trade means that frequent slaughter is often unsustainable. Most get their everyday protein needs met with legumes, and those in coastal cities have broad access to seafood.

Animal sacrifice is vitally important to the practice of the Imperial Wardi faith, but the meat of sacrifices is not eaten (outside of a few specific rites and festivals) and is instead burned.

Khaitmeat is rarely eaten outside of desperation (or opportunistic slaughter of old/injured animals) due to their great value and a developed taboo around its consumption in some parts of the region.

Hunting is a pastime for the urban upper class and typically forbidden within the territories of the city-states without an expensive 'license' (unless one one's own lands, which also generally requires having big money). Poaching for meat in the outskirts of cities is common among the urban poor.

Hunting is a key part of the diet throughout the rural parts of the region, many rural commoners eat meat more frequently than their urban counterparts on this merit.

Some established dishes (either vaguely conceptualized, or have come up specifically in writing):

Pounded white yam and nothing else (a famine food).

Pounded white yam with whitefish and pepper soup, a hearty common meal in Godsmouth.

Savory cornmeal cakes (cornmeal cooked in vegetable broth, lard or olive oil, peppers, onions, cumin, salt, cheese, wrapped in a corn husk and cooled to be eaten on the go).

Shitty cornmeal cakes (a famine food) (cornmeal with weevils in it, you can't really get the weevils out and it's protein so might as well, salted and cooked in water).

Grain festival beef/horse stew (tough bone-in cuts slowcooked with peppers, onion, garlic, and any other available vegetables. Usually heavily spiced. The resulting broth is used to cook the grain (usually hominy, rice, or barley), the meat and vegetables are served on top, sometimes with cream or cheese).

Hominy porridge with milk and sprinkled cheese.

Wheat porridge with dried dates and anuje.

Reed duck boiled in date wine, flavored with peppers, coriander, cumin, and saffron (VERY fancy).

Pickled kolis stem bulbs.

Fermented kolis stem bulbs and cabbage.

Gannegal soup (made with bull penis, hominy, garlic, onion, cabbage, and chickpeas in a spicy broth, supposed to support fertility)

Raw hippegalga meat, thinly sliced with onion and hot pepper, all marinated and cured with nara and eaten cold atop barley or rice (also supposed to support fertility)

Anaebi soup (made with reed duck, lily bulbs, rice, and okra, supposed to support a healthy pregnancy)

Cow tripe and cabbage soup

Finely chopped meat/fish/shellfish or vegetables with onions, wrapped in dough and fried or baked.

Peledyo (A strong, heavily fermented fish sauce favored in the coastal cities (this is pretty much a garum ripoff), which is mixed with wine, vinegar, honey, etc to form the base of other sauces)

Very spicy shellfish soup with a peledyo, wine, and pepper broth.

Caviar ant eggs marinated with nara, vinegar, chopped onions and cabbage, mixed with rice.

A sweetened bean porridge made with cream and anuje.

Hummus-esque spread made with chickpeas, garlic, onion, peppers, and olive oil, usually eaten with bread.

Whole spitroasted horse

A type of root vegetable sausage (intestine casing stuffed with mashed cassava or yam, onions, garlic & cumin seeds which have been cooked down in lard, sometimes with minced meat/offal. Boiled all together.)

Blood sausage (usually horse or cattle)

A kind of donut fried in oil and then soaked in anuje and fruit syrup.

Roasted peppers and onions sauteed in heavy cream, usually served atop grain or a grain porridge.

Toasted locusts, locusts fried with rice or barley, pounded white yam stuffed with fried locust and onions (opportunistic meals during locust plagues)

Fried sprats with pepper and onion sauce

Crab stock soup with onions, peppers, crab meat or whole softshell crabs, and crab roe (sometimes with cream)

Squid ink soups (variety of seafood or seafood-stock soups, blackened by squid ink)

A simple 'trail mix' made with dried camiche seeds and hominy

Dessert bread glazed with fruit syrup or anuje, covered in dried dates

Raw minced lacetor with peledyo, garlic powder, cardamom, coriander. Used to top grains or to be eaten with pounded yam.

Thinly sliced uhrwal flank simmered with date wine and vinegar.

Fatty cuts of an-nechoi belly, usually slow cooked and eaten in soups.

Minced kolis stalk, onion, and pepper, salted and marinated with nara or vinegar

Roasted figs with cheese

Also here's the lore friendly meal I cooked, the grain festival beef stew. Here served in only the lore friendliest of dollar store paper bowls

This specific dish is eaten as a part of yearly grain festivals celebrating the end of the harvest. In most contexts it's an agricultural community event with each family contributing whatever vegetables and spices are on hand, and each donating some of their harvested grain. It's cooked in a huge pot and usually serves dozens of people.

The exact vegetable/herb/spice components would vary wildly within the region, timing, and by the success of the various harvests, but will generally be farmed (rather than foraged) due to the nature of the festival as an agricultural celebration and thanks-giving. Cumin, peppers, and onions are considered the absolute bare minimum necessity. The grain will usually be maize, barley or rice, and may be mashed into a savory porridge instead of eaten whole.

This will usually be one of few times a year where meat is eaten in abundance in the agricultural context. The meat is almost always beef or horse, usually tougher bone-in cuts are chosen for this specific dish. These animals will have been slaughtered specifically for this festival, with the best cut of meat from each being burnt in an offering of gratitude to Ganmache and Anaemache (ox-face and river-face of God, both of which are associated with agriculture and harvests), at the base of what will become the cooking fire.

The meat and vegetables are cooked on low heat in water until the meat is soft and tender and a broth is formed (which should be very strong and spicy, as it will be used to flavor the grain). Some of the broth is drained and used to cook the grain, which is then served with the meat, vegetables, and a few spoonfuls of broth on top. In the eastern dairy belt, milk/cream may be added to the broth, and/or it may be topped with crumbled cheese or sour cream. This is next to heresy in the west.

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For my easily accessible grocery store equivalent, I used a beef shank, 2 onions, 2 jalepeños, one habanero, a bunch of garlic, okra, and cabbage. Seasoned with cumin seeds and tumeric (very lore friendly) and a sazon packet because I had it (most of the spices involved are at least passably lore friendly). Also jasmine rice (not lore friendly but it's what I had).

I first toasted cumin seeds in olive oil, then added the vegetables and stirred until they were cooked down. The meat and vegetables/spices were cooked in water on low heat for ~5 hours and seasoned to taste. Some of the broth was then removed to cook the rice. Meat + vegetables are spooned on top of the rice, along with some broth.

Results: It's preddy good. Might be a little better with roasted or sauteed rather than heavily cooked down vegetables, but the latter is how it would be eaten. I also had a sore throat at the time and ended up just drinking the rest of the broth. It felt amazing. 6.5/10.

#I've also cooked the cornmeal cakes I mentioned (not the weevil kind)#Yeah I LOVE food worldbuilding and food is also pretty like... thematically important to The White Calf (in the context of famine)#So I get to get into it but can't do much textual fantasy food-porn because of aforementioned famine. Mostly weevil bread up in here.#Reverse Dungeon Meshi.

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aspentreewrites · 3 months ago

Text

Tripping Along

It’s just the two of them amidst a cacophony of exploding stars and colours, bright and swirling and reacting to every move they make. They are the centre of this perfect, divine universe, and it loves them as much as they love it. Perhaps, Cody thinks, being drugged by that plant is the best thing to have happened to them in a long while. Returning from a scouting mission, Obi-Wan and Cody happen upon a botanical discovery with... interesting effects. Cody decides that it's exactly what they needed - an opportunity to relax, to show his lover some gentleness they've both been in desperate need of.

Link to read on AO3 here!

Pairing: Codywan

Rating - Explicit

Wordcount - 5.4k

Tags/Warnings and full fic under the cut!

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Tags/Warnings: Explicit sexual content and language, accidental drug use (but the ensuing sex is very consensual), established relationship, service top cody & bottom obi-wan, porn with feelings

A/N: It's my 24th birthday and I'm choosing to publish incredibly self indulgent smut to celebrate <3

Is it smut as an excuse for a character study, or a character study as an excuse for smut? Much to think about.

This work was entirely inspired by the song 'Tripping Along' by The Decemberists (give it a listen if you fancy a reading companion)! Shout out to Colin Meloy for writing so many good songs about incredibly specific intimate situations.

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It had been - initially, at least - purely a matter of scientific inquiry.

Obi-Wan had never seen a flower like it before - the tall stalk, the vibrant colours - they’d caught his eye while they were on their way back to the camp from a fairly routine scouting mission.

It was just the two of them, and Cody had been more than happy to indulge the Jedi’s curiosity. The last few days of the campaign on this planet had been stressful, to say the least, and something in a very weary Obi-Wan had lit up at the sight of the plant - Cody couldn’t have told him no if he’d tried.

Together, they had tried (keyword being tried) to prise out one of the seedpods nestled amongst the petals without damaging the rest of the plant, for the Jedi to study later.

Unfortunately for them, it hadn’t been all that simple.

The second they had successfully dislodged one of the seed pods, the plant had closed itself up quickly - but not before it let out a puff of some kind of gas as a defence mechanism.

The two had stumbled back a few steps, coughing and spluttering. Outside of the foul aftertaste, though, it had seemed harmless enough at the time. Obi-Wan had even checked them both over in the Force to try and detect any poison, just in case.

… And now, here they are.

Though, come to think of it, Cody’s not entirely sure where ‘here’ is, actually.

He’s a few steps ahead of Obi-Wan as they walk, making his way up onto the crest of a hill he thinks they must have come over earlier - logically, they must have done - but it looks entirely alien to him.

Alien. That’s an odd concept. Everything on this planet is alien, in a technical sense. He looks down at the grass, frowning in thought. Why is it he’d decided to climb this hill, exactly?

His brain, Cody thinks distantly, is not quite as sharp as it usually is.

“... Cody,” Obi-Wan’s voice comes from a little way behind him.

Cody, a little confused, wonders for a moment if he’s always seen colours floating through the air as his General speaks, or if that’s something that’s just happening right now. He can’t remember. “I rather believe our interesting botanical discovery earlier might have contained some properties that are a little–”

Cody’s knees buckle underneath him, finding himself fixated on the way the meadow flowers are… dancing, amidst the grass.

“-- psychoactive.”

Cody blinks slowly.

The information makes sense, he rationalises, but he’s entirely sure what he can do with it. The raw facts of the situation are all, at this moment, feeling rather abstract.

He should probably ask Obi-Wan something practical, like if they’re in danger of being ambushed while in such a state, or if they need to radio immediately for pickup from their unit. He certainly intends to.

What actually comes out of Cody’s mouth when he opens it to speak is:

“The grass is soft.”

He looks back at Obi-Wan, who seems to be staring his way with barely concealed amusement.

“Is it, now.”

Cody nods. He wants to sink down into it, perhaps even sleep. He is, after all, so very tired after today. “Yeah.”

Obi-Wan softly makes his way over, ever-graceful in his steps, and kneels down beside Cody. With a thoughtful hum, he reaches out a hand to run his fingertips across the blades of grass below. His eyes widen, and he lets out a quiet sound of surprise.

“So it is,” he murmurs, wonder filling his tone.

Cody’s not entirely sure how long the two of them stay there, observing the meadow around them with far more reverence than strictly necessary. He’s never noticed before just how nice it is to feel the solid ground under his palm, how pleasant the feeling of a gentle, cool breeze is against his skin.

He’s only broken out of his reverie by the sound of Obi-Wan speaking into his comm-link, informing the team back at the base that their scouting mission has concluded, a little earlier than anticipated.

“Copy that, General,” comes the swift response. The crackles of the radio are unusually harsh to Cody’s ears. He’d rather not hear them, he decides. Not for now. “Will you still be returning in the morning, or are you headed back now?”

Neither of them rush to respond to the query. Obi-Wan stares over at Cody, and the two hold one another’s gaze for a long moment.

“I should… flush it out,” Obi-Wan murmurs. Slowly, he lays back on the grass with a sigh, his eyes tracking the sky above them. Cody follows the path of his gaze, idly watching the way the stars glow and blur in his vision, weaving themselves into constellations both unknowable and ethereal.

Cody is not a particularly religious man.

The clones had been taught of the oversoul, of the Manda that Fett’s people believe in, but it never particularly resonated with him as something true.

In death for the Republic comes glory, he doesn’t dispute that, but in his mind, it’s not a requirement for a soul. It can’t be.

All beings, Cody had decided at a young age, must harbour a connection to the divine, if such a thing even existed. The alternative option, a so-called ‘God’ that picks and chooses who is worthy, is something he wouldn’t be interested in appeasing anyway.

That being said, if the heavens so many religions speak of are, in fact, real, then they’re above the two of them right now, twinkling overhead and promising quietly to keep this small moment of rebellion a secret.

Nothing else exists in this small pocket of existence but them, the stars, and the endless meadows below. It’s a beautiful rarity, far from the inescapable bustling of Coruscant and the chaos of the battlefield.

The idea of Obi-Wan bringing this to an end suddenly feels almost unbearable.

“They won’t miss us. We’re not needed back until dawn, anyway,” he proposes softly.

They both need to relax - desperately, in fact. The war has never once been ‘easy’, not for a moment, but these most recent weeks have brought more obituary reports and unyielding nightmares than usual.

Obi-Wan turns his gaze on Cody, his eyes reflecting the millions of lights overhead. Cody momentarily forgets how to breathe.

“A Jedi is not supposed to be… compromised in such a way,” Obi-Wan eventually replies, though there’s a tinge of regret in his tone that belies how much he wishes they could stay like this, too.

It suddenly occurs to Cody that perhaps it is his mission, ordained by the Stars above themselves, to convince the Jedi to actually allow himself to indulge in relaxation for once. Obi-Wan needs this, and it’s frustrating him that he can’t see that, too.

Cody realises that he’s not entirely sure how to go about persuading the man before him, especially with his usual faculties of speech a little lost from him. His mind is made up, though, so as with any negotiation, he begins by stalling.

Carefully, he shuffles himself closer on the grass, leaning down over the Jedi who follows each movement with lidded, hazy eyes. Gods, he’s pretty like this - none of that usual tension that bleeds into every breath and word, bathed in the moonlight like the men on the covers of those pulp holonovels that Woolley secretly keeps a stash of in his bunk.

Cody slowly dips his head, pressing a languid, open-mouthed kiss to the side of his Jedi’s neck. The taste of his skin sends a shiver down Cody’s spine, something he can usually lose himself in entirely, even without the help of the plant’s effects.

In this heightened state, it’s all he can focus on.

Obi-Wan sucks in a quiet breath, tilting his head back in a silent encouragement for Cody to continue.

“Can you let go of what a Jedi should be, should do…” Cody murmurs between kisses, his voice low, breathless. “For just a few hours?”

Beneath his lips, he feels the other man still, warring with himself as he always is. His mind, Cody knows, is no doubt filled with the voices of every authority he has ever known, telling him how she should be acting, what the proper thing to do would be.

Time to negotiate a little harder, then.

Cody gently bites at his throat, promptly soothing the sting with his tongue. His efforts earn him a sharp gasp, the Jedi arching his back ever so slightly into the sensation.

All that is, is the scent of Obi-Wan filling his nostrils, the salt of his sweat on his tongue.

“Cody,” Obi-Wan breathes, “Force above.” One of his hands comes up to tangle in the curls at the nape of Cody’s neck, gently running through the strands there. The feeling seems to reverberate through Cody’s very being, both soothing and arousing all at once.

With great effort, he pulls himself back to meet Obi-Wan’s gaze - much darker than it was before, his lashes low and pretty over those beautiful eyes.

“Please, Obi-Wan,” Cody says, more than willing to cast aside his pride to plead with him for this. This moment feels far too important to just let go of, now. “Let me take care of you.”

I need to take care of you, too, are the unspoken words that echo in Cody’s head - he’s sure the Jedi can sense them anyway. I need it like I need air.

At Obi-Wan’s hip, his comm-link buzzes again, shattering the moment. The boys back at the base need a response, and Cody’s out of time to make his case.

Obi-Wan watches Cody for a long moment, his still-hazy eyes searching for an answer. Cody meets his gaze unflinchingly, his expression as imploring as he can make it.

With a heavy sigh, the Jedi reaches for his comm-link and activates it. Cody holds his breath.

To Obi-Wan’s credit, his words only barely come out slurred. “Expect us back in the morning as initially planned, Waxer. There’s more here that we need to explore - we’ll be in contact if we need a pickup before then.”

“Copy that, General. We’ll see you then.”

The hush that ensues falls over them like a warm blanket on a winter’s night. Cody feels his shoulders drop, exhaling in relief as the decision is made.

He smiles, gently nudging Obi-Wan to lay back down against the grass again. The Jedi still looks a little guilty, opening his mouth to speak, but Cody swallows his words with a kiss before he can get them out.

Bracing his forearms on the grass below, he gently cages Obi-Wan in below him; a promise of safety, an affirmation that in this moment, there’s nothing to feel guilty of, no reason to be afraid.

Cody’s entire body feels like it’s floating at the sound of the soft sigh his Jedi lets out into the kiss, the way Obi-Wan’s hands weave into his hair and pull him ever closer.

“No thoughts,” Cody mumbles against his lips as they finally break for air, both breathless and wanting. “No… planning, no strategising, no need to be anything but a man. Just for now. Okay?”

Obi-Wan’s fingers tighten a little in Cody’s hair as he blinks languidly up at him, clearly still fighting against the way the drug wants to pull him down under the waves. Cody resolves to remedy that soon, but all things in good time.

“I… could be amenable to that,” Obi-Wan murmurs.

Ever the eloquent negotiator, even in a situation such as this. Cody lowers his lips to Obi-Wan’s ear, relishing in the way the other man shivers in response.

“I’m curious,” he begins quietly, pressing a chaste kiss to his hair. “How does the Force feel right now?” Cody shifts his weight onto one of his forearms to free up a hand. With it, he wanders, smoothing down Obi-Wan’s robes with a light touch.

The Jedi hums, his eyes returning to the stars overhead. The faintest of smiles tugs at his face, awed and reverent. Cody continues his gentle exploration, tracing idle patterns against the fabric at Obi-Wan’s hip.

“Tangible,” Obi-Wan answers in a hushed tone. “Everywhere. Like I can almost see it in the air.” He closes his eyes, his expression shifting to one of utter peace, as it often is when he’s in deep meditation. Finally letting go, like he needs to. Good.

Never let it be said that Cody doesn’t seize an opportunity when it arises.

His hand slips less-than-innocently to Obi-Wan’s inner thigh, adding subtle pressure as he rubs small circles with his thumb.

“And how about now?” he asks softly.

Obi-Wan’s eyelids flutter, letting out a breath.

“Darling, I…”

Cody splays out his palm, pressing the heel of it against Obi-Wan’s groin.

The Jedi gasps, hips twitching at the unexpected contact, and Cody presses a kiss to the shell of his ear before drawing back.

“Answer the question, dear,” he breathes, his tone sweet and honeyed - a direct contrast to the heat of his actions.

“Like a supernova,” Obi-Wan mumbles, his eyes snapping open, fixated on Cody as if he contains the essence of the very universe itself. “Cody…”

Cody feels a heat coil low in his gut. He’s never sure what to do with the adoration that so often clouds his lover’s gaze - so pure and uncomplicated, as if he deserves such a thing.

It’s been the biggest thing he’s struggled to reconcile with throughout the length of their relationship so far; that feeling of being wanted. Of being desired to be by someone’s side, not because of his abilities in battle, nor for any strategic purpose - but simply because they want him to be.

It’s utterly foreign to him. The complete opposite of everything he was told to be possible when he was younger. A clone does not get to love.

… And yet, here he is. The hallucinogenic seems to magnify the emotion that swells through him like a wave.

“You’re so beautiful,” Cody whispers past the sudden lump in his throat, continuing to palm the growing hardness beneath Obi-Wan’s robes.

The Jedi whines at the praise - a sound that had fascinated Cody the first time he had heard it, so long ago now, and still serves to be just as satisfying now.

“And so sensitive,” he adds, unable to keep the amusement out of his tone. Obi-Wan, despite very clearly not being himself right now, manages to level him with an almost-pout.

“You would forgive me for any– ah, Stars– perceived overreactions, were you experiencing what I am right now, love,” Obi-Wan manages.

Cody decides quietly that he would like very much to take away his ability to use that coherent, clever tongue, the sooner the better. He’s using far too many words for someone who should be an utter mess right now.

With some effort, Cody pulls back (pointedly ignoring the sound of protest this elicits from Obi-Wan), and carefully begins to peel away Obi-Wan’s robes.

It is a tenet of the Jedi Order it seems, to Cody’s mind at least, to instill their members with an unabiding and lifelong love of over-complicated uniforms. (Dressing oneself, Obi-Wan had told him once, is a time for a Jedi to meditate - to connect to the Force first thing in the morning).

Over the months, Cody has learnt enough tricks to keep from fumbling - the most efficient ways to quickly divest his lover of all of those bothersome extra layers. In fact, he’s fairly sure he could do it blindfolded at this point.

With each inch of skin revealed to him, Cody feels himself brought further and further under by the pull of the drug coursing through his system. He gives himself over to it willingly, pressing the pad of his thumb gently against the pulse point in Obi-Wan’s neck and marvelling at the flutter of the pulse beneath it. So delicate. So perfect.

“Fuck, you’re…” his hand trails further down, pushing apart the fabric to reveal the curls of hair at Obi-Wan’s chest, dragging his fingers through it with a touch that might be considered reverent, were it not so sinful. “Exquisite.”

Cody shifts so his other hand can cradle Obi-Wan’s jaw gently, lovingly, while he explores at his leisure.

Obi-Wan exhales slowly, pressing his cheek against Cody’s palm and letting his eyes flutter closed, his expression one of pure bliss. His hair is unruly, his cheeks flushed, looking every bit the image of the debauched, fallen Jedi as he tries to catch his breath.

It’s intoxicating, and Cody revels in the fact that he gets to be the one who can do this to the usually unflappable Jedi Master.

Sudden emotion surges within him once again, this time a deep sense of wonder at the trust that Obi-Wan places in him so readily. Cody silently vows to do right by that trust, now and always, if he is to be allowed such a privilege.

He takes a moment to pause in his explorations, tracing the lines of scars he’s long since memorised, worshipped ardently at the altar of in stolen moments between battles. Mesh’la. Beautiful. Two languages aren’t enough to describe him.

The Commander kisses his General once more, his tongue dragging over his lower lip before slipping inside the other man’s mouth.

Stars above, he tastes so sweet. Cody’s whole body feels like it’s on fire, his nerves tingling as stars burst behind his eyelids.

The sheer passion of the moment, the relief of being able to shed their duties entirely and surrender to this strange type of oblivion, combine to become something altogether further than ecstasy.

He licks into Obi-Wan’s mouth like a man starved, unable to hold back his desires any longer. He’s dimly aware of his own body reacting to the heat of the moment, his codpiece feeling unreasonably tight, but he dismisses the thought for now. He wants to - has to - focus on his lover first. He wants to ruin Obi-Wan, so thoroughly and completely that when the time comes for them to join as one, the Jedi won’t be able to think of anything but Cody’s name.

The thought is enough to steal the breath from his lungs.

Cody’s wandering hand dips further, down to Obi-Wan’s waistband, toying with the fabric idly.

The likelihood of anyone stumbling across them on this hilltop, miles from civilisation and far from their base, is miniscule, but he still pulls back from the kiss to watch his Jedi’s expression intently for any sign of hesitation, of uncertainty.

Finding none, Cody gently tugs down the fabric, his eyes falling to the real focus of his attentions now. Stars above, but Cody is lost.

Obi-Wan’s cock hangs heavily as it’s freed from his clothes, already hard and lazily drooling precome from the tip. Cody can’t suppress the shudder of pure, electric desire that moves through him at the sight.

With practiced skill, he takes him in hand, stroking his palm down and gently squeezing him at the base. A satisfied smirk flits across his face as he hears Obi-Wan gasp sharply, feels the way he pulses under his fingers.

This is normally where he would tease, if they had found themselves with enough time to spare back aboard The Negotiator - drag his fingers a little too lightly up the underside, trace each vein delicately until Obi-Wan is a panting, writhing mess beneath him, begging for more oh-so prettily.

… But with the way he feels in this moment, Cody doesn’t think he has the patience to wait.

He begins to stroke Obi-Wan’s length, up and then down rhythmically, at a languid and unhurried pace to begin with. He watches, spellbound, as the muscles of the Jedi’s abdomen ripple and tighten with his fight to control his breathing.

Cody twists his wrist as he pumps, taking advantage of the way Obi-Wan’s jaw goes slack with a soft moan to press his thumb into the Jedi’s mouth. Obi-Wan accepts it gratefully, his eyes heavy and lidded as he meets Cody’s gaze once more.

The world falls away.

He doesn’t know how long the two of them stay like that, staring at one another with panting breath and pupils blown wide, but he only registers that he’s increased the pressure and speed of his hand when Obi-Wan lets out a particularly needy whimper. Cody slips his thumb from the Jedi’s mouth, allowing him to speak.

“Cody,” - Stars, his voice sounds absolutely shattered - “please, I need–”

Obi-Wan trails off with a gasp as Cody traces a thumb over his slit, smearing precome over the head of his cock. It twitches in his grasp, every little gasp and shake telling Cody that he’s close.

Cody’s smirk, he’s sure, is positively wolfish as he leans down over the ragged Jedi. “Hm?” he prompts, tilting his head innocently. “What was that? Use your words, darling.”

He knows Obi-Wan well enough to be sure that if he had more of his wits about him, he’d be scowling (or attempting to scowl, at the very least) at such a condescending comment. Obi-Wan relishes submitting, but he never gives himself over too quickly, if he can help it.

In this state, however, it seems he’s powerless to resist. His hips buck and he practically keens. “Please…” he repeats, squeezing his eyes shut momentarily. When they reopen, Cody feels dizzy with the weight of the sheer need he sees in them. “I need you inside me.”

The swirling colours around them glow brighter, the cosmic dust in the air collapsing and being born anew into countless galaxies as Cody’s mind utterly blanks.

He feels himself throb, achingly hard and neglected under his armour as he stares, wide-eyed, at the obscene beauty of the man beneath him.

Withdraws his hand, he leans down to capture Obi-Wan’s mouth in a searing kiss, groaning as the Jedi sucks at his tongue in return.

“Yes,” he finally manages as they part, his trembling hands working clumsily at unclasping his armour. “That’s my good boy. I’ll give you what you need.”

Obi-Wan helps him with removing each piece until he’s stripped down to his blacks, tugging impatiently at his shirt the second he has the opportunity. Cody would tease him for being so eager, but for once he’s just as desperate.

He kneels down in front of the Jedi, who props himself up on his elbows to watch Cody remove his belt with darkened, lust-drunk eyes.

The wanton moan that leaves Obi-Wan’s lips as Cody removes his underwear, tossing it to the side, is one that, understandably, goes straight to his ego. The Jedi’s eyes are fixated between Cody’s legs, his tongue darting out to wet his lips and his breath coming a little faster.

Cody always likes this look on his lover. It’s almost blasphemous, to reduce a Jedi to such a state - but if it is a sin, it’s a sin he revels in, wholeheartedly.

“How are your hips?” Cody asks softly, trying to keep himself together enough to check in. His voice sounds hoarse, even to his own ears, his tone slightly shaking with the effort of holding himself back.

Obi-Wan, dishevelled and dazed, looks up to meet Cody’s eyes again, taking a moment to process the question, and then the intent behind it. It seems to be a difficult task for him to gather his words together.

“Well enough to take me as you please,” he answers, hushed and equally unsteady.

Neither of them are particularly young men, in body. The flexibility needed for certain positions is not as much of a given as it once was, but in their line of work, age is a privilege and not a promise. There’s a strange joy in getting to the point of creaking joints and aching bones - Cody will never say he wishes they were younger.

He nudges Obi-Wan's legs apart, settling between them. Their bodies, sweat-slicked, press close as Cody dips his head to kiss him once more, groaning at the feeling of their cocks sliding against one another between their bodies.

“You’re sure?” he murmurs, cupping the other man’s face with a calloused hand, sweeping a thumb over his cheek.

It’s almost an indescribable feeling, but if Cody were to try and put it into words, he might say that flowers are blooming in his chest, his body a propagator for a whole garden of vibrancy, fed by the love he feels for his man. It’s as if every moment of love, of longing, of want that he’s ever felt has been concentrated into a single point, blossoming outwards within him now.

“I’m sure,” Obi-Wan affirms, smiling up at him with such softness it threatens to tear his heart asunder.

Cody wonders what it is that Obi-Wan is feeling throughout all of this. Something equally as profound, he hopes - by the euphoric look on his face, it certainly seems like it.

With a final kiss, he draws back, carefully hooking Obi-Wan’s legs over his shoulders.

Helix, Cody is certain, would kill the both of them on the spot if he knew they were making use of their bacta reserves to act as lube, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

“I’ll go slow,” he promises.

Obi-Wan cries out as Cody slowly breaks him open, his fingernails digging into the skin of Cody’s back and dragging across the skin in an exquisite blend of pleasure and pain. Cody isn’t sure he’s ever felt more alive than he does in this moment.

It’s an experience that borders on the sublime; pushing into his lover until he bottoms out, his entire vision overtaken by ethereal, abstract hallucinations as his entire nervous system goes into overdrive.

Each drawn out thrust of his hips, dragging himself nearly fully out before sliding slowly back in, has Obi-Wan clinging to him tighter. He feels divine, his warmth surrounding Cody, enveloping him completely. Cody may be the one who takes charge more often in their intimate moments, but the feeling of complete and utter safety goes both ways.

“Force, Cody, Cody…” Obi-Wan pants, his voice wrecked and getting progressively more and more pitched with each desperate movement.

Cody presses their foreheads together, sharing a single breath between them. It’s the only grounding sensation in a galaxy that’s spinning wildly away from them, drowning them under the force of its waves. He’s no longer sure if the pulsing he feels in his veins is from the plant’s effects or from the pure, unbridled lust he’s feeling - the two have become long since inextricable, now.

“I love you,” he whispers. His whole body shudders in pleasure, and he lets out a strangled, breathless gasp. “Stars, I love you so much.”

He isn’t certain if it’s a vision courtesy of his addled state, or if it’s actually real, but he sees tears slip down Obi-Wan’s cheeks. Mesh’la. Perfect.

“I love you too,” his Jedi whispers in response, wholly broken, desperate.

Both of their bodies are trembling, careening ever closer to that inevitable, blissful edge.

Cody is very aware of how close he is to coming apart at the seams, but he needs to see Obi-Wan through first. Each gasp of air helps him to hold on a little longer, but he knows it won’t be long.

He reaches down between them, wrapping his hand around Obi-Wan’s length again and stroking him with urgency.

“Be a good boy, darling,” Cody grits out, swallowing Obi-Wan’s ensuing whimper with a rough, needy kiss. The Jedi’s back arches, and Cody takes advantage of the new angle to thrust into him harder, chasing that mind-numbing pleasure he knows is so close that it's practically tangible for the both of them. “Come for me.”

Obi-Wan’s body convulses instinctively at the order, spilling over Cody’s hand and clutching so tightly to him that they may as well be one singular being rather than two.

The sensation of his muscles tightening around him has Cody following so suddenly he has no time to prepare for it, the Commander letting out a sob of pure bliss as he presses his face into the crook of his lover’s neck, riding out their orgasms together in a haze of pure elation.

The galaxy explodes, but they are untouched. Perfect, transcendent, locked in their eternal embrace.

They lie there like that for an unknowable amount of time, their bodies still connected and twitching with the occasional aftershock.

Blinking slowly, Cody’s senses begin to return to him, piece by leisurely piece. A cool breeze passes over the hilltop, making him shiver. Dazed, he remembers that he has a physical form, and that said physical form is… cold. Ah, right. They’re in the middle of an open meadow, in the absolute dead of night. Clothes… might be a good idea.

He presses a kiss to Obi-Wan’s temple before pulling out. The Jedi lets out a quiet whine at the sensation, grunting as his legs are able to finally unfold, returning to their normal position.

“You alright, love?” Cody asks with a sympathetic wince, passing him his robes.

Obi-Wan hums, slowly pulling himself up into a sitting position with a quiet hiss of pain. The smile he gives Cody, however, is radiant.

“Better than I’ve been in weeks, darling,” he murmurs sincerely. “A few aches and pains are–” he exhales slowly as he rolls his shoulders, attempting to alleviate the discomfort that’s built up in them. “... Are very worth it for something like that.”

He reaches over to capture Cody’s wrist, bringing his hand to his lips and brushing a chaste kiss to his knuckles - a markedly demure gesture, given the nature of the indecency they were engaged in just minutes ago.

“You were right, my dear. I did need that. And it seems you did, too.”

Cody just smiles in response, quietly shuffling over behind him to help him with the intricate process of re-affixing his robes in the intricate way he likes, the action second nature to him now. Once they’re done, Obi-Wan helps Cody with his armour, gathering the various pieces that have been strewn about the meadow haphazardly and attaching them with a gentle hand, peppering kisses to his skin as he goes.

“... There we are. Last piece,” he says softly once they’re done. He offers a hand out to help Cody up, which he takes gratefully.

Slowly, the two begin the ambling walk down the hillside, neither man in any particular rush to get back. A sense of satisfaction and contentment fills the air between them - the tension that had seeped through them before a thing of the past.

“It’s funny,” Cody says suddenly, breaking the silence a little ways into the stroll. The moon of this planet is bright, lighting the path ahead of them comfortably without the need for the artificial flashlight of his visor. “It seemed to… wear off, all of a sudden. At the end. I’m not sure why that is.”

Obi-Wan hums thoughtfully, passing a hand over his beard as he considers his answer. “I wondered at that, too,” he murmurs, casting a glance Cody’s way. “I expect it has something to do with the release of oxytocin altering the potency of the plant’s effects, but I can’t say for certain.”

The two share a smile.

“Well…” Cody murmurs, his hand finding his Jedi’s and interlinking their fingers. “If we needed to experiment with it more to be sure, it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

Obi-Wan gasps and raises a brow, faux-scandalised. “My dear Commander,” he says, shaking his head in reproach, though his eyes dance with amusement. “Surely you’re not suggesting a Jedi Master indulge in something so… forbidden?”

Cody shrugs, a playful glint entering his eye. “Well, I mean, if it was in the name of science…” he suggests, innocently.

The Jedi laughs softly at that, squeezing Cody’s hand. “We’ll see,” is all he says.

Cody grins, feeling more relaxed than he has in a long time.

It’s definitely not a ‘no’ He’ll take it.

✷✷✷✷✷

A/N: No beta readers this time, so instead I'll give a shout out to my wonderful fiancee for helping me with um. research!

This was my first time writing anything nsfw, so I really hope it was all okay!! Thank you so much for reading <3

#aspentreewrites #codywan #codywan smut #cody x obi wan #my fics #commander cody x obi wan #smutfic #star wars fanfiction #aspentree after dark

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rjzimmerman · 7 months ago

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Excerpt from a review of the book, "Smithsonian Trees of North America," authored by W. John Kress, from Smithsonian Magazine:

When W. John Kress was in college and pondering what life was all about, he used to climb up into a treetop and stay there for hours at a time. “I wanted to be away from everything else and be with nature in some way,” he says now, speaking to me from his home office in leafy Vermont.

Kress is the author of a new book, an 800-page tome called Smithsonian Trees of North America. It’s an incredibly thorough guide to just about every leaf, needle, flower, seedpod and pinecone you’re likely to come across as you walk around the United States or Canada. Kress—a research botanist emeritus at the National Museum of Natural History and former interim Under Secretary for Science at the Smithsonian Institution—wrote the text and took most of the photographs.

He notes that the book doesn’t cover all the tree species in North America—a global tree assessment published in 2021 estimated that there are 1,432 of them. But the 326 species the book does include account for 98 percent of the trees on this continent, north of Mexico. (The U.S. and Canada share many more species of trees with each other than they do with Mexico, so it’s common for botanists to consider the lands south of the border as a separate region.)

“We take trees for granted a lot,” Kress says, as I glance out the window at a flowering crepe myrtle in my own backyard. “And that was the point of the book. Not every tree is the same. Another point of the book is that we’re losing that diversity. We need to start paying attention.”

When it comes to the animal kingdom, you’ll hear people talk about “charismatic species”—the elephants, pandas, lions and dolphins that never fail to attract zoogoers or sell plush toys. Conservationists hope these alluring creatures will serve as ambassadors, making people care about entire habitats and all the other forms of life within them.

With the notable exception of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy, you don’t usually see tree toys or arboreal characters in children’s cartoons. (Let’s not talk about the dismembered heroine of Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.) And yet trees are all around us if we’re lucky, an underappreciated backdrop of shade and greenery. Kress wants people to care about the individual trees in their neighborhoods, form relationships with them and, through that, build a deeper connection with nature.

#Smithsonian #Smithsonian Trees of North America

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ntls-24722 · 1 year ago

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Artastic's reblog with the pierced neck sails was truly inspirational because I've just decided to focus on body mods for Debu regions and their neck-sail piercing specialties. I'm realizing a lot of things that I've kept from Debu for their percieved (by me) tediousness and material cost are not half tedious or expensive as I thought, so... also expect Debu clothes soon (though, clothes are purely decorative and aren't around for actual cover)

Going off of the groups I named in this general makeup chart;

Coastal Debu have the benefit of being in reach of all sorts of shiny, pretty "bug" parts from their beach living. Shells, paddles, decorative mouthparts, along with dried fish parts and bones, it's all in their reach and by god do the coastal Debu use em, slapping those things right onto studs made of bone with the decorative side pointing outwards. Coastal Debu are not known for one specific reoccurring feature in their piercings, but the beach theme is very specific to them.

Valley Debu are mostly known for beads. Clay, bone, stone, "wood", glass (glass in particular, since they invented it!), into cubes, ovals, little squares, stars even - they love the damn things and they will put it anywhere and everywhere. In this case, the most popular style for piercings is on the string that hangs interwoven between their gauge. There's also little flags of cloth they hang on the string to denote families or in-groups within tribes.

Other than that, they hang pycnofibers and lines of scales from these strings as well.

Also, it was at this point where I finally changed how the sails are.

There's now 2 of them! They start way higher up on the neck (yellow area is base) so there's more surface area and they're better at their thermoregulative job

Badlands Debu are known for their art using a specific type of plant sap that they dry out in the sun to create a hard, amber-like resins. There's a lot of art they have where they pour it into casts or over certain things, and the most popular thing they like dipping in the resin for their neck piercings are the fluffy seedpods of a flower most similar to Earth's dandelions.

Badlands Debu also have a focus on body modifications making one look powerful, so there's scarification and mouth cutouts, which are painful but make the Debu be seen as hardcore or look very menacing. Or both! There actually is a specific mouth cutout that are reserved only for leaders where the entire cheek is cut for a wider gape of the mouth. Other Debu are required to have a little strip of skin connecting the top and bottom jaw.

Serendipolis! I used to think the debu from this society would be the only ones able to get piercings, and yet I stalled like crazy trying to think up body mods for them. HMM

Anyways. They're obviously known for metal, and along with rings, Debu are also known to have these tusk caps (think a horseshoe but for your teeth). But a special accessory of theirs is a stream of cloth on a string that connects to the lips to the back gauge on the sail. That damn thing gets caught on everything but I'll be damned if it doesn't look cool. They also use diver Cloe jawbones (now that they're in access to zebraelves) and bug heads/eyes (now that they're in access to the other bugs that Zebrapeople have domesticated.) There's also colorful shells they have from trading with coastal Debu.

Rinkalla used to have a nose ring but when she moved out of Serendipolis, she didn't want to stand out (since that was the point of her moving), so she took it out and now she has the valley beads as well.

#ntls-24722 #djmm #dj music man #fnaf au #worldbuilding #speculative biology #homo mousike #rinkalla #(almost) daily music man

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emmalovesdilemmas · 7 months ago

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His personal observations included many grace notes. A description in the margin of a tidal pool in the rocks down the coast just beyond the lighthouse. A lengthy observation of the atypical use of an outcropping of oysters at low tide by a skimmer seeking to kill a large fish. Photographs of the tidal pool had been stuck in a sleeve in the back. Placed carefully in the sleeve, too, were pressed wildflowers, a slender seedpod, a few unusual leaves. My husband would have cared little for any of this; even the focus to observe the skimmer and write a page of notes would have required great concentration for him. I knew these elements were included for me and me alone. There were no endearments, but I understood in part because of this restraint. He knew how much I hated words like love.

Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer

#annihilation #jeff vandermeer #the southern reach #the biologist my beloved #this part is so gut wrenching #their relationship and characterizations are the main reason the movie makes me so upset #i don’t really care that much about the omission of the tower/crawler (i do actually)#but they did these two so dirty

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blackswallowtailbutterfly · 9 months ago

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My Garden Flowers Part 1

Just thought I'd give you all the garden tour. :) I will update when I get more photos. This is of course not counting any of my ferns or conifers as they don't flower. I might do a series of foliage posts, though. All photos mine, unedited.

In order of appearance:

001. Canada Plum (Prunus nigra) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet. I have her in a shady spot and she's fairly slow-growing but healthy.

002. Yellow Monkeyflower (Mimulus guttata) An annual that sadly doesn't seem to have reseeded despite flowering profusely last year. But maybe next year! That happens sometimes.

003. Boreal Yarrow (Achillea millefolia borealis) The place where she is is north-facing so she doesn't get quite as much sun as she'd like, so she can get a bit leggy but she still flowers so it's fine.

004. Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) Not pictured as I haven't got any pictures yet, but I will if she flowers this year. I actually had to move her because she had planted herself in a not ideal location in my garden. Which is fine because I wanted one anyway.

005. Vierhapper's Aster (Aster alpinus vierhapperi) This was supposed to be Canada goldenrod, but it's okay because Canada goldenrod planted herself. I relocated her to the intended spot and they get along fine together. Asters and goldenrods generally do. :)

006. Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) I did not plant this! Must have been given to me by a bird or squirrel. Sadly she didn't reseed. Oh well, she's a cultivar and I did get the wild type. Interesting to me that she actually flowered in that area when her cousin stubbornly refuses to.

007. Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana) This refers to the fact you can move the flowers around, not to the behaviour of the plant, which is very aggressive.

008. Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet.

009. Enchanter's Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) I didn't plant her; she just started coming up everywhere when I removed the grass. She is not a nightshade. I've learned that even people interested in planting natives regard her as a weed. I disagree. She's not aggressive to other plants and she's pretty.

010. Northern Gooseberry (Ribes oxyacanthoides) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet.

011. New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus americanus) Haven't tried her for tea yet, but she's a lovely little bush.

012. Sunchokes (Helianthus tuberosa) Aforementioned cousin of the common sunflower. Not pictured as she keeps making her flowerbuds too late in fall so the frost gets them before they can open.

013. Potato Bean (Apios americana) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet.

014. Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) SUPER fragrant, especially in the evening. This is an aggressive plant but worth it for the flowers, the fragrance, and the butterflies they attract. Not to mention the young shoots, flower clusters, young leaves, and young seedpods are all edible if cooked properly!

015. Northern Bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet. Her leaves are nice and evergreen, though.

016. Virginia Strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) Also known as "wild strawberry", but so is her cousin. She flowers reliably every spring but no strawberries yet. The flowers themselves are edible but I keep hoping she'll make strawberries. lol

017. Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet.

018. Riverbank Grape (Vitis riparia) Not the greatest picture, but the point is I will get grapes one of these years!

019. False Sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides) It was hard to pick a favourite photo. They're really quite stunning. She blooms from July until the frosts of October. :)

020. Canadian Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis) Not pictured as she hasn't flowered yet. She's a wee little tree in the shade for now.

021. New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) Probably the most attractive of the Symphyotrichum asters, to be honest. The flowers are more compact than most of her relatives while still being a decent size, and the colour is much more saturated too. And the bees absolutely love her. But that doesn't stop me enjoying other asters!

022. Common Elder (Sambucus canadensis) She almost died when I potted her for the move. See I dug up as much of her taproot as I could, but she'd already gone quite deep and I had to break it. But she lived! She's quite big now and has these wonderful lacy white elderflowers every year, with elderberries to follow.

023. Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculata) Not pictured as I didn't get any pictures yet. Should have when I first got her. She was in flower then. She hasn't since.

024. Black Raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) Not pictured as I don't have pictures yet. Don't know why. lol I've taken pictures of the berries. I'll remember next year.

025. Fox Geranium (Geranium robertianum) A true geranium I managed to trade for last year. You mostly find these in the woods and now I have her in my garden.

026-027. Common Hops male and female flowers (Humulus lupulus) I can't remember which is which, but yeah! I could flavour beer if I was a brewer. :)

028. American Spikenard (Aralia racemosa) Another one with lacy little white flowers, and it looks like some of them are going to fruit!

029. Silverweed (Argentina anserina) After several failed attempts, this one has finally taken off. Truly lives up to her name in the spring and has these nice yellow flowers later on.

030. Hoary Vervain (Verbena stricta) The name must refer to the leaves, which are kind of blue-grayish, because the flowers are just a nice purple.

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pharology · 5 months ago

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Interspersed with this direct account of what had happened to the expedition were more personal observations, most of which I am reluctant to summarize here. Except there is one passage that pertains to Area X and to our relationship, too:

Seeing all of this, experiencing all of it, even when it’s bad, I wish you were here. I wish we had volunteered together. I would have understood you better here, on the trek north. We wouldn’t have needed to say anything if you didn’t want to. It wouldn’t have bothered me. Not at all. And we wouldn’t have turned back. We would have kept going until we couldn’t go farther.

Slowly, painfully, I realized what I had been reading from the very first words of his journal. My husband had had an inner life that went beyond his gregarious exterior, and if I had known enough to let him inside my guard, I might have understood this fact. Except I hadn’t, of course. I had let tidal pools and fungi that could devour plastic inside my guard, but not him. Of all the aspects of the journal, this ate at me the most. He had created his share of our problems—by pushing me too hard, by wanting too much, by trying to see something in me that didn’t exist. But I could have met him partway and retained my sovereignty. And now it was too late.

His personal observations included many grace notes. A description in the margin of a tidal pool in the rocks down the coast just beyond the lighthouse. A lengthy observation of the atypical use of an outcropping of oysters at low tide by a skimmer seeking to kill a large fish. Photographs of the tidal pool had been stuck in a sleeve in the back. Placed carefully in the sleeve, too, were pressed wildflowers, a slender seedpod, a few unusual leaves. My husband would have cared little for any of this; even the focus to observe the skimmer and write a page of notes would have required great concentration from him. I knew these elements were intended for me and me alone. There were no endearments, but I understood in part because of this restraint. He knew how much I hated words like love.

Jeff Vandermeer, Annihilation

#annihilation #jeff vandermeer #southern reach #i just want this in my blog somewhere

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monster-rinds · 2 months ago

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Chapter 28: No food for you

I would have preferred a bit of witty dialogue first, ala Spade and Guttman in the Maltese Falcon. That would have been fun, at least. But I can’t say I didn’t see the attack coming.

I think my opponent expected me not to.

It came at me from the Strands. It injected itself from the Strand where it kept most of itself, right into the ground beneath me, causing the tremor. The tremor itself was really enough of a telltale for me, so I don’t know what it was thinking, honestly. But by the time it opened its maw, I’d already shifted the surface of my palms and fingers to become all gecko grippy. Which is starting to feel like my favorite trick.

It’s so handy, though.

Anyway, that gave me time to work on my next transformation. The timing for which was fortuitous and lucky.

Something was keeping this thing just a touch slower than me, and yet it still almost got me. But, by the time it rallied, I was already growing and rising up out of reach, drawing it out of the ground.

To give Felicity as much to work with as possible, I made it so that my physical projection was really made from billions and billions of nearly microscopic compound eyes. Which also meant I could see everywhere, in the physical sense. There was no photon that escaped me and my notice.

But the digitally remastered Sarlacc-y Audrey II motherfucker that was climbing its way out of the ground below us had no eyes itself. It looked like an angry seedpod on a mass of spikey, woody tendrils, all dirt colored and pissed off. And when it opened its maw, there was nothing but endless light behind its rows and rows of fine pointy little teeth, like a brightly lit infinity mirror. The light was bright enough to reflect off the side of the building as it tried to climb up after us.

“Once there’s enough of it out of that pit, I’m gonna make a mouth way bigger than it is,” I told Felicity inwardly. “And then it’s all urine, Pee-Pee.”

“What are you – ?” she started to ask, but didn’t bother finishing.

“I miss our witty banter at the checkout counter, I said.”

“Were we really like that?”

“No. This is what you get when you don’t set me up with red wine and tampons.”

“Oh, it was worse.”

“Yes.”

“I’m inclined to let it eat us, then,” she replied.

“Understood.”

People in the building were rushing to the rooms that had windows facing us, but then panicking and pushing back up against the far wall and the other people trying to get in through the doors. They were screaming, enticing me with emotions I could no longer feel and absorb. Cars were piling up in the street, and some people were running, while others collected in a wide circumference that was soon looking inadequate as I grew. And Cassy kept aiming her phone at me. Soon, she wasn’t the only one doing so.

But I was feeding. Because the monster below me was blasting me with such anticipation and fury it felt like a furnace. And I’d had no idea that was possible. I’d felt nothing quite like it before from an emanant. Nothing quite so strong and nutritious.

It just tasted bland compared to human emotion, really. One dimensional.

About when shade trees near the sidewalk were being pushed over by the plant-thing, and people started backing up from between their cars, I declared, “Now.”

I’d been growing faster than it. And while it had been largely growing upward, I’d been growing outward. Still, the space it was in was long and narrow, between the building and the street, so I mostly grew in that direction, as we’d need a mouth that was kind of similar to Croc-face’s. I felt it was fitting to imitate it, if Croc-face was maybe somehow working for this thing.

I didn’t so much open a mouth in my underside as I manifested an already open mouth, teeth first, from my cloud of eyes. It was open completely flat, no tongue, with the depths of a gullet in the middle. Gums as red as a celebrity carpet, teeth a children’s book ivory. And then, when it was complete, I felt Felicity take control and snap it shut.

But I then also felt her change of heart, and her determined and sickened duplicity take ahold of her just before pulling those jaws back upward just in time to clamp down on air just in front of Seedy MacSeedpod’s snout.

And Seedy took that moment to lunge faster than it had been moving before, clamping onto the one bit of solid corporeal projection I had, which suddenly wasn’t Felicity’s anymore.

Felicity let go of me, stopped feeding on my inner reserves, and fled into the eyes of so many people.

---

Cassy had the weirdest little thought.

She thought that what she was seeing was like a kaiju battle if drawn by Mercer Meyer.

Her mom had collected Mercer Meyer’s books from her own childhood, to make sure to share them with Cassy, and they might have informed some of Cassy’s special interests. So, it wasn’t too odd that she’d had that thought. But for the magnitude of what was happening, it sure was a glib observation.

However, what happened next tied her gut into a knot, and she staggered.

When Synthia snapped her jaws shut, she also paradoxically, unbelievably, pulled them up short, missing the monster below her entirely. Which allowed the plant creature to snap up and grab a hold of her like a giant squid grappling a whale.

But just before she could see what happened next, there was a sudden and blinding stabbing pain right behind her eyes, and it began worming its way into her brain and heart simultaneously.

---

Felicity spilled into the world and the Strands around me as her monster realm presence separated itself from mine.

And I felt a searing pain in the tip of what was now my own snout, which was clenched in the shell-like jaws and wrapped by the spiky tendrils of Seedy. There was a lot of agony in that appendage of mine, but that burning sensation filled me with dread and panic. I was being drawn slowly into the metabolism of another monster, and I now had the experience to know I couldn’t sever that part of myself from me to escape.

I desperately gripped every bit of spacetime I could occupy, physical and Strandspace, and I pulled. I strained and stretched, then contracted and yanked, jerking, tugging, hauling on the part of myself caught in the grip of Seedy’s jaws.

But all I did was successfully pull it further out of the ground.

But I wasn’t so completely engrossed in escape that I didn’t also see everything else that was happening around me at the same, nor did I miss the moment when Cassy stumbled, dropped her phone and clutched her face, screaming.

She staggered back and fell onto her ass, whipping her covered face to the sky to screech like a dying rabbit.

And I could see a good majority of Felicity’s Strands pointed right at her.

“No,” I rumbled with thunder.

It’s possible the whole city heard me.

Even if what I was seeing was a rider in Cassy being attacked and fronting and protesting physically as a result of it, I had lost all vestiges of trust I’d had in Felicity, and had no clue how my human friend was experiencing it.

I couldn’t let her be hurt.

But at the same time, I was being inexorably consumed.

Maybe I couldn’t tear off a piece of myself, but perhaps it was possible to let Seedy do it for me. After all, Croc-face had taken only a part of Felicity. Supposedly.

So, in desperation, I started morphing my snout back into a cloud of tiny eyeballs, which I should have done sooner, and turned my focus on Cassy.

But all I could think of was that I didn’t have the adaptations needed to pursue Felicity and stop her. And, that maybe the worst damage was already done.

Whatever was in Cassy was so small, and Cassy herself so fragile and human, that Felicity’s attack should be over in seconds.

But Cassy kept writhing and screaming, so, with the rest of my bulk I rushed over to her like a river of black caviar, trying to ignore the growing alarm and excruciating white pain in my furthest vulnerable extremity.

Countless hosts of Felicity gasped and shouted and fell even further back. Well, there were maybe, like, fifty people altogether, but I wasn’t counting them. They were countless to me.

And I surrounded my friend in all seeing darkness, so that I could get a closer look.

Seedy opened its mouth and pulled with its vines, to get a larger portion of me into its gullet, which worked, and increased the pain, but it was still such a small portion of me. And I found myself coming even further out of the strands to billow out over the civic center of Gresham for better leverage.

I was maybe covering nine blocks worth of area, now, blotting out the sun, and I could see more of the effects I was having on the city around me.

But I was focused on Cassy and Felicity and whatever was happening between them.

And as everyone who was not a host to Felicity turned and ran, I watched as Felicity turned more and more of her attention to Cassy, who just would not stop fighting her.

And if Cassy did have a monster in her, it didn’t cast so much as a shadow in the monster realm, now that I was looking there, too.

This didn’t make sense. And I couldn’t get between them if I couldn’t jump into Cassy’s psyche like an epialivore or Felicity somehow. I’d never done that. And it would take me hours, if not days, to figure out how.

Or, I could eat Felicity.

I could eat her from the monster realm up, and gain her adaptations while saving what was left of Cassy from her attentions.

That would also take an adaptation, but a lesser one.

I had really only discovered one way to eat another monster, if I could bring myself to do it again, and that was to insert part of myself inside of them and start to… absorb… them… through. my. surface.

As I plunged a pseudopod of consciousness into the monster realm to see about piercing Felicity there with a proboscis of sorts, the rest of me turned to face Seedy with billions and billions of tiny black hooded eyes. This looked much like clouds of reflectionless blackness rolling inward toward a central point where the monster fight was taking place, toward my rapidly disintegrating snout and the plant-beast that was swallowing it.

Personal morals and ethics are simplified in the face of being eaten, and of saving a friend from the same fate.

I knew I would regret myself afterward, but for the moment I wasn’t going to have an afterward. And that I was able to contemplate doing this at all was a testament to over seven-hundred million years of survival.

As I slid a long, thin needle into Felicity on one end of myself, I made the other end begin growing stout spikes into the innards of Seedy.

To be fair, I think Felicity didn’t see me coming because she was so focused on her fight with whatever was inside Cassy. It was grabbing all of her attention fast.

Seedy just didn’t know what it had bitten into.

And I began to feed on the two teratovores.

And I thought, Croc-face had better run.

---

#original fiction #teratovore #web serial #writeblr

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bumblebeeappletree · 8 months ago

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youtube

Australian native flowers are in high demand for cut flowers, and can cost a lot in the shops, so why not try growing a few of your own? Clarence suggests some top varieties to try.

But first a word about what is an Australian native - we’re talking here about plants that are from Australia originally, not their ancient Gondwanan relatives such as proteas and leucadendrons, which are native to southern Africa.

Banksias: there’s one for nearly every corner of Australia and they make great cut flowers.

Hakeas also last well in the vase and, while some can be a bit spiky, H. francisiana and H. bucculenta has softer foliage and spectacular flowers. The woody seedpods also look great afterwards. When cutting back, make sure you don’t cut back to bare wood - the stem is more likely to grow back if it still has some foliage on it.

Waratahs are truly spectacular but need shelter, consistent moisture and good drainage so they won’t grow just anywhere. But you could always try a pot using good quality potting mix.

Grevilleas - many hold well in a vase but the sap of some grevilleas in a common allergen so use gloves and eye protection and place them somewhere indoors where they can be admired but not touched.

Short-lived annuals such as Pelargoniums are lovely in a vase, too, and will generously self-seed in the garden.

Kangaroo paws are a classic cut flower, but beware of the hairs on the flowers, which can be an irritant.

Everlasting daisies will grow almost anywhere in southern Australia and their papery flowers dry beautifully as well as bringing colour to a traditional posy.

Foliage - don’t’ forget some grey and green leaves to offset the colour, and growing a few at home can save you a lot of money.

Grasses - their soft, elegant foliage and seedheads can add interest to any bunch.

Picking is a good form of pruning, so don’t be afraid to cut!

How to arrange:

If in doubt, pick a central stem as the main focus, then slowly build up around that, turning the bunch as you go and adding another stem at each point as you turn.

Featured plants:

Protea (Protea sp.)

Leucadendron (Leucadendron sp.)

Firewood banksia (Banksia menziesii)

Coast banksia (Banksia integrifolia)

Grass-leaf hakea (Hakea francisiana)

Red pokers (Hakea bucculenta)

NSW waratah (Telopea speciosissima)

Austral storksbill (Pelargonium australe)

Kangaroo paw (Anigozanthos sp.)

Rosy everlasting (Rhodanthe chlorocephala subsp. rosea)

Paper daisy (Xerochrysum bracteatum ‘Dargan Hill Monarch’)

Kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra)

Filmed on Dharawal Country in Heathcote, NSW

#Gardening Australia #solarpunk #Australia #boquet #flowers #plants #native flowers #native plants #Youtube

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cedarboughs · 7 months ago

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Hiking Journal: The West Coast Trail

Day VII: Last Steps

Darling River to Nanaimo

One last giant banana slug, the biggest and most beautiful and inspiring yet, greeted us in the breakfast table to bid us farewell to the West Coast Trail I suppose.

I had to rest in one of the hammocks made from washed-up fishing line. The craft these must have taken in the midst of a trek like this! And they are comfy and give the pirate vibes again.

We waded the Darling after walking briefly up its beach-to-forest canyon a couple hundred metres to see the falls.

Then two kilometres of Tideshelf Tango to Michigan Creek, the last campsite, named for an American wood steamer sank in the last years of the nineteenth century — to no loss of life, thanks to the rescue road built in the mourning for the Valencia.

It was misting out of a low sky and the tide was all the way out* so I walked far out the tideshelf into what the map coloured blue, where clams spread like clover.

Two kilometres past Michigan we visited the Pachena Point Lighthouse. This is the westernmost post on the whole Trail. Looking out to sea, it’s open water all the way to Japan.

A short and easy kilometre past there, I was beginning to tire a bit. We broke for lunch at a point overlooking two busy sea lion haulout rocks. The smell of the sea lions wafted by on occasion, but the symphony of barking and yapping from the territory-seeking older bulls and milk-seeking cubs kept up all through our time there. We ate wraps with envelope tuna and cheese that wasn’t quite so hard as when I packed it up.

Then, walking. Nine more long kilometres of inland trail, well maintained and easy to walk, but feeling endless. Final stretches either sap last bits of energy as you feel the cumulative weight of every step it took to get there; or else, there comes an infusion of energy from knowing the end is within reach. I felt both of these ways through those last nine kilometres, mostly depending on whether I was walking up or downhill. Along the way were carved stumps and, somehow, an abandoned motorcycle rusting right on the trail just out of the ferns.

This isn’t in my journal but I remember at one rest I made a point of pondering the tree across the trail. I got me thinking about cedars, which is a thing I do often. I traced with my eyes the striations of fluted bark falling vertically down the trunk like water over falls, then indeed tumbling over rock and soil and older wood just as water would. It’s no great revelation that the Great Bear Rainforest feels so remarkably alive from its abundance of life-giving water and how life piles upon and gives life to other life in all its layers. Coming from the dry prairie, that was the great novelty and reason I so loved the rainswept Pacific drainages. But looking at that plicata I thought, here is a tree that more than any other of its kin, whom I’d see as living extensions of the earth, here is elemental water given towering form. In Waterton I’d seen trees born of fire growing back in the valley, and trees of air wracked by high alpine winds. Every element grows life in time. That’s why a lawn of cut grass feels like such an abomination. How many flower blooms, clover spreads, or rippling waves of seedpods lay aborted in that featureless spread of dying yellow-green? How many tasty free-growing sources of dandelion greens and flowers and milk and coffee and wine? I don’t know how people can choose to live in suburbs among that. Even in a proper city there’s an organic life to the growth of towers like trees and an exploratory sense to the karsts of skyscrapers and an ecology to the succession of streets and neighbourhoods. It’s amazing what can grow when left to its own nature, beyond the human desire for control. It you let it alone, it will surely grow.

A few final tall ladders for good measure in the last kilometre looking over Pachena Bay. This was the harder of the two ways through the section we’d taken on day 0.9, but the tide was back up. Sorry Wallace, but the low tide is only a constant endpoint in a novel that ends there.**

Then we were done, and there was the car at the trailhead.

It was a long drive across the Island to Nanaimo, although really, to call the first mileage-marked seventy-five kilometres to Port Alberni “a long drive” of a couple of hours after taking the last full week to do that distance seems unfair. Past Alberni we finally did stop at Cathedral Grove to keep our legs from totally seizing up as we sat eating chips in the indulgent languor of off-Trail life. “The Big Tree” at Cathedral Grove, a six-metre-diameter Douglas fir, was indeed a bit bigger than all those cedars and spruce we walked among along the Trail, but it was strange walking along interpretive paths so flat and maintained.

On the way into Nanaimo we stopped for takeout pizza. I can talk about blackened fresh caught cod and rare freshwater crab but let’s be real here— that tandoori chicken pie eaten on a TravelLodge bed while waiting for the shower was the most satisfying meal I ate in B.C.

* Wallace, D. F. (1996). Infinite Jest. Little, Brown. Well, almost.

**Yes I know that you could have a whole argument about where or even whether Infinite Jest “ends.”

#Spotify #my photos #hiking #british columbia #west coast trail #west coast #pacific northwest #vancouver island #adventurecore

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a2add0 · 7 months ago

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i had a conversation on here years ago, i wish i could find it.. and maybe i could - i saved a copy of that blog before pressing delete. an archive of several previous mes. it's on a harddrive stashed in the back of the bottom drawer

their name was cypress? or maybe they didn't have one, we talked about names - how necessary is one, what does a name really mean? sweetgum is the tree w palmate leaves and spikey seedpods, mourning cloak is the black butterfly w yellow at the edges, [ ] is the human body i live inside of, the one i see in the mirror

anyways we talked about dignity, the importance of it. tact is the dance we do to maintain each other's. maybe humanity's main folly is that dignity is worth dying over, but that's where ---- and [ ] disagreed

what sparked the conversation? i was working in a movie theatre at the time and maybe had written about it.....

the memory feels just out of reach now. everything's clear right up to it, the bar, the soda fountain, the smell of the popcorn, but the sound's all muffled. someone suffering, something about wanting to see it, bear witness, like it was the only thing i could do so i would do it.

but this didn't make sense to ----. who would avert their eyes. why suffer too, the pain of having to see it.

i realize i'm conflating two conversations. one about the importance of dignity, another about an instinct to bear witness, catholic upbringings.

we talked for about 8 months. perpetual motion machines, forests, upstate new york, deserts, colorado, baader meinhoff, clarice - they said reading clarice felt like looking into an empty elevator shaft.

then less and less. they posted about ending it, deleted the tumblr account. i sent an email. what could i possibly have said then. but i sent something. some abbreviated response. i sent something else, what do you say? and that one bounced back, account deleted.

the internet

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somediyprojects · 2 years ago

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Paper Icelandic Poppies

Project by Kate Alarcón:

There’s a particular kind of lady-slipper orchid that I have made and remade and adjusted and readjusted. I’ve probably made a hundred little green orchid slipper prototypes, and each try is more frustrating than the last. At this point, I suspect that the minute I finally do figure out this orchid, I’ll make it and then crumple it up, just to vent my irritation.

The Icelandic poppy is another flower that I feel like I’ve never completely nailed down. I’ve been tinkering with this version for over a year now. But unlike the lady-slipper, just about every attempt at this poppy has been really fun. I think it’s because poppies — with their wrinkled petals and hairy, spindly, crooked stems — are gloriously awkward. My practice poppies could carry off every little eccentricity I inflicted on them with rumpled panache.

I hope you’ll make your own awkwardly glorious bouquet of poppies and stick them in a vase and fuss with them as they tilt their blooms at weird angles, and lean all over the place, being disagreeable. And just when you’re about to throw up your hands, you’ll step back and realize that it’s all come together. You’ll want to make more.

The crinkle technique I describe below is adapted from Livia Cetti’s gorgeous and essential book, The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers.

Special thanks to the phenomenally talented Lynn Dolan (@lmdolan75 on Instagram) for her generous advice on this project! —Kate

Photography by Kate Alarcón

Supplies

-18 gauge cloth-covered floral wire -8mm wooden beads -white cosmetic wedge sponges for applying glue -sharp scissors –poppy templates

Crepe paper

This is what I used, but definitely feel free to mix it up and substitute.

From Castle in the Air:

-“Pale Yellow Green” heavy crepe for the frill at the top of the seed pod -“Lemon” heavy crepe for the stamen filaments -“Sunflower” fine crepe for the anthers at the end of the stamens -Fine crepe in “Red,” “Persian Pink,” “Pale Pink,” “Pink,” “Sunflower,” and “Vanilla” for the petals

From Paper Mart:

-“Moss Green” heavy crepe to cover the pod and wrap the stem, from Paper Mart

Optional:

Design Master Color Tool Spray in “Holiday Red,” “Perfect Pink,” “Coral,” “Orange,” and “Yellow”

PanPastel in “Permanent Red Tint 340.8,” “Permanent Red 340.5,” “Orange 280.5,” and “Hansa Yellow 220.5”

A note about grain:

The grain of the crepe paper runs parallel to the roll or fold. You will almost always cut petals with the grain, placing the template so that the tiny wrinkles in the paper run up and down the template, not across. Each template includes an arrow to show the direction the grain should run.

Constructing the seed pod at the center of the flower:

The first step is to create the little frill at the top of the seedpod. Use template A to cut a frill piece from the pale green heavy crepe. Stretch the wider end of the piece all the way out, flattening all the little crinkles in the upper half inch of the frill piece.

Twist the frill piece, beginning about ½” below the top edge. The part of the frill that you stretched will form a little funnel. As I twist, I like to place my fingertip inside this funnel so that it stays open.

If this feels cumbersome, it’s fine to just twist and then use one end of your floral wire to reopen the funnel.

Insert the twisted bottom part of the frill piece into your wooden bead.

Dip the tip of your wire in the glue and scrape off any extra so that you have a thin coat that isn’t dripping all over the place. Insert this wire tip into the bottom of the bead, next to the bottom of the fringe that you’ve just inserted.

You don’t need to push this all the way up into the bead. You’re mostly just trying to anchor the wire tip inside the bead. You’ll secure it in the next step.

Use template B to cut a rectangle from the medium green heavy crepe. Snip a very short fringe across the top of this rectangle (it’s fine to freehand this, but you can also use the lines drawn across the top of template B).

Use your sponge to swipe a thin layer of glue over this piece. Lay your bead on top of the rectangle, so that the top edge is slightly higher than the top of the bead. Stretch the rectangle around the bead and press either side together.

Trim the excess rectangle.

Use your fingers to press the fringes of the green crepe down onto the top of the bead. Scrunch the green paper beneath the bead around the wire.

This will secure the pod to the wire.

For the stamens:

Use template C to cut a rectangle from the pale yellow, heavy crepe. Stretch this rectangle all the way out. It should now be the same width as template D, but if it’s wider, trim any excess. The dotted line across template D shows how deep you should cut the fringe. (You’ll be cutting from the top). You can trace this line with a pencil or just fold along it and let the crease mark where your fringe should stop.

Without stressing out about it, cut the fringe as finely as you can.

Using the diagonal line on template D as a guide, cut away some of the excess paper beneath your fringe. This will create less of a bump where you’ve applied your stamens, and also smooth the transition from stem to blossom.

Use your wedge sponge to apply glue to the area beneath the dotted line. Place your bead on this fringe piece, so that the bottom of the bead sits just above the dotted line. Roll the fringe around the bead loosely.

Don’t worry about what’s happening below the bead; just focus on making sure that the fringe at the top is even all the way around.

Scrunch the bottom of the fringe around the wire all the way up to the base of the pod.

Gently pinch the filaments between your thumb and forefinger and bend them away from the center, all the way around, creating a tidy ring of stamens.

Now you’ve got your stamen filaments ready to go!

Cut a 3”x 9” rectangle from the orange fine crepe (the short sides will run parallel to the grain.) Fold it in half vertically and in half vertically again.

Cut a fine fringe through all these layers, turn it 90 degrees, and cut across your fringe to create a fine “confetti.” Gently sweep this confetti into a little pile.

Squirt some glue onto a paper plate or disposable dish, and dip the ends of the yellow fringe into the glue.

To keep my seedpod frill clear of the glue, I prefer to hold the stem at a 45 degree angle and dip one section of the fringe at a time, slowly twirling it to glue all the way around.

Dip your fringe into the pile of confetti. Now your filaments have anthers!

Adding color:

You can apply color before or after you cut your petals.

If I’m using the Color Tool spray, I prefer to color sheets of paper ahead of time. Though the odor fades after a couple of days, this stuff smells really intensely like bug spray when you first apply it, so I strongly recommend doing this outside, preferably with a mask on.

Shake the can well, and spray on a light coat. If you’d like more intense color, let the first coat dry a little bit and then spray on another light coat. I like to spray rows of color across the grain of my paper, spacing them a little bit farther apart than my petal height.

If I’m using PanPastels, I usually cut and then color my petals. Use your cosmetic sponge to swipe the pastel onto the petal, swiping with the grain of the paper.

I especially like to apply it so that the color is more intense toward the petal edges, fading toward the bottom, though you could also reverse that.

Clockwise from top: 1. “Vanilla” crepe with “Holiday Red” spray, 2. “Red” crepe with “Orange” PanPastel, 3. “Sunflower” crepe with “Holiday Red” spray, 4. “Vanilla” crepe with “Orange” spray, 5. “Light Pink” crepe with “Yellow” spray, 6. “Vanilla” fine crepe with “Perfect Pink” spray, 7. “Persian Pink” crepe with “Coral” spray, and “Persian Pink” crepe with “Holiday Red” spray.

For the petals:

Each poppy will have six petals: two from template E, two from template F, and two from template G. Templates E through F are actually half a petal, so you’ll need to fold your fine crepe parallel to the grain and place the dotted line along the fold.

Lay the petal on a smooth surface. Place your fingertips about an inch in from the edge of the petal closest to you. Place your thumbs right on the edge, behind your fingers. Use your thumbs to drag or inch the paper toward your fingers. When your thumbs and fingers touch, leave your thumb where it is, lift your fingertips and set them down about an inch forward. Repeat until you’ve gathered the whole petal into pleats.

Pick up your gathered petal and pinch up and down it to set the pleats.

Holding the pleats in place, twist the petal as though you were gently wringing water out of a rag. You’ll twist them pretty firmly, but I find it works better to use a lot of little twisting motions than to try to do everything all in one big twist. Untwist and gently spread the petal, taking care not to smooth the tiny pleats and wrinkles very much.

You can curl your petal at this point or after you glue your pleats.

Curling the petals is a lot like curling ribbon for giftwrap: you can scrape the petal with the blade of your scissors, a skewer, or just your fingers, moving from the base of the petal to the upper edge as you scrape.

Spread the bottom half inch of the template most of the way out and use your sponge to dab glue all the way across the bottom of the petal.

Pinch the bottom edge to gather it back up. Let the glue dry for a few minutes.

Snip off the excess bulk at the bottom of the petal.

Attaching the petals:

You’ll apply the petals in pairs. Start with the template E’s, and place them on opposite sides of the pod. Apply a little bit of glue to the base of the petal and press it right up under the bead.

The second set of petals, the F’s, come next. Working clockwise, place each F beside each E, so that each F overlaps each E by about 30 percent.

Finally, apply each template G petal beside your template F petals, again overlapping by about 30 percent.

Finishing your flower:

Cut a few ¼” x 8” strips across the grain of the medium green heavy crepe. Dab glue on the first two or three inches of the strip and tightly wrap the section of the stem just beneath the flower to secure the petals and hide the petal bottoms. Apply a small amount of glue to one side of the stem wire. (I usually glue four or five inches of the stem at a time so I don’t get as much glue on my hands.)

Hold the strip at a 45-degree angle to the stem and gently stretch the strip as you twirl the stem, spinning the strip all the way to the bottom. If your strip breaks or runs out, just begin with a new strip right above the place on the stem where your previous strip ended.

Once the glue is dry, take some time to straighten your stamens and arrange your petals. You might want to curl some a little bit more, or gently tug a petal’s edge to straighten out crumpled pleats, or press some of the petals down where the petal meets the center to separate the layers.

Sources for supplies:

Michaels: 18 gauge floral wire, Design Master spray, wooden beads, glue

Castle in the Air: Crepe paper, glue, wire

Paper Mart: Crepe paper

Blick: PanPastels

#diy #crafts #paper #x

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