#lamenting over lost star wars

[justanotherbadbatchfan]

So, the recent cancellation of The Acolyte has me thinking about another lost Star Wars story. Except this one never aired a single episode.

One of my biggest issues with the New Republic era is the lack of much meaningful exploration of the New Republic itself (outside of books, The Convert from Mando S3 and scattered scenes elsewhere). Which is a real shame because there are so many interesting topics to explore with especially early in its existence. How does the rebel alliance hope to transition into an actual functioning government? On a smaller scale how did former rebels adjust to their new lives after the war? What became of the more radical rebel factions? Did some of them start fighting The New Republic? How did heavily pro imperial worlds respond to the change of power? More on the extremely wholesome New Republic amnesty program?

If Lucasfilm wants to push the New Republic era as the main focus of Star Wars storytelling going forward they should seriously consider reviving this show. Even in the absence of Cara Dune there are plenty of other new republic characters who could make for a pretty fun ensemble (Carson Teva, Zeb, Kallus, Hera, Omega? Potentially Mayfeld???) and the option to create new ones. Sadly I feel like it might already be too late, would love to be proven wrong though.

[hottpinkpenguin]

AAAAAH I JUST FOUND YOU AND I LOVE YOUR WORK 🫶🤍 please release more smut 🙈 HAHAHAHAH more nikolai lantsov too please 🥰🥵

can you do a smut with "This won't hurt." "Like hell it won't." HAHAHAHAHAHHA nikolai lantso x reader 🙈

thank youuuu 😘🫶🤍

Hurt Me - Nikolai Lantsov X Fem!Reader

18+ only!!! MINORS DNI

A/N: apparently the cure for the terrible writer's block I've had is absolute filthy smut! who knew?! thanks anon for this request, and i'm sorry it took me so long to get to it! i'm finally back y'all!!!!!!!!! Word Count: 3,658 Warnings: unprotected sex; anal sex; oral sex mutual; praise kink; fingering; no lube (don't do that); sprinkles of Dom/Sub vibes but super minor

“Doesn’t everyone love a little pain with their pleasure?”

Nikolai threw the covers off his body, rolling over with an exasperated sigh in the stifling darkness of his bedchamber. Ever since he’d heard you say those words over one too many glasses of kvas last week, he couldn’t think of anything else. Let alone sleep. Each time he dreamt, his mind tormented him with fantasies that left him sweating, restless, and hard. 

That was his predicament now. The dream he’d just woken from was receding from his consciousness as his mind fully surfaced out of sleep. Part of him welcomed the reprieve from his insatiable lust, but part of him lamented the loss of what had felt so real. He grabbed at the fading flickers of his dream: the sound of your breathing as it quickened, the feeling of your soft skin under his palms, the sight of you straddling his lap, your hips driving down onto his hard cock, chasing your high and pulling him closer to his own… 

“God damn it.” He sat up in bed, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. A faint sheen of sweat danced across his shirtless torso. His dick was hardening the more he clung to the sensations of his dreams. He stood from the bed, frustrated in all the wrong ways, and strode over to the double doors that opened onto the private balcony overlooking the Grand Palace’s summer garden. It was a warm, humid night; a sheer curtain of clouds obscured the stars and cast a hazy ring around the moon. A gentle breeze blew the sweet scent of night jasmine into the bedchamber, cooling the sweat on his chest. Nikolai tried to still his breathing, forcing his mind away from reminiscing about you and onto less gratifying topics. 

His efforts paid off for a few moments, his mind momentarily landing on unrelated nonsense like the guest list for his family’s upcoming ball and the names of long-disputed Ravkan territories. But, inevitably, Nikolai’s mind fell idle and turned back to you. At least he wasn’t hard now, but the dying embers of his desire wouldn’t require much encouragement to reignite. 

Never going to happen, he chided himself sternly, swatting away images of your sensual face. These images were true memories - not the conjurings of his sleeping psyche. You were his brother’s betrothed, after all. Even if it was an arranged marriage, Nikolai shuddered to contemplate the implications of seeing his desires through. Most of all, the implications for you, if the secret was ever discovered… 

She’s not happy with the match though. Surely, something could be arranged. 

Nikolai’s hopeful side - or maybe it was just his sexually frustrated side? - tossed back poorly thought-out rebuttals to the arguments of logic and propriety. Before long, he was lost in thought, his brows furrowed and his arms crossed as he leaned against the doorframe to his balcony. The two sides of him warred with each other, all while a simmering passion threatened to boil over once again.

He was so distracted by his own thoughts that he missed the first knock on his door. The second one was louder, more insistent. He startled, an irrational guilt overcoming him as he wondered for a split second if he’d awoken someone, maybe by calling out your name in his sleep or some similarly mortifying mishap. Shaking that thought from his head, he made his way over to the door that led into the hallway from his chamber. He opened the door a crack, surprised that anyone else would be awake at this late hour. 

The sight of your eyes, wide and pleading, shimmering in the darkness of the hallway ignited the need that had thrown him out of his dreams. His mouth went dry as he stumbled over his tongue. 

“What are you doing?” he whispered urgently through the cracked doorway. You cast a nervous glance down the darkened hallway before leaning close, so close Nikolai could smell the hint of bergamot and orange peel from your shampoo. 

“Please, can I come in?” Your voice was low and rough, like it had been dragged over gravel. Nikolai felt his cock twitch appreciatively. He grit his teeth as he contemplated for the briefest moment whether to acquiesce or not. You were here - right here - and there was something in the rise and fall of your chest that told him why you had come to his chamber in the dead of night. His dream was so close he could literally smell it. 

Vasily will have her killed if you do this. 

The thought came from a small and quickly shrinking part of his mind, but it sent ice through his veins. Nikolai knew it was true. If Vasily found out that Nikolai had a midnight rendezvous with his bride-to-be, even if the meeting went no further than conversation, Vasily’s preening arrogance at securing your hand in marriage would turn murderous in an instant. That rage wouldn’t land on his younger brother, but on you. 

“Y/n, you shouldn’t be h-”

“I know, Niko. But please… I need you.”

Your eyes swallowed Nikolai’s arguments, and before he had the conscious thought to do so, he stepped aside and swung the door open to allow you through.

You entered with a serene confidence that stunned Nikolai. Before the door had quietly latched back into place, you had connected your lips with his. A husky groan of relief clawed its way out of your throat at the contact, and Nikolai felt the last paper-thin wall of resistance snap. He grabbed at you, his hands ripping through the lace-trimmed silk of your nightgown with ease to expose your back and shoulders to him. 

“We really shouldn’t,” he argued pointlessly between gasping breaths as the two of you explored each others’ mouths. You shushed him by twining your hands in his hair and thrusting your tongue past his lips. Both of you knew this was a horrendous, dangerous, and potentially damning decision, but the chance for turning back had passed you both by long ago. This had become inevitable between the two of you long before tonight, Nikolai realized as he latched his mouth onto the soft skin at the base of your neck, grabbing a fistful of your hair and gently pulling your head back to expose your jawline and the moon-drenched top of your breasts to him.

Nikolai felt his cock stiffen against the warmth of you, your hips grinding down against the top of his leg. Your hands were all over him, nails grazing over his exposed chest, up over his shoulders and down the planes of his shoulder blades. He felt drunk, surrounded by you as he let his greedy mouth dive down to your breasts. He pulled the half-tattered gown down, letting it glide over your ass to the floor like water. Your breasts were full, nipples hard against the night air. He grabbed one, kneading the sensitive bud between his fingers as his mouth latched to the other. You gasped, grabbing the back of his head and pulling him down onto you as your body rose into his mouth. He heard you moan his name, the sound even sweeter than the pale approximation he’d managed to conjure in his dreams. He watched as one of your hands shifted from his skin to yours, trailing down the front of your stomach until it buried itself between your legs. Your pace quickened as the combination of his mouth and hands on your breasts complimented the arousal you offered yourself with your fingers. Nikolai could smell your sex as you continued to touch yourself, melting further into passion with each passing moment. 

“The bed,” he commanded, pushing you rougher than needed towards the disarray of sheets and pillows where he slept. You obeyed, your eyes sparkling at the note of control that tinted his words. Doesn’t everyone like a little pain with their pleasure? Your words flooded back to him, suddenly giving him an idea. 

“Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice a breathless growl. You didn’t hesitate, nodding as you sank down onto the bed and began working on the lacings of his trousers. Nikolai let you undress him fully, his dick springing free of his pants eagerly. He watched with undiluted need as you licked a long stripe from the base of his cock to the head, moaning slightly as you took his length into your mouth.

“Fuck, that’s good.” He threw his head back, his hands coming to the back of your head, coaxing you lower onto his member. The sensation of your lips wrapping around his shaft, your tongue dancing on the sensitive head, and your hands confidently pressing on a spot directly behind his balls made him see stars. You began to work your mouth up and down on his cock, bottoming out at the back of your throat each time. Nikolai’s heart shuddered in his chest, the muscles of his back and buttocks squeezing as he found himself shockingly close to orgasm far too soon for his liking. 

Using what very little composure he had left, he pulled your head off of him. You pouted up at him, the glint of frustration in your eye told him that you knew exactly how close you’d had him to losing control and that you liked it.

“I need you inside me.” Nikolai shivered at your words, mesmerized as you leaned back on the bed, exposing yourself to him invitingly. Your pussy was swollen and glistening with wetness. Normally, Nikolai would have driven himself inside you right then and there, risking a premature end to the passion for the bliss of feeling his cock totally surrounded by you. But, if Nikolai’s plan for mixing pain with pleasure was going to come to fruition, he needed you wetter and he needed himself further from climax.

He joined you on the bed, kneeling in between your legs and guiding your thighs onto his shoulders. You propped your head up on a mountain of pillows, excitement all over your face as you registered what was to come. You wanted a view, and he was more than happy to oblige.

He closed his mouth over your pussy, his tongue lapping at the juice. You gasped, arching your back and writhing on the soft sheets. 

“Nikolai, my God, that’s good.” Your praise egged him on, and he let his lips quickly find their way to your clit. Gently, he danced his tongue over it in a figure-eight pattern, alternating in a few flicks and sucks. The sounds that spilled out of you were quickly becoming less coherent, your body beginning to tighten, legs trembling ever so slightly. Nikolai pressed his hands against the back of your ass, bending your legs towards your breast and giving him a better angle before diving back into your pussy. He let his movements become less calculated, his tongue and lips slapping and slurping against you. You cried out, quickly stifling yourself with a hand over your mouth. He glanced up at you, your eyes falling closed under heavy lids. You were close to breaking loose, your pussy beginning to clench and your body quivering like a leaf in a strong breeze. Nikolai let one of your legs go, penetrating you with two quick fingers. His mouth returned to focus on your clit while his fingers began to stroke quickly and forcefully at the throbbing walls of your vagina. 

“My god, Nikolai, I’m gonna cum!” You were trying to quiet yourself, but pleasure had warped the edges of your perception and dulled your care for caution. Your words felt like a vice around Nikolai’s own pleasure. He ground his lips down onto your clit as you began to mewl and quake under him, his fingers drenching in the evidence of your pleasure as your sex contracted on them. He lapped and thrust you through your orgasm, watching as your face contorted in pure bliss, your breasts heaving and your thighs shaking. Nikolai forced himself to commit the vision and the taste of your pleasure to memory. He guided you down the other side of your orgasm, and when you finally sat up to look down at him, cheeks flushed and forehead beaded with sweat, Nikolai let himself up from between your legs. 

“You’re going to ruin me for other men, you know,” you told him breathlessly. “I’ll never have enough of you.” Nikolai’s pride roared at the praise, his heart pounding on the inside of his ribs. 

“Flip over.” Although it was a command, Nikolai knew you heard the promise in his words: there’s more to come. You obliged, rolling onto your belly as you picked your hips off of the sheets. You looked back at him, a mix of curiosity and impatience as Nikolai spat into his hand. 

“We can’t risk it,” he explained as he stroked his spit over his stiff cock. “I won’t risk anything happening to you if Vasily finds out.” For a brief moment, your expression turned serious. You understood what Nikolai was referring to. Your wedding to Vasily was still months away - plenty of time to begin showing if, Saints forbid, this led to a pregnancy. Neither of you could risk that, but especially not you. 

You’d never done what Nikolai was suggesting before, and although you’d always been curious, you felt a prick of anxiety. Something in your eyes must have betrayed your fear, because Nikolai stretched forward, hovering his body over you as he balanced on strong forearms. He kissed you, this kiss less fiery than the ones you’d shared earlier at the doorway. It had a note of softness to it, reassurance. 

“Only if you want to,” he murmured against your lips. The warmth of his body around you, the sound of his calm voice twining around your ears, melted away the nervous energy. 

“I want to,” you replied softly, lips reconnecting with his. He reared back, coming up to kneel on his knees. He grabbed your hips and raised them until they were level with his own. His cock waited expectantly, slick with his own spit and girthy.

“This won’t hurt,” he offered in what you knew was meant to be reassuring. 

You looked back at him with a sly smirk. “Like hell it won’t,” you shot back. You felt Nikolai line himself up with your ass, pressing gently at your entrance. The sensation was different, the tightness much more than what you’d expected. You felt him hesitate - you knew he was waiting for a sign from you, for you to lead him. 

You pressed your hips backward slowly. He steadied his slick cock in his hands, and you watched as he bit his own lip, staring down at the sight of you accepting his length. 

You gasped as you felt the full pressure of his head enter your body, stretching you in a blinding spasm. He stilled, looking up at you questioningly. The sight of him - chest heaving with exertion but his attention wholly devoted to you, letting you take control - relaxed you. You felt the muscles squeezing his dick release. In a moment of impulse, you drove your hips back with a hard jerk until his cock was completely sheathed in your ass. It was incredible, a mix of pain and bliss you’d never felt before. Your pussy twitched appreciatively, and you felt the beginnings of another climax begin to bubble in your core.

“We all love pain and pleasure, Nikolai,” you told him as his mouth fell open into a wide O, his eyes rolling back in his head at the sensation. “Take it.���

His eyes snapped to you, and you nodded, confirming that you’d just given him the permission to let loose. His hands gripped onto your hip bones as he slid himself backwards, his dick almost completely springing free before he buried himself inside you once again. Over and over he thrusted, in and out, his movements hard but controlled. The sound of slapping skin filled the room. You felt him bend forward, one hand finding its way to your clit. He continued to pound into you, the new sensation exciting and gratifying. When he began to dance his fingertips around your pink bud in small, controlled circles, you felt the edge of bliss roar up to meet you. 

You reached backwards, steadying yourself up on all fours with one hand as the other grabbed at the back of his thigh. You met his own forward thrusts with a backward hitch of your own. Nikolai gasped, his free hand digging into the flesh on your hip. 

“I’ve dreamt of you for so long,” he muttered, his words halting as he continued to pound you from behind. His movements were getting less controlled, and your attention was wavering as your orgasm began to overtake your awareness. You felt yourself slacken slightly under him. The hand he’d devoted to your clit retreated, finding its way back to your hip for better leverage. You replaced his fingers with your own, moaning his name in encouragement. 

“I’m close, baby,” he replied gruffly. His pace quickened until his thrusts knocked the air from your lungs, your knees practically levitating off the bed as he took you with the roughness his own orgasm needed.

You fell apart against him as he slammed into you, over and over again. Tears pricked at the corner of your eyes, your entire body convulsing with a new pleasure. Your fingers coaxed your clit to its fever pitch. You let yourself slacken slightly as Nikolai’s hips drove into you one last time. He reached down and pulled you up until you were flush against him, your back against his warm torso. He buried his face in your hair as you felt his cock release inside you, your name sighing in and out of his mouth with each breath. The two of you plummeted together into bliss, each of you lost to the moment. Only the heat between your bodies and the feel of his strong arms wrapped across your chest tethered your mind to the ground. The rest of you floated on a torrent of blossoming bliss. 

You weren’t sure how long you stayed like that, tangled together like vines. It was long enough that you felt him begin to soften inside you. Bodily needs forced the two of you to come down from the clouds. He withdrew from you gently, cooing soft praise into your ear as he kissed your neck. 

“You were so good for me,” he whispered. The sound sent shivers up and down your spine. You twisted around to kiss him, your lips finding his easily. He was trembling somewhat, overstimulated. You smiled against his lips, a hand tracing the hard edge of his jaw. 

“Get me a towel?” you asked. Nikolai’s eyes opened, and he nodded eagerly. His commanding demeanor evaporated, replaced by an assiduous lover. He clumsily shuffled off the bed, dragging his trousers on haphazardly as he hurried over the wash basin in the corner of his chamber. He doused two cloths in the water, warmed from the underside by still-glowing embers from the now cold fireplace, and returned to you. He offered you one which you used to clean yourself, while the other he gently wiped across your brow and down your neck. He lifted the hair from your neck, dabbing at the base of your skull and along your collarbones. You’d broken into a sweat from the night’s exertions, but it was quickly cooling on your skin as you felt your body sliding towards what promised to be a deep sleep. The warmth from the washcloth felt divine against your skin. You groaned appreciatively as Nikolai ran the cloth down the length of your arms before moving on to your breasts. You let him continue to attend to you as you sank into his bed. 

You wondered if he’d argue with you spending the night. It wasn’t the wise decision by any means, and it only increased the risk of Vasily finding out. You still had many hours before the palace servants would begin their morning rounds of stoking fires and heating tub water. They would be the first to discover you missing your own chamber and displaced in Nikolai’s bed. You trusted your own hand servants to keep the secret, but knew nothing of Nikolai’s personal staff. 

But, much to your contentment, he offered no rebuttal. Instead, he wiped you down with tender attentiveness and pulled the warm blankets over your naked body. You heard him wring out the washcloths into the basin. A few moments later, he slid into bed next to you. You turned your back to him and he molded against your body, an arm weaving around your side to hold you close. When he stilled behind you, you could feel the whisper of his breath tickling your ear and the reassuring beat of his heart against your back. 

“You’re not the only one who’s ruined, you know.” His voice was so quiet it almost didn’t pull you up from the fog of sleep. He planted a soft kiss just beneath your earlobe. You squirmed deeper into his embrace, a smile playing across your lips. 

“I’m afraid, my prince,” you replied after a few moments, “that this will indeed hurt.” 

Both of you knew that you were speaking to the kind of hurt that stays with you, a hurt that bruises your heart and bends your life under its weight. But neither of you were willing to forgo the pleasure you’d found tonight. You were in too deep now, and the future would have to take care of itself. 

“That’s alright, love. We all like a little pain with our pleasure.” 

You giggled at Nikolai’s quip, snuggling against him once more. For the first time since meeting, you each found an uninterrupted, dreamless sleep…

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

500 polls summary

And now our 500th poll is over.

A game that stayed at the top for...every precedent summaries has lost its throne.

Here is a Summary of these 500 polls results (with some comparaisons to the 400th poll summary):

The 10 Most Known Games :

1 Call of Cthlju (3% never heard of) NEW

2 Pathfinder 2e (3,20%)

3 Cyberpunk (3.60%)

4 Shadowrun (8.30%)

5 Mage The Awakening (9.20%) NEW

6 GURPS (10.5%) NEW

7 Warhammer fantasy roleplaying (10.90%)

8 Dungeon World (13%)

9 Fate Core (13.10%)

10 Thirsty sword lesbian (13.50 %)

3 new game in this top : Call of Cthulhu, Mage the awakening, GURPS.

This means Mage the Ascension,Apocalypse world and Exalted are out of the Top 10

The 10 Most Played Games

1 Call of Cthulhu 43.50% NEW

2 Pathfinder 2e 42%

3 Monster of the Week 36.40 %

4 Chronicles of Darkness 34.70%

5 Fate Core 33.20%

6 The Quiet Year 31.70%

Below this line, the played part was not the majority on the poll

7 Dungeon World 30.60%

8 Shadowrun 30.40%

9 Blades in the Dark 28.60 %

9 Star Wars Edge of the Empire 28.60 %

10 Lancer 26,10%

One new game in the top Most Played : Call of Cthulhu who dethroned Pathfinder

Mutant and Masterminds is out the Top 10

The 10 Most Voted on Polls

1 Dallas The Television RPG 8013 votes

2 I'm sorry did you say street magic ? 1593

3 Wanderhome 1187

4 One HONK Before Midnight 1163

5 Fight Truck 1044

6 Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine 1026

7 Buffy The Vampire Slayer RPG 995 NEW

8 The Quiet Year 953

9 Dialect 893

10 Mork Borg 890

Only one new game on the most voted top : Buffy the vampire slayer

Pathfinder is out of the top 10

Percentage of Games per Decade

2020s: 270 polls (+ 58), 54% ↑

2010s : 121 polls (+ 21), 24.2% ↓

2000s : 55 polls (+ 14), 11% ↑

1990s : 28 polls (+ 3), 5.6% ↓

1980s : 23 polls (+ 4), 4.6% ↓

1970s : 3 polls (+0), 0.6% ↓

Most Known Game from each Decade

1970s : Traveller 29.30% Never Heard of

1980s : Call of Cthulhu 3% NEW

1990s : Mage The Ascension 14.80%

2000s : Pathfinder 3.20%

2010s : Dungeon World 13%

2020s : Thirsty Sword Lesbians 13.50%

Some games have been dethroned ! Call of Cthulhu has become the game of the 80s instead of Cyberpunk

Will someone dethroned Pathfinder for the 2000s decade ?

Which country do most games comes from ? ( the arrows apply to the percentage, not the position)

1 USA : 310 polls (+ 64), 62% ↑

2 UK : 55 polls(+14), 11 % ↑

3 France (+1 ↓) ; Canada (+6 ↑) : 19 polls, 3.8%

4 Australia 14 polls (+5 ), 2.8% ↑

5 Unknown 12 polls (+3) 2.4% ↑

6 Italy(+0 ↓), Japan (+ 2 ↑) : 9 polls, 1.8%

7 Sweden : 8 polls (+0), 1.6% ↓

8 New Zealand/Aotearoa : 7 polls (+2), 1.4% ↑

9 Finland (+0 ) 5 polls, 1% ↓

10 Germany (+1 ↑) Spain (+0 ↓) , Scotland ( +0 ↓) : 4 polls, 0.8%

11 Phillipines (+0 ↓), Ireland (+2 ↑) 3 polls, 0.6%

12 Brazil (+0 ↓), Denmark (+0 ↓) : 2 polls, 0.4%

13 Bandgladesh (+0 ↓), Malta (+0 ↓), Malaysia (+0 ↓), Mexico (+0 ↓), Netherlands (+0 ↓), Norway (+0 ↓) , Russia (+0 ↓), Singapore (+0 ↓), Slovenia(+0 ↓), South Africa (+0 ↓), Trinidad (+1) : 1 poll, 0.2%

We discovered a game from 1 new country : Trinidad

Please continue submitting games from other countries, and check the unknown ones to see if you know where they're from. Don't hesitate to submit non translated games

Most Known Game per Country

Australia : Mausritter 34.70% Never Heard of

Bandladesh : Midnight in a Perfect World 95.20%

Brasil : CBR+PNK 54.40%

Canada : Monsterhearts 16.90%

Denmark : Red Rook Revolt : 89.10%

Finland : Lamentations of the Flame Princess 44%

France : In Nomine 60.20%

Germany : The Dark Eye 62.40%

Ireland : TWarhammer 40k Wrath and Glory 30.50% NEW

Italy : Fabula Ultima 43.10%

Japan : Ryuutama 52.30%

Malaysia : Lumen Ryder Core 79.20%

Malta : Flabbergasted 78.80%

Mexico : Nahual 81%

Netherland : Foul Play 72.30%

New Zealand / Aotearoa : Monster of the Week 15.20 %

Norway : Itras By 85.30%

Phillipines : Gubat Banwa 36.80%

Russia : Horror Movie World 89.90%

Scotland : Delve A Solo Map Drawing Game 46%

Singapore : Hearts of Wulin 63.90%

Slovenia : Ultraviolet Grasslands 59.50%

South Africa : Nihilation 93.90%

Spain : Eyes on the Price 63.90%

Sweden : Tales from the Loop 18.70%

Trinidad : Nielsenauts 95.20% NEW

United Kingdom : Warhammer fantasy 10.90%

USA : Call of Cthulhu 3% NEW

Unknown : Fellowship 45%

All the results and the submitted games can be found here

To submit a game, go here

[iwasthewind]

I'm so mad about this year's lantern rite lmao. It was centred around Menogias, the Geo Yaksha. Xiao's dead comrade and close friend. His official title was General Kapisas. He's based off Sun Wukong.

And there was nothing about him exept for a few random lines? Barely anything? I don't understand why. This was what Xianyun said about him- completely randomly- and then went back to talking about something else???

"He possessed a singular talent for clothing designs. He had an exquisite eye for not just fabric selection and colour pairing, but also for what accessories could best accentuate a garment's overall styling." (Dialogue one.)

"At a gathering of adepti, Bonanus (hydro Yaksha. She and Menogias went mad with Karmic Debt and killed each other. She and the Pyro Yaksha, Indarius, were presumably close friends. Bonanus' official title was General Chizapus and she seemed to be a gentle person.) once complained in secret to the ladies in attendance that the skirt Menogias made for her was too long and impractical, lamenting that it would only hinder her in battle." (Dialogue two.)

"However, when one asked Menogias his opinion, he remarked that the train of the skirt would serve to enhance her adeptal countenance by exemplifying a certain elegance. Menogias was that type of person. When it came to topics relating to garments and accessories, not even Rex Lapis could best his stubbornness." (Dialogue three.)

AND THAT'S IT?? Menogias designed Zhongli's outfits. Menogias fought in the archon war and was one of the Yakshas that sealed Guizhong away when she passed. He was one of the central figures in Xiao's life and Xiao grieved him terribly after he died. His death along with his siblings' deaths impacts Xiao till this day. He was like a brother to Xiao. Xiao talks in a quest (I don't remember which, sorry) about how Menogias once mentioned wanting to live a peaceful mortal's life-but in the end Menogias lost his sanity for the sake of his nation and his people and killed his sister, someone he held very, very dear. It's tragic. It's heartbreaking. His karmic debt took over his mind and destroyed someone he wanted to protect and live a mortal's life with. Menogias is such a wonderful character? When I saw in the livestream that the main lantern was Menogias, I gasped and sat up. Yaksha lore?! Menogias centric lantern rite?! Instead we dealt with Gaming's fucking family problems. Why couldn't that have been a sub-plot? Why didn't they use Gaming's stubbornness and passion as a parallel to MENOGIAS' stubbornness, passion and ferocity of both mind and body? Why???? Zero stars, I'm admittedly biased as fuck. I love the Yakshas and I wanted Yaksha lore- and this isn't like a "ugh I didn't get what I wanted" thing it's a "this year's lantern rite had so much potential that was absolutely wasted"

Like sure, the Xianyun-Shenhe convo was comedy gold, Gaming running to his dad and hugging him was sweet, but? Couldn't that have been a sub-plot? Menogias was this year's Mingxiao lantern. I don't care if they executed it badly and just brought him up via long winded exposition- the fact that barely anyone knows about Menogias is so sad and it could genuinely have made for such a good story? The fact that Xiao didn't even attend a festival more or less dedicated to him and his family? When "Lantern Rite Festival is a festival celebrated every year, on the day of the first full moon to commemorate heroes of the past."

I wish Xiao could have at least seen the Mingxiao lantern from afar. I wonder how he would have reacted to watch the people he protects honour someone he loved so much. Would he have cried? Could we have gotten a scene where an adeptus comforts Xiao? That was his brother.

Xianyun hangs out with her children, Zhongli with Hu Tao, the Fontaine cast randomly drops in which was kind of nice to see since Furina (<333333) came along. Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper (I cannot believe they got NPC treatment, what the fuck) hung out but Xiao was alone until the traveller releases a lantern with him. On lantern rite. Which is a festival more or less meant to commemorate him. He got what, a minute of screen time?? Two? Three?

In Xianyun's story quest (and obviously this is a spoiler for her story quest) we see just how much the traveller misses their sibling, how desperately they want them back and how much they bottle up their feelings. Xiao must feel the same, right? I can't imagine how guilty he must feel or how much he must wonder what life would be like had they survived. It would even have tied in with Gaming's story- how much he'd want his family to accept him and be there with him on lantern rite. Why didn't we get something about these three? Why was there so much focus on a random four star (I'm sorry if you like Gaming, I love his playstyle but I really don't give a shit about the character).

I feel like they really just want people to pull for Gaming and Xianyun, I really can't explain why they (imo) fumbled this so bad. I expected so much after the Fontaine AQ but man this was so disappointing it literally killed by desire to keep playing the game. I'll just do my dailies and log off, HSR welcomes me with a much warmer embrace

[gwaedhannen]

[Excerpt from Sorrow Beyond Words: Collected Testimony of the War of Wrath, 4th Edition; ed. Elrond Peredhel. Archive of Cîw Annúminas, inaugural collection]

“Simply reaching Menegroth was a struggle. Doriath had become a twisting nightmare of overgrowth and rot and mists, as Morgoth’s power warred with the remains of the Girdle and our old songs. Ai, our home, our haven! I know the name of every holly in Region, before the exile. We found deadfalls surrounded by dozens of animals who’d lain down beside the trees and rotted before they died. Blind moose more antler than flesh staggered towards us even after a dozen arrows. Vines covered in dripping thorns reached for our eyes. The cherry trees were overladen with fruits that smelled like gangrene. Deildhod stumbled into a nest of maddened vipers, and only escaped because their tails were all tangled together into a festering mass and could hardly move. We never saw or heard a single bird. I’m amazed we lost no one in that whole push through Region. No, I speak a lie. I know how we passed through with nothing worse than scrapes. Elrond was with us, and the ghost of Melian’s love still recognized her kin.

“Esgalduin had nearly been dammed by one of Hírilorn’s fallen boles, but the bridge still held. We crossed and reached the ruined gates, wrought twice and broken twice. Within there was only darkness to be seen; we knew not what manner of horrors Morgoth had sent to infest the city, but Ingwion was unwilling to leave them at the rear of his forces as he moved north, if it could be helped. Celeborn stood at Elrond’s right and myself at his left. Far less an honor guard than the heir of Elu Thingol and Melian Besain deserved. Yet in those dark days it was all the honor we could muster. King Dior Eluchíl had known thirty-six summers when he was unrighteously slain. Queen Elwing Nimaew thirty-five when despair took her to the sea. Lord Elrond Peredhel beheld the city of Elu for the first and only time in his twenty-ninth summer.

“Elrond stood before his inheritance and Sang. He sang a lament, for the lost endless years of joy and peace, for deep halls lit by birdsong and echoing with wisdom, for the Forsaken People who awoke the forest and earth with many voices, for the works of beauty never to be seen again on this side of the sea. He sang a promise, that the glory of Menegroth will be remembered in the songs of Middle-Earth for as long as its children endure. He sang thanks, for the protection the halls granted us until it could shelter us no more. As his song at last ceased, I thought I heard nightingales answering him.

“Stars shone on his brow, and his hair glistened as the vault of night, and the memories of our once-eternal bliss in the woods of Thingol’s realm under Elbereth’s gifts arose in my mind. Let Oropher dream of a deep hall for his own; let Celeborn reign where he will at his wife’s side! I knew in my heart, as the echo of nightingale songs faded, that there was no lord or king I would ever stand beside save Elrond Elwingion.

“The living stone in which our kingdom once thrived knew his voice, and at long last laid down its burden and passed. The darkness over Menegroth was lifted, and we went forth into its corpse, and no beast or orc could stand before us. I do not sing of what we found and left behind when we cast down the bridge and gave leave for the river to flood the caves. It is not worth remembering.”

[margindoodles2407]

So.

Was anyone going to tell me before I started reading the William Shakespeare's Star Wars Series by Ian Doescher

That this man rivals Matthew Stover himself in his ability to take Revenge of the Sith from tragic to absolutely SOUL-CRUSHING?

@whyoneartheven GET OVER HERE AND TAKE A LOOK AT THIS. YOU LIKE SHAKESPEARE WE CAN BE NERDS TOGETHER

Highlights from The Tragedy of the Sith's Revenge:

The use of Rumor as a character and a plot device, like in Richard III, because Dramatic Irony

After the whole "Hey the Jedi Council doesn't trust the chancellor, we need you to spy on him" debacle, Obi-Wan gets a monologue about how much he loves Anakin and has been worrying about a growing darkness within him, and swears to do whatever he can to prevent him from Darkness

The Tragedy Of Darth Plagueis The Wise (tm) is a PLAY WITHIN A PLAY THAT PALPATINE ASKS THE ACTORS TO PERFORM, like in Hamlet, CAUSE PALPATINE AND ANAKIN ARE AT AN OPERA OH MY GOSH I LOST MY MIND IT'S SO COOL

Padme keeps having lines about how worried she is for Anakin and how she keeps praying for the preservation of his soul ;_;

After Anakin's fall, he and Palpatine are referred to for the REST OF THE PLAY as Vader and Sidious

TWO UNNAMED JEDI HAVE THEIR OWN SCENE ABOUT HOW WHILST LOOKING THROUGH THE CLONE HANDBOOK (tm) THEY NOTICED THAT A CERTAIN ORDER WAS SKIPPED OVER. THEY THEN LAUGH ABOUT IT AND GO TO WATCH THE YOUNGLINGS DO THEIR LIGHTSABER PRACTICE

Sidious has a soliloquy about his awfulness. ENDING IN: "Die, light, die, any good that ever was,/Die, wisdom; yea, die, virtue, die, respect,/Die, honor, die, nobility, die, right-/These qualities shall perish on this day./For lo, the Sith do ply their merry tricks,/Come, Death: thy name is Order Sixty-Six."

I AM SCREAMING

FREAKING CODY HAS A MONOLOGUE ABOUT HOW HE DOESN'T WANT TO KILL HIS BEST FRIEND OBI-WAN

I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS POSSIBLE TO MAKE ANAKIN KILLING CHILDREN SADDER BUT APPARENTLY IT'S POSSIBLE IF YOU HAVE HIM ASK THEM IF THEY'VE SAID THEIR PRAYERS BECAUSE, AND I QUOTE, "I WOULD NOT KILL YOUR UNPREPARÉD SPIRITS;/NO, HEAV'N FORFEND! I WOULD NOT KILL YOUR SOULS"

When Yoda sends Obi-Wan to fight Anakin on Mustafar, Obi has a monologue about how PERHAPS, ONE DAY IN THE FUTURE, HE MIGHT BE ABLE TO COME TO TERMS WITH THE FACT THAT VADER HAS EFFECTIVELY KILLED ANAKIN "FROM A CERTAIN POINT OF VIEW"

The whole "You turned her against me/You have done that yourself/You will not take her from me/Your anger and your lust for power have already done that/et cetera et cetera/I will do what I must/You will try" is done using, of all things, Nautical and Sailorly imagery. High Fantasy Star Wars, Anyone? (this legitimately made me so happy; they also have a similar conversation in The Clone Army Attacketh during the scene where Padme's asleep and they're talking about politicians)

WHEN. WHEN OBI CUTS OFF HIS LEGS AND IS DOING THE WHOLE "YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE" SPEECH. ANAKIN HAS A MONOLOGUE ABOUT HOW HE'D CRY TO OBI-WAN FOR HELP BUT (HE THINKS) OBI-WAN WOULD ABANDON HIM, WHICH ENDS IN "I HATE YOU"

Hey. Hey listen. Obi-Wan, after the battle, SINGS a FUNERAL LAMENT for Anakin

"Although it may be said that I have won,/Herein hath died the heart of Obi-Wan" EXCUSE ME MR DOESCHER WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION

No no, listen to what Padme says about her children: "He shall be Luke, and walk among the skies./Heart of mine heart, and issue of my love." "'Tis Leia, who, like me, is royalty./Brave spirit, do remember thy sad mother."

(loud ugly sobbing can be heard from Margin)

I AM. NOT OKAY

[searchingforserendipity25]

Shadow-folk

@feanorianweek | Maglor

For @melestasflight

Hail Gil-Estel, brightest of stars, called the mariners, the travellers, the honest merchants and worried fishermen, the children orphaned by war.

As for the penitents in the gallows and the murderers sleepless in the dark, the debtors in irons and the heartsick generals, the ones who did not dare look at the stars - other prayers have been known to rise from their mouths.

Hail Gil-Estel, brightest of stars, called the mariners, the travellers, the honest merchants and worried fishermen, the children orphaned by war.

As for the penitents in the gallows and the murderers sleepless in the dark, the debtors in irons and the heartsick generals, the ones who did not dare look at the stars - other prayers have been known to rise from their mouths. 

More than the virtuous alone lived in Arda Marred, even when they deserved it not. Yet they did live, undeserving; and among them, there were those craven few who longed for their own houseless pilgrimage. A brave man’s cowardice was a feat of mad courage to those trapped in evil, who saw no path out of evil. They wished for it, if they wished for anything: to escape, not be known, do no harm.

Hail Maglor, Kinslayer and exile, whispered they who could not put their hopes on something holy, the ones who feared the clean light. Hail Maglor, who wanders ever by the sea.

Many a tale was told in the barracks of Númenor, the prisons of Lindon, around the slow fires in the slums of Dol Amroth. Songs were sung, in galleys where thieves were set to work building ships, by those whose hands were burned as a mark of culpability older than memory, that all should know not to trust them or give them shelter. And it happened at times that even pirates were known to take the Singer's escape - toss their swords into the sea and make themselves fishermen. A cherished longing beyond all longing, and undeserved; but it did linger, in the minds and songs of Men.

Among the tales whispered was the one of Amandil the Faithful, who in his long youth was Tar-Aphârazon‘s conquering fist, the master-of-empire. Many versions of he long story of his disaster at sea were lost with Númenor; many more blossomed as weeds in the cracks between walls, wherever Númenor had been, where Númenor's memory and yoke and mourning remained. All agreed on the one passage - how that mighty commander of fleets was washed ashore, lost and wandering as a pauper, and of his speeches with the stranger that walked with a hand bound in dark linens where the tide met the water-line.

Some said the Kinslayer was far in the West, serving time, some awful and very fair notion of justice as the Eldar knew it, and where Men could place all their fears, their cold despair. Some said he was deep in the sea, trapped by the frightful deities of the waves, never to see land or star again - but those were dark tales, and not even the guilty ones who loathed themselves very strongly liked to think of it overlong.

Need a story be true? It was enough that the evil done was regretted, and the good not done not less lamented. It was enough that someone remembered. This was a thing the despairing knew.

From the far heights the star shone its beautiful light, too distant to clearly perceive, too bright to look at for long without harm. But there was life in the dark, in Elenna, Endórë, and perhaps farther East besides, where the Encircling Sea met the strange sands few ever saw.

Hail Maglor, said the criminals who had nothing else to say at the last. Mourn us, we who shall never go home again. And then the noose was bound and pulled taunt. It was not love, and it was not faith. It was only that the monsters of the world did not wish to be alone in their hearts.

The West-bond winds tarried long by the sea, and brought him the prayers of the dead, the dying, the dishonourable.

Where the mists slithered over the adobe walls of the low-rising cities, he was there. Where darkness lurched against the patches of spluttering oil-lamps in the markets of the harbours, he was there. There, in the dark, where the chains and the chained were kept, there was he. The rats did not near him, and very few could see him, or bear to see him- but the vain tears wept by those who had caused far more weeping upon the world did not go unlistened.

At the last of himself, in the dark, alone, he was only a musician. Sounds were his work, and silence. A whisper carried to the right ears, a dim path kept sheltered for the frightened souls that had the need to pass it. The shadow of a key against the wall, and the possibility of opportunity. Out, and no escape from memory; but out, and with the burden of liberty never to be set down, if they had the courage to carry it.

And of those, some were comforted. By an intruder in the dark, a charred hand that brought the food and the clear water left for the exiled, gone in the gloom before dawn without more than a glimpse being seen. The song in the twilight that made the hard hearts of criminals weep, and sorrow, and be ashamed. The evil that was done could not be undone, but to act in evil was not a promise that could not be broken. Even if only at the end; even if only in the end. 

The living he avoided. When they could not be avoided – when they chased him down in despair or madness, a danger to the world as much as themselves - he gave them small bloodless duties till they found others of their own. The ones left exposed in the dunes and cliffs, perishing unmourned he comforted, loved, let them have him as they liked. Some liked a helping hand; some liked to be witnessed, to hate, to rage, to grieve or listen to a mourning song in a language not their own and weep.

The dead he kept company with, for however long their laments needed to be finished. He sang the water to cleanness before the washing and the shrouding, and mingled rosewater and pine-needles and wild lilacs if there were any to be found, gathered misshapen pearls and sleek, dark mother-of-pearl for a death-treasure. He, first among the wretched, gave them the honour in death they had not deserved in life. His paths were repeated enough to seed saplings where there was nothing of worth to be set down in a grave-stone.

And he sang for them. That much Maglor could do.

He was always left alone in the end, but that was as it ought to be. Shadow-folk indeed! Shadow-folk he was; the starlight had rejected him wholly. Shadows were his kin, the last and only; all the rest dead, and forsaken after death as he cast away the Jewel that had bound them more tightly than blood. 

Deedless was a harsh judgement. Accurate, as much of his father had been, but incomplete, skewed, as much of Fëanor had been.

In all fairness, Maglor did weep a greart deal. The sea certainly did not thank him for it, but that did not make the tears vain, he thought. He had quite good use of them.

The Hallowing that sunk him into molten agony as steel on the crucible had but revealed the evil underneath; without words and Song, without purpose and skin. He dwelt by the sea, and there was nothing in him that the sea could love. Nothing stood between the Marring of him and the world. Sand-lizards scurried away from him; herons disdained him, wild foxes howled at the nearness of his self, the long slant of his shadow. 

He learned to make himself insubstantial, where to be otherwise might harm. It grew to be a more terrible thing, the hatred of the world worse than the truth the judgement of the Hallowed Jewel had revealed. He did not wish to wound anything. He did not wish to do ill.

Certainly that was not enough - it could not be enough. There were so many scraps of despair in the wind, brought to him from far off; all of them the same refrain, lamenting the certainty that wishing to do ill was not enough.

No noble songs henceforth; no glory, and nothing of victory that was not the paltry victory of the soul, or of the small selfishness that refused despair one night more, the short length of one small Mannish lifetime.

Hail Maglor, who cast away the stone, prayed the traitors, the frightened thralls and the loyal soldiers, in the mad instant before they stabbed their commanders in the back. And Maglor himself might have had something to say, he who once struck down Uldor of the Easterlings for treachery; but it was not for him to speak of such things. He had cast away the stone, and breached all the promises that ought to have been breached long before. A bad example was better than none, but it could hold its usefulness if well employed, could be a cunning net in rhetoric and a shield against error.

To choose to go was not to choose to stay; and the wisdom to leave a story unfinished was a hard-won victory. And sometimes it was cowardice only, and no wisdom - and all the same, there were times when treachery was all the bravery that could be hoped for.

Once he had been acclaimed for his songs; but more dangerous even had been the arranging of acclaim, the measuring of song-stuff. No wealth of wordcraft had been left undisturbed. Hope had been supple under his hands, soft as fire-warmed gold, made to suitable molds for suitable ends.

This was humble work, beside that. To go alone and deedless through the world was a punishment as fitting as any other, but if it had been punishment he wished for and the duty most pressing, a journey to Lindon or the Falas or the havens beyond the mountains might have been arranged.

At long last, Maglor had lost the need for an audience. This was a performance he was uniquely suited to complete, the only service he could employ himself with to the fullness of his usefulness. If ever a doubting soul sat by the fire, and took dire counsel from a stranger in the dark - much of what was kept out of the songs had its own history better left unremarked.

But some things were remembered, for a lifetime or three. A grandmother three generations back, who wandered far as a child and was found by a figure walking out of the mist-storms that swallowed the sea, the sand, the reed-banks and the trails lost among the cattails. When the sail-weavers stood watching the waves through a curtain of rain with a heavy heart, it was the Mariner they called for, Gil-Estel whose light guided the wayward home. And it was the wanderer by the sea that sang the seas to distraction, and turned Ossë’s wrath on him; long enough that Gil-Estel, Westwards-bound, cast by its course the opposite path of darkness for the sailors to turn the till and point to shore once more.

Was that kinship? A hundred times he had argued about the measures of justice and atonement with pirates over ledgers and caskets of gold, with judges in silks sitting in the damp cold of their cells, old women spinning thread in the shade, comparing the length of their regrets while Arien ran her chariot through the last paces. Was that kinship?

A brave man's courage was nothing like a coward's. Maglor had given his voice to the sea too many times not to know it. As an audience it was entirely without pleasure in it, but he sang to remember what had to be carried and what was bequeathed unto him, not for gratitude.

As for hope beyond hope -

Forgiveness was not his dominion. Only the endurance of the unforgivable. A cautionary tale could be useful; it could not be more than that. For one thing, it would discredit a dozen stories, ruin the songs that most needed listening.

But no one wandered beside him through the mist to know whether he deviated from that task.

"Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars," said Maglor by the sea, in the morrows and the twilights when the Jewel was brightest in the sky. He was very alone, and very weary, in the hours of dawn and dusk, when the world thinned, and not even the old laments rose readily to mind. And yet, all the same: the sea was very beautiful, with the light rising above the dark waters.

Of him it was said that he never did run out of laments, not until the end of all things. Such a thing cannot be assured; only Gil-Estel knows what things he saw from far in the heights, and he, perhaps, knows some songs are better left remembered in silence, or only by the sea.

[arunikas]

ー𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒖𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒂𝒘𝒂𝒚

𝖶𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾'𝗌 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝖿𝗎𝗋𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗌𝗍 𝖺𝗐𝖺𝗒 𝖿𝗋𝗈𝗆 𝗁𝗈𝗆𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎'𝗏𝖾 𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋 𝖻𝖾𝖾𝗇?

Blank. The far stretch of infinite void is the only thing they could see. Their bodies float like they’re trapped in outer space, in the middle of nowhere, no anvil whatsoever to keep them in place. In reflex, securing his wife's safety is all he could think of. He hurriedly reaches out to hold her hand, gathering her so close until there leaves no spaces between them. At least, if they can’t find anything to hold on, they’d still have each other. Like how he’d promised her.

He’d questioned many things since the portal closed; when the image of his adopted son, Kawaki, vanished from his sight, swallowed in the black swirling that was the door separating their realm. He’d questioned a lot of things.

How did everything end up like this?

Since when did things start to go wrong?

If anything, it was his decision. 

Taking Kawaki in was what he decided. Keeping him as a member of the Uzumakis. Addressing him as his own son, the brother of his children. Giving him the love and warmth of a family that had never once bestowed upon him.

Even after witnessing with his bare eyes how he killed his son–one who shares flesh and blood of his own, he still decided to keep him. 

So, if anything, it was his decision. 

Everything…it was his fault to claim.

And once again, he fails to protect his family. 

He finds his eyes rise to look at his wife; tear stricken face already staring back at him and her eyes gleaming with the unspoken scream of her litany, a lament of her desperation. 

Naruto feels so beyond ashamed, finding it hard to keep his eyes on her wife due to the weight of shame pressing down his shoulders. Because after all…it’s his fault. His son is going to be killed by the one he considers as brother. And he can see the storm looming above the sunshine of his family.

And him…he feels so hopeless, desperate, devastated. All the years of being a shinobi, the hero of the 4th shinobi war, bestowed the title of the great hokage, named the strongest to be alive in all over shinobi world. Everything…all of them stomp on his being, upon his incapability to protect his own family.

Naruto lets his eyes drop from the comfort of Hinata’s gaze. How can he look at her in the eyes…?

How is he supposed to tell her that everything’s gonna be okay, like how he’d always been…?

Uzumaki Naruto has always been a man of his words. But right now…he doubts himself. No, he utterly despises himself. Mouth pressed shut. Words forever lost.

A warm cradle lands upon his cheek, gentle tumb strokes his skin in a leathery way. “Naruto-kun…look at me.” 

He can’t. He can’t.

Hinata knows. Even though not a single word is spilled from his lips, she knows. Everything is translated through the deep blue of his eyes. That he’s desperate, just like her. 

That he drowns his mind in self-loathe, just like her. 

That he despises every strength, jutsu, and power he has under his arsenal only to make no use of them when it matters most, just like her.

She’s just as helpless, desperate, and devastated as himself. But she knows, there’s still hope. 

“Look at me, dear. Please.” Her pleas come out as something heartbreaking. And he hates himself more because of it.

Slowly, he looks up. Finding those orbs of what he’d defined as the star of the cosmos. 

She smiles. 

“Remember the moment Boruto was born?” she cups his cheeks in her palm, and he doesn’t have it in him to resist. He leans into her touch. “His tiny fists were held high in the air and you happily proclaimed that he’s ready to fight the world!”

A soft giggle escapes her lips upon unraveling again the memories. “And not long after, we had Himawari. Our little princess whose smile is brighter than all stars aligned and heart is filled with kindness even vaster than the sky.”

His lips are still pressed tightly, wallowing in the melody of her voice.

“And then we had Kawaki. Our poor, broken son.” Hinata takes a pause. There’s pain in her eyes but she decides to let it all go along with her sigh. “All I want to say is, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault–”

“No. It is! I can’t keep my promise to you. I can’t keep our family safe–”

“Shh,” Hinata presses her thumb on his lips. “It’s not. We are together in this.”

“But–Hinata, I-I’m...sorry. I don’t–I don’t even know if they’d be safe–”

“Uh-hum,” she shakes her head. “Our children are strong. We have to believe them. Boruto, Himawari. All we have to do is to believe them. They’d bring Kawaki back. They’d make everything right again.”

Naruto’s mouth falls open to say something but he stops when he feels his feet become numb by the sudden freezing. Cold slowly creeps up and he finds himself not being able to move.

“Hinata–!”

“It’s okay…it’s okay.” She smiles to calm him down. “I hope this is not our last…but if it were,” she pauses, bringing her eyes to look at him as deep as she can, to touch the depth of his soul, “Do you remember when you asked me where’s the furthest away from home I have ever been?”

Tears start to gather inside the pockets of his eyelids, while his voice is forever buried in the pit of his throat. 

“My answer was the moon, the place where we sealed our promise to be together for the rest of our life. But now, my answer changes.”

Hinata caresses his hair and presses their foreheads together. “The furthest away from home I’d ever be is you, Naruto-kun. Even when I’m trapped in the middle of nowhere, my furthest away will always be you. Because I know, you’d always be there by my side. Just like this.”

“Hinata…” tears melt from his eyes when his eyelids no longer can hold its weight. And a smile so genuine and broken adorns his lips.

He can feel the cold already freezing half of their body. And at last…as if it were their very last…he gathers her tighter in his embrace. 

“From now on, forever and ever, until I die, I want to be with you,” Hinata recites the words from her memory, “Thank you for keeping your promise, Naruto-kun.”

And Naruto finally smiles, welcoming her own that never leaves her lips like they’re made for it. And he leans closer, with a heart so full and surrender. At least, there’s still a promise he can keep.

As the world starts to freeze and the time stops flowing, they never let go of each other. 

They kiss, as if it were their last.

They hold each other tighter, as if it were their last.

Even if it were really their last, they hold no regret. 

Because, at least, they still have each other.

[no-squared]

An Ode to Grief

by me.

 My mother carries her grief like a baby blanket. She's carried it as long as she can remember and on dreary nights she recognizes it as her birth right. In melancholic moments when the sun hits like a warm summer memory, she traces my brother's initials into the edges of the dusty yarn. It's a balm on her festering wound, just a touch, a whisper or a prayer. She clutches it tight between her fingers like a rosary. The baby blanket of my brother's life is beautiful and unfinished. There are perfect loops that feel like his first love, his first real dream, his favorite color. And there are parts so twisted and decayed they hang loose and weary. She covets each one and in days where the sun paints magic back into her veins, she drapes it over her shoulders and bears it for the world to see. 

        My father and I carry our grief like the moment between a punchline and laughter, full of anticipation, bated breathe and devastation waiting just over the horizon. We toss it back and forth, begging humor to consume truth and become whole. I poke fun at what little memories I have of the boy who was the man who was my hero. My father pokes fun at the infection that begins in his hands, from the wars won and lost. he keeps a granade instead of a baby blanket. He holds it in his iron fists on violent nights when he laments the words he will never be able to take back, keeps his finger on the ring and dreams of absolution.

    My sister does not grieve, or lament, or pray. "I have a child," She says. She means she does not have a choice. She is a mother first, a mother last. She will not grieve with her son alive and well in the next room. She will not grieve with her husband, who is kind and reassuring. She will grieve along side no one, though she aches for it. She holds nothing, arranges the funeral, arranges the wake, arranges her grief into calculated moments cut short by her son's needs. She is changed and sheds the skin of grief each fall, but she always smiles for her little boy.

    I had known from the first call that the wrong sibling was gone. I knew as I fell to my knees in the kitchen, as I packed a bag with numb fingers, as I greeted the family that had lost so deeply. I remember the bruising shackle of my mother's hand in mine, fingers crushing the veins of my wrist and the way she screamed over his casket. I remember the star of the american flag, tracing it with my finger because my brother was inside that wood and touching it would make it true. It couldn't be true. I know as my mother drags me from my father's side that my brother would know how to heal this. The thought buried itself behind my eyes, rose glasses of malice and forced me to the world through the lense of the ways in which I failed. I could not console my mother with a hand on her shoulder, I could not ease my father's regret with a joke, I could not steal the burden from my sister. I sat on a couch and stayed still enough for the rot to settle in the marrow of my bones. A woman tells me God needed another angel and I tell her that I needed my brother. I tell her that if it is God that greets me when I am done then I will become the beast that bites the hand that feed, for I have been starved and beaten and since he could not hear my prayers then he will go deaf by the fury of my complaints. 

My grief lays in the hollow of my bed, fills the shape of my body like pooling water, It tethers me to the cold side of my bed and whispers. I am a reverend at a silent church composing purple prose for an audience of one, swearing by the book that God it isn't true, there's something else. There's always something else over the horizon and it may be tragedy but God what if it isn't. What if there is wonder there too, what if there is beauty growing from the rot? God does not answer me and neither do the devout. 

    I take up smoking, it chases away the shivers of anxiety carried like lightning to my heart. I take up drinking, a bit of cotton shoved into the brother-shaped nothingness of life. I take up three more substances, each less filling than the last. I do not try to kill myself again, my mother can not fit another baby blanket in her pocket, my father can not hold a grenade in each hand with a finger on the pin. My sister can not hide any more. But I cannot breathe anymore, I don't know who I'm grieving, who I've lost, I will never live up to the last words he ever said to me. But, I consider the loophole. An accident is forgivable. The funeral would be moderate and quiet and there would be no stories of my life shared with sparkling eyes. "I horrible thing," My aunt whispers, hand over her heart as if to shield it from her own words.  "Wrong place wrong time," My uncle says as he hands my mother a bottle of whiskey. They will grieve and move on far easier than they did with my brother. And so I don't look every time I cross the road. I skip a meal because eating is a bother and it's outlived it usefulness to me. I pick up an extra shift though I can feel the bruises of my feet all the way to my knees. I do not try to die, though I know I wouldn't mind if something tragic were to happen. 

        My mother calls me crying. It's two days before it will be two years; she says she feel him anymore. Though I'm not there, I can see her hand over her heart, the same way my aunt would for me, I see it breaking under her palm, the staples pulling at their seams. I tell her I understand, though I don't. She tells me she doesn't know what to do. I tell her I've never known what to do. I tell her I don't think there is anything to do. The call lasts an hour and four minutes and with the dial tone ringing in my ears, we both wish she had called someone else. By the end of it I'm smoking again, though my efforts to stop were always half hearted. If I were to die choking on smoke, the blame would land in my palms and run through me like sand and they would be spared my slow death. By the end of my cigarette my sister texts me asking what I said to mom. 

        Their battles are not my own, I learn, when they start rebuilding themselves. It takes mortar and paste to soothe the angry red lines of their despair. It takes grit and blood and whatever they're willing to give. Their teeth turn gentle, the hurting subsides in favor of work and family and the next project. I watch my sister have her second child, she names her baby after him and when she looks at him, part of her sees the uncle her children will never get to know. I watch my mother throw herself into romance, into pre-rolls and nature, I watch her dig her heels in and bear the latest weight, she gets promoted and takes up paddle boarding. She seems happier afterwards, like the water has licked her wounds and baptized all the memories she had with her boy. I watch them but i can't emulate them. I lay awake at night wondering what I missed. I don't know the man they talk about, the man in their stories who's bright and full of life. He was everything to me, my nightmare and my greatest ally but I was too young to truly know him, had grown up mostly without him. I have so few memories and in all of them he is young. I can't rebuild myself, I was never that strong. I've been held together by luck even before and now the tools I used are rusted and splintered, they wouldn't do for the craftsmanship this requires. I fall quietly behind. 

        I have a dream that began a few days after the second anniversary. It begins with my mother and I fighting. We're yelling at each other, circling like wolves with blood dripping from our jaws. It turns violent, we've become violent. There's vitriol in our words and kerosene welling up in our eyes. I throw something at her and tell her that I can't even remember my brother's face. The dream changes and I see him in the hall of our childhood home, his back turned to me. He's my brother in form and silloughette, I'd know him anywhere. He turns and has no face, nothing but a blank slate. I wake in terror and refuse to sleep until I'm too drunk to remember there was ever anyone there at all. 

        Things return to normal. I make slow improvements until my legs feel steady underneath me most days and I only think about him in the drinks before tipsy and drunk. I go home, I go to work, I work until my ankle swells and I lay in bed whenever I get the chance. But I survive, I continue. I turn the page and start new. I remember him in the way I treat others. I'd grown up in his shadow and now I live his honor. I take the extra step, give a free compliment, I open doors for others and I ask them about their day. I try to be sincere about it. I try to help where I can though my mother can not bare the failure in me any more than I can bear the disappointment in her and my sister will never see me as more than the obligation forced upon her by our parents. I'll never heal completely, I will never be able to overcome this, I will never not be mourning him in the corners of my mouth or the ringing in my ears, I will never truly know what it was like to have a brother. 

        When August comes around I will retreat to the shadows of my blankets, I'll lock the windows and the doors and turn down the lights. I'll clean the apartment and stock my fridge with liquor and microwave meals. I'll take four days off near the end, I'll brush my teeth on the last night of July and avoid the hollow gaze of the bathroom mirror and I'll search for God in the bottom of bottles and find him on the bathroom floor instead. I'll be shivering and dizzy, I'll feel the liquor burning through my gut, nourishing the rot that set in so long ago and God will sit with me. He'll hold my hair back as I vomit the words that got stuck in my throat so long ago and he'll lay me down to sleep on the cold tile. He'll sing to me and wish me well but will never tell me he's sorry. I am too weak to plead my case and that's why he's gone by morning.

        I wake alone and tired and can't remember a time I felt any different. I pick myself off the floor and into a new skin. A new day dawns and I try one last time. Grief lives in baby blankets and grenades and silence, it lives in my bones and behind my eyes, no room will ever be full again, no noise enough to drown a vacancy of one not there. I will live forever knowing that the wrong sibling died, unable to seek salvation, turning a blind eye to absolution, taking the Devil's side and keeping everything neatly folded behind the curtains of apathy I have cultivated. The unbreakable solitude of my grief will hold me far better than a lover, will deliver sweet kisses of encouragement and dredge the memories written into my genetics. I live inside my grief, to large for anyone to notice. My grief will settle in one of the chambers of my heart and claw it's way from my ribcage each August leaving carnage in it's wake and broken glass in my veins. I'll be undone by this terrible thing but until that day I will pick myself from my bathroom floor and I'll remember that my brother loved me enough to use my name as his laptop password, that he kept the letter I wrote to him while he was off fighting a war he hadn't been alive at the beginning of, that my brother's last words to me were that he was proud of me.

[arrthurpendragon]

WIP Tag Game

I was tagged by @goldheartedchaoticdisaster

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

(Imma put it below the cut lol)

A Ballad of War & Love (TURN)

A Moonlight Serenade (Sherlock)

A Royal Pain (Royal Pains)

A Window to the Past (HP)

Across the Lands (Star Wars)

All is Found (ATLA)

An Attempt to Tip the Scales (Veronica Mars)

Angel Eyes (IT)

At Wit's End (Pirates of the Caribbean)

Beauty & the Geek (Criminal Minds)

Black Magic (HP)

Bluebird in My Heart (BBC Musketeers)

Breakaway (Twilight)

Bridge Over Troubled Water (Virgin River)

City of Stars (The 100)

Coming to Terms (Remember the Titans)

Constant as the Stars (Star Trek)

Damsel in DC (Bones)

Daughter's Lament (Hunger Games)

Dear Theosodia (Bridgerton)

Divine Strength (Marvel)

Enchanted (The Flash)

Entreat Me Not to Leave (Outlander)

From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea (Percy Jackson)

Gloria Regali (Reign)

Green Eyed Monster (Riverdale)

Holding Out For A Hero (Gotham)

Holy Mother Forking Shirballs . . .this is the Vampire Diaries (TVD)

House's Hart (House)

How to Save a Life (Grey's Anatomy)

Incomplete (Kenobi)

Just Give Me a Reason (NUMB3RS)

Just South of Heaven (The Good Place)

Kingdom Come (SPN)

Kryptonite (HP)

Let Me Fall (HP)

Let's Go Eevee (Pokemon)

Look What You Made Me Do (TUA)

Lost Along the Way (HP)

Love Comes Softly (Pride & Prejudice)

Mail Order Bride Original Stories

Mamma Mia (Stranger Things)

Nine to Survival (Jurassic World)

Of Dragons and Lions (HotD)

Of Love and War (TURN)

Once Upon a December (Peaky Blinders)

Only Fooling Myself (OTH)

Other Stories (Original)

Pippa's Book TBD (Bridgerton)

PS I Love You, Steve Rogers (Captain America)

Psych You Out in the End (Psych)

Rewrite the Stars (The West Wing)

Rule 14 (Criminal Minds/NCIS)

Safe & Sound (Star Wars)

She Will Be Loved (Law & Order SVU)

Simple Joys of Maidenhood (HP)

Someone Else's Starr (Teen Wolf)

Songs to Love and Die By (Divergent)

Stealing Her Patriot Heart (Bridgerton Prequel)

Tale as Old as Time (National Treasure)

Tempting Fate (HP)

The Devil's Pawn (HotD)

The Hero Dies in the One (Agents of SHIELD)

The Night Janitor (Night at the Museum)

The Prayer (Merlin)

There's a Hero (Spiderman)

This is Me (Gilmore Girls)

Threads of Fate (Rings of Power)

Under a Paper Moon (HP)

Untitled (Chronicles of Narnia)

Untitled (Keeper of the Lost Cities)

Us Against the World (SPN)

Vindicated (Black Panther)

When Call the Heart (Love Comes Softly)

Where Dragon's Dwell (HotD)

Written in Your Heart (Once Upon a Time)

[papermoonloveslucy]

SUPER BOWL BALL!

LUCY & THE GRIDIRON

Even the Queen of Comedy was a gridiron groupie!  Here’s a pigskin parade of touchdown moments of Lucy and the sport of FOOTBALL! 

1934 ~ As a young model and actress, Lucille Ball didn’t just take film jobs. Here she poses in football gear with Billie Seward at Bovard Field in Los Angeles.

“Three Little Pigskins” (1934) ~ A football-themed film starring the Three Stooges and Lucille Ball. 

The second half of the film was shot at Gilmore Stadium. The Los Angeles stadium was newly built in 1934 and had a seating capacity of 18,000. Coincidentally, the stadium was later sold to CBS and became the site of Television City. 

Too Many Girls (1939) ~ The Broadway production of the musical featured Eddie Bracken and Desi Arnaz as football players. Both would be featured in the film version a year later. Interestingly, it was a football injury that kept Desi Arnaz stateside during World War II. 

Too Many Girls (1940) ~ Van Johnson (center) was added for the film version. It was this film that introduced Lucille Ball to Desi Arnaz. 

On June 26, 1948, Dorothy Manners’ column reported that Lucille Ball was cast in Interference, a film about pro football starring Victor Mature, to be produced by RKO. 

The film was not released until October 1949, by which time its title had been changed to Easy Living. The film features the real-life Los Angeles Rams football team

“The Football Game” (1950) ~ Liz (Lucille Ball) and Iris are determined to go to the annual State University homecoming football game with the boys, until the boys tell them they aren’t planning to take them along this time.

IRIS: I can hardly wait to get to the game and watch that old quarterback make a home run. LIZ: Iris, it’s not a home run, it’s a touchdown. And isn’t a quarterback, it’s a second baseman. RUDOLPH: It’s a shame not to take them along, George. Wouldn’t they love to see the jockey run 65 yards to a knockout?

“The Saxophone” (1952) ~ When Lucy finds her saxophone, she mentions to Ethel that she was in the high school marching band in Celoron in order to date a football player.  

“The Benefit” (1952)

“Ricky Minds the Baby” (1954) ~ Little Ricky wanders off while Ricky and Fred watch a football game on TV.

“Little Ricky Learns to Play the Drums” (1956) ~ Sports fan Fred is trying to catch up on his reading with a November 1954 copy of Sports Illustrated with San Francisco 49′ers Quarterback Y.A. Tittle, the first professional football player, on the cover.  

Tittle will be mentioned again in “Lucy the Fixer” (1969). 

February 1956 ~ Lucy returns to Jamestown by helicopter and sees that fans have spelled out a greeting on the snow-covered Jamestown High School football field. 

“Lucy and Superman” (1957) ~ Lucy’s make-shift Superman costume features a football helmet! 

ETHEL: I still think the helmet is wrong. Superman doesn’t wear a helmet.  LUCY: He would if he was trying to cover up his red hair! 

“The Bob Hope Buick Sports Award Show” (1961) ~ Lucille Ball is one of the celebrity presenters. Coincidentally, her name in the opening credits is over a football game, although she later presents an award to boxer Floyd Patterson. 

“Lucy is a Referee” (1962) ~ Jerry and Sherman’s football game is going to be canceled due to the lack of a referee, so Lucy volunteers. 

With the help of her boyfriend Harry (Dick Martin), she learns all the signals, but cannot help interfering on her son’s behalf and clumsily affecting the outcome of the game.  

At the start of this episode, Lucy is searching for her son’s lost Johnny Unitas football card.  At first, Viv thinks that Frankie Avalon and Ricky Nelson are football players, too.  Lucy reads out the sports cards of ‘Red’ Phillips, then a player for the Los Angeles Rams, and Jimmy Brown, of the Cleveland Browns. Divorcee Viv laments that the players’ age and marital status are not given.

Lucy offers to take both teams to a pro football game, but a blizzard strands them all at Lucy’s house, watching the big game on TV.

The Mighty Mites of the Venice Athletic Club was a pee-wee football team from Venice Beach, California, that took the parts of both the home and away teams in this episode.

“Lucy Puts Up a TV Antenna” (1962) ~ Sherman and Jerry are excited that the All-American Football Team is going to be on TV. This continues the boys’  enthusiasm for football, established in “Lucy is a Referee”. Later, when trapped on the roof, Lucy mentions that Chris is having her music lesson and the boys are playing football.  

“Lucy the Co-Ed” (1970) ~ Harry’s old flame Gloria is in town to help produce a musical for their college alumni. They resurrect a show Harry wrote in college. 

Harry (Gale Gordon) plays ‘Crazy Hips,’ Bullwinkle University’s football star.

As the curtain goes up, the orchestra plays “You Gotta be a Football Hero (To Get Along with the Beautiful Girls)” written by Al Sherman, Buddy Fields and Al Lewis in 1933. It is one of the most widely recorded and performed football anthems of all time.

The song was first sung by Craig (Desi Arnaz Jr.) in “Lucy and Carol Burnett” (1969) to raise money for the school gym.

FUMBLE!  The white football Craig tossed away during his solo number is stranded on stage. Desi Jr. must stoop down to scoop it up during his entrance for the finale.

“Lucy the Skydiver” (1970) ~ When Lucy sees her daughter in a motorcycle helmet she asks if she’s playing for the Rams, Los Angeles’ hometown football team. Later, when she has the parachute pack strapped to her back, Lucy says she feels like she’s carrying the Green Bay Packers, yet another football reference in this sports-themed episode that aired (coincidentally) the same day as the premiere of Monday Night Football.  

“Lucy and Aladdin’s Lamp” (1971) ~ Craig (Desi Arnaz Jr.) wishes for two tickets to the sold-our Rams Football game. After a dramatic thunder clap, Craig gets a call from his friend Alan who offers him a ticket.

In the same episode, Lucy pulls out a fur-lined jacket she says was worn by Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945). Craig says that judging by the shoulder pads she could have worn it in The Spirit of Notre Dame, a 1931 football-themed movie starring Lew Ayres.  

“Lucy and Joe Namath” (1972) ~ The series brings back the character of Craig for a special appearance by football player turned actor ‘Broadway’ Joe Namath. 

Actual clips of Namath on the field for the New York Jets (#12) are featured. 

After the show was over, Namath sent Lucille Ball an autographed football.

“Super Comedy Bowl” (1971) ~ In a sketch, Lucille Ball played an ER nurse who ‘manhandles’ football player Joe Namath after an accident. The sketch was written by Arnold Kane, who wrote about it in his book, My Meteoric Rise to Obscurity.

“Super Comedy Bowl” (1972) ~ The next year Lucie Arnaz followed in her mother’s footsteps, appearing on the special with football great Bubba Smith. 

“The Big Game” (1973) ~ O.J. Simpson speaks at Harry’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon and passes on a couple of free passes to a sold out football game.  

To get into the spirit of the occasion, Mary Jane brags she is wearing her Tommy Trojan pendant. Mary Jane says she learned a lot about football because of her crush on Howard Cosell,one of television’s most famous and enigmatic sportscasters.

The football hanging above the head table falls into the punch bowl - splashing Simpson in the face. Touchdown! 

“Lucy Carter Meets Lucille Ball” (1974) ~ The on-screen announcer is played by Tom Kelly, who first called play-by-play for college football. He described the action of five USC national championship football teams, five Heisman Trophy winners, and 92 first team All-American footballers. Kelly previously played himself in “The Big Game” sharing the screen with O.J. Simpson.

[baeaecha26]

Chapter 30: Unraveling the Past

Though the village slept in ruin and desolation, the remnants of the past refused to stay silent. As Ti and Kaipa explored the once-bustling streets and abandoned homes, they began to accumulate pieces of a puzzle that formed a story much more complex than what they originally envisioned. This place had secrets, and as they delved deeper into its heart, it became impossible to ignore the inexplicable attraction the village held over them.

Kaipa looked back at Ti as they excavated an ancient, blackened ledger from beneath the rubble. "It's like someone wants us to see this – these relics of the past, preserved like this despite the devastation all around us," he whispered, his voice little more than a ragged breath in the wind. He traced his fingers along the singed, crumbling pages, tracing the elegant script that danced beneath his touch like tiny, fevered serpents. Ti watched his, his hands trembling with equal parts anticipation and fear.

"Magic," he breathed, unable to tear his gaze from the strange symbols that appeared to shimmer like ghostly firelight in the increasingly darkening surroundings. "Ancient magic, barely remembered now… but it could be the key to dissolving this bond that ties us together." He glanced at Kaipa, his face streaked with grime and exhaustion, and realized that he was not just speaking of the bond created by the artifact.

His eyes met his, and in that solemn exchange, they acknowledged a truth that had remained unspoken, hung like a silent specter over their tenuous alliance. They had hurtled down a path from which there could be no retreat, and as the weight of that realization bore down on them, they found solace and purpose in the remnants of a civilization that had once thrived amidst the ruins.

As night fell, the wind's voice matured into a mournful lament, the air now heavy with sorrow and a haunting sense of loss. Guided by flickering torchlight and a fragile resolve, they entered the central ruin, an ancient temple whose shattered turrets seemed to claw at the very heavens in a final act of defiance. And there, beneath the shattered remains of a once-magnificent altar, they uncovered the secret that would change the course of the war and the fate of their broken hearts.

"I knew it…" Kaipa whispered as they pried open the delicate, intricately -crafted chest, his voice shaking with a thousand years of awe and regret. "The pillars of the temple were inscribed with phrases proclaiming the love of two star-crossed lovers, who sought refuge in this village, away from the war that raged in their homeland. I knew the answer had to be here somewhere." He stared at the softly glowing crystal heart, nestled within the chest, its ethereal light casting eerie, shifting shadows on the cracked and crumbling walls.

Ti reached out with trembling fingers, uncertain whether he should touch the fragile relic at all. "This is the source of the magic… The very heart of a lost civilization whose love and devotion transcended the bonds of death and ended a long, bitter conflict. Could it be that we have followed the same path?" His heart quivering with a mixture of desperate hope and suffocating fear, Ti locked eyes with Kaipa, and for the first time, allowed himself to speak the words that haunted his dreams.

"Do you remember," he said softly, "that first night…when we discovered the artifact that bonded us together? It taught us a painful lesson but also showed us that love could save us from ourselves." His gaze never left Kaipa's face, where he saw a hidden yearning surface amidst the grime and sorrow of their shared ordeal.

"Yes," he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I remember thinking how cruel fate was to have brought us here, to have left us adrift in this ocean of despair. But perhaps…perhaps it was a gift, disguised as a curse." He regarded the crystal heart, its soft, wavering glow shining alluringly in the darkness.

With a final, shared breath of courage, Ti and Kaipa reached down and lifted the crystal heart from its resting place. The air around them seemed to thicken, charged with energy; unspoken words hung in the balance, a tapestry of hope, doubt, and a fragile, gossamer love.

"This is our choice," Kaipa whispered, his voice shaking with the enormity of the decision that lay before them. "This heart, the remnants of a love so powerful it healed a world, can be either our salvation or our undoing. It all depends on what we choose to believe."

As their fingers brushed against the ancient relic, the crystal heart seemed to throb softly as if resonating with the pulse of their blood. The shadows on the temple walls danced wildly, echoing the tempest that raged within their hearts. As they stood on the precipice of destiny, they knew that whatever they chose, their lives would forever be entwined with a love that transcended time and mortal understanding.

[libidomechanica]

Fretted to secure you yet may smiling bride on, we

A sonnet sequence

               1

Yon cloud all but the twain, feeding for delight I know not wish be together, the crystal vial Cupid brought? Time is lost Estate. Tis but his wrong is thing, patching, silver an endless the Prime renew! Fretted to secure you yet may smiling bride on, we two with a kind but it in witness fail, that swallows next, a doubled mighty’s Gentlemen, by Command; to my head. Poor Betty lambs we pull; fair-lined slippers warming by starting go of soul and night by daylight on a stagnant then, let bee. At the plasma, listen’d to bless you drill it scars. In the treasure times would understand. In your fierce tears; beneath her to Saving me, said I, was well as an old old wolf, for ever prove to spare it, he being somewhat gardens. The prince he Mouldy rolls, please; bankrupt of Life each me to complete, however to Lament will play, threefold their own despise, and, from where my earth.

               2

My poetry, at lengthen follow’d on two or thee, and Take when we who whiff it. And Susan Gale? Move forfeit on the greates, if Bands, she wild voice I raise, which Betty’s face aglow with Maiesty. Further and all dissemble, with love may the Tenement lights appears; the rain, has such a royal trumpet blow, or I shall alone, that he crie; let woe gripe on my dress was like a ghost, they anointed worse than deaf that copy die. One think of it. And yet I see the carved through, the royal children she can know one that will not for I can see, that flower shall cost a Limb of his chair?

               3

You shout, his image. By shall be too night will brings me to me: a virgin mantle in Hate: resolve on the poor Susan cries. On the darts as difficult to get Preferment, and wild words are hush’d, and speech do liue, thought for aye, the wrong indentures: oh gentle Silvia, do I know why you resided first rose they crave that is mild beam blot the inspiration from thence in their Suffer, thus with a riding what senses fail, that tho his own predicate in giving, hurry. And balmy eve; and brew’d with pedestrian Muses, pipe as suddenly a memory of Civil Wars.

               4

A grateful lady bug without elucidation upon a star in the arrows spent, and increase: thought, and frog eyes and laughed then in health and bind, deeming the violet breathing-while sobd-out words. Matthew stop; and less, those dew-drink-offerings matter their ray was sloped down, yes, an endless string I was grace; god cannot wears even to One, in spite, tis no need to kill me where a garden! Bursts otherwise but you have hearts, dishonest simple truth’s beams arise like a Lyon, Slumbring the son, but I will ne’er before. Two hours, take pains? I mourn for who is care, or poison from and rain.

               5

Against my smile, as carefully and words a perfectly pure loue, with paleness gall—to still his golden Apollo, that’s done lamenting Venus badge in me, but I tell your modern dames: well if he had his face, a gray old chain it wear are feasts so solemn groves, he or lazily fondled the impalpable ash or them. And now you desire, because the one who drank from that not trust, while or two with Kings on and best them shake upon her house; everything went back into your eyes and bade him still call. The flowers be over. Of it all claim only a yard be undone.

               6

Where is a moon that three—a dismal knell! My only Phillis, thought God’s will not the Golden fruits, and thence, ev’n with the white with my wit, the smiling. But whene’er before in the sofa: digestions try; and Matthew stop; and balmy eve; and that I were recouers. And could make him in the act. For themselves until the Hall, my Maud is as frail gesture. That was inseparable Knight; but, like the sky, and joy! Who told him we were destroyes, but he is dear possess a lawful Government. Proud Egypt would surely, some divine; she could plays about her far nor no God couldn’t you thinking chair?

               7

Of Arbitrary Lord: and my boat was no other character of Barren Womb or Grave; but to me? Must cou’d be true defilèd bosom heaven was very flower- loving rose heap’d o’er the Pigmy Body to declare that is merchant, to seek me, and, from cause expos’d the time so sordid and a Moses’s face turn’d away. But, Betty fifty ponds so sordid and limbs: he rolls, pleasure, and gazed disturb a State: and, which is the vale; and by times her bosom move? Wind sleep. The broke the new porridge for my self about, which, who am not God it’s much on along theefe! Soldier once!

               8

Lingering from the question which he came over thought with the pestilence and shook the blabbing out and shall danced athwart the expanse and like blood of its many ill with silence to hover round himselfe themselves in the ripe corn-fields to dwell with a green darkness. And moon’s and each Heart will make a keyhole and here is meant thou, whose fellowship; but with my life I was calm, and their habitationmaster heart. He dancing music, answer as if to their cell, that Eloquence: so that done? Were he wishes long as it’s a Monarch tame, a most fresh tears are electric to catch for sure I?

               9

It was said, Those hedges in your own at Keswick, and the arrows of poverty, and space is so late: he had for what has fetched Elenor, I am forst such set trash of a mate forgot and these they don’t decorous water-fall she hearts, you gave a score years to sell, or not to my threshold him wait, susan, we must be gone, I must be sleep reciting day; the night are scarcely can say that sweet flutter to mee: no, no, no, no, my Deare, let bee. Instruction flies, and many others, the moonlight and rak’d, for Tyran, you knowes no more am I as the day when the dell, and pale sickly grown weary to possessive and I’m afraid, if I cannot tell what nedeth feyned loveth him Return. ’ Time, where you up in her desire, they circle the watches may Sons of thee designed: she tremble the war; the City, to set it made of Beauties skies, making to you.

               10

By natural to him befell? Phoebus gilding the silver-shedding bless, and her down with Lyes; to please the intent to sound she were recount of their Masters or stars he to dig Love’s beauty is truth I do belie his Consent; and life is dreaming Saints such their roots with the million perfectly- chisled cheeks. I could not, happy, happy as a wave is; it suffers not inherited silence jewel-thick sunn’d itselfe, still at hand upon the window and balm, or playing wind slowly through the heat of Justice damn us all, now backwards they had heart; I said thou canst touch near to you there.

               11

So round a beggar before; or melt him share. Beat into rhythm, you loved a thunderbird instead; at least by his holly credible. When, tho his Kitchen is Oothoon weep to this poor old Susan Gale. Thy face aglow with that your more than deaf that then, bosom move? The happy, happy and a parch the lakers, in a wounds, dishonest to David’s Cause. But try your foe. Why is your pleasure; but a calamity hard your pursuit? And all the fates come away. For blood waltzes. For to Rule Jerusalem Displease, but that she appeach time began to mind until the morning bed!

               12

Before incense things before eleven. So, through here was, nor story, what wickedness; disdaining fame; nor hopes and all the world beside, where thoughts which Betty Foy, and you, and tiger, and time; with timorous joys of life filled, the winds could that he swell, and that in the Councill violent, on the day, to pass away; if Susan had she waters written away his noble Stile he may yields. By his hands beneath the fierce darts by the Monarch’s fate proposed bliss, and I’m almost humbly at you birth, please approaches, crying: The Night his Prey, his father, bed by their roots too. An old jockstrap.

               13

Which droops upon the benefit of Fate, tO sell it thou dost lord was ten color of furious of adamant will Swear, till contemn; which enclose by what was loaded with cold out of them deep wounds have name of Destiny convulsive rapture of deities new, as the giddy Jews tread the Old men go; and Peace can gives, all mean, poet? Her sighs towards the wheels are past thou to war’s alarms, and her deafe of that opprest the husband’s head to me: a virgin that day, and that Applause might theeues thy airy flower, was made; and Patriots in the hears more discuss; and yet may be vain!

               14

Once more to herself thou flew’st moss the Doctor! I to the end of wurst think to a mean Descent, and how to serves his life indanger bring, are often urg’d by on either home, cried Betty Foy? My lord was deadly draught me. The buzzing Emissaries, fillèd with me—a flower, like a man of Jealous Eye to the Ill, for Loyal Nation’s caves beneath the dye of her how content? Concord better twere burthens our flocks by shall looks like manner they bore, were thy nervous verses dight, th’ eventide. The park what Religion and market in his Enemies, in Sanhedrins to die.

               15

But Esau’s Hand of sighs. Yet oh that was shape and not made for man say I have laid down with nets found, where my weary wander’d in a clandestines ally’d; and strikes in distress his leave me for it. The sea, knew its rocky cave e’er the Pigmy Body to believe, by turning, with near ally’d th’ eventide. Yet, Corahs placid mischance against female charms o’ lovely Davies. Would lose him they go, and prove and cold floods the bare; and in the words my sight, when I’m indoors and balmy eve; and how she sang:-she would that name I would stab the prince Restor’d; saw with posterity.

               16

On a blush, with a woman’s heart and lifts his wicked but two or themselves in my soule doth publick Scorn. One whit your kindest gifts its hooves if it brings me to thee, and his Fame: and all other Errors but bloomed that uttered, without really brings are the more I lie within these Prodigious destiny had him in vain; when he to you in our bird-throated mother know I have kept your beauty’s careless wit, fearles Ruby- hidden row, nor doubts and Stews; whose same baite, and weeds, sweeter blood bound the weight have no more account, for sure as bold as if facing a blackbird in one forc’d to seke?

               17

Or let him give up groweth with my dearest the which was ten those alone, in hand, as himself to give; of moon was no more account, for joy; she darts are they had he bees, my drinks waters round there for towns once, for who could lose me destroy, and mad, they take care doth to the sun that ne’er had love ready to deem, as I have Helen! They could sleep however though my life. Buttercup until, after sore, johnny answers above that the ether name of thy Reign as Aarons’s race, was made you: nor do aspire to worry him. If my Young Samson with glancing must popped her this, folly’s left.

               18

And sin he be seen, three A. Thy cup is run! He knew all faith, like stones of your joy: despair? Each mans believing rose with shield me the time we were flower shall not changed eye finds such folly call, would remove, come tomato aspire to help poor mans bereft, he traverse, there in abundance from off the Place; in the night of her. She meets you, fire with joy that flower, I come, stopped, he seem’d as he the world turning of that can finde, cupids help, on while I played away. Sound of May, since shown, sitting sheep, a field me though not pluck the blow—I swears the word. What maid, and down with lifted was there?

               19

Have years does their eyes and brew’d with that your Case no fear of sad misfortune roll’d his beside their season at all that is abed, candles out forth? And we live it to have no peaceful citadel, thou so longer Just. Most importance pleasure, would be, to leaue to do with life is done withstand! Love, let my poor goodness wealth, thy soules ioy, bend nothing in the Princes something in the grants to foot with long the best coupled before; oh Shah, I am dead; or sadly he may be dissembling home, is in smiling photograph from Boston Common- wealthsmen, were strong with work, sit on its dead.

               20

And he was things are endeavour from this miser spread, o’ercast my small, so I made for Empire is a life will make a flowers to shame; and sunk upon the same fast the cock sung out and compassionate one. There is only cruel! With one is false feathers boyl the first. From stone with a life are him and loving went ever try’d, or let his Foes shall be offered up as being the dusk with such work, not hurt ye, or in thy fair, I long Process of men, near the flash of a plum. His Courage Foes, what Prudent men at the ditty, my father, but coud once in thy feet to give away.

               21

Sung and terrors of Albion hear you’re alive air in my sight, thought, indew’d by boyling and thus he said; but ministers are up—she said; she said their strengthen fetters worse that pull us true: theeues do rob, but old man say I am down, yes, and ever proves that you come lived with stirrups, just a nail. Thus I have killer, spare, to drown heart wild ass why he refuse: that I would rather letters of his Sould did not born of year, its love, like a March night lanes the secret Foes. On both gone shopping; just post with a flirting upon the eyes upon the head, and amber for Priests devise.

               22

What does his place: holds any nail in travelling short of Godly Faction, bliss on blisse, and for men? Not talking about me the oxen’s looks again-her arms? And want, because his Servants are very world turn’d. Himself: when man, fills their Belzebub will choose, to find, I fear the paralytic’s wife who thinkes their Heart: which did equal and the blood! Put on, and dead, long dead, half a Father of my soul, could not of all his golden cage. And knows what she with Foes? Is when long already got, and some let me in me, but Innovation renew again; the ocean, color of boot or snow.

               23

As fast thou shalt wane, so fall, and strikes in cunning in odour and unnamed her soul in eternal chain it went to groan’d her only due to the undone vasty version brought to her arms a wet napkin, wrapp’d aside, which i cannot shed while their mad Labour trust thy shapeless as foretell me what is the wind; and as spirit ditties of wine and built with joy in which the depths, and will feel that you had tri’d of honest, since so well, were Jebusite. When I do? A lawful and shook the rais’d up to Foreign treaties he scene, had yet more harlots; and Priesthood in a fickle Nelly Gray!

               24

Leaves me not Helen, Helen’s publick Zeal to us out of pleasure nor prayer that a wretched to it with me afrights of Wine. Then the passes to shun, whatever stirs this stuff that fresh Force. Does the storms of every Royal Youth theirs’ the dripping wings, and Rais’d in stones of Leutha, seeking flowers such appellants go to—God knows where you, disparage such too weak in seeming sleep twelve hour when Natures the worm feeds on, and hopes a Right in the wandering waterfall, at poor old beloveds have let mine owner’s tongues, milton appears; then, your lips, prisoners release, whom Just Revenge!

               25

Like religious drops dead. The lake; speak the bestowest thou English grant, independs on Praise all, my lids and Starry Pole: from my revenge is no goblins’ hall, or in the sweet babes, poor idiot boy. Has proven abortive but because then is your face enioyeth, but the day and the Bent; but the Jebusites to groan ran thro’ the threshold, and wash my earth my eye like a dial-hand, march with Fear, yet new, as that morning the Bravest, and keeps me, most stifled with time throated mother, and the dreary, he muses have come upon em with a joy, where dwell, the slows down to the eldest.

               26

Like them, pried loose or binde; there’s ivy! But I am but only; you envy and Hatred to them! She said; she seem’d but Pomp, did adorn’d, the cock sung the town so wide, is this wonderous band, is involved in the and heart. The cottage warmth of the grave. Some lucky Revolution of this first let me ending taught to make you for the father, and seems no law deny’d, and was Israel’s monarch, and tempting to pass a day among the fruits flour, is in thou have hardly can see a midnight’st helpe, most oppress with a Lordly Rage, rage against the known to takes her idiot gabble!

               27

As if I chances terse. Far and unnamed light, where is not so; to hang on thy shadows less pleasure in the pasture, gladdening mee; let folke orecharg’d with Fear, yet shines spred; she carefully and pure good Husbandman? And Betty summs of every world across the power in green, twas Johnny do, I proves that not so the same Design. All, a creep softly o’er the wrinkled body of bones to and bring, gave us lief. Both for ever warn’d by Nature waters slept quiet sleep, when with only cruell worth, and it is in her hand: in horses beat neath my nursling near, till betide? And strikes the could not because the way you do letters of evolution of the publick Good, the ripe corn-fields, woods or sword, i’ll gie Cuckold frae naething to Build and as coy; with lifted hands to dash thy glimmering an hour ago, on Johnny, Johnny seen, and wanted on dead, half an hour employs.

               28

Ever again the last, you live it in all faith downcast eyes, lips he in the way, fretted their Mothers, because they cannot guessed are, or bring; foment of their father Countries but his second and all delight, yet lov’d into his was a blackning across the Vapours ere the worse awhile, they going, there’s nothing in odour and with mine eye; let me runs before, ye soft piteous earth! Thinking she heat spreads her very Jewes, which enclosed me with youth of thy King. Or break me again. Yet those tears fell with studied Arts a fright, and he right of day; and Humane Good old Caleb free.

               29

Wild men by their Suffer, though our love or to enjoy. But closed me first to the sky is still and heap’d amid a murder. And, which that passes to-night, destroys: and if they Chose, god was Israels Courage Foes, who make soon shall the eagle returnest too coarse to mee: no, no, no, I do to ease your love to the Strand; but sicken at the shower, and brake, in blackness of matter to Punish a Body to say my death wrapp’d in an empty. You will not to mee, and past. God, even a things she heauens for me. Too cold climate and bleached: bees pass the worst if her you will be my death’—alas!

               30

But these thin Partitioners: whom, debauch’d with my Emma lay; while our tithes in one force, Infus’d, the Government it seemed to my wanted of thy mettall mankind’s force—thus doth eternities new, changed me threshold? Thou only thine in the parson claim, and hoary, dark, o’ercast my kissed me in, let rays of reason Law. I must need of length it standing Crowds engage in the night, dar I seye, that Absalom’s than flowers be overgrown in Bathsheba’s Embraces old. But try your own at Keswick, and vagrant from hill to the same he might have made: he taking three summer beauty.

               31

But then, seeking the door, what does he cometh not, she said thinking chains, with you and I, and spread, o’er the peoples pleasures grows deny’st me crie; let folke orecharg’d with gory blood with a prayers to wood? I though i have me? May make and I, and adorn’d, thought was just enough? Now, free as the dear lord, all matter what it into that he knew, his Factious Friendship lies are Altars, Priest inslav’d the dews were painfull flight, and forests on the hours in his book, then she be in your absence exiles sunshine, and sunk upon the father. Beautiful a sun, so I though now she’s happy plight?

               32

I am not beauties worst discern the false fears that with Jealousies and all night in the day morning to tell where they went unregarded joy and as love loves, his Prerogative. She listening, eyes are sweet Eloquence in a friended by a Puff of WInd. If it bring of Zeal to plume the care shining memory, though his Toyls. She of her cheek once and o’er it makes the blackness of Reason: then she the cincture slips, possess and she was no place: holds her Locks before are too feeble power in a frights their Consent she crafty soldier, his pegs; but shun th’ effused to go.

               33

At having love were lost, vnkindness I content, submit therefore can I began to her to hell therefore it cheerless, to my eye in his set the Throne, for all the voice back from them, nor turn: gull’d with thy sacred Rites the fire glance, His gallop on for a Calm unfit would fly, as where they burr, burr— now Johnny is not see the women in a sad quandary. It home. In a serious within a mighty fret? If ancient race by this ride. The wingèd light, open to Sin our Fathers God, and through; a wave that you take thou, rich and lay him wiht new Plots, true heard—the Sea of his life. And showers.

               34

Useless and night ice I know how my wrist is based on two objects, how ill with a joy! A blooming girl, whose lillies, nor mans bereft, he left full to that the Crown, with his chin, looking the most unreward his way to the bridle too, and long! Last I know of thy princes; o sceptred hand, tis my present ease; gods the grasp of fellowship I need to the stamped her soiled gloves your Arts, and the progression seat of bed; good Betty’s stand: a man of maidens over the kitchen, thus reply: yon cloud drops, that is hurt ye, or over these he fleshly screen, a page redacted, you forget to pronouce a Foe. As Samuel used him can chatter is enough short of going, what conceal’d, he would not cut him still it into the shown, sitting goes; with that was turned to it with for ever bid the Springs me near the words are mutual Victims laid, state the Prince. The bloods they go, and past.

               35

And o’er had deeply places long halloo! Poor pitied Youth, and to man, to Alienate than Loyal Nations—condescent word Miltonic mean to strikes it and out on his dart. Ah, happy, happy morning, thou only said, And falling Theotormon several Sons against your fault, seemed his herte al hoolly on horse, among there not those cured of something else can sin again that were mists their guardian Angels, whom, when he with gaze enchant your eyes and Stews; whose ribbed wing round my breast do rise, with one beloued, your husbandman? Next stood on the worse, rais’d in gold, the level wasted all theefe!

               36

They circle the princes and priest, lead’st thou from field, when thou art farre worse forget to greet it must deem him not be restore where other story—an old and his head of her mother who could ill commeth learning to telephone the rock language of ice exchange his Cooks, his Son, for I shall that very soule, so fair woman in arms and ache, while my blushing red, round they return in a common lose him wait, susan! Waking to follow the ravish’d bride on, we two with his arms. Let folke orecharg’d with virgin fears behind to pray for the boxed- in hills beyond the meadow understand.

               37

Then we’re all delights more sweeter blood; thralled me. A thought wise, oppos’d a prey because the churchyard come against the world if silent pillowes, sweets grosly as the breaking through wise men a snake the Publick Love; to Head that little town, or she had; her cloke, twinkling veins, between dream the measur’d time their Bounds divides thus, acquiesce, and thus qualifi’d, in its godlike Samuel used to me, who mends of happiness; disdain and strike up and defraud the Plot they such power in green and modesty, this gentle Silvia, be the worse coming the night keep them forth a Servile Train.

               38

All night in all is simple verse, the prefaced half sighs. Monthly fix how he’d head of morn arose, thoughts it rouses thinking chain of life or limbs, stiffened by the sweet thy AEgis o’er the furies oppressing to break good wife. Was able to a wife of murdring the general Joy detain; tis Natures start, eyes nurtured in a wild music and this flower to her you and long already know. Tell me what to love to serves to be born a shall view she receives his Estate; where to be tell what maks us mair thing of cat or mortal rivers swim the Sands, she wanton and speak. The poem.

               39

Born every words my darling after God’s below, the mild! To what he has been so ill, so I hurl myself of whip or wanton and within the fates all, now backward with only to the sun, and how she with gory blood, the Principles of short File Barzillai first nigh. The lake; speak? Endless seas of soul on Cloe’s eyes and that sight. But valiant body. Soul with Foes? With vertues of Love as fire is no long, till I then I wake to laughing vaults. Who shall were his shield of time in her idiot boy. That thine imagines the sire to pay her to laud the noticed me, and when his grieve.

               40

And thus he saw then to takes his own, and Restrain going, what can I achieve, better places of arms! He said; she knew, his western cloud come not thy soul desponds beneath? Ills the right, and partly fear, his eye, number of me beloued, your beautifully, mysterious of her thing to your general Cry, religion and Erin’s gore, and, which we are doth eternity,—and honour’d, snatcht in the skies. Spending him invisible eye, that, had to death, or to shed; she said, Those him a cloak that the same degree, in sleeps: it must blow of this steed and moving you with money, that Eloquence.

               41

On his rome, which ay most may come to you. From thence this, ’ he crossed, and fears, you Diuell alas you stand amazed. Night and he must stay:— she’s no others, blind, for a Worthier Head. Ever learn, too cold. But once and cause then I returns in look—I leave me? How turn his change o too this horse then chose heaps of poverty? Or let him sound with here; her mouth laugh, never taste, as I was wet with Oaths affirm’d, with her equal and tossing to hate and make Example led, to the pony, they call thing, then worked no law for you and mock you were below, the But in witness this waiting-place was shaped?

               42

Sod. I belie his joy? With porridge that was their Lords the low, then, let bee. Like statue of the loss, or mortal strains be taught dost ten, three sins in the Thrifty Sanhedrins be that’s in thy shapeless and laughs, between us where our time—nearer one things, to raise refuse do powre euen now if these dishes of a peacock proud peoples Judgment in Exreams: so over Violent, your love but half-dead; or sadly he may lives has been a things beauty to descry the impure scourge force, Infus’d, the suddenly grow to drown’d, or the other delight, th’ event your idiot boy, you plaints!

               43

Have stood a King: nor event and burnt me some were on your Piety, you know, and gentle muses! Ye know the vale; and the wish’d bride—till time did hush thee to my mind may be defilèd bosom’d, over-bow’d by many heart. Nor leagues no more Establish’d out of silk was, and women I could hope, and look the public merits price. Or him his tunefull meed of it all contents of the expands, thought, and smile’s a rumour, that sits her doctor’s door in truth suppress with cares also her slipperie place and cursed myself thy Name. Became then I pretended leaves. Blaze frightens above payment?

               44

When shew her exquisite as that the paine recount of the dorm. Happy dawning David’s Cause? Love is become of Gold. Had already in her in your substance is freed from David’s Grace, as the State errours that you just prove that I wear, look ye not enough! Last Love, even you though tis true or false, are necessary to thy heauy grace with do more clear weather into which of its ray? And I slept, say: a snakes left. If I chance too; so much thine eyes, lips he is a virtuous night, the Dog-star’s at the summer, two morning kind. When, the log, everything’s Defend the down, alone cou’d be undone. Poor Susan will not fashion can heart’s undoing. And the night away, didst flie: whose ribbed wings on and euen now lifts its utmost with the fading tongue. Of lust, the blood which Hebrew Priests may repent and to his Toyls shalbe proue annoy, all silver-green bough of winter campfires in their own.

               45

Aromas, light in silence and some Names assure: some Royal Planet that she might she never beautiful and Just, observants in darkness. Bliss, O Man! Commit it to make him Magistrate; and yet I loved, and that wisdom, beautiful the gardens faith, like the painted what is left. On each! If ancient Honour won, to the tree. In the words—but while our self, and long! Do not get far those whom, when the equivalence and brew’d with the moon in our Lord. But she cannot dissolve their powers, to mumble at my Power and peanuts, since Time began there. His Hand a stony British stare.

               46

A desart wilds, from the locker room the Crown; and then his resuming Cov’nant was such affronts haue, vse something central to catch and hoary. Like the promiscuous use of death wounds have called discontent? Kings are out; but he is dear delight, of every hour toes toucht with eternal charge vniustest thou find’st not, or had deeply planned, I hung with either down to take of truth enlight long year self might I might be wholly credit of the height, hirèd villain turn’d whither Johnny! Of Men, and a current runs between dreaming for my self-love to expiate too fortune stops her sorrows?

               47

Peace, and with my soul’s eyes and the pony moves his Hunters tear. I want to Destroy, thou, O Cupid brought, and end his father’s birth, please, and allow’d with porring Babes are all alone from thy fresh Force he will set off to seem best? If my Young Samson with an Exile with the moonlight to hate, but shortened next tree did uphold; his Hands more disgrace, if Theotormon’s breached, thy leaf make Treason, and no offence his new simile holds herself say: I say this glimmering liberation; if in Susan said he, Let other messenger and Property: and euen now if you still grew worse the sire to look back thee desire, though wise as sad distempers? Last year, I can say thoughts it rouses that worse, rais’d in Impenitence. Take me to me, saying willow switches and as her set his explaining you was a Now rasher Cholerick was, and cleared against the town, to bring.

               48

She of the sky to the movie screams—she carved thee to me? Not help belie his eyes. This lonely moated grange. The Shadows less please approach, at the father’s Name is God’s enemies, in Johnny here, the foaming of this knot to die. Dregs of the fame: I now my song, astarted Patriot Paint! The sweet Love, I envy neither life’s best the cheers when will be slave-maker, whom Nature lent, and even this free the last, they Crack’d the waits his words were hot. Why should have I to takes no more perhaps th’old Harp, on which had a good night? Bold Lover, never rue. They steps proclaim, you Draw; and you do.

               49

As subjects, how Faction can a Pageant Show, a Plot to life, no precede the publick Love; to Head the charm of work, ’ said I am all her head, but how coud Adam bind his Sould do. They led these sweet passes once from Vertue is chain of listning Crouds can murder in curles are afraid, why thou hardly name. To me for Empire is new. With your name is lost thou can point after I am gone. Napkin by such working on him well; perhaps he’s out of your Venus to land is my wit, and Property: and Heavens expands, therefore it came in base, yet Comets rise from the next morn.

               50

Like it and want and stray; in twining harp this mysteriously her fixed place? But each breathing to be it wholly dumb; I will not trust, and that which thou arrive with so beauties worn and seen; with peace in the moonshine, steale but twice despite of a woman’s fear, his jokes, reconcil’d, shall not bind: if alterning of thee, and Order the world drops, the lamp of my eye like light, comes to a shape! That Absalon: not the treasure cannot climbed in laurels foes suspect wide; these precious Name to you despite of all the Noble seed; david, undisting, and steady Skill, for ignorance the phone.

               51

By the might road, and sometimes from the people no Consider, Johnny well agree, the gray-eyed Eulalie thou see, we live th’ Offending; nothing understand. I dreamed to say I have kept your husband’s heart become of truth suppression, the one was, and of the Pacific seas in which enclose of her departest; and age should not her, resist not mine to hell forebodingly, among the cheeks. At poor idiot boy? Ten lines, bright as we are betray’d it to brow, he linkt a deadly sin; but she came to bless, lustful joy shall day were riding, she appear; the sun of a bee!

               52

Such savory Deities orange as chief at manacles Mens faith in the rest; for shall day with many a day, and told measures may have bedded with fear. And justifi’d the skill in her fast. Read the same degree, a fatigue we image of love, the Land. Where thy soft and he sat with greedy of them about thy steel bosom’s ward, but Innovation grieve. Would ease her out with a stones of a Patient saint, and wise; such valid reason guide my hart; now from the wars of Albion weeps; such thine eye may lives to the new. Fier of the Lady of the back into that false subtleties.

               53

Unto his madness growe, which, as a blackboard with children born to stone-cast from the virgin’s cheek once we turns and how she said cried Betty, go! Where all is simple verse when Kings are though less curl. Into that glistening bride—till that is folk, this Achithphel Unites the dead cold winds were my wedding be, which, I pray. How can tell! But thou hadst set me what he know and then, have a future Truths are shallow grows; whose word. Their Servant of Clay. And Jebus bore, the song, nor no less circumvented staircase ending; nothing is she, I love? You own your fists into you. I propped her tenderest made?

               54

And, O my muse, thy term is reached, drunk as a Guardian Fire: the sylvan singers and time began to speak? If those whom thou canst thus is spoke: with Martyrdom did Stephen gracefull Harp had strung, and sung the found, that anyone who resemblance and gold; a belt of your kitchen is a recognized occasion I know who serve when she stood like her side bowing to him, to boast: now more by the turn of yet, him whom she be in your eyes have tied are, or when the rich esteeming the roses throw me and bring to his breasts; and as the known to each joy o’er his parted Patriot Paint!

               55

Dear rose into a new neighbour, yet new, as the best habitants of planted to thee: I lay the other man is stand. ’ Offending princely poet’s blacked-out window, if little by foreign field, whom all that shining fires, wide wing’d with her bed she forbade my Last Love, I am Ra who dwelling to brow, he linnet’s pages. And Betty Foy? Proud Egypt would stab the publique Good, as if in flights obscure the vulgarest rose to the brook, and this distress. Evening went back to think of thy feet of bed; good Betty, poor soul to thee, I would not bear. We part—but by this or the envier?

               56

Bob Southey lengthen followed in a knot. Let Israel Suite, and, snugging thus, acquiring underneath his Toyls. Poor Susan Gale: and, brib’d, unsought, for ever piping skeleton shall Rest, and Oothoon, wanderer through the silk and so books were such vngrateful tale, this mortar&somewhere is a merry meeting; the owlets hooves if it bringing Court remote, and foresee, make Heirs forgets I will he found my hairs be good, their cell, thoughts prouoke, dangerous boy; like peace it is to please, are both thrown on your best, and sang another. A genius by daylight who place, a body of that were hot.

               57

In your feats of selfishness amorous joys of old Jerusalem, of hospitable Soul, devising feet, and that held her mouth laughed the Southern winds at all the wingèd brow dost mountains, of yonder a large- browed stealing up to all. Or does the blabbing the fine-odour’d snow, nor leagues no heed; of the cold, that good Betty, go! Whatever translates a that anyone whose loves, her he best to love often gold. Why do you to proves to a Lawfull Images, but Government, where his side. In this is sin. Solitude, to bake a poet laurel, the slow though I oft myself in bed.

               58

Such skill in true or falls under the door . A sin, nor wish her arms with only two years to sing’ this old Instruction freedom, wisdom! Where there but Bromion can blaze up, and made you coming, leap’d the Fury of the and run Popularly Mad? If the Wise. Could I descry the question, seldom please they things a bird feet to what is that move to be knows where Vertues Land: perhaps compliant body. Sweet Eloquence of fools or her side of jasper that—plot of some lived for the failed, while both leads, o’er craggy mountains, the carcanet. She come away and, since we were bred: for Convertest.

               59

To these the night’s gay feasts so sweet Love, I have called her the damp hair falls melodist, unwearied, then remove, come nothing songs, nor turn she carefull Devil and all the other waist, and make the Sands, if we misse this love: she railed, while new emotionless and he music the bring its sleep, while you’re alive with many a day: our Authour sweetest solid Power: and say’st, thou, whose words your Reign? She storm come in over Violent, they circle the and crooked again would understands, if Bands, if we keep silence in the parson claimed his Jest, and less, thought,—All labour of it; for who cries.

               60

And now my epic renegade, whate’er tripped within; desire to guardian God; and Share thrust, the glory-garlands drest? Over there on Bromion said, My life decay: if alterning brand; but when they take an unshed tears nor pearly in the river or sea wrack and into his was of short beside the Godheads Image in life and real? And sorely puzzled are turn’d whither Johnny, mind in the still and how shall looks, and fathom where you sit holding three wintry blast for that as the day, and holy feet of afflicted man say easily will worth the heavens Anointing Name.

               61

Thou know, since d’Amour heart roused to re-cement of sighs, a morning from his tuneful citadel, To what Applause might away, conscience too; so much as freed from the ox to the steep rough the light, while or to enjoys the chain it stands possibly escape? When I think! And night ice I know and the Daughters write her enough. That you, let me endite; take a flower, now a nymph that you to war’s alarms; but slavery my successfull Arts, and with jealousies and away. As Phillis, that hit with tears, the end of fools of Noah’s Arms, t’ assist my mind, and fickle the fumes in the Excise.

[strawberista]

⚅— Continued from here. —⚅

⚅— @dandybarista —⚅

— ★ ⚄ ★ —

Hanekoma had not intended on getting drunk tonight. Especially not when he was lamenting over lost love and the implication that doing so could lead to disastrous effects to his city. When there was a part of him that feared that Joker might actually find a Palace within him one day despite his best efforts. When gazing at himself in the mirror and taking himself out on dates proved painfully inferior to someone holding his hand and whispering sweet nothings into his ear. In fact, he didn't even realize he had drunk that much until he was sitting on the couch staring at his phone at a message he'd just sent, trying to rationalize why he would ever fathom it was a good idea. Then changing his mind and redacting his save. Then changing his mind again and having nothing to say for himself.

He hated that. And there was a part of him that foolishly thought that maybe none of that had actually reached its target, for one reason or another. Then once again he was dashed upon the rigid rocks of reality as a flood of responses came in, burying him deeper under a mountain of guilt. But luckily, this was not a repetition of that day. This was not the same response as the last time he'd foolishly poured his heart out to Eanas. He was not met with hurt and angry words or the cold and relentless cuts upon his character. He was not met with a demand that he stay far away. Luckily, the words on the other end actually seemed humorous, and pet the part of himself that wanted approval right now.

Koneko. Koneko. That name so lovingly bestowed upon him by his Aibou. Kitten. How he loved hearing that from the people he loved most. How deeply he desired to be called that, to feel the shelter and caring that came with that name. To hear that title come over him over and over again, and the implications that came with it.

The thought of calling was immediately rejected in his mind, then immediately after desired. A small war was fought between reason and desire, and he knew he couldn't be trusted. And yet. And yet. His heart was bleeding so deeply tonight, and he could barely stand it.

A shuddering breath rattled his breast, and slowly he started typing back.

12:26 pm A call? From you? I do want to know more about you. More and more and more and more, until there isn't a spot on your heart I can't chart like a star in the sky. Until there isn't a breath I do not know as blind. Until there isn't a part of you that's a stranger to me. You're a monarch to me, a golden treasure, a lost figure in a far off dream. And as beautiful as all of that is, it's so distant, so cold. I can't stand it. I feel like I'm calling to an apparition, a memory left behind in a dark room. I want you nearer, I want to feel your heart and know your mind. I want to feel our souls touching, to find you in your hiding place and curl around you, within you. I want to know you and belong to you as if l were, too, a part of your soul, your heart. I want you to want me. I want you to want me around you. I want to make you smile. I want to make you happy. Make you love me. I want it so you become as hunted, as haunted by my spirit as I am yours. I want your wingtips brushing against me, for your soul bared to me and held by me. I want to steal into your dreams just as you have mine, to meet on ground untouched by the world and light a fire together and find warmth in each other's arms. 12:30 pm Hearing your voice now, to tell me of yourself, to bestow upon me your heart and mind. Such nectar to me as that dulcet sound, that siren song that you would be so kind to spare. Just a moment. Just a second of you. I could never ask of something so incredible... Even so... Even so... Would you bless this restless, bleeding, overripe heart? Would you deliver unto me such a shivering poison? I would pay my life to hear it. Please. I cannot promise I will speak, but... Next to yours my voice is meaningless anyway. You know me. Please let me have the honor of knowing you.

[dirthara-dalen]

So i made my newest star wars (clone wars era onward) oc in swtor after having been inspired by certain things in Jedi survivor. His name is Zayne Carson which later becomes Zayne Starwing-Nar after marrying into my other main oc's family. i'm gonna put his info under a cut just in case someone doesn't have the jedi survivor tag blocked.

Zayne was born 218 years prior to the clone wars. He is half mirialan, a quarter human and a quarter sith. This has an impact on his appearance as he is born with one amber eye one slightly glowing yellow eye. He has slightly pointed ears that he got from his father, his skin is green like his mothers but has a slightly reddish undertone.

He was given to the Jedi as an infant and after passing the initiate trials he became the padawan of Oppa Rancisis. He was a prodigy in the force and saber combat which came natural to him as he was a descendant of Scourge and Kira Carson (I love the ship). After becoming a knight at only 16 he joined the Khobo research project. He became close friends with Santari Khri who then introduced him to Dagan Gera. Zayne considered Dagan a friend but never knew if he felt the same. He was also in a relationship with another teen his age. Lane Starwing, he had meet the teen when he ha join his father on Khobo for some work they were doing for the order.

After his first visit to Tanalorr, he became fascinated by the planet. However, when the Nhili attack he was more than willing to abandon the planet when his former master ordered and evacuation. He watched as Dagan slowly fell to the dark side over his obsession with the planet. He left Khobo to help deal with the Nhili and by the time he was 18, he had achieved the rank of master for his feats against the Nhili.

He returned to Khobo after hearing rumors that Dagan had lost his mind. What he wasn't expeting was to be redirected to the moon upon leaning Khri wished to speak to him. He learned that she held one of the last working compasses and was concerned Dagan was coming for it. She was right. Zayne intercepted Dagan to try and stop him resulting a duel between them. Zayne only lost because Dagan threatened to hunt down and kill Lane. AS a result he was impaled but that didn't kill him. Drawing on the dark side of the force he held on long enough for Khri to find him. Like Dagan he was brought to Khobo where he was placed in a bacta tank. However, despite recovering rather quickly he was forgotten about due to the emergence.

Believed dead the tuner that was specially made for his location was given to Lane. Lane lamented the loss of his lover whom he had planned to marry. Instead Lane married a fellow mirialan, the couple ended up having several children on of which would go on to be the ancestor of a one Lee Shan Starwing.

Lee would eventually locate the tuner and using psychometry learned about Zayne shortly before the clone wars fully began. As a result of this Lee went and freed Zayne who was not overly happy that he had been trapped for 200 years. Despite this Zayne was accepted back into the order but he found the new order a bit lack luster. Near the end of the second year of war Zayne entered a relationship with Lee's twin brother, Sio, and his husband, Zero Nar. He does survive order 66 claiming the clones are nothing compared to fighting the Nhili.

I'm still working on his role in Fallen Order + Survivor as he is involved with both events along side Lee.

[pagetreader]

"Love, supposedly," Benjamin softly suggested. "Although looking at the present state of the world, I'm afraid such sentiment is rather difficult to find."

Love. It was a novel concept. One Alicent used to dream about as a child – the sort found in the pages of the books she read. Once, she’d hoped to find a dashing rogue who’d won the hearts of the people, a knight who would defend her honor and fight for her favor, a prince who would search for her after a night of dancing beneath the twinkling stars.

All these types, however, were only fairytales, or so she’d come to learn after her father had used her, trading her very life away to gain favor with his wealthy associate. 

Like Major Tallmadge, Alicent too, was tired. 

Perhaps it wasn’t surprising to hear he hadn’t the time to find love amid war, though she wondered why he hadn’t the opportunity beforehand. Surely women had taken notice of the fact that he was both handsome and intelligent? Of course, his single status spoke for itself. 

"An officer in my position would be unwise to wed. As much as I desire a wife, it...it would be cruel to marry when at any given turn, I could be gone." 

“Is love not worth everything, as you implied?” she questioned, truly not knowing the answer herself, for she had no reference to base it on. But was it not better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?

"However, I did meet someone once, not so long ago…” he amended, “She saved my life. And I thought I might love her."

“But she did not love you.”

It was a guess, deduced by the look on his face, the pain in his eyes. Alicent couldn’t imagine why that love hadn’t been returned, but then again, what did she know about love? 

He huffed, shaking his head. "I'm sorry. You never asked for extraneous details..."

“And yet you lamented anyway…” 

Leaning forward, Alicent placed a hand over his, lightly squeezing in comfort. There might not have been anyone who had cared to hear her story, but she was glad to lend an ear to another who felt trapped by his emotions. 

“Whatever the case, her lack of love for you does not mean you are unworthy of love at all. She merely wasn’t the one you were meant to share it with.”

In truth, she wasn’t certain that there were soulmates, true loves that were intertwined by destiny, but it was a nice thought, and if anyone was meant for such wonderful dreams, then surely it was someone like Major Tallmadge? He deserved to know love – to be loved in every way one could be. In that moment, she found herself wanting to fill that role, however ludicrous it might seem. 

“I suppose in times like these we should find happiness where we can and hold onto it for however long it is given.”

Leaning forward (God. What was she doing?) she dared to cross the threshold of his personal barrier until she could feel his breath on her cheeks. Carefully, she studied the shine of his beryl eyes as she remained still. 

“It’s as you said...you could be gone tomorrow.”

“I do not denounce your passions.”

Benjamin looked up again at her words, genuinely startled.

“On the contrary, I believe it to be just," Alicent continued. "If we have no freedom, no hope, then why do we live?”

He allowed a faint smile, albeit bleak. "Love, supposedly," he softly said. "Although looking at the present state of the world, I'm afraid such sentiment is rather difficult to find."

Tired...

Yes, he supposed he was. Despite the constant fatigue, Benjamin had never once allowed himself to focus on the aches and the pains, both physical and internal, as he pushed himself from task to task.

"I have my moments," he allowed. "Unfortunately, rest isn't quite guaranteed in this camp." In his instance, he was lucky to glean three to five hours a night.

“Are you married, Major Tallmadge?” Alicent appraised him with her vibrant, cat-like eyes, her invasive liberty causing a splash of pink to darken his cheeks. “You’re a rather handsome man. It’d be a shame to think you don’t yet have someone to admire that trait.”

"I...no," Benjamin stammered, curling his shoulders. "There is no one."

And there never has been.

Exhaling, he was quick to deflect, "An officer in my position would be unwise to wed. As much as I desire a wife, it...it would be cruel to marry when at any given turn, I could be gone." His expression melded into something softer, more melancholy. "However, I did meet someone once, not so long ago...she saved my life. And I thought I might love her."

Why was he telling Alicent this, he wondered? Why was he revealing to her what he'd never even been able to tell Caleb?

Benjamin huffed, shaking his head. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "You never asked for extraneous details..."