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starr-fall-knight-rise · 5 years ago

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Humans are Weird, “Rescue Without Reward”

I had been planning to write something similar to this for a long time, but @cyberstrikebeast also suggested it, so thought this was about the time to try it. Again, just something fun and easy I wrote really quick for today. Hope you all like it and have a good day :)

The planet was quite beautiful. The GA scientific team, brought on world with a protective detail of UNSC Harbinger marines, stood outside the open shuttle doors and stared around at the mesmerizing landscape.

They had landed on a wide outcropping of rock surrounded on all sides by shallow pools of still water sectioned off into ponds that, from above, looked like the organizational structure of cells seen under a microscope. The rock itself was almost pure white glittering brightly in the cold, distant light of the star. A range of small black hills rose over the pools in the distance, and the occasional monolith of rock rose form the landscape cutting high into the air at odd intervals framed magnificently by the shadow of a neighboring gas giant and its rocky concentric rings. Weather it was due to some strange atmospheric occurrence, or the way the star’s light hit the atmosphere, the sky was a striking pinkish purple cut across with clouds tinted blue.

The magnificent scene from above was reflected against the water below giving the alien landscape an even more alien quality.

Members of the GA research team stood wide eyed in wonder while their protective detail of humans muttered in appreciation for the scene.

“Damn that’s awesome.”

One of the humans pulled out some sort of device pointing it towards the scene before stowing it back in her pocket.

“Send that to me when we get back onboard the ship.” Someone was saying, and the agreement was quickly made.

The humans, serious about their duties moved into position around them. Along with the humans, they were accompanied by two Drev, one small and glittering with blue armor, while the other was absolutely towering and glittering with bright red armor. The humans formed around the GA team like the head of an arrow meters away from each other but still close enough to be in sight.

The commanding human, stayed on the inside three rows deep behind the arrowhead directing their movement as they moved out towards the pools of water. The first human was ordered to test the integrity of the ground pressing his boot against the narrow rock shelves which separated the pools. Finding that it was enough to hold his weight, he moved forward, and the others fanned out behind him making different ways across the little rock shelves.

When asked why they didn’t just walk in single file, the humans said something about avoiding an ambush. This idea made their companions rather nervous, but there was nothing for it at this point, and so they followed the strange, powerful predictors across the open landscape.taking samples and doing their best not to leave anything behind.

All of them had been decontaminated before leaving the ship, but still the human body was a biome of bacteria, so all the accompanying humans were forced to wear full face masks and goggles just to keep their germs away from a potentially delicate environment before it was tested to susceptibility. The last pool of water faded behind them, and they stepped foot into a thick growth of trees.

Of course to call them trees was a rather strange way of putting it. They were a little bit like tree roots in the way that they twisted, and kind of like trees in the way they reached towards the sky, but otherwise they were more like strange twisted skeletons rising from the ground. They had no leaves and no branches really simply twisted black forms rising from the ground a good ten to twenty feet splitting at odd intervals into their “branches, which plunged back downwards into the soil covered all over in patches of turquoise moss.

They were growing in such a way that you could walk underneath them, and through their twisting branches. The ground was sort of mossy, bright green in most cases with a splash of purple. Aside from the trees they were these, giant bright-orange ferns that towered into the air and cast themselves downwards under their own weight bringing the ground into shadow against the sun. They were placed at distant intervals from each other leaving enough room for the strange tree-like things, and a lot of the forest floor moss.

There were thousands of other little ferns, some in spiral shapes and others, in bright blue, which looked like giant blades of grass rising into the air patterns of dark black cutting up their surfaces like tiger stripes.

“Ah! Don’t you dare touch that.” The leading human ordered, and the marine at the front of the column withdrew her hand wilting.

“Yeah I know it looks cool, but it could be poisonous.” Their leader walked up and rested a hand on her shoulder, “It’s alright,...” His voice lowered, “If I am being honest with you, I want to touch it too.”

The GA members looked on in worry at the human’s conversation. They had gotten into some sticky situations, with this particular crew, from touching strange plant life in the past, and they were not interested in repeating such a situation. Luckily for them, the humans found some semblance of self control and kept their hands to themselves as they moved through the strange forest.

A white critter with one leg and one eye blinked warily at them from under a fern before leaping away into blackness.

The humans watched it go with mild fascination as the creature used it’s coil to bounce off the ground and into the bushes.

The temperature hovered a few degrees below freezing despite the tropical-esque plantlife that seemed to dominate the forest. It was hard to discern just how the plants survived in such an environment, but that is what they intended to learn. A low fog rolled in at some point plunging them into an eerie world of uncertainty.

With some trepidation, the humans constricted their triangle in order to see each other through the mist.

It was at that precise moment that they heard it, the strange sound rising on the air. It was close by. An echoing trumpeting bugle that rattled and wavered before dying back into darkness. In response, all the humans hunched into a low crouch weapons at the ready. It had a strange almost…. Metallic noise to it as if made by a rundi ship, but not quite.

It was difficult to explain as none of them had ever heard such a sound before.

A few moments past, and then they sound came again rising in the air and then dying back into a sort of thrumming gurgle.

The GA scientists shifted nervously.

One moved forward approaching the humans as they talked quietly to each other through their earpieces. One of the members tugged on the elad human’s hand, and he turned to look blinking at him with his single eye.

The expression was disconcerting, “What is that?” They wondered.

The humans looked at each other with a shrug, “We aren’t entirely sure right now.”

Again came the low bellowing rattling through the trees and echoing through the forest.

“Some kind of animal/” One of the other humans wondered.

“That would be my first guess.” Said the one-eyed human

“Should we head out?” They asked glancing into the fog and towards that echoing sound.

The lead human paused head tilted to the side as the sound came again, “No…. it doesn't seem to be moving in this direction. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be moving at all.” The aliens looked on in surprise at the human’s confidence. Of course they could all hear the noise, but theirs was not so tuned as to locate or detect where it was in the environment. It could be anywhere for all they knew.

The human kept his head tilted and continued to listen, “it sounds…. In… distress.”

GA representatives looked on in consternation, “how could you possibly think to tell that. You’ve never heard the creature before. Perhaps it is a mating call, perhaps it is hunting, and perhaps it is giving birth. There could be any number of reasons.”

The human shook his head with a frown, “I…. something just feels off about it. Hard to explain…. I think we should at least head in that direction to see what is going on.”

To the incredulity of the watching aliens, the rest of the humans agreed, though hesitantly, shouldering their weapons and forming into firing positions behind the first human.

With her weapon shouldered, the small blue Drev walked over and allowed the leading human to climb onto her back bracing his weapon against her shoulder and he directed her to the trees. The GA representative hung back towards the back of the group as the humans made their way into the fog. It’s not like it mattered though, if they were forced to run the humans would be much faster, and would outstrip them in minutes anyway.

As they walked, the distant bellowing grew louder and louder until they broke through the ferns and fog at the edge of a clearing. The humans stopped just ahead.

“Sweet Jupiter.” One of them muttered.

His expletives came at the behest of a strange scene. To the shock of the GA the leading human’s guess at the strange sound was correct. There was in fact a creature, that did, appear to be in distress. It was a strange creature tall and gangly with four long legs, or what they guessed to be long, and a short sloping back.

It had a long neck and head whose muzzle was long and conical tapering towards a shallow point at the end. As it trumpeted, it would tilt its head back and emit the noises from the small round mouth at the end of it’s cone, face. The head itself was topped by a strange array of what must have been either antlers or horns, many ending in sharp bladed leaf-like points.

On the creature’s back this same leaf like pattern continued, but with long feathered protrusions that flared when it bellowed sticking upwards and outwards two feet on either side.its body was furless, so there was another mystery as to how it survived in the cold, but it’s skin was a strange flower orange color hinting towards pink, very bright and shocking against the mud and the mist.

They could only assume the creature was tall based on its neck and body as much of it was hidden below a gelatinous mass of frozen mud which shifted and squelched as it struggled unmoving and getting nowhere.

It bellowed another mournful cry.

The humans had stopped in the clearing a few stepping closer to get a better look.

The GA representatives relaxed. If it was trapped, than it wouldn't be able to hurt them.

However, the humans began to move closer, causing the GA representatives to shift nervously in their places.

Seeing the humans the animal began to bellow wildly and thrash, and who could blame it as the predatory species moved around in a tight circle examining the creature.

“We should move on.” One of the GA reps stated nervously as the humans returned to their beginning circle.

The main human frowned at them, “what? ANd just leave it here.”

The GA scientists looked at him in consternation, “Well of course we are going to leave it here, what else would we do.”

The human held out his hands to either side, “Rescue it obviously. We can’t just let it die there, whatever it is.”

“Commander, it is no place of ours to intervene with the natural order.” “Clearly you don’t know humans very well.” he shot back, and the other humans began to mutter in agreement.

“Commander, what reason would we ever have to rescue that thing. What would be the point. It would only waste time energy and resources, and just look at the thing. If you get any closer it will gore you.”

With a stubborn shake of the head, the human glowered at them, “because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Who said that.”

“I did.” The human responded petulantly before turning to look at his men, “We are going to need tow cables, and anything else that we can come up with. Maybe a shovel if you have one. We aren’t going to leave this poor thing here to die.”

Behind them the creature was still thrashing in the bog as the humans began to gather their material, a few of them running back towards the landing shuttle to gather supplies they had neglected to bring, unknowing what was to happen. The GA scientists watched in consternation and a mild bit of annoyance. It didn’t make any sense, there was no reason for humans to be out here doing what they were doing. They had no idea what the creature was or what it could do, and for all they knew it would rip them in half as soon as it was able. In fact, this may just be how it lured it’s prey in before drinking their blood.

They had no way of knowing.

But still the humans insisted on doing what they were doing. Ropes and cables were brought. The humans discussed the best way to retrieve the creature. The commander took suggestions drew up plans in the dirt and offered to do the most dangerous part of the operation, seeing that it had been his idea to begin with, not that the other humans were disagreeing with him, and his choice.

The scientists watched from the forest as the human slowly began approaching the creature. He had the rope in one hand opened into a wide loop that had been tied by one of the marines. He approached slowly foot by foot. It was clear he did not go without notice, and the creature began to balk and shriek as he approached.

It jerked its head sending its knife like bladed horns flying in all directions. The human had to step back more than once out of the way of the thrashing creature.

“Shhh, shh. Its ok.” He was saying, doing his best to sooth the creature that didn’t seem intent on being soothed. This went on for more than an hour as the human attempted to get closer to the creature only to be driven away by the things bladed horns. Slowly, however, the creature began to lose energy bugling less, and slumping deeper down into the mud. The human grew closer and closer before eventually, reaching out and tossing the coil over the creature’s antlers.

It didn’t move but lowed piteously.

“Shh it’s ok. We’re going to have you out in no time. Just relax.” The human urged slowly reaching out to adjust the rope over the thing’s antlers.

His hand was right next to the creature’s multiple eyes.

It’s sides heaved in fear.

The human stepped back and motioned to the marines who moved forward to further secure the animal.

The commander reached out hesitantly brushing his fingers over the things neck. It recoiled at his touch.

“Shh. You’ll be ok.” He muttered resting the flat of his hand on the creature’s muscled neck. At first it shied away from him, but eventually relaxed still breathing heavily, eyes wide with fear.

Establishing a solid connection, the commander ordered his men back into position before stepping away to join them, “Come on, pull.” He grabbed the rope along with them, and together the humans began to pull. A small group of them wasn’t nearly enough to do more than cause the animal to bugle.

He ordered some of the others over, “Just pull enough to loosen it up, and then we can get closer so we don’t hurt it’s neck.” They agreed, and another group of marines walked up grabbing the rope and began to haul on it. Together the humans worked in unison rocking back and forth chanting in unison as they began to pull. If they had thought that one powerful human was impressive, the might of at least six was greater than impressive.

There was a sharp sucking sound as the creature’s legs shifted in the mud, and they lurched back.

“Hold it there.” He ordered three marines motioning two others with him as he moved forward.

He came in first between the creature and his men flexing his gloved hands, “IT’s alright, you’re almost out.” The creature just looked at him with wide frightened eyes.

He reached out delicately wrapping his hands around the base of its horns. He was just inches away from it’s huffing mouth.

“On my order…!... PULL!” They began to pull again and he gripped the creature tight hauling backwards with his feet digging into the soil. They strained and pulled for the longest time dirt giving inch by inch.

It would have taken ages if they ever did manage.

Until the two Drev took hold of the rope. They clearly didn’t understand what was going on either, but they decided to help.

ONe tug, a single tug. The mud made a sucking noise, the humans staggered back, and the commander flopped to his back still gripping the beast’s antlers. The creature was pulled bodily out of the mud, it’s long dangling legs stiff rigid it’s head lying on the commander’s chest it’s antlers just inches from his face.

He was breathing hard staring up at the razor edges.

With some difficulty, the human pulled back undoing the rope form the creature’s antlers as it lay in the mud before making a prudent retreat backwards. But they weren’t out of the woods yet. Using the rope he had taken from the antlers, he secured a loop around the front feet of the creature, strange, with three toes looking almost like fingers two facing forward and one facing back. Once standing, it seemed as if the animal would walk on the knuckles of the front two fingers and stabilize itself with the back appendage…. Like a thumb.

That done, he ordered the marines to pull very slowly and gently dragging the animal up onto the bank before retrieving his rope and making a hasty exit back towards his men.

The creature didn’t move for a very long time before slowly lifting it’s head and folding it’s legs. It sat there for an even longer time appearing almost confused as it turned it’s head to look at the watching humans. It had probably expected the predatory animals to go right ahead and eat it, but here it was…. Free.

It let off a soft bugle, and this time the call was returned from the distance.

As they watched, the creature urged to it’s four legs awkward with what appeared to be two knee joints as well as an ankle. The creature was quite tall when it stood upright.

It was watching them.

The humans grew very still.

The thing hesitantly stepped towards them leaning closer with its long neck. Something like a strange white tongue flicked from it’s circular mouth. They stood facing each other for many seconds eventually broken up by the call just outside the clearing.

All together they turned as the thing’s companion stepped into the trees. This one was a light peach color, almost as tall as the first but missing the antlers. Instead it had many of those long clear feathers dangling from it’s head and reaching towards the ground.

Around it’s feet there pranced at least ten very tiny orange creatures that looked like them in a vague sort of way. Like how a caterpillar kind of looks like a butterfly if you ignore the wings. Humans and GA scientists alike remained silent, watching as the tall horned beast took a few wobbly steps towards it’s little family turning its head to look at them one more time before vanishing into the trees.

It made no sense really. There was no reason for the behavior of the humans. The act itself didn’t reward them anything. In fact, they lost both time and resources trying to help the creature. The commander risked his life and limb against something that could easily have eviscerated him if it had really wanted too.

What they didn’t understand is that this behavior is quite common in humans.

Perhaps it has something to do with their great amount of empathy, but whatever the case.

The good of humanity doesn’t like to leave anyone to suffer weather it be human alien or beast.

#humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #humans are space oddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #HUMANS ARE WERID

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sockori · 4 years ago

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The Akatsuki But. Pokémon (2)

Not trainers, not preexisting Pokémon- but Pokémon themselves. I mean, Kishimoto’s original plan for them was to all be monsters- so why not reimagine them as pocket monsters?

(Notes:

- Covers Kakuzu, Hidan, Kisame, Itachi, Sasori, and Deidara.

- See Part 1′s notes. )

Kakuzu

(The Zombie Pokémon)

(The Ragdoll Pokémon)

Type: Dark/Ghost

(Dark fits the greed aspect, Ghost fits his transformation.)

Abilities (1): Cursed Body “May disable a move used on the Pokémon.”

Hidden Ability: Heart Harvest “Steals the stat changes of the Pokémon it takes out.”

(Can only happen once. If multiple faints by a spread move, the first Pokémon that faints gets stolen from.)

General Stats: Largely set on Attack and Defense; rounded everywhere else, with slightly higher HP Stat.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

A story told: wronged by those it once trusted, this outraged Pokémon stole the hearts of its superiors, literally- transforming itself into a horrifying beast of immortality. It takes the appearance of a ragdoll, a form made of loosely stitched up parts, its core a mass of strange, elusive black threads.

It holds a reputation for taking other’s wealth, eliminating powerful Pokémon and trainers to steal their riches, hoarding the treasures in an unknown location. Because of this, many have desired to capture it to become rich themselves- though, such a daunting task has, so far, only resulted in many... unfortunate disappearances.

Mega Evolution

Type: Dark/Ghost

Mega Ability: Mold Breaker

“Moves can be used on the target regardless of its Abilities.”

(still not sure on a Mega Ability- resorted to this one.)

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

The Pokémon’s entangled core bursts forth, rapidly expanding the physical form into a terrifying mass of threads. It rapidly repairs the body, quickly stitching back up the parts it loses along the way, though the effort is not exactly permanent.

The rapid physical transformation reveals strange masks on the Pokémon’s back, each a heart of the superiors it once trusted long ago. These strange creatures aid Kakuzu in masterfully performing Fire, Water, Electric and Flying type attacks, despite not having priority.

Hidan

(The Cult Pokémon)

(The Voodoo Doll Pokémon)

Type: Dark/Fighting

Abilities (1): Reckless

“Powers up moves that have recoil damage.”

Hidden Ability: Justified

“Boosts the Attack stat when it's hit by a Dark-type move.”

General Stats: Very high Attack Stat, with moderate speed and slight but relative bulk.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

A wild, cultish Pokémon with no desire for pacifism, it eliminated the peaceful village it came from in the name of violence. Hidan now roams the surrounding region in search of blood, looking for people to sacrifice in the name of a paranormal beast known as Jashin.

Hidan possesses strange power in immortality, able to suffer great injury, even severing, without a care in the world- perhaps even enjoying it. It shares bonds in immortality with Kakuzu, another Pokémon with similar zombie-like qualities.

Mega Evolution

Type: Dark/Fighting

Mega Ability: Cursed Blood

“This Pokémon, upon fainting, takes the opponent down with it.”

(Guaranteed Destiny Bond.)

General Stats: Equal Boosts to Attack, Speed, and Defense.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

It draws a strange symbol below its feet, activating an inner dark, arcane power, the sheer aura tainting its skin with a skeleton-like pattern. It can now pass its suffering to others if it so desires, making it a living voodoo doll of sorts.

Fueled by cultish energy, its newfound abilities in pain splitting give it the wild desire to maim in the name of Jashin. It tortures opponents it ensnares in its odd circle, passing on each injury, howling with nefarious laughter all the while.

Kisame

(The Shark Pokémon)

(The Swordsmen Pokémon)

Type: Water

Abilities (1): Rough Skin

“Inflicts damage to the attacker on contact.”

Hidden Ability: Shark Skin

“Inflict additional damage on the opponent when making contact.”

(Attaches Rough Skin to contact moves.)

General Stats: Emphasis on Attack and HP. Slow but bulky, with relatively high defenses.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

Losing its faith in the world, it lost the desire to stay in the Mist region, now affiliating itself with the mysterious Pokémon of the Rain. Despite its large, intimidating appearance and thirst for combat, this Shark Pokémon is actually relatively docile, intensely loyal to those it gains trust for.

Kisame possesses one of the legendary Seven Swords- a scaly-skinned, sentient weapon known to absorb the power of anyone it pleases. The bond Kisame holds with this weapon is strong, perhaps even affectionate, giving the strange creature poffins after battles.

Mega Evolution

Type: Water

Mega Ability: Dry Skin

“Restores HP in rain or when hit by Water-type moves. Reduces HP in harsh sunlight, and increases the damage received from Fire-type moves.”

(casually puts skin abilities on Kisame)

Stat Boosts: Trades out its bulk for offensive power, with crazy high Attack and Speed, but lower defenses.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

It fuses itself with the legendary Sword, inheriting its regenerative abilities, transforming into a large, more shark-like beast. It captures opponents with its strong jaws, dragging them under the surface without mercy.

Now fused with the legendary Sword, it fights with every last effort against its opponent. Its strange loyalty compels it to fight, willing to exert everything for those it trusts- even if it means sacrificing itself.

Itachi

(The Illusive Pokémon)

(The Optical Pokémon)

Type: Psychic/Fire

Abilities (1): Illusion

“Comes out disguised as the Pokémon in the party's last spot.”

Hidden Ability: Illusive World

“It traps the foe in illusions whilst they’re confused, reducing their HP.”

(Bad Dreams but different. Tsukuyomi would be Dark Void for Confusion.)

General Stats: Highest in Special Attack, good in Attack and Speed. HP is moderate, Defenses are low.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

The legendary Pokémon known as the Uchiha were wiped out in a single night by the mysterious Itachi for reasons of testing strength- or so many assume. It now walks outside of the Leaf region, refusing to walk its home grounds once again, though sightings of the Illusive Pokémon inside its borders persist anyway...

It is infamously known as The Optical Pokémon, for its strange changing eyes that are said to stare directly into the soul. It channels Psychic energy into them, generating life-like and sometimes horrific illusions on its opponents- though, doing so further wears down its eyesight.

Mega Evolution

Type: Psychic/Dark

Mega Ability: Susanoo Armor

“The Pokémon’s stats are dramatically increased (3.5x), though it reduces its HP (1/6) every turn.”

(a unique ability, but not signature- as obviously the other Uchihas can have it as well. The HP reducing sucks but without it would be absolutely broken)

(Susanoo Armor is the Mega Evolution stats boost.)

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

A gigantic armored spirit appears, enveloping the Pokémon in a virtually indestructible armor. However, this armor also dramatically strains the Pokémon, inciting excruciating pain the longer it continues.

Due to the drawbacks of the armor, this Mega Evolution is relatively short-lived. Despite this, it spreads mass destruction, able to topple a nation in just one swing of its sword.

Deidara

(The Explosive Pokémon)

(The Transient Pokémon)

Type: Ground/Rock | Ground/Fire (I’ll let you choose.)

Abilities (1): Flame Body

“Contact with this Pokémon may burn the attacker.”

Hidden Ability: Firecracker

“Gives priority to bomb/ball moves.”

General Stats: Great Sp. Attack and Speed. Moderate everywhere else; slight advantage in Attack.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

An intense Pokémon with a taste for art, it searches the region for inspiration- and destruction. Championing the art of “Transient Beauty”, it takes pleasure in bombing and setting fire to anything it finds pleasing, typically without any regards to who may be there.

The odd mouths on Deidara’s body churn up fiery power into clay, giving it an unusually explosive quality. This Explosive Pokémon regularly uses its mouths to create destructive clay creatures; they follow its every will, dutifully guiding themselves into their target like missiles.

Mega Evolution

Type: Ground/Dragon

Mega Ability: Transient Art

“Powers up Bomb/Ball moves by 40%.”

(Yeah he gets two unique abilities. What Of It)

Stat Boosts: Both offensive stats and speed stats boosted. Minor boosts here and there.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

Deidara churns up an intense amount of clay, forming a massive, strange white creature in the shape of a dragon. It churns out explosive attacks on the opponent in rapid succession, taking a notch off of its tail in the process.

Creating a giant clay dragon, Deidara hops onto its back and hovers into the air. It proudly proclaims its Transient Art from above, raining down a series of bombs on the opponent- and whoever else is in the area.

Sasori

(The Scorpion Pokémon)

(The Eternal Pokémon)

Type: Poison

Abilities (2):

Poison Touch “Coming into contact with this Pokémon may cause poisoning.”

Battle Armor “Hard armor protects the Pokémon from critical hits.” (In reference to Hiruko.)

Hidden Ability: Contaminated

“All contact moves this Pokémon uses gains a 45% chance to poison the opponent.” (Contact moves that already have a chance to Poison get boosted by the same amount.)

General Stats: High Attack and Speed Stat. Slight emphasis on the defenses, moderate everywhere else.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

Unfortunate events turned this Pokémon toward inhumane reason. Fascinated with “Eternal Beauty”, Sasori performed an unknown technique that altered its appearance with semi-immortality. The specifics of this strange transformation remain undiscovered.

This poisonous Pokémon roams the sandy dunes, stealing items and trainers for its grizzly fascinations. It is said that the poison it excretes is so powerful, not even a basic Antidote can cure it. Unlucky victims undergo three agonizing days before meeting their fate.

Mega Evolution

Type: Poison / Steel

Mega Ability: Merciless

“The Pokémon's attacks become critical hits if the target is poisoned.”

General Stats: Massive increase to Attack and Speed. Loses some of its bulk in the process, but its relatively minor.

Pokédex Entries (1, 2):

The Pokémon takes off its cloak, revealing the secrets of its transformation- an intricate puppet body. It uses its sharpened blades and deadly poisons to cut through waves of opponents. It is merciless in its outrage, sparing no sympathy for those it targets.

A wide-eyed, empty stare is plastered over the face of this now revealed puppet. This Pokémon believes it is sparing the foe it poisoned by fainting it swiftly and powerfully- it spares no mercy for those it shreds.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #akatsuki #naruto akatsuki #kakuzu #hidan #kisame #kisame hoshigaki #itachi #itachi uchiha #deidara #sasori #crossover #see part 1's tags

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tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 5 years ago

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Trinkets, 33: Interesting baubles, semi magical objects and items touched by mystery.

A wax stamp that changes insignia depending on the proximity of the nearest royal blooded individual.

A hollowed, curled demon horn. When blown, it sounds like tortured screaming.

A strange note, written on bloody human flesh. Examining the ragged piece of flesh reveals a reeking stench of sweat and tears. A series of crude gouges in the skin pulsate and seep blood. They seem to form a pattern, and the reader can just make out the following: “Beware the Avatar of the Crawling Chaos, the Heart of Darkness knows no mercy.”

A sharp tooth as long as a human hand. Looking at it makes a humanoid creature uneasy in a deeply primal way.

A glowing orb that has a hidden button on it. Pressing it reveals several smaller variously colored orbs inside, which escape the orb and start to orbit it, like planets around a star. Pressing the button again causes the spheres to retreat back into the glowing one.

A sealed glass petri dish holding a small ooze like substance labeled, "Experiment #1".

A perfume vinaigrette shaped like a tiny, long amphora. Made of some silvery metal and worked all over with tarnished curlicue. If shaken, the vinaigrette rattles, as if filled with large grains. Its lid clicks open, allowing, from the grated neck, a mossy odor of chypre. A scent neither in vogue nor disliked, today. The scent does not run out, nor fade.

A long scroll made out of weathered parchment with a broken wax seal. The material is covered in strange diagrams of inhuman anatomy at crazy, disjointed angles.

A piece of parchment torn from a notebook, written on it are a list of names and causes of death.

A lead slate, five inches by four, and quite worn, with five lines of text written across the back in small, punched holes. Each line appears to be the same phrase, simply repeated in five languages. The first, punched out in the symbols and tongue of Ancient Dwarven, which is still legible today, reads "What wrought we here should be forgot."

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A wax stamp that changes insignia depending on the proximity of the nearest royal blooded individual.

A hollowed, curled demon horn. When blown, it sounds like tortured screaming.

A sharp tooth as long as a human hand. Looking at it makes a humanoid creature uneasy in a deeply primal way.

A sealed glass petri dish holding a small ooze like substance labeled, "Experiment #1".

A long scroll made out of weathered parchment with a broken wax seal. The material is covered in strange diagrams of inhuman anatomy at crazy, disjointed angles.

A piece of parchment torn from a notebook, written on it are a list of names and causes of death.

An elongated, angular mask designed for masquerade balls. It features a large pair of velveted antlers and a crown of lustrous ivy.

An antique pipe that has a carved parrot wearing a tricorn hat perched on its bowl. The smoke that billows from the chamber is colored a wild mix of reds, blues, and greens.

A small jar of a sweet smelling green paste. When applied to the tender inflamed skin, it soothes and numbs the pain, replacing it with a pleasant tingling sensation for a few hours.

A coffin shaped scrollcase filled to the brim with loose sheets of yellowed paper. They are covered with maddened scrawl and diagrams and calculations and degenerate ranting.

An oil lamp made from a turtle's shell embellished with gold leaf and a copper handle.

A bronze bowl engraved with pagan figures, one side shows a city at war and another shows it at peace. The metal of the bowl is corroded, gone all green and black.

A surgeon’s amputation saw with a bone handle engraved with pictographs of burial rituals.

Kolain Drop: A small tin canister containing a few dozen candies made from amber sugar, spun into a shape resembling the outline of a teardrop (Although a cynic might claim they look like candy nooses) and coated in dark chocolate. Licking a Kolain makes it harder to concentrate on sad memories for a short while, but finishing a whole drop while focusing on a specific memory accentuates the positive emotions of that memory and makes it easier to deal with the associated negative emotions.

A prosthetic eye made of ivory and set with an opal iris. The eye whispers unintelligible breathy words to the bearer in the dark and if worn during sleep, the bearer suffers from terrible, barely remembered Random Nightmares.

A beautifully crafted silver pocket watch that functions but the hands tick backwards.

A ship in a bottle suspended above water that sloshes and froths rhythmically, regardless of whether or not it is moved or shaken. The ship bobs cheerfully in the water and is relaxing to look upon.

A bassoon with the bell joint carved into the shape of a dragon’s head that shoots smoke rings when played.

An iron mask resembling a skull with its mouth sowed shut.

A large tapestry made from an unidentifiable thread. Strange symbols and stranger images fill every space, chaotically strewn about the thread work with no apparent pattern. No centralized theme or focus can be made out, but the likeliness of several important figures and deities can be made out amongst alien creatures and other, unknown people. The tapestry is unfinished on one side, making it obvious that the project is still a work in progress.

A large hourglass which in place of sand, has dozens of tiny teeth of all shapes and kinds flowing between the two bulbs, each one glowing with a faint red light. The flow of the device switches directions at random times for no visible reason, with no bulb ever holding all the teeth.

A wanted poster that resembles one of the PC's but the hairstyle and colour are completely wrong.

A freshly dead messenger raven with a tiny scroll tube tied to its leg. Within is a small parchment with some sort of coded battle report written on it.

A fairly well made wooden mask that has been carved to resemble the facial features of the minor God of Random Domain. A creature actively wearing the mask see's the world through the eye holes with a slightly altered perception as if they are being subtly influenced by the nature of the God.

A simple but finely crafted leather armband embossed with a branch-like pattern.

A one gallon cask of a rare liquor known as Hag's Blood. A strong fruit wine with the hyphae of a fungus growing through it. It has to be fed a bit of sugar every year to keep the fungus alive, or else it just becomes a normal fruit wine. It is drank slowly, and induces hallucinogenic effects in the drinker.

A wide, flat bronze bracelet carved with couples entwining.

A large brass medal of military service. It once bore an intricate casting of a lion's head. But it has been polished smooth over many years.

A small medicine bottle, halfway filled with a herbal remedy.

A small portrait of a group of friends, all but one of them with a date written next to their name.

A blue and gold diviner's scroll covered in text that change every morning at dawn. The writing is usually cryptic message about future events.

An ocarina seemingly crafted from snowflake obsidian that produces some decently low notes and is shaped somewhat like an aquatic animal of some sort.

A silver coin with a siren on heads and a banshee on tails. When the coin is flipped it will make ominous wailing sounds until the outcome is revealed.

A brick taken from a haunted house. The brick grows sharp, jagged teeth at night which retract during the day.

A small goldfish skeleton preserved in a clear glass orb.

An amalgam of dozen small animal skulls, each from a different creature, all compressed and partly melted into a heavy, fist-sized ball of horror.

A bag of glass eye marbles fashioned in various shades of blue, green, brown, and hazel. When a marble is rolled on the ground, it always appears to be looking at the creature who rolled it.

A music box in the shape of a clockwork raven that sits atop a porcelain skull. Winding the mechanism plays an eerie tune, while the raven pecks the empty eye socket to the rhythm of the music

A small leather pouch filled with strong-smelling healing herbs.

A leather wallet stamped with the holy symbol of a God of a Random Domain. It contains a set of certified identification papers denoting that the bearer is an ordained member of a religion who worships said Deity. The section containing the priest's physical description (Height, weight, sex, race, eye, skin and hair colour) is completely blank and could be filled in by anyone with half decent handwriting.

A wooden, toy rocking horse, carved to look like a horse whose skin has been removed, muscles, tendons, and blood vessels are all intricately shown. In some areas, even those layers have been removed in favor of exposing parts of the horses skeleton.

A simple lantern with a hood covering. The hood spins as the base plays a music box tune to reveal pictures of clawed monsters, winged demons, witches and wolves on the wall. Different hoods can be placed on to show different scenes.

A carving of a boar made of quartz and no longer than a person’s thumb.

A clockwork dismembered hand wearing a white glove with an ornate signet ring and dress shirt cuff with gemmed cuff links. It moves around on its fingers when wound up.

A handheld mirror with a cobalt border engraved with strange runes. Instead of your reflection, you see nothing but mist in its surface.

A fire opal carved into a small coin. The obverse sigil is a picture of rainfall. The reverse is an elven phrase that translates to “Let us take what nature will not provide.”

A single small, filthy earring that when worn, allows the bearer to speak the language of the goblins, but only to say: "I don't actually speak Goblin. I only know that sentence, and this one explaining it.” The bearer is not granted the ability to understand the language and doesn’t comprehend what they just said unless they are already fluent.

A wooden relic carved from bronzewood, in the shape of a serpent. It can always adjust to fit snugly around the bearer's forearm. It writhes occasionally, when seen out of the corner of your eye.

A travel case for a Random Musical Instrument. The case is made of hardwood covered in boiled leather sealed in beeswax with rubber seals around the opening. The inside is lined with velvet sheltering the instrument from the harshest jostling the bearer might endure. An adjustable carry strap allows the bearer to wear it in whatever manner is most comfortable for them. Whatever type of instrument the case is deigned to carry, the case contains one such musical device (Or a set of devices) within it.

A shawl of beautiful rainbow color with lace frilled edges resembling clouds.

A black coin with two grim sides. One side bears the staring visage of a spiral-horned woman with mean eyes. Its opposing face displays an eyeless skull. A tarry blackbird, ragged, follows the carrier of said coin at cautious distance, watching with fish’s eyes.

A branding iron the length of a human hand, whose business end is forged in the shape of the phrase: “Random Motto”. The brand could be used to stamp leather or flesh and might have been used by an individual or organization to mark its goods, armor or members.

A brooch composed of three overlapping green-enameled nickel silver leaves secured together by rusted hinges. The enamel is cracked and dusty. If worn, the leaves click together; a sound reminiscent of clinking spurs on riding boots.

A chunk of amber included by a blackened, fossilized thing curled up upon itself. It is big-headed and roughly humanoid, like a minute fetus, but has distinct ridges or spurs running down its curved spine.

A clay whistle, shaped like a toothless, leering skull. With some practice, a user may develop a queer embouchure and play the thing, which requires a forceful blow into the cranium. It produces no music; only a high and rattling cry of human terror. A blood-curdling scream.

A die with six sides. An inch square, and cut from decayed walrus ivory. The carved faces, their lines filled with dirt, are thus: A long-fingered hand, a thin eye, an acorn, a seven-pointed star, a spiny fish, and a rose in full bloom. When rolled, the fish consistently lands facing up.

A dried serpent, coiled in a foggy crystal tube sealed with wax. A husk of a creature, like onion skins wrapped around brittle fishbones. A leak of ash and smothered cinders spills from a split in its long, desiccated gut.

A glass jar, blue, sagging with the slow melt of ages. Within are three seeds, somehow not yet turned to dust. They are like those of a pumpkin, or squash, but are reddish and much pointier.

A green, glass apple barely skinned with flaking gold leaf. Within, there are visible countless rivers of incredibly tiny veins, fibers, and seeds, as if a real apple were refashioned precisely as glass. Said seeds are glimmering red, perhaps rubies. The apple is profoundly strong and cannot easily break.

A handheld fan with lightweight steel leaves. When fully opened on its creaking rivet, it forms three quarters of a circle. The leaves are spotted with delicate openwork in flowering geometric patterns, some of which have been eaten through by rust.

A bright red, strip of cloth, stitched with images of a cheering crowd throwing garlands toward a chariot. It fits across the bearer's shoulder and then diagonally down their chest to reach their opposite hip.

A strangely shaped piece of whittled driftwood with dozens of holes in it. When the correct hole is blown into, it mimics the sound of the ocean.

A large locket, its case and door crafted from faceted, cracked, yellowed glass cut like a rectangular gem. Its interior frame holds not a painting, nor an etching, but a fuzzy, silver mirror. The mirror, when polished, has a hidden effect: If one looks into it, centers their face in the frame, and focuses upon the background, they may discern a tall, unmoving woman there, towering behind them. She is ghostly, as if cut into the silver, and looks on with deep, piercing eyes. A pair of long, spiraling horns extend from her gaunt and mirthless head.

A miniature, silver-plated skull inlaid with black fretwork. The skullcap lifts of on a tiny hinge, revealing holes for three vials, grouped in a triangle, within. Only two vials are there. They are octagonal, ruby red barrels capped with silver.

A bolt of coarse, beige, jute cloth wrapped in a protective oilskin case.

A monocle-like disc upon a fragment of silver chain. Unfit for wear as a monocle, as the thick, yellowed lens is scratched and scuffed with countless minutia and little pitted points. The points seem to coalesce as a man-shaped form. If set before a bright light, the lens projects a diagram: A flayed man, splayed in anatomical position, with labels in an odd language indicating his spilled organs and opened bodily structures.

An old harmonica engraved with a compass card and a variety of fish. When played on land it summons a fresh breeze smelling of salt and seaweed, putting everyone within earshot in a melancholic mood and longing for the sea.

An iron hook, barbed, like those meant for fishing, but quite too large. Two links of rusted, cast iron chain trail from it, followed by a flat, similarly cast tag of iron. It shows, under ample rust, the simple etching of a bony man hung by a hook sunk through his collarbone. Three runes, like circles cut with spurs, are stamped below. The tag has another hole opposite the attachment of its links, suggesting more where attached thereafter.

An ivory comb, the kind meant to lay flat and stay a plate of hair. Blackened, either with age or with purposeful tarnish, and carved on its handle with images of plagued skeletons, obviously undead, spilling over each other in a chilling accurate depiction of frozen, unnaturally insectile movement.

A petrified egg, slightly orange, with one side cut away. A hideous embryo, also fossilized, is curled there. It is a long-backed, anencephalic neonate with long, rodent-like incisors that join to form a sort of beak. It clutches, in three-fingered hands, its own tail. The thing is shot through with long maggots turned by time into red stone.

A silver brooch shaped like an imperious face framed by stylized, curling locks. It has small, yellow garnets for eyes. The eyes seem to be backed by mirrors, for they flash with an unusual brightness while in light. The brooch is magnetic, on its iron back, and connects powerfully to metal objects.

A silver tube, long, worked with branchwork, and thin, filled with yellow powder. Said powder smells of hickory and some astringent tang. It fills the tube, which is closed with a screw cap, to the brim.

A small, ivory figure nailed to a Y-shaped crucifix, also ivory. The figure is carved in excellent detail. Though emaciated and wracked in stiff-limbed agony, a wide and tooth grin is present on the figure's hollow-eyed face.

A small knife, unfit for fighting, with small notches and teeth, like those of a key, cut into its edge. Plainly made from dark, patinated iron. Shiny and sharpened at the hard, toothy edge.

A square bell, rather small, and unusually heavy. Smooth, unrusted, with a short tongue that wags with only great force. It sheds no sound; only heavy vibrations that shake the hand, vibrate one's teeth in their sockets, and touch ringing tones of nearby metal objects.

A squarish iron key, large, with three blocky teeth. One of the teeth rotates, with some difficulty, grinding with rust. The wide, handle portion of the key is also rusted, but depicts, in bas relief, a square door with a howling, heavy-browed face above the keyhole.

A strange pin, like a clothier might use for sewing, but larger, and with a slightly serrated shaft and a red glass bead for a head. Larger than is useful by a factor of two. If stuck in red-blooded flesh, into which it sinks readily, the red bead glows, faintly, flickering like a faint flame in a bloody shade.

A slide whistle made of bone, carved in the shape of an emaciated skeletal figure, mouth agape at the end. When played, it emits an eerie ghostly sounds that can be varied in pitch with the slide.

A thick crystal sphere, large as a grapefruit. Delicate fronds of green flora lie within, all sprouted in a choked abundance from a mess of roots and humus. Yellow dust, perhaps pollen, swirls about the stems amidst motes of white gas. The sphere does not open, and the plants within are like none seen on the earth.

Two glass eyeballs in a tarnished silver box with gold hinges. The orbs lie on dusty, red velvet divots. They are green glass and irregularly shaped in the back. Oddly convoluted inside, like jelly and fish eggs. Gold leaf irises lie under the hard, crystal lenses.

A heady, sweet smelling noose made of still-living flowers and freshly cut vines.

A massive cloth and leather banner emblazoned with the unified crests of ten different fey courts.

A white marble mortar, quite small, chained to its pestle with a thin iron leash. Stained on the interior with blotchy brown. Carved on the outside with simple images of tiny, impish individuals grinding teeth in mortars just large enough to accommodate a molar.

A whale tooth decanter scrimshawed with the image of a gargoyle within a star.

A darkwood and brass door knocker with the image of a rock gnome, and a tower within a teardrop shape. It is of ancient workmanship.

A matching pair of brass bangles, each decorated with the symbol of a sheaf of grain and an oak leaf.

A highly polished shell horn made of walrus tusk.

A beautifully-written madrigal, the first line reading "Your blazing mass negates any prudence." in Dwarvish.

A large tin canister whose lid is stamped with the image of barn, whose interior reveals a farmer milking a cow. The container is filled with dozens of well-preserved strips of beef jerky.

A white handkerchief, slightly yellowed, bordered in black thread. The soft, silky weave sloughs away all soaked or stuck-on mess once fully dried, no matter how dirty. Impossible to tear, by hand, but frayed around the edges. Bears a monogram in one corner; a rune reminiscent of a G, but with more curls.

A short scroll wrapped around a pair of dowels, bearing runic script and celestial patterns painted in rich, bold inks.

A small harp with a body made out of an opaque golden glass that seem to glow as the instrument is played.

A dark black cowl made from a fine matte cloth. The edge of the cowl is lined with a dull silver trim inscribed with shimmering symbols of Thieves Cant.

An ancient set of pipes made from the hollowed out finger bones of a dead bard, whose soul is still bound to them. When music is played from the instrument, listeners can faintly make out a gentle vocal accompaniment that perfectly fits whatever is being played.

A porcelain mask featuring a laughing face and a wide open mouth, and has all manner of colours and inlays on it. Inside the open mouth is just a black void that reflects no light, not even a glossy sheen.

An elven hunting cap that’s especially elongated, visually mirroring an elf’s elongated, pointed ears. It’s black, and the brim is pinned on one side with a tourmaline brooch, holding an iridescent peryton feather.

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galahdanblade · 4 years ago

Note

She was still new to this and not very sure of how things worked. So she just followed the other hunters towards the main hut of in Prairie and fidgeted with her dogtags; they were still shiny and new. This was the area for new hunters to earn their first few ranks after all. Seeing a vaguely face she knocked on the timber door frame; Jeanne had seen this guy in the city with Dave Auburnbrie. "Hi there, I'm one of the new recruits from Lestallum, name's Jeanne. I ... not to sound like a city-slicker, but I don't really know where I'm supposed to go, or what I'm meant to do. Help a girl out?"

note to self - next time just flat out refuse. don’t try and pick the diplomatic approach about it not being suited to his skill-set. it wasn’t that kaleb didn’t like prairie, not at all. all hunters cut their teeth at this place, it held a nostalgic feeling for most of them.

from the rusted skeletons of cars and trucks that had long-since been cannabilised to save other vehicles, to the dartboard on the back of the barn and the rope strung up as a make-shift washing line by its side ... there was always a sense of coming home when you went to prairie.

things were laid back there - most of the hunters knew the varmints were low-levelled dualhorns, sabertusks, anaks and the odd few reapertails prowling the rolling scrub between formouth garrison and the roadway.

it was just ... still a bit uncomfortable for kaleb. prairie held a hell of a lot of good memories from his earlier days hunting and learning the ropes, but it held a few he was none too keen to delve back into again - just steer clear of keycatrich trench.

sitting down at the small table out by the back of prairie’s barn, kaleb blinked and tore his attention away from the dirt road that led up the slope to the ruins. instead, he leafed through the intel the different tipsters had sent their way, the hunter sorted through them, setting the reapertails to one side ... no way he was sending a party of newbies on that one, didn’t need to go tell dave he’d managed to get one of the recruits speared with a barbed tail.

another one and kaleb had to do a double-take on the report - fucking cactuars? hadn’t seen those round these parts in a hell of a long time, save for that fabled ‘night of 1000,000 needles’ but that had been a pure fluke of nature, that many cactuars in one place. and it had been in duscae, not leide. another no for the newbie pile.

another few pages and he’d found some hunts for sabertusk packs prowling around out by the three valleys parking spot. and if things went south or the hunt took longer than expected, merioth haven was close enough to make camp at.

okay, sabertusks it was then.

looking at the sound of someone knocking their knuckles against wood, kaleb gave the woman a quick glance over; short, sandy-blonde hair, bright hazel eyes ... jeanne labreigh, wasn’t it? the sole reason that name had stuck in his head was because she’d been the only woman in this group of newbies. that and it was unusual to get a female recruit hailing from lestallum - most the girls and women there tended to head straight for the exiniris plant.

there were another four or five recruits though? furrowing his brows, kaleb held onto the edge of the table and leaned back until he could catch sight of the gap between the barn and the remnants of the house that stood next to it ... yep, there they were. fawning over the shiny new weapons in the culless truck.

great, he had a magpies for recruits it seemed.

‘ information is knowledge, and knowledge might end up saving your ass some day - lesson one. and one you’ll hear about three hundred more times, but i promise you it’s a motto for a reason. ’

rolling his eyes to the clear sky above, he shoved his chair away from the table and stood up, holding out the intel they had on the sabertusks for the woman to take and read over.

‘ lesson two, relax, alright? you’re not gonna be put out of your depth. right now, give the intel a read-through, decide what you need to bring with you and we’ll see if knowledge is your friend yet? ’

‘ i’ll be back soon ... need to go frighten your buddies first. i’ve been granted explicit permission to do so from the head hunter. ’

@meldaciomartyr

#tagging you because ... tagging his wife would be problematic #XD #Anonymous #replied

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escorble-writes · 4 years ago

Text

Interview between "Plink" of the Hawthorn Sprites and Argos of the Bane Squad.

Argos squirmed uncomfortably on the cold rock he sat upon.

It was a pale day, and the sky shone an eerie silver behind the inky trees towering high above the clearing the rather slight man was waiting in. Too similar by far to the clearing where they-

"No. No nows not the time to think about that." He thought quietly, brushing his newly grey hair beneath his hat.

After all he was here on a job. It wasn't a good time to remember three dark figures draining life from you like blood.

There was an odd buzzing hum on the air then, and he saw the first sprite decend on the little clearing, its brethren lingering back in the shadows of the woods.

The sprite was a strange little creature, but no stranger than what the man who called himself Argo saw on a daily basis.

It had six spindly limbs, four arms and two legs; that looked as though they were grown from the stems and sticks of scraggly plant life. Five talons topped the end of each of these limbs, more like rose thorns than nails, and the creature was patterned in strange swirling patterns all over its leaf-green skin.

'Hullo life-bane!' It called out in a voice like a wasp 'have you brought us our payment?'

Argos nodded and held aloft the fist-sized bottle of tears. He didn't know where Thetis had got them and he wouldn't ask.

The swarm of sprites hummed delightedly and their emissary shot down on it's skeleton leaf wings.

It landed surprisingly heavily on the oak log next to Argos and he jumped slightly in spite of himself. A wide sharp smile was painted on its little pointed face, ink-black eyes crinkled in a smile beneath mossy hair.

'Give, give now and then we shall speak to you.'

Argos quickly handed over the bottle to the sprite, and it wrapped it's arms around the glass, giggling happily.

'Ask, ask away.' It cackled, the sound echoing eerily from the rest of it's swarm. One of the many benefits to being a hivemind- you could never quite die.

Argos made the remark quietly and was met with another peal of crackling laughter in response.

'Is true. But not what you called us here for.'

It tilted its tiny head towards the tape recorder in Argos'hand and he nodded as he started the recording.

'This is Argos of the Bane Squad, on November 3rd, speaking to the sprite hivemind involved in the case of 007.3, also known as "Stitches".'

There was a mutter through the clearing then : "Stupid Stitches" in a deep hiss.

The air changed then, and if it were possible felt even colder and darker than before.

'Er... yes.' Argos said 'we were wondering what your involvement with that fey was.ehst may I address you as?'

'Plink. ' the sprite next to him said thoughtfully. 'Is a nice sound.'

'Alright. Plink it is. Now, Plink, when did you first meet 007.3?'

The sprite hummed in contemplation.

'Four summers old. A chit of a silly little boy. Smelly. Wouldn't let us drink his tears, even though he had a lot to spare.'

A shard of something like guilt shot through the man's chest. He remembered seeing Stitches, hearing that broken howling sound pour from the boys bloody mouth...

'What about recently? In the Autumn?'

'He leaves us honey. We don't pinch. Very simple. Nothing else.'

Argos sighed. He'd had a feeling this was going to be tricky, and the stubborn set of the sprites jaw just confirmed his suspicions. They'd never rat out one of their own, even a firefae.

So, swallowing his questions about their role in keeping 007.3 from dying on day zero, he asked about the girl, 007.4 instead.

'Oh Woodachre? Our light, our love, our queen. Too good for the likings of man.'

He pressed them for more, for the clear stones around a split and smoldering log, for the blood on the field, the sightings, and the rumors but they said nothing.

Argos was angry.

'You cheated me! You went back on your deal! You're not telling me anything!'

Plink smiled at him with teeth like broken glass as the hum of its kin started, low and menacing all around them.

'We showed up. We spoke of Stitches and Woodachre. That was the deal.'

The air grew oppressive with the sound of muttering cackling sprites and Argos stood, backing away with tape recorder in hand.

Too similar. Too similar.

(The trees whistled around the three robed figures, hands raised to the sky-)

Argos fled.

#short story #stitches #the bane squad #sprites #fey #fae #faerie #writeblr #writers on tumblr #english folklore #original writing #drabble

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lover-of-skellies · 4 years ago

Text

Introducing: Valence Bandersnatch. Or Val, if you'd prefer that

He's a British boy (complete with the accent), he lives in Nep's forest by himself, and he's a murderer, getting random people to go back to his little cottage for tea and crumpets or whatever before killing them. From there, he has to dump the bodies in Nep's lake, since he's indebted to Nep (the family of lake dwellers are allowing him to live on their land, so he has to repay them somehow to keep the peace)

He's a flirt with a weird set of morals. Like,, he'll flirt with a person and do sinful things with them if he's in a good mood, but forcing yourself on someone who doesn't want it though? That's a big no no, and if he finds out that someone's done that to someone else before, he will literally kill them on the spot. He’s also got this weird ability that involves changing his appearance, so he can make himself look like anyone he wants. The only thing he can't do from there is mimic their voice. As far as a job goes, he's a hunter and an herbalist, and he sometimes even lends his ability to enchant things to people as well, though that's more expensive for them

Because I was bored and had some free time, I went and wrote a thing to kinda introduce him a little :P it's kinda long though, hence why there's a cut here. Just be warned though,, there's violence, one scene gets a little suggestive (nothing more than kissing happens though, soooo??), and I guess there's some drugging? Some weird aphrodisiac-like substance and a poison, used separately on different things

You'd been minding your own business, absentmindedly swishing your bare feet back and forth in the water as you laid on your back on the wooden dock, looking up at the canopy of trees that seemed to loom over you. The air was a pleasant temperature, not too warm, not too cold, as it drifted through the leaves, occasionally blowing an individual leaf loose and causing it to come fluttering down to the ground. As you listened to the sound of the leaves being caught by the gentle breeze, you let out a soft sigh. You'd been so stressed lately with life; between work and family, you'd felt as though you were dangerously close to snapping and committing murder. Not that you actually would, though.

You'd been so stressed lately with life that when you arrived here and settled down on the dock, you didn't register the pair of solid white sockets that watched your every move, calculating when to strike.

A low growl in some nearby brush caught your attention and you immediately shifted your gaze to them, your brows furrowing; what the hell?... It sounded like it came from some sort of large predator, but the biggest predators that resided in this forest were the simple bobcats. Not even bears called this place their home. Sitting up, you pulled your feet out of the water and fumbled with your shoes and socks, scrambling to slip them on as the growling began to grow nearer and nearer. As soon as you'd successfully put your socks and shoes back on, you stood, narrowing your eyes slightly as you strained to see the shape that was huddled in the brush better. From where you currently stood, all you could see was black and white. Though... If you didn't know any better, you'd say it looked humanoid. How strange.

You took a small step toward the creature, and then a second, and then a third, but it remained almost perfectly still. Another growl made you freeze in place, though this was different from what you'd heard before. This growling sounded more like the sound your stomach would make whenever it called out for food. A pair of solid white sockets, entirely focused on you, narrowed slightly in what could've been considered joy, and you'd somehow edged close enough to be able to watch as a wide grin stretched across the creatures face, displaying a row of serrated, sharp teeth. And then the creature rose to his feet, tilting his head as he stared at you.

It was a skeleton, clad in a pair of baggy basketball shorts and a white t-shirt. His shirt, however... you frowned, your eyes locking on the vivid red that stained it. Right over where his sternum would be, there was a red blotch that resembled a hand print, and you felt your blood run cold. The skeleton watched your expression twist from confusion to fear, and he let out a raspy chuckle, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He then bared his teeth, still smiling widely as he asked, "Hey there, pal. You up for a game of tag?" You were lost for words, shaking your head as you stepped off the dock onto the earth, your eyes wide with fear. His body warped through the space between the two of you and he roughly grabbed your arm, digging his claws into your skin. You yelped as they broke the skin, your eyes watering up as he proceeded to lift your arm. He locked gazes with you as a deep teal tongue slipped past his maw, trailing up your arm and licking up a droplet of blood. Feeling yourself begin to tremble, you whimpered, your voice much weaker than normal, "P-Please... stop..." He licked a bit more of your blood up, his sockets hooded as he leaned even closer, his hot breath fanning over your face as he purred, "I'm it, ok? I'm gonna let you go and give you a ten second head start before I come after you. If I catch you, it's game over. Now," he released your arm, excitement flickering in his sockets, "run, human. Run as fast as you can."

Feeling your heart jump up into your throat, you turned and began to run, hearing the skeleton burst into laughter as he watched you. In your frenzy, you abandoned the established path, running through the brush in a random direction and crying out as you felt thorns scratch at your exposed skin. Whatever it took to get away from that monster, you'd do it without regret.

Still running as fast as your legs would allow, you glanced back over your shoulder, not noticing rays of sunlight momentarily pass over something metallic. You put your foot down, hearing a click, and then you screamed, collapsing in pain as tears streamed down your face. You sobbed loudly, reaching down to pry at the "jaws" of the trap that'd clamped down on your leg just above your ankle, ignoring how the metal teeth sliced the skin of your fingers. Just as you felt the trap loosen a hair bit, your grip on it slipped, and you screamed again as it latched down on your leg, once more at full force. You let out a choked sob as you heard the brush begin the move nearby, a cry for help ripping from your lungs. This was it. This was how you'd die. The trap very clearly wasn't going to budge, and with even the smallest of movements, a searing pain ran up your leg, causing you to cry out in agony yet again. You curled in on yourself, trying to tune out the throbbing from your leg, and in doing so, you failed to see a second skeleton step out of the brush nearby. Upon seeing you on the ground, your entire body shaking as you sobbed loudly, he froze, letting out a long, low whistle, as if impressed on some level, "Oh dear."

Hearing a new voice, you bolted up from your current position, forcing yourself to stand as you faced him, whining loudly, "Please, help me. I need help, I don't wanna die." The new skeleton frowned, setting down the basket he was carrying and making his way over to you, "It's gonna be alright, I promise. I'm gonna lean down to open the trap, and I need you to hold onto me. Do you think you could do that for me, human?" You nodded, reaching out to the stranger and tightly grasping his shoulders as he squatted beside you, curling his phalanges around the jaws of the trap, and with what looked like no effort at all, opened it, freeing your leg. As he rose to his feet again, his grip was gentle yet firm as he wrapped an arm around you, tugging you flush against his side and sighing, "Here, I'll carry you. You're pretty badly hurt and I wouldn't wanna see you make the injury any worse." Despite not knowing this man, you nodded and gave your consent, wrapping your arms around his neck vertebrae as he lifted you, one arm supporting your back while the other was tucked under your knees. He then began to walk, one of his sockets going dark as the other flared up with cyan tinted magic, encasing his discarded basket and making the item begin to float. As he carried you, you lightly rested your head against his shoulder, looking up to admire the color of his magic. He kept his attention forward, pausing to glance back over his shoulder as a twig snapped, worry briefly crossing over his expression. He then stole a quick glance down at you, offering you a small smile, "Human, I need you to close your eyes, please."

You wanted to ask why, but with the way your throat burned from your screaming and sobbing, you decided that questions could wait. You closed your eyes, and then you winced, feeling your stomach turn. Your head spun and for a brief moment, you felt as though static teased at your skin. Although you felt the skeleton shift you in his arms, you kept your eyes shut, waiting for the ok to open them again. Glancing around his small living room, the skeleton watched as his magic lowered his basket to rest on the coffee table and then faded from sight, breathing in deeply as he very delicately lowered you onto the sofa, his voice a mumble, "Alright... you can open your eyes now, friend."

You slowly cracked open your eyes, your heart thudding harder at how close your companion now was to you, offering you a small smile again, "I apologize for that... I needed to use a shortcut to get here faster, where you'd be safe. The only problem is that the transition wouldn't have been pleasant for you, had you kept your eyes open." You nodded slowly, swallowing a lump in your throat as you tore your gaze from him and began to look around, your voice cracking, "W-Where are we?... What's a shortcut?" You looked back to him before continuing, "Who are you? Was that your trap I got caught in? What were you-" He pressed a single phalange over your lips to silence you, his expression softening, "This is my cottage, and a shortcut... well, let's see... it's like teleportation, essentially. To answer your other questions, my name is Valence Bandersnatch, but you're free to call me Val, if you'd like. And no, that wasn't my trap. Believe me, I wouldn't put a trap in such a place, if I had any. While I understand that you likely have many more questions for me, you need to take it easy now. I'm gonna heal up those injuries of yours, and then we can have some tea while we wait for that deranged maniac to pass by. He won't find you here, I promise. All you need to do is keep your voice down."

You nodded in understanding, watching Valence curiously as he lowered himself to his knees, gently moving your injured leg and holding a hand over where the trap had caught you. One of his sockets flared up with magic again, and more similarly colored magic surrounded his hand. As your injury began to rapidly heal, your eyes widened in a mix of shock and awe, your voice barely a whisper, "Whoa... that's so cool..." His cheekbones became flushed, a faint blush beginning to stain them as he smiled sheepishly, releasing your leg as it finished healing, "Thank you... I'm very happy you think so, human." He climbed up onto the couch beside you, holding his hand over the scratches on your arm. Your gaze followed his motions and you continued to watch in awe as the scratch healed before your eyes, just as they'd done before.

His magic faded away and his second socket returned to normal, both irises present once more. Your gaze met his and it was silent for a moment, his multicolored, swirled eye lights captivating you. His faint blush darkened slightly and he cleared his throat, glancing away from you and sheepishly scratching the back of his skull, "I uh... how about I get us some cake and tea? The cake is fresh, just made this morning, and I can whip up a kettle of tea in no time at all." A soft blush teased at your own cheeks as you smiled softly, "As long as it wouldn't be a problem or anything, I'd really like that." The skeleton returned your smile and shook his head as he stood up, "Of course, it's not a problem. Not in the slightest," he paused, tilting his head and playfully winking at you, "especially not for a human as lovely as yourself."

Your blush darkened a small bit and you looked away from him, trying to tune out the way he chuckled at having been successful at flustering you. As he turned and exited the room, you let out a deep breath that you weren't even aware you'd been holding; sure, you'd only just met Valence, but he was such a gentleman to you. He was so gentle and considerate, and his magic was beautiful. He was also quite attractive now that you thought about it. His smile gave you butterflies and his eyes (eye sockets?) were mesmerizing, and there's no way you could forget that sexy British accent he had. You blinked. Wait, what was happening right now? Were you seriously developing a crush on him? He was a stranger, but he'd also saved your life, too. As thoughts raced in your head, you failed to notice as he appeared in the doorway, a small plate in hand that held a fork and a piece of cake. Seeing that you were lost in thought, he briefly paused to admire the look on your face. Excitement bubbled up in his very soul, and he grinned to himself; he'd saved you once, but before the day was over, he'd save you yet again.

He quickly rearranged his expression, his smile smaller and more genuine in appearance as he approached the couch and cleared his throat, gaining your attention as he offered you the slice of cake, "Here's your cake. The tea is almost ready, and I can bring it to you once it's done." You accepted the cake and couldn't help but smile at him again, "Ok... thanks Val. I really appreciate you doing all this for me." The skeleton waved off your words, nearly beaming at you as he returned your smile, "Oh, don't mention it. Anything for such a darling human." Your cheeks flushed again and your smile turned shy as you sheepishly refocused your attention on the piece of cake. Val was quick to vanish from the room again and you grasped your fork, slicing off a small bit of the cake and popping it into your mouth. As it hit your tongue, your eyes widened in pleasant surprise and you practically moaned at the flavor. It was perhaps the best cake you'd ever had in your entire life.

So not only was Val your savior that happened to be attractive and sweet, but he was also a great baker too. Talk about a catch.

You'd eaten about half of the slice before you began to notice the way heat coarsed through your body. You repressed a tiny mewl as it reached your core, causing you to press your thighs together. He wouldn't have done something to cake… would he?

As Val crossed into the living room again with two cups of tea, your scent invaded his senses and he inhaled deeply, nearly purring in delight. There were no words to describe how amazing you smelled right now, but it left him wanting to just... eat you right up.

He settled on the couch beside you, leaning forward to set the cups of tea on the coffee table, his sudden movement making you jolt in surprise as you looked up at him. He cleared his throat, offering you an apologetic smile, "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean to startle you." You shook your head and sighed, offering him a slight smile in return, "N-No, it's alright, don't worry about it, Val." Noticing the way you tried to be very subtle with your squirming, he feigned concern, frowning, "Are you alright, human? You're all red, and you don't look so good." Shaking your head, you hummed, "Nah, I'm ok... just a little warm, that's all."

To your confusion, he swiped your piece of half eaten cake from you, setting the plate beside your cup of tea before gently capturing your jaw, making you unable to turn away from him. Lifting his free hand, he delicately rested it on your forehead, as if checking to see if you'd caught a fever. With him being in such close proximity, you fought the urge to kiss him. Sure, you just met him, but in your current state, kissing him felt like something that needed to be done. He hummed, sliding his hand from your forehead to your cheek, his thumb gently stroking your skin as he met your gaze. That was what destroyed your last bit of self restraint. Without a warning, you leaned closer, pressing your lips to his teeth and kissing him. As expected, he momentarily tensed in shock, but then to your utter delight, he began to kiss you back. It wasn't long before his teeth coaxed apart your lips, allowing his cyan tongue to pass through and greet yours.

As the kiss grew more heated, you whined, fisting at his shirt and fumbling with the buttons on his vest. You'd managed to undo maybe half a dozen before he broke the kiss, letting you catch your breath. While you watched him, your eyes clouded with obvious lust, he reached out, lifting one of the cups of tea and offering it to you, his slightly hushed voice now holding a husky edge, "Drink, darling. It'll help you cool down." You whined, squirming in your seat as you caught the tone he spoke to you in, "B-But Val... please. I need you-" Grinning shamelessly at you, he chuckled, leaning closer to peck your lips, "And you can have me. Drink some of your tea first though." Though you would've liked for him to forget about the tea and take you right there on his couch, you nodded slowly, almost pouting as you accepted the drink.

Raising the cup to your lips, you took a sip, your eyebrows raising in surprise. Once again, you'd not expected the flavor of what he'd handed you. Humming in curiosity, you glanced up at Valence, "What kinda tea is this?... It's really good, Val." The skeleton watched you as you took another sip of your beverage, "Golden Flower." Blinking, a realization hit you and you raised an eyebrow, visibly interested, "Wait.... as in 'Golden Flower Tea'? The tea that Asgore supposedly loves?" He hummed in confirmation, "Exactly so. I'll say, I'm a little surprised you know about that old goat and his tea preferences." You smiled bashfully, shrugging and taking another sip, "Well... yeah. When the monsters came to the surface, I did my research. I wanted to learn what I could, y'know?"

He nodded in understanding and offered you a playful grin, "So you're a bit of a nerd then, it seems." You rolled your eyes, lips still curled into a smile as you flicked your tongue at him, "Yeah, maybe I am. Is there a problem with that, mister?" You made sure to make it clear you were only teasing, and in response, Valence laughed softly, "No, no. Of course not. For a nerd, you're actually really cute." Your cheeks immediately gained a bright blush and you squirmed in your seat, smiling sheepishly again. He watched you quietly for a moment, allowing you to continue enjoying your drink before he spoke again, still smiling slightly, "If you read about Asgore and his love of Golden Flower Tea, I wonder... did you happen to read anything about what the tea is made from?" You hummed, tilting your head and nodding, "Mhm. Isn't it made from the seeds and stems of Golden Flowers?" The skeleton nodded, arching a brow bone as his grin suddenly became mischievous, "And did you learn about what'd happen if the petals were used, too?" You paused, furrowing your brows, "Doesn't it become poisonous?..."

Something flickered in his sockets and he purred in satisfaction, "Right on, Cutie." You opened your mouth to question him but froze, pressing a hand over your mouth as you began to cough violently. You reached out, intending to place your cup on the coffee table, but both of your arms went limp, causing you to drop your cup and spill what was left of the tea on the floor. Unable to force your body to cooperate, you slouched to the slide, now leaning against Val. He sighed, feigning a look of concern again as he tsked, reaching into the breast pocket on his vest and withdrawing a handkerchief, lightly dabbing it along your mouth as he hummed, "My my, look at you... you're making quite a mess of yourself, you know." As he pulled the handkerchief away from your mouth, you glanced down, your eyes widening in fear and beginning to water up as you took notice of the red that now stained it. Unable to lift your head to even look at Valence properly, you whimpered, a tear rolling down your cheek, "W-Why, Val?... Why would you do this to me?..."

The skeleton hummed, merely smiling at you, "Because I'm a little overdue on paying my debt to the lovely family of lake dwellers that have allowed me to live on their land." Your voice cracked, and you tried your best to force back the impending need to cough again, "Y... You're using me to pay off a debt?" In a much too cheerful tone, the skeleton monster gave you confirmation, "Pretty much, yeah. Don't take it personally though, ok? I like you. If I didn't, I would've killed you sooner, and I wouldn't have been so nice about it."

Your eyelids began to feel heavy and you croaked, "How does killing me pay off that debt?" He merely smiled, lightly cupping your face and stroking your cheek with his thumb, "They're a bunch of human eaters." Your mind replayed the look that the first skeleton you encountered had worn and a chill ran through you, "But the tea... It'll poison them too." He chuckled, lowering his voice to a murmur, "No it won't, silly. It doesn't affect monsters the way it does humans. Guess you didn't get the memo, huh?" You felt yourself break, letting out faint sobs as you tried to look away from him. Reading your expression, he sighed, "Come here, darling. Let me ease your suffering a bit." You wanted to shove him away and scream, tell him to get lost, but as the world began to fade away before you, the last thing you felt was his teeth against your lips

#writing #Valence Bandersnatch #he's officially a fanservice boy #have fun with the sexy british bastard man #nep.exe #hhhhhh #i have no idea how to tag this #rip #the LV is strong with this one #undertale #undertale au #skellies art

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spoiler1001 · 4 years ago

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The Pinelands was a country with a history that no one seemed to care to remember. It was once a proud land with many city-states, but pride overtook them and they betrayed each other, legging the skeletons of the buildings to rot. The society's fall gave way to people banding together under one country with a name. No one can remember the name, so they call it The Pinelands, just a network of communities. There were borders for the network, they weren't enforced, sure there were guards but creatures callosum through sometimes. It was extremely sandy and dry to the east and west, with mountains breaking the desert and leafing to a river in the south. The communities were settled on flatlands and forests.

Inns and bars made plenty of money, due to constant traveling between communes. That also led to beer and spirit related mischief.

Dawn made her way by each empty cell, she was one of fiendish blood. Her eyes were solid black, harsh against her red skin. She wore her black hair in a bun, with bangs. She was wearing a dress made from hides, with the front of the skirt cut away, exposing pants underneath, while mimicking a long coat closed around the chest. She finally stopped in front of a cell with someone in it.

"Hello there." She sighed. The man smiled. He was very tall for the cell, having to duck to not hit the ceiling. He had gray thick, curly hair. His eyes were bright, with white-gray irises. He wore dusty leather armor with brass trimming.

"What exactly are you here for?" Dawn whispered to him.

"He got busted for pickpocketing. Do keep your distance." A deep feminine voice rang out. Dawn turned to face a woman of similarly fiendish descent. Her horns grew close to her face, looping to form spirals over her cheeks. She wore thin chain mail armor, stopping above her knees. She had an obvious dagger stapled to her thigh, an axe strapped to her waist, along with a whip.

Her skin was a faded gray, almost blue or violet. Her eyes were solid gold. Her hair was a pixie cut. It was white, with no hints of curls. She had a friendly smile on her face. Fangs peeked over her bottom lip.

Dawn looked back over the tall leather-clad man and took a step away from him.

"Oh."

"So what brings you here?" The other woman asked.

"I was here to ask if the people doomed to the gallows have anything to confess. Maybe I can soothe their souls." Dawn whispered.

"No one is due for that today." The man in the cell whispered.

"But it is a nice thing to do. I'm Merias." She shook Dawn's hand.

Opening the cell, Merias gestured towards the tall guy.

"Andrea. Pleased to meet you." He bowed in greeting.

"I'm Dawn," The red tiefling nodded.

"Well, it's lovely to meet you, Dawn. Andy and I have oranges to eat as payment for a job well done." Merias grinned and walked away.

Andrea and Merias made their way to the inn where two yellow, not at all ripe oranges.

"Wonderful." Merias scoffed, grabbing one of the fruits."

"I mean I did get caught." Andrea sighed.

"But you grabbing the note from that guy's pocket stopped a poisoning." Merias pouted.

"Which is why I had to only spend a night there." Andrea shrugged.

A moment of silence passed between the two. They peeled the fruit, causing the smell to feel the air. Purple looked over at them, jealousy running cold in their veins. They took a bite of the fruit, a second passed, then two. Merias spit it out, groaning. Andrea frowned at the flavor but kept eating.

"My Jaw is hurting now." She complained, grabbing another slice. Andrea grabbed her hand.

"Don't put yourself through this. We can put it in our water." He sighed.

"You say that now, but as soon as we're halfway to the next community…" Merias sighed.

"That's it? You do a job and you're gone by the next day?" A voice rang out. The two of them liked over to see a half-elven guard. He had white hair and solid white eyes, showing off a Drow heritage, but so do alot of people in the Pinelands.

"That is how I can get paid. Do you have another job lined up for me?" She looked up at him.

"Not me, but my captain. We're short-staffed and creatures are… leaking through the southern river. They're attacking the fish and fishermen." The guard looked at Merias.

She just smirked and leaned forward. "And you want us to… what? Kill them?" She asked.

"These kinds of creatures are your specialty." The guard scoffed. "For some reason, these things seem to fall to you more easily."

"I got it. We'll take care of it." She nodded and the guard walked away.

"I couldn't get a read on him." Andrea sighed.

"He's bullshitting." Merias sighed. "I'll call our friend in the shadows."

"Think she'll have something on the guard?" Andre raised an eyebrow.

"Maybe she can help us deal with the monsters. Invite that girl from jail. Maybe she'll want in as well." Merias ran her fingers over her hair.

"Why me?"

"You're charming and she seems lost right now." Merias shrugged.

"I'll talk to Penny. You ask Dawn if she's interested in monster hunting." Andrea chuckled.

"Alright. Maybe she'll find me charming." Merias sighed.

"Sounds like a plan."

------------------------------

Dawn was at a bar, easing congealed wheat with spices in it. She was fiddling with a small metal object. It was engraved with a language of… somewhere. It was not of this region.

"So, I'm leaving for the southern river. There are some monsters. Maybe you want to help?" Merias asked, appearing next to her.

"What kind of monsters?" Dawn asked.

"Probably undead."

"That's one of the worst kinds." Dawn nodded. "Why me though?"

"Because you seem like you have nowhere to go and it's safer to be in a group while figuring that out." Merias shrugged.

"What do you get out of me joining your duo?"

Merias laughed. "It's gonna be a whole team. I get someone new to travel with. You'll be great."

"I could be a killer."

"Not a dealbreaker."

"And pay?" Dawn slipped her token back into her pocket.

"Split evenly between all of us." Merias smiled.

"One job to see how it works out, then we'll see." Dawn nodded.

"Great. Pack your bags." Merias smile and walked away.

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Andrea made his way to a dark alleyway. He was out of sight. There was a smell of smoke and bile in the air, making every breath burned. He could see very well, but there was something about the area.

"Who do you want to laden about?" A low voice asked. It was rough, more rasp than voice.

"Penny." Andrea smiled and turned around.

Penny was thin with the skin tone of a cadaver. Her eyes were bright blue, seeming to glow against her skin tone.

"Merias and I are building a team for-"

"Ah… Hell beasts in the South." Penny smiled. It was a happy and excited smile. "I do want in."

"That makes it seem like you're already packed." Andrea straightened his armor.

"I am. I will see you when it's time to leave." Penny skipped back into the shadows.

"Oh. Alright then." Andrea nodded and went to pack.

----------------------------

Dawn looked down at her bag. She was ready to go. She played with her token. The wind blew despite no moving air. If she closed her eyes she could feel something run down her arm and wrap between her fingers. She opened her eyes and the air stilled. She took a deep breath and left the room.

------------------------------

Penny sat next to her bag, wrapping herself in furs. She felt off in the furs. They were warm, and that's what mattered. Maybe she'll try skins and leathers next.

She stood up and made her way to the meeting point, her ear to the chatter around her.

-----------------------------

Andrea read over his old school books. He missed teaching in that village. It was fulfilling to teach children how to spell and read. When the plague hit…

He strapped his weapons to himself. He was this now. Bounty hunting is something new. Maybe he can retire and teach again.

He sighed… maybe this will be the last mission. He needed to retire anyway. He steadied himself for a moment, before leaving to meet the others to go.

-------------------------

Merias put her best armor on. It shone brightly. She looked over her dagger. There was an engraving on it. Overcoming. Merias smiled. The last thing her mother gave her. It was the last thing anyone gave her.

Merits sheathed her blade. It was time to go. She stood up, taking a deep breath. She made her way to the group. The new adventure began.

#dnd campaign #pinelands campaign #origional character #tw alcohol #tw war mention #tw war

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kinetic-elaboration · 5 years ago

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February 17: Clarke/Murphy, Freak

Clarke/Murphy, some kinda AU, ~800 words

Tag list: @ciewill @dealingdreams @shadowheron2013 @julyrubyrose @wonderland-promises @hanav @rycewritestrash @thelittlefanpire @musicnote902 @stonybnatural @earthgay2052 @fabianapvec @bellarkehastakenovermylife , @bellarkewriting @failing-at-being-an-angel (lmk if you would like to be added to or deleted from this list)

In a past life, Clarke was a princess, and Murphy was smoke.

Such is the story he tells, an easy way to explain how one moment, he can be here, and then the next, only wisps and tendrils,

—then somewhere else.

And Clarke, monarch of the deep woods, royalty of the in-between, holding court in the classrooms, the dormitories, the graveyard after dark. The clack and crack of haunted bones. She rises to the surface in the late Earth afternoon to conjure herself a throne from the hollows of ancient trees. The golden afternoon light turns her skin translucent; her steps are light as early autumn frost against the leaves. She fashions herself a crown out of gnarled tree limbs, skinned of bark. They appear from a distance to have the length and angles of skeleton fingers, eerily broken at the joints.

Out of the corner of her eye, blurred beyond her focus, she catches sight of a shape that might be a large branch, or fallen tree. Too dark against the soft and leaf-strewn ground. She looks up. And then she sees that John Murphy is standing in front of her, hands in his pockets, staring down the length of his nose at her. Appraising her.

She turns her gaze down to her work again.

The shape at her periphery grows and distorts. All around her, she can hear every tiny forest noise: the chatter of animals, the high flight of the birds. Human beings and laughter and life and the growing of moss and the whisper of spirits. The shape is dark and monstrous, jagged and sharp, larger and larger as ever-dissipating smoke, crackling like fire.

"Hoping to scare some children today?" Murphy asks, from very close at her side, and she snaps her gaze up and narrows her eyes at him. Flips her hand over, and her crown hovers just above her palm.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He rolls his eyes. She sets her crown just so on her head, testing out its sureness, pleased with its weight. She can feel Murphy's stare, sliding down the length of her, with such unusual patience: what she has come to expect from him only in moments such as these. Their small indents of privacy, the rare minutes they spend on the surface of the world.

He's close enough to touch. He's gone. Clarke tilts her head back and stares at him, kicking his legs from his perch on the outstretched branch of one of the trees. "I liked you better," he says, "when you kept to yourself all the time. Remember those days? Before you wanted to be in charge all the time?"

Clarke hums, briefly, then shrugs. Turning her back on him reads as dismissal, is nothing but trust. She can hear the faraway laughter of schoolkids, telling stories; with a short gesture of her hand, the wind begins to blow. The leaves scatter. A scud of gray clouds shifts above them, obscuring the sun.

"Not that I don’t think it’s fun," Murphy says, from somewhere stretched and long and shadowed, to her right and up, "scaring children."

"They probably deserve it, don't they?" Clarke answers, low and wicked. "For coming into the woods?"

"Ha!"

Murphy's laughter sometimes has this bark, like a door in an old house slamming shut. He's on the ground again, has jumped with perfect lightness from the tree branch, nearly weightless, but Clarke can hear the thump of his boots against the dirt. She can feel the thrum of his voice, in his throat.

"Guess so. You know you certainly look the part—"

Wisps, and tendrils, trails of gray, a presence of no known shape, right there behind her—

His hands at her hips.

"Dressed like that." He's right behind her, against her, his nose bumping up against the back of her ear and his lips at her throat. "You only wear dresses when you want to make people think you're—"

"The Devil?"

In a flash of sun through the clouds, so dark now that they seem to threaten rain, her face transforms. Skeleton hollows for eyes and the glint of bone. In the far distance, from the ends of the earth, deep tremors of thunder sound.

"You know how most people feel better," Clarke says, as her fingertips dance light melodies across his knuckles, "when they're being led?"

"I've noticed." He presses a wide, open mouthed kiss, the shape of words, against her skin. "Though I can't say I relate."

"Well, I feel better—" She turns around in his arms. The wind whips the long ends of her dress around her ankles: white curtains, fluttering across a balcony, an inscrutable warning that sends unwarranted shivers through the bodies of the living. "When I'm leading."

"Yes, Ma'am," he answers, but the words are a drawl, and he's fisting his hand in her hair, tugging at her hair, and she's pulling him in, and she's biting his lip until he bleeds.

#clurphy #clurphy fanfiction #the 100 #clarke griffin #john murphy #mine #my writing #clarke x murphy #the year 2020 #2020: free write #all pair challenge #they're teenage monsters in case you were wondering #the number of influences that went into these 800 words lol #if you think one of them was the classic 90s nicktoon aaaah real monsters you would be correct #this is the last clarke x murphy you'll see from me in a while #it's just a coincidence i've been writing them so much #monster academy

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precuredaily · 5 years ago

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Precure Day 175

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 27 - “Rin-chan’s Date with a Handsome Ghost!?” Date watched: 24 March 2020 Original air date: 12 August 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/7vdwVuj Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

not pictured: a handsome ghost

Are you ready for more summer vacation antics? How about some ghost stories! No, not the gag dub kind, I mean actual ghost stories. Yes, tonight the girls decide to poke around an abandoned wing of their school and wind up in the middle of something bigger than themselves. Let’s dive in!

The Plot

All the girls are gathered around a table in the dark as Komachi tells them the story of Count Rosett, who used to live in a mansion behind the school with his girlfriend, until she died in a tragic accident. The count lived out the rest of his days in sadness and now his spirit returns to the school on the anniversary of her death. Nozomi, Urara, Milk, and Coco are all a little scared by the story, Karen and Nuts seem indifferent or even bored, but Rin is scared out of her mind. So naturally they go check it out.

Over in Nightmare, Kawarino himself summons Arachnea to the office and tells her that while her work is good, if she instills fear into her opponents, then they’ll expend all their energy. Sound advice honestly. With that in mind, she sets off, and begins to haunt the girls on their ghost hunt. How timely! Arachnea plays her card very quickly by bringing a skeleton to life, which makes itself known to Rin and only Rin, so she bolts off down the hallway away from the other girls. Suddenly she runs into another shadowy figure.... who reveals herself as Masuko Mika, who is inexplicably here at the same time with the same objective of finding the ghost and reporting on it.

or they’re doing the fusion dance

Nozomi, Urara, Komachi, Karen, and the fairies continue exploring the school building, trying to find Rin, and end up in a pitch-black classroom. Karen bumps into something, and when they shine the light on it revealing it to be a large statue of a man, she finally gets scared and screams. After Karen calms down, Komachi deduces that this must be Count Rosett, and then they see a large portrait on the wall of a woman who looks a lot like Rin.

or more accurately the animators drew Rin’s head on this random portrait

Rin and Mika continue wandering around until the skeleton reappears and starts chasing both of them. Rin trips and falls but Mika doesn’t stop, so Rin scrambles into a nearby classroom to hide and the skeleton passes her by. This time, though, she comes face to face with yet another specter, as a large shadowy figure reaches for her, and this one isn’t a student.

She freaks right the fuck out and loses consciousness. When she comes to, the other girls are surrounding her and asking what happened. When she explains, Komachi puts the pieces of the puzzle together and deduces that this was Count Rosett, the portrait was of his deceased girlfriend, and he was trying to give Rin a gift for his girlfriend. They convince her to try to meet him again and resolve his centuries-old suffering by accepting the gift. She really does not want to but they beg and plead her and she begrudgingly agrees to try it. Once again she enters the room and lo and behold the shadowy figure reaches for her. However the girls suddenly finds themselves in broad daylight in the courtyard of the school building and adjacent mansion, with a handsome man standing in front of her. He greets her and presents her with a rose-shaped hairpin, but before Rin can explain that she’s not his lover, the sky turns purple and Arachnea makes her appearance. She gloats about this excellent terrain and turns the wandering skeleton into a Kowaina, which is just a giant skeleton with a Kowaina mask on its forehead. Rin and the other girls quickly transform.

The monster wreaks havoc on the mansion, which Rouge takes special exception to on behalf of the Count, and Arachnea retorts that it doesn’t matter anyway since this is a false world, before reminding Rouge that she had just been deathly afraid of the Count’s ghost mere moments ago. Rouge exclaims that her fear went away when he communicated his feelings and the girls all go on the attack. Mint and Aqua and then Dream and Lemonade perform a nice one-two combo on the monster as Rouge declares that she won’t forgive Nightmare for wrecking the Count’s house, even in an illusion world, and then her brooch glows and she summons her new weapon, the Rouge Tact. She uses it to perform a powered-up version of her finisher: Rouge Burning

The items should have been called Rouge Torch and Dream Tact but what do I know

This attack utterly destroys the Kowaina, and the mansion returns to its former beauty. The girls detransform and Count Rosett once again tries to give Rin the hairpin. She tells him she isn’t the girl he was waiting on, but he responds that she fought so hard for his sake and he just wants her to have it. She smiles the biggest smile and then the Count and the scenery fade away, leaving the girls back in the school building, with Rin still holding the hairpin. As they leave the building, Nozomi teases Rin about possible latent feelings for the Count, and then Mika reappears screaming about how she was chased by a skeleton. Komachi suggests they go back inside and get pictures, but Mika is too afraid to see any more ghosts. However, Rin states that ghosts are just like people, they experience normal feelings and once those feelings are communicated there’s no cause for fear, a marked change from her earlier behavior.

The Analysis

It’s shameless summer filler and it is EXCELLENT. This is how you do low-stakes. It’s fun! It’s a great character spotlight! It takes us new places! It ties into typical summer activities! This plays out like an episode of Scooby-Doo, with a shoujo bent. It’s comedy gold from the very beginning, when Komachi tells a ghost story and the others are varying degrees of afraid and all the way through the episode when Rin is the only one being haunted, either by Arachnea’s interference, classmates, or actual ghosts. The poor girl can’t get a break. But the comedy is done excellently, and the episode is positively filled with wonderful facial expressions (which is why my gallery ballooned to 132 images, a record for a non-movie or finale episode, so check that out).

I love how Karen and Nuts are just so over it all, while Komachi is too excited about the mystery to be scared. It makes sense given her affinity for literature, she’s heard it all before and she just wants to see if there’s any weight to the rumors. Nuts, being well-read and also generally apathetic, is probably just not spooked by ghost stories period. But back to Rin: Nozomi explains how she’s positively terrified by ghosts, and so of course she’s the one that ends up seeing them all, and ultimately meeting Count Rosett in the flesh (sorta) teaches her a valuable lesson that hey, they’re not so bad if you can reach an understanding. I don’t believe this has any lasting impact on her character but I might be wrong. I hope we see some hint of this going forward.

As I said, while Rin is scared out of her wits, the other girls are far from unshakeable. Even Karen, who spends about half of the episode acting bored, finally flips when she bumps into what she thinks is a person in the dark.

Nuts is still unimpressed though

Nozomi and Urara are scared when they start but everyone’s animosities fade away once they find the portrait of Count Rosett’s presumed girlfriend, and all they can think of is trying to get him to meet Rin and put him to final rest.

This and the next episode have really made me realize a problem to the show at this point, however. Since they got rid of Girinma, Nightmare’s only grunt is Arachnea, while Gamao is still wandering around as a free agent, and the two basically alternate episodes. Bunbee is going to dip his toes in the water again in episode 29 but it’s kind of a slog on the villain side until episode 31 when Hadenya and Bloody show up. Gamao is completely unlikeable and Arachnea has all the personality of a loaf of stale bread. Her attempt at being scary here consists of chasing Rin with a skeleton in an already haunted setting. That’s all she can muster. I’m very reticent to give Smile Precure credit for anything but they definitely had a better haunted school episode.

During the battle, Rouge accesses her portion of the Symphony Set for the first time, which is called the Rouge Tact. “Tact” is of course a name that will be reused for various Precure baton weapons in the coming seasons. The wiki says that it’s derived from the German word “taktstock”, which refers to a music conductor’s baton. As for its design, it is a large leaf shape with a handle on one end and an extension on the other which lights on fire. As I quipped above, I think it should have been called “Rouge Torch” while Dream’s baton should have another name, but oh well. The way she uses it is interesting, as you’d expect her to use it to launch a fireball directly at the enemy but she doesn’t. During her normal Rouge Fire attack, she creates a burning butterfly from the back of her hand and then palmstrikes it into the monster. Here, instead, she ignites the tact, then in a single motion she swoops the flame in front of her as the butterfly separates from her hand, she releases the tact and grabs it with her right hand as she pulls back with her left for a palmstrike and the burning butterfly shoots towards her enemy. A lot happens in a short time but the effect isn’t dramatically different from her normal attack, and rather than shooting a stream of fire directly from the tact she just uses it like a lighter. Once again, it suggests the staff weren’t sure how to incorporate the Symphony Set into the show.

I appreciate them remembering that Masuko Mika exists but it’s a really big coincidence that she’s here on this night. The script didn’t make it clear whether the ghost was spotted on one night every year, or every month, or just randomly. If they had clarified that, it may have made more sense for her to appear. I’m glad they’re trying to incorporate her but all she really does is scare Rin, sneak around, and then run off at the first sign of actual spookiness. Bring her into the group dang it! Make her a friend of the precures. Minor complaint.

From a cinematorgraphy standpoint this episode has some really cool camera shots. My absolute favorite is this zoom back from the abandoned wing of the school:

And later on the inverse: a zoom in and tilt upwards to look at the portrait of the lady that resembles Rin:

These scenes help to breathe some energy into the episode and provide atmosphere, enhancing the creepy and mysterious mood of the place.

Then there’s this sequence where the girls are trying to convince Rin to go find Count Rosett again, where the camera dollies back in stages and then shifts right to look at Karen.

I don’t remember seeing complex camerawork like this in previous episodes so to have so many of these unique shots in one episode is really cool and it makes me want to see more of it.

Finally, while this isn’t a very complicated shot, I like this bit from the fight where Dream and Lemonade perform a double kick in perfect sync.

I’m a sucker for cool fight choreorgraphy and this fits the bill. Sure, we’ve seen other more complex fights in this season alone but I like to call them all out when I find them.

(reminder: you can find higher resolution copies of these gifs in my gallery, I have to keep them under 2 MB for Tumblr)

All told, this episode is a fantastic summer ghost story. It balances comedy with an interesting mystery and provides Rin with just enough character growth to justify her unlocking her new finisher. It’s got some wonderful facial expressions that you can find in my gallery and it’s only brought down a little by its unerwhelming villain.

Next time, another summer staple: it’s time for a festival! Look forward to it!

Pink Precure catchphrase count: 0 kettei!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 #YPC527 #PCD175

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jihyosforehead · 5 years ago

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do you have any haunted house au's??? for any twice ship i dont even care who everything you write is just 🥺🥺🥺

funny u should say ask, i was just at a horror escape room and i literally lost my voice screaming for an hour straight lmaooooooo

…

okay breathe, nayeon tells herself. she can barely look at the mirror because a glimpse of her make up was enough to send fear down her spine. maybe working in a haunted house escape room over halloween was not her smartest idea. but also to be fair, nayeon is not exactly full of smart ideas.

“okay they’re going to be here soon,” her coworker, chaeyoung, hisses from her spot behind a trick wall covered in cobwebs and a long stripe of fake blood, there’s a fake arm dangling from the ceiling. nayeon closes her eyes. the disembodied voice, and the lights ominously flickering causes an involuntary squeak to escape her throat. there’s an exasperated sigh. “nayeon, i can’t believe you right now.”

“i am not scared!” she hisses back, sounding completely unconvincing, her voice rising at least three octaves. nayeon adjusts her sleeve to cover the unpainted skin, wincing when she catches a short glimpse of her reflection in the broken glass on the floor. the doll make up was a bit much, even she had to admit. she wasn’t expecting the make-up team to make her look so terrifying.

“you’re scared of your own shadow!”

the door slams open and a group of three girls barge in before nayeon can defend herself. two of them are clutching at each other and screaming from momo and mina’s room. there’s a short-haired girl with big eyes and another with blonde hair pouting at the bleeding walls. the third is trailing behind them, looking thoroughly unphased. she’s tall, with short cropped hair and rolling her eyes at her friends who’ve already started clutching onto each other’s arms. the blonde and the girl with short hair flinch when the lights flicker above them, and then scream when the room goes completely pitch black.

“something is going to attack us,” the shortest of the three is telling her friends desperately, whimpering when the lights make a buzzing sound. “please don’t jump out and scare us! i will cry!”

“excuse me, ghosts! please don’t attack us!” the blonde one says, her voice verging on a whine. then more quietly to herself, “i don’t like this room at all.”

nayeon counts the light flickers down in her head, but flinches violently, knocking the a painting off the wall when chaeyoung leaps out from behind the door and screams in the shortest one’s face. causing her to jump into the blonde’s arms and burying her face into her neck, shaking like a leaf. the blonde is rubbing the girl’s back soothingly, looking equally as shaken.

“shh, jihyo-ah, you’re alright,” the blonde is saying to her friend in a low calm voice, an alarmed smile on her face when she feels how hard jihyo’s shaking. she sounds scared but is pleased when jihyo whines and nudges her head under the blonde’s chin, “it’s just make-up.”

chaeyoung’s timed her next scare with the loud clap of thunder and the shriek of a laugh on their looping soundtrack. she’s now circling the group, targeting the shortest one, jihyo, and laughing menacingly in her face. the blonde is flipping them around so that she’s in the middle. nayeon would have found the scene sweet if chaeyoung’s doll make up wasn’t so effective; equal parts terrifying and realistic. nayeon totally understands their fear, unaware that she’s also shaking in her spot.

the tallest one dutifully ignores all of the sounds, and instead, is focussing on the objects on the floor, squatting in front of a crudely drawn, inaccurate pentagram. she picks up a tag attached to an intricately carved rat skeleton. the plastic skulls and flickering candles were spooky, and nayeon knew it was all fake, she couldn’t help but feel a shiver run down her spine all the same.

“come on guys, help me solve this,” the tallest girl says, trying to wave her friends over. “i think it’s a code for the door.”

there’s a metallic clanging sound right by the door and this time it’s the blonde that squeals loudly, pulling jihyo close so that she’s holding the back of jihyo’s head with one hand and wrapped the other around her shoulders.

“here, there’s numbers on the floor. help me find number fourth number, jihyo-ah.”

“n-no!” jihyo tells her friend adamantly from her spot in the blonde’s neck, she’s all but being lifted into her friend’s arms. then in a small voice, she says sheepishly, “too scared.”

“they said that the ghosts would help us with the clues, “ the tallest one mutters, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. she’s then walking over to chaeyoung who’s now switched from growling menacingly to circling jihyo. “hey she’s holding something, jihyo-ah, ask her for it.”

“no it’s hers. she should keep it,” jihyo says frantically. then she adds, sounding apologetic and scared to death, “we’re not going to take your thingy. don’t listen to jeongyeon. she’s lying. you can keep your thingy.”

“come on, just ask her for it,” jeongyeon says impatiently, from her spot on the floor. she’s sitting cross-legged, rearranging the plastic snakes and candles. “sana-ya, ask her for it.”

the clap of thunder sounds, cracking like a whip over their heads, the ceiling trap door opens and a white shadow drops abruptly, eliciting screams from jihyo and sana again. unfortunately, it also causes nayeon to scream helplessly with them. jeongyeon eyes nayeon’s hiding spot suspiciously.

the group calms down after awhile, while jeongyeon attempts to figure out the clue on the floor. jihyo even leaves sana’s neck for a few minutes, managing a small smile when sana volunteers to hold her hand, and actually picking up some of the fake skulls.

“oh!” jeongyeon says suddenly jumping up, “it’s a code for the door!”

she’s rushing over to the end of the room, right by nayeon and punches in the numbers correctly, jihyo and sana glued to her sides. now was her moment. you can do this, nayeon thinks determinedly, suppressing a flinch when the lights flicker overhead, her cue to move. chaeyoung frowns at her from across the room, head tilting slightly, gesturing for her to start. jeongyeon manages to get the door open and ushers her friends in front of her.

nayeon crawls across the grimy floor on all fours, trying her best to scuttle like a weird, disgruntled crab, just managing to keep up with jeongyeon’s heels. jihyo and sana’s blood-curdling screams echo down the hallway, bouncing off the walls and a clock chimes so loudly by her ear that nayeon is automatically jumping to her feet yelping. and there’s a floating foot by her head and she feels it brush the top of her hair lightly, grazing the side of her face. then there’s a growl behind them, reverberating around the room, that she actually gets goosebumps. before she knows it, she’s all but jumped into jeongyeon’s arms, shoving her face into the taller girl’s chest, whimpering.

and then nayeon remembers herself and pulls away suddenly sheepish, she can feel her face burning red under all the make-up. she rubs the back of her neck.

“i’m sorry,” she mutters under breath. she looks up, at the unexpected guffawing.

“i can’t believe you’re scared of your own halloween effects.”

“i’m not scared!” nayeon chokes out, scandalised. she can see chaeyoung shaking her head out of the corner of her eye.

“you look like an actual demonic creature,” jeongyeon says. “and yet, youre scared to death.”

“stop laughing, i might get fired over this,” nayeon finds herself whining, pushing at jeongyeon’s shoulder. this only encourages jeongyeon to laugh even harder, there are literal tears streaming down her cheeks.

nayeon jumps again at sana and jihyo screaming for jeongyeon. and jumps again when the lights flicker.

“i think i have to go save them,” jeongyeon tells her between laughs. she gives nayeon one last smile and disappears down the hallway. “you’ll be okay, I believe in your scaring skills.”

there’s a minute there where nayeon feels like she’s dreaming and then chaeyoung flicks the back of her head, bringing her crashing back down to reality. but all nayeon can think is how dumb she is for not asking for jeongyeon’s number. she should have at least made getting written up by tzuyu worthwhile.

(jeongyeon leaves her number at the front desk).

#nayeon #jeongyeon #2yeon #twice #twice hcs #twice headcannons #twice scenarios #twice imagines #ask #anon

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engineeringecosystems · 4 years ago

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One mussel, two mussels, brown mussels, blue mussels

Walking through a meadow calling the plants by name is like entering a room of friends instead of strangers. -John Hildebrand

Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms based on their shared characteristics. Although we probably started purposefully grouping things together around the same time that we developed language, the first physical record of classification dates to around 3000BC in China, with the Father of Chinese medicine, Emperor Shen Nung. It wasn’t until the 1700′s when a Swedish botanist came along and developed the system of classification that we use today. Known as the “father of modern taxonomy”, Carolus Linnaeus dedicated his career to classifying plants and animals (and minerals). Carl’s catalogue was a continuous piece of work, constantly being added to and revised as he identified and classified new organisms. In 1758 Carl published the 10th edition of his massive taxonomic collection in a book titled Systema Naturae - and I mean truly massive, by its 13th edition it was 3000 pages long!

With the introduction of animals, the 10th edition of Systema Naturae is widely accepted as the start to “modern” taxonomy. Carl classified organisms into a hierarchy - which we know as the Tree of Life. From trunk to leaf, least to most exclusive, it goes: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Carl also developed and popularized the use of binomial nomenclature which shortened long-winded Latin names down to two terms, the first denoting the genus and the latter the species. However, circumstances of the time heavily influenced Carl to describe the world as created by God which led him to classify organisms based on morphological features, such as the shape, size and placement of bones in a skeleton. This was very helpful at the time because until then we thought whales were fish! But, as technology has progressed, especially in the field of genetics, we began to learn that just because two organisms look alike or behave in a similar manner doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the same organism, or even closely related, if at all. This, of course, led to a reorganization of Carl’s work (and occasionally to the dismay of stubborn scientists). If you’re keen to learn more about Carl or taxonomy check out this video.

As useful as it is, identifying and classifying organisms can get a bit overwhelming, especially when everything looks the same (yeah, I’m talking about you mussels!). I am going to do my best to break this post down into bite sized pieces. So, without further ado, lets classify some mussels.

I figured it’s probably best to start with the common blue mussel, Mytilus edulis (credit: British Antarctic Survey), first described by Carl in 1758.

Quick shell fact: although all Mytilus edulis, the shells above are from high to low latitudes (left to right) and show subtle morphological changes due to environmental factors like temperature and salinity.

Despite looking like a rock (there, I said it first so you don’t have to feel bad), Mytilus edulis is an animal, and therefore in the kingdom Animalia. Like many members of the phylum Mollusca, from squids to snails, Mytilus edulis has a radula, a mouthy bit that creates a current drawing in water and food, a fleshy covering that holds their body together called a mantle, and a shell made mostly of calcium carbonate. Mytilus edulis has two shells, or valves, which are held together by a strong muscle called a foot (which also makes them so dang hard to open and eat), situating it among others like clams, scallops and oysters, in the class Bivalvia. We are first introduced to the “true” mussels in the order Mytilida, which are characterized by having long asymmetrical shells covered by a thick, adherent layer of “skin” called the periostracum; they attach themselves to solid substrate, like rocks, rope, or piers, using a secreted bundle of filaments, referred to as a byssus or byssal threads. The only extant (not extinct) family in this order is the family Mytilidae which contains some 52 genera. One of these is the genus Mytilus which contains most of the edible marine mussels. Finally, we arrive at our friend the common blue mussel or the Atlantic blue mussel, known by its species name Mytilus edulis.

And there you go.

Mytilus edulis occupies the coasts of the North Atlantic, including the United States and Canada, as well as France and the British Isles across the pond. When its range overlaps with others in its genus, like Mytilus galloprovincialis in the Mediterranean or Mytilus trossulus in the northern parts of the North Atlantic, Mytilus edulis will sometimes form a complex and hybridize with them.

Other members of the genus Mytilus include:

Mytilus californianus, the California mussel (credit: Sharon Mollerus)

Mytilus coruscus, the Korean or hard-shelled mussel (credit: Conchology, Inc.)

Mytilus galloprovincialis, the Mediterranean mussel (credit: Andrew Butko)

Mytilus planulatus, the Australian blue mussel (credit: Javier Couper)

Mytilus platensis or chilensis, the Chilean blue mussel (credit Schnecken & Muscheln)

and Mytilus trossulus, the bay or foolish mussel (credit: Conchology, Inc. ).

I imagine many of you are looking at these mussels and thinking, “yeahhh uhhh Matt, they all look like the same”. Maybe with this face

(or maybe even this one).

But stay with me.

You’re right, they do look very similar, which is why classification can be troublesome when it’s based off how an organism looks. Classification based off morphological features can be useful, but up to a point, and may be useless at finer-species level-scales. But advances in science and technology have led us into the new age of taxonomy - classification based on genetic sequencing, using a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR. Like reading a recipe, scientists can sequence the genome of an organism and reveal hidden secrets like the evolutionary age of an organism, which can help us construct a more accurate representation of the Tree of Life. Along with advancements like data storage, genetic sequencing has revolutionized the way we classify organisms. And it’s showed us that there is in fact a difference (albeit small) between the members of the genus Mytilus.

I hope you learned a lot this week! I really enjoyed putting this post together, even though I didn’t cover all the mussels that I wanted to. And I know I promised y'all last week that we would visit the some of the deepest parts of the ocean and we will! Next week will be less lecture and more *let me show you all the pictures of my children that you didn’t ask to see*. Until then, try to be a little less selfish and more shellfish. Cheers, y’all!

#mussels #linnaeus #conservation #ecosystem engineers #engineering ecosystems

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yourpaceangel · 5 years ago

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straw house, straw dog

[read here on AO3]

warnings: pretty graphic nightmare depicting fire under the cut

“Morning Aziraphale,” Crowley said, throwing open the door to the shop. He silenced the infernal bell above the door with a snap of his fingers and let the door close behind him with a clap. The smell of book glue and must greeted him, dust motes floating lazily in the morning sunlight streaming in through half drawn blinds.

Aziraphale came around the corner of a bookcase. In his arms was a stack of books towering just over the top of his head. “Ah, Crowley, be a love would you?” He said, the books swaying a bit in his arms.

Crowley took half the books off the stack for him.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, smiling now that they could see each other properly.

Crowley grunted. “Where are these going then?”

“Ah, yes,” Aziraphale walked around him, “just over here. New display.”

“Don’t understand why you bother,” Crowley complained, following, “you never sell anything anyway.”

“Hush.”

Crowley helped Aziraphale stack the books on their new display, pushing them an inch to the left each time Aziraphale turned his back until the angel shooed him away from the display. “Let me finish. Go make some tea if you want to be useful.”

Crowley rolled his eyes from behind his glasses and went to put the kettle on. He messed about the kitchen while water for the water to boil, hiding Aziraphale’s tea towels in the cabinet under the sink and rearranging the cutlery drawer. He found Aziraphale’s loose leaf tea in a sugar bowl on top of the microwave and wondered for a moment if he was the one to put it there the last time he made tea. It was possible. Aziraphale rarely used his kitchen.

The tea made - one sugar for Aziraphale and six for Crowley as well as little milk - Crowley carried their mugs back out into the shop. Aziraphale was fussing with the new books added to his collection by one Adam Young, Antichrist. Crowley clicked his tongue and Aziraphale’s head shot up. “Oh good,” Aziraphale said, “thank you my dear.”

Crowley grumbled a moment as Aziraphale took his mug and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“What’s got you in such a mood?” Aziraphale asked, “Are you cold?”

He was. Winter mornings in London always came with a bite and this one was particularly snappish. “No,” Crowley said, “it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?” Aziraphale asked, “I could warm it up a bit for you. I’m a bit chilly myself.”

“Mm,” Crowley pretended to think about it, sipping his tea, “I suppose. If you’re chilled as well.”

Aziraphale smiled.

There was a waft of something singed in the air. Crowley’s tongue flickered out briefly. He wondered if he might have left the stove on after making their tea. “What’s-” He turned around to face a wall of flames. He dropped his mug with a crash, shattered ceramic and hot tea spilling across the ancient wood floors. He spun back around to grab Aziraphale, to run-

Aziraphale was gone. Around him the bookshop burned. Every direction he turned more devilishly hot flames licked at dry books like kindling and spread higher, wider, until he was trapped, unmoving, in a blazing inferno.

“Aziraphale!” Crowley screamed, “Aziraphale, where are you!”

“Here!” Aziraphale yelled back.

Crowley turned, dazed and terrified, barely able to move. Aziraphale was there, behind him, the sleeves of his ivory suit on fire. He brought his hands up to Crowley’s face. “You let me burn,” Aziraphale said.

The flames spread up, licking at his shoulders.

“You let me burn, Crowley.”

Crowley tried to wrest his head free, but the grip Aziraphale had on him was iron.

To his chest, spreading up and down. Eating at clothes. At skin. Aziraphale was burning.

“No!” Crowley screamed. He couldn’t move. All he could do was watch.

“You let it all burn.” His face was a ball of fire, hair burnt skin melting. He spoke through his teeth like a skeleton. “You let it all burn. You brought them here. You killed me.”

“I didn’t!”

“You burn everything you touch.”

“No-”

“Burned it all.”

“Stop!” Crowley was paralyzed, watching his angel burn down to his bones, “Aziraphale!”

The rafters creaked, sending flaming chunks down to the floor below. A large chunk smashed into the ground behind Crowley. The windows blew inward, sending sharp glass digging into the side of his face.

“Burned it all.”

“No!”

“Burned it all.”

Tears tracked their way down Crowley’s face. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t- And there was this flaming corpse digging bones into his face leaving bruises and he couldn’t look away. “Aziraphale!” He sobbed, “Aziraphale!”

“Crowley!”

Crowley woke with a shuddering gasp. His body felt weighed down and he gasped. “Off, off, off.” The pressure released and Crowley sat up shaking, curling his head down between his knees. He felt like he was going to vomit.

“Easy love,” He heard Aziraphale say next to him, “Just a nightmare. You’re safe. I’m here.”

Crowley was shocked to find he had tears in his eyes. He blinked to try and be rid of them but it seemed more came the more he did it. He let out a low moan and reached out blindly until he found Aziraphale’s hand. He brought it up to his head and heard Aziraphale make a small noise.

Aziraphale brushed his cheek before reaching up to stroke his hair. “That’s it, steady on dear. There you go.”

Crowley wiped furiously at his eyes.

Aziraphale moved closer, the bed squeaking under them, and wrapped his arm around Crowley’s shoulder. “Okay?” He asked.

Crowley opened his mouth and a sob escaped. He buried his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder and let himself be held.

Aziraphale rubbed soothingly at his scalp, his other hand resting firmly between his shoulder blades. “Just a nightmare, my love. You’re okay. It’s alright.”

Crowley’s hands came up to clutch desperately at the back of Aziraphale’s sleeping shirt. He balled his hands into fists in the soft cotton, holding on as tight as he could. He could still smell the burning of hair, of flesh. “I-I-” He bit down on his tongue and just let himself be held for a while.

Aziraphale rubbed circles over his spine and pressed kisses into his hair. He didn’t let go until Crowley did, and even then he only let go enough for them to be able to look at one another.

“You were burning,” Crowley said. He let go of Aziraphale’s shirt so he could hold his face. He had to touch, had to make sure this was real.

Aziraphale’s face crumpled into something desperately sad. “Oh my poor Crowley,” He said, his hand resting on the back of Crowley’s neck, “what an awful thing to have to see.”

“The shop,” Crowley said, his breath trembling, “it too, and all of the books, but mostly you, Aziraphale. I watched you burn and I couldn’t do anything to stop it and it was my fault.”

“No love,” Aziraphale said, “oh darling, no.” He leaned in to press a soft kiss to Crowley’s lips, as gently and tenderly as he dared. “I’m so sorry, my dear. But I’m here, right here, and nothing is ever going to take me from you. Nor you, me.”

“I love you.”

“And I, you.”

Aziraphale pressed Crowley gently back down into the sheets, his hand cupping the demon’s jaw. He kissed a meandering trail across Crowley’s face, showing his love the only way he knew how, and let his weight rest atop Crowley once more.

Crowley felt contained and safe under Aziraphale’s body and kisses, as he always had. He let his shaking hands wander under Aziraphale’s shirt, just to touch, not seeking anything more. He pulled Aziraphale close and then closer still. He smelled honey and ozone, a bit of ink and book leather, but no more burning.

“Okay now, dear?” Aziraphale asked, smoothing a hand along Crowley’s naked torso, stopping at his hip and squeezing before lightly running back up his ribs. It almost tickled and Crowley squirmed.

“Yeah.”

The terror had passed leaving a bone deep kind of weariness. Crowley breathed deep and easy, his body lax against crisp dark sheets. Aziraphale kissed him, soft and syrupy slow. Crowley’s eyes fell shut. Aziraphale kissed him again and again until Crowley was worried he might fall asleep under him.

“Tired,” Crowley mumbled.

“Of course, love,” Aziraphale said, brushing his hair back from his forehead and kissing the tattoo of a snake next to his ear. A pleasant heat suffused through his bones. “Go back to sleep. I’ll watch over you.”

Safe, cared for, watched over - Crowley slept.

(For those who wanted to be tagged in things: @srebrnafh , @the-moon-loves-the-sea. Also thank you to an anon for asking @a-zira-fell about any fics involving Crowley having a nightmare. That’s where this came from.)

#fic #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #nightmares cw #mine

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claybefree · 5 years ago

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Excerpt- Mule Skinner Blues

The man guided Kit up the trail until it merged within a hair's breadth of treeline next to the tracks, running like that until it met the railyard. The two lines coming in from the outskirts split and branched into a multitude of tracks like veins of a leaf stem spreading across acres of junctions and ballast rock.. The trail there was halted abruptly by a wall of chain link, complete with a man sized hole in it. Not far was what must have been a dead line as along it’s back were parked huge lengths of what Kit guessed to be track laying equipment, low slung, enveloped with clumps of Queen Anne’s lace and left to rot away. Hulking wrecks with a rainbow of multicolored patina, years of different owners individual paint schemes peeling away over one another. Red and yellow gave way to yellow and orange which gave way to blue, with the deep burgundy of Lord Rust presiding over all.

“Okay, Hobo 101 meets under that barge there,” the thin man said.

“What, underneath?”

“Yeah, don’t worry it ain’t goin anywhere.” he said with a grin. “It’s a Sunday so there ain’t that much personnel but if you see a white truck a comin’ you better coon it, quick.”

In response to Kit’s confused look he said “Here, allow me to demonstrate.”

Hustling through the hole in the fence, he started off across the sparse grass hunched almost to squatting, hands just above the ground as if he were about to drop to all fours. A sneaky kind of lope, Kit decided, that looked almost exactly like a racoon.

The weeds were almost four foot tall and clustered thickly so that once underneath, they were well concealed. Kit crawled up next to the thin man and lay across the rails, the smell of creosote impregnated timbers all around. They peered out through a multitude of top heavy stalks each bearing a small continent of impossibly intricate white flowers waving gently in the breeze.

“Okay, so if you run across a worker that wants to talk, it’s probably safe. Most of these guys work a twelve hour shift, so bullshitting with a hobo is a fun way to burn time. Plus you might find out something useful. You’ll know a bull if you run across one, they usually cuss and yell. There’s this one red-faced old drunk who works here, means as hell. If you see him my recommendation is you haul ass.”

As they were talking, the rumbling in the earth beneath them grew to where it filled the air around them and a locomotive rolled out from between the lines of freight heading towards them. Kit resisted the urge to wave at the engineer. The thin man paused, waiting for the building fury of diesel fumes and machine grumble to pass them. A rogue’s gallery of battle scarred boxcars followed behind as the train picked up speed heading into the wild heart of forest just outside the yard.

“So the mainline he’s on is headed East, besides he’s local. You need a mountain train. The line on the other side goes North. That’s the one you want. At some point he’ll make a left, hopefully, at which point you’ll be on the mighty Highline. Ride that til you can’t anymore. It stops at the Pacific ocean. Think you can manage that?”

“I think I can.” Kit chuckled.

Rows of oil cars rumbled past, black as pitch with streaks of pitch spilling down the sides from the lid. Then a number of boxcars, pale sun-faded yellow with black doors slid open. Red company emblem a flying “W” tucked in amid a riot of graffiti, brash hieroglyphs that might have been slurs in purple and green.

“Now if you wind up on a boxcar, make sure you jam the door open, so you don’t accidentally wind up locked inside. Also, I wouldn’t recommend riding topside of a trash bin or a coal car, you’ll freeze to death.”

“Freeze? Ain’t it August?” Kit said, “What month is it anyway?”

“Don’t matter where you’re going, friend.” He smiled. “You do got a jacket in that rig, I’m guessing?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay- so the ideal is that type car right there, a grainer,” he gestured at the silver and grey walled construct rolling past, it’s box battered and slightly concave from too many years being in service. Black iron trucks and wheels spinning diligently away underneath. “You’ll want the ass end of things, shetler wise, under that triangular edge. Not the side where the mechanics are located, mind you, the brakes and such, there’s no real estate there. Oh and make sure it’s got a porch. Otherwise you’ll have to ride suicide which is not nearly as fun as it sounds.”

“Growing up on a farm so I learned early on how to behave myself around heavy equipment.”

“That’s pretty comforting, actually. Oh yeah, see those three bolts on the wheels? If they’re going to fast to count, then the train is moving too fast to catch. When you go for it, make sure you get both hands on the thing before you haul your shit aboard. If it pulls out of your hand it’s going too fast and you’ll need to ditch it into the rocks. Ballast rash ain’t no fun but I think you understand the importance of not winding up under the trucks.”

“Imagine that’d put a hitch in your giddy-up.” Kit said.

Noticing the grim turn of his mouth, the thin man said, “I know this is a lot to take in but be careful, don’t die and you’ll be a gentleman of the yards in no time.” and slapped his shoulder.

“No chance in talking you into coming with me is there?”

“And take the chance of watching you get chewed into hamburger? Sorry but no.” he laughed. “Besides, I got to stay here and mind Screwdriver. At least until he realizes his lady love ain’t coming back anytime soon, and then probably a week or so after that. Maybe I’ll talk him into going home to the farm. Hopefully you won’t have to wait long. Just do me a favor and don’t start drinking until you’ve successfully boarded your ride, okay?”

“Will do.”

“See you on down the line, Kit-By-the-Way.” and with a smile he doffed his floppy hat, scrambled out from under the car and was gone into the treeline.

In the end, it took no time at all. Hidden away from the heat of the day, he dozed until awoken by the familiar rumbling that sounded like the end of all things. The engine passed in a blaze of orange and yellow, gleaming bright as a sun in the afternoon light. He picked a grain car and made for it straight away, making sure not to linger in the sight line along the locomotive’s edge, the only hitch being almost getting decapitated by the skeleton frame of an empty lumber rack. The beast was going slow enough to catch with ease, and as luck would have it, the porch was enclosed in a steel case with a large circle cut into it that he could squeeze into. Once inside, the diamond plate steel of the floor was clean and spacious, a fresh coat of battleship grey. There were even half a half dozen comic books left by another traveller. Spider-man versus the Rhino. Black Panther. He crawled inside his enclave of welded steel and made himself hidden and comfortable.

Just as the thin man said it would, the train slowly thundered out the yard and made a hard left, heading North, at which point it stopped entirely. Fearing he would be discovered, Kit remained sequestered and read his comic books. After an hour of this he ate a can of ravioli, raw, slurping cold meat sauce from his fingers. During the second hour he ventured outside to pee into the rock between the cars and then quickly hid himself away again, even though he was completely enveloped entirely by forest and had seen not a soul since they’d left the yard. He developed a welcome case of the stares and let his gaze drift across the lines of the coupling he was told not to cross, even mimicking the shape of it with his two hands, cupped one inside the other. He watched the way the ladder on the car across from his rose, battered and worn, to the top edge, and convinced himself he didn’t need to climb it. Still the train sat motionless with not even an occasional tremor to indicate shunting yet for this or that. Finally, with nothing else to do, he broke into the handle of Jack he had hidden away in the depths of his bag, having endured the nagging weight of it for what seemed like an eternity.

“Well, the old guy didn’t say nothing about drinking after I got on the train, which I did manage to do. Seems like time to celebrate to me.” He would have to portion it out if he could, as he had no idea how far it was to California. Tipping it back, the burn in his throat and consequently his stomach was like a lover’s embrace. Everything immediately softened, the colors of the woods brightened, the filth covering everything fell away and the world didn’t seem so big and scary.

Eventually he heard a series of bangs from far away as the engine began to pull the train along it’s chain length to move out, a clamor that echoed well into the woods and back towards town. His turn came and he was thrown back into the hole, the slack jerked taught, and the great assembly of steel and iron and rust began to roll. Naturally he took another shot to celebrate his departure.

It occurred to him that unlike the tractors he’d grown up riding, this was more a moving city as it was a piece of equipment. It was not a smooth ride, which surprised him, and there was always a sound of metal creaking somewhere. As they gained speed, and the woods parted and they spilled out onto another limitless ocean of wheat fields, he realized that everything left in his mind would shortly be pushed out by it. The train would consume his entire existence, there was no arguing with it, the train was terrible and absolute.

Presently the woods surrendered to wheat fields spreading away from both sides of the train. Off to his left the sun fell below the racing clouds, setting the whole thing alight into a golden blaze that threatened to consume him. A conflagration of yellow and orange set to consume the prairies. The train, picking up even more speed, rocked him like a child.

“Sadie-girl, I sure wish you could see this,” he said quietly.

The engineer poured on more speed such as to send them flying through towns and countryside. It sounded like a mile up the track from him but Kit could hear him laying on the horn as they roared through each crossing. Towns that seemed only to be out there to harvest wheat, maybe they were able to muster a downtown, sometimes just a convergence of a road and rail, with few houses thrown in just to indicate a population. Occasionally there was a water tower or a fallen down depot giving a name to the place to be noted and then immediately forgotten. Monolith grain elevators stood vigil, rising windowless out of the landscape, clapboarded in faded black or white or grey, an architecture completely foreign to him. As dark fell and the train picked up more speed, he became drunk and yelled at it all, incoherent, raging against his own insignificance.

Morning found him under his leather jacket, body inside the hole and head on his boots as a pillow on the perforated steel walkway outside, woken by a light rain or cloud vapor accumulating on his face. In a literal fog, his waking gaze followed the rail, polished to a mirror finish and passing smoothly beneath him like a pair of silvery ribbons. The pace of the locomotive seemed to not have abated in the least, and he figured he must have caught the famed hotshot he was looking for. He sat up. The softness of the fog obscured the morning, but as near as he could tell the sun was off behind them. They must have turned West somewhere in the night, and his friend was right, he was freezing.

No coffee to be had, he rummaged around the pile he’d made to sleep under until he found the bottle of Jack, on it’s lower third, and took a three finger belt. The mist cleared enough to reveal a martian landscape. They were in the mountains sure enough. Maybe it was the hangover, maybe just being unfamiliar, but everything looked jagged and angular and desolate. Tall aspens, he gathered, maybe doug fir. Pines of every kind. The only familiar thing was the rail flying beneath him, it’s gauge holy and absolute, punctuated with a million crossties.

“Sadie, I don’t particularly care for all this ponderosa bullshit, no ma’am,” and pulled again on the bottle in his lap. “Too many pines, rocks and dust. Not enough green. I feel like I might dry up and blow away as it is.” He stood up and stretched, swaying slightly due as much to the train as the fact he was not at all sober. He threw his jacket over his shoulders and clutched the bottle by the throat for good measure. Didn’t want it getting away from him.

At this point the engine up the line let loose with a blast from its horn, sending ghosts of echoes to fill the canyons.

“Ah yes, good morning to you too, Captain!” Kit shouted back. “You heavy handed sonofabitch!”

Suddenly the earth fell away into a chasm that must have been a thousand feet deep, the floor of it buried in the fog and unseen. He grabbed onto the ladder mounted to the outside corner of the grain car. “Holy shit. I guess that’s what all the noise was about.”

The trestle was immense, a miraculous web of cross bracing filling the valley in what amounted to a straight line through the air yet neither side had a rail or walkway. It occurred to him to just let go and fall away into the clouds. The rocks or river or whatever below waiting would hold him close until the vultures and wolves and whatever else came to claim him, and he could belong to the forest from then on. Listening to the pines whispering, the occasional train whistle, coyotes crying, perhaps he could become a whisper in that valley himself.

Instead the locomotive pulled him across the abyss to the other side before he had formed a proper mind to leap. He sat down hard, thumbed off the top and pulled on the Jack once again. There was a bag of beef jerky stashed somewhere he’d considered for breakfast, but decided against it.

“Hey Sadie, wake up and come look at this,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Purple mountains majesty and all that.” For a moment it seemed the same shade as the lavender she had left on the dash of the Toronado. Delicate purple flowers windswept from the open window and perched on a skin of turquoise leather. Maybe they should have stayed in the farmhouse, he thought.

He lamented the he never showed her the network of rabbit tunnels crisscrossing the yard, long mounds of soft earth stretching this way and that between the house and the barn. He decided he would hang on just in case he ever saw her again so he could describe this to her. The soft earth with rabbits hidden beneath, the ground yielding underfoot oddly comforting. He drank a little more and thought these things and in this way passed into California.

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thecloserkin · 5 years ago

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book review: Marian Veevers, Jane & Dorothy (2018)

Genre: Biography

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: No

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: Y’all fools: Stanning Lord Byron and his half-sister Augusta whom he didn’t even meet until he was nearly grown, never mind whether he actually knocked her up. Me, an intellectual: William and Dorothy Wordsworth are right there, eloping to the countryside and spending the rest of their days holed up in a picturesque cottage composing poetry.

First let’s have a detour where I yell about Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro). A few of the recent asks about incest vs. the patriarchy got me thinking about this line from Jane & Dorothy: “the malevolent power of married women over their spinsters-in-law.” Between the wife and the unmarried sister it’s obvious who has more power and it’s clearly not the spinster sister-in-law—and yet Guillermo del Toro would have us believe that Edith in Crimson Peak is helpless before Lucille’s resistance to giving up the skeleton key (the one that opens every room in the house). Edith is made out to be the victim of Lucille’s bloodthirsty unhinged jealousy, when she’s not only THE WIFE she’s got ALL THE MONEY, she’s literally holding all the cards??? It doesn’t add up. This biography is the antidote to that. It looks at the paucity of options open to your average 19th century girl who just wants a Room of One’s Own to write in, and situates her bid for freedom in the context of having no good options. The trouble with “Crimson Peak” was not that Edith wasn’t relatable or that I didn’t identify with her; when Thomas tears her down in that faux-breakup speech he attacks her on the terrain where she’s most vulnerable, her abilities as a writer. The trouble with Crimson Peak was that this beat would have hit so much harder had it landed on Lucille, a woman who’s WAY more vulnerable than Edith by dint of having (1) no marriage prospects and (2) no inheritance. Without Thomas this bitch has (3) no survival strategy either! Otoh take away Thomas and Edith is still left with her dad’s $$$, Edith still has Alan waiting in the wings to swoop in & save her, in other words Edith will be just fine. No wonder Lucille feels so threatened!! The situations are not even comparable. Here then is Jane & Dorothy which offers two case studies of women whose impulse to write & create was just as strong as Edith’s, but whose plight was much closer to Lucille’s ie. precarious as fuck.

I picked this book up because it’s actually a dual biography of Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, and I’m a basic bitch and Jane Austen is my eternal favorite. I’m going to focus on the Dorothy chapters but rest assured I read the Jane chapters with equal gusto. Jane Austen (b. 1775) and Dorothy Wordsworth (b. 1771) were both born into the British pseudo-gentry, which means they were too highborn to go and get a paying gig as a governess or companion but not highborn enough to have any independent source of income (neither of them had a dowry settled on them). While the two women never crossed paths, the arcs of their lives run in parallel as they pursue divergent strategies to secure their futures. So the primary imperative here is to avoid a life of domestic drudgery. But the secondary imperative, because these are both perceptive girls with rich inner lives, is this:

For an intelligent woman, confined to a society which denies her higher education and restricts her existence largely to the home, the male companion with whom she shares her life is her chief provider, not only of security and affection, but of intellectual stimulation.

This is a popular romance novel plot, do I want to marry a man who is a bore (possibly also a boor) or do I want to starve hmmmm. The point is that women are frequently starved for both affection and intellectual stimulation, and it’s little wonder Dorothy fell so hard for her brother William when he showered her with both. Dorothy and William were separated as children when, after the death of their mother, she was sent to live with an aunt in West Yorkshire (she was seven, he was eight). Nine years later they reconnected and sparks flew almost immediately. I mean I think their letters speak for themselves:

”the last time we were Together William won my Affection to a Degree which I cannot describe.”

What kind of brother needs to “win” his sister’s affection? Most of them treat sisters like furniture.

”Never have my eyes burst upon a scene of particular loveliness,” he wrote, “but I have wished that you could be transported to the place where I stood to enjoy it.”

standard “everything beautiful either reminds me of you, or makes me want to share it with you” pablum but EXTREMELY effective for all that

but enough he is my brother, why should I describe him? I shall be launching again into panegyric

Dorothy: hahaha but don’t you think my brother was looking mighty fiiiiiine today

”his attentions to me were such as the most insensible of mortals must have been touched with”

”I assure you so eager is my desire to see you that all obstacles vanish. I see you in a moment running or rather flying to my arms.”

That letter is from William, and you have to remember that William was supposed to be a huge dick who routinely ignored his friends’ missives leaving them in suspense whether he was alive or dead and yet he managed a lively & regular correspondence with Dorothy for years before they moved in together. It’s almost like he treated her … special.

”that sympathy which will almost identify us when we have stole to our little cottage”

These kids are already plotting their elopement jfc! Here are some snippets from Dorothy’s diary from much later, after they have in fact achieved The Dream of their own cottage:

”After dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him and my Beloved slept.”

”The fire flutters and the watch ticks and I hear nothing save the Breathing of my Beloved and he now and then pushes his book forward and turns over a leaf.” It is a picture of domestic contentment such as Jane Austen draws to portray a genuinely happy marriage.

”After we came in we sat in deep silence at the window — I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and love, a blessed hour.”

This is literally #goals. Veevers points out that “the conflation of marriage with home, spinsterhood with insecurity” meant that “William was promising the kind of permanence and safety which women usually found in marriage.” Dorothy really thought she could Have It All: a home of her own and a rich, stimulating intellectual life shared with the man she loved. And she proceeded to spend the rest of her life making fair copies of his poems. Hell, she pushed him to be a poet in the first place (it was not at all clear initially that this was the best plan for William, who could just have easily have embarked on a career as a political polemicist, but it was Dorothy who pushed him to be a poet, Dorothy who spent the rest of her life copying out his verses in her fairer hand). Early on Dorothy & William befriended the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was so envious of their bond that he complained, “You have all in each other, but I am lonely, and want you!” Can you b e l i e v e Coleridge actually said that. If one of you hoes doesn’t write me the William/Dorothy Historical RPF that’s Coleridge Outsider POV I s2g I will do my damnedest to die of consumption.

Veveers sums it up this way: “It was a relationship few women would be able to have with their husbands, for, at the time, the two sexes were expected to inhabit different mental landscapes.” To put it bluntly women had ovaries instead of brains; they just weren’t interested in the same stuff a man was. Otoh you have William and Dorothy Wordsworth, actual soulmates: the historical consensus is there is “some uncertainty as to whether she would be best described as muse, emotional support, secretary or co-author.” And she didn’t hide it, either. This is where you really see the difference between Dorothy, who is so open, and Austen heroines like Eleanor Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility), Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) or Anne Eliot (Persuasion) who also feel things deeply but had to regulate the bejeezus out of their emotional responses. This is Dorothy:

After any separation her joy at meeting her brother again was uncontrollable. “I believe I screamed,” she admitted on one occasion when there were witnesses.

Uncontrollable screaming in front of witnesses every time she’s reunited with her brother??? WE STAN. This is how low Dorothy’s spirits sink whenever he’s gone:

”I slept in Wm.’s bed, and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.”

adkfjdkfjdkfjdk I just want to add that when William is home the floorboards are so thin that she can hear him pacing in the bedroom above hers, so his insomnia keeps both of them up at night but she doesn’t mind, she can’t sleep until he falls asleep, she would probably give up a kidney or a lung if she thought it would sell 500 more copies for him. I’m torn between GIRL HE AIN’T WORTH IT and stanning her even harder for being so ride or die on any topic that touches her brother (later, when he has kids, she decides William’s kids are smarter and better-looking than everyone else’s kids).

This is the most iconic line in the entire book, from a letter Dorothy writes to an interfering relative who deplores Dorothy’s judgment for throwing in her lot with a penniless failson like William:

”I affirm that I consider the character and virtues of my brother sufficient protection”

The icily scathing tone of the setdown is PERFECTION. But also, this just in your brother abandoned his pregnant Catholic mistress in France. You know this. Yet here you are gallivanting around the countryside in his company. In fact, when he proves too much of a coward to tell your uncle himself about the existence of said pregnant mistress—this is the uncle who funded all of William’s education and reasonably expects some return on it—he delegates Dorothy to break the news. Dorothy also winds up in charge of all correspondence with the poor girl, who writes occasionally asking for a little money or when is William coming back to France to marry me, and it’s Dorothy who has to fob her off. And this whole incident—the revelation of the French mistress, the break with the family, William refusing to take holy orders to become a clergyman—is so pivotal in their relationship! They were close before but this is the irrevocable step when Dorothy decides to join her fate to his. And her motivation could not be clearer:

William’s outspoken affection for her seems to have first aroused a reciprocal love in Dorothy, but it was his fall from grace, his isolation and his need of a friend, which provided the final catalyst that raised her gradually deepening affection into wholehearted, single-minded devotion.

She saw his need and responded almost involuntarily. She is a RESCUER.

Dorothy, was in one way, very fortunate to have fallen in love with her brother. “Rambling around the country on foot” with a slightly disreputable brother might bring down the censure of her more conventional relatives, but it was a good deal safer than rambling about with a man who was not a brother.

This is the kind of behavior that if two unrelated people engaged in it must have resulted in the man being honor-bound to extend an offer of marriage, because a woman has nothing if she doesn’t have her virtue. Two siblings roaming the countryside, picking flowers and wading thru streams and stargazing? My god what PRIME fodder for fake married tropes! Just present yourself at the first inn you come to as a married couple and then guess what? There was only one bed!!!!

at Grasmere “there was an unnatural tale current of Wordsworth … having been intimate with his own sister.”

tell me MOAR omg this is so deliciously Gothic i keep thinking about that line from Wuthering Heights “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

at Alfoxton, “the master of the house,” it was said, “had no wife with him, but only a woman who passes for his sister.”

PASSES for his sister trololololol like they don’t act the way you’d expect of a brother and sister, like they’re too into each other.

And it was generally accepted that immorality and radical anti-British sentiment went together.

But really William got much more staid and less radical as he got older, and Dorothy was never political because her energies were centered on William William William. On top of which it’s hard to overlook the fact that William would go into Dorothy’s journals and “borrow” her words and publish them verbatim as his own; he felt as entitled to her intellectual labor as her domestic labor, and there is nothing radically egalitarian about that. So I definitely don’t think this is a case where incest is subversive so much as incest illuminating existing hierarchies & oppressions. Veveers writes: “An unmarried woman’s hold on her own time was extremely fragile. She could be made use of in any crisis, transported against her wishes” to fulfill another family members’ needs. Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra evidently shouldered both their weights when it came to this sort of emotional labor: writing letters of thanks & condolence, minding their brothers’ children, calming hypochondriac aunts down, attending births of little nephews & nieces. Cassandra doing all this extra labor gave Jane the space and time to write. Moreover Jane had formed the ambition to write. Dorothy, on the other hand, thought anything worth saying was already being said by William. And she didn’t have her own Cassandra to share the unceasing burden of housework with:

In fact, the domestic labor and childcare that lay ahead of Dorothy were almost indistinguishable from the duties she had escaped at Forncett rectory. But now she was to be living in a home she had chosen, with a man she loved.

Did it matter in the end, Dorothy’s rebellion? If she’d remained a hanger-on in her uncle’s household, living on his charity, her life would not have been outwardly all that different. I have to believe that her choices did matter, of course. It would be easy to sit here and speculate that if Dorothy had not poured all her mental and physical resources into supporting William’s career, she too might have produced another Pride & Prejudice, but naturally we cannot know that. What we know is that Dorothy and William were 100% in love, a fact that anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension can verify by reading their letters. Why is this not more widely discussed? William Wordsworth was not exactly an obscure poet. The explanation, again, comes back to patriarchy:

The idea that Dorothy might have inspired (or felt) desire at Dove Cottage was as abhorrent to mid-20th century academics as it was to gentlemen of the early 19th century … who preferred to think of unmarried women drooping and degenerating after the age of 25, rather than maintaining a subversive and disturbing sexuality.

I wish I could say that William and Dorothy grew old together at Dove Cottage. What actually happened is he got married (she talked him into it—she chose a mutual friend of theirs whom they’d known for ages) and accidentally fell in love with his wife oops. His new wife was neither young nor pretty, in fact she was painfully plain, but that William became genuinely attached to her there can be no doubt. Dorothy continued to live with them and look after their children until her death. So I think we have avoided the worst case scenario, the malevolent-power-of-the-married-woman-ruins-her-spinster-in-law’s-life scenario: This is what happened to Jane Austen when Jane’s father unexpectedly announced his retirement, uprooting Jane and Cassandra from the Steventon rectory where they’d lived all their lives and forcibly removing them to Bath, where Jane was so miserable she did no writing for years. All this upheaval on account of Jane’s brother and his wife wanting the Steventon rectory and its income for their own! The accursed woman was probably measuring the drapes before she’d moved in. Anyway, it is fortunate this open enmity did not characterize Dorothy Wordsworth’s relationship with her sister in law; they were fast friends and they remained friends after the latter’s marriage to William. But instead of William-and-Dorothy forming the nucleus of life at Dove Cottage now it was William-and-Mary, and if this did not sting at least a little Dorothy would not be human. She had been supplanted in William’s heart. I CRY.

Because I’m literal shipper trash I want to end on the bittersweet note of SIBLINGS EXCHANGING RINGS AS A SYMBOL OF COMMITMENT EVEN THO THEY CAN’T LEGALLY GET MARRIED. This is Dorothy’s description of the morning of William and Mary’s wedding, right before they leave the house to attend the ceremony:

”I gave him the wedding ring—with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before—he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently.” It might be said that William married her before he married Mary, and that Dorothy was making a promise in that upstairs room try like the one Mary was about to make in church.

it’s been two months since I read this book and i’m STILL SCREECHING byeeeee

#dorothy wordsworth #book review

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tokensfortalkers · 5 years ago

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d100 ONLY IN THE WOOD

From pulsing spiral shells

of perfect, woven red scales

our tribe extracts rich music

to sweat the land in dance

til vice weft seed in set.

The flowers of lava trees open like shattered glass spilling liquids of molten pollen

A single bud rests in a fallow field, shimmering a sign planted next to it reads "Needs blood"

For each fallen limb stepped upon, a tree breaks into splinters; limbs crack at the slightest touch.

Swamps travel swiftly and quickly. The same swamp can be seen many days from many mountains

Rock splits in a cacophonous crack, oozing red and blue liquid, when hardened go back in time.

A craft falls from the sky, blazing with heat and, eventually, berths opportunity

As it's marked, tree hisses -- a faint whistle (Return in 2d10 days to a deflated tree -- and a sapling).

Winds braid walkable paths of leaves in the air. Only as the wind dies, do the leaves fall away

Moles' noses are carved into stones, creating a fern gully of sniffing sculptures

Floating woven metal drip beeswax around a wick of living hemp positioned below an exposed bladder.

Pits in the skin caused by biting insects deepen into darkening and widening maws until the next day.

Boats along the lake shore are all shells for crab-like crustaceans

Footsteps are Taken away -- stored in vials to be poured out for later use.

Illusion barrier of ancients' lost city is on the fritz; such sensually polluting defenses nauseate.

Writing in the fog lights up where fireflies flutter from one location to the next

Oars cause lake water to be shoveled rather than pushed. Water sticks to implements, weighing them

Spiders in the forest have been cursed with human customs. Like to picnic and play volleyball.

Water shrine of exotic wood caused a lake to explode and freeze at the same time, resulting in ice caves.

Single bed and breakfast hosted by a ghost. Good meals, fascinating guest log, excellent books.

Drunk frogs defend an artisan well of wine fed by a massive pitcher plant suffering from allergies

Lamppost mill, owners tend to the lampposts, growing them from single crystals in careful vats.

Servile-yet-serpentile signs read what actions PCs took last, in an attempt to annoy them away

Flash flood is an illusion (unfortunate actions of panicking characters are not.)

Gruesome sculptures with pivots stand before picketed signs reading Tip Me.

Piles of leaves dart about wildly, clamboring in a cacophonous emsemble, deafening all other sound

Wellsprings of gasses hiss in notes. Covering them plays a flute-like melody, enchanting victims

Chasm blows anything blown into it back out and 10x smaller; thrown in again, reverts to normal.

Snails with numbers on shells litter the forest floor and trees. Snails are purple with black spots

Wisps travel from tree to tree like high traffic. Sign posted says Experimental Area: Keep Out

All equipment hums and wilts when held by an owner who isn't at least humming if not singing

Cairns of stacked pumice float from one spot to the next, rearrange their stacks, and continue

Odorous flowers create paths. Follow the fresh bread odor? Or the smoked meat one? Or some other?

Seeds in the shape of fetuses wriggle in warm areas, like in sunlight or the palms of ungloved hands

Pool of glass hatches and walls of plasmatic liquids make a maze of this deathly-still lake

Boxes of quartz contain tiny plants growing tinier morsels. Opening a box usually kills the plant.

Sky flickers between day and night as though it can't remember what time it's supposed to be

Cat rests atop a floating, bloated carcass, pounces upon a mouse, and returns to the carcass to dine.

Fruit dries quickly when plucked, its wrinkles taking on the face of the one who plucked it

Every tree has a name carved into it. A fallen tree's root ball harbors an unearthed prisoner

Boulders crack, revealing stone chicks. it would seem this particular part of the forest is a nest.

Silent beast work tirelessly at weaving spider webs into cocoons for sick caterpillars

Driftwood in the lake each have a hand in their centers bobbing in and out of view

Field of view shifts in parallax, at 5 frames per second. Woodland beasts appear and disappear wildly.

Whispers from holes dug in the ground reveal the names and notable deeds of those buried here

Fire blooms from grasses bent too quickly, their blades passing one another produce the spark.

A thick, sweet pollen clouds vision and clog up uncovered airways, causing light asphyxia

Baubles or trinkets are grown into tree bark, assumedly pulled up by the capillaries by mistake

Breezes fill in pockets of thick air, erupting when touched, causing a furious blowback

Expansive circles or carefully cut and laid stone course a map to old civilizations

Animal path cuts through a canopy of ever-shrinking oaks. Leaves of the oaks drip a shrinking tonic.

At night, animal sounds are mistaken for mad ramblings, philosophical musings, and arguments

Tapestry of quilted hemp died with shells and treated with aromatic oils blanket the area

Cylinders of colossal, rusting, fallen chimes chamber the only accessible paths through the forest

Pustules on the hillside reveal the mad workings of a unindustrialized colony deep below

Flute sounds emanate from cracks in the stone cliff and stop when the cliff is touched.

Sticks crossing one another reveal the true forest floor -- a barren desert.

Howls and screeches leave the players mouths, their hollow words swallowed up by something high above

Animals will only eat from the hand. Beg players to feed them. Starvation abounds.

Blossoms of a tree paint pictures in the sky as they fall. If shaken, produces a vision of the future

Salt deposits litter the forest floor from red trees puking fresh water over themselves.

Tree roots reach out of the riverbed. Stepping into the river inverts the forest's orientation.

Eels swim through the air, casting crude shadows in the shape of animals once presiding here

Croaking of ghostly frogs echo through the forest. Bumping into one causes it to spew fiery vomit.

Red dust litters the forest floor. When exposed to rain, turns into rivulets of blood.

Tress drink so much light, they are too black to see. Useful light is only produce pointing downward

Bushes restructure the limbs sporadically, limbs fighting over sunlight

Herd beasts chew vegetation growing on their backs, reluctantly move only when aggressively persuaded

Ghosts of a pilgrimage performed time and time again fill the ancient steps of this mountainside

Owls with heads turned in the direction of safety become parts of trees when viewed up close

Distending mosses sprinkle spores onto coats and cloaks, turning fabric slowly to more moss.

Dollops of cream leak from fleshy termite mounds. Animals congregate around, lapping the cream

In a stony nook rests a single hut. In the hut rests a single book, in the book, a single word: Run.

Snot eventually pours from trees periodically sniffling and obviously allergic to visitors

Groups of birds vanish from the sky. Reappear again and vanish again in the same spots.

Magenta plants leave the forest floor a royal, mossy color. Sleeping here feels deep. Forever, even.

Every strike makes a weapon sharper, a bow tighter and a blade swifter until, of course, they shatter.

Trees all appear as doors and are, in fact, door trees. Should probably knock before harvesting.

Animals incessantly beg to be ridden and then race at top speeds until players fail Ride checks.

Wood is lopsided. Limbs slowly move between trees to grasp at the light, feverishly and frightened.

Fetid bog's algae moves like lips, spewing low hums, sharing secrets of the wood's history

Jewelry in scattered piles brighten vision when worn and turn to bloody briars once leaving the area

Short afternoon showers morph brambles into herds, twigs into serpents, and rocks into turtles.

Furs nailed upside down to trees speak quickly hushed warnings of what lies ahead

Single silken bamboo drips milky sap from a cut, trapping all who enter until the cut is mended

Animals stop what they are doing to stare at visitors, moving closer and drop dead when touched

Single-occupancy thatched shelters litter the wood where a single well-dressed skeleton lies face up.

Leaf-vested and well-spoken asks to join visitors. Becomes a dagger in an inventory outside the area

Abandoned wine cave leads down, into a burial tomb filled with statues in the likeness of players

Thrown rocks never hit the ground, loop back around behind players in d10 hours.

All wine taken into the wood is greedily hunted by ever-agitated vines eventually hissing, barking.

Well-kept signs argue in text about which way to go and must be separated before being of any use

Shanty ranch house bigger on the inside is home to giant talking bats drinking blood from pet rats.

Fruit launches from trees instead of falling, is picked off by swift birds with sword-like beaks.

Village performs odd festive rituals to entice visitors to move in; keeps a log of failed rituals.

Meticulously decorated massive nut shells are filled with villager bodies (filled with exotic seeds)

Farmers moving a waterwheel state their river's reversed direction just as the river reverts again.

Baby birds fall from nests left and right, crying for help, they beg, plead. Where are their mothers?

Sign reads Wondrous Shop Right At the Boulder. There is no boulder. There is no shop.

Elk sheds, disembodied, crack and strike one another. Best not get between them.

Rivers of trailers filled with kids teaching kids how to manipulate space without time.

d100 Only in the Wood by shwac

#d100 #list #forest #weird

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