#know that I have been scammed twice before a long time ago and am very suspicious of people asking for money

[4m4zing-gracie]

Closing my inbox because the Gaza scammers won't leave me alone

[hogwartsfirebolt]

A ticket to ruin (or Do Not, under Any Circumstance, agree to pretend you're dating your boss, oh my god)

It’s becoming increasingly clear that I’ve made a mistake, though it would be inaccurate to say I didn’t see it coming. As remarkably skilled as I am at self-deception, this particular lie is outrageous even for me.

And maybe I chose this, but what was the alternative? There was nothing else to be done.

That’s also a lie. I did not have to. I agreed freely, of my own volition, and was not coerced, even if Harry’s pleading eyes and lovely smile made it feel inevitable. He’s my boss, but it was me who said yes.

It feels as though the newspaper burns through my fingertips when I pick it up at the corner shop after breakfast. The lady selling it squints at me, possibly recognizing me from that godawful photograph that’s been everywhere today, the one that looks like every single one of my dreams and is, consequently, my worst nightmare.

“Potter’s new beau?” The headline reads. It could be worse. It is worse, online. When I checked this morning, Twitter was saying “Potter caught snogging a member of his crew,” which is at least true, and it was also saying, “Potter in love?” which is without the shadow of a doubt the worst thing I have ever read in my life.

If life has taught me anything, it’s that everyone buys their own ticket to ruin.

With the newspaper tucked underneath my arm, I make my way into the office, taking time to school my features into something that doesn’t feel like I’m wearing my heart all over my face, but it’s useless, when the whole world knows.

And, oh god, I don’t want to, but I take a peek at that photo again and grit my teeth so I don’t let out the shriek crawling up my throat. Shame and I, we go way back, made acquaintances when I was very young, but somehow this feels like every humiliating experience in my life thrown into a jar, shaken, and let out to swarm my chest.

The Photograph. “Potter’s new beau?” the headline screams. Harry, with his distinct hair, the leather jacket, the self-assured stance. And me by his side, shockingly pale, gazing up at him in what can only be described as motherfucking adoration. I look elated at having his attention on me, I look smitten.

If he’s seen this, Harry must be thinking I’m the actor of the goddamn century. He’s lucky he doesn’t have to live with the knowledge of what I was feeling in the moment depicted in The Photograph. Lucky he doesn’t know that, when he said, “I can see a pap, come here, let me kiss you,” my heart leapt, somersaulted, cartwheeled, backflipped, did a handstand with swinging feet.

The second picture shows the actual kiss, but thank god for small mercies, because my back is to the camera. I don’t know what I looked like at that moment, and I definitely never want to find out.

I fold the newspaper again when I step out of the elevator and into the open floor of the Harry Potter Management Offices. As soon as the Juniors spot me, the entire floor goes dead silent. I can practically read the he’s fucking our star as a collective speech bubble above their heads, and wish fervently for death as I make my way to the very back of the office, into Harry’s favorite meeting room.

He’s there, of course, and looks up with a smile so blinding I have to stop myself from stepping back from it.

“Morning, D, have you seen this?” He points at the different newspapers and magazines he’s laid out on the table, sounding supremely amused. “It worked, huh? This one’s my favorite.” He picks up an article with The Photo covering the entire front page, and a headline that says Potter, the heartbreaker, back in the game.

I clear my throat to avoid screaming.

“Yes, it worked.”

“This should get the label off my back for a bit, at least until the deal is settled and I’m back at the studio to record No Dwelling.” He stops, locks eyes with me, and I’m taken back to that moment one week ago, when he asked for the favor, and then, upon getting an I’m only your assistant for an answer, said I was one of the people he trusted the most in the world. “Do you think we can go out again today? Maybe for drinks in Soho? Paps always hang around that new bar, Fuel.”

I swallow. “I’m not sure I’m free.”

“Well, are you?”

Of course I am free for him, all my time is for him. I still take out my cell phone and make a show of checking my calendar before nodding. “We can go after your photo shoot for the Hermès fragrance. That’s at four.”

“Ah crap, I’d forgotten about that.” He makes a face, pursing the lips I know the feel of against mine and runs a hand through the hair I know the texture of against my fingers.

It’s been four days. I’ve made the worst mistake of my life.

“Let’s cancel,” he whispers, leaning close to conspire. I want to pull away; I want to lean so much closer that I disappear into him.

“We’ve canceled twice,” I murmur somehow, though I have no conscious idea of where I’ve left my voice, and if I’m answering it’s only out of three years of practice at having this heart attack of a man next to me every waking moment. His eyes shine, as they do every time he’s playing instigator with me.

“Come on, Draco, let’s go to the market. We can buy sandwiches, get our picture taken while we hold hands or something.”

I’ve been given a deadline to correct my public image, Harry said that fateful day, I promised the label that I could prove that the girl who claims she’s having my baby is a scam, but I don’t know how to.

He said, I think if we pretend we’ve been dating for a long time, that could distract them and give me an alibi. Will you do it? Please say you’ll do it.

He is the most convincing man I know, a force of nature made up of ridiculous good looks and charm that should be punishable by law. I didn’t even think to say no, even though the self-preservation alarms were going off in my head, saying, you absolute fucking idiot, you can’t do this, you’re in love with him.

But here I am, doing it, and he wants to play hooky as if we were in school.

He must see something in my face because his splits into the earth-shattering grin that throws entire stadiums into a frenzy when he flashes it in the middle of a show. “Awesome, text the representative, and let’s go.”

Still, I try. “What makes you think I’ll do that?”

“I want you to?” It’s not even a question, with that smug cock of his eyebrow. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

I’ve always known I’m buying my own ticket to ruin. With Harry, it almost doesn’t matter the outcome. Every second spent near him makes me burn bright with a light-soaked joy that seems pulled right out of a poetry book.

It’s worth it, the ruin. Even if I get one kiss, even if it’s for the cameras, even if I’m only ever his assistant, even if it never happens again. It’s him, and it’s worth it.

I text the representative.

This is my gift to @peachpety for the Wheel of Drarry Exhange. My dear peach 🍑💖, I had so much fun creating this for you, I really hope you enjoy it!!! Infinite thanks to @fw00shy for the beta and the convo about celebs ✨

[notwiselybuttoowell]

I've had it up to here with technology, I'm just losing my mind. Tumblr is still crashing or loading the newest posts right in the middle of the app or browser. Multiple browsers. Multiple devices too. The tumblr team's suggested fixes that I have tried have not worked. Some of then weren't even an option given on my end though that could just be my stuff's continued deviation from reality. I put the Support route to a solution on pause months ago. I've updated what I can. Still no luck. In fact tumblr will specifically tell you your browser is unsupported and out of date in chrome. But I can't update chrome. Because it updated to the newest version two weeks ago.

My phone definitely needed updating. Apparently the auto-updates hadn't been working for some time. I go through a series of updates that require my permission to continue. This takes about 8 hours as I recall, but it could be longer. My initial memory was of it taking a whole day but that might not account for me needing to sleep in the night. I get to one update that tells me it will wipe out a lot of my information if I agree. However a smattering of the core things can be saved to the cloud. But samsung cloud is imminently being discontinued. I get notices of this frequently. I've downloaded the photos I have there twice. I thought it worked the first time but I got another message. I hope I've got it right this time.

I've signed up for a vpn that is supposed to stop all disconnects you might have from the internet. But I still experience them, apparently. I don't realize that about half the time my replies to messages in the gmail app don't go through until I talk to the person or they come to me asking for a response. I get messages in one of my samsung apps that say I'm not connected on a regular basis, despite the fact that I demonstrably am. I found a thread for someone seeking help with that issue. None of the suggested fixes there worked for me. A moderator at the end of the thread said that if op was still having problems they should download the Samsung members app and send in a feedback message. I try for myself but I am not able to download the app at all.

I've gone round and round with my service provider. Their system kept telling me to refresh the modem from afar. That never worked. They've been out twice. The first time they added a new faster modem. That didn't fix my problem in the end but they went away thinking it did because my problem is intermittent. Afterwards my laptop won't connect to the internet at all, whereas before it was just disconnecting on a frequent basis and I had no option but to constantly manually reconnect. It is suggested by an existing forum thread that exactly detailed my situation (my wifi networks simply don't show up anymore) that it needed an update of the driver. For the person in question it worked. As I said, I've gone through all the updates I can - this I tried too, plus all optional updates. It doesn't work for me and my laptop is still plugged into the modem with an ethernet cord.

I called my service provider again. There's no way to set up appointments otherwise than to go through a long wait and to talk to a real person. This time the man tells me it's too late in the day to set up an appointment through him but I can get a scheduled callback in the morning. I agree and he sets it up for me. I wait all day the next day and never recieve a call. I go through the call and wait again. This man connects me to an advanced tech for the first time. She is very knowledgeable, and this will be the best service I will end up having in this process. She watches one of the devices disconnect right before her eyes. It must be an outside node problem. She schedules an in person appointment for a few days out, which is fastest option I will end up having in this continued pattern.

I get a call the next day from one of their people who want to troubleshoot it over the phone. I actually had one of these come in from the first appointment, but the audio was so bad and the background so noisy I was thinking it could very well be a scam. I told him that I couldn't hear and would have to call back. I tried very hard to ascertain at the time whether it was a scam but only got conflicting answers online. The woman who wants me to avoid an in person appointment looks at her info and tells me that someone has done some work in the area and my internet is fixed. I check my phone and it seems to be working. I agree to cancel the appointment. The problem comes back.

I have to go through the wait and call process again. When the tech does come back he can find no problem with the outside node. He tries to separate the 2.4 and the 5 strands of my network. He goes through the sites and apps I have problems with on my phone on his. It works perfectly for him. I still have problems. He thinks it's very mysterious and calls some people. They don't know what to think. He gets down all the details he can from me and says he'll let his supervisor know. It has been a more than a month and I've not heard anything from them and nothing has changed.

In a way it doesn't matter. I spent several days at another location (albeit one with this same service provider) and still have the same tumblr problems across multiple devices and that same app tells me I'm not connected to the internet.

Yesterday the tumblr app started to intermittently refuse to reblog things. For hours at a time. I'm tired.

[resinatingbeauty]

A 'Witch Shop' Owner's Plea Before Casting That Love Spell

I don't personally offer many spell kits, mojo bags, etc. In my shop and avoid selling my 'Craft', as in, I don't advertise or list spell casting among my offerings, though I have had a couple of customers specifically ask if I could perform a spell I offered as a kit on their behalf for whatever reason. This is because I personally believe that the journey is just as important as the destination in witchcraft and many of the spell kits / spells I do offer are designed in such a way to soothe, relax, release, and heal throughout the process. Honestly, in addition, I really don't want the responsibility associated with performing magick on someone else's behalf for many reasons. The strength of my intent is not going to be as strong as yours, for example. Even if I effectively channel your energy, creating that personal connection between the beneficiary and the intent or purpose of the spell work is incredibly difficult at a distance. I'm always wary of other shops advertising this type of service- the sad truth of the matter is our little niche has been permeated by scammers, con artists, and frauds looking to take advantage of anyone looking for a solution to whatever it is that has them at this low point in life. I will tell you, more often than not it's love spells that the customer is after, and they are apt to find many options on Etsy, the platform I primarily do business on, and beyond.

I distinctly think of one potential customer who had contacted me one night obviously very upset. My heart went out to her immediately - I could just tell by what she was saying and how quickly she responded to me that she was in a state of panic and extreme emotional distress. She isn't the only one, but she stands out from the others as her desire to win back her ex lover was so strong it was evident that she would do anything and (potentially) pay anything for a chance to get things back to the way they were in her love life.

I am a human being. I have been given this amazing opportunity to pursue my passion to share my creations and spiritual / metaphysical knowledge with the world through my work. I understood a long time ago that this also meant I had a responsibility to do my best to help those in need and never knowingly harm, much like a doctor commuting to the Hippocratic oath. This may make me a flat out horrible business woman, but I would rather not sell someone on something I don't believe is going to help their situation. In fact, love spells usually make things worse. I'll get to that momentarily.

"Is there a spell to make her see what she has done wrong and to make her love and want me again?"

I allowed this customer to explain to me the situation and took the time to hear her out after telling her that I'm sure that she could find something like that elsewhere and someone else willing to sell her a spell kit or cast that spell, but I urged her to take a deep breath and talk to me before she did something that she would regret.

Thankfully, she spent the next hour or so explaining her situation and elaborating on everything that has happened in her relationship. It was one of those on again / off again things that so many of us get trapped in. Understandable, considering once you establish that strong bond of love, whether one sided or not, it's incredibly hard to cut that cord and move on especially if you're so emotionally invested (and maybe even financially invested) in this other individual who has had your heart for so long you can't imagine giving it to anyone else.

This PSA goes out to the broken hearted of all walks, as this is a universal experience for anyone who has been in love. There may not be someone to stop you from pursuing what you think will fix everything as I did for her, but I'm hoping if you read this, you'll think twice about acquiring and performing love spells or any magick in hopes that it will provide a quick fix to any situation.

•Beware the Opportunistic Con / Scam

Our field is flooded with scammers, con artists, and frauds that exclusively cater to those in this sweet girl's position and anyone who is vulnerable due to emotional distress or panic. Whether you need a love spell like she did to win back her ex or a quick fix to get more money in the bank or what have you, beware those that have used spiritual advisory and witchcraft as a means to peddle you their high priced garbaged. This is a tough one, as you may have a hard time deciphering what is 'legit' and what isn't, but there are some signs and facts you can look for when browsing these shops / websites.

-They promise / guarantee results within a specific or unrealistic time frame

Magick takes time to manifest and the true story is that nobody has a 100% satisfaction guaranteed spell book. More often than not, when spells come to fruition, it often isn't quite the way you would expect it to, either. Anyone promising a quick fix to anything is most likely just trying to take advantage of you when you are vulnerable and you better believe there will be no money back guarantee if said garbage doesn't work for you. OR, they like to do one of these:

-"Oh, your situation is worse than I thought. You're going to need this and this, with a huge $$$$ price tag."

This starts a never ending cycle of you pouring money into this scammer who will make you believe that it is necessary to do so. That maybe if you did throw them an extra $500 for their thingamajig that you will get what you want. This is only the beginning, as when THAT doesn't do it for you the way you would like, they will claim some other interference, maybe you're cursed or under psychic attack, and need something else even more expensive and elaborate to take care of that before you can even get to what you went to them for in the first place. Anytime someone proposes this type of thing, stop while you're ahead and don't provide them with a guaranteed cash flow that you aren't benefitting from at all. Also, be wary of ANY seller who makes outrageous claims- overnight changes, curing cancer, etc. Are unrealistic expectations.

•Understand What You Truly Need

Maybe it's time to consider an alternative path. The customer I spoke about DID ultimately purchase a tarot spread, which I was much more inclined to do for her than some love spell to win back this girl who has repeatedly broken her heart over the past few years and obviously got a kick out of it, the way she told it, as it was ALWAYS her doing the breaking up and blocking, starting all the drama. I told her I would much rather give her a spell to find her twin flame / soul mate than to win this person back who has perpetually been hurting her and taking advantage of her kindness.

Sometimes it's time to cut the cord before more damage is done. I understand it isn't easy to move on from someone you have loved and cultivated a relationship with over a long period of time, regardless of the negative energy that has invaded the relationship, we DO tend to focus on the positives, which leaves us a bit biased and blind to what we could have and deserve to have.

Take a moment if you are in a relationship situation like this, are beginning to question your current relationship, or are considering taking the next step in any relationship. Sit down with a pen and paper. On one side of the paper, write down all the things you love about that person. All the ways you think they have been the light in your life (be honest and give credit where credit is due!). Now on the other side, list the negatives or cons in your relationship. If one list is noticeably longer than the other, depending on which side it is, it may be time to consider breaking it off, giving things another shot, or taking things to the next level. Ask yourself;

-Do they support me in what I do, even if they don't understand or necessarily agree with it? (So long as it is something healthy -obviously if they're supportive of a bad habit or detrimental behavior, this is more like enabling and not a good thing)

-Do they have my best interests at heart more often than not?

-Do they show that they care? Even in the smallest of ways?

-Could I call them my "best friend?" Am I honest with them?

-Are they honest with me?

-Do they lift me up more than they put me down?

-Do you want the same things in life / have similar priorities?

-Is our relationship valuable to them the same way it is to me?

•LOVE SPELLS NEVER WORK THE WAY YOU WANT

This is the cold hard truth about love spells. Forget the warnings in movies and books, as it is hard to believe them or even take them as a legitimate warning when you haven't had the displeasure of experiencing what a love spell can do for yourself. I have, so you don't have to. This is MY story:

Of course love spells are very appealing when you're a young and naive teenager. I had a strong crush on this guy I had low key been stalking since middle school. I don't know why I liked him so much. Part of it I'm sure was the way he looked (hey, I'm being totally honest!) And how he came across to me. We had absolutely no interaction with each other outside of passing each other in the hallway. He had no idea who I was.

I had just borrowed a copy of Silver Ravenwolf's 'Teen Witch' (which is honestly a fantastic book for teens and young adults just starting to delve into Wiccan practices, which she follows exclusively) from a friend of mine and thought I would try the super simple love spell in the book figuring I had nothing to lose. All it consisted of was focusing on the subject, your intentions, writing their name on a piece of paper, folding it up and placing it under your pillow. I would sleep on that paper for months. I was in middle school just about to go into my freshman year of high school when I performed the spell and would forget about it up until the day it worked, a few months into my freshman year of highschool, when my crush was in the graduating class of that year- literally my last chance to make an impression.

I had gone to a local band's concert that was performing at the school's auditorium one day after classes and was just about to leave when my crush randomly approached me and started talking to me. It was like the whole world just stopped right there. I couldn't believe it. The thought of that spell crossed my mind briefly as we exchanged phone numbers.

Over time and getting to know him, he admittedly wasn't exactly my type. He was still someone whose friendship I valued, but not someone I could really put any effort into dating. About the time I realized this, his personality took a complete 180° turn for the worst. He was stalking me. Blowing up my cell phone (which was a prepaid piece of junk at that time I really couldn't talk on for more than a minute without paying a fortune), so much so one evening when I was at Jukido Jujitsu practice that I came home to something like 32 missed calls and 17 voicemails from him, each one showing gradual frustration and anger. This scared me. I knew I had to confront him about it and break this off before it got worse.

I caught him in a populated area of the school the next day before homeroom- more like he came up to me out of nowhere like he knew I would be passing through that part of the school that day- and I confronted him about the calls,attempting to gently explain to him that I wasn't interested in a relationship and I would like to continue being friends. He blew up at me and threw me against the brick wall of the school, trying to kiss and touch me in front of every single person that walked by. I wish I was making this up.

Thankfully a teacher came and pulled him off. Nothing much else was done. I did my best to avoid him and cut him out of my life entirely from that point on.

I don't know if it was the love spell or if this would have occurred anyways. All I knew was that what had been originally a very sweet, big hearted guy that was soft spoken with low self esteem became a monster in a matter of weeks. The take away from this and what I have personally seen with other's experiences with love spells is that they tend to bring out the worst characteristics of the person they are cast on and you have to be really careful what you are actually asking for when thinking about 'desire' and 'passion.' This intent can quickly lead to stalking, obsession, and not in a good way. Another customer of mine who originally came to me for my Forgiveness Spell Kit and had the desired results also, unbeknownst to me, had someone else perform a love and desire spell in addition to it. The guy that she was reverted into an obsessed jerk who decided to spread rumors about her on social media and beyond, blocked her on all platforms, and would get her friends involved in his quest to make her life miserable. Her story reflects and embodies so many I have heard over the years from others who have dabbled in such spells. When they work, it's just never quite what you had in mind.

So if you came to this blog post in search of a love spell for your personal situation or came across it when you have maybe considered one in the past or know someone who has, please take a deep breath, consider your options, and don't do anything that you may regret down the line. Remember that you are deserving of all the love, respect, support, and happiness one could give another. Do not settle on someone who offers you less and expects more, no matter how much you have invested in them, no matter how many years you have spent with them, as they do not appreciate you for the amazing person you are. I can promise you, however, given some time to heal, you WILL find someone who does.

-Samantha

(Owner /Chaos Witch/Designer)

Blursedbaubles.etsy.com

[avauntus]

2020 favs: (short) fic recs

I am stealing this idea from @macgyver-sheriff, who has no clue who I am, but whose post I saw go across my dash. Thank you! 👋

Would you like some recs for the holiday season? - I too would like to share love for my favorite things I read that were written this year! <3

I’m going to do this in two parts - the short fics (10k or less, generally one-shot), and another post for the long or series fics I loved this year (it’s 2020, I figure we can use too much of a good thing?)

( @staidwaters - I’m ‘disqualifying’ your works because I’m biased, sorry! Look away! Unless you want recs!) 

"Congratulations, Get Rich" (9,238 words) by Attila (The Untamed - modern AU)

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year, which means Wei Wuxian has to get all of his bad decisions out of the way tonight.

Lan Wangji, Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng, Mianmian are all so screamingly perfect as modern versions of themselves in this, and it is KNOCK DOWN HILLARIOUS. Wei Wuxian is just a screaming queer disaster (affectionate) - as he should be.

Excerpt:

After a long beat, Lan Xichen sinks gracelessly into the chair Lan Wangji had been sitting in earlier. “I just want to be absolutely clear,” he says delicately, “that you are currently under the impression that my brother has no romantic feelings for you. That is what you’re saying to me right now, yes?”

“Yes?” Wei Wuxian says, feeling desperately confused. “Obviously? Why?”

“Because at least one of you is very stupid, and I’m trying to figure out who,” Lan Xichen tells him, sounding distracted. It’s the rudest thing Wei Wuxian has ever heard him say, and his mouth drops open slightly.

“caved to the careless” (6,708 words) by ilgaksu (The Untamed/MDZS - Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen)

Love is a choice you make - like this, and this, and this.

Have you ever read a writer whose work is so distinctly itself that you can feel yourself slipping in time even as you keep going? That’s not very articulate, but it’s the best way I can describe everything of ilgaksu’s I’ve read. Their fics are the same emotional register as having the breath knocked out of you after a fall. This was the first one I read, and I think it ends well-- with what Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen find along the path-- but it’s still heavy. Discussions of canon-compliant character death and grief/mourning here.

Excerpt:

He pauses. Until this very moment, he was unsure who to ask for. He has heard the rumours of the Yiling Patriarch’s ongoing residence here, about Zewu-jun’s seclusion: he’s dead, but even the dead are not free from gossip. But he remembers a courtyard, nearly two decades ago, and the weight of eyes some might have called angry in their intensity. He remembers those same eyes, and how for the wear of the intervening years, they had kept the same essence: longing, yearning, a kind of small unspoken grief.

Song Lan had a dream once. A dream of a sect, bound not by blood, but by a shared belief in the right path. So many things are only an inheritance: shame is one of them.  

Love is a choice. Love is a choice, and you choose until you can’t.

“I am here,” he decides, carving the words into the dirt, every stroke of every character resolute, “To meet with Hanguang-jun. Please show this one the way to go.”  

“Green River Running” (8,169 words) by @rain-hat (Love in the Moonlight - post-canon AU)

5+1: Kim Byeong-yeon returns to the land of the living.

I skimmed through Love in the Moonlight during my quarantine summer (distinguishable from my “quarantine spring” or “quarantine fall” only by fireworks), and immediately upon finishing, thought: “Psht, they killed off their best character.” And then, something happened that never happens -- I went on ao3 and found the exact thing I was looking for, written far  better than I could have imagined. Kim Byeong-yeon is such a quiet yet powerfully subversive presence and the progression here is so masterfully done. This is true of all of rainhat’s work’s I’ve read, but this is a fine example-- I really treasure the warm humanism of them.

Excerpt:

People needed helping hands even more than they needed sympathetic ears, though. Over the last year, Hong Gyeong-rae and Byeong-yeon had built houses and planted crops side by side; negotiating with moneylenders here, helping small-folk secure their stores against bandits there. There was nothing courtly about Byeong-yeon’s capacity for labour, or his expectation of reward. Wherever he went, he worked from dawn to dusk, ate the food he was given, and slept under a roof if he was offered one.

It suited him, Hong Gyeong-rae thought, even though there was something outlandish about his gentle speech and palace manners in the midst of it all. But to behave in any other way would be untrue to his upbringing; nor was he the sort of man to whom it would occur to try. And after all, most people liked to be treated with courtesy; it did not come across as mockery from this solemn, severely dressed young man, who seemed to find no task too big or too small. Hong Gyeong-rae had seen him argue tax law with local councillors and stand up to highwaymen armed with nothing but a knife and staff. But he watched cooking pots for women who had to run to the fields to tide over the day’s labour, too; he wrote letters for them, and tolerated their fractious children and spoon-fed their bedridden elders, if that was what was called for.

“The Veritable Records of King Taejo: Year 2, Entry 208“ (9,857 words) by @sadviper (My Country: the New Age - Nam Seon-ho & Hwang Sung-rok slice-of-life)

Hwang Sung-rok eats his way to the bottom of a real estate scam, and Seon-ho and Yeon help (a little).

No one is out here doing it like SadViper. This is technically part of a series, but they can all be read separately. I did not realize I needed to see more of Nam Seon-ho in all his “type-A government official glory” until Viper started sketching him out for us, and as a bonus, we get to see Yeon, and Sung-rok as the world’s surliest caretaker (but don’t call him that). I have an authorial fallacy where I always think stories have to have some grand “plot” -- a “Maltese Falcon” to pull the reader along-- the genius of Viper’s work is she shows us exactly how interesting and important the day-by-day tiny choices and connections we make are, with an impeccable background of historical research to ground you in the setting.

Excerpt:

Nam Seon-ho was his master now. He was a strange one. He was a traitor, for helping the escaped Liaodong soldiers, but not, because he managed to wiggle his way back into Yi Seong-gye’s favor and was now a sixth-ranked inspector with the privilege of having personal audiences with the King. He was temperamental and belligerent from being the son of a slave mother and a lifetime subject of Lord Nam’s fantastic parenting philosophy. He was afflicted with perpetual guilt. And he was also one of the hardest working and most desperate people Sung-rok had ever known.

It was a terrible combination. He was not merely a disaster waiting to happen, but a disaster perambulating on two legs at the edge of a chasm. If Sung-rok intended to stay in service for long, he needed to find a way to cool down some of Seon-ho’s intensity, even though admittedly, it was what drew him to Seon-ho in the first place.

Thoughts like these plagued Sung-rok for a while. It was one thing to know a person; it was quite another thing to try to change them.

“Orison” (4,975 words) by @gravelghosts​ (aeli_kindara) (Supernatural 15x18 coda)

Cas says, I love you.

So! This rips my heart out, every time. All the times Dean imagines himself together with Cas...and then he imagines himself, if not happy, then thriving.

Jack: “What is the point...if everyone I care about is going to leave?”

Castiel: “The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you... When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them.”

Excerpt:

The thing Dean tries to do is: listen.

Happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just — being. It’s in just saying it, Cas tells him, and Dean’s whole heart is screaming, No, but he shuts his mouth. He listens. He listens like his life fucking depends on it, which it does, in more ways than one.

“Sky Full of Song” (6,632 words) by @drivingsideways (Supernatural, finale 15x20 fix-it, Dean/Cas)

Or: The One in which Cas ghosted Dean.

Look. Look. If Cas(tiel) can yank Dean Winchester out of Hell, celestial-scream at him not once but twice, burn out a woman’s eyes like an utter clown before thinking “Huh, an Earthly vessel, guess that’s not just bullshit, then,” and when they finally work it out, Dean greets them with a knife to the chest and THEN they’ll spend twelve years misunderstanding each other and bickering, you had better believe these two are going to be disasters even in Heaven. Drivingsideways gives us all of that dynamic, with the found family of Jack and Mary as facilitators, and the happy resolution, which of course includes a true form “roughly the size of your Chrysler Building.” <3

Excerpt:

The thing is, Castiel doesn’t want Dean to feel obligated.

Dean has a streak of self-sacrifice that's as wide as the Caspian Sea, and Castiel doesn't want to be any more of a chore or obligation than they have been to Dean for all the long years of their—brotherhood.

Castiel had shocked Dean, to the core of him, with their confession, and Castiel had seen the swirling confusion, the fear, the panic, the shit what do I say, what do I do—how do I stop him—

So, no, Castiel would not be paying a visit anytime soon.

Of course, if Dean evinced an interest in meeting them, then Castiel would not stay away.

Castiel isn't that cruel.

(They have, on occasion, been exactly that cruel, but they are trying to outgrow it.)

Dean is still their friend.

Dean knows how to reach them, if he wants to.

(see? disasters. haha)

“The Rough” (3,267 words) by anactoria (Supernatural, finale -15x20- ‘fix-it’)

 Heaven can absolutely fucking wait.

Rec’ed for the concept more than the style (this is dialogue-heavy, as a lot of 15x20 fix-its tend towards), but I *love* this course-correction: After kicking around Heaven, Dean and Cas return to Earth to take their place as urban legends among the hunter community. Just for a while.

Excerpt:

But it isn’t life. That’s the thing. It’s awesome, but it isn’t life; life’s a hard, painful, infuriating mess, and Dean only got halfway through his own, and he feels cheated. For all he held it together for Sammy at the end, for all he tried to take Cas’s big moment-of-happiness speech on board, he feels cheated.

There’s supposed to be peace at the end. When you’re done.

Dean wasn’t done.

[eve-evil-lair]

Someone in the Garden - M Naga x F Human, NSFW, 2nd person perspective.

This was a request from my friend and my first go at original smut writing. It is also available on my ao3.

Inheriting a mansion in New Orleans was NOT what you expected to happen to you by the end of a very shitty year. Still, that happened. It was bizarre and you still expected it to be a scam. Either way, you had nothing to lose so there you were. The lawyer had opened the gate and after like two minutes drive you were in front of not exactly a mansion but a large house. It didn’t even look that old.

“The original mansion burned down about 10 years ago,” the lawyer explained. “The addition at that time was also an indoor, large swimming pool/lake.”

You nodded as you got out of the house. The land belonged to some of your distant family, so distant that you didn’t even know they existed until you got the letter. Clearly, No one else wanted it.

“The land has a natural spring that goes through the lake area to later join a river. You can get water that way. Generators provide electricity in case the lines get cut.” the lawyer kept talking as you walked inside the building and started to show you around the place. It didn’t look too bad. Dusty and might need airing and a fresh coat of paint here and there. Some of the previous potential owners left buckets of paint behind.

“So… why no one has claimed this place? Is it haunted?” You joked but secretly hoping it wasn’t.

“No one gave much of a reason aside from ‘changed mind’. Longest someone stayed here was a week,” the guy checked his papers. “I won’t lie, Miss, we have a bet going back at the firm on how long are you going to last here.”

“Oh, I hope you bet for me to stay here permanently, huh?” you grinned.

“I gave you two days,” he replied bluntly and your smile fell.

“Gee thanks.” you huffed. Now you were going to show this asshole that you can take care of yourself.

You toured the house and quite liked it. It was a two-story building with a kitchen, living room, two bathrooms and 3 bedrooms with built-in closets. Your only concern was - how were you going to earn money to keep all that. You could sell it, but not until you proved the stupid lawyer you could live there no problem.

“I will now show you the rest of the estate,” said the bastard lawyer and led you outside and right to the giant swimming pool/lake.

It was made of glass like a greenhouse. Inside were multiple tropical plants and it looked much better than the house. As if someone has been taking care of it. You asked about that.

“Well there is no one listed as a gardener,” the lawyer checked the papers again, “but the previous owner made a point of never getting rid of this building. It’s the only condition for you if you want to keep the estate.” he lifted an eyebrow at you.

“I’m not going to get rid of it but I am just wondering if someone is taking care of it.” You didn��t have any experience in gardening but if this place was empty for at least a year or so…, shouldn’t it be a bit overgrown?

“Hmmm, there were…” one more page flip and…., “ah yes, there is some sort of wild nature enthusiast who takes care of the greenhouse.” Success. “Unfortunately there’s no name.”

Well, that was a bummer. “Thanks, I’m sure I will run into this person once I settle in.”

With that, the tour continued. You got a good look at the premises and signed the papers that you were supposed to sign and got your bags into the house. The night you were going to spend in a sleeping bag until you’d air and wash all the sheets and refresh the mattresses. Hands full of work.

It’s been three days and one night of cleaning everything up until you saw the light in the greenhouse. And the shadow. It was one huge-ass shadow but then you thought it was just a trick of the light. It must have been that friendly, neighbourhood gardener. It was a strange hour to work - the clock showing close to midnight. You grabbed a flashlight and went to talk to the person. You planned to bake them a pie but you weren’t sure when they’d show up so you had that idea on stand by.

“Hello?” you walked into the greenhouse shining your path forward. It was still dim. You took another step forward and tripped. You yelped and fell on your shoulder and winced. Damn it, the flashlight rolled away and you had to find it before shining it at whatever you tripped over. A tree branch? No… It was huge. Thick. And definitely scaly. Like a snake. You recognized the markings. You always wanted a python and was interested in reptiles. This… this was an anaconda. A damn huge, horror movie sized anaconda. Getting to your knees you looked abruptly around for the head of the reptile. Why the fuck was there an anaconda in your greenhouse?! Why no one told you! Shit, shit, maybe the poor thing ran away from poachers or illegal breeder or fuck knows what circus. But it was way too large for you to deal with alone- oh fuck the tail moved. You decided to bolt. Ready to sprint to the door you swallowed hard and-

“Wait,” the voice stopped you. It was a very pleasant, deep, vibrant, male voice. The kind of ‘panty drop’ one on TV shows. Heck. You turned around and shone the light around. It finally landed on a stomach. A stomach that was way too high and was creamy yellow. Not a very human tone… The light travelled up to land on a board chest and then on a face that got quickly covered by a hand. “Please put that away.”

You clicked the flashlight off, mouth hanging agape, still in a big shock. “What the fuck,” you said softly. Then promptly fainted.

Waking up with a small headache you groaned holding your head. “Shit.” You groaned. Confused you looked around. It was still the greenhouse. What were you laying on? You looked down and swallowed. The massive coils of the anaconda. You looked up to see a concerned (or at least you hoped it was a concern) face of… snake dude. You knew there was a name for him but currently, you couldn’t care less for proper terms.

“Oh you’re awake!” he said relieved and grinned.

You felt cold sweat running down your back at the sight of his teeth.

“Yup,” you squeaked out. “I- Can I go down?”

He blinked. “Oh, of course, there ya go.” the coils unravelled under you creating a slide which got you to the floor. Immediately he headed to the huge lake in the middle. OK, so he was not going to eat you. That was nice. Suddenly you realised why no one lived in the house longer than a couple of days. He must have freaked everyone out.

“Um, ex-excuse me,” you called to him. “Who are you?”

“I’m Adam,” he said and sighed slipping into the water.

Adam. A humanoid mega python in your pool was named Adam. This day could not be even more bizarre than it already was. Okay. You licked your lips.

“Okay, Adam. Can you tell me what are you doing here?” you asked trying to sound polite.

“I live here,” he replied. You watched mesmerised as his tail swished over the water.

“Ye, I got that but… how did you come to live here?” you gestured to the greenhouse.

“Oh, that’s a funny story, really.” He brightened up seeing you were going to stay and listen to him. “I was much younger and you know… much smaller,” he looked over his body patting his soft belly a little. “I accidentally got stuck on a ship, it went up to the port, tried to escape from there, got caught in some nets and then Mr Brown found me.”

“Mr Brown. The previous owner?” you asked to clarify but who else could he mean.

“Yeah, his house burned down because of a storm. He was a really nice person, allowed me to stay, even tried to get me back home but…. I kind of like it here,” he smiled again, all sunshine and rainbows and you couldn’t help but to ‘aww’ a little. “I stayed and brought some good luck to him.”

“What?” you blinked a little.

“You don’t know? Naga are protectors of underground waters and possess great riches, I don’t have riches myself but I tend to bring a lot of luck to those I like,” he explained further. “You strike me as a nice person. What’s your name by the way?”

That moment you remembered you didn’t introduce yourself so you quickly fixed that. You stayed up with Adam the rest of the night, talking and answering some questions. You started to enjoy his company and noticed that he was very handsome once you look past the whole shock of having a possibly a 30 feet long anaconda dude in your greenhouse. Possibly even longer. You didn’t pay much attention. What you paid attention to were his deep voice and beautiful, warm, light brown eyes. Also muscular arms and torso. With a little bit of a belly. But you couldn’t stay with him forever and had to go back to the house and get some sleep. You bid your goodnights and went back inside.

The next day you worked a little on the house and in the evening went to meet with Adam. You two bonded a little over time, you caught him up with the times and he showed you how to take care of the plants inside the greenhouse. Like he said suddenly your luck started to improve. You got a really good job, following his advice you played a lottery and even won quite a bit. Enough to finish the work on the house. It was great.

There was one but. You realized somewhere along the way that you might be crushing on your Naga friend. Like really bad. Once or twice maybe even ended up having a (*coughamazingcough*), wet dreams. His hands were so huge on your shoulder and whenever it landed on your back you wished it was on your ass. You kind of also wondered if…. He resembled snakes in more ways than one. Though you hoped for no spikes. Or hooks. Anything that might be painful in the wrong way. That would be bad.

So, for now, you have been kind of keeping all of that to yourself. But damn was it becoming hard to keep your eyes, not on his waist level. In your defence, he had no clothes! And it was most of the time on your eye level! Where else were you supposed to look when horny!? His eyes?! …. Yeah possibly, yeah. Damn it.

“Are you okay?”

You almost jumped out of your skin when he got you out of your deep thoughts. You completely forgot where you were. Namely in the damn greenhouse. Oh, god. You couldn’t wait to just get out of there, drive to town and find a quick one nightstand. You were ready to go, having done all the prep for * all * possibilities. But nope, you got distracted by staring at your roommate’s? Housemates’s? Crotch. Nice.

“Yeah, I’m fine, just a bit spaced out.” You tried to justify yourself.

“So… you’re horny, huh?”

Holy fucking hell, you must have blurted that out. Why cannot the ground swallow a chick whole just this once???

“Uuuuuuuh, hehehehe, sorry.” You licked your lips.

Suddenly Adam moved around you, circling you with the upper parts of his tail, or at least the part not in water.

“That’s fine by me,” his voice… oh, boy his voice. It was already rich molasses but now it was just unfair how hot it was. He touched you under the chin and smiled. You swallowed hard. “Do you wish for my help there?”

“Mmhm, yup, yes please,” you blurted out making him chuckle.

“Alright then. Off must go these clothes,” he said and before you could say anything riiiiiip went your shirt. Damn. He sure made his point. Quickly before he could destroy your good bra and skirt/panties you took them off. He watched you. His tongue darting forward, it was cute. You wondered what that tongue could do.

Whatever you have imagined got interrupted by a hungry, rough kiss and a hand between your legs. God, that felt good. You were already dripping of which he made a notice by lifting his fingers back up to his mouth and wrapping his long tongue around his digits and having a taste of you and looking too smug in your opinion. Your face was positively on fire but who would complain in this situation?

“Just hurry up,” you tried not to sound too whiny and he chuckled.

“Impatient, you are,” Adam hummed and wrapped his mouth around your nipple. His hand travelling back between your legs.

Your hands went to his head stroking him and grazing his skull with your fingers. He seemed to know more than less what he was doing over there. His lips were keeping a nice, a bit rough pressure, and his finger was stroking you so well~. If he just moved his calloused, thick forefinger just a bit to the- You jerked and bit your lower lip to stop a loud moan from pretty much erupting from your throat. Looking down you saw him with a grin and he did it again.

Your nails dug into the back of his skull as he stroked your clit in just the right spot.

“Fffffuck!” you whined and gripped your other hand on his coils looking for support. “Oh, fuck! F-faster! God!” you hissed and he gladly obliged.

The first orgasm crashed through you with a tsunami of relief from weeks of frustration. Turning into a noodle in his arms your you sighed and breathed heavily, trying to regain some sort of sense of composure. But God did it feel so good to just lay there for a moment.

“Where-, how-” you panted out, cracking your eyes open not even remembering when you have closed them.

“I read a lot, you have no idea what you humans throw out to the swamp,” he chuckled. “Was it… Good?” he asked just in case.

“It was fucking awesome.” you gave him a thumbs up calming your breathing down. “Got any more tricks you read about?” You licked your lips in anticipation.

“I do,” he picked you up and removed the top coil, allowing himself more manoeuvrability before setting you back down. “Keep your legs open,” he instructed before his head went between your knees and you had to stop yourself from crushing his head.

Wow, that tongue felt * amazing*. Adam swirled it in gently circles, that little fork at the end of it just rubbing your clit and when he slipped inside… Oh, wow . You gasped and reached behind your head to grab onto his tail. Pulling yourself up and arching back. But he didn’t let you get away oh no. He took his time, finding all the angles to make you moan and cry out. The thrusts going from soft to quick. One finger pressed to your clit to compensate for lack of nose as he pressed on. He reached to your breast with the other hand and stroked you. You whined and twisted your body. Good lord. You should have done this ages ago!

The pinch to your nipple and a hard suck on your clit had tipped you over, crying out in your release. When you stopped shaking he removed your legs from his head and licked your thighs. You whined and twitched.

“Noo,” you sighed over stimulated.

He then stroked your face leaning back and that was when you saw them. Two. Magnificent. Dicks. Long, thick, swaying with his movement. Each head looked almost like a flower with a collar of soft-looking nubs. Barbs? You were unsure about the terminology. Anyway, they glistened. Must have been covered in his own lubricant. They were dripping. Your mouth watered and eyes grew big. Oooooh~

Adam noticed your stare and coughed. “Well, um-” he sounded a bit sheepish.

“Can you use them both? At the same time?” You asked managing to sit up.

“Y-yes? Why?” he immediately helped you out, supporting you as you crawled and touched one of the cocks. He shivered a little as you ran a hand over them. Sticky, the liquid covered your fingers and started to dry, much like lube or your juice would. It didn’t smell half bad either. You licked it and heard him swallow loud.

It was your turn to grin like the cat who got the canary. Wobbly standing up, you pressed onto his chest.

“I want to try something,” you said. Something that you had only ever tried with toys. Once with one of your exes. You were quite sure you could take him. Blessed be your earlier precautions

“Okay,” Adam said slowly, watching you as you sank on the first dick. Inhaling loudly and sharply in you adjusted.

“Oh, yes,” you breathed out and reached back to the other dick. You rubbed your hand over the head, getting used to the barbs as you bounced in his lap. He shuddered and moaned stroking your back. You did not want to end this too fast for either of you so you slipped off of him. “Adam, would you mind to stretch me a bit, here?” you stretched your ass cheeks apart to better make your point. “I want both of them at the same time~,” you told him. “I also want you to use your tail on me, while you do that.”

“No problem,” he nodded looking quite excited at the idea.

Wetting his fingers first he slid first one finger over your ass cheeks and between them. Rubbing the circle of muscles he slipped inside. You moaned and breathed deeply, relaxing. His tail went up to your front, pushing inside you, impaling you repeatedly. Feeling your ass loosening up he added another finger and stretched your ass further and further until you both were sure you could take him in. His other hand gently fondled your chest and you reached down to toy with your clit. Soon, your third orgasm was coming in. You went rigid and spilt yourself, gasping for air once more.

“O-okay,” you said trying to steady yourself up. “Let’s… let’s try his thing.”

Now, here comes the moment of truth! His tail slipped out of you and got replaced with one of his dicks. You angled a little and Adam pushed the second cock into your spread out asshole. Your eyes watered a little. That was full! You gasped and gritted your teeth, the moan already escaping you. Throwing your head back you search for him.

Adam held you against his chest. “You okay?” It must have been a lot for him too. He was holding your legs wide open. It probably would never not be a turn on - the ease in which he could just keep you in his hands.  

“Never better, just getting used to you,” you reached up and patted his cheek. Your vision was in that kinda lusty state where it wasn’t exactly fuzzy but your eyes couldn’t focus on anything.

The barbs were pressing on inside you, the shape of his dicks was an unusual one but thickness and texture were making up for it so well~. You squeezed your walls around him and he hissed. His hips pushed forward and you groaned pleased. Yess, that was so good.

You pressed your back to his chest, one hand on your boob. “Fuck me,” you told him, voice hoarse.

His throat moved as he swallowed. He nodded and started to move you on him. Your body shivered, your mouth fell open. Those dicks barely fit whole inside you, your stomach having a small bulge every time he thrust inside. The barbs rubbed your insides, pressing onto that sweet spot. The added feeling and tightness from his other dick was making you dizzy. You panted and moaned, trying to move as much as you could. The feeling swelled and grew until you couldn’t hold back any longer, screaming out. Your hips jerked rather erratically and you dug your nails into his scales, finding gaps and holding tightly. His own body convulsed under you and he hissed your name, dicks spilling into you as you heaved against his chest. A final thrust which elicited a whimper of his name from you, and he was done, movements slowing as you both struggled to catch your breath.

After a moment he laid down on the ground, the two cocks slipping out of you and with it came the cum, slowly dripping down your leg. But who cared at that moment? You whimpered and nuzzled his chest.

“My legs feel funny,” you giggled stupidly and hummed pleased. He also made an amused noise and nuzzled your head.

You looked at him. He was getting ready to sleep now. Ah, some things never change among the species, huh? You stretched yourself and kissed him. That made him wake up a little and look at you softly. Pulling you up in his arms he kissed you again and coiled around you.

“Sleep?” he mumbled.

“I need to clean up,” you replied patting his face.

“But come back and sleep, yes?” That made you feel so warm and fuzzy. Maybe this was going to be a bit more than just a one-time thing?

“Sure,” you wiggled out of his arms and waddled to the lake, washing away the remains of your mixed fluids. Then as promised you came back. “Goodnight, Adam.” You said softly.

“G’d night.” he said and soon you both were fast asleep.

[dhwty-writes]

Chapter 10 - The Contrast of Compassion and Contempt

This was a surprisingly easy chapter to write, given that I had absolutely no idea what was supposed to happen until I wrote it. Here's to hoping it won't mess up the timeline. 

Thanks as always to @persony-pepper for betaing!

Summary: Geralt is back at Lettenhove Hall and Jaskier is coping. Or at least trying to, as both Geralt and Ciri do their best to shatter the fragile balance on a razor blade that defines their relationship. 

Read on AO3

Prologue | previous | next

The alderman of Saltwall was a fool and a bloody coward, too. Jaskier was very pleased to discover that - so pleased, in fact that he greeted Geralt with a smile on his face when the witcher trudged into his study.

"'To The Right Honourable The Viscount Lettenhove, Julian Alfred Pankratz'," he recited as he leaned against his desk, crossing his ankles, "'I offer to you my sincerest apologies for the recent misunderstanding. It is my deepest regret to relay to you that the honoured Master Geralt of Rivia' — do you hear that, Geralt, I quite like the sound of it — 'indicated in no way that he was affiliated with you' — oh, fun, that's some fodder for the rumour mill." He cleared his throat and read on: "'I assure you, it was not my intention to slight you or yours. In hopes of amending this misstep, I send to you and your witcher this recompensation consisting of three hundred crowns.' Melitele's tits, Geralt, what on earth was the agreed sum?" Jaskier tossed him the coin purse.

"Hundred and fifty," he replied and weighed the purse in his hand. "I assume you want half of it?"

He dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Keep it. This is much better, listen to this: 'I trust that no bad blood remains between us, as you are one of my most esteemed neighbours.' That's the best he could come up with? Ridiculous. But wait, here comes the best part: 'Also, I extend the humble invitation to you and your household to come and dine with my wife and me in Saltwall.'" He lowered the parchment and grinned widely. "What do you think, Geralt? Should we accept? I'd love to see his face when I show up with the sixty-odd members of my household."

Geralt huffed what could almost be a laugh. "Fuck, J- my lord. What did you write in your first letter to get that kind of response?"

"Oh, that was easy," he said almost bored. "I politely informed him that you were there on my orders, and that I am greatly displeased with the lack of financial compensation for your hard work. I also reminded him that his liege and I had studied in Oxenfurt together, and that I am soon due to visit my old friend, who would surely be interested in his activities. Oh, and I might have implied that I slept with his unmarried sister."

Now he was certain that Geralt was laughing. "Poor man. He had no idea what he'd gotten himself into."

"What can I say? I am a master of my craft." He bowed with a flourish.

When he straightened his back again, Geralt was rolling his eyes fondly. "You're incorrigible."

"Maybe so," he allowed the teasing. "It gets me what I want, though." 

"Hmm," Geralt made and crossed his arms. "And what's that?"

An icy hand gripped his heart. 'I told you,' his mind screamed. 'I asked you to come with me. And you walked away.' But that had been a lifetime ago. "Well, that depends." Jaskier forced his expression to go blank. "Primarily, though, none of your business."

"Right. I'm sorry, my lord." He could tell Geralt was mocking him.

Still, he answered: "You are forgiven, my witcher."

They were silent for a bit, Jaskier unwilling to budge first. To his everlasting joy, Geralt caved. He talked a lot since their reunion - comparably at least. Jaskier enjoyed this development immensely. "Are you going to accept the invitation?"

"I'm thinking about it. It would be rather satisfying to have that bastard bowing and scraping to you, wouldn't it? That would teach him."

"Hmm," Geralt made. "Or he'd be twice the arse to the next witcher to get back at you."

Jaskier frowned deeply. "No, you're completely right. That would be awful, we won't do that." His fingers danced to a rapid rhythm on the desk while thoughts chased each other through his mind. Then, thankfully, one of them slowed down enough for him to grasp it. "Oh, that's better still!" He wheeled around, pulling parchment and a quill from his desk, and started penning the response.

He'd written one and a half pages already when he was startled from the daze he was in: "What are you writing?" Geralt asked and peered over his shoulder. Jaskier very nearly dropped his quill. The witcher was close enough that he could feel his breath against the back of his neck and the heat radiating from his body. A shiver ran down his spine, and Jaskier wasn't quite sure if it was pleasant or not. Geralt reached out and moved the page he was writing on, to better examine the one beneath it. He didn't retract his arm just yet, though, but put his hand next to Jaskier's hip, leaning on the desk, and thus greatly restricting his movement.

Once he would have rejoiced for any chance to get this close to the witcher when he wasn't gravely injured or dying. Now, it made his skin crawl. Jaskier scarcely dared to move, but turned his head to see Geralt frown. "What?" Jaskier asked, amused.

"Is it some kind of joke? I don't get it."

He snorted a laugh. "Yes, witcher, it is. You should ask your daughter about it, she'd understand it." The frown on his face deepened beyond what seemed humanly possible and Jaskier quickly kept on talking: "It's an insult, you see? 'As pleased as I am to get invited to the famed court of Saltwall, it would greatly trouble me to infringe upon your winter stores. Though, I do have plans to visit my brother-in-law in Goldfurt this winter and should be overcome with joy to meet you there to renew our fleeting acquaintance.' It's-" He waved his hand impatiently. "It's a reminder that visiting Saltwall is beneath me and that I have better options. It's also a remark on the fact that he wanted to scam you claiming he didn't have enough. And a whole lot of other things. Would take some time to pick all of that apart."

"Hmm. Not looking forward to seeing him in Goldfurt, though."

"What makes you think you'll be in Goldfurt?" he teased him and snickered when his face fell. "Don't worry, witcher, it's another taunt. The Baron of Goldfurt would never invite someone as insignificant as the alderman of Saltwall. No danger of us running into him there."

A smile tugged at his lip. "Clever."

"Compliments will get you nowhere," he scolded, a bit more harshly than strictly needed, perhaps. He waved his hand dismissively. "Go now. I have unfinished business to attend to."

Geralt sighed and leaned in a hairbreadth closer before pushing off the desk. "As my lord commands."

Only when the door closed behind him, Jaskier could breathe freely again. His knees gave out beneath him and he dropped onto his chair like a puppet whose strings have been cut. He ran a shaky hand over his face, trying desperately to sort his thoughts again. This was not good. First the worry, now the nervousness… This was not good at all.

It wasn't exactly as if being close to Geralt was unpleasant, quite the contrary. It was just that it was unbidden. Unwanted. Undeserved.

He had left all of those feelings behind him on that mountain. With his return to Lettenhove, he had rid himself of all his silly fancies in order to become the pretty, tame little songbird his parents had craved all along.

After everything they'd been through, it felt wrong. It was so awfully familiar when it shouldn't be. It probably would be easy to just act as if nothing had happened. To fall back into that familiar pattern of teasing each other, maybe even something more and yet-

Jaskier couldn’t pretend the mountain hadn’t happened. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t returned to the place he had vowed to shun of the rest of his life, and that he couldn’t leave again. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t spent ten long months nursing a broken heart over someone who had never been his in the first place, that he hadn’t heard a word from Geralt for one and a half years - that had never happened before, not in sixteen years.  He couldn't just forget that he had offered up his soul up on that mountain and that there still hadn't been so much as a talk about it, much less an apology. And he certainly couldn’t pretend that it was all fine.

Silence would be easy. Silence would be what they'd always done. They'd never talked about the djinn, never talked about Cintra, about any of the times when Geralt had broken his heart without even knowing. His conversation with Ciri came to his mind. That wasn't making up. That was suffering in silence. And he was done with that.

He stood and straightened his doublet. 'No,' he decided. Until they actually talked, there would be no repeat performance of whatever had just happened.

It was later that day when Jaskier almost fell to his death down the stairs of his tower as a giggling quartet of children raced past him. "Stop right there!" The Viscount shouted, and three of the four followed his command immediately. "What is it I have to see here?" He caught Ciri by the scruff of her neck. "What do you think you're doing, cousin?"

She giggled and writhed in his grasp. "Jaskier!" The three serving girls stared at her as if she'd grown a second head and one of them even mouthed 'Don't!' in warning. "We're just playing, let go of me already!"

He eyed the others warily, who quickly averted their gaze. They were certainly not company fit for the heiress to the Cintran throne. "Beggin' your pardon, m'lord," one of them. They made her happy, though.

"That's not what I mean," he said not unkindly. "I am talking to you, young lady, and about your foot."

"My foot is fine," she insisted. She pulled up her skirts and wriggled it around to prove it. "See?"

"Hmm," he said. "Did you talk to Wera about it?"

"I did!" she insisted. "She said it would be fine if I didn't jump and run around too much."

"And you think sprinting up my staircase is within the determined parameters?"

She looked up at him with large eyes. "Please, Jaskier," she begged. "Please let me play a bit longer. Only today."

'Oh,' he realised as a cruel fist clenched around his heart. 'She's lonely.' And how could he deny her when he had suffered the same strangling solitude of these cold grey halls for so long? "It's alright," he said and gently stroked her hair. "Run along now, we'll talk later."

Later turned out to be two days later after he had weathered another disagreement with Geralt — gods, as soon as the door closed behind the witcher he couldn't even remember what it had been about anymore. In that moment, he had understood the urge to batter something with a sword very well. He didn't follow through with it, though. He would most likely only make a fool of himself.

Instead he buried himself in his work. It had just been an excuse for the alderman at first, but the letter he had written had gotten him thinking. He probably should reconnect with his old friends from Oxenfurt — most were bards, just like he had been, but some held their own lands now. 'The jolly days of our youth are past,' he thought bitterly, 'we have to settle down if we don't want to die as we lived: strolling minstrels in an unmarked grave.'

So, he had begun writing them again, inquiring about fiancées he'd seduced and brother's he'd bedded, racking his brain for any kind of information about them besides their relatives he'd spent lovely nights with. He couldn't come up with a lot. He only hoped there would be some kind of payoff for all the trouble.

When he was just trying to remember the name of a particularly handsome set of twins he’d met at a  ball once, Ciri walked in without even knocking. "Hello, Jaskier," she greeted him and hopped onto one of the side tables.

"Hello, Ciri," he answered, continuing to write his letter. He was almost done when he noticed that his study was silent safe for the scratching of his quill — the usual chatter that began as soon as Ciri walked through a door suspiciously missing. He put the quill down and tilted his head. "Are you quite alright, darling girl?"

She shrugged and stared down onto her dangling feet. 'Oh-oh,' he thought, 'that's not good.'

"What's the matter, Ciri, talk to me," he beckoned. When she still did not answer he continued: "Are you unhappy?"

"That's not it," she said quietly.

"Then what is?"

"I think Geralt is sad," she admitted finally.

"Oh?" Jaskier stood and moved to sit on the edge of his desk. "Why do you think so?"

"I think he is sad that he can't train me like he did before anymore. He kept talking about how it all reminded him of Kaer Morhen. He doesn't do that anymore. He's also very grumpy." Before he could say anything, she held up a hand to shut him up — a gesture she seemed to have picked up from him — and continued: "Even grumpier than usual."

"Even grumpier?" he asked incredulously. "Dear girl, you have to be mistaken. That cannot be possible."

"It is!" she whined. More quietly she added: "Make it stop."

Whatever clever remark he had prepared died on his lips. She sounded so earnestly, so heartbroken, so- "Alright," he heard himself say. "I'll make it right again."

"Great!" she answered. Grinning widely, she pecked him on the cheek before running off again. He stared after her for a long time, wondering what on earth had possessed him to make such a promise he couldn't hope to keep.

It was almost time for dinner when he finally came up with a plan and made his way to the guardroom. "Evening," he greeted the gathered men cheerily. There were about five of them, gathered around a table where Geralt and Borys were engaged in a round of Gwent. They didn't even look up, eyes on the cards and the pile of gold between them. "Is Marin here?"

"In his room, m'lord," one of the others, whose name Jaskier couldn't recall, answered.

He nodded his thanks and made his way up the short flight of stairs to the Captain of the Guard's room. Without knocking he opened the door. Marin was sat on a stool, bent over a tarnished mirror, and shaving with a rather blunt razor. 'Should I increase the salary, maybe?' Jaskier wondered, but that was a thought for another time. He cleared his throat quietly.

Marin nicked himself and cursed loudly before turning to see who it was. "My lord!" He leapt to his feet and knocked the stool over in the process. "I didn't-"

"Relax, Marin," he said tiredly, "and sit down again, for Melitele's sake, She knows you deserve the rest."

"Right," he said warily and righted the chair, still hesitant to sit while Jaskier was standing. Instead of waiting out the internal debate of his Captain, he simply sat down on the shaky desk in the corner. Finally, Marin did as he had told him. "Why exactly are you here, my lord?"

"I wanted to thank you," he answered honestly. "For your advice, when-" his voice broke without his permission.

A kind smile spread on Marin's face. "You're welcome, my lord."

Jaskier wet his lips with his tongue. "I've also come to request another piece of advice."

"I'll be glad to oblige."

"How do you train your guards?" he asked bluntly.

"I- I beg your pardon? I-" Marin stuttered, clearly taken aback.

Jaskier tried not to sigh in annoyance. "No, you haven't misheard. How do you train your guards?"

"Well, there's drills. For longbows and crossbows, swords, too. Halberds, sometimes. I teach some of the lads how to ride, the most promising ones. And I have them trek through the forest with heavy bags. That’s about it."

"Hm," he said and frowned deeply. 'That's not exactly what I'm looking for here.' He took a moment before continuing: "And, theoretically, if you wanted to train their reflexes as well as their agility, how would you go about that?"

Marin raised his eyebrows. "Theoretically?" he parroted.

"Theoretically," Jaskier confirmed.

Slowly, he said: "Theoretically, as in... similar to balancing on railings or barrels?"

"Theoretically, yes."

"In that case, theoretically, I guess I'd build a structure I could put my trust in. Not too high above the ground, I'll wager. Beams and monkey bars, even a quintain or two, maybe. It would train her reflexes to respond to unexpected blows — theoretically, of course. And I'd definitely pad the floor with something soft. Bales of straw or something.."

"Hm." Now that was something he could work with. Well, not Jaskier himself necessarily, he'd definitely need help for that. "And, theoretically, could you draw the plans for that?"

Marin seemed to consider the idea for a moment. "Theoretically, I could."

"Good man."

"I'll have them by you within the week, my lord."

Jaskier flashed him a bright smile and opened the door. "I'm looking forward to it," he said with a wink, "theoretically."

He went back down to the guardroom and was greeted by wolf whistles by some of the older guards who he had known in his youth. 'When did the boys I grew up and trained with become the older guards?' he wondered absentmindedly. Geralt was still playing Gwent, although with another opponent.

"And what business did you have with the Captain, Master Julian?" Borys asked with a lewd grin.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he replied and made a show of blowing him a kiss.

The wolf whistles grew loud again and Borys laughed. "I believe I would, m'lord. Care to show me?"

His smile froze on his face. "Maybe later."

The guard sitting next to Borys jabbed him in the ribs sharply. "That's a no," he stage-whispered and the guards laughed.

Jaskier was still thinking of a smooth reply when Geralt suddenly threw down his cards and exclaimed: "Fuck!"

His opponent laughed heartily, quickly scooped up the coins between them, and hid them from Jaskier's view. Not that he cared. He still clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Gambling away your earnings already, witcher?"

"Not anymore," he grumbled and stowed his cards away. "I'm done for today." He stood and walked over to Jaskier who regarded him with a raised eyebrow.

"Waiting for something?"

"You're blocking the door. My lord."

"Right." Jaskier reached behind himself and turned the knob. "Enjoy your evening," he called to the guards before opening the door and waving Geralt through.

As soon as the door shut behind them, the voices started up again but Jaskier couldn't tell what they were saying. Geralt, though, turned beet-red and hunched his shoulders, apparently trying to get away as fast as possible.

"What are they talking about?" Jaskier asked with amusement.

"Nothing important," Geralt muttered and held the door to the courtyard open for Jaskier. They had almost crossed it when he spoke up again: "You aren't sleeping with any of them."

"Why the sudden interest in my sex life? You only ever cared about whose pants I kept out of not whose pants I got into."

"Hmm," Geralt made and eyed him up. "I thought I knew you, my lord."

He couldn't keep from flinching. 'You did,' he wanted to tell him. 'You were the only person I didn't put on a show for. And see where that got me.' But he wasn't quite ready to lead that conversation, yet. "Well, I changed."

"I'm aware," the witcher answered. 'Why does he sound so sad?' "I'm trying to get to know you again."

He bit his tongue, almost hard enough to draw blood again. But they had reached the East Wing now and he didn't want either of his sisters to witness whatever needed to be said between them. He sighed. "No, I'm not," he answered the earlier question. “Sleeping with them, that is.”

"Will you tell me why?" Geralt opened the door for him.

"Maybe later," Jaskier answered honestly. "This is no conversation for dinner." With that he shouldered the doors to the dining room open.

"Julian!" Ciri said excitedly, who had quickly learned not to call him Jaskier in front of his sisters. She smiled brightly, and after that it was easy to get into character, grinning widely and chattering away. The princess was a very useful prop when it came to him wearing that particular mask.

"Hello, cousin," he greeted her and went to press a kiss to her forehead. "How was your training today?"

"Boring." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm not allowed to run or do cartwheels at all. Only footwork. Geralt says I'll injure my ankle again elsewise."

"And he's very right about that," he told her and took his place at the head of the table as Geralt sat down at his right. He waved his hand to signal for the servants to bring the food and continued: "Just imagine if you twisted it again, or, Melitele forbid, broke it. You wouldn't be able to leave your room for weeks on end!"

The horror on her face made him chuckle and dig into his food, too, beckoning his sisters to talk about their days. Afterwards they moved their conversation to the Fireplace Room, where Janina and Józefa took up their needlework.

"So, witcher," Józia asked after settling into a steady rhythm, "you returned from your hunt in the woods."

"I did," he agreed as he sat down in the armchair across from Jaskier.

"Tell us about it, will you?" It wasn't a question.

Geralt's glance flickered to Jaskier, as if asking for permission. He raised an eyebrow and his lips curled into the tiniest of smiles. After a moment of consideration, he raised his goblet of mulled wine to Geralt, beckoning him to carry on.

Janina snorted rudely and stood. "Forgive me, my lord," she said tersely, "but I do not think I have to listen to that. May I retire for the night?"

He swirled the wine in his cup, contemplating it. For a moment he considered telling her no — she had lost the bet, after all. Then again, he wasn't cruel. Janina had her reasons for her resentment against witchers just like he had his for his reverence. It was a topic best left untouched within Lettenhove's walls. He waved his hand dismissively and she hastily fled the scene.

"What-" Ciri began but Józefa shook her head.

"Not now, child," she said quietly. Facing Geralt she asked: "Well?"

Jaskier could basically feel him grinding his teeth and was more than a little surprised when the witcher broke into the probably most detailed story about his adventures Jaskier had ever heard from his mouth. He even included details like the frankly hilarious name of the pig, Sam the Ham, he had shared a bedstead with.

When he was done, Jaskier was still feeling eerie as he always did after hearing a particularly compelling story and stood from his armchair. "Walk with me?" he asked Geralt.

The witcher looked up at him funnily. "Sure, my lord."

The night was crisp — freezing almost, and Jaskier gladly accepted the warm cloak a servant brought him hurriedly before they could climb the battlements. "My, my," he said quietly, "it seems like I'm not the only one who changed. Where's the taciturn witcher I fe-" He bit his tongue. "-I travelled with?"

"Hm," Geralt said and Jaskier was almost about to make another comment when the witcher already continued talking: "I don't know, my lord, but I was travelling with a bard named Jaskier. He might know the answer."

"You-" Jaskier gasped indignantly, fumbling for words. Geralt just raised his eyebrows. A challenge. An invitation. Jaskier was tempted to accept. But when wasn't Geralt a temptation for him? "Fine," he said curtly. "I'll ask him."

"Do tell me when you do," he leaned against the merlon as Jaskier sat down between two of them. "I'd like to have a few words with him myself."

He looked up and tilted his head, stubbornly ignoring the fluttering feeling in his gut and the song lyrics in his mind when he saw him bathed in silvery moonlight. 'I once loved a man as white as snow / His skin was deathly pale / His hair a silvery moonlit veil / His eyes two golden suns / After decades of scorn I was once again shunned / But I loved him even so.' He sighed and tore his eyes away. "All in due time, witcher," he whispered, "All in due time..."

"Hm," he answered and took to staring into the night as well.

It was a strange but still familiar silence that settled between them. Once upon a time it would have been filled with chatter and songs and jabs. But still, as the white puffs of their breath mingled in the cold, Jaskier relaxed for the first time in weeks. Because that was Geralt, the White Wolf, standing beside him and he was still Jaskier the Bard somewhere deep down inside, and that still counted for something.

"It wouldn't be fair to them," Jaskier broke the silence at last.

"What wouldn't be?"

"Sleeping with them. They are sworn to be at best, my subjects and property at worst. They can't refuse. It wouldn't be right. That's not the kind of lord I want to be."

"I thought you didn't want to be any kind of lord, my lord," Geralt answered and began inspecting him instead. It made Jaskier's skin crawl with unease. 'I'm weak, my love, and I am wanting,' another line came to his mind. 'Please,' he begged weakly, resisting the urge to recoil beneath the merciless glare, 'I cannot be found wanting again.'

"I don't," he said bitterly, "Alas, I already am. Might as well do my best."

"Hmm."

"My father was that kind of lord," he said without really knowing why, "my grandfather was, too. I suspect half the garrison consists of my siblings and cousins."

"He wasn't a good lord, then?"

"No,” he said quietly, “and he wasn't a good person either."

"Hmm." Finally, Geralt looked away. "At least his son turned out well enough. Don't know about you being a lord, but I know that you're not a bad person."

Jaskier blinked in surprise. "Thank you, Geralt," he said and resisted the urge to take his hand.

To his surprise it was Geralt who grasped for his fingers instead. "Hmm," he made, warming them between his palms. Jaskier ignored how his heart skipped a beat. "Get inside, my lord, and get to bed. Before you freeze to death."

"Right," he breathes, his words blowing out in the night air like the clouds of his breath. "Goodnight, witcher."

"Goodnight, my lord. Sleep well."

[destielstuffandthings]

Fire And Feathers

I can’t stop writing this so here, have chapter two! Ready for some snarky shrunken heads and a failed meet-cute?

Summary: Castiel is a clumsy witch with a famous bloodline who never seems to get a spell right. Dean is an unattached familiar who stumbles his way through life seeking a purpose.

Pairing: Castiel Novak/Dean Winchester

Characters: Dean Winchester (young and present age), Castiel Novak (young and present age), Sam Winchester (witch), Gabriel (witch), Mary Winchester (mentioned), Charlie Bradbury (familiar)

Tags: @cateyes315​ @omrj007​

If you’d like to be tagged in this please let me know!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Castiel scrubbed his knuckles over the growing stubble on his cheek as he frowned at the bubbling pot. He pulled off a sprig of lavender and tossed it into the cauldron. A wisp of smoke poofed out and curled into the air.

“I think it needs more bruisewort. What do you think?” He looked up past the drying herbs hanging from the ceiling to his only companions.

“Don’t ask me.”

“Mrrff! Nrrrm grmml ffrrn!”

“Are you ever going to unsew his mouth?”

Castiel sighed and reached for a small knife. He ducked under a small bundle of yarrow and reached up, lightly grabbing a very angry looking brown shrunken head. He turned the head towards his face and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you going to play nice with the others?” The head rolled its eyes then blinked twice. “Good. Hold still.” He lifted the knife to it’s mouth and gently cut away the yellow twine holding the heads mouth shut. Once free, the head opened it’s mouth wide, stretching it’s jaw.

“It’s about time. I thought I was going to suffocate!” the head shouted.

“Balder, you don’t even have lungs,” Castiel groaned.

“You better not try to bite Flox again.”

“Oh would you shut up, Pital!”

“Stop!” All of you, or so help me--” Castiel braced himself against his rickety altar, digging his toes into the soft dirt. He looked to the potion that was now a syrupy goo and sighed. “Thirty years old and I still can’t make a healing potion.”

The creak of his door pulled him from his wallowing.

“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking?” Castiel sighed.

“On what, Cassie? The wall of moss you call a door?” Gabriel walked up behind his brother and whistled through his teeth.

“What’s uh---what’re we trying to make here?” he asked, pulling the spoon from the pot and watching the potion ooze off.

“Healing potion,” Flox called out.

“I thought you got that one down years ago?” Gabriel asked, leaning in to sniff the goo and regretting it immediately.

“I did. This one,” Castiel gestured towards the pot, “was for my hive. The queen is injured and keeps fighting off the drones who come too close.”

Gabriel dropped the spoon and stared at his brother. “It’s for a bee? A bee, Castiel?”

Castiel grabbed the pot and walked over to his makeshift sink, pouring the contents down the drain. 

“Did you need something, Gabriel, or did you come here purely to annoy me?”

Gabriel squinted and poked Balder in the cheek. “I was on my way to the markets. I thought my little bro might want to get out of the house--well, hut--and get some fresh air.”

“You do need more Vervain,” Pital chimed in.

“And Poppy,” Flox offered.

“Looks like I’m going with you,” Castiel sighed.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean let his fingers sink into the coyotes pelt. He hated this part of the market, but humans loved their rugs and scarves made of fur.

“Poor guy,” Dean murmured. He patted it once more before moving on to a stand with dried meats hanging from the awning.

“Fine selection of goods today,” he merchant said from behind the booth, gesturing towards his items.

“Yeah, I can see that. You have any rabbit?” he asked, poking at a string of venison strips.

The merchant smiled, his brown teeth making Dean grimace. “How much ya needin’?”

“Just enough to get me through the afternoon.” He looked in his brothers direction, seeing him look carefully through a wicker basket full of feathers. His arms were already piled full of burlap bags stuffed with books and spell ingredients. “Gonna be a long one.”

The merchant sliced Dean off a generous chunk of jerky and skewered it onto a stick. “Five silver pieces,” he said expectantly.

“Five! That’s robbery!” Dean scoffed.

The merchant waved the dried rabbit back and forth in front of Dean.

“Three. And these.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out two shiny brown feathers with black streaks.

The merchant scoffed and waved Dean away. “What am I going to do with bird feathers. Get out of here, I have actual paying customers.”

“They’re feathers from a red tail hawk. A familiar’s, actually. But if you aren’t interested...” Dean started stuffing them back into his pocket.

“No, no-no, wait.” The merchant raised his hands. “Let me see.” Dean grinned and handed them over and watched as the merchant delicately ran his fingers through them. “Fine. Here,” he handed out the rabbit as Dean dropped three coins on top of the feathers.

“Nice doin’ business with ya,” Dean said before biting off a chunk of the jerky. He walked towards his brother and bumped him with his shoulder. “Want some?” he asked, waving the meat in Sam’s face.

“Gross, Dean. No.” His eyebrows shot up. “Hey, how’d you even pay for that? I thought you only had five coin?”

“I bribed the merchant with my feathers,” Dean said around his meat, his cheeks sticking out like a chipmunk.

“Dean,” Sam sighed, “you know they lose their power if they aren’t given to your witch. They’re useless otherwise.”

“Yeah well he didn’t know that now did he?”

Sam shook his head as they walked to the next tent and inspected small glass bottles. “Hey, have you seen Charlie? She shifted and ran off about ten minutes ago.”

“Nope, been to busy scamming an idiot,” Dean laughed.

“Do you think you could---” Sam lifted his chin and nodded his head up towards the sky.

Dean groaned and shoved his meat stick against his brothers chest. “Fine. There better be some of that left when I get back.” Dean rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. Crouching slightly, he jumped into the air as his arms were replaced by wings. His legs shrunk down to scaley feet with razor sharp talons. Shifting mid air was something Dean was always immensely proud of, it was the one good thing he could do as a familiar. He soared above the market, his eyes tracking everything and anything that looked remotely like Charlie in her cat form. He let himself glide for a minute, letting the wind drift him over the livestock section and sure enough, there was Charlie. She was in the cow’s pen lapping a bowl of milk two little kids put down for her.

Found her, live stock pen, he thought to Sam. Gonna stay up for a bit and stretch my wings.

He let himself glide around the whole market and watched people come and go. There was a strange electricity in the air today. Maybe there was a storm coming, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Dean felt himself being pulled towards an herbs tent which was odd, because he never had the use for them. He watched as a blond haired merchant handed a man bunches of yellow flowers and bulbous pods on long stalks. He lowered himself so he was flying just above the tent.

“If you’re making healing potions, might I suggest Echinacea? It’s good for colds, infections and even wounds.” The merchant offered Castiel a small pouch.

“Thank you, yes I will take some. Do you also have Valerian root?” Castiel rummaged around in the glass bowls while Gabriel tapped his foot impatiently.

“Cassie come on,” he whined. “We’ve been here forever and I’m bored.” He looked up to the sky and blew out a deep breath.

“You’re the one who wanted me to ‘get out of the hut’. Deal with it.” Castiel let his fingers sink into a bowl of dried Evening Primrose but stopped when he felt a chill run up his spine. He whipped around and faced his brother.

“What was that?” he gasped.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “What was what?”

“You didn’t feel that?” Castiel turned around in a circle, his eyes darting in every direction. A small gust of wind, barely enough to rustle the dried herbs nearly knocked Castiel to the ground. He bent over, grasping his knees and sucking in deep breaths.

“Castiel, what’s going on? What are you feeling?” Gabriel hovered over his brother and held onto his shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Castiel winced. “It feels like I’m being---aarg.” He cried out as he stood up straight as an arrow, his head tipped back to the sky. “Feels like I’m being pulled---”

Castiel dropped his wares and his arms instinctively shot out just in time for a large red tailed hawk to fall awkwardly into his arms.

[newobsessioneveryweek]

The Bounty Hunter: Chpt. 1

This is chapter 1 of a book I started writing about a year or two ago. If you like it and want me to continue please leave a comment! Enjoy!

People I’m tagging because I love them and need their advice: @xicarusisfallingx @kirii-thenotreally-kitten @awesomeunicat @haze517 @jdc1717

‘So,’ Luna said impatiently, ‘what’s the payment?’

‘Ten gold for turning in disloyal citizens. You know your king. Wouldn’t spare a cup of water for a beggar on the street. Still, this offer is generous for a bastard like him.’

Luna huffed but she knew Aaron was right. This offer was by far the best she would get for such a task even though that pathetic amount of money wouldn’t even be enough to buy a cheap whore. She needed the money though and wouldn’t let any opportunity pass no matter how demeaning. She was already a criminal. Cowards looking to get their hands on otherwise unreachable items often employ her services, though she’s not always faithful to her clients. Not a very good reputation for a mere seventeen-year-old but struggle builds character, and she’d gotten to know a lot about struggle. She didn’t care much for her pride either. She’d lost that luxury years ago, replaced by desperation. All she needed was enough money to pay for a decent doctor for her father. Once she’d done that she’d live a normal, care-free life.

‘So,’ Aaron said, jarring her from her thoughts with his deep whisper, ‘Are you in or what?’

Luna didn’t need to think twice before she said, ‘I’m in.’

Aaron gave a slight nod before explaining their objective. ‘You know Estagio Vanamir, baker’s son? Asked for a very special gem from the king’s repository. Probably Selena’s Ruby. Says he’ll pay handsomely. Twenty silver.’

‘Twenty Silver? A handsome reward?’ Luna stifled a laugh and was about to berate her partner for not haggling for a higher price, before he continued, ‘That’s a high price for the son of a baker Luna,’ Aaron said, ‘obviously it was no use haggling. We’re going to turn him at the guard anyway for the king’s meager reward.’

‘Yes, but we could’ve brought the man the gem, gotten his reward and then led the guards to him to make a greater profit. Honestly, Aaron, why am I always three steps ahead of you when you are supposed to come up with our strategies?’

‘If the heist was to fail and we were to be spotted we would be the ones behind the bars of a cell,’ he said, exasperated, ‘So Vanami’s offer won’t matter in the end.’

‘I still think you were scammed. For the job he expects us to do, a small fortune would be the least he could offer. What does he want with the ruby anyway?’

Aaron shrugged. ‘I don’t know and I didn’t bother to ask.’

Luna gave a resigned huff. The two stood in silence for a brief moment.

‘Be ready at sunrise tomorrow,’ Aaron said seriously.

‘Since when do you give orders? Have you suddenly grown bold,’ Luna said only half-seriously.

‘I’m merely making suggestions, a good one at that. We’ve been working together long enough to be considered equal partners in trade. Or is it just me who thinks that?’

‘It’s just you Aaron,’ Luna said before turning and walking to her father’s house. It was beginning to get late and her father was probably wondering where she was. He wasn’t aware of her criminal reputation at all and she intended to keep it that way. She wouldn’t want to cause him an early death if he found out.

Before she managed two steps she heard Aaron calling her. Luna turned around and acknowledged him. ‘I can’t imagine you’re leaving so soon,’ he said, ‘would you care to join me for a flagon? I still have some coin left from our last haul.’

Luna rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a thief, not a drunk. You have fun drowning your sorrows away.’

‘Don’t be a sissy. Join me, and even if you don’t drink, you could still have yourself a good time, if ya know what I mean.’

‘I’m not interested. Enjoy with your whores you pervert. And don’t blame me at sunrise when your head becomes a blacksmith’s anvil if ya know what I mean.’ Luna swiftly turned around tittering to herself and hurried home to her father. His condition had been steadily worsening for months and had finally driven him to incapacitation. No doubt the death of Luna’s mother had spurred his illness into action. She had been one of his only joys in life: since she worked as a servant in the king’s palace she earned a helpful sum, partially supporting them financially while he made his earnings working at his forge, she kept his health in check and made sure their needs were taken care of. The love he had for his wife was unmatched by any and all human emotion. When she suddenly died, his health spiraled downwards.

Luna arrived at the small house. She’d prepared a pot of vegetable soup that morning that was simmering on the cooking fire. She picked up the ladle and gingerly spooned the mixture into a bowl to serve to her father, who was sitting up in bed, staring dazed at the drab brown curtains hung in front of him.

Luna quietly walked to his bedside and hesitantly put a hand of his shoulder. He jolted in surprise, causing Luna to nearly spill the contents of the bowl as she jumped in shock.

Luna’s father turned his head sleepily in her direction and stared at her confused for a moment before his face lit up in recognition. ‘Luna, my dear, did I startle you? I’m afraid I haven’t been able to get up to much aside from admiring the scenery,’ he glanced at the curtain and attempted a good-natured laugh, which came out more as a wheeze followed by a series of painful coughs.

Luna set the bowl of soup on the bedside table and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Did Katherine come? She said she would bring a remedy for that cough.’

The man rolled his eyes, giving Luna a full view of his reddening sclerae. ‘You just arrived and are already playing physician. Have a rest, child. Have you eaten? You’re so thin.’ Luna thought it strange that the man was worrying for her sake when his own body looked as if it had been constructed out of twigs with skin as thin and pale as a bedsheet. His pale eyes, once sparkling like the polished silver, were dull and lifeless.

‘I understand that my worry is warranted since you refuse to attend to your own health. I will eat once you have finished your supper.’ Luna took the bowl from the bedside table and scooped a spoonful, blowing on it to cool it down before holding the spoon out to her father. His eyes went to the spoon before darting to his daughter. ‘What is the meaning of this? I am perfectly capable of feeding myself. I’ve hefted axes, hammered at steel for hours, and you doubt I can lift a spoon,’ he spluttered in discontent.

Luna raised an eyebrow, still holding out the utensil. She understood that he must have felt undignified, but his circumstances simply did not allow him the freedom he used to relish only months ago. As hard as it was for her to see the once-proud man he was confined to a state of total helplessness, she had no choice. The man gave a sigh of resignation and opened his mouth. The way he pouted like a sad child broke Luna’s heart, but she continued feeding him until the bowl was empty.

Her father blinked slowly and scooted lower in the bed until his head rested on the thin pillow. His face glistened with a sheen of sweat and he looked utterly exhausted. ‘I’m spent. You go eat my dear, you need not worry any longer. A sleeping figure threatens no danger,’ he uttered with a joking smile.

Luna nodded and leaned over to place a kiss on her father’s forehead, subsequently wiping the sweat off her mouth, earning a chuckle from the man.

She did as her father requested and ate her supper. The sun had set long before she had finished so she dressed down for bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  When the sun had just begun steadily crawling over the horizon, before the cocks began to crow, Luna rose from her bed and tiredly rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She quickly threw her dress on and attached her dagger to her belt along with a vile of a potent sleeping draught she’d used on her father a few times just in case. She preferred to render enemies unconscious rather than kill them but underestimating her battle prowess was a grave mistake people dared not make. She wouldn’t hesitate to take action if need be. After making sure her father was peacefully asleep, she laced up her boots and made her way to the tavern to meet with Aaron.

She arrived just in time to see the tall boy retching in the adjacent ally, his curly brown locks drenched in sweat. Luna recoiled at the sight, but couldn’t help smiling at her confirmed prediction. The boy leaned miserably against the wall with his eyes closed. He looked exhausted but Luna had to applaud his commitment, which was exactly what she did. She snuck quietly to his side, avoiding his disgorged stomach contents, and loudly clapped her hands right next to his ear. Aaron nearly jumped in the air, but he opted instead to double over clutching his aching head.

‘Fuck you,’ he said as he rose from his stooped position, punctuating the effort with a groan of discomfort.

‘Did I not foresee this,’ I asked mockingly, ‘I knew you would drown in your cups. You possess the minimum amount of self-control equal to that of a horny dog.’

‘What can I say? I blame the impulsiveness of youth.’ He made of gesture of shaking his fist in the air before letting it drop listlessly to his side.

‘Do you really expect me to bring you with me in the state you’re in? You’ll only be a hindrance.’

‘What are you talking about,’ he asked, looking at her with tired golden eyes, ‘did we not agree to turn Vanamir in? There’s no heist involved, hence you won’t need me for much. I just came to discuss our approach.’

‘No, you wanted to turn him in, I wanted to kill two birds with one stone, earn some extra coin, and not be a sissy about getting caught. Now that you’re no longer an asset on this mission, I’ll be opting for my plan.’

Aaron pushed away from the wall, stumbling before regaining his footing and somewhat steady composure. ‘Whatever,’ he said, ‘as long as you get it done. Though I should warn you, the king has upped his guard recently. I have no idea why so I advise you to just watch your back.’

‘And I would advise you to stay away from the bar. You look positively awful and you smell like a piss pot.’

Aaron blinked and made a face. ‘Incredible. I never would have thought it possible but, I must say, your social skills have gotten better,’ Aaron retorted sarcastically.

 The two parted ways, Luna making for the castle.

While Luna’s mother was a servant she had learned that the castle had a servants’ entrance separate from the main doors. If she looked the part she could easily slip by bustling maids and watchful guards. Navigating the castle wasn’t a problem either. The king’s private business hadn’t been kept very private at all from careful listeners so Luna was aware that the repository was situated on the lowest level. All she had to do was make her way there without being noticed. She hoped she hadn’t bitten off more than she could chew, but she was confident in her abilities. If worse came to worst she could simply render her victims unconscious.

She set her plan into action; she walked through the servants’ entrance and picked up a basket of the king’s laundry to carry around with her. Luckily none of the other servants questioned this. A person could mistake her for a servant just by her attire and the way she walked with purpose as if washing the king’s clothing was her only goal and pleasure in life (which, for most servants, it was). With the laundry basket balancing on her hip, Luna turned down hallway after hallway, ignoring suspicious glances from guards and trying to muster as much confidence in her step as she could, which was proving to work. The guards she passed had stopped paying much attention to her apart from the occasional lustful gaze and so she continued until she made it all the way to the stairwell that led down to the king’s repository. Unfortunately, the stairwell was guarded by two rather distracted guards, who were sitting at a wooden table gambling with dice and gulping down mouthfuls of whatever beverage was in their cups.

This posed a problem of course. Before she could approach them she needed a plan. She couldn’t simply stab them; one of them might sound an alarm before she can get in a clean blow. Her only chance was to lace their drinks somehow. Luna had never been one for flirting, but she might’ve needed to summon what little knowledge she has on the subject and use it to her advantage. Her mother had taught her how to dance before Luna became more interested in learning how to use her dagger, so she knew how to move her body to get the right reactions.

She moved seductively towards the men, swaying her hips while still balancing the basket. One guard noticed her advancing and stood from his seat, while the other glanced over and fumbled to rise, but ended up toppling onto the floor. Luna knelt down with a kind smile on her face and offered her hand to the fallen guard, who furrowed his brow in confusion.

Luna giggled in response to the guard’s baffled expression, ‘I don’t bite, I promise,’ she said as sweetly as her shaking voice allowed. The guard continued to stare for a moment longer before accepting her help and smiling goofily at the wink Luna gave him once he stood.

‘My my, it isn’t often we get visitors here, especially ones this beautiful,’ said the guard on the left. ‘Tell me, my dear, what is your business here?’

Luna spoke convincingly, ‘I’m a servant washing the king’s clothing. I’m new so I got lost-’

��A servant, eh,’ said the guard on the right, clearly not too interested in her reason for being there. ‘What’s a beauty such as yourself doing serving the king? A maiden this lovely, why your time would be better spent gracing a dance floor.’

‘Don’t you know how to flatter a girl,’ Luna ran her hand down the guard’s chest, ‘tell me,’ she said glancing over to his gawking friend, ‘may I join you?’

The two guards glanced at each other, smirks creeping up both of their faces. Luna felt rather uncomfortable with that but she had a mission to accomplish. The guard on the right answered, ‘Of course, you can. However, we only have two chairs, but, if you want, you can sit on my lap,’ the man said, a wild glint in his eyes and a slit of a smile on his face. Luna nearly outright retched at the man’s offer, though instead, she gave a shy smile and an innocent nod. The guard whom she had helped looked mildly jealous but sat down, sipping his drink miserably. The other sat down slowly, trying his best to appear sexy but failing rather spectacularly. He patted his lap and Luna begrudgingly sat down, swallowing the bile rising in the back of her throat. She had to drug them quickly. She inconspicuously slipped the draught under the long sleeve of her dress and folded her fingers over the cork.

‘Do you mind if I have a taste,’ she asked pointing at the drink in front of her. The man held it out to her. She took the cup, the guard rocking his leg as if to tease her, sloshing the liquid in the cup. He laughed as if he’d just made the funniest joke ever, Luna laughing along to please him. She held the cup close to her lap so the guard wouldn’t see her slyly pour the liquid in the cup. She emptied the vile before realizing too late that she hadn’t laced the second guard's drink. Luna panicked, still holding the cup low. The guard furrowed his brow, looking slightly annoyed that she hadn’t drunk anything and took the cup from her, taking a long sip. ‘When you get to be a big girl you can have a sip of my drink,’ he set down his drink and put a hand on Luna’s back, ‘So what do you do for fun lass? Or, more importantly,’ he made eye contact with Luna and Luna saw the man’s intentions written plain as day on his features, ‘ what would you like to do? Whatever it is, we can do it together if ya fancy. Maybe afterward I’ll let you have a sip.’ The man laughed and it was the vilest thing Luna had ever heard. His hand started sliding down Luna’s back until it was far too low for comfort.

She inwardly scowled and blanched at the man’s suggestion. She knew the effects of the draught would kick in soon, but she was getting worried that this man was going to do something unsavory to her. She needed to stall for time.

‘Um… H-how about you two tell me your names first?’

The man let loose a booming laugh, his eyelids drooping, but his advances continued. He looked at his partner with a smug smirk, ‘this one likes to get personal,’ his friend rolled his eyes. ‘My name’s Gilbert, and that over there,’ he said, pointing at the guards across the table, ‘is Simeon. And what’s your name sweetheart,’ he asked, but before Luna could answer his head lulled forward and he planted his head firmly on the table, his torso folding over her lap. Luna heaved a sigh of relief and took the guards inactivity as an opportunity to take action. She drew her dagger, threw the man’s upper body away from her and jumped up. The remaining guard hurriedly got up from his chair. She saw him notice the dagger in her hand. He looked up at her, an angry expression marring his features, ‘What did you do to him,’ he shouted, ‘Intruder,’ he alerted the forces. ‘Wait! He’s not dead,’ Luna said, but it was too late. She had to act quickly. She made a run for the stairwell, but the guard lunged at her. Luna swung her dagger at his chest, but he was too quick. He dodged her attack and made a grab at her shoulders and pinned her to the wall. He twisted her arm until she dropped her dagger, the silver blade clattering helplessly to the floor. She had been caught. She heard the hurried footsteps of the alerted forces making their way. If she tried to escape she would just be caught by the oncoming support. There was nothing she could do.

Before long two new faces pulled her from the wall and held her firmly by the shoulders, the sleeping guard lying unmoving on his chair. Luna had to think of a plan, and quickly before she was brought to the king for sentencing. She could acknowledge how suspicious it looked that a guard somehow dropped down while she held a dagger in her hand, and with a witness present, it made her case even less convincing. The fact that she’s tried to run into the repository made her case vastly doubtful. Did she even have a case to present? She had really made this a very difficult situation.

[iwakuraarisu-blog]

Trinidad And Tobago

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[jackcliu]

On tokens, markets, and a path to a real-time economy

Two years ago on March 1, 2019, I posted a Letter to my future self to the Bitcoin blockchain. This is the story of that letter, one where I didn’t write a word, and how two years later, the dream is still alive. There is an actual path with tokens and markets to make utopia a reality, and my case for what that might look like. 



About a month prior to March 1, 2019, I had privately begun telling my close friends, colleagues, and family that I was going to be making a significant career and life change and dedicate the next chapter of my career towards building exclusively for the Bitcoin SV blockchain. You can guess the confused looks and concerns people had about what it was I was doing. Did I lose my mind? To be fair, I still get those messages today. I knew what I had envisioned when I first read the white paper back in 2013 and somewhere along that journey, the crypto industry had taken a path that veered dramatically from the one I had imagined. With Bitcoin having course corrected twice already via hard forks, I wanted and needed a guiding compass - a North Star. That’s when I had the idea to write a letter to my future self.

I confided in one of my best friends, Jackie to help me write it. It was a busy month for me, my mind was all over the place and I needed help. Over two afternoons, I shared with Jackie what I wanted to say, what was the possible world that I imagined. To her I must have been repeating myself since she and many of my friends had heard this for a decade. The future would bring Proof of Work from a term to describe a computer science thing to one that would describe the workings of the entire global economy and drive a seismic shift in how value was created and how we humans would interact and cooperate with one another. I wanted her to include a thank you to some people who helped me along the way - titans of the industry whom I was fortunate to cross paths and work with. Jesse Powell, gave me my first job at Kraken. CZ hired me to OKCoin in 2014. Star believed in me and gave me so many growth opportunities. At Circle, I worked with my long time friend Dan, who would go on to create CMS. A few days later, Jackie sent me a draft. I was pretty shocked at first, thinking hey this doesn’t even say Bitcoin in it. Where are all the names I wanted to include. Then I read it another time and when she asked if I wanted any changes or if the approach was right, I said, “Let’s not change a single word”. It was different, it was exceptional, to me it was perfect. I sent the letter internally as part of my Circle resignation email, flew off to San Antonio with my parents to watch the retirement ceremony of my favourite basketball player Manu Ginobili, and then a month later on April Fools Day, RelayX was launched.

Having this Letter out there has served me well. Nobody could have expected the course of events of the past two years both within BitCoin, and the world at large. Politics, COVID-19, money-printing, delistings, court cases, you name it. Without it as an anchor, I might have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you would have asked me then what BitCoin would look like today, I would have predicted a 100x rosier picture than the current situation. Despite most of the boom in the cryptocurrency industry having not occurred on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, the rapid adoption of blockchain and digital currencies from NFTs to DeFi, to institutions putting BTC on the balance sheet shows the underlying movement is in full force. Just this week, I watched sharpshooter JJ Redick utter the words “non fungible token, and blockchain technology” on his podcast talking about NBA Topshot. That’s incredible.

In the letter are the words - “Your world will be frictionless and marked by truth, freedom and fairness. Your world will truly be one that is defined by human imagination and honest work.”

I am making the case for tokens as the critical solution to a real-time economy. I want to break the spell of the narrow definition of tokens that has bounded the Bitcoin SV ecosystem. For much of the past two years, there appears to be two camps in BSV when it comes to tokens. The dominant one being we want only regulated tokens, security tokens, tokens backed by real assets, with real utility, that real businesses and enterprises can use to make their businesses more efficient. The other, perhaps out of jealousy for what’s going on in other blockchains being let’s just port those Ethereum ERC20’s over and let it run wild for it might pump the BSV price! Funny thing is neither has happened as developers are busy debating whether tokens should be on layer 0 or layer 1 or layer 100 but that’s a topic for another day. Both views are myopic. 



Tokens are going to be a much bigger deal on BitCoin than anyone might imagine. 

How many websites are there on the internet? I looked it up recently and the answer is 1.7Bn. How many token contracts are there on the Ethereum chain? The answer is 350,000. 



Websites are kind of hard to set up - you have to purchase a domain name, at least use a website template creator, and there isn’t that much use for getting one for the average person. Not when you can have an Instagram page, a Facebook account, a Twitter handle, a Medium blog without having your own site. Yet there are 1.7Bn of them! Ethereum tokens are prohibitively expensive mining fee wise to generate. Out of interest, I asked one of the devs who minted the original USDC contract during my days at Circle to find the transaction. It cost 0.44 ETH. At today’s prices that’s well over $500 to create a token. Yet there are 350,000 contracts!



I would wager there will be over 100Bn unique tokens on BitCoin and I’d guess higher but I don’t want to be outside the bounds of the very Overton window I’m creating.

It takes a few seconds to issue a token on BitCoin and at current mining fees, less than a tenth of a cent to issue. If I’m a store owner, I might issue a different gift card a week for the various deals I have going on. If I’m an artist, a different NFT for each piece of artwork. Neither the store owner nor the artist needs more than one website and you start to see the math.

If reading this, you still think tokens are going to be contained to some narrow definition of ‘security’ tokens, or NASDAQ like tokens, or fiat currency tokens, realise it’s like saying the internet will only have The New York Times or CNN or some licensed officially approved site. It’s ok if not every account on Instagram is world class photography. Not every Twitter account is going to be insightful (that’s clear) and that’s ok. In a world of 100Bn unique tokens, You bet there’s going to be a great deal of useless ones and a pretty large number of scams. Just like there are websites that are phishing for your passwords, websites with illegal content, and websites with viruses in them. Over time, services emerged to protect you by blocking, or warning you about potentially dangerous websites.

What’s the bigger picture and what do tokens have to do with a real-time economy? I’ve made the case for there being a ton of tokens. Does that mean it’s just going to be a Coinmarketcap with a lot more pages? An exchange with a lot more trading pairs? No, a lot more exciting than that.

A world with 100Bn tokens means every single asset, service, good, company, project, video, post and many more abstract things than one can imagine is going to have a dynamic, live price. It’s not about the tokens, it’s about the markets. Today, you visit a restaurant and you check Yelp to see if has a good review. BSV entrepreneurs are making some new review site but with reviews posted on the blockchain thinking this is the problem that needs solving. “Immutable reviews”. Much more valuable than a review or immutable review however is if this particular restaurant’s loyalty token is trading at a premium to the other one next door. There’s actually money on the line. Then after eating, instead of being a foodie with a blog and an Instagram to hype up such restaurant, if you’ve got that talent for knowing what’s going to be the next hot restaurant, you can just buy on the open market more of the restaurant’s tokens. Yes, a local foodie just became an crypto trader. Now you profit when you promote the restaurant on your blog. The chef who started that restaurant instead of using Groupon to attract an initial set of customers who have no loyalty to you, can instead issue 10,000 tokens, where each dish costs 100 tokens. Pretty soon if your food is delicious, those token prices are going to jump. Think Global, Live Local is not just going to do good, it’s going to now make you rich. 



I grew up in a lower middle class first generation immigrant family. I remember being a teenager in those years where oil prices were very volatile as the world approached the idea of “Peak Oil”. We would sometimes drive by a gas station one day where prices were a few cents cheaper than the day before, and even though the tank was half full, we filled up. Other days, the warning light would be on, but we held off for another day to fill up the tank in hopes prices would come down. Is this speculation on oil prices bad? Another fun memory I had was going grocery shopping with my folks and my favourite cookies were the Chip Ahoy Crunchy chocolate. Eating those with milk is probably half the reason for my height. Once in a while they would be on sale but next to them were the No-Name brand versions of the same cookies. Chip Ahoys were definitely better but were they $2/100grams better? No. We would calculate every time to decide which we would buy. Is this speculation on cookie price bad? How come other goods and services in the economy didn’t fluctuate in price? That’s what’s always fascinated me. I knew they would if they could. With Bitcoin, it was possible.

Tokens on Bitcoin with the perpetual scaling design of Bitcoin where it isn’t the holder that’s rewarded (Proof of Stake) but rather those contributing to scaling the network (Proof of Work) will lead to the formation of markets where markets were too inefficient to exist - unlocking trillions of value in the process. 



A fully tokenised economy makes everything efficient, fair, honest, and real-time. I don’t mean efficient like fast transactions or cheap mining fees. It’s the economy that will be efficient. You won’t need to be a big grocery chain or a big oil company or big tech company with financial analysts, and big data and machine learning folks in order to know what to set the price of a Chips Ahoy or a Gallon of oil or surge pricing on a taxi ride. It’ll be orders of magnitudes better than that and for every person on earth because it’s all going to be open, issuable, transferable, tradeable. You won’t be checking page 978,950 of Coinmarketcap. You won’t be scrolling to AHOY/USDT on an exchange. I predict all of this will happen without you realising that it did and all our lives will improve as a result.

For those who immediately think of the regulatory ramifications of this, I’ve thought the same. In 2015, while leading OKCoin, I led our initiative to become the first international benefactors of Coin Center - the industry body working with regulators and governments. I am a minority seed round investor in Chainalysis which looks for criminal activity onchain. I look forward to working with all those who would like to embrace innovation while having an eye on ensuring an orderly, legal transition to this future.

I could not be more excited to support the emerging token projects on BitCoin, through building products, investment, advice, or even in spirit. 

Bitcoin is plumbing - just plumbing where billions of trades and speculation down to the satoshi will be happening every second.












[kindofanactress]

Acting + Schmoney Moves

So not too long ago I had my first paying acting-ish job. 

(i’ve done background work but I’ll save that for another post) I say -ish because it was for a PSA campaign and they filmed video as well as photographed me. So far I have only seen print ads for it. TBH I’m just excited to have gotten paid.

 I’m going to tell you about it, if it wasn’t already obvious.

I submitted to the job, got an email to come in for a casting. 1 week later I received an email that I had been booked!!!!! I was in contact with wardrobe leading up to the shoot since they wanted me to bring a couple of my own clothing options. 

Shoot day arrives and It was an outdoor shoot so I arrived to the trailer for the project that had the PA the wardrobe lady and the hair and makeup peeps. They did my hair, basically just a side pony and trying to control my baby hairs and flyaways. Then my makeup (on the “natural” side because I am supposed to have a “young” look. Not gonna lie I felt so boujee. This was me:

not literally but on the inside. It was nice.

Then we went to the set. This was March so it was cold, but Idngaf I was super lucky because we finished within 3 hours. I cannot stress this enough. This is rare and not at all the norm. Before I left had to do the standard paperwork like releasing the right to my image in the stuff we just shot, payment stuff. Here is where it gets juicy.

When I applied for the job, it said the pay rate would be x but when I was signing the paperwork it said I would be paid over twice that.Which is more than I’ve ever been paid for one day’s work. Not even that because it was done in a few hours. I was scrreaming inside, but I had to keep the image of professionalism. 

I went home and waited for my check. Probably should have asked when that would be but I’m awkward so I didn’t. So I waited and waited 

My mom even started murmuring about what if I got scammed or something. I knew that wasn’t the case because I did my research and knew that it was an offical company and the campaign was from NYC department of so and so themselves. I finally decided to email them because what if it got sent to the wrong address who knows. I was nervous to do so because I’m naturally a very fretful person and didn’t want to bother them. It just so happens that the week I emailed was the week that the checks were going out they replied. It finally came in the mail almost 2 whole months later. Looking back that’s not actually a crazy amount of time, I’ve heard of it taking longer for commercials and stuff, but I didn’t know that.

The day after I got my check someone I know texted me a pic of the thing in the wild and asked “is this u” Within 2 days someone else in my family saw it too!!! 

Hope that this wasn’t dreadful to read through, but if it was... Why did you read through something so dreadful, you’ve got to show your self more love. 

~Gabriela 

[sour--strawberries]

Meow Cafe, part 11

fandom: Stony (Steve x Tony)

universe: Figaro universe, cat cafe!au - Tony works as a barista in a cat cafe and Steve is totally smitten by him and Tony’s overly fluffy cat, Figaro

summary: The work on new Meow Cafe has started, and an unexpected reunion happens.

length: 6 395 words

warnings: this fic belongs to Figaro universe, not focused on tickling, but has some from time to time (none this time)

a/n: aaah, one more chapter to go! don’t worry, the last part is already done, it needs some polishing, so it will be up till end of this year! (it will be also the chapter where new cats will appear!). remember that reblogs, likes and feedback means love!

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Meow Cafe, part 11

(part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12)

The days were passing slowly, but were hectic in their own way. Pepper was finalizing the transaction and gathering supplies for the renovation of the new and better Meow Cafe. Natasha took Oliver to his new home and sent Tony and Steve daily updates on how the orange cat was settling in (very good, he still loved to sleep in every threshold possible and Steve couldn’t help but to smile wide each time he saw Natasha and noticed that her clothes were covered in orange fur).

Summer was ending and Steve had to sit down to work and plan a new school year for his students. Tony, on the other hand, became a little anxious, wishing Meow Cafe would open sooner as staying at home for so long was getting on his nerves.

Unfortunately, it started to show.

“I am asking for the last time. Who. Did. This?”

Steve tried to arrange all the materials for the syllabus on the coffee table, deciding in which order he should put them in. He didn’t like to repeat each year the same program, as art was all about creativity and different interpretations, but he will keep it organized, just to be safe from the school director. Mr Fury could be demanding and quite unpleasant when things didn’t go according to his wishes.

“You really think you will get an answer for this, babe?” Steve asked, not lifting eyes from the numerous pages spread in front of him. Maybe he should focus a bit more on sculptures this year, still having in mind the great architecture of Rome.

“One of them will crack sooner or later,” Tony replied, crossing arms over his chest. Figaro didn’t react to accusations and was spread leisurely on one of the cat shelves, his tail swooping gently and showing that he wished that his human would stop making a ruckus and not disrupt nap time. Gizmo was also on the cat shelf, clearly lurking and avoiding Tony’s gaze. Yet, neither of the cats admitted to digging in the big potted plant near the TV, throwing black soil out and into the wooden panels.

“Get down here and show me your paws!” Tony demanded, pointing his finger to the floor for emphasis. At the scream, Gizmo hid away, and Figaro’s tail swooped with more force. It was hard to say who did it, as both cats could be guilty, even if Gizmo acted more afraid. But that was just Gizmo, always easily scared and more delicate, while Figaro had high self-esteem and believed that whatever he was doing, he was doing good. It was humans who didn’t understand.

Steve tried to not smile too apparent, and God forbid, laugh, pointing his angry boyfriend’s attention to him. Maybe he could take Tony out for the weekend somewhere. Not far, just to change the environment. And without cats. That would be the hard part, talking Tony into leaving his babies, but Steve had a feeling all of them could benefit from this. And they had to use the last moments of Steve’s freedom before school starts all over again and he would go back to teaching. Just then, when Steve moved a photo of the Triton Fountain he took during his trip, something else caught his attention. Under it, there was a photo of a cat, one that resembled a whole lot Gizmo. He found the edge of the photo, and slowly pulled the whole thing to himself, holding the last issue of the newspaper he had bought this morning and didn’t look through yet. Tony always mocked him for buying newspaper, claiming that he could find everything on the Internet for free, but Steve liked the feeling of real paper under his fingertips. Not mentioning that torn out pages, scrunched up into paper balls were the cheapest and one of the most entertaining cat toys for Gizmo and Fig, and throwing them paper balls and watching the two cats chase them around, was always fun for all of them.

Smoothening out the newspaper, Steve noticed that he was looking at the lost and found a section of the newspaper. He quickly skimmed through the column, finding the photo again and reading the text below, his eyes widening with every word. He looked back at the cat shelves where Gizmo, unhelpfully, hid away to not be faced with Tony’s wrath, but he was becoming more and more sure of it. He knew that some cats looked alike, but there were too many similar points.

“What?” Tony asked, noticing his boyfriend’s twitchy movements. “Whaaat?!” he demanded again, when Steve shook his head and folded the newspaper, hiding it away.

“Nothing!” he squeaked out. He can’t let Tony see it. Not yet. Not until he would be one hundred percent sure.

Tony drew his eyebrows together in anger and left the relieved cats alone, stomping to his boyfriend instead. “Show me the newspaper,” he said, reaching his hand for the periodical. Whatever was there, he wanted to know.

“It is nothing—”

“Show me!”

“It really is nothing!”

“You promised to never lie to me again!”

Darn. Steve bit his bottom lip and looked away. He did. He should have known that the relief driven promise would come back and bite him in the butt. Feeling defeated, he reluctantly handed the newspaper.

Tony took it, anger changing into victory as he unfolded the paper and looked at the page Steve had been studying a minute ago. At first, he didn’t see anything interesting, but Steve saw the exact moment when he did. Tony’s whole body convulsed and he drew the paper closer to his eyes, not believing what he was seeing. He read the text and quickly did the math in his head, even counting on fingers for double check, a totally unnecessary move as Tony was good with mathematics. It all fitted. The date, the neighborhood, the cat in the picture.

“Gizmo!” Tony called, lowering the newspaper. “Gizmo!” he tried again and it was the desperation in his voice, that made the black and white cat peek out. Green yellow eyes. White whiskers. Black dots on the nose. “Takk?” he asked, waiting for a reaction, but Gizmo’s ears only twitched as if he heard something he didn’t in a really long time. His real name.

It all hit Tony at once and it made his head spin, not in a good way. “Ty stole him…” Tony whispered. According to the column, a cat like Gizmo disappeared from his backyard, the same day as Tiberius brought Gizmo into the Meow Cafe. All Ty had to do was to take his collar off and discard it somewhere. It was so easy and so cruel.

“He stole him!” Tony cried out, turning to Steve. “Why was I so stupid?!”

“Babe…” Steve said softly. He hated that Tony could so easily blame everything on himself. It wasn’t his fault or anyone at Meow Cafe. They all wanted to help the seemingly stray cat, even if the prime condition the cat arrived to them was suspicious, but they saw a man trying to do a good deed, and didn’t question it. They should have pushed him more, but none of them expected it to be a scam and a way to get close to Tony.

“I can’t believe I believed him, what is wrong with me?!” Tony was beating himself. How could he be so blind? Finding a stray cat. He should smell a scam. He should know better.

“Tony, you couldn’t have known—”

“You don’t get it!! I skipped two grades in elementary school, I should be smarter than this—”

Somehow, the comment made Steve laugh and as soon as he had an occasion, he grabbed Tony in his arms and wrestled down to the couch, kissing his dumb genius breathless.

***

“Takk!”

It was the first time, Tony and Steve saw Gizmo looking so happy. When a burly blond with musculature even greater than Steve’s stood in the door, the black and white cat took the shortest way down from the cat shelves and trotted to the man, his tail standing straight and eyes widen.

“Takk, you mighty beast!” the blond called, when Gizmo jumped on his chest and the guy cuddled the cat close. “What a joyous day for us to be reunited!”

Steve and Tony stared with varying degrees of shock, Steve’s dumbfounded face purely because of the way the stranger was talking, which he should already know as he was the one who called the guy, but he thought that maybe he was an actor and caught him in the middle of rehearsal. Tony’s was soon explained.

“Wow, he is hot,” Tony whispered, staring at the long-haired blond and his square jaw. Definitely his type. He felt Steve’s burning look on him. “Outside! It is hot outside! Would you like some water?!” he rambled out, his cheeks becoming pink and Steve narrowed eyes. Riiight. They were having a pretty hot end of summer, with a lot of rain and clouds.

“Thank you, but I ought to be on my way,” the guy smiled, and it was bright and sunny, and Tony felt a bit weak in the knees, unprepared for that. Steve harrumphed and elbowed him in the ribs, causing his boyfriend to squeak. “My brother is awaiting Takk’s return. He wasn’t himself without him.”

“Oh, right! Tony suddenly remembered. "Before you go, I need to see a proof that Gi— Takk is your cat,” he said. Maybe the warm reunion should be a sufficient sign enough, but Tony decided to be twice as careful from now on. The blond fished out his wallet and took out a photo, handing it to Tony. In the photo, was the blond guy, having his arm wrapped around a pale, black-haired man with a stoic expression, holding a cheerfully looking Gizmo. There was a second photo below that one, clearly taken from hiding as it was a little bit blurry, but it was safe to say that it was the dark-haired men, holding Gizmo in his arms and smiling gently at the cat. Tony could feel the bond between them just by looking at the photo. Steve also looked at the photos, just to be sure, but there was no doubt that Gizmo and the dark haired man had something special.

“Fine with me,” Tony said, handing the photos back, and quickly looking at Steve, who smiled and nodded his agreement.

“And as promised,” the guy hid the photos back and took out an envelope instead, “the reward for keeping Takk safe.”

Tony smiled gently, not imaging that he could ever accept money from a fellow cat lover. “You can keep the money. Or even better, you can donate it to a cat shelter.”

“That I shall,” the blond guy smiled back, impressed by such noble behavior. He kneeled down with Gizmo and put a brown collar with a gold oval medallion on the cat’s neck and attached a leash to it. “It’s time to return home, Takk. Say your farewell,” he told the cat, stroking his face. Gizmo turned back and looked at the people who took care of him in the last weeks. Maybe Tony was imagining things, but it looked like if Gizmo bowed his head to them, his human’s regal behavior rubbing off on him.

“Bye, Gizmo! Stay close to home,” Tony smiled and petted the cat’s head for the very last time. Steve did the same, hoping that nothing would again disrupt their peace.

“Takk, my friends!” the blond called for goodbye, laughing at the surprised expressions of the two men. “Takk means thank you in my language,” he explained and went out of the apartment, Gizmo trotting next to his longtime no seen friend, all excited to be on his way home.

“Huh,” Steve said, locking the door behind the guy. “So, he is Norwegian, but talks like Shakespeare,” he thought out loud, “do you remember his name?” Steve asked. It was in the column, but it slipped his mind.

Tony sat on the couch and pursed his lips as he was thinking. “William,” came out eventually.

“No, not William!” Steve laughed. Maybe Tony was great at math and science, but it seemed that he had real troubles with remembering people’s name. “I think it was something like… Thud?”

Steve didn’t have any more time to think about the name when he heard a quiet sniffling. He looked back at Tony and noticed that his boyfriend was swallowing tears and trying not to break.

“Aww…” Steve cooed and sat on the couch next to Tony, letting him cuddle into his side, and cry quietly. Gizmo was back home after nearly a two months of being absent. Tony couldn’t imagine the pain the dark haired man had to endure.

“Do you think he will be happy?” Tony asked, sniffling his words, meaning the cat.

“Of course,” Steve replied, rubbing his boyfriend’s arm soothingly. “He is going back home.”

“Happier than he would be with us?” Tony asked after a while.

Steve smiled while thinking about his answer. He couldn’t imagine any cat being unhappy with Tony. “He is going back to his family, Tony,” he replied in the end and kissed the top of his boyfriend’s head, hoping that it was enough of an answer. “Oh, hey, Fig!” Steve said, when Figaro, practically out of nowhere jumped on Tony’s lap, wondering what the commotion was about. He observed the whole situation out of his hiding spot, not understanding why all his cat friends were disappearing, but also feeling that they were not in danger. It was a weird feeling.

“And you are back to being an only child,” Steve smiled, scratching the fluffy cat under his chin, just where the white spot was.

Figaro purred as an answer, and curled into Tony’s stomach, taking advantage of the moment for a quick cuddle. He felt that his friend needed more company.

Tony sniffled, petting his cat, and being petted by Steve himself. The apartment looked empty again. But he had Steve and Fig and he wasn’t really alone. It was all good, and maybe one day, life would put another cat in his way, but for now, it was fine the way it was.

***

“We will end on this today. For the next class, read chapter five and think about the differences between Roman and Greek sculptures. Class dismissed!”

It wasn’t an everyday occurrence that Steve let his students free before the assigned hour, but the lecture was done, students behaved good and they all earned an earlier break. It definitely didn’t have to do anything with the fact that it was Steve’s last class and he wanted to get out as soon as possible.

“Remember that your first art project is due until end of this month! I won’t accept anything delayed! If you have any questions you can ask me now!” Steve called after the walking out group of chattering teens, hoping that none of them would turn around and ask him questions. He was just being nice, not counting that anyone would take on his offer. Luckily, no one did, and after the class emptied, Steve packed his things and walked out, already smiling at the perspective of the afternoon.

“Are you ready?” he was asked as soon as he stepped out of the room and almost jumped a foot up. “Woah, easy!” Natasha laughed, secretly enjoying sneaking up on her fellow teacher.

“Oh, did you end the class early today too?” Steve asked, walking down the corridor with Nat, trying to make their way out, before the halls would fill with screaming and running teens.

“Yhm. I think I would accompany you today. If you don’t mind that is,” she smiled, her eyes sparkling happily. It was no secret, that each day after Steve was done teaching, he rushed to the new Meow Cafe to help with setting up the place and meet his friends and boyfriend, where they stayed till late hours.

“I don’t,” Steve smiled back, noticing some orange fur intertwined into Natasha’s black sweater. “Aw, Oliver slept on it again?”

“Dammit,” Natasha frowned, looking down at herself and trying to pick the fur out, “I thought I cleaned it well.”

“You know how it is, when you have a cat, everything becomes a cat,” Steve laughed, not so much bothered by the black fur on his clothes anymore but finding it alarming when he woke up and had strands of long fur in his mouth. That should not happen. “How is Oliver doing?”

“Very good,” Natasha replied. They went outside and turned their faces to the sun, enjoying the crisp Autumn air around them. “He tripped Clint over last night. It was hilarious,” she said, giggling, and it was rare to see her giggle. Owning a cat was serving her well. “And how are the things between you and your barista?” Natasha asked, well aware of their eventful past.

“Very good,” Steve parroted, smiling broadly and meaning every word. Maybe it wasn’t the wild heat anymore, but he and Tony were going steady and Steve had a feeling that Tony was the one. Of course, he didn’t say anything yet, knowing that they both could rush into things, and there was no need for that. They loved each other and were not only boyfriends, but partners. It was something Steve never had before. “How are Clint and Bruce doing?” Steve asked, his voice gaining a teasing note. Natasha still didn’t admit to dating them both and living in a threesome, but Steve knew better.

Natasha looked away and bit her cheek, trying to hold a smile back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a neutral tone. Of course. Too bad that Bruce had two sphinxes, because additional fur on Natasha’s clothes would point against her.

“Yeah, you don’t,” Steve laughed, not bothered. If Natasha wanted to keep it as a secret and not say anything until they all were ready, he won’t force her. Didn’t mean he won’t tease her. “Oh, do you know if Bruce will be at the cafe today?”

“No, he has evening school today, maybe he will appear around 8 pm — sneaky!” Natasha gasped, shoving Steve in the arm and laughing together with him.

They took the subway and soon were in the neighborhood of the new Meow Cafe. It was just a few blocks away from the previous location, which still counted as a manageable walking distance from Tony’s apartment, which was good. It wasn’t as close to the main street as the previous location, and maybe it was better. It would for sure minimize people coming to get a coffee to go and point customers willing to stay and bond with the cats, without the unnecessary rush.

“We are here,” Steve stopped, letting Natasha take the sight in.

“Oh. It… looks nice,” she said wanting to be polite. It didn’t look nice at all. The building was clearly not used for a long time and the paint was falling off the walls, not mentioning the graffiti on one side. The windows were covered with black foil, including the big front window, so similar to the one that the previous cafe had, to hide everything from the people walking by. The place looked quite depressing in comparison to the shiny new buildings around it.

“They will fix the outside soon,” Steve explained, “I saw the projects and it will fit right in with the neighborhood.”

“The building looks big,” Natasha observed. Putting aside the poor look, the place had potential.

“Yeah, it is almost twice as big as the previous cafe. More room for cats!” Steve laughed and he knocked on the door, letting everyone know about his arrival before entering. “Hi! I brought a guest!”

“Hi! Come on in!” Pepper called, leaning out from her place on the spacious couch, sitting with Happy and Rhodey. The small group was in the already done part of the cafe, with walls painted in warm brown colors and latte stripes, and some furniture, stacked in a corner and still waiting to be placed. The only available furniture was the couch, covered in plastic wrap for safety until painting would be done, and small plastic tables in front with empty boxes of Chinese food. The place smelled of fresh paint and exotic spices, and it was a harsh combination, but Steve and Nat quickly got used to it.

“Long time no see!” Rhodey called to Nat when she and Steve approached and Pepper stood up to greet her properly, boys quickly following.

“It looks much nicer here,” Natasha smiled, loving how the paint made the whole place look cozy. She could imagine the whole cafe done in such colors and she already knew it was a good choice.

“How’s Oliver?” Pepper asked her friend, and everyone sat down, the girls talking about cats, while Steve asked Happy and Rhodey was there any more work left for him and how the progress was going.

“We finished installing the bar today,” Rhodey said, pointing to the bar area, “it is fully functional so we don’t need to drink instant coffee anymore!” he grinned, the next second standing up to properly greet their guests and serve them a cup. Steve watched a bit amazed, how efficient Rhodey was with the sparkling new and, in his eyes, highly advanced coffee maker. Maybe it was mandatory for all of Tony’s friends to pass a barista exam. Steve wouldn’t be surprised if that was the truth. Soon, he was presented with a cup of latte with sugar, while in front of Natasha was a double espresso, strong and black.

“The whole back office is done,” Happy summed up, listening all the renovations that already took place, while Rhodey had been preparing coffee. That included the office, cat room, kitchen and bathroom for workers. “Half of the cafe needs painting and changing of the panels, and then we have to do the bathroom for clients and the playground.”

“Playground?” Natasha asked, surprised by the words, taking a sip of her espresso.

“For the cats,” Pepper picked it up from there. “It will be an area specifically designed for cats, without access for the customers. Some pillows, toys, cat shelves, to rest and play, while customers could observe. We will put in there a lot of hiding spots in case one of the cats decides that they don’t want to be seen.”

“And then the outside. The signboard is in the making together with curtains and pillows for the furniture. We have painters scheduled. It should go smoothly now, it was a pain to fix the whole installation, it is an old building and we needed to take all precautions to not— you know,” Happy’s voice dropped. He didn’t need to say it. The fire. The official cause of the fire was faulty installation, but the opinions among the crew of Meow Cafe were divided. Very divided.

“Um, where is Tony?” Steve asked, trying to change the topic.

“He and Janet are in the kitchen. They are testing some recipe,” Pepper answered, “and I think they were saying something about trying out new uniforms?”

As on cue, there was a hearable swing of the door, and Janet’s head peaked out through the double door, the same model with an easy swing used in all restaurants. Some sweet, warm scent of spices made its way into the room and it showed how well ventilated the kitchen was.

“Good, you all are sitting!” Jan brightened, and before anyone could ask why exactly they should be sitting, Jan popped her head back into the kitchen, took a three-second break, and then leaped out again, opening the bar area and standing outside. “Ladies and gentlemen! May I have your attention, please!” she announced, putting both hands around her mouth. It wasn’t necessary, as everyone already turned to her, curious what was going on. “Straight from the runaway, I present to you, the new Meow Cafe uniforms!”

And…

Nothing. The group exchanged perplexed looks.

Janet huffed her cheeks out. She turned to the door leading to the kitchen, and stomped her foot impatiently, the rubber sole of her sneakers barely making any sound. “TONY!! Get your ass here, or I will drag it out!!”

The comment made everyone chuckle a little. That was Janet, going from super sweet to super angry in less than a second.

There was another three-second break, and Janet almost jumped back into the kitchen, when the door opened.

The usual Meow Cafe uniforms were quite simple. They were aprons, black, with embroidered logo on the chest, and a big pocket in the front. Standard off the shelve. When Tony walked out, everyone saw that the new uniforms were not so different. The apron didn’t change, it was still a classic cut, just instead of the pocket being in the center, there was a smaller on the side, near the hip, and there was a second one, the same size, on the opposite side, on the chest. It was knee length and had a dark grey stripe of material around the middle, for a better fit. The used material was in steel grey color, which was less formal than the classic black from before. What made it stand out, was the accessories.

Why Tony was reluctant to go out, became quickly explained. At the top of his head, was a headband with cat ears attached, black with brownish stripes, the color resembling Figaro’s fur. It was not the end. On Tony’s hands were big gloves, cut out to look like cat’s paws, with pink paw pads, and also the same color as the ears. The fingers were cut though, and Tony’s own fingers were visible. It made sense, seeing that workers had to somehow write orders and serve coffee. It was surprising that Janet didn’t draw any cat whiskers on Tony’s cheeks to complete the look, but maybe she dropped that idea because of the goatee on brunet’s face.

The reactions were divided, from Natasha’s staring in shock to Rhodey quietly laughing at his friend’s new cat look, but it was Steve who won everything, by chocking on his coffee and spraying it out of his mouth on everybody.

“Ew! Steve!” Natasha scolded, wiping her face off.

Tony’s mouth dropped as he just noticed his boyfriend and Natasha among the crew. Jan had to time it out like that on purpose. “You tricked me!!” he pointed a paw at his friend, finger pointing at the beaming girl.

“Doesn’t he look great?!” Jan buzzed, obviously proud.

“Um… Janet…” Pepper started insecurely, while the rest of the group was drying themselves off and grumbling, except Rhodey who was still chocking with laughter. And Steve, who was still staring at Tony. “It's… It’s nice,” she said clumsily, unsure how to end.

“I know! And the material is easy to wash too! No more coffee stains! And this!” Jan took Tony’s hand and showed the pink paw pads. “Can be used to wipe off the tables!”

“Shouldn’t agree to let her design the uniforms,” Happy leaned to his wife and whispered, and Pepper grunted, knocking the man away.

The group didn’t say anything. No one wanted to hurt Jan’s feelings. Maybe Natasha wouldn’t mind, always speaking what was on her mind, but it wasn’t her place.

“By the way, I was joking,” Jan ended the silence and pushed Tony closer to the group, making him stumble. “Only the apron is for the cafe, I made the rest to make Steve spit coffee out,” she smirked, pleased that her plan worked.

Everyone breathed out in relief, especially Pepper. She took the hem of the apron and rubbed the material between her fingers. “It is really great, Jan!” she started and everyone followed with praise.

Steve didn’t say anything and kept looking from his blushing boyfriend to Janet, finally stopping on the girl. “So, can Tony keep the ears?” he asked, and if Tony wasn’t blushing enough before, his face just exploded with red. Luckily, he had his paw gloves to hide into.

“Sure!” Jan smiled, stripping Tony off the uniform and passing it along the group to get all the feedback she could, before she would start sewing for everyone. She encouraged Tony with another push and practically made him stumble into Steve’s lap.

“Aw,” Steve cooed, holding his boyfriend, feeling enamored by the cute behavior. “Come here, my kitty,” he said and pulled Tony closer, kissing him once, not wanting to push it in front of the group. It seemed to work and after the last grumble, Tony sat next to Steve and pulled the gloves off, but left the headband in his hair. Just for fun.

“I am thinking of putting here a cat’s face,” Jan smiled, squeezed between Rhodey and Pepper, and drew a circle on the lower pocket with her finger, showing where the pattern should be. “Maybe in a white thread!”

“Hey, weren’t you baking something?” Happy asked, remembering why Tony and Janet went to the kitchen in the first place. Jan almost jumped out of her place, but Tony was faster and stood up first.

“It is fine, I will get it,” he said, motioning for the girl to sit down, “I got the mittens for it,” he took the previously discarded cat gloves and walked back into the kitchen. When he came back, he was holding a tray with giant cookies on them. “The oven turned itself just as we programmed it! Dig in!” he smiled, setting the tray down and taking two cookies with himself, for him and Steve.

Steve looked at the giant oatmeal cookie that was handed to him, seeing nuts and raisins in the dough. He took the first bite, and the taste and combination of spices definitely rang a bell in his head.

“Wow, those are really good!”

“Delicious!”

“Way better than the one we used to serve!”

“What recipe did you use?”

“Steve’s!” Tony announced happily, and all eyes turned to him and the blond, and it was Steve’s turn to blush, as he was not used to be the center of attention. “I hope you don’t mind,” Tony said, turning to his boyfriend. Of course, he first used the recipe and then thought about asking for permission.

Steve shook his head and nibbled on the cookie. He didn’t mind. “It is not really my recipe, it was my grandma’s,” he said and remembered the afternoon when as a little kid he was helping his granny measure out the ingredients and knead the sticky dough.

“To Steve’s grandma!” Rhodey called, raising his cookie and the rest followed, paying a tribute to the woman.

“Really, really good,” Natasha nodded, biting the cookie again, and she wasn’t big on sweets to start with.

“Umm…” Steve said, and all eyes turned to him again. “If you want, you can use this recipe in the cafe,” he offered. Maybe if his friends liked the cookies, the customers would too.

“Are you sure?” Pepper asked. It was a family recipe after all.

“Sure,” Steve smiled, again remembering his past, and this time memories of him and Bucky stuffing their faces with cookies in secret appeared in his mind. Those were good times. “I think my granny would like that.”

Pepper smiled and agreed. The new cafe was given a wonderful new start.

“New aprons and new cookie recipe! We are starting strong!” Janet cheered, and everyone nodded.

“Speaking of starting strong…” Pepper said and looked briefly at her husband, who smiled at her encouragingly. “I want to introduce another change,” she said, turning directly to Tony.

Oh uh. That was the moment. Everyone froze and Tony especially. Of course, Pepper always claimed that Tony would have a spot in the cafe, as long as he wants the job, and while he trusted Pepper, there was no solid guarantee she would hire him back.

“I thought for a long time about and I think it would be the best if…” Pepper made a pause and took a breath, “Tony would become a co-owner of the new Meow Cafe.”

“Me?!” Tony’s eyebrows raised up, and the surprise was lost in the general cheering of the group.

“That’s a great idea!”

“You deserve it, Tony!”

“Go, Tones!”

“What do you say, Tony?” Pepper asked with a smile. “I am promoting you from the head barista to a co-owner. Are you interested?”

“Peeeep…” Tony drawled, brushing both hands through his hair, unsure what to think yet. It was a huge honor, but also a huge responsibility. His fingers caught the headband with cat ears and he took it out of his hair and looked at it. If he became a co-owner, it would mean no more goofing around. No more being late. No more serving the customers, but planning and managing a group of people. And, if he was being honest with himself, he liked being a barista. He liked having direct contact with clients, and looking after the cats and job flirting with customers, granted he didn’t want to do that anymore seeing that he had Steve — his inner turmoil was interrupted when Steve put a hand on his knee and squeezed in a loving gesture. Tony’s breath hitched. If he would take the job, he would have a lot less time to spend with Steve. And…

“I really appreciate it,” Tony looked at his friend, and smiled, emotions clear in him, “but I will say no. Having my old job back is good enough for me.”

The group was disappointed and Steve smiled sadly, but understood, somehow expecting this.

“Are you sure? Maybe think about it a little more—”

“No,” Tony shook his head, interrupting Pepper, “I am sure. In fact, seeing that you want me back, I would like to become a half-time worker, instead of a full time.”

“What?! Why?!” it was Janet who cried the words out, and everyone gaped at Tony, Steve included.

“Guys, I can’t serve coffee and pet cats till rest of my life!” Tony laughed. He loved his job, but it was time to start new projects. During his free time, he got back into graphic designing and made a portfolio and had big plans. Time to focus on that, and treat Meow Cafe as a stepping stone and form of relaxation. “I am pushing thirty and—”

It was the worst timing for Steve to take a sip of his drink, as he started to choke on the liquid, quickly putting both hands to his mouth to avoid spitting on his friends again. Tony quickly patted blond’s back, helping him to calm down.

“You are thirty?!” he called out, unnecessarily loud after the coughing fit ended.

Tony narrowed eyes, sending the blond a calculating look. “In a few months, yeah, why?” he asked, and his tone told Steve to very carefully pick his words.

Steve felt a note of panic. He looked among the group and saw Rhodey and Pepper looking back at him, and he suddenly remembered that they were Tony’s peers, and very probably were the same age. Not that it mattered anyway, comparing to Steve’s twenty-eight years old, it was barely any age difference, but he always assumed that Tony was younger than him. Twenty-four, top twenty-five. He looked for help to Natasha, but the girl only kept smiling, eagerly waiting how he would get out of this one.

“Are you the same age as… everyone else?” Steve turned to Janet, and he could hear Tony roll his eyes. The brunet girl looked young, but so did Tony, and he couldn’t trust his eyes anymore.

“I am actually forty, but I keep up well,” Janet answered with a huge smile and giggled at Steve’s mortified look, as the blond totally bought it.

“Jan is a freshman in college,” Happy took pity on the baffled Steve, “and so is Bruce, if you want to know.”

Steve nodded, feeling that he made a fool out of himself. Slowly, he turned back to Tony to check if his boyfriend was still glaring at him. Unfortunately, he was. The group started talking again and Steve pulled Tony closer to himself.

“So, you were not joking when you told me that I can drink from white mugs when I get older?” he asked in a whisper, remembering the occurrence that took place in Tony’s kitchen during the movie marathon for their shared friends. That seemed to break the ice and Tony giggled in humor. He smooched his idiot boyfriend, and turned to join the conversation, that currently was on a topic about hiring a new person to fill in Tony’s absence.

“Don’t worry!” Tony called, ceasing the chatter. “I already have a replacement,” he smiled, calming everyone down. All eyes turned to him, waiting for the news. Tony just smiled mysteriously, enjoying the attention. He leaned to take Steve’s cup and took a sip of the nearly cold latte. “But it is not set in stone yet. You will find out soon. And can I get a proper coffee?! Do I have to do everything around here?!” he called dramatically and stood up to go to the coffee machine, Rhodey soon following and arguing that the coffee he had made was fine, and Tony was being a pain in the a–

Steve kept smiling, listening to the chatter around him and the sound of coffee beans being ground.

Big plans, big changes, but less and less time to adjust.

————————

<— previous part   next part —–> 

[revistasentimental]

BAD WINDOW PEOPLE

Por K. Reswob   

All windows are open even though they seem to be closed. A curtain can cover the panes, but that doesn’t mean that a creep won’t find a way to take a peep. Windows, with its many variations, are everything around me.

I opened up a book several years ago that I bought inside a Washington D.C. airport titled, The Invention of Nature. Inventing nature sounded curious to me and it had a nice cover, so I bought the book and learned some things about Alexander von Humboldt. I never finished the book in chronological order, but over the years I’ve been flipping through it, reading bits and pieces and in my opinion, it is a quintessential politics-as-usual tourist book.

What I mean is that it basically upholds all the values of pro-coloniality, if that makes sense. A book that has the potential to make every backpacker think they’re an explorer or becoming one. It’s at the very least that, because it’s so much more and I say that because I feel like the context in which I bought it is important to me. Conveniently situated in a highly surveilled Dulles International airport, invisible cameras all around me and appropriately named after a secretary of state and in my opinion also after the longest-serving C.I.A. director in history.

This book, for someone young like me traveling, could turn you into a Humboldt stan because of his alleged, but also documented disdain for slavery, but at the same time turn you into a settler, colonizing “cheap” land in the middle of the Andes. It essentially could turn you into a snitch, because that’s what Humboldt was, a spy without ever being contracted to be one, whispering into Thomas Jefferson’s ear about the people of Latin America, their crops and climate. It’s a great book for a worldly centrist to love everything about.

                                  Humboldt briefing Jefferson, 2018

A curtain can cover the panes of a window, but that too can be a window. Windows are kind of surreal to be honest, like that expression “eyes are the window to the soul” or one of Magritte’s The Human Condition paintings of painted easels in front of painted windows with painted canvases of painted landscapes. I mean, we are weird, so we too are or can be windows I think.

You know, it’s kind of haunting how ordinary it is to sit inside of an airport named after a Dulles brother or both and be spied on while acting normal at a bar while drinking an overpriced Sam Adams lager. Those things too are windows and still are, I thought, and took a quick look all around me. Is that guy in a suit sitting across the bar from me a spy? I wonder as I shift my face out toward the wet runway.

If “eyes are the window to the soul” I guess that eyes can also be windows we gaze through considering the arrangements, disarrangements, derangements, lucidities and whatever the brains, minds, souls got going on behind there. Like Donna Haraway and Marilyn Stathern said or say in some way..., it matters what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties, what knots knot knots, what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.

We are very crafty, us people, I think and if that’s reality, which sometimes I don’t really know what is, then the state is definitely much more proficient in manufacturing what we see and how it wants us to see. So, in a way Humboldt was very blind when it came to how he saw the United States of America and its founding fathers. And, in a way, I am very blind too, but at the very least I think I know how to be skeptical.

Meeting Jefferson was something the explorer and all around science man Humboldt looked forward to during his travels throughout the Americas. Like, Humboldt wrote to James Madison once or twice, another founding father of fake news liberty USA, and wrote “having witnessed the great spectacle of the majestic Andes and the grandeur of the physical world I intended to enjoy the spectacle of a free people.” 👀.

                     Humboldt blinded by the idea that the USA was moving                                                      towards a perfect   society (LOL), 2018

It’s funny, for me, in an absurd kind of way that Humboldt wanted to see civilization in all its glory, a republic “built” on the principles of liberty, when in fact, it was built on the back of his hero Thomas Jefferson’s slaves among other evil aristocrats throughout the then thirteen states and before colonies. Ok, maybe the two guys had a few good discussions about nature, philosophy, liberty and blah, blah, blah, but Jefferson really only cared about the disputed border region with Mexico, that space between the Sabine River and what gringos call the Rio Grande. And dumb-dumb Humboldt was happy to assist, because his admiration for the United States and the air he breathed while in it was ‘liberty.’

The scam of liberty and freedom (now stronger than ever before). The ruse of liberty and justice for all Alexander was blind to was, however, selective while in the presence of so-called farmer and founder of USA Tommy… True centrist behavior of turning the cheek, but then later tell Jefferson’s friend or architect that slavery was a ‘disgrace.’

That is one of the beginnings of the United States’s imperial statecraft, happening circa 1803. Here we are two hundred plus years later and we haven’t learned a damn thing about the fake news propaganda of freedom in the United States. It’s a dream, the American dream is a sham, it’s a bad dream. A bad dream where being spied on is normal and becomes more normal.

I’m supposed to be on my way back to Mexico, but it’s raining, my flight is delayed and this place is already under my skin, so I order another beer. You know, it wasn’t too too long ago that I learned about Allen Dulles, the C.I.A. director, a window I opened up to some very ominous terrain. Call it a window, call it a can-of-worms, call it what you want, but what did the worms ever do to you?

The Dulles brothers, without a doubt, are horrible people. Allen, he roughly (to put it lightly) invented the modern intelligence system we are way too familiar with. He paved, in a way, he paved the dirt road that people like Jefferson cleared the way for. Maybe that is a stretch, but Humboldt, basically became an informant to the United States. The information that he shared was likely hoarded, kept and shared between a private group of individuals scheming power moves. Today we know that as classified information. Today, there is a lot of that, a lot worse than that and it’s only every now and then that the public gets some redacted version of a truth that hasn’t been ripped up.

                                         A History of Bad Men, 2019

The Central Intelligence Agency is packed full of vulgarities, whether it’s the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état that Allen Dulles planned or whether it was the vile experiments of trying to remote control living dogs, to which I imagine was to see if it could be done to people—take a look at Project MKultra. Take a look at how the C.I.A. director under Richard Nixon, Richard Helms (two dicks in a pod) ordered for those files to be destroyed in the middle of the Watergate Scandal… Isn’t it curious that we know more about a break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters than MKUltra?

As Efrim Menuck wrote to sing in a song called “Godbless Our Dead Marines” for Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, “When the world is sick, can’t no one be well. But, I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong.” And so, we just move on.

(To be continued?)

— K. Reswob | May, 2020

[myaekingheart]

So it seems as though I've spiralled back into another one of those spells where I just hardcore hate myself. For the past couple days, all I've been able to think about it is the thought of getting a job, ever since I had that stupid fucking dream the other night. I dreamed that I was working the register at some upscale fast food restaurant taking orders as people filtered in, got their food, and left. I couldn't help but think to myself, "God this is so easy! Why didn't get a job earlier?" and then five minutes later, I broke out into a massive panic attack mid-dream. Numb hands, cold sweat, hyperventilating, feeling like the place was closing in on myself, the whole enchilada and that's when I realized why I don't have a job. Granted, I know anxiety is no excuse for being unemployed, I'm not an idiot. Ever since that dream, though, I just have not been able to stop thinking about jobs and how I don't have one. I don't necessarily want one but at the same time, I keep feeling increasingly uncomfortable with my parents sending me money for all my bills and rent and whatnot. I feel bad that they're stuck supporting me like they always have. I kind of want the independence of having a job and earning my own money, anyways. There's just all the stuff holding me back and making me feel like an absolute failure, like the fact that I am 20 years old and have never worked a day in my life. I feel like a total scam because as I sat here today filling out job applications, applications that wouldn't let me move forward without submitting a resume, this disgusting tinge of guilt and disgust fell upon me as I had to sit here and fill out that I had no work experience. And I know the application is only step one. As much as saying I have no experience pains me, I think the thought of anything that might come next is even worse. I've filled out job applications before, twice for Spirit Halloween, both times of which at the end of the process, they've immediately told me I'm either not qualified enough or not what they're looking for and that was fine. I don't fear rejection in job applications. If anything, a gross part of me prays for rejection because that means I can get out of this. The thought of moving forward and getting a job offer terrifies me. I don't like thinking about having to step foot in these places for an interview, having to paste a smile on my face and lie about how I'm a team player and enjoy being a corporate slave, and explaining why I've never had a job before at my age. I don't like the thought of getting hired and then having to work a menial, pointless job for shit pay and being trapped in a store filled with people complaining left and right at me about things that are probably not beyond my control. I am honestly such a difficult fucking person because like I know I need a job but I don't want a dead-end job that won't have any positive effect on the future of my career. I don't want to work a pointless job that has nothing to do with what I enjoy or strive to pursue as an actual career. I want to be a writer so why not look at freelance writing jobs? I did and I can tell you that the results are not good. I want a job that parallels my career goals but I don't want to sit here and waste my time ghostwriting someone's novel, working my fingers to the bone only to get zero credit for the hours of time I've spent on this thing, or churning out pointless articles for someone too fucking stupid to write it themselves. I applied for a job at a local Books a Million and at my university's bookstore because I figured, hey! Why the fuck not? It's as good as I'm going to get, I guess. The thing that terrifies me about Books a Million, though, is that I just feel like I'm not fucking good enough. I feel like I really know next to nothing about the majority of the books out there today, I feel like I don't read enough to work at a bookstore and that if someone came up to me with a question about something, there's a fat chance I wouldn't have any fucking clue what they were talking about. I've never even read Harry Potter (nor do I care to-- I tried but I'm one of the few who just could not get into it). The university bookstore is really the one I'm banking on most, honestly. It would be nice to get to know my way around campus before starting classes there in January, plus it would be the easiest to get to in terms of transportation. Which brings up another point of contention: I am 20 fucking years old and I still don't know how to drive. I don't even have my permit. I've never been behind the wheel of a car save for Mario Kart and the Tomorrowland Speedway and if my experience with either of those is any indication, it's probably a good thing that I don't drive. I should've learned a long time ago but I have always put it off, terrified of getting in an accident and knowing full well that I will without a doubt get overwhelmed because of literally every single thing you have to pay attention to and worry about. I feel like I'll definitely get massive sensory overload behind the wheel of a car. Again, however, not a valid excuse for never learning how to drive. It's not that I enjoy people having to chaffeur me everywhere. I wish I could be totally autonomous and independent and in my dreams, I am, but in reality I know I'm just a failure who knows next to nothing about being an adult and am failing miserably at it. My boyfriend keeps telling me he wants me to get a moped, thinking that that would be better for me because it'd be easier to be aware of my surroundings on one of those as opposed to a car but I'm skeptical. Not that I wouldn't love to come off as a motorcycle bitch or whatever but still. My only other option is the bus which I mean, I didn't have a problem with that. I've taken public transit thousands of times in my hometown to my community college, but never in this city. And that makes all the difference, honestly. My hometown was dull suburban where nothing ever happened except the occasional heart attack during bingo. There were sketchy people, sure, but it wasn't in massive volume. Here, however, things are vastly different. This is the city where there's homeless people and drug dealers abound! My boyfriend is very protective of me and he's always made off this facade about wanting me to stay safe, liking the fact that when I'm home he knows where I am and that nothing bad will happen to me, that he's skeptical of the bus and doesn't exactly feel safe with the idea of me taking said bus. It's built up this understanding in my head that the outside world is dangerous and that I should avoid going out there alone at all costs. But he's also a little frustrated that my parents never encouraged me to learn to drive before I moved up here, because he knows learning to drive up here is going to hell and he wishes I would've gotten it done sooner. Which also makes me feel like a failure. Like, how pathetic could I possibly be? Never worked a day in her life, never been behind the wheel of a car. I'm practically a child. And I sure as hell feel like one, too. I'm embarrassed and ashamed of myself for letting myself get so far behind. I've avoided becoming an adult for so long that now I have absolutely no choice and I'm not even the slightest bit prepared. All I want to do is stay home and eat Oreos and lay around in pajamas writing shitty fanfiction but I can't do that because I am an adult with my own apartment 300 miles away from my family. My academic achievements shine but my personal achievements fall short big time and I'm so fucking ashamed of myself for that. I should've taken care of this shit a long time ago. I should've grown up a long time ago but I'm terrified. I'm so fucking terrified. In a way, living up here still doesn't even feel like everyday reality. A part of me still processes this as temporary, like I'm on a trip to visit my long distance boyfriend like how it was for the past year and then at the end of the week, my parents will show up and take me back home and everything will go back to normal. But that's not normal anymore. This is my new normal and I need to learn to adjust to it. This is my home now and this is my life now. I can't sit around on my ass like a house guest anymore because I'm not a house guest. This is my house and my new town and I'm not a dependent living under my parent's roof anymore. I am a full-fledged adult and I need to start acting like one, even if I'd rather shoot myself in the mouth than go through this horror. I still don't feel ready. I don't know if I'll ever feel ready. I'm so motherfucking scared and the worst part is knowing that this is all my fault.

[ahnsael]

Last night at work went mostly smoothly. A person I had to babysit the night before behaved.

The only semi-problem I had was that we had a player who says that he hit four-of-a-kind on video poker, and had a coupon for a “100 Coin Bonus” if they hit the four-of-a-kind on video poker. But he forgot that he had the coupon, and kept playing. Then he realized it, and wanted the bonus. And he says he was betting $1 coins (which would be a 5-coin bet to qualify for the coupon, so a $5 bet). So he would have gotten a $100 free play bonus.

But...he kept playing, not thinking about the coupon. And when he realized it, he said “just key the machine and check the history.” But the thing is, our owner yelled at us pretty good a few months back about doing things like that. It violates Nevada gaming regulations to key the history for a guest (we can do so for an internal investigation, but not at a guest’s request). And he wasn’t happy at all that I wouldn’t do it.

But...I’ve had our company’s owner yell at me twice (once over being too lenient with coupons and free play, once last month for the dismal sales at the bar that I now manage -- we had bartenders giving away booze to people who weren’t even playing, or who were only betting a few pennies, and our bar’s cash sales for the MONTH of June were about $12), and I’m not anxious to have him yell at me again. He’s a good guy overall, but...you do NOT want to see him pissed off.

The only thing is that we’re rolling out a new thing today (Tuesday). We’re switching a “match play” promotion from “we’ll put that on your account” to “the machine you’re playing will put that on your account.”

But we have to make sure everyone is enrolled in the proper “group” for it to work.

It’ shouldn’t be too bad. People have gotten used to us being adamant that we have to watch them put $10 in the machine for us to then add $10 match play to their account. But now we don’t have to watch them put $10 in, but they have to PLAY $10 in a single session to get the bonus. But only if their account is set up for it (and as of last night, we have maybe 1,500-2,000 of the 10,000+ accounts set up for it). We can set it up in seconds for them, but since it’s different than what we’ve done before, we have to be clear that they need to WAIT until we ensure their account is set up for the promotion (it’s only available to those 50 years of age and older so we can’t just automatically add everyone; we have to literally go into each individual account, check the birth date, and then add them to the group) or their play won’t count towards the bonus until we add them to that group.

So if someone shows up with EXACTLY $10 and plays before we’ve made sure they’re in the group, anything they play before that doesn’t count.

Overall, it’s a REALLY good change. In the past, when the rule was “we have to watch you put $10 in the machine, then we’ll match it with $10 free play,” people would put their $10 in, wait until we walked away, then cash out their $10 and only play the free play (the rule was that they had to play $10, but it would take up far too much time for us to stand there and watch them play that amount -- especially if they’re playing penny Keno games).

My boss even showed me a report a couple of months ago that showed players who had literally never gambled even a nickel of their own money -- and yet had received thousands of dollars in free play due to them (a) playing the system and (b) dishonest employees hooking up their friends.

Another problem, which I discovered last night when I was adding people who had participated in our last “senior day” (hoping to get most of our regulars into the system), there were people younger than 50 who were getting the free play because of certain employees who I’m surprised still have jobs hooking up their friends. And this particular person wants to be a manager. And yet even TODAY I caught him trying to play a promotional game while on the clock (and then he lied to me saying he had just “signed up but haven’t played yet” even though I could clearly see in the system that he had already played -- the only reason I didn’t push it up the ladder is because the other employee who let him play didn’t know that rule and while I REALLY want to nail this one guy I also don’t want to nail the newer employee who didn’t know any better).

Once this change is fully implemented, it will make life easier on employees and guests alike (except for those who were gaming the system, and I honestly don’t care if they don’t like the change because they were gaming the system). It won’t stop every possible instance of fraud, but it will stop all of it (for example, if someone uses their mom’s card, we won’t know unless we know it’s not THEIR card in the machine -- like if I see a man who I know as James playing and the screen says “Barbara,” I will take the card away unless/until they can prove they are actually “Barbara”).

There’s going to be a learning curve on this, for both guests and employees. And it started about 45 minutes after I was off work, so I don’t know how it’s working so far (and won’t until I arrive to work in the afternoon).

But overall, this will be a good thing. It will take human error mostly out of the equation. It will take guest fraud and employee fraud out of the equation (there still is a way that employees could hook up their friends, but...it will be harder to pull off, and there will be a computer record of it happening). And no more “here, I’ve put in my $10, now give me my free play” and then taking out the original $1 and only playing the free play.

The ways people try to scam us are endless. We even had a short-change artist in last night who tried to trade in a bunch of change, and then take back a few coins after each dollar he counted out (he did it with my Keno guy...the Keno guy caught it, but the “guest” is lucky that I was on a break at the time because this was happening right next to where I was working most of the night to enroll people in the “senior” group for Tuesday and after the second time he did it I’d have kicked him to the curb with a 72-hour trespass notice -- something my Keno guy doesn’t have the power to do, but I do).

It’s ALWAYS an adventure in the casino business.

Thank goodness tonight will be my Friday. This week has been IMMENSELY better than last week, but...I’m ready for a couple of days off after tonight.

And tonight might be a LONG night...not just with the changes for the Tuesday senior day, but because our graveyard guy isn’t in the best of health right now, and we had a bit of a scare a month or two ago, so...if he can’t work, I may be there for many more hours than scheduled.

But I’d rather stay late than to have his health compromised. I was ready to send him home tonight after hearing how bad he looked yesterday morning, but he wouldn’t have it. But if his health gets worse...I could pull a 12-16 hour shift tonight.

But for those of use who have lasted more than a year (as of just over a week ago I am part of that tiny club), his health is paramount. Again, we had a scare not long ago, where he missed a couple of days. If he misses work, we’ll deal. We'd rather keep him and cover when needed than to lose him entirely. As I’ve told several guests and employees, this guy is the very definition of a “good person.” 

But he’s also a stubborn old cuss, and I’m wondering if I should have let him relieve me. We already had a contingency plan. He said he wasn’t feeling great. But he was also adamant that I didn’t send him home last night and call another manager to cover. And I respect him, so I respected his decision, but also told him that if “the room starts spinning” like he said it did last night, call [this person] and [this person] will come on and cover, and THEY will call [other person who had already been given a heads-up on the situation] to cover the morning until I get there in the afternoon.

So I really hope his night goes smoothly.