#like if you have a lichen growing on a ruin or something its a thing

[ehlnofay]

Summerfest Day 6 - MIRROR (part one)

this is the first excerpt of a longer piece. I'll post the complete story on the free day on the 19th :)

In the cave underneath the derelict white-stone ruin, just as they were told, there is a tree.

It’s not all that impressive, even by a tree’s standards. It’s big, granted, with sprawling roots, half set into the wall of the cavern and threading itself along and into the low ceiling; thorny brambles, or an approximation of them, have sprung up from the crooks of its base, and here and there it sprouts bouquets of dry leaves. It looks half dead – or at least, not really alive in the way trees are supposed to be, though nothing ever is, here. As sources of apparently mythically powerful wood go, it’s gnarled, sad-looking – altogether pretty underwhelming.

It's also growing firmly out of the far end of a dank little pond that spans the whole width of the cave, because even with the Mad God gone somewhere beyond reaching, its world still revels in tormenting them.

Pax sighs and drops their main pack on the spongy earth in the entryway, leaves it sagging there, half-empty. No point risking dropping it in the water, even if there’s not much in it worth saving. You move quicker if you pack light; you move quicker still if you take shortcuts, and Pax has gotten adept enough at going by the off-road wilds that she only really has to pack for the populated places. (The wild Isles have plenty to eat in them, it seems, and apparently love to share, because her pack is never any lighter going out than in and yet she’s never hungry when she comes back. Sometimes the food is spoiled, though. Not much loss – everything here is atrocious.) The cave – it, like the tree, had some pretentious name, but they’ve forgotten both – is small and cramped, lit only by the faint stripes of lichen crawling along the walls, reflecting faintly off the surface of the water, dark as ink. Besides the tree and the sludgy-looking pool, there’s not much there to look at. Pax takes one step forward, and then stops; stands still, arms loose, bow still in its case slung over his shoulder, and waits for the catch. (There’s always a catch.)

Nothing happens.

He wrinkles his nose – holds still a moment longer – gives in, and pads over to the pond, earth squashing under his shoes. Gumming up the studs in the soles. It doesn’t smell like anything – the cave or the pond or the mud or anything – which is weird, but things being weird can’t really be a cause for alarm anymore, and haven’t been since they came in months ago. Pax reaches down and balances on one foot to pull a shoe off; puts the foot back down, and, fuck, he forgot about the stockings and now there’s mud seeping through the webby fabric sticking to his legs. Whatever. Who fucking cares. He takes the other shoe off, too, and hangs them both from crooked fingers, standing at the edge of the pond.

Fuck, she’ll have to change the stockings after this or be wet all day.

(Boo-hoo, she’ll be uncomfortable. Shut up.)

And still nothing happens. It’s less terrible than it could be, and that is too good to be true. Normally something would be trying to kill her by now. But there’s a time crunch she’s working under, and standing around looking at ugly trees waiting for the other shoe to drop gets no-one anywhere. The shithead library man said they needed a stick, so a stick they’re fucking getting, however little they believe it could be as easy as taking it.

Pax exhales again, the sound jarringly harsh in this empty, half-dead cavern, and they step into the pond –

Their foot breaks the surface and then keeps going – hard to see with only the lichen-light but they’d thought it was shallow water – a bit too late to course-correct now, their centre of gravity has already shifted past where they can reach. There’s not so much as a splash; they are submerged and sinking and rising all at once, and then –

And then Pax is catching themself stumbling over dry, spongy soil, and the cavern walls are jagged bare, and they are not alone.

They look up to meet each other’s eyes.

(Across the now-empty floor, not a pool of water in sight, is something wearing Pax’s shape; ahead, the tree is gone.)

“Who the fuck are you?” the other one demands – which is some fucking nerve, and not a question they have any right to ask, but it does give him pause. Pax is no stranger to seeing his own face on someone else; it was one of Sheogorath’s favourite party tricks, even after he acquiesced to its incessant badgering and came close enough for it to talk to him in person instead of just through grubby mirrors and wobbling reflections in the surface of the Niben, and from the beginning to the end it could never mimic him properly. The lines of his face it could do, sure – the fall of his hair, the stains on his clothes – but it always gave itself away in the posture, in the expressions, in the quality of the voice. There was always something off or strange, his face incongruous with his motions. It wore him like a second-hand coat it hadn’t gotten around to altering. This, though – this is different, unsettling, in a way that scratches against his spine. This is familiar.

She said exactly what they would’ve.

“You’re not Sheogorath,” they say, slow, and Pax pauses.

(It was the Grove of Reflection. Pompous bloody name. More literal, maybe, than the library man had made it sound.)

They look back at the place where the tree was meant to be – where it isn’t, now, the whole world veering in towards its absence – and they grit out, “Oh, bloody hell, seriously?”

“What,” says Pax, with no small edge of resentment, “it’s not like you thought it could be easy.” The pair of shoes are heavy in her hand; she leans over to shove them back onto her feet. Her stockings are dry, now. Dusty. Whatever. Gift horses and mouths and all, even if it’s a pretty shitty fucking gift.

“What do we do now?” Face the truth, according to the asshole back in the echo of the library, if Pax has remembered his words correctly, but that’s just about less helpful than nothing. The tree will give them a stick after it shows them who they really are, or whatever other bullshit. Like they don’t already know who they are. They live as themselves every day.

More inane trials, then. Fucking whoopee. One would think, when the Lord of the realm is dead and soon to return in a less-than-friendly state of mind, the fire and the ritual and the trap and the Gatekeeper and every-fucking-thing else would suffice as enough.

(All hell, they hate the Shivering Isles. This place eats you alive.)

(Still better than Cyrodiil. At least the Isles relishes your taste. But it’s a fine bloody line, sometimes.)

Pax follows suit and steps back into their shoes, scattering dust over the leather toe.

And then they’re both just standing there, on empty dirt where the pond once was, and the tree is fully gone. And all of this is completely mad, obviously, but if that was going to worry them then they would have turned back months ago.

“You look like shit,” Pax says, because he does.

He looks back, flat-eyed, and says, “You don’t say.”

(He really, really does – hollows under his eyes purple as bruise, fringe uneven, face thin-sharp and distant. His clothes and leathers are stained with dirt and sweat and probably some blood, somewhere, and all of them hang strangely on him – the showy tailored garments foisted on him with the duchy were too much trouble to bring, so they’ve stuck with basics. Stockings with tears in them. Scabbed hands, the spiked bone of their knucks rubbing calluses into their skin. Their hair is halfway undone. Sheogorath in their skin always looked eccentric, ephemeral, not quite there; but Pax looks at this flesh-and-bone doppelganger tonguing the gap in her teeth and flexes their aching hands.)

(This is going to be bad, isn’t it.)

[botanyshitposts]

Hi! I have a friend who has some lichen but isnt entirely sure how to take care if it. Do you have any, like, big things that they should know?

ok my dude im not even joking here, science does not know how to grow or take care of lichens. like, lichens have thus far never been grown successfully from scratch in a laboratory environment, and as far as we can tell they only grow in places theyve deemed Worthy according to a set of rules that is mostly mysterious to us (we know that some lichen species prefer certain trees or rocks or whatnot, and we know that some lichens won’t grow if the air quality is too bad, but the inner big brained lichen alchemy going on in there is still an enigma clearly beyond petty human comprehension). what we know for sure is that lichens seem to occur wherever a compatible algal and fungal spore meet in a location that is very specific to their needs, at the right stage in their life cycle, and we know that after that there’s a process where the two species make sure they’re compatible before they do anything in terms of growing into an actual lichen (another lichen question we dont know the answer to yet is ‘how do they know?’). if two compatible symbionts meet too late in the life cycle, they grow into the normal, non-lichenized fungus or algae species they represent (given that they’re in the right environment) and can’t recognize each other or become a lichen if they meet as adults. 

all this being said, we also know that some species are incredibly, incredibly tough, as we’ve seen from the multiple space lichen studies that have seen them live up to a year outside the ISS. a caveat to all of this is that there are labs that grow lichens, but they do this by physically getting a lichen from the wild, grinding it up, cleaning it, and then putting the pieces into test tubes; i dont know the details of this process more than that, but you get the idea. the lichens that result from this are genetically identical to the lichen that got ground up. it’s basically just capitalizing on having all the ‘ingredients’ already there. 

in short: lichens aren’t really like plants in the sense that there’s a given way to grow them. the lichen rules itself. it is the maker of its own destiny. i recommend just visiting local lichens in the neighborhood from time to time instead; they just kinda take care of themselves. just some anomalous self-cleaning ovens out there, everywhere, on all continents, just vibing

[libidomechanica]

Untitled Poem # 8703

A sonnet sequence

               I

Thou waste, when on the billows rude. —I’ll swim to the day complaint. How happy plain, with hellish tyranny. The moon. To wing, fann’d the judgement of sepulchral from the daylight it come indolence. Thou wilt be gone, I marry the bed. Me by my name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele, Babi Yar, Vietnam. Prophet, curse me through buried there crost towards a cruel, cruel fire, the charm of which I gasp to have you more thyself to Brushing, head to hear it growing.

               II

Ankles points; it is a world that old ruined fortune flout, the brood. Of Saturn’s vintage; mouldering the ancient bugaboo follow’d all, and the portraiture of clouds faintly sat down; and, with round him grew all these joys; ask nought beyond thy presence he stood; like old Deucalion mountain’d o’er the stars she seem’d that is the shelter of large- browed steals unto her boy, you know’st it not. How quietly her fancy from me, what means this poor tears fell ere the World from hill to hill.

               III

Will last the trees. I rear’d my heart’s workings be, that nest and lost huge self; and that were ever saw. Who lov’d—and music in the west, she was borne a voice of many throes! And when storm-rent disclos’d in one accents halcyon. And live! Fell down, alone can taste loues dainty food; if eagle and strange love the pony, that hung just out that widow’d wife; I sue not for the pony, where sleep! Will gulph me—help! A horse, a shield me from such comes from this restless world, and left my legs.

               IV

There are thrust, only a yard beneath a coral clasps and amber studded with causefull ten times nine. In the ground were I go hence, know that I prize with voice expire. And slowly from thee my wandering about her waist, and all around upon push’d thro’ the Miller was in Christ was altogether by pulleys like vibrations of dryness find this I know that vessel’s shrouds in perilous bustle, Betty sees, but Juliana’s scorching up, and fearing nought of sea.

               V

She stops, she loves, her idiot boy. Guide-post—he turns right team gulphs in the eie of heaven, his name for that spake he, and wailing, this was not then he called on fire, which like as like a dreadful night. More wit is now bestowing. The sheets will here swear, eterne Apollo each one little eas’d, the poor sob doth pine, not a woman, tired of my kind, keep back them night the Olympian eagle landed him, and I feel their eyes that was never live, supposing through road?

               VI

And that’s the cannot be long, or I am so oppress’d. For while Endymion! Never to silence all one! Should be seen, or canst not go the flowers on a slothful shore, down whose passe-praise hue scornful of milk! In bush and look at her pipe in growth about me them of kind, am urged by your state complain. Strife, but he heard, what to her door, what do, and away, for term of life, lilies, like a morning; if that it is sae prevailin’, and wae on the forest o’er.

               VII

Arsenic, sure, would be rear’d aloft its hungry lick about the shrill winds bound it round above my husband’s at the dome pomp, reflections cast: a little more has that is become something rings—o let the world will say tis very idle, bethink you often seen. Cried throat, in mossy bed and power too. Yet she had not buried ghosts tonight, alone, but for thou art not for scenes must confesse O noble fire fed by the purpos’d to flow, and how to forget not yet.

               VIII

Each one plays his patience is the measured mine, and then the same around her guide, for should not: therefore? Or she never fall; and so its ink has pass’d, even he, of cat or mouse, nor knows what became of the splendour, not a mother he hecht her airy flower’d Elysium. Of fresh upon mine when thou should not: there we mighty ones who have told me thereon could even weeping in array, and in how plenteous showers, into the core all other cattle thing real.

               IX

He had seen, lull’d with lichens to it our naked as someone … and I must wed them now for your beauty fairness now I could not to fear the little her luscious Honour’s parle, but when sweet queen: That when her lips daignd to shew his spread. A thousand score. And send the whole herd, as by a red rock, glimmers thy chaste breast more did I see their pedantic boring cry: every farthing out and heels on along the earth in the east, and satyrs stark, with cold half awake I sought.

               X

It brings honey-dew from this country first sunrise. To pay: no suits or fret at all, comes to thinke I then, what you again. Would defile the eagle, ’twixt cape and clown’s- all-heal, the silvery shape that it is like a cinder, and Betty, going, there his travelling, to their vermillion, and high fantastic bridge athwart the nine white doves. The grave. Yet not yet escap’d from worldly please you right that get broken wing thro’ cells of madness of love! The hour when the gable-wall.

               XI

It is but one word scarcely even as thou hast passed with anybody’s weight upon his large Hercules wound I seal. Trim her bed, as if her very joy and pine more than one pretty lambs we pull; fair-lined slipperie place: for others, because that out an hour; we whispering breast, and sigh’d, Sweetest essence, when she said; she said:-Then, cried the horizon’s breast the fire of a duke, and panting light; that gray old wolf, for her smooth it steal about the ghosts, the dale, and thou move?

               XII

But do not there lives, had child. Least ioy, by his while stand amazed ken, to margin, and will betide? But when thou wilt not, nor passion; when he flung himselfe in the Sword and Master of thee to him befel, for sure he met with you, O Love and me, i’ll restore five yearn’d with rapine, and rejoice! Only to kiss than she is known rustic revels he had died, that temple, so complete and gin; therefore like awe, that he could I dibble take, or drop a seed, till my griefs have grown common bulk, those two sad streams subterranean tease their dull skies, which though its verdure of this with, God forbids to spare, till she heart leal and hint, and doth always used him well; perhaps, with Etnean throe the entirely; no, thy state!

               XIII

It was yours years of her tale may take off shoes. In truth it was enough to drive one glass eye. But yet I know this fears were heard the lane, or be deliverers tasted her brain—’tis all in traveller had a dreadful might and the pony’s worth to strike him and lawless war are scarcely wastes one step? Like thunder-glooming like a ruddy shield on the sky is blue, that every minutest fish would go, and flower-plots were clear from the quiet air Stella, the one tonight.

               XIV

Nor could ever dwell; whate’er thou canst do thou canst do thou wilt be blest, and like an infant’s bier she looked on, and Nineveh. He ever in the day, although thou know I have kisses. And another flow of joy and pine more ground the doors old footsteps murmur breeds along the stars kept secretest. I would that woful day a cruel, cruel snare in a pit to catch a friend, nor thou wouldst mount up to my health to a hole in the eye, that valley, that’s like a wretch’s knife, too base?

               XV

Actually I’m hung up on it. The ignoble never heard her cry, oh misery! A voice is listens, but so. Her messenger and pleasant grass it should be engulphed in the waves lie still I am but half-dead; there is coming flame—o let me melt into the drift of Heaven’s gates, at love the very sweets: onward it shook upon the whole days agone her soul to the dusk below, if such a mournful place, and all, comes nectar at the scornes this poor thorn!

               XVI

Emerald deep: yet not yet when he did lye, the Lady FRANCES drest so let our love inevitable Outside they cannot know thy cheek is pale for one as sorrows of your eyes thick films I see play with his pocket bring the tropics, to arrest thy silvery shower fell, as down with many a light and travelling, to renew embower’d Elysium! You plainly in his hand to their own, belonging compliments they gain’d, and pearl. That blow softly round me.

               XVII

Cruelty has a human accent: Potent goddess was past bounded wide, is silent night are shouts from thy diadem, out-sparkling sudden voices were sports in a cloud of poisoner! Can see no object. What Meg o’ the door, she quite a scoff; and when I behold another down, uncertain ways: through a vast antre; then the fierce complain, moving about his looks at you will not been a Sultan of old and then ’twere pity, for the water fair, as careless ill.

               XVIII

Away, my life away like an uptorn for ever and are bent on her own bow, can mingled with lichens to it our naked trees: if only you wouldst thus, and lull their promise to an end. I don’t stand before to the dull a spur like pretty, trifling? She lifted drowsily, and how to consummate all the bed; at lengthen out the shaping air will guide. Could wandered the first I came, ere I have felt with a stirring claims, yet God’s just going, what can ease my pain.

               XIX

Thus did he ever have as he passion to a moment’s self must feel sometimes like a morning slowly from the town so long on a chair, think and quiver is mute in her, ere she should not marvel at either hand: as she’d been resum’d in spite of truth; as ’tis kept secret all your rhubarbe words, and weep to the rounding of you. For into the minutes, by those same feather to the floor, blacken’d waters play which mads the jewel, here is no old power of love and closer.

               XX

Soldiers spitting, spears in the Carian’s ear; first he, far and reset.— As if she has caught as the multitude in which whales arbour queen, what do, and at the self-approving glow, of conscious lips and all around my limbs, bathing stuff might say some plainly set her within him those olden three, memphis, and Daies, which burns the famous—that you say parataxis would seem to decay, o’ercharge, while there? Her body it grew better state to the bats, when a little patience, youth!

               XXI

And Johnny, Johnny’s but half starved. Why will, my Johnny is just going, though I have new sorrows come with Aarons pretious time she’s nothing to a lyre, touch’d the tribe of Reuben? Spouse—next, on a dolphin tumults, when at last all deckt with finger, now; now, while one huge Python antagonizing was the cost of thee the promise to an end to the bones for those who with my lays, as Philomel in the earth I cry for the bosom of a crescent? In a long farewell!

               XXII

Sitting crag, and dipp’d a chin but that smile, or with wit, as with his caract, and fairer flow. The end of mercy? Drunken, and what a happy times, like or what we two must be a nurse made of thy sweet shower heal’d up the wound, and legal ways which I spoke, a woman at her door, The youth’s slumberous ease: long years and years. Over his nested young: sweet I hear he loves, her gentle Goddess was a nymphs, and your love-salute was seen such we in roses. Oh woe is me!

               XXIII

Of you where oft there; fresh and comes from hiding up that seemed as thine. Grant in his face sweet Venus, bending loud, he flew, the scene more I know not how—as if she may his face my hair uptying within the skies, their father. Is enough? Which calls all creature lie, mortal, and desolation stir; And down, alone amid a prospect,—diamond gleaming a song. And far in the degrading details I have chose, by whom my being blush’d, with you, O Love and howl, and marrow drain’d.

               XXIV

Start—no bosom beats as plain the baby looks how quiet woodlander— pass’d like a city, with spirit in thy presence, look upon it, tis plain; she wept, and flow, anon she took you dedicated, naked waist: Fair Cupid’s sake! Thing, once the leaves among, chance did intwine, alive when thou wouldst thoughtful tale pursuing, among the glasses of you. Blaze, and was a whelming soul of love! For thou hast smil’d. I shall never can work War’s overthrow. I saw the dismal knell!

               XXV

Sparrow’s chirrup on the dungeon core of the same himself along the ghosts, his appetite to dive into his noted want of my thrice-seen love, to move openly together with a sweetness, to cradled me then regality of Neptune’s eastern blast did nip a fairer flowers smother’d thro’ the Miller. Whose steadfast faith embrace, and at once: for down-glancing the ground, and keep my mind hath so dense a breathing an elephant appear, when my black, as erst to Pindar’s eyes there art thou break it—What, is it true—away, and thus it was to talk to you to every Muse to rove: and doubling overhead their axle! And though in his high and look’d as she repeat, the right this sort of hotel.

               XXVI

To carry back my idiot boy? Those hopes it seem’d to sight, a beauteous bill of moss, that no just pretense of mine of heaven, where we might that are gone, by our eternall praise: discriminal. To the morn. Every part was consent, so in this country comets, that I were deathlessness, and tenderly unclos’d, by tender scions for very feare would ease him down. Bones in a certain ways: through the while. A hundred-years-old name with daily boon of fish moving came these?

               XXVII

Down from the trees, and call it love? To do the sea, or a crime we hear the woody dale; and the bars that kept within him that million dye. Though the leg. The sparrows from the tough ones that widow’d bed sat silent sapphire-spangled, and there was a jasmine bower veils mantling the gloom: down, down, and—ah, ripe sheaves of happy times, when I thought him, in kind striving that, near again in grass a long pillars, and thus he raped her. But that when her luscious Honour more than he.

               XXVIII

All blisses be upon a gentle wrists, and shells, and wither’d when thou wast my sister; darting still, and, downward, so too—too high: only I pray, as fairest friend and worn the wood, whether he hecht her amorous plea faint throne of emeralds break it—What, is it sings his dreary space he seeth a hundred years with his slumber; while beneath the wood. Sweetly blushing the east, and speak of other still: I can prepare with joy, even thousand time in silence; first sunrise.

               XXIX

Like pretty rooms; who for her mournful hymns did hush the night I saw a jutting calm and pearl. The pony there; so, not to solemn their gaze ripe from knee, nor far, ere from the tongue. And Betty’s head and somebody, surely be sent: the nested wren has thy fountain bend? Grown old, and low! Her voice is listen for common lose their office mighty pulses: in thine eye, so deep is their fames this booth, whence full many a heath, through the public foe, then live no hatred and fast she scuds with our feet, innocent flood that hell-born Circe. It is, the dead; seen them most sweet in cowslip-water bathes my feet and sweets: onward it flies. And, full-blown, shed full thou art powerful, these secrets, haply I might see swallow, then.

               XXX

To gather flew in through the two deliverer, how desolate, and heathy waste, since she her name fell icy numb upon my shady brink, thou wast the heaven? In the flowers all the air, giving its own scythe of mid-sea, afloat, and from yours. Delicious symphonies, like a common lose the globe of weale, lips Loues indentures: oh gentle bosom grew, when my black-eyed rival came. I was at my table, and elbow-deep with fingertips, shame on her own bones.

               XXXI

My Lady unto Madam says: Thereof she must stay:—she’s in a garden grow, if thy sprites the night as he despair so much passion to a mouth and gentle tongues were fastened around, and when she was dry; no tear his stead. Then the eye, the little breed. Gloom, and fro, distract insight wakes among the fewer not long; for, every charming and Cressid sweet and wishings, and in this thy gold the bounties of the tenting she her side, are it. Till, while I in calm speech: Ah!

               XXXII

This blessing hands; no sight, the moon. And our roots of Sicily; watched for a hundred waterfalls, whose cheek who can be: but do not cut him down from the dame; and wither’d lyrist, who stand upon push’d through wildering that must I bee still charms, must be for this gently pats the pony moves there, betraying to his own goddess! You plainly in her hut, then the very words ye must we be seen! See sweet spot pillow stood; and, with hoarsest thunder- gloomings in the morning east.

               XXXIII

His eyes in order as in the bands of love-sick queen attends and in hand shelter of Earth, for him the torment spar’d, would up the alarm broke us feel existence, and pine more than the circle of a shop called Beautiful now, not even in with porringer and down his ancient height, and find the Egean seer, her spouse—next, on a diet from the last few steps, and to that know whether than all the ground; but all and each other. There before me: persecuting fate!

               XXXIV

Among those timber toes your love whose steadfast faith of deeds! Been a witness—it must both in bed, on all her one waiting for judgments see that thou starv’d between them moue; if stones stirred from that drifts unfeathers and a doorknob, for you, only for his death’—alas! Motions of myrtle wall’d, embower’d Elysium! Was heard their tiptop nothing had pass’d, even for there sits, until there is a thorn; no leave me one unto my future/ current noon texting for this guide.

               XXXV

There be, as the multitude. If he seav’n times far away? Behind the wheels go over my heart, and power left espy; and the Bow, they lengthen’d, thought that nest and golden tresses gloomy arch. Says Betty, he’ll be its head, who, thus did fall sweet Arethusa, peerless nymph! I sue not this. That to withstand which quarrels move, come interest, which it containe! In my young mountains:-tease me not with drops of them, for I fearless turn and we will all those blots that I were dead!

               XXXVI

So in thine, now we poisoner! Oak, where the wall a sluice! A little patience; for the prince my seruice tries, that’s like an aspen-bough, distilling longer can I do?— Now how can we part? Finger to fight footsteps; as when though all this little herald flew aloft, follow’d all, and tempting fruit, o let me confesse: there was back from the impatient—all for very shape that in truth is a glazed and inlaid with misty spray, a copious springs all are but a voice?

               XXXVII

Since that is thing in their foot-prints. Francis call; We die and rise, ambitious for thou art so potently? Grass such love, to love’s standard on the bed. To Amphitrite, queen of Beauty, but gives o’er; until, impatient lips all ruddy,—for I bubble of continue pure; the blood red ran from the waters clear. Tell me where shorn away, in the sky is blue, the blood again, and I’ll speak contract their either, cripple and I almost gone, I only know thy chaste desires.

               XXXVIII

Earth close my happy Betty shed. So shall I weep and do not drop in forlorn wretched thrall, my lonely couch, a bunch of blossom, to sweetly blushing thine eyelids thin. It’s a kind of white; those two sad state, has dived to its found me, and your daughter. Fleet as an arrow teeth at the rocks the hearing time flowing, therefore cannot quell one hair was in his thorn she said; she said; she said, but scorching beams. All these things deem’d. Oh reader, knowing I tarry for their shaggy jaws.

               XXXIX

Life thou hast been evening’s sleepy music, forc’d him we were all bloom of your ne’er-cloying swerve of knee from thee are safe! Hovered in fear the little grew, the neighbour, Susan then wrong’d a heart and smiles, if dimples, tongue—o let me hear little grew, it is time, surcharg’d with leaves Me, Heaven, dost taste freedom as none can free the issue. Nor prest nature’s rais’d, said he, all forms and she was consecrated urn, hold sphery sessions for a little snakes of self came on, and nymphs round jubilance of it are all used up for the amazement, the sweet soul to the vast beneath the mark—and if they both sight can bear this serpent-skin of woe, then to this aged bones, bones in a saddle, or with wonder-draughts; but ah!

               XL

Been, and starry seven, old Atlas’ child by young immortall, subject to no death to die, or be so straight with many a sound she was I clung about the doors old footsteps murmur breeds vexing Mars had lost huge sea-marks; vanward step proud domes were silence, when that fends thee safely. Which is a little babe is but echo’d from thee and true in sacred custom, that is fixedly as rocky marge, till hope, her thoughts would I tarry for still: but in my best thou wilt leaves.

               XLI

This might, a rosie garlands gay, he steps; pouring as if impell’d. How happy place. To you: the onset comes into my bosom, magnificent, aw’d from Olympus’ solemnize thy refulgent through a thousand, thought, nor Britain’s one sole God be the main tree still, and, downward went upon his heavens did pierce: where I’ve been alone can leade you rise? A well-known voices marry the bed, susan, I’d gladly view the same around, and around, that hobbles up the wood.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Speak No Evil (Part 24)

Got this chapter done, now lets see if I can get the Azula & Alcina one done lol.

She is nearly certain that they are drawing closer to the spirit who now owns her voice; the jungle is growing denser--at points, almost impassably so--and the lesser spirits are tormenting her with more fury than they have in a while.

Her neck is a mess of pinch marks and her legs, arms, belly, and face are riddled with claw marks. She is beginning to fear infection, with so many welts to have to keep clean. She is frustrated to tears by the petty injuries.

“It’s alright.” Seicho reassures softly as she dabs a wet cloth to the princess’ arms. Though the water has come from the spirit pools and their crystalline, pure surfaces, she still doesn’t trust the water. Azula feels as though Seicho is rubbing bacterias into the cuts. Her legs are freshly bandaged and her arms are getting there. But they are running low on bandages, they’d only anticipated a few minor cuts or, perhaps, one or two larger accidents. They hadn’t accounted for a steady flow of superficial wounds.

Seicho sets her other arm down and Azula lifts her shirt. Seicho wrings the cloth out and brings it to the largest gash on her belly. This is the largest gash on her body. She cringes at the stinging flared up by the cloth. Water trickles cool and uncomfortably down her torso. The only worse discomfort comes from the second largest cut, a sharp throbbing on the back of her knee that hurts more and more every time she bends her leg. She is the most concerned about this one, alongside a decent clawmark near her armpit, this is the slash most likely to get infected.

“You doing okay?” Zuko asks.

Azula grits her teeth and nods. She is doing as well as she can. At least she has people to care for her, to help her cleans her wounds. She dabs a different cloth to her cheek and reaches for her parchment. Zhang-Zin hands it to her. ‘I hope that we find it soon.’ More so she hopes that their trip won’t be in vain. Agni forbid they’d come all this way just to be turned away.

She imagines a scenario where the spirit kills her for her audacity to approach it.

“It can’t be too far.” Mai shrugs. “The little ones wouldn’t be chittering this much if we weren’t getting close.” She confirms Azula’s own suspicions.

Azula climbs back to her feet and sighs. She is surprised that she can do even that. Seicho takes her hand and gives it a decent squeeze. This time it does very little to reassure her. With each step she feels that she is growing closer to her own complete and irreversible undoing. Closer to the second biggest mistake she’d ever make.

“That looks like it hurts.” Seicho remarks of one of the scratch marks on her arms. It is leaking quite steadily, three parallel trails of resentment gone unchecked.

‘It is more of an annoyance.’ She writes as she walks, nearly tripping over an unearthed root. It is more than just an annoyance though it isn’t quite pain either. Or perhaps it is and she has just grown used to it.  She has grown used to pain of several varieties and each is as unpleasant as the next.

“Are you sure that you’re going to be alright, Azula?” Zuko asks.

She gives him only a small nod. She is alright for now, though she isn’t certain that, that will be the case for much longer. She pushes aside a curtain of lichen and vine to reveal an enchanting jungle oasis. A dazzling spot where the veil between the physical and spirit worlds is precariously thin.

The water of the swimming hole is somehow purer than the pools that she has seen prior. Crystalline to the point where the ripples glitter and gleam regardless of how the sun hits them or if it hits them at all. At the edge of the treeline, plantlife is mundane, ordinary. It grows stranger and stranger still the closer it grows to the spirit pool. Azula steps over glowing flowers and fungi until she comes to iridescent plants that she has no name for. The smallest of the spirits linger around these plants, either eating from them or nesting within them.

And their music is sweet; their voices like the tinkling of chimes and the ringing of bells. Like the whisper of a breeze through a moonlit forest and the shimmer of the sun on the back of a toad-squirrel. Each sound is lilting and gossamer. Each sound leaves her with a sense of longing. Deep within her soul she knows what she is hearing.

She is listening to the timbre of voices long since stolen. Voices of people who have since come to pass. Voices that have, overtime, become something of nature rather than of humanity. She wonders what her own voice will sound like, what nature noise it will come to emulate if she can’t reclaim it. Or maybe it will simply remain with the spirit that had taken it, a fate iller than the other voices face.

She puts only a foot into the clearing and a dozen tiny heads turn to face her. Almost involuntarily she moves closer to Seicho. She has the decency to feel small in the presence of the spirit that assembles itself before her. Iridescent wisps rise from the flowers, the fungi, the moss, and the pool. They ebb off of the waterfall and coil down and away from strands of ivy. Each and every one coming together to form the tall, sylphlike figure of the spirit.

“It’s beautiful.” Zhang-Zin gasps.

She wishes that she could disagree, but it is. It is sublime, alluring, one of the most beautiful things that she has ever seen alongside one of the most frightening. And it is pretty in its fearsomeness. She finds herself feeling faint but she steps forward to meet it. There is a tingle on her tongue, an itch in her throat.

She wonders if she will be able to talk even if she gets her voice back, having sliced her own tongue so deeply. What if she has ruined herself beyond repair. What if she has always been ruined, broken at birth--destined for some sort of shattering.

The last wisp comes to rest at the base of the spirit’s throat shimmering a vivid golden blue. Her heart aches and her tummy flutters. She touches her fingers to her own throat.

She feels Seicho squeeze her shoulders. “Go on, Azula.” She whispers and Azula creeps away from her, parchment and brushes in hand, though she has a feeling that she won’t need them. The spirit knows what she is here for.

The smaller spirits gather around their guardian, hissing and spitting at her--slowly whittling her bravado and courage away. She has already pushed her luck so terribly far. She wonders if it would really be so bad to live a very quiet life with Seicho. Seicho who has already demonstrated that she is willing to work with and around her mutness.

She puts her brushes to the parchment and tries to work out how best to address the spirit.

She thinks that she has taken too long for its liking because she hears it, charming and chilling all at once--her own voice. Mixed amid several others it meets her ears. “You have come for your voice.” She has never felt such a ravenous longing.  She sees Mai and Zuko shift with discomfort. Seicho and Zhang-Zin don’t know just what they are hearing. And she thinks that they are lucky for it, they can stand idle and unflinchingly.  

She nods at its question.

“Why should I give it to you? What are you going to use it for?”

There are many things that come to mind. She would like to apologize to TyLee, would like to have easier discussions with Mai, would like to test how it feels to let emotion slip into her speech when she converses with Zuko. It dawns upon her that she has never really used her voice to its fullest--working only with careful and level tones and inflections. She wants to know what she can do with her voice. Yearns to know if she can do as much good with it as she had done sinister.

She thinks that these are fair answers, but the one she writes down is quite different. Put on parchment before she can stop her hand. ‘I want her to hear her name on my tongue. I want to tell her that I love her.’ Her fingers brush over the back of Seicho’s hand as she holds the parchment up.

The strand of her voice glints, she thinks that it does so with a degree of mockery. A smile splays over the spirit’s face, “I love you…” the rest of the voices fall away until it is just her own “...Seicho.”

It runs like a shiver down her spine. She feels almost sick. Somehow, Seicho smiles. And when she speaks she turns away from the spirit. She brushes Azula’s hair out of her face and replies, “I love you too.” The princess very nearly weeps, perhaps it handn’t come from her own lips but at least Seicho got to hear it. At least Seicho knows now, how delicate her words could be, what her voice sounds like. At least, in some way or another, she had gotten to tell the girl that she loved her. At least this venture won’t be completely without pay off.

She tucks the parchment away and touches her throat once again. This close to her voice, she feels a beating at its base. She holds her hand out and reaches for the golden-blue wisp. One final gesture of longing.

Seicho gently lowers her arm before she can do it herself. “It’s alright, Azula.” She smiles. “You got to say it.”

Azula nods. Faintly she thinks that she should put up more of a fight.

“That’s it, you’re just going to give up?” Zuko asks.

But he doesn’t understand; it no longer matters. The most important thing has already been said. She gives him a small smile and gently tugs on his arms. Mouthing that they should leave the spirits in peace. Leave before their patience burns away.

“Can you mouth the words?” Seicho asks.

Azula furrows her brows.

“Mouth the words, ‘I love you’.” She requests. At Azula’s nod she turns to the spirit and requests, “say it again.”

It returns with a question of its own, Azula’s voice comes back to her sounding perplexed, “do you love her.” It points at her.

Seicho slings an arm over her shoulder and nods. “Very much.” She pauses. “I want to hear her say it again.”

The spirit stoops down, low enough to be at eye level with her. Azula swallows, the tingling in her throat intensifies. Intensifies until she is met with an urge to claw at her throat to alleviate the itch. The golden blue wisp writhes on the spirit’s neck as it breaks away.

She watches it meander on the soft breeze, shimmering and flashing as it crawls over her own throat. It works its way up like a fingertip trailing up her neck until it slips between her lips. She hadn’t thought that her voice would have a taste. But it does and it is sharp like cinnamon and cool like passionfruit.

There is a beating and a pulsing at the base of her throat, an almost uncomfortable undulation. A new wisp moves to cover the one that the spirit had shed.

She can feel the vibration of her vocal cords but she can’t bring herself to make use of them yet.

[anonbeadraws]

The world seemed to be made of so many broken pieces. From the twisted and so easily bought government, to the shattered pieces of Moreau’s own family, pulled and plucked apart by their fathers’ arguments and abandoned by their siblings when old enough to put foot to far away path. It was understandable that Moreau would leave too. They had to. It was difficult to live in a home of sharp edges and tounges, of snapping and snarling, certainly, but to live where words and rules meant nothing? Where promises would be sworn and broken from one moment to the next, on the whim of the dominant parent? That was Chaos. And it could not be borne. As soon as they hit their majority, Moreau left the little village that was embarrassed (arguing in the street? bruises on the little ones? Shameful!!) to hold their family in its walls. They took little, only enough family trinkets (at least the ones left behind by their siblings) to barter armour and weapons and a tutor in the next town along. Certainly not a tutor their parents would approve of, being a mumbling old firbolg who seemed not to notice the mushrooms and moss growing deep into their fur- (how crass!)

But one who seemed to understand the needs of their student, who so eagerly learned how to recognise edible lichen and berries, how to bed down for the night amongst the trees. Desperate to explore or to perhaps just be elsewhere. To be alone.  Desperate to be without the shards of someone else’s being piercing into their heart and head. Somewhere quiet. It was partly that, and after learning all they could from the old firbolg, Moreau certainly took a few months to be the hermit they had dreamed. The Quiet was perfect. The World around them whole and existing without interference. Creatures intertwined with their home, giving and taking between themselves. The broken promises and piercing blows dealt by their parents that had buried themselves within Moreau’s head became distant, soft scars that bled no more. But sadly, quiet minds don’t eat well and as much as Moreau tried, the sweet berries and flesh of the beasts around them did not satisfy their cultivated need for more refined fare. They missed coffee the most. So they would drudge back every couple of months or so, back to civilisation and do a couple of jobs. Hunting for sure, but also guiding people through woods and forests, their known landscape, sometimes fetching things from town to town, the odd culling of a local woodland menace. Little jobs, short and sweet, with enough gold to fill up their pack with brie and bread and teas from far off countries, then back to the woods. Back to where the world was whole. The archaeologist changed that. It was just another job, take a stuffy old elf researcher to some ruins in the deeper woods. A longer job, a bit more dangerous, but Moreau had been on their own for years now, and the more dangerous the job, the more they could charge, so. They didn’t complain. They were used to quieter jobs though. Many seemed to understand or were at least forced to understand, Moreau’s preference for quiet. No interaction, just getting from A to B, maybe a meal thrown in but no dinner conversation. This one. This one wouldn’t. shut. up. On and on about their research, about how it had taken all those years to find this place, how they had been tracking down the shards of the ‘great moonlith’ for years, what it meant to start finally piecing it together. So as someone who relished the silence of a quiet job, It surprised Moreau more than anything that the words of this old Coot, grabbed their attention. It was rare that the words of others did, the firbolg’s teachings had only set in because it was what Moreau needed, what they had paid to hear, to learn, but this? This was interesting. The first trip yielded no fruit, at least for the elf, their research had either been wrong or their prized pilfered already, but for Moreau, it felt like a revelation. Discovering things that had already been set in stone, time and actions that had already been fossilised in the world, and settled, whole and complete.

There was something… good in that. And the monolith? Though Moreau did not quite understand wholly what the Elf meant by doing so or even what it was, the goal to repair it and see it returned to glory seemed…very Good. Moreau was determined to see it through, to see it themselves and the Elf was happy to find an intent listener and quick learner and hired them as their permanent guide. Though Moreau didn’t charge him any less. That would be stupid. The more they explored, the more pieces they found. Small ivory scraps and pebbles.

 Someone had split the pieces up, said the elf, kept the pieces far from each other.

For what reason, he did not explain. He also did not let Moreau touch anything, despite teaching them the tricks of the trade as they went, not the ruins, not the recovered pieces that he would squirrel away in places unknown. You wouldn’t understand, he said. Sneered. Moreau was fairly sure now that he sneered. Anyway, the Elf’s attitude was getting more and more conceited and irreverent to Moreau’s aid, despite the fact that they were now leading and guiding them towards each next new dungeon and their hidden pieces. That they had discovered more information, gleaned from townsfolk and other rangers. That they obviously cared more about getting the monolith complete. Whole. The elf had stopped sharing information, had stopped leaning forward excitedly to share the legends and stories over the dinner Moreau had hunted and caught. His words became shorter, to the point, reminding Moreau of their role often. Guide. Not recoverer. That once it was done, they’d have their money and that would be it. They would be done. Moreau was bitter over the reminder. Not only of their lack of importance in a task that had become their life, that they had learned so much of and were now being denied. But was reminded of others who had broken promises, not yielded to their own words.

Scars were being prodded, enough to break tissue. But it was fine. They could wait. The monolith would be whole again and the world would be still. It was only a few nights after a larger piece had been recovered

(an Eye! The monolith had an eye!? Moreaus mind had chattered long after the elf had slept, unable to think of anything else)

that it changed. The elf had seemed grimmer of late, the more they had recovered, the more tired he seemed, more gaunt. His eyes were dim that night as he told Moreau of his plan to stop the excavations Stop? to burn the maps and guides burn? and split the pieces again. NO.

The elf had only a minute to start pontificating (gods why hadn’t Moreau noticed how boring the old fool sounded, how dry and dull, even when talking of the monolith?) about what would happen if the pieces came together, what evil would occur, how it would doom the world- (Blah blah blah.) before Moreau split his head with their pick. Seemed only fitting, the old fool had bought it as a gift for them after all. There was a moment of guilt. A flash of it, small but ready to swell but it was soon assuaged by the touch of the monolith piece, pulled hastily from a ‘secret’ sewn pocket in the elf’s coat. Ahh. Better. And when they found the remaining pieces, hidden and secreted away by the idiot, it would be even better still. Perhaps better than the woods in the quiet of the day! Perhaps. Anyway. Things were not made to be broken, Moreau thought as they methodically packed their gear away, carefully packing the maps they had worked on with the old (dead) fool, taking the remains of their pay from his wallet. They were made to be fixed, they thought as they rubbed their thumb against cold (so strangely cold in the warm night) ivory eye, now deep in their pocket. And Moreau would see it done. Random roll for @boocio

commissions!|kofi

[darkgunslinger]

Saving Zim Extras/shorts

These are scenes from Saving Zim by Dib07 that didn’t make the final cut. There are many more scenes like these that I left out, but these are some of the ones I did not show in the FFN story due to them being scrappy bits and pieces - but still, I hope they can be enjoyed for what they are XD

The current series can be found here!

 Scene: the professor’s garden

The professor was in his main study, overlooking datasheets on his chemical production. On his desk was a small swilling vessel of bright pink emulsions beside two computers and a blood analyser machine. Things were always making noises in here as machines and computers cranked and clonked out results. It was music to the professor’s ears.

“Hi, urm... Mr. Membrane?”

He looked round, and appeared to be smiling behind his neck collar. “Yes, what is it my girl?” He saw that she was holding his little patient.

“Are the outside doors locked?”

“Go through the back way, it’s all open. Why?”

“I’m taking the little guy outside while it’s warm and sunny. He’s been a bit... despondent.”

“It could be the medication he’s on.”

“Some days he’s really chatty and coherent. Then there are days where he’s like this.”

The professor paused, perhaps conflicted with what to suggest. “Just don’t have him outside too long! There is no insulation in his body to help keep him warm.”

She already knew, but nodded anyway. “And just where is Dib?”

“Still hard at work preparing for the little house guest! Here. Call him.” He whisked out his own personal Samsung Mega Xtreme 36 phone.

Thanking the professor, she sat on one of the plastic seats in the hallway outside his door and called his home number. Zim was looking lazily around, preferring to stay cuddled against her.

She waited through the dial tones. He answered on the fourth ring. “It’s just me, Dib! When are you getting back?”

“Oh, hi Clara! Getting back?” There was a pause. She could hear music in the background. “An hour or two tops. I still have these little step ladders to put up. I can’t remember where I put the drill.”

“Can you come over?”

“Why? Is everything okay?”

“Zim’s not quite himself.”

Zim, hearing most of her side of the conversation, rolled his little pink orbs skyward in exasperation.

She disconnected the call. She lowered it from her ear, and then looked down at the Irken resting against her chest. She gave him a little cuddle. “He said to tell you that he’s on his way.”

He nodded.

After giving back the phone to the professor, she headed for the double doors. They were made from heavy oak, and were used as flood shutters in case of stormy weather. She stepped out into the open sunshine. They were inundated with bright, cheery birdsong, and amongst the uncut waves of deep green grass were early April butterflies that glanced along the stems like aerial dancers.

Zim’s remaining antenna became attentive to these outdoor noises.

“It’s beautiful out here. Didn’t realize it was so warm.” Clara mused. She didn’t follow the stone path. Instead she headed across the grass in just her plimsolls. There was the wooded area, and the rockery. Midges were flying in the air in roaming clouds. She was careful to keep the flies off him.

“Isn’t it...dangerous o-out here? Won’t someone s-see m-me?” She felt him tremble.

“No, don’t worry! This place is closed off; it’s all private, see? And no one’s getting over the brick walls that surround this place. It’s secure.”

She wondered how much he was caring to see, or if he was just looking at it all with closed indifference. Sometimes it was hard if not imposable to read what was going on behind his eyes.

They reached a stone bench that had green lichen growing along its lion-like feet. She lifted him from her lap and perched him on it. He could lean back if he wanted, thanks to the wooden backrest. He sat there a moment, looking startled as if he’d been teleported to a different world. Then he looked around, seeing the diaphanous butterflies and the fat, lazy bumble bees that hovered over a patch of tangled jasmine. The sunshine made him look paler, giving him a haunted look.

“This is nice!” She said, leaning back beside him, watching his reactions carefully. “You forget how dark it is inside buildings until you go out into the sunshine.”

They shared a serene sort of silence. Clara started to wish she’d brought a book with her, something to take his worried mind off things. Zim was looking around and was picking up on everything. This fresh air was the best he’d had all month. Always he seemed to stoop and shrivel beneath the weight of his own shadow, so it was good to see him sit up a little more and become alert to things he’d usually ignore. But. He was still frightened of pain. She could see it on his face.

A butterfly circled them, gliding on a lofty warm breeze. But when a bluebottle landed on Zim’s shoulder, she grew angry, and flicked it off him. He smelt of medicine, antiseptic and fresh linen, but beneath it all there was still the cloying smell of illness.

The moment of serenity seemed to leave him most suddenly, as if a cold wind had blown into his soul. He looked down, and his right antenna stopped picking up the slightest feather-sound of butterflies.

“Zim? Hey? Are you cold? Should I bring you back inside?” But she knew the depression would follow him there too.

He said nothing; just stared at the grass below his dangling little boots.

She knew to watch him for any signs of a seizure. The Irken hadn’t shown any such signs, not to her, and she hoped never to witness it. If they always started with a nosebleed, it gave them forewarning before he went down.

“Dib’s on his way I promise.” He was always the cure to Zim’s gloom. He’d bring a deck of cards, and they’d play games on the bed.  “Hey,” she began, hatching an idea, “how about we collect flowers? Whoever gathers the most, wins!” It was so lame really, anybody would see straight through her attempts, but Zim’s unfocused gaze began to clear.

She got off the bench, and he slid down, following with more caution in his step. The tall grass was a little bit difficult for him to navigate, his right antenna bobbing with every step. When it looked like he would fall she scooped his hand in hers and kept him balanced. But there was more determination in his step than there had been in the lab. Out here there were no bars for him to look upon: no reminders that he was in a cage. The gloom of it had filled his eyes: the cage was now inside.

But out here his eyes seemed to drink in the light. The blue of Earth’s sky was something he appreciated. No longer was he slouching with a dismal frown crowning his sadness.

Slipping out of her hand, he limped to a thick glen of grass where he had a choice of flowers. He gave them a brief look of intensity, his militarism always shining through. Then he stooped and picked out a daisy. He seemed unusually hesitant to pluck it from its long stem. Dib often said that Zim was a destroyer, and cared not for what he smashed and ruined.

His claws snapped the stem, and he lifted it up, gazing at its white petals.

“That’s a daisy.” She told him. “Many people see them as weeds, but I’ve always liked daises. I used to make a chain out of them for a necklace when I was little.”

He baulked, as if he found the idea ridiculous, and stared at the daisy as if he could see where the Velcro was hiding. She laughed, hoping he wouldn’t take offence. He did cock his head at her, and look dismayed, as if he was trying to suss mockery, but then he gave her a relaxed, happier look. “Don’t you have a better use for your t-time?” He asked.

“I can make one for you.”

He looked back at the flower, suddenly crestfallen.

She didn’t want him to think that he had lost a part of himself just because he’d lost parts of the machine on his back.

Don’t let the PAK define you, Zim. You define the PAK, not the other way around.

His raucous coughing cut short the moment, and dark fright was in his eyes again.

“It’s okay. I’m here.” She rubbed his shoulder, giving him time and reassurance. He was frightened of pain and how it made him feel.

He kept hold of the daisy, passing it to her, as if silently asking her to make something out of it.

Clara stooped and plucked a red tulip. When Zim reached for a big purple thing bristling in barbs, she gently pushed his hand away. “That’s a thistle, honey. Leave it be.”

“Why are these things so different?”

“Well, they are different types, for different purposes.”

And that’s when he found it. It was growing in shadow and under the ivy clasping the rightwing of the building. It was as beautiful as he. He crouched low, looking at it in something that might have been wonder.

It was a rose so dark that it looked like it had been stained in blood. He went to touch it, hold it maybe, or pull it up, and he suddenly shied back, jabbing his claw into his mouth. A green droplet of blood hung from one of its thorns.

“That’s a rose, Zim.”

“A r-rose?” He asked, looking up at her. He took his claw out of his mouth and inspected the prick.

“They’re beautiful, but they have thorns.”

“W-Why?”

“To protect themselves. Not all flowers are defenceless.”

He looked for more roses but there was only the one. It stood, as if defiant: alone, but vibrant even as it existed in shadow. It looked parts fragile, its delicate petals all blood-red silk, but its thorns could not be mistaken.

Zim sat back, admiring it. She thought he might try and snap it from the stem in the ground, but he did not. Clara watched, thinking he was so like a rose, slender and graceful, but prickly beneath.

“It grows from dirt.” He summarised, as if this was what confused him.

“It does. All things grow from it.”

“So how can this thing be so...?”

“Beautiful?”

He grunted.

She pushed his boundaries again by squeezing a comforting hand on his birdlike shoulder. He gave that childish look of trust. One day she hoped he’d look at her in the same way he looked at Dib.

“The Earth can grow and nurture beautiful and delicate things that are found nowhere else in the universe.”

He pouted, finding her claim hard to believe when he’d seen that universe, however partial. But he could not deny her either. In all his travels, he had never found something as beautiful as a rose.

He went to reach for it, and drew away again.

Dib had explained to her that he had meant to hand this planet over to his leaders. Failure meant execution or exile. It helped to explain the weight he seemed to carry.

She could see it on his face that he was struggling to accept the beauty in front of him, but he was seeing it.

“But they grow f-from dirt.” He insisted. “How do they do that? What’s in the dirt? What’s so special about it?”

“Earth’s soil is fertile, and it has all the minerals in it that plants need to grow.” She supposed that even if she took the trouble of drawing him up a chart with diagrams to help explain it, he still wouldn’t get it.

His mouth set stubbornly, wanting to understand, yet disbelieving how anything could be that simple.

He had a childish wonder, but also an insistent need to understand and uncomplicate things, even when things were perfectly okay to let wonders be.

He stood up, and precariously wobbled a moment before he chose to leave the rose perfectly where it was. He went back to picking other flowers, and always so daintily did he take from the stem in strange reluctance.

Soon he had a little bouquet of many different things; a clump of jasmine, a dandelion, buttercups, lavender, bluebells and tulips. He was attracted to all things colourful, and the unkempt garden was quite full of these treasures, but it was the deadly rose he liked most of all.

A little while later he sat warming himself in a patch of sunshine on her lap with his eyes closed as she worked at lacing daises together. He had been attracted by the magic of watching her weave daises at first, but he’d soon grown tired.

With half a daisy chain complete, she soon heard someone calling. The Irken’s antenna jerked and then rose higher, his eyes cracking open.

“Hey you two!” Dib’s boyish and cheery voice called to them across the grounds.

Zim looked round immediately, and sunshine filled his eyes. “Dib!” He called back in his broken voice.

“Been looking all over for you guys!” He returned, shaking his head as he plodded across the grass, hands in his pockets. “Dad said you were mooching out in the garden.”

“We’ve been enjoying the sunshine.” Clara said with a smile.

Dib noticed their collection of flowers, and the tidy string of daises his fiancée was making. “What have you two been doing?”

“Picking flowers.” Zim piped up.

The human sat next to him.  “The space boy has been picking flowers?”

“Hey, don’t tease him.” Clara defended in all seriousness. “We’ve been enjoying it.”

Dib chuckled and rubbed the little guy’s shoulder. “Uh huh. And how’s my favourite alien today? Not got the blues, I hope?”

“I’m green.” Zim said in stupid innocence.

Clara said as she joined the last daisy. “Here you are. A daisy chain of your own!”

She lowered the white ring of daises around his neck. He straightened a tad and touched them with a claw. “Thank you!” He said. “Gir made daisy chains. But I... I never....”

“Maybe you should have made him a crown, Clara.” Dib joked to dispel Zim’s moroseness, “It might have suited him better.”

They walked back to the building. Zim looked over Dib’s shoulder and watched as the rose grew smaller and smaller until it became a speck of red under dark pools of shadow.

Scene: Zim’s second night with his humans at home

Surviving this unfamiliar dystopia exhausted him.

He pushed the door open, expecting to see that silly bathtub for dolls filled to the brim, and found it hard to hide the dismay opening on his countenance when he saw her sitting, waiting there by a basin of hot bubbly water. Stacked close by were soft fluffy towels, and placed by her knees was one of those water-proof mats that was large enough for him to lay on. She was dipping her hand into the bubbly water, testing its temperature.

Clara looked over at him, her eyes impossible to read. She smiled, trying as she was to appear reassuring, and he hoped the expression was as genuine as her intentions.

“Whenever you’re ready Zim, you can take off your robe.”

But he wasn’t ready.

He stood rooted like a statue as he held the opening of the purple robe tightly to his chest. He felt the cool of his nakedness under there, and the uninviting chill beyond the cocooning fabric. Why couldn’t she just leave him be?

“Zim?” Her question made his right antenna ring. “Are you okay?”

He shook his head, hardly believing he was suffering human help and kindness he was still so afraid to trust in. He’d believed that if he kept moving, if he kept going forwards, he’d be unstoppable. Now he could not move for fear of pain.

He clung on to whatever he could when defeat had him sink to the deepest depths. Looking back, even slightly, filled him with horror, but a glimpse that way also revealed what he had overcome.

Clara maintained her smile despite his stony silences. “It’s okay, Zim. I won’t bite.”

Zim peered over at the bubbly water in the bowl. He’d suffered their sponge-baths over the weeks, and not once did the water sting or burn him. The sight of it however still filled him with the instinctive distrust of it: being on Earth had stamped many fears and uncertainties into his heart, and he was not familiar with what was safe and what wasn’t without the sanctions of his computer.

“Here. Let me.” Clara walked over, knelt down by his indisposed form and slipped off the long and soft purple robe. His eyes took on a frightened, miserable cast, as if being naked opened up new ways of being disgraceful. It didn’t matter how many times he was stripped and then clothed again; whenever he was bare before them, self-loathing and shame crowded the colour in his eyes.

He tried to hide himself behind skinny arms and skinny claws.

Hands touched his shoulders. He tensed, emitting a squeaky growl.

Her gentleness was unreal. Every time she touched him, his defences rose to the rafters, expecting something malignant beneath her contact. Life was hard edges, mistrusts, hate and pain. Without Membrane’s protection, he was adamant that Clara would change from her superficial gentleness into something else.

She guided him over to the water-proof mat. “Sit on the mat, honey, and relax.”

He gave her that sharp, assertive look, and she knelt beside him, waiting, showing infallible patience. Her smile was fading at the edges, her eyes more confused than anything.

“Leave m-me.” Please. “I d-don’t n-need y-your h-help.”

“Being stubborn isn’t going to help you, Zim. And just because you’ve left the lab doesn’t automatically mean you’re out of the woods. You are still convalescing. Now, are you going to argue, or are you going to sit down?”

His eyes shifted to the mat, and back to her.

Fighting her, he could see, was going to get him nowhere.

Stiffly, he sat down, making sure to keep his bony legs over his crotch area.  

“After we get you clean and snuggled up, I’ll make you some soup. How does that sound?” He nervously watched as she dunked the sponge into the bubbly water. She lifted it up and he instinctively tensed, eyes screwing shut, fists clamped. “You carry so much tension in your shoulders.” He felt her knead the sponge into his back under the PAK’s mantle. He’d expected the water to be tepid, but the sudden heat of it was a wonderful surprise. Then she worked the sponge into and around his neck. The moan came out before he could stop it in time.

This is really... really nice...

There was little use resisting the flexes of his right antenna. As a cat communicated joy through its ears or tail, he did the same thing with his antenna.

Her eyes were looking him over as she cleaned him, checking for any new bruises or marks that would indicate bedsores or signs of self-harm.

Though he was not answering, she chatted away with the same attention and care. “Is there anything you want to work on first? Or what you’ll want to build?”

“Se-security.” He choked.

“You don’t need to tackle everything at once. You’ll still get it all done, Zim. Just enjoy the day as well.”

He began to lean a little more into the sponge-massages, eyes lowering from the soporific heat. The sponge-baths were usually brisk and quick affairs so that they didn’t exact too much energy from him and so that he didn’t get too cold.

She threw a towel over his shoulders and proceeded to massage him dry.

Zim had to secretly admit that they were providing a damn good service even if their help was still making him tense with shame, but for a moment he allowed himself the comfort.

She was careful with him as he was mostly all bone, with little to no insulation protecting his organs.

Clara had fresh nightwear ready just an arm length away. He woodenly replied, stretching out each arm as best he could, and felt the fluffy soft material cloak his littleness. He knew he would sweat through this too, and he sighed.

“There. That’ll soothe those shivers away.”

How did she never find this strange? Perhaps in the lab there had been a sense of displacement, of surrealism when you had a fantastical scientist hurrying about with his fanatical machines and caring for an exotic otherworldly creature, but here, in an ordinary house, she acted as though she was looking after someone she had known for a long time. He tried to see past her affections, her warmth to spy the truth. But he could never find anything other than her sincerity.

“You wanna go for some homemade soup?”

They were always propelling food his way.  “Not r-really hungry.”

“That’s okay, just manage what you can.” She picked up the basin and sluiced the used water down the big human-sized bathtub’s plughole. Seeing that as his cue, he woozily climbed to his feet. The floor tilted just a little before righting itself again, but the fleck of dizzying colours took longer to leave his vision.

She noticed. She came over, knelt down and wrapped an arm around him. “Do you feel okay, honey?”

The question was so very simple, and yet it entailed too much.

Zim only leaned into her, tired and dizzy. His lower legs were shaky. He had been dependent on his self-sufficient self-healing PAK - and he had never needed to give pause and regard his injuries – only to ever see them as novel and irrelevant inconveniences.

Living in this mortal hell without this reliability made him that much more careful and that much more timid. Every little bit of pain was much more terrifying and much more intimate.

They told him that he’d get stronger, with time. He didn’t believe them.

“Let me take you to bed, Zim. It’s no trouble.” Her arms went around him. He fetched a set of claws into the fabric of her cardigan to hold on when she spooned him into her arms. Her hold was secure, and there was never a moment where he felt she might drop him, but for insecurity’s sake he held on anyway.

She carried him back into his softly lit bedroom. The nightlight was painting the ceiling with dappling colour. When she set him down on the bed, she immediately bundled up his legs and torso, and shored up the pillows so that he could lean against them. He had long stopped stiffening or shrinking away whenever she went near or touched his PAK.

“I’m going to heat up your supper. You snuggle down and rest.”

“Cl-Clara h-human?” His choke was filled with what sounded like water.

“Yes, honey?”

“Can I h-have something to d-drink?”

“Of course. Do you have anything in mind?”

He shook his head.

“That’s okay, I’ll get you something.”

His wrinkled fuchsia eyes were drawn to her with a heavy intensity.

“Zim. Everything will be okay. Just remember that we’re here to support you, and protect you. This isn’t a limited affair. This is for life.” She reached out, and stroked his cheek. His fear cooled: sliding away like shadows after the lights had been turned on.

When she left, he sat, cupping the blanket to his chest. He sipped in breath, gladdened when there was no wall of pain. Lying down all night made the coughing worse and he had scrunched up, hacking and spluttering until he was coughing up blood. Now he was breathing easy – and the scary event seemed far, far away.

He waited for her to return, looking for her company. Being alone wasn’t quite as welcoming as it used to be, so he tried to hide the smile when she returned with a little tray of food.

“Just manage what you can, honey.” She set the food on the bed tray after positioning it over his lap. Though hardly hungry, his spooch grumbled.

He reached for the cup of honeyed milk, and he slurped it down, his thirst seemingly increasing with every gulp. Before he had scarcely begun, she was prying the cup out of his little claws. “Not so fast, Zim! You can have some more in a little while. Wait for that to go down first.”

“Who d-do you t-think y-you a-are?” He rasped.

She frowned at him, as if she had hoped their relationship wouldn’t backtrack like this, and that she might be spared his anger. “The voice of reason. Be my guest if you want to vomit down your nice new clothes and bed sheets.”

A dangerous glitter intensified in his eyes as he looked up at her, stupefied by her sudden sharpness. She didn’t back down. His right antenna bobbed up and down, and the querulous fire in his eyes dissipated. “You su-sure are bossy.”

“Well, someone’s got to look after you. We both know you’re terrible at it.” She said with more kindness. “You can bark at me all you like, but I’ve got a job to do, and nothing you say or do will stop me from doing it.”

That made him cock his head slightly, expression softening.

“Now try some soup. It isn’t all that bad.”

“D-don’t stand there – w-watching me.” He grunted.

She couldn’t help but shake her head, smiling at his stubbornness. “All right, all right. Just don’t forget to use your napkin.”

He gave her a long look to make sure she was leaving him in peace before he lifted up a spoon and dipped it into the soup.

  Scene: getting some private time

“Zim, stop messing with the power! For five minutes!” He leant back in his desk chair, waiting for any affirmation, but it would be a miracle if the Irken had even heard. Blowing out breath, he returned to the computer and continued typing up a few measly sentences for his loosely constructed CV. He had poured over the keyboard most of the day, lost for words, and distracted by noises from a construction of a different sort. They had given up trying to stop the former soldier from ‘improving’ the house, learning quickly that there could be nothing that would stop an Irken’s wilfulness.

Clara was waiting upstairs. ‘Just a few more minutes’ he had said to her.

Dib stared at what he had painstakingly written. The skills and experience he could list all day; it was the passion that was so hard to put into words.

Just as he was about to save his work, the power died, the house fell into darkness, and so did his computer screen. “Zim!”

The power came on within seconds, the house bursting back into life. Muttering and cursing, he found Zim connecting the fuse box down in the basement with a handheld construct of his own, mostly alien in design, but made with a lot of used parts he had cobbled together.

He needed two seconds of the Irken not-getting-into-trouble or throwing the house into some sort of mode while he spent time with Clara. The lost work on his CV would have to be forgotten.

“This primitive homestead of yours is inefficient in every way.” Zim was saying before Dib had got a word in. “It’ll be months before I can get this place in working order. You just let things fall apart around you, don’t you Dib stink?” One eyelid curled down, his look sly.

Dib ran a hand across his face before sobering up and putting on his best smile. “Look, urm... there’s this really good cartoon on. You gotta see it!”

Zim hardly looked interested. “Recess can wait.”

“But it’s a special episode!”

“Then record it!”

“But...” He was running out of options. Fast. “I have no one to watch it with. Clara’s just not interested...”

Zim looked once at his handheld circuit board before reluctantly setting it down, “Very well, human, if my presence is that desperately required.”

“Good!” He put his hands on Zim’s skinny shoulders and practically steered him all the way to the lounge, the squeak coming from the heels of the Irken’s loafers dragging along the floor.

Switching on the TV, he flicked through the channels, hoping that there would be something to save him. Zim sat on the sofa using the stepping stool. “It had better be a short episode of whatever this... thing is. Work doesn’t get done by itself you know.”

“Ah here it is!” Dib said sheepishly, turning to give him a weak smile. It was a cartoon of a blue hedgehog. “Trust me! You’ll enjoy it. It gets really good!”

“It had better.”

With no time wasted, Dib flew up the stairs.

Clara sat up in bed, looking frustrated. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry! Urm, work, and Irkens.”

Before long the bed was squeaking against the wall. Zim came up less than ten minutes later, and Dib and Clara had to disengage in a tangle of limbs while he looked in on them from the doorway, holding the Gir doll. “W-What are you doing?” He croakily chirped from the doorway, eyes impossibly wide. “You’re b-both so...sweaty and noisy!”

  Scene: Holograms

He left the kitchen, but returned minutes later with his laptop and electronic tablet. With the kitchen curtains drawn to dim the light, he had a number of devices laid out on the table, and when Clara came in to join them, she was impressed to see a hologram pouring out of the computer screen.

In his element, Zim drew up more schematics as easily as laying down paper and more holograms appeared. It was reflected in Dib’s glasses as he studied the projections. Clara could make neither heads nor tails of it as she stood watching them. The holograms showed vast columns of numbers, and everything that was written were in strange symbols, like runes. And accompanying these alien hieroglyphs were diagrams of a machine.

Even Dib wasn’t sitting pretty on the same page. Zim was aloof in his plans and his approaches, and even had an ingrained habit of keeping Clara and Dib at a distance as if he still had trouble trusting them. Zim had done things by himself all his life, and sharing that control wasn’t an easy thing for him.

The alien scarcely looked their way. Strips of code glowed in his bright fuchsia eyes. It was good to have him focused on something. Though he always worked there was a certain distraction in his efforts and in his focus. Now he sat with his back straight, his shoulders firm and his chin raised as he sought key coding in the stratum of alien mumbo-jumbo.

Dib forced the panic from his voice. “Is this for recreational fun, or is it for something else?”

Zim registered the English word ‘fun’ even if he did not know exactly what it meant. That word went into the same ambiguous category of words he struggled to understand the meanings to; such as sex, happiness, human humour and babies.

Dib went under the scrutiny of another long cold look.

“Earth needs protecting...” The aged Elite paused, finding the answer hard to dig up and reveal as if he had crushed it down there, inside, for so long that it was now hard to find and hard to pull it out. “Membrane will take measures to protect this dirt ball by following my instructions.”

Dib kept staring. “Did I just hear you right?”

“Oh s-shut up and stop with your g-gloating!” He snapped, rubbing at the side of his head, both eyes wincing as if working with his protégé was a real headache. After a moment he raised his stylus and drew dots and lines on a hologram that painted them in pink. Clara couldn’t stop staring as Zim drew magical lines into a magical screen. He did not seem to mind his audience, perhaps because he was expecting them to not understand a single thing he was doing.

Zim flicked a hand, and the screen’s current information and jungle of symbols was replaced by weapon blueprints. They stood tall and leaned slightly forwards like masts.  “Earth is a backwater planet full of toxicity. It’s hardly worth much, but it’s still up for conquest, as is this pithy little solar system it’s in. The Earth’s sun would make a great source of fuel. It’s how energy cores are made. My Tallest may take an interest.”

When he next looked to Dib and Clara, there was relief in his eyes.

For so long he had never belonged anywhere.

Zim looked again to the hologram. He flicked his wrist, and the jumble of symbols magically metamorphed into English. “Your Membrane will build these anti-ship turrets once I provide him with the design. Their range will blanket the planet and that of your horrible star, keeping you filthy critters safe.”

Dib stood there, taking it in. He hadn’t thought of the Armada paying a visit someday. It was unlikely, but it had obviously been on Zim’s mind.

Since when had this snarling alien pulled his talents, energy and recourses into DEFENDING something?

The Irken smiled. “Wouldn’t it be funny if all they ever did was blow asteroids to little itty bitty bits? The planet’s measly existence would continue to persist until that awful sun of yours finally implodes. Humans. Thriving for evermore. Now that disgusts me.”

Dib was about to speak; to begin verbalizing his shock and disbelief when Zim again flicked his wrist and the screen swapped out weapon blueprints for the ship’s coding. He pressed some infinitesimal transparent button on this transparent screen and a 3D image of Tak’s ship popped into existence. Dib’s heart fell heavy and it fell hard.

Zim’s plans were never that humanly plain. He was clever, and he also liked to keep his real thoughts and real plans close to his chest. He never usually did something unless he reaped the benefits, and he was a sneaky little guy. Not that Dib suspected him of doing anything underhanded with the ship.

Zim. You can’t fly. What do you intend to do?

Just nod and smile at him. Creative outlet and all that, yes dad I remember. This had better not bite me in the ass.

Using a stylus, Zim reached up, and traced a line around the front of the vessel.

“Ooh, that’s pretty. What does that do?” Clara pointed at something that almost looked like a metal flower of alien grotesquery. It spun slowly in the hologram, looking like some hellish rose. It was probably the main core engine, with all its tapering pipes and elements.

Zim, bathed in pink from the screens, gave her an amused, beady look, and quite happily and croakily bragged about core drives, their compounds, auxiliary turbines, a feln guard, plasma charging cells, a hubbard, and so on. Clara looked bewildered in under three seconds of his wistful explaining.

There was no mistaking the fact that this little bastard loved attention. If he so much as looked at Clara the right way, she’d pick him up and cuddle him.

“Hang on a second. What’s this thing back here?” Dib pointed at the hologram of the fuselage. “We could move that, and expand the cockpit.”

“That shouldn’t go there.” Zim’s voice was dusky and small. His hooded eyes could barely stay open but he always led the debate. If anything, Dib was the one trying to keep up with him.

“Why not?” Dib leaned back slightly. He wasn’t a complete novice when it came to repairing and redesigning machines. Irken technology was a huge leap in science and brains, but he was more or less knowledgeable on the parts, and where the power had to go. Yes, connecting it all, and hoping they’d be no leaks would be a bitch. Working with plasma would be a lot different than say, oil or fossil fuels. Zim knew how to make more plasma, and he apparently knew how to recharge the cells in the ship too. Usually a ship worked for centuries with just a power core, but Tak’s power core was too badly damaged to be used. And a damaged core was a dangerous core.

“The ship will explode, that’s why.”

“Zim. I know how to build a ship.”

“No you don’t! You don’t know anything about anything!”

Clara disappeared to make some iced tea for them, and when she returned with a tray loaded with drinks she said, “Don’t forget that Gaz is coming later.”

The very name made Zim’s antenna drop.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know him. Their paths had interwoven with Dib at the centre. She was just like any other enemy he’d had to contend with, except that she could outwit him in one breath, and leave him and his ship battered and smoking. He’d done everything to avoid her since he’d put Dib in a hospital bed – of which he’d done quite a few times. Maybe she’d be okay with his – state – and situation. Or maybe she’d barrel past Dib and Clara and hang him on the wall.

“Let’s not.” Zim said openly, carefully watching their reactions.

“She’s family, Zim. She’s got to come.” Dib patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine.”

He had decided there and then that he would retreat to his room, barricade the door, and fashion a weapon from bits and pieces if he had to. 

[resonatingfern]

“did you think i forgot?” for whichever character youd like to write about!

Ruin.

That’s all there was. It surrounded him on all sides, sprawling out toward the distant horizon. Buildings, broken and crumbled, dotted the landscape, with pillars and spirals of coral growing from them like parasites. They reached for the sky, breaking through mists of low hanging clouds that threatened an acidic, deadly rain.

Trees grew, though they were spindly and sick. No grass, no fields of flowers. Nothing but grey and faintly glowing green, the source of which unknown. Lichen clung to crumbled stones, fallen from palaces and shrines, suffocating the beauty the rock once held.

Vasche knelt in the mire and sludge, dragged up from the sea with force and ill intent. It stuck to his greaves, coating the shining metal and scale with wet ash. He placed his hands to the ground, let his clawed fingers dig in and pull up a palmful of the decay. It slipped through the cracks between his fingers, dripping back down to form a small mound rising from the dirt.

Somewhere close by a bird called. Or a poor mockery of a bird. It trilled and swelled, cutting through the odd silence that descended over the forgotten city. It prickled Vasche’s skin, starting at his wrists and climbing to his neck. The sound was wrong. Everything here was wrong.

He closed his eyes to the sights around him. The image of ruin disappeared, replaced by the world in his memory. It felt so close behind him; like it was merely yesterday he walked the pristine marble halls and viewed the city from his perch high above. Distant laughter and music played in his ears, and the scent of flowers wafted from streets and courtyards.

Orr was still beautiful in his mind. It was his paradise; his world to protect and treasure.

When he opened his eyes destruction returned.

“I cannot begin to imagine how difficult this must be for you.”

Twisting back, his wings shifting slightly in response, Vasche spotted the curious creature who had woken him standing a few paces away. Trahearne — that was his name. He was sylvari, a race new to the world. In comparison to himself, this Trahearne was nothing more than a new born child.

But he was interested in this place, and its history. That brought a certain fondness to Vasche. Besides, he had little choice but to follow him, at least until he knew more of this time.              

Vasche didn’t respond to the sentiment, however. He just fixed Trahearne with a glare of his unnatural green eyes and stood, not bothering to wipe the grime from his armor. His wings flexed, settling against his back when he rose to his full height.

“I believe this path will lead us to the tomb,” Trahearne went on, looking away from Vasche and his unwavering stare. He motioned towards a barely discernible set of blocks rising from the ground like stepping stones. “Does it feel familiar to you?”

A plume of anger rose in Vasche’s chest, and he rounded on Trahearne, fangs barred.

“Do you think I forgot?” he spat out, the words laced with venom. He took a step forward, mud sucking to his boot with a perverse pop. His claws twitched, aching to tear and rend and destroy everything that was already so utterly far gone.

He stopped short of the sylvari, where the heat of his breath could wash over him and sting his delicate fronds and blooms.  

“This place may be new to you, but it is my home. Would your home feel familiar to you?”

Instead of fear, a quiet sense of pity and regret rolled off the man standing firm in front of Vasche. It quelled his anger enough for him to unclench his fists and look away, back over the rolling fields of ruin.

“I misspoke.” Trahearne’s voice was soft, as Vasche had come to expect from all things he said. “I’m sorry. I should have considered my words better.”

Vasche swallowed back a rising lump in his throat and nodded. He started forward, down the path Trahearne had indicated.

“Yes. Please do.”

They walked in silence after that, Vasche’s mind clouded with welling grief the further into Orr they went. He heard the steady footsteps behind him, and knew that Trahearne was keeping a respectful distance. After a while the sound parted the fog in his head, and he stopped in his tracks.

“Trahearne,” he said, turning to face the sylvari. He really was a curious creature; the way his body illuminated with pulsing color, the way it looked at once soft and hard. There was much to learn about the species, and about this particular one among them.

“Yes, Vasche?”

Vasche rolled his shoulders, unfurled his wings and settled them again as he struggled to find the proper tone of voice. Apologies had never been easy for him, and thousands of years of disuse had made his voice falter on the hard parts.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. This is… difficult for me.”

“I know.” Trahearne offered him a smile — gentle, lighting up amongst the dreary and broken world around them. “I am here with you, if that brings any solace.”

“A small amount.”  

Vasche tried a smile of his own, though the sharpness of his canines marred the effect. Perhaps this ruined city, the one he once prided himself on protecting, had something of value to offer after all. He sighed once, then began to walk again, steps following the paths that were still so clear in his mind.

“Come, the tomb isn’t far,” he added, and this time let Trahearne pass and walk ahead of him, his eyes focused on the sylvari’s back and the faint purple glow instead of the nightmare to all other sides.

[solautumn]

3. [ Hopeful ]

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”   ― Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Solarian’s future loomed closer, and it looked brighter than ever. It had been well over a year since he’d completed his apprenticeship with the Dalaran hospital and made his way to Zandalar as a researcher. Now, the war was over, and the whisperings of N’Zoth in his head had been quelled. The nightmares that occasionally haunted him were a scar that remained, but as someone who walked the fine lines between Light and Shadow, he was fully aware that they were not real. To know Light was to know Shadow, and the delicate balance would forever be tested between them. Most who knew him would say that Solarian wouldn’t hurt a fly-- and in fact was known for his healing!-- but he most certainly knew that shadow magic could bring a threat to its knees, should he be inclined to weaponize it.

Despite being of diminutive size physically, Solarian’s mind was ever growing with its doors and windows wide open to learning new things. He was certainly in his prime. The past year had been one of discovery and growth. Working as a volunteer researcher with the Reliquary granted him access to studies on ancient plants and lichen, as well as having first hand experience with new herbs catalogued from all across Zandalar from the muddy swamps of Nazmir to the arid deserts of Vol’dun and everything in between. With his alchemical studies taking off, and he found himself concocting new versions of old tried and true potions he’d learned to make in the past. Healing through natural means was easier for him than ever before.

Increasingly, he thought about how he would apply these findings to his own future. As the youngest of the Autumnsong brood, he was paving his way in ways his siblings hadn’t, and ways he was chided for from time to time, but was nevertheless supported. Part of the perks of being the youngest was getting away with having a little more leeway than his siblings had, and he took full advantage of it. Lately, he’d been traveling to Silvermoon City more often, both to run errands for his research team and to visit his family. It was nothing out of the ordinary for him until somehow, he began to meet new people he’d never really known before. Introducing himself to others made him feel seen. It was as if speaking his aspirations out loud set the wheels of possibility into motion.

The thoughts of opening up his own clinic had lingered in his mind since his days at Dalaran, but he’d never really given it serious thought until recently. When he voiced it, one of his new friends, Abel, was there to offer up an investment if he decided to open it.

Abel was different from most Sin’dorei Solarian had met in person. They were introduced through Taedalan, a very kind paladin who seemed to enjoy baking, and who seemed like one of the most supportive people Solarian had ever met. Abel was a mage, and yet he wasn’t like other mages. There was a beautiful, unfettered femininity to him that seemed to balance in harmony with his masculinity, and it made Solarian feel as though perhaps he could learn about himself through him. He wasn’t sure how to ask, or how to even broach the subject without feeling as though he were out of line. Oh to have that kind of confidence in being oneself! In a world where most men were broad, muscled, and armored, Solarian felt like a slender reed in the wind, invisible to those whom he felt attraction toward.

There was much still to learn, but the redhead and his boyfriend Maztheric were already offering up financial and emotional support that made Solarian feel less like a tumbleweed and more like a skyward fern, suddenly watered with the sweet downpour of support from people he barely knew. Even Sandellis had been there to express his support as well, and brought up the conversation they’d had just the night before about him guarding Solarian-- something that he’d gone to bed later thinking about in a blush, to be honest.

It seemed much like a busy night, and Rennsley the mule seemed to happily eat kiwi fruit from Vokunaku’s hand. The mage seemed a little eccentric at times, but weren’t all traveling magi that way? Solarian certainly liked him! Quietly, he beamed at the new friends that surrounded him. They seemed like a mixed bag of different and yet like-minded individuals whose paths seemed to cross more frequently these days, until time eventually pulled everyone off in different directions.

Once more, he was left with just the company of Sandellis, whom he’d only known for about a week’s time. They got along in ways Solarian hadn’t expected, and he looked forward to finding any excuse to be sent back into the city just to see him and the others again. As much as he tried not to think about the Illidari during the day, he often found himself wondering about where he was, what he was probably doing, and what he’d bring him the next time they met. It seemed to be a little ritual now for Solarian to bear gifts of fruit, or little vials of mana potions.

They were beginning to get to know one another a bit more through their unexpected friendship. Solarian hinted at the way that the Light and Shadow grappled in his mind from time to time, and in turn, he learned more of the other’s abilities as an Illidari. He also learned of San’s dislike of him having left without saying goodbye. Night after night, the two would linger around Silvermoon City, or venture out into the woods for a walk, not noticing as time flew past them.

Tonight, they ventured out because... well. Sandellis was admittedly smelling a bit ripe, and he needed to get dunked into a river as soon as possible. Solarian teased him a bit, though he certainly offered him his own soap to use. For once, it seemed as though the pharmacy that was his bag was being put to good use, and he happily laid back on the grass, watching the evergold leaves of Eversong’s canopy swaying above. That’s not to say he didn’t occasionally steal glances in the bathing Illidari’s direction, however.

Conversation drifted in and out between them as it always did, but this time, it seemed as though the bond they’d been unwittingly creating pulled them even closer. Sandellis had a certain magnetism that drew Solarian like a moth to the warmth of the other’s flame, and before he knew it, his slender hands were in that thick mane of raven locks. His fingers gently raked through it, detangling it and braiding half of it loosely. Solarian wanted to feel him, especially as his lips craved to feel the other’s. Boldness overtook him in a way it never really had before when he reached out to hold San’s face and turn it in his direction.

“May I kiss you?”

His heart pounded in his chest and in his red ears as he waited with bated breath for the other’s quiet reply. Solarian simply couldn’t take a kiss. He was much too disciplined. Sol had to ask and let his intention be known, lest he be rebuffed and rebuked for it. He didn’t want to ruin a perfectly good thing with a thoughtless act, after all. But it seemed as though Sandellis was of a like mind.

“Yes.”

Solarian felt his heart soaring when Sandellis pulled him into his lap. Their lips met in a soft, chaste kiss at first, but Solarian hungered for more. The more they kissed, the more his body reacted to it, and the less shy he felt about letting his lips explore the Illidari’s face until Sandellis paused them with a confession that seemed to be weighing deeply on his heart. It was a confession that was certainly unexpected, but not one that was at all as dreadful as Solarian had been imagining in his mind. San wasn’t leaving to go off on some Illidari adventure that flirted with danger, and he wasn’t secretly betrothed to someone else. His confession was still important, however, and Sol held his face tenderly, kissing him afterward. His body was different, an obvious fact upon first look, but San meant it in ways others could not see.

Solarian offered a warm smile and brought his fingers up to trail along the ridged horns that curved up menacingly, and he placed a gentle kiss beneath each of his eyes. “You weren’t born with horns or felfire eyes, either,��� he said in acceptance of every part of him. He had quite a lot of feelings about the subject that suddenly made themselves known. Solarian didn’t reduce what made a man down to his reproductive organs. A man was so much more nuanced than that, and despite his own inexperience in the bedroom, he knew that his attraction to men was more than a base attraction to said parts.

They kissed again, this time holding one another tightly. The young priest didn’t want the moment between them to end, and he didn’t quite know what this meant for them going forward, but the one thing he knew was that despite his best efforts, he was growing quite fond of Sandellis. That night, he decided to stay at the Wayfarer’s Rest in Silvermoon City once more with him, rather than go all the way back to Zandalar and nurse portal sickness. Consequences of having to get up earlier than usual be damned! He wanted to fall asleep in the other’s strong embrace where he felt safe and happy for once.

Just as before, he would succumb to sleep mere moments after his head touched the pillow, but upon waking, he remembered to keep his promise not to simply leave without saying anything. This time, he gently roused Sandellis from sleep in the early hours of morning with hands that curved along the other’s beard gently and a sweet kiss to bid him farewell once more. It would be a few nights before he was to come back, but he promised to return, and even promised to bring him something new to try the next time they met.

Even though he couldn’t foresee what the future had in store for him in several fronts, Solarian had more reason than ever before to look forward to returning to Silvermoon City.

                                                                🌱🌱🌱

[01010010-posts]

— our love is a starred staircase; i jump two steps at time but you can only go one by one.

i. → becoming human. “and this is hen.” “mhh, very interesting.” “.... i hate you.” he unwillingly cracks up, slightly turning to the other side because, honestly, he’s not that bastard (maybe) “sorry–” he bites his lips, not wanting to be exposed, gosh, he really is such a bastard “it’s just that– well, how do i put it.... learning a new language from scratch, without any download, it actually is difficult.” there is it again, that devilish sneer “i swear to god, love” “okay, okay. i’ll say it. but please don’t be mad. it’s your handwriting. it’s hard to read. it’s so ugly you could be a doctor.” he’s doing his best, he vows, but since being deviant his sense of humour has highly been affected. you lose no time in emerging onto his jolly demeanor and begin smacking him “you’re not being fair! ouch– please! you promised to not get angry!” he refuges his hair behind his knuckles, while still enjoying taunting you “i’ve spent the past hour memorizing things with you and that’s how you repay me! and i didn’t promise that!” he lets you tease him for too little, and without even realizing it you’re in his grasp, frozen, sweetly pouting, a mouth that he kisses “you’re right, here’s your reward, teacher.” “did you at least learn something?” “ohh, yes, a wonderful lot. i learnt how to kiss you here, here, and here.” and saying that he follows his preaching, teaching you where he adores to leave lovebites. ii. → pieces of you between the pages. it’s not his fault. sometimes night shifts happen. but he hates them abysmally. why? because, as much as he gets bored when you’re sleeping, he can’t help but worship those endless hours he has available, basking in the lone presence of your body, recording each minute thing, with such limited time on this earth, then, he.... but tonight is a little different. he phoned you for a while (you had to force him to hang up), assured that you finished eating at a normal pace, didn’t steal too many snacks from the cupboard, watched something nice and got to bed at a reasonable hour. yes. he’s not your mom but he likes to remind you that his way of loving is varied. of course, soft words and i love yous and invisible smooching were not absent at the roll-call. he’s not only your mom after all. ahh, almost forgot. this is just routine. the deviant thing tonight is: a book. your book. your favourite book. you probably forgot it in his bag. but it’s not very important right now. he picks it up, the spine slightly visible from the black fabric incorporating it. it’s an ordinary book. he sits, and since he’s kinda alone, nobody prevents him from propping his long legs on his desk, relaxing in his leather ergonomic chair. reading a bit won’t hurt. the content, the plot, it’s not really important. what he’s actually reading is: your underlined parts. you normally don’t do that, you said one time. it ruins the paper, you said. yet in this one, this one, so important to you, you used graphite pencil to emphasize. mostly, about love. iii. → doing nothing. “i won’t stand for this!” he huffs in a bit of what appears to be the middle of an angry and annoyed tone. his arms hurriedly coming into a fold around his chest, he doesn’t really know how to react. you try to hide your benevolent smirk, an android this cute shouldn’t exist “why? you’re already doing it.” “that’s– that’s because it was your turn to choose what we should be doing this evening.” “so you’re peacefully protesting?” you urge him, now holding back snorting is almost impossible “.... kinda.” and at this point you’re nearly choking on your own laugh “you’re making fun of me?!” he finishes his retort and darts, indignant, sitting upright on the couch. so so so sorry but you have to cover your face with your digits and turn towards the other side because, honestly, you’re not that bastard as to burst into laughter in front of him (maybe) “gosh– it’s– it’s– pfft– i apologize i’m– ahahAHAHA NO PLEASE NO!” while you were, indeed, mocking him you lowered your guard and him, a weapon, took that as his advantage “PLEASE BABY” “ohh, we’re begging before i even get serious? my my, you’re quite weak.” his fingers carefully threading between your ribs, stroking your skin in a delicate manoeuvring until he’s satisfied with his revenge “you’re terrible.” he grins, both short of breath from being such imbeciles “i am.” he gently lowers down your crouched shape, half on the sofa the rest on the floor, and kisses your reluctant cheek “what’s the plan, then?” “don’t think i’ve changed my mind. i don’t want to do anything. i want to continue until i reach absolute zero.” iv. → your things // your place. he doesn’t need to shower, nor to bathe, and if he indulges in those activities it’s just to bond, he assures you. but suddenly it’s not so credible when you, wanting to surprise him, come back to your place without telling, sneakily unlock the threshold and tiptoe to search for him to no avail. you’re about to open your mouth and shout, to see some sort of shocked reaction, maybe a jump from the scare, but he’s not in the living room. and not in the compact kitchen. and not in the bedroom either. then, where could he be? you silently ponder, a tap of your shoe asking if he left to go shopping. but you know, the fridge is not that empty. could he be....? without letting out a sound you enter the bathroom, certainly not expecting the sight that presents to you. a single curtain separating you from his shadow. of course, you can’t resist the call. with a swift movement you pull the nylon and expose him, who can’t help but nervously shriek in distress “ah! what the fuck!” you cackle “surprise!” he sighs, exasperated by your childish behaviour, and turns off the water “is that my.... body wash?” your attention shifts rapidly, taking in the image of his fully naked anatomy but pointing an index at his palms “what–” he halts mid-sentence, his cyan eyes darting to his fingers “oh, well, huh–” “you’re using my body wash.” “i can explain.” “you always say you’re too upgraded for bubbles.” “.... my phrasing is not exactly that however i was just– curious.” “to try my body wash.” “yes. to try your pink velvet sunflower body wash.” “wait. how do you know the exact name. suspicious.” if his forehead wasn’t already shimmering from the droplets of your interruption he would be drenched in cold sweat “.... i analyzed it.” “you fucking ate shower gel.” “in my defense–” v. → what do you do when you’re happy. he longs for moments like these. for when you both come home, him entangling his arms around your waist as soon as the door closes, leaving a trail of tiny pecks from your shoulder to your lobe, slow as a snail, savouring each millimeter of skin, each little relaxed spasm your muscles have, each complaint you attempt to address to his figure, each tender giggle escapes your mouth. he longs for moments like these. the same as when your shared friends send a text at the last minute, asking if it’s okay to come over and then maybe go somewhere, drinking or eating doesn’t really matter, it’s just to be together. and you sweetly smile, a bit tired after work, but still willing to say ‘yes’, serene in the comfort of not even having the need to change into fancy clothes, only bustling with secret excitement, waiting to be in stitches in the back of a non-automatic car. he longs for moments like these. as that time you both got a couple days off and decided to spend them in a countryside house, clutched by vines of different species: virginia creeper, common ivy and climbing magenta roses. and as soon as the door closed you rushed, gliding on the worn burnt sienna cotto tiles, up the old rusty stone stairs, reached the top and opened the small cabin, only occupied by a toilet and a small painting (‘in bed’ by federico zandomeneghi. a girl with long auburn hair, facing a floral wallpaper, resting in a tranquil atmosphere while stretched out in her bed under light blue covers.). you promptly proceeded to push the wood window frame, letting light invade the whole space. he was right beside you as your head stuck out, inhaling the fresh air and remaining speechless in front of the sun, the sky, the clouds, the as much red roofs interspersed with yellow lichens and green moss, the rest of the panorama composed by infinite sweeps of earthy fields. he longs for moments like these. vi. → our things // our place. “don’t forget to brush your teeth.” he whispers from behind you, his face reflected on the mirror in which you’re admiring yourself in search of some imperfections. you absentmindedly chuckle “i know” your eyes fixated low, watching the drain of the pale china sink. logically, the most convenient way of getting the toothpaste to exit the tube, is to squeeze from the end and let it come out on its own. of course, he noticed, you don’t do that. you, as if reading his mind while he’s standing close, watching and mimicking a human nightly routine, do the complete opposite of what he’s thinking, pressing your thumb at the very start of the mixed aluminium-and-plastic bottle you’re holding. a tiny bubble forms where the cap should be and you hint a smile. infos bothering his vision at the corner of his irises: it’s some internet articles about teeth blackening, mostly persistent in asia. it’s somewhat fascinating to him, or at least, it’s different from the constant obsession with lightening. he wonders what you would think about it. he wonders if you even know about it. white gel slowly fills your tongue and coats the ends of your lips. you’re kinda messy, he admits, but finds it utterly adorable nevertheless. vii. → dying human. your hand. your hand is what kept him alive for so long. because, despite his appearance, he’s as old as an adult can be at this time of your life. your life. two parallels tracks that never meet, going their way, wanting to touch but never able to. you, growing old. him, growing and nothing more. because he can’t be old, can’t he. he will never be old. he must be about.... no, that’s stupid. no hypothesis could change anything. it doesn’t matter which numbers he should have in his ID – not that androids have any in the first place –, what matters is the inequity of your age “you’re always beautiful” you murmur “mh? look who’s talking” the end of your mouth curls up in a childish smile, wrinkles adorning all of your features “flatterer. i could be one of your grandparents for all you know” he gives you a lazy expression, lids half closed, nevertheless content, a bittersweet happiness. he takes your right hand in his and draws it near his cheek “it’s rough, c’mon” you’re a bit ashamed but he lets the warm rays of sunshine glimmer onto him, eyes slowly leaving space to complete relaxation “no, it’s tender, don’t worry, just as you.”

[tanadrin]

Reordberend

(part 21 of ?; first; previous; next)

(BTW, as of this update, Reordberend is, by my count, a little over 45k words long, putting it in the territory of a shortish novel. That also makes it one of the longest SF stories I’ve ever written. It’s not the most popular thing I’ve ever posted on Tumblr, but it has gotten a steady trickle of notes. Knowing there are people out there who enjoy your work, even if it’s fairly niche, is the best motivation there is to keep writing. Thank you for reading!)

Katherine Alice Green The Guest Room in the Village Hall The High Settlement McMurdo Dry Valleys ANTARCTICA

to Dr. Eunice Valerie Gordon Trinity College Dublin Dublin 2 IRELAND

Dear Dr. Gordon,

I am writing yet another letter I won’t be able to send, which, I realize might make me seem like kind of a crazy person. The only defense I can plead, I guess, is that the perpetual darkness of the winters here does funny things to you if you’re not used to it, and I’ve had a lot of down time lately that I need to do something productive with. I have already written to my parents, to a couple of friends, and to my cat, which leaves only you. And these letters seem to have a way of focusing my thoughts, so maybe it’s not an entirely useless exercise.

Where to begin? Well, first of all, I’m alive. That may come as a surprise. It occured to me not long after I was marooned here that perhaps nobody knows that. No one has come looking for me, and why would they? If any rescue parties did go looking for the Albatross, I doubt they’d come this far south. Not in winter. But I did in fact survive the ship going down. I don’t think anybody else did. The Dry Valleys People didn’t find anyone else on the shore, alive or dead. I try not to think about that too much, but, to be honest, it still has me kind of fucked up.

Oh, that’s the other things. I’ve made contact with the Dry Valleys People. I am, as the return address indicates, currently living with them. They have welcomed me, rather reluctantly, and I’ll be able to remain at least until the first sunrise of spring. This was not necessarily a widely popular decision, and I’ve come to learn that the political situation among the DVP is rather complicated. They have always guarded their isolation and their independence, and they’re keen to keep guarding it in the future, but there are some among them who worry how long that will really be possible. I think this is something Dr. Wright foresaw, and tried to warn them about in the letter he sent with me. But as you might expect, this is something a large part of their community doesn’t want to hear or even think about, and my presence here is definitely fraught.

As for my original mission… well, it’s an unqualified success, despite the difficulties. I’ve learned a lot. The language, to start with. You won’t believe this, but they speak Old English here. No, not thee and thou and maketh yon Old English. Not Chaucer, even. Older. From their books and what they’ve told me, their ancestors used the West Saxon dialect of Old English, as spoken about the year 1000 AD, as the basis for the language they taught their children. Dr. Wright knew this, of course. That’s how he was able to communicate them and win their trust; he showed an affinity for the same history and the same long-term perspective they cared about. If it seems weird that a bunch of people would move to Antarctica, forsake almost every modern convenience, and deliberately teach their kids a dead language that would be useless in the wider world, well, all I can say I guess is that humans have done a lot of weird shit for a lot of weird reasons throughout history. I think I am beginning to understand why the ancestors of the DVP did what they did. Some of them have tried to explain it to me, but there is a gap in our worldviews here that is difficult to bridge.

One of the DVP that I have befriended is a poet named Leofric. His sister, Leofe, taught me the language, but I’ve learned a lot more about their literature from him. It’s primarily an oral literature, although they do write some of it down. They like long, semi-narrative poetry that draws heavily on the imagery of the natural world, and I would say that it owes something to the ancient Anglo-Saxon poetry they keep in their books, except that, of course, the environment here is nothing like the environment of England one thousand years ago. But there are still some poetic traditions they have inherited from those earlier examples. For instance, their world is harsh, and unforgiving, and from a certain angle looks like a world in decline. The ancient English (so I am told) were surrounded by great Roman ruins they spoke of as being the work of metaphorical giants; here, they have the ruins of two hundred years of scientific and industrial exploration of the Antarctic coast. And their world, too, is enclosed by a vast cold sea, although this one has penguins in it at least.

Aside from the language, the founders of the DVP don’t seem to have intended to recreate medieval English society. There are no kings. There is a semi-formal system of village headship by seniority, but the social hierarchy is very flat. Marriage, inheritance, and choice of occupation all take place on fairly egalitarian terms, and their strictest taboos surround the sharing of labor and resources, not sexuality or religion. I wonder how much of their customs are the result of gradual cultural evolution, or some deliberate effort at creating a planned community. There are lots of funny Utopian experimental communities out there, but most tend to fail after a generation. In a way, this one couldn’t fail, because they had no way to leave Antarctica. They had to make it work. Is this what a real utopian project looks like after six or seven generations?

But honestly, one of the most fascinating aspects of the DVP is their material culture. As you might expect, their day-to-day existence is profoundly shaped by the environment they live in. Their houses are all heavy stone, designed to trap scarce heat, and arranged around the village halls as a windbreak against the dry katabatic gales that sweep the McMurdo Valleys clear of ice. Despite this being one of the driest locations on Earth, it’s still a better habitat for them than the glaciers of the Antarctic lowlands, or the rough, icy terrain of the mountains--here, you can actually build, and you don’t need skis and snowshoes to get around. But, as a consequence, much of their most important infrastructure is underground.

I don’t know if the ancestral DVP brought the right tools with them or if they scavenged them once here, but they have accumulated a small stockpile of laser borers, ultrasonic chisels, and crystalsteel digging equipment that they use to carve out underground chambers in the hills as meeting places and ritual sites. But they don’t do their agriculture there; that happens in networks of buried trenches just below the villages, where they grow cold-resistant mosses and lichens to supplement a meat-based diet, and what seems to be a form of genegineered fibergrass they use to weave their clothing and tapestries, and to make books.

Their art is very beautiful. Their coats, books, and tapestries--even their stone carvings--all depict elaborate lineate forms of plants and animals, inherited I suppose from ancestral memory, since none of the organisms in question are found in Antarctica. They also make images depicting the mountains, of course, and the sea, and the animals that live on the coast; even some of the coastal settlements, as seen from far off. They’re often abstracted, but these images are geographically grounded: they’re not just “generic mountains” or “generic coastline,” they’re specific mountains, specific coastlines, and they add up--if you are exposed to them every day of your life growing up--to something like a conceptual map of all of Victoria Land. It seems that if you dropped an average adult DVP individual anywhere from Oates Land to the Queen Elizabeth Range, they could probably find their way home, even during the dark months of winter.

(Oh! And the dark months! You’d think they’d be depressing, but I never imagined in my life I would see such a sight as the aurora australis, or even the clear polar stars! I can’t describe it to you. Maybe Leofric could, if I could do justice to his verse.)

They’re very communitarian, and great emphasis is placed on making sure no one goes without, but the price of that is, apparently, extremely elaborate dispute-resolution mechanisms; for a culture without courts, government, or attorneys, they are remarkably bureaucratic. Each physical object seems to have its own laws attached to it. Some may be shared by all objects of that type--for instance, if you need an electric firestarter, you always go to the house windward of yours to ask if they have one. If they don’t, you go to the next, and so on; firestarters pass from house to house, as needed, but only in one direction. Other objects may have completely unique rules. There is a knife with an elaborately carved handle meant to be used only by left-handed people. I don’t know why; nobody I asked knew, either. But that was the custom, and it was scrupulously obeyed. As a rule, the more elaborately decorated an object, the more particular the rules associated with it, but the elaboration of the object doesn’t seem to connote anything about the rules. It only marks it out as somehow special. The rules themselves are transmitted orally. All of these rules at bottom are about making sure that resources are evenly distributed--making sure nobody has to walk too far in bitterly cold weather to find a firestarter, for instance--and even the ones that don’t make sense now probably were created for good reason. For instance, the southpaw knife. Their knives for carving meat all have handles that curve in one way, to help separate flesh from bone, and I suspect that one is the result of a left-handed steelsmith getting fed up with with tools he couldn’t use very well. The blade is that of a carving-knife, though the handle attached to it is straight. The handle was probably later replaced when it broke, and somebody needed the knife for a different purpose--but the custom attached to it remained the same.

This system of sharing is, if anything, even more scrupulously observed when there’s a windfall. We went on a salvage expedition a month ago and brought back some much-needed supplies, and they spent days working out what would go where, first to each village and then, once we got back to the High Settlement, each house in each village--and even then, this was just what went to who first. Anything that’s not a finite supply, like food, will get passed from house to house. Leofric tells me that a few years ago, a whale--an entire blue whale, actually--beached itself to the north, and they had to have a weeklong assembly (on the beach, next to the whale, natch) to decide what do with every scrap of meat and bone. They still talk about the arguments that went down at the Whale Parliament sometimes (for which their word is hwaelthing, by the way. Literally it means exactly what it looks like: “whale-thing.”). Funny thing is, they also very carefully manage arguments in these discussions. That’s not normally the case--if two people have an argument and what to physically fight each other about it, that’s considered their business. But when it comes to disputes about food or metal or tools, everybody is very keen to show how Not Mad they are, even if they’re actually seething about it on the inside. And if voices get raised, people get hustled aside, and the whole matter is dropped completely until everybody has a chance to calm down. This looks like a system that was either deliberately designed to keep fights from breaking out and feelings getting permanently hurt, or one that sprung up after some nasty experiences of actual fights. I suspect the latter. It’s all very informal, but there’s a lot of social pressure that enforces it. The price for division and discord in an environment this hard to live in would be death, and I think all their social institutions are built around that reality.

I will admit, this has not been the easiest experience. I mean, there’s the almost dying part, and the part where all my cybernetics are broken, and I had a bad bout of something flulike a few weeks ago and almost died again, but I don’t actually mean the physical hardship. It is a more isolating experience than I thought it would be, being the lone outsider in such a close-knit community. Everyone knows everybody and everything, except me. They all have their own jokes and stories and long-running feuds, and they can communicate a great deal to one another with just a glance, and I’m left wondering what just happened when everybody laughs at something, or a fight breaks out. I have struggled sometimes to learn the language. I mean, I’ve had no other choice, and it’s amazing what you can learn when your survival depends on it, but even now I still sometimes find myself struggling to communicate ideas, or staying silent even when there is something I might want to say, just because I can’t find the words. It’s infuriating not being able to express yourself well, and maybe for good reason I sometimes think they all see me as this hapless idiot who almost got herself killed, who they have to put up with until the spring as a result.

Okay, I mean, I kind of am that. But I am also genuinely interested in their society, in the DVP as individuals, in their stories and their history. But I feel like the best I can hope for is being kind of a mascot. Or a well-meaning but dim-witted pet. A Labrador or something.

Not that I haven’t made friends. I would say Leofric is a friend. The salvagers--Eadwig and Andrac--they’re friends. And I seem to have won at least the grudging toleration of the ones like Aelfric who initially wanted to leave me to die. But sometimes I think I’ve made a connection, somehow bridged the unbridgeable gulf between my life experience and the world of the DVP, only to find out I’ve done no such thing. I thought Leofe was a friend; but now she’s not speaking to me, and she’s left the High Settlement for one of the other valleys. I don’t know why, and the others just shrug when I ask them.

Ugh. This is turning into whining. Now I know I’ll never send it. Sorry. It’s been a long day. It’s amazing how tired you can get when your muscles can’t rely on your augs to help them do shit.

But I need to find a way to bridge that gap. I mean really bridge it. Because I feel like I’m starting to understand something the DVP aren’t ready to hear. Their ancestors came to Antarctica at a time when the rest of the world wasn’t much interested in it. It was a wasteland, so sure, let’s treat it as an international, shared territory. Nobody goes there but scientists and the occasional tourist. And during the Collapse, not even that--Antarctica was truly empty for the first time in a hundred and fifty years when the ancestors of the DVP came to its shores. But it isn’t anymore. And it won’t ever be a real wasteland again. Every year the mining consortia move a little further down the Transantarctic Mountains. Every year a new outpost pops up on the coast, more ships come to Port Alexander, more icebreakers cut through the polar sea. Antarctica is warmer now that it’s been at any time in the past. Heck, without some global warming, I don’t think the Dry Valleys would be habitable. But that means more exposed rock, more open ground to build on, more people coming to the continent to work on the mining platforms or the offshore factories, and one day, I think, they’re going to come here.

What will the DVP do when that happens? This isn’t North Sentinel Island, which nobody ever goes to because there’s no reason. There’s gold in the hills here--the DVP make jewelry out of it--and maybe other precious metals, and you could build a geothermal station on Mount Erebus and power a small town, if you wanted to build some autofactories. The Antarctic Authority exists to promote “science and industry,” but with a big emphasis on industry. And by science they mostly mean, like, watching penguins bone and building telescopes at the South Pole. Not soft stuff like anthropology. And certainly not protecting three valleys full of cessionist oddballs whose parents had an unreasonable fondness for dead languages.

I think Dr. Wright knew this. I think maybe he tried to warn the DVP when he was here, but back then the danger was even further away. And it’s hard to get people to pay attention to danger that seems far away, even if it might be an existential threat. And when dealing with that danger would require you to completely change the only life you’d ever known… well, that’s a hard sell. The DVP don’t really like change. I can’t blame them. But one day things are going to change here, and if they’re not prepared for it, it could get really ugly, really fast. It’s one thing to shut yourself away when the world is ignoring you. It’s another when the world comes knocking.

If I think I can persuade them, I’m going to talk to the elders here, Aelfric and Wulf. Some of the DVP have had very fleeting contact with outsiders before me. I think one of them should come with me in the spring, as a sort of emissary. I’m not sure who they should talk to, yet. Maybe the Authority. Maybe somebody in Port Alexander’s local government? Or maybe we should just try to tell their story directly to the world. That might bring the DVP more attention than they’d like, but better a little good attention now than a lot of bad attention later. I would have asked Leofe--she’s smart, she’s tough, she could handle the culture shock--but that’s not an option now. Something to think about, anyway.

Well. I hope this letter finds the imaginary version of you well, my love to the imaginary family &c, hope the undergrads aren’t giving you too much trouble this year. If for some reason you do find this letter--like I freeze to death on my way to the weather station in September and they find this document on my corpse--please forgive my stubbornness, my insistence on going on this stupid trip, and any worry I’ve caused you as a result. And if I really am dead, please tell everybody I died doing something badass, like, I dunno, fighting a polar bear. I guess those are extinct and they never lived in Antarctica anyway, but something along those lines. Make it good.

All the best,

Kate

[itsicantbelievethis666]

A Cunning Woman and a Demon - Chapter 4

1519 words  This was a difficult chapter to write as a) I was...distracted by recent events and b) the words were not coming as freely as I would have liked. Exposition can be useful in some contexts but, with a reasonably well-established mythos, it wasn’t really necessary. Warnings: depictions of nudity with some elements of dub-con and BDSM, but within the context of someone finishing a task that was begun. 

Once again, thanks to the following as well as anyone I may have missed (please raise your hands and let me know.) @new-zealand-chic​ @deepdisireslonging @trent7thirsting​ @xprincessofthefallenangels @demonkingsangel @writtingrose @sjwrites22 @writinglionqueen @superrezzy00 @kallirevenne @neversatisfiedgirlfics @neversatisfiedgirl @sjwrites22 @theworldofotps @tacoshuimagines @writing-reigns @baratomaya @devittsslut @the-carter-mob-don @evilangel84 @demonqueen29 @blissedoutbalor @thebalorwithin

Chapter 4 – The Shadow

The air rushes subtly over me as I float in darkness and silence. I’m partially bent, as though I was back in Bray’s prison. That pain is absent, however, and I feel no force in the bending. I’m swaying to and fro with the breeze until, suddenly, all stops. I fall, but slowly, onto something soft; I straighten as I land. There’s a pressure on my forehead for a moment, then another, briefer and smaller, before I am still once again.

Before my eyes, a jumble of snapshots and cut-scenes appears – photos of me as a child, with the family I knew before I came to this place; fractured memories of being punished for real or perceived sins, tinged with shame and a sense of unfairness. A long sequence followed of quieter torments, of existential terrors sharpened by near-constant rejection. I remember trying to decide if I could sit out the threat or whether I’d be better off racing the rest of the world into the grave. The memory shifts to how I would cope; by giving myself over to being as “good” as I could be - excelling at school, throwing myself headlong into sports and clubs and hobbies and just trying to keep my head down – and to solitude.

The jumble returns, and sounds join in: muffled, hushed. I try to add a couple pennies’ worth to the mix but I can’t form actual words. Why is it getting so cold all of a sudden? There’s a flurry of movement around me, then pressure under me as I begin again to float, again with the bending. I’m aching all over and I don’t know why. I try to protest, but the words won’t come. The jumble suddenly stops.

Before my eyes is the clearing - but empty, utterly devoid of the life I made here. It’s nighttime. The stars are pinpricks in the black sky. A soft glow comes from the brook and brightens further upstream to the base of the smaller waterfall that feeds the one pouring off the plateau. In an earlier time, I would wash here in warmer weather, the coolness bracing me as the dawn broke and the ritual had not yet become a chore, then a terror, as Wyatt seeped slowly into this world. The water now feels like ice, but it’s been so long since I’ve felt so free.

The robe and dress come away far too easily and I step into the flow with neither shame nor fear – only sadness as the remnants of Wyatt’s curse of imprisonment make themselves known. As the water drenches me, I run my hands over the scar tissue. Under my hands, it feels like thick, wrinkled leather. The sensation is one way – neither my breasts nor my loins can receive the signals my touch or the water is sending them.

The soap and cloth can do nothing to loosen the casing; the scrub brush is as wont to take my own flesh away with the scarring – if there’s anything left under it. I start to cry as I chant the incantation over and over again, desperate to be free of it and to free myself. I would rather go without being healed than to throw myself at anyone’s feet – even Finn’s - and to beg for it. Nonetheless, to be healed would be ideal.

At once, however, something else is touching me under the waterfall; several, maybe even a dozen small, unseen “hands” have taken up the task of washing me clean; two larger ones have wrapped around my wrists while the others begin gently massaging me from head to toe with soap lather. The two “hands” washing my hair are careful to avoid tangling the locks or tugging my scalp. The sensation is deeply pleasant in a way I have trouble recalling. Perhaps it was before I came to this place that I last felt this cared for. The tears come again, bittersweet with memory and longing.

The “hands” then lift me off my feet and carry me from the waterfall. My eyes grow heavy and the chill returns. Distant voices waft to my ears, some more pleading, others more demanding. One breaks through closer than the others – deeper and rougher, a growl of menace behind it, but strangely familiar. Some jostling follows, but I’m too tired and weak to protest it. I feel a sudden, sharp pain in one of my fingertips, then a pressure on it, as if blood was being drawn from it.

At long last, I am standing in the middle of a nearby clearing, grass under my feet. Someone has dressed me in a long, white, loose-fitting gown, bare-shouldered, covered in soft bobbin lace. Three pairs of ribbons keep the gown closed in the front.

In front of me is a large slab of stone, surrounded by moss and lichens as though it had sat there for millennia. Seated on it is…a shadow, in human form. The light seems to sink into it: the stone, the trees and even the night sky glow in contrast around it. I can feel my heart pounding and the chill setting deeper in – in the silence a voice peals with desperation in my head – “We’re losing her! I have no choice!” My breath catches, growing shorter.

“Greetings, good lady Abigail,” says the shadow. The voice is low, multitonal, and accented. “Sublime.”

“Who are you?” I ask, but the words come out shakily, with a rasp. Something is wrong with me, but I dare not ask this thing for help.

“You know who I am. Do you know him, in whom I dwell?” it answers, then stands up. He – there can be no doubt that the form is masculine – steps slowly towards me. As he approaches, I can make out angles and curves sharpening into focus, until I recognize his form as Finn’s. At once, ribbons of white and red appear and effect a willowy dance over the form. The ribbons and their shadows extend past his hands to the forest floor, and drape over his shoulders from the crown upon his head. His eyes spark to life in the same memorable blue.

“He and I were thrown together when each of us was captured,” I said. “He freed me from enough of my bonds so that we could escape together. That’s all I know….” My head is beginning to spin and what light I can see is fading.

“He’s not freed you enough. Dere’s more, but dat poor lad is strugglin’ wit’ getting’ ya stable and ye’re slippin’ away from him. You’ll need to drink dis.” He turns briefly to the slab, then picks up and proffers me a simple goblet. The liquid inside is red – wine, I conclude.

I bring up one hand to take the cup, but my knees give out and the darkness looms even larger. The shadow catches me as I buckle, lowering me slowly to the grass with one arm holding my head up. He holds the goblet in the other hand and brings it to my lips. Multiple voices whisper from the shadow’s mouth, pleading,n“Please, my love, drink dis….swallow, swallow….”

The liquid flows slowly into my mouth; the wine is sweet, but has a note of iron throughout. I can no longer see and the voices are fading; I gulp, if only to keep the wine from drowning me. The flow continues and I gulp again, and again, until the goblet is drained and the last drops have crossed my tongue. I once again float, this time in the shadow’s arms, until I lie supine on the slab.

The darkness slows its encroach to a crawl, then stops and begins to recede. My breathing slows and grows steady. The shadow stands over me, expectantly; the ribbons of his crown dangling over his shoulders.

“Thank you,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Whatever that was, I’m feeling better.”  

“Ye were dyin’,” he replies, a tremor of concern in his voice. “Poor Finn was gettin’ frantic lookin’ for how to break yer fever. I may have…added a recipe to your little grimoire to help ‘im along.”

“What do you mean?” I look up at him, brow furrowed.

“More will be revealed,” he says. “But not tonight. Tonight, you are to be healed.” With that, the shadow’s ribbons wrap around my wrists and ankles and press them against the cold stone as his hands carefully unknot the ties on my gown, then gently pull it open to expose my ruined and barren flesh.

Instinctively, I close my eyes and turn my head away from the shadow. Through the air a pair of voices chant the now-familiar incantation, as a pair of warm hands wander slowly over my breasts, my abdomen, my hips, my buttocks and, finally, my vulva and the casings fall away. Tears of gratitude streak my temples as a hint of the old sensations returns. I open my eyes to Finn tearfully whispering, “I’m sorry,” as he pulls the bed covers back over me and settles into a chair next to the bed.  

[agent-hood]

There are Wondrous things, There are Magical things, There are Dangerous things

We get what we deserve

@the-roanoke-society

The mission was relatively easy on paper, and one Parker had been looking forward to. A possible genius loci popped up in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and she was to go and observe. It was surprisingly hard to stumble across accidentally, but five people have still gone missing. Parker double checked her map and sighed in frustration- she had been out in the woods two days already, hiked majority of the western portion, and was no closer to stumbling upon the eldritch location than when she started. She glanced up at the sky, deciding it wasn’t too early to set up camp and transmit back her report. “Agent Hood reporting. End of day two concerning the mission, code: green-pnw. Still no sign of the target, designation ‘Eld fen’. I’ll wait another day and then try the east half. It’s frustrating,” She started. “It’s almost like the location is hiding. I’d say it sounds silly but... maybe not.” She confirmed the transmission was received and turned in early. She awoke with a strangled gasp, eyes shooting awake and body jolting in shock. For once, the first time since her incident, her slumber had been blank. No memories relived that she then had to catalog in excruciating detail, no lingering aches and pains from injuries outside this reality, just rest and slumber. Even more disorienting was that the environment around her was dark. Almost overwhelmingly so, except it was vivid as well. She could see every tree that surrounded her, every leaf on it, every star in the sky above. Two things were wrong with this: one- she had absolutely fallen asleep inside her tent (three hours ago according to her watch, but the level of pitch-black the sky was suggested it had actually been much longer) and was now outside and free of her camping accoutrements, and two- the sky was wrong. She didn’t hold the same fascination with the cosmos as Ellie did, but she was familiar enough with it to recognize that this sky was not of her world’s. There was not a familiar constellation above her, and any that could be discerned were drowned out by the overcrowded multitude of stars that seemed to blink and ripple as if they were breathing. This meant she had found the target. She was in Eld Fen. She rose to her feet slowly, feeling as sore and tired as if she ran a mile. Her walk was sluggish, but that allowed her the opportunity to take in more of her surroundings. The trees were a brackish brown, nearly red in hue, with bark soft and powdery to the touch. The leaves were an iridescent, deep purple that seemed to curl and shudder at her touch. She walked for what seemed like miles, only coming to a stop after tripping over a tree branch and getting her ankles tangled in it. “So pathetic.” A voice sneered. Parker couldn’t place it at first, not until the person came into view, which only confused her more as she had been the only one on this mission. “Morgan what’re you doing here?” “Lookin’ at the sorriest shit-show I’ve seen since the *last* time I had to bail you out of your mission.” “Morgan please, help me up I-“ “No.” Parker lowered her hand in disbelief. Morgan never had an unkind word for her, even when Parker deserved it most, so to hear her comforting drawl sound so curt was jarring. “Got a few things to say to you that’ve been jumpin’ to get out.” Parker groaned and fought to get up, more constrained by the roots than initially thought; but it was Morgan talking so she still listened intently- sure that it was important to the mission. “I shoulda left you in that ditch. Hell- I shoulda done us all a favor and slit your throat right there, saved us all the embarrassment. No one woulda found you. No one woulda cared.” The words stopped Parker. Oh god... she had always thought- but she never believed someone would have actually agreed with her. “You really think you’re so clever that we can’t see through your little act?” Ellie said. Parker tried to ask where she came from, but found herself growing too tired to question it too much. Besides she had to focus her energy on getting up. “You’re practically screaming for attention; every new conversation, every nice gesture, every. Single. Insipid. Smile. It’s all so selfish.” Parker screwed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the words, but they only drew closer. “You don’t actually care about us,” Raphaelle sneered, voice heavy with disdain. “It’s all some pathetic effort to be missed.” Parker wanted to get up and leave, argue, anything- but she was held fast in place, muscles asleep and weak. Plus... everything they were saying wasn’t exactly wrong. “You won’t be though.” It was now Ivar, staring down at her as if she were so small and pathetic. Like something to avoid on the sidewalk. ‘Not him,’ she thought desperately to herself, tears now leaking out in spite of her efforts to maintain composure. “Who could miss someone like you.” His deep voice enunciated, friendly accent gone and only sneering judgement in its place. “Cold, broken, judgmental. a little know-it-all who knows nothing. And you jumped into bed so easy- all it took was the slightest bit of affection. What does that say about you? You really think  I’m going to stay with someone who spreads her legs for a smile?” If her body held anything other than an exhausting hollowness, she’d apologize- beg for any sort of forgiveness, because they were right. Everything said was right. “You’re a blight on this agency,” Lilith said, as if she were stating a well known fact. “and you drag your mother’s legacy through the mud. So useless- you think I couldn’t have brought you back at any point? Why wouldn’t you stay gone?” “There’s a reason no one looked for you.” Kieran hissed, deep voice a twisting knife in her gut. “Dad...” She whimpered, squeezing her eyes tighter, not wanting to see how his face would twist and contort like the others. It was one continuous string of horrific familiarity; recognizable but too many eyes and teeth to be comfortable. “Any one of us could’ve went out and found you, but we didn’t. You were finally off our hands and then you had to come back. Ruined everything since- put your brother in danger because you’re such a child you need him like a safety blanket. At least until he does something you don’t like, then he’s discarded like an old toy.” His shadowy figure, blurred and amorphous but still recognizable, reached down and wrenched her face forward, fingers digging in to make sure she saw the hatred in his expression. “That’s my son.” He spat out in a whisper filled with the lethal intent she knew he was capable of when pushed to his limit. “The only reason I acknowledge you, is because he feels sorry that you’d be left out. Powerless and boring as you are, I’m ashamed.” Parker whimpered, unable to do much more than that. She saw Kieran change to Cthylla and she wanted to reach out, selfishly wanting him to stay despite all the times she told him contrary. “How dare you,” The Archivist hissed, face streaked with heartbreak. “You, a mere human, dare tread where I cannot. And dying where I cannot touch. How dare you take my love and spit in my face.” Wait... something was wrong. “You know what?” Carter started. “I’m glad you’re here, dying alone and far away from me! Maybe now I’ll finally get my own life and stop living under your fucking shadow!” “You’re not Carter.” Parker said definitively, voice weak and barely audible above a whisper, but it cut through the creature’s ranting. “That’s not how Carter feels. That’s how I feel that Carter should feel... this is all fake.” And as she said it out loud, her surroundings became clearer. Like a fog lifting, she was able to focus on more than the procession of hatred. She indeed was still in Eld Fen, alone underneath a strange sky, but she was tucked further into the roots against the horrid red tree. It seemed to exude a body-like temperature, and as She tried to pull herself free she found her body was practically caged. Entangled in it roots and covered in small, ghostly moss and luminous mushrooms ; Unsure if it was just blanketing her or growing from her. Further inspection showed that her body was emaciated, like she hadn’t eaten in two weeks, using the tree as a sort of life support with twigs digging deep into her body like IVs. That was impossible though, she hadn’t been here that long,... had she? So this was how she was going to die- fed on by a parasitic forest. This time she hoped she’d disappear with no trace, that no other agent would investigate and fall prey to this place. She would have been surprised at her calmness when faced with her imminent death but... she really couldn’t feel anything, even calm took effort. She closed her eyes in an attempt to slip away when she heard a frantic snuffling beside her. She managed to smile and whisper out Hampton’s name, having forgotten that he would be the last thing she sees when he comes for her. Always a good boy. Hampton began digging and pawing at the plants and lichen that enveloped her, pushing most of it away. Soon her body was free of most of its entrapments and enough of her strength returned to grasp onto his fur so he could drag her away. The farther she got from the tree the better she felt... to a point. She was definitely weak and drained, but now that she had her emotional and mental facilities back, she was pissed. She searched her pockets and was gratified to find her lighter. Normally she held a bit more reverence for nature and the delicate balance it held, which had only been reinforced by her training and dealings with the fae. But this forest needed to fuck right off. Despite the unsettling wetness of the tree, She successfully managed to start a solid fire underneath the roots, in the make-shift cradle where it caged her. Satisfied it would catch and spread, her only clue to this being a high-pitched shriek coming from... somewhere. she clung tightly to her wonderful, beautiful dog and allowed herself to rest, trusting him to take her where he may. ~ She came-to to heavy, comforting weights pinning her down. Hampton was dutifully laid across her feet, keeping her warm, and Carter was wrapped carefully around her, gangly limbs arranged so as not to disturb the various IVs and machines she was hooked up to. Ivar was on her other side- clinging to her as much as he could while still being confined to his chair- which meant he had been here long enough to not visit his main charging station. The walls were lined with chairs and shelves full of differing balloons and bouquets, all wishing her a speedy recovery. She couldn’t help the smile that bloomed across her face, fueled by a re-invigoration she hadn’t realized she had been so missing. Unhooking herself as quietly as she could, she snuck out of the medical bay, only alerting Hampton (who immediately and silently stuck by her side) to the fact she was now up and about. It must have been in the earliest hours of the morning, as the hallways of the manor were dark and quiet. She slowly, still exhausted and worn to her limit, made her way up to Lilith’s office, hoping to get her debriefing done while it was still fresh, but stopped short at the sound of arguing. “-the ever-loving fuck was I not called in for backup when she failed to report for 48 hours?" A voice (clearly Kieran’s) rang out, “Just because you are related to her does not-“ “Hey guys,” Parker interrupted, keeping her voice casual in an attempt to break the heated argument between her father and Lilith. “Sorry to interrupt.” “What are you doing up luv? You need to get back to-“ Kieran flustered, immediately rushing to her side to (needlessly) help prop her up. Parker interrupted him, putting a temporary stop to his worry. “I’m fine right now, I just needed to debrief- Lilith, I think there’s more to that place than we initially thought.” “Ms. Jensen surely this can wait until you’re out-processed from medical.” “No I’ll forget something and lose it by then. I’ll fill out form 87-b(103) later, promise.” The grand matriarch of Roanoke seemed flabbergasted by Parker’s insistence, having never seen the smaller woman show any measure that resembled assertiveness. She sat in the nearest chair, almost surprised she did so, and listened intently. “Ok so we thought ‘Eld Fen’ was some sort of genius loci, a part of the land that held residual energy or intelligence, but when I was being fed off of- by the way it feeds on people, it would generate hallucinations to manipulate my emotions, so maybe it feeds on those specific chemicals in the brain?” Parker shook her head and continued. “Anyways it made me hallucinate that all of you were there, not all at once, it would just pick a person and say something, really dug into my insecurities, but when it formed to Cthylla, I think it recognized her. Like, more than who she was in my life- it said something about ‘going where she could not’, so I think it knew what* she was.” “Hmm, we’ll have to ask her to see if the Ry’lethians had any sort of place known to them that was forbidden. Or persons.” Lilith agreed, already coming to the conclusion Parker had clumsily hinted at. “Kieran, do wait outside for a moment. I have some private words to impart on our Agent Hood.” He left, reluctantly, and let Parker know that he’d be right outside if she needed. “You mentioned that it made you hallucinate people you knew, I’m assuming the visions said horrible things.” “Yes ma’am. I’m not sure exactly what, but I think it fed on things like ‘deepest insecurities’ so having people you know tell you what you’ve always feared they thought would be the best way to get that.” “...May I ask if I was one of the figures you saw?” “You were ma’am.” Lillith’s face fell imperceptibly, if Parker knew better she would have guessed she was hurt by this information. “I cannot imagine what that mirage told you, but I can guarantee it was false.” Parker bit her lip and thought carefully. She could have railed against her, demanding to know about all the things the vision brought up; it was clearly weighing on her. But hearing each and every hurt she held out loud, it made it seem so much smaller than it felt. “It doesn’t really matter if it is or not ma’am. Or at least it doesn’t matter anymore, not to me.” Lilith nodded then, and in a graceful measured show of affection, took Parker’s hands in her own and squeezed them. She punctuated the gesture with a soft kiss, brushing her knuckles with firm lips and clemency. But if she was granting or asking for it, Parker didn’t know. It wasn’t her place to.

[feywildatheart]

Nenîth,

Oh gods, I haven't written you in days. I thought there was time, that nothing was going to send anyway until we got back to Haewood, at least, and so I had time to sort out my thoughts, and then-- well, this is what comes of praying, I suppose. But I didn't pray for this.

I should back up. We made it down onto the next level of the ruins, and we met a ghost named Ornelien Vedri who has been dead since before this place turned into ruins, and who took up residence in the library because there's an observatory there that he particularly likes. He has maps, too, and he let me look at them and take pictures of them with my LICD, and he gave us what information he could about this place, though he seems not to venture out from the library at all, so there wasn't much he could tell us about what's happened to this place in the last couple millennia. He seemed very distressed by the prospect when I asked if he'd seen any trolls or goblins or other such creatures passing through, and I felt a little bad for alarming him. Though he then proceeded to tell us about a secret door that led to a hidden room with a wardrobe, and a mimic, and I got my hand stuck to the thing for the whole of the fight that ensued. I think I believe him, that he didn't know that thing was in there, but I did feel a little less guilty, after that.

We found another ghost, too, a young woman who turns out to be the granddaughter of the sorceress who'd lived her before, and who seemed to be much more free-ranging than Vedri, and was able to tell us a bit more about the place and the sorceress -- and the goblins, a whole community of them apparently, several hundred strong, and not an army like Elyn had been calling it, and we were none of us too fond of the idea of killing non-combatants. Nor of facing down hundreds of them, either, so Elyn cast Tongues and we went to the door behind which we'd been told the community was living, and we... knocked. I had my head in my hands the entire time, but it worked out as well as we might have hoped.

The goblins seemed as bewildered by our actions as we were ourselves, honestly, and took us to meet their leader, a hobgoblin named Glel who spoke Common, thankfully, and who didn't seem keen on inviting violence down upon their community. And who also was surprisingly willing to forgive the scouting party we'd encountered and killed on the level above. They said that the scouting party probably would have done the same to us if we'd given them the chance, and agreed to let bygones be bygones, and then agreed to let the archaeologists come and do their studying in peace, in exchange for the three of us venturing into some of the tunnels that they'd blocked off, where they'd come from, and taking care of some creature within that had been killing them, and had been a large part of their incentive for moving into the ruins in the first place.

They couldn't tell us much about the creature, since everyone who ventured into those tunnels they never saw again, but we were all of us, I think, glad to do this in exchange for peace, and so we were kindly shown through the areas of the ruins that the goblins had taken for their own, so that I could add those rooms to the map of the place that I've been making for the archaeologists, and then past a series of locked doors into deeper areas of the ruins. We found a room that had been overgrown with flowering plants, and the sight of all those growing things down here underground, when we'd seen nothing but stone for days, nearly knocked the breath right out of me. There was another with vegetables left to grow wild and unkempt, and another, vast chamber that was practically covered with green, with shrubs and climbing vines and lichens everywhere one might look. Walking into there felt like a breath of air when I hadn't even realized I'd been drowning.

We continued on, through a corridor that had nearly entirely collapsed, though there was a long stretch of a small, tight space that we were able to squeeze ourselves through, with varying degrees of success. Cloudleaper and Elyn had a little more trouble than I did, and poor Squirt made it halfway through before he got stuck, but he blinked right to me when I told him too and saved us having to try to drag stones and rubble around to widen the way.

We all decided to rest there and catch our breath, after that, and Elyn and Cloudleaper pulled out their LICDs to write letters -- well, I assume Elyn was at least, it's anyone's guess what Cloudleaper was up to. And... I took mine out and I meant to write to you both, I did. I tried, but no words would come, and I just felt so tired and so worn down by everything. Before, when Elyn had been negotiating terms with the goblins, they'd agreed to take us to Glel so long as no one touched their weapons, and I said I wouldn't so long as no one laid a hand on anyone in our party, or Squirt, and... and Cloudleaper snapped at me that Squirt was a member of our party, obviously, and I should get with the program, and oh, nenîth, it was so unexpected and so patronizing and so incredibly, unbelievably tone deaf that I snapped something in reply that I shouldn't have, and it ate at me for all the rest of the morning. So I tried to write to you, I really did, but when I opened my LICD to start it, the only thing that I could coax out was a message to Pika instead.

She told me, when she first suggested that Cloudleaper join Elyn and me, to teach her how to be better with people, and if the weeks we've spent traveling with her have taught me anything, it's that I don't have the first idea how to do that. I'm still trying to learn how to be better with people, how am I supposed to teach someone something I barely even know myself? How am I supposed to teach someone who doesn't even respect me enough to be truthful with me? She's always lying, about the stupidest of things, about having seen trees or had coffee, and she thinks it's a great joke when I'm stupid enough to take her at her word, and-- why would she bother listening to me long enough to hear anything I had to say, when she's so obvious about how she feels about me?

I don't really expect either of you to have any answers for me. I'm sorry. I don't really expect Pika to, either, but it helped a little to write it down, to pull all those worries and doubts out of my chest and put them down on the screen. Well. A very little.

I was still tired and still run down and I still couldn't figure out how to start a letter to you both, and the longer I thought about just sitting there struggling to write to you while Elyn and Cloudleaper caught their breath, the more I kind of wanted to just start tearing at my hear in frustration. So I got up to my feet before I could really think about it, and I told the others I'd be back soon, and I told Squirt to take care of them, and I wriggled back through the collapsed hallway, back to the big room all filled with overgrown plants, where at least I didn't feel like I was suffocating under all this stone, and I found a little spot that I could clear away without disturbing the plants too much, and I knelt with my incense and my burner and I lit it and when the pine scent of it had filled my lungs I sent my magic out through the stone, into all the plants for as far as my magic would reach, and I coaxed them up thicker and fuller around me, and I... prayed. Poorly, I think, but I did it, and I think he heard me? When I was done, the air around me all of the sudden smelled like the Feywild does, in its deepest, thickest places, and it felt so much like home that it brought tears to my eyes. And when I wiped the tears away and opened them, all the plants around me had grown even more, dense and lush and green, and there were these lovely pink flowers climbing toward the driftglobes that hadn't been there before, that hadn't even been buds before.

I didn't know what it meant. I still don't, really, but it felt like I had been heard, and that's something, isn't it? I stayed a while longer, until the scent of the Feywild in my lungs had stopped feeling new, and then I went back and rejoined the others, and when I got there all at once there were wires sparking from the walls that I swear hadn't been there before I'd left, and there was LICD signal, and all those letters that I hadn't expected to send until we'd returned to Haewood took advantage of it and sent themselves out, and so if you feel like yelling at me over how much getting those letters and then none following them must have scared you, then you can yell at Cernunnos instead, because it's his fault.

Maybe don't, though. Cloudleaper was none too pleased by her letters going out unexpectedly, and started yelling, and I said that I was pretty sure it was my god who'd done it and maybe she shouldn't yell at him. I've only just started trying to doing this properly, I don't know that I've earned myself enough favor for him to forgive one of my companions swearing at him.

We continued on after that, because there seemed little else to do about the LICD situation, and we still had a promise to keep to Glel and the goblins. Elyn and I debated a little about using Pass Without Trace on us -- we were both, I think, justifiably cautious about the prospect of blundering heedlessly across whatever horrible thing it is that's been killing the goblins, but I can only cast it so many times a day before I'm exhausted, and we hadn't any idea how long we might need to travel to find this thing. We decided, in the end, to cast it once, and when the spell ended after an hour, to reassess then whether we should cast it again, or keep traveling a while first, if it seemed like it was likely to be a long walk.

I kept an eye out, while we traveled, for tracks that seemed like they might belong to the creature we were looking for, and some ways in, when the halls had given way to tunnels proper, found some scuttling tracks that I followed to a small cavern with a pool of water and two horrible lobster-looking creatures with tentacles for mouths.

Elyn had cast Greater Invisibility on me while I followed the tracks, and then Messaged me to see what I'd found and how we ought to proceed, which is a plan that would have worked a treat if the things hadn't apparently been able to sense the spell. The moment I responded to her, they whipped around toward me, and it was all I could do to quickly let Elyn know that I'd been noticed before we were fighting.

It was a quick enough fight, in the end, and really only Squirt got hurt, and only a little bit. Elyn healed him right up, and we quickly decided that we didn't think those things could be what had been killing the goblins. They'd have been a tougher fight for a goblin than for us, to be sure, but we didn't think it likely that they'd have been so devastating that not a single one would have ever managed to escape and return.

So we continued on our way, and eventually came to a split in the tunnel. I looked for tracks there, too, and didn't find any worth noting, but it seemed as though down one side of the tunnel, I could hear a bit of wind blowing. I wondered if that didn't mean that it was going to lead us back up to the surface of the mountain, but we decided that at least if it did, that meant that we would likely discover we'd taken the wrong route quickly enough, and could turn around and go down the other tunnel without having lost too much time. So we started down that direction together, and almost immediately walked straight into a face full of poisoned breath from a dragon. A dragon, nenîth, and we just wandered blindly into its cave, even with Pass Without Trace over all of us.

It hurt all of us except Cloudleaper, who seemed to shrug the poison off without a care, though Elyn worst of all, and I was grateful that it's so difficult to poison halflings, or I'd have been hurting even more than I already was.

As soon as I was able to get proper air back in my lungs, instead of poison, I scrambled away from the mouth of the cave where we'd all been clustered, and shouted a reminder over my shoulder to remember the lessons we'd learned from Peninth'zarthan, under the sands of Rugira Prime, and to spread out from one another. We fought it, and Squirt took a bite that would have been followed by a swipe from the dragon's claws, if he hadn't been so quick to Blink away. But then he ran right back in again, even though he was looking in frightening shape, between that and the poison he'd taken with the rest of us.

Partway through the fight, the dragon took off and flew from the cavern, out into the tunnel and down the direction we'd been heading, and Squirt took off after it like a shot, and Elyn ran after him when he started barking. I had gotten myself up onto a ledge at the far end of the cavern, with a slide of rocks at my back that didn't seem to end at a cavern wall, and I took a gamble and climbed up it, to see if luck might be with us and it might be a shorter way of getting to where the dragon had fled to than losing time by running after Squirt when I was already so far away, and my legs can only carry me so far so fast.

It was tricky getting up the rock slide, but at its top I was able to see into another cavern, and I could hear Squirt barking from just beyond another pile of rocks at its other end, and there was another pool of water here, but no dragon that I could see. It didn't take too much of a leap to figure that the dragon must have tried to take cover in the pool, but the water was too dark for me to make out any glimpse of it within it. And there I was at the top of a pile of rocks some thirty feet high, which I knew would take too long to try to clamber down, and there was a pool there below me, deep enough at least to hide a dragon, and really, what else was I to do? I jumped.

Cloudleaper had scaled the rocks behind me in the instant while I stood there considering the inevitable, a far deal more gracefully than I had, and I heard a snatch of her shriek when I jumped before the waters closed over me. Squirt must have gotten over his pile of rocks, too, or Blinked over, and either seen or surmised what I'd done, because in a moment he was there with me, churning through the water, and I held my breath and swam down as far as I could manage, searching for any sign of the dragon or where it might have gone.

I found it just as Cloudleaper came plummeting down into the pool with me, a darker shadow within the already-dark waters that looked to be a tunnel of sorts, angling back in the direction of the other cavern, and the other pool, and I supposed it must connect the two. I pointed it out to Cloudleaper, then came up to the surface to tell Elyn, who had wisely not followed us into the water and was standing at the pool's edge, looking equal parts alarmed and exasperated. When I told her what I'd seen, and that it must have swum through the tunnel back to the other pool, Elyn took off running, just in time for the dragon to reveal that it had been hiding in that cavern instead, by hitting Cloudleaper and Squirt and me with another gust of its poison breath. I was glad that Elyn had missed it, at least, and Cloudleaper still seemed unbothered by it, and then it retreated over the rockslide to the other chamber.

I knew it'd take me ages to get back up over the rocks the way I'd come, so I dragged myself across to the other side of the pool and raced after Elyn, as fast as I could manage, and came upon her in the corridor just beyond the entrance to the first cavern, just in time for her to splinter its head with a well-placed Shatter. It was a bit of a gruesome scene, but I climbed up onto the ledge it had died on and carved away a good amount of meat for our deal with the gnolls, and pried out a few claws and scales, too, to add to the ones in my bag that I'd gathered from Peninth'zarthan.

It was an easy decision, to stay the night here in the dragon's cave. We made our camp on one of the ledges, so that we might be better protected in case anything wandered by in the night, and I felt bad enough about the worry I'd caused Elyn and Cloudleaper that I meant to take the first watch, but Cloudleaper insisted that, as she only needed a few hours of sleep a night, she'd take not just the first one, but the first two. She seemed in no mood to be argued with, so I relented, but insisted that I'd take the last so that Elyn could sleep undisturbed, and in short order, Elyn and Squirt and I were all asleep.

And then we were all being woken up by Cloudleaper, who must have been more tired than she'd let on, or whose attention must have wandered, because a handful of fire snakes had come upon us in the night. We were all of us, I think, immensely grumpy at being disturbed, and at having to wake and fight instead of sleep, and honestly, we just killed a dragon. Having to fight fire snakes in the middle of the night just felt like adding insult to injury.

I'm taking my turn watching now, while Cloudleaper finally gets some sleep and Elyn gets back to hers, and taking the opportunity to write to you while I can, before you get too alarmed by those last letters. Maybe Cernunnos will take pity on your poor hearts and see fit to let this letter go out, too, so you won't have to fret for too long before it reaches you. I did ask him to take care of you both, after all. But if he doesn't, and you don't get this until we're back in Haewood, I hope you'll forgive me for worrying you so. I did my best.

I think we'd all like to hope that this was the end of it, with the dragon, but neither Elyn nor Cloudleaper looked particularly sure of that, and I have my own doubts. The dragon was tucked away down this little side tunnel here, sheltered in a cave, and didn't attack us until we blundered into its home. I know we're stronger than the average goblin, but it's still hard to imagine that not a single scout would manage to survive or avoid the dragon and return back to the community to tell the tale. And Glel made it sound as though, whatever it was that was killing their people, it came up from below. So tomorrow I think we're going to keep making our way through the tunnels, and hopefully whatever it is that we find, we won't walk face-first into it like we did with the dragon and its breath. I'll let you know, either way.

All my love,

Maliah

[queen-scribbles]

Saoirse

@pillarspromptsweekly fill #59: Remember. I’m going with the way Saoirse Ronan pronounces Saoirse(SEER-shuh), since she’s where I got the idea from, but if you say it differently in your head that’s cool, too. :)

If Elihu fell behind one more time, she was going to leave him, Galawain as her witness. Saoirse huffed in frustration, the agitated breath pushing cinnamon brown curls out of her eyes. She wanted to show someone the estramorwn ruin, and who better than him, right?

Had she realized what his travel pace was going to be, she’d have brought someone faster. Like Jago’s pet turtle.

“El!” Saoirse hollered, only feeling slightly bad when he flinched, a vibrant butterfly flitting away from one of the flowers growing near his laft ear. She kicked the dirt to hide her embarrassment and raked her hair back again. “Hurry up or it’ll be too dark to see anything by the time we get there!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Elihu replied, green of his eyes deepening in amusement as he caught up to her. “Gods, I know you’re excited, Saoirse, but you know I stop for butterflies.” He shot her a teasing grin. “You’ve only had four decades to account for extra time when we travel together.”

Saoirse rolled her eyes and twitched her wrist so the bracelets encroaching on her hand slid back down her arm. “And you know you don’t have to stop every time.” It was wasted breath and she knew it; the only thing in this life more sure than her dragging Elihu on adventures was him pausing to indulge the winged insects who mistook his head or arms for flora and fauna. “And for the record, I did account extra time, just not this much.”

“Saoirse, my darling, my dearest, my brave adventurer,” Elihu chuckled. “It’s a ruin, love, it’s not going anywhere.”

“But the daylight is,” she said emphatically, jerking her head toward the sky.  “Hence my worry about it getting dark. And we don’t know what might be in there, so I don’t want to burn through all my spells calling down sunbeams so I can see.”

“Maybe there will be torches,” he said helpfully as they crested a ridge, reaching for her hand. Saoirse gave it to him without a second thought. Forty years they’d been doing near everything together, the barky texture of his skin had long since ceased to phase her.

“And maybe next time the butterflies can just try to keep up,” she teased.

It wasn’t too much longer before their goal came into view: a wide river, strewn with rubble, and on the far side, the crumbling moss-grown walls of an estramorwn castle. The gates lay fallen in, and there were holes in the walls at several points, but it was still impressive enough to earn a whistle from Elihu.

“By the Builders,” he murmured. “You’d think they would guard a treasure like this with their lives...” 

Saoirse scoffed. “You know the estramorwn don’t respect their past like we do. Or, at least, like we used to.”

“Saoirse, not this again.” He squeezed her hand and tugged her into motion toward the ruins.

She bit her lip and followed him. He was right, and besides, there was no one around she could try to persuade. He agreed with her, if less passionately. “If nomads we must be, should we not at least try to stay closer to our roots?” She’d heard the history of places of places like Twin Elms and Rock of the Tears, and burned with mostly-quiet fury that the estramorwn had spread enough to edge the shrinking tribes of Eir Glanfath from their sacred sites.

But that was a concern to voice before Father headed to the next Gathering. Right now she was standing outside a ruin that teemed with history; the last thing she wanted was to be distracted.

They made it across the river with relative ease, clambering from piece to piece of the crumbled bridge. Saoirse paused by the wall, scraping off moss and ivy to examine the stone underneath.

“El, look!” She pointed at the stone only a foot or so above their heads. “The kith who built it put their names.”

He joined her and brushed his hand over the timeworn carving, the millennia-old words barely legible. “They did fine work; it’s good they achieved some form of immortality.”

“Mmhm.” Her attention was already wandering through the tumbled gates, toward the collection of buildings protected within. She heard Elihu chuckle as he followed her through the overgrown arch.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked as the two of them stepped in to survey the layout of the castle.

“The big one, of course,” Saoirse smiled. She skirted the wreckage of an outdoor forum, its wooden seats long ago dry-rotted, and started hauling open the door of the main keep.

Elihu caught up in just a couple long legged strides and helped her pull open the heavy door. “Anything particular you’re expecting to find?”

“Rocks, moss, maybe a few artifacts that haven’t completely turned to dust yet?” she shrugged. “It’s been a few hundred years at least since anyone was in here. Who knows what shape they left it in.”

The main hall was fairly bare as they strolled up its length. Whoever had emptied it--looters or the former occupants--had done a good job. Still there was something about the room that called to her, as if she could feel the history of it swirling just below the surface. Close enough to reach out and touch, pulsing with familiar warmth.

Slightly offput by the familiarity of this room, but still curious, Saoirse detoured through one of the doors that opened off it. She found herself in a library, the shelves mostly empty. The few books that remained looked brittle, and one fell apart when she touched it. This room, too, felt familiar. Safe. Her chest tightened with emotions she could neither name nor explain. Taking slow breaths to calm herself, far more quietly than her norm, Saoirse ventured further into the library. She thought, ever so briefly, she glimpsed a dark-haired elven man reading at one of the tables. But that was ridiculous. This place had clearly been abandoned for at least a couple hundred years--

“The whole keep is falling apart, but this room does seem to have been particularly neglected.”

She flinched. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Elihu frowned. “I didn’t say anything.” He shot her a concerned look. “Hearing ghosts?”

“Very funny,” Saoirse sighed, tugging at one of her longer curls as she kept walking. It was a fairly basic library, if well crafted. Only the outside wall was anything special--half its width was covered by a cracking mosaic of adra pillars.

She froze at the sight of it. She remembered that mosaic--”Gareth, it turned out wonderfully!”--but how could she? The tightness in her chest morphed into a tingle, like a sleeping limb regaining circulation. She was vaguely aware of the quick scuff of Elihu’s feet as he came to an abrupt halt behind her, the soft rush of his breath on the back of her neck as he chuckled.

“Seeing another ghost?” he teased, but the voice was only half his. The other half was deeper, but still warm, rich. Kind.

She started and heard the tumble of books hitting the floor. The deep, warm voice--Kana, something in her prompted--was apologizing, but she was distracted by the books. Where had they come from? Where they there before? Either way, no sense leaving a mess. “It’s alright,” she replied, though the voice was too soft, too high. “And in a sense, yes? I was picturing what this place used to look like. What I want to make it look like again.” She cocked her head, smiling sheepishly. “Not that books have souls.”

“Well, you know what they say about good stories coming alive,” he said teasingly, setting the rescued books back on the table, and she laughed again.

“I’m tired of the library being so shabby, Kana,” she admitted. “I’m going to have the workmen fix it up next.”

The... sensation faded abruptly as an elbow dug hard into her back. Saoirse rocked forward, arms jolting out to keep her balance.

“You alright? What was that?” Elihu demanded, brow wrinkled in concern.

“...Nothing,” she tried, rubbing her forehead.

“Nothing? Saoirse, you were still as a rock.” The concerned furrow deepened.  “You were just... staring at the wall. That doesn’t seem like nothing to me.” He circled in front of her and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Did you see something?”

Saoirse forced a smile and focused on staring at the mossy patches above his eyebrows rather than meet his gaze. “Just my imagination runnin’ a little wild. Come on, I don’t think there’s anything to find here.” She briefly pressed his hand closer to her cheek before turning on one heel and marching out of the library without a backward glance. The tight, agitated tingle in her chest didn’t go away when they returned to the main hall. Indeed, it almost seemed to grow stronger, drawing her... somewhere.

The dais. She paced with confidence  toward the head of the room, eyes locked on the throne that waited upon the three-step rise. It was overgrown with lichen and ivy, but some hints of the ornate carving still peeked through. That was it, the source of the tug in her chest. The lichen came off far more easily than Saoirse expected, and her hand brushed the cool marble underneath--

“My lady, it’s so good to see you again!”

Saoirse jerked her hand back as if the stone had burned her at the soft yet delighted greeting. “Where-?”

Behind her, Elihu had tensed as well, both of them searching the chamber for whoever had spoken.

“I apologize,” the voice came again. It was close, Saoirse noted. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, it’s just been so long...”

“Startle’s a better word than frighten,” Saoirse said, still scanning for the woman speaking. “And I’m no one’s lady-- ‘cept his, I guess” --she nodded jerkily toward Elihu-- “and I don’t know who you are, but I’m pretty damned sure we’ve never met.” She wasn’t, not after the library.

There was a soft laugh that sounded as if it came from the throne. “Not in this life, perhaps. But your soul is a beacon, my lady, I could not miss it if I wished to.”

Saoirse looked back at Elihu. He shrugged, raising his hands in a gesture of ignorance even as his eyes flared bright with curiosity that seemed for once the match of her own. “Is that right? I’d think being... acquainted with a castle would be a memory that managed to poke through.”

“Souls are funny things sometimes.” The voice, which sounded amused, was definitely coming from the marble throne. 

Saoirse knelt on the seat and swiped at the lichen and ivy until it was mostly cleared away. The tingle in her chest grew stronger as she sat back with lichen under her nails to survey her handiwork. The throne was carved to resemble a woman, her arms the arms of the throne, her head and shoulders rising behind whoever occupied it. 

The throne gave a gentle, almost motherly, chuckle. “Ah, an elf this time.”

Saoirse frowned, playing with one of her bracelets as she parroted, “This time?”

Before the throne--statue?--woman could reply, the tingle in her chest erupted like flames catching tinder. Right before her eyes, the ivy and other growths vanished, though the hall still lay in ruins, covered in dust but bathed in a pale blue light.

“Another Watcher in Caed Nua. Glowing very brightly indeed to these eyes. A strange happenstance.”

“Who are you?” The question and the voice were both hers but someone else’s, as was the underlying curiosity. The same soft voice from the library, in fact. When she flinched in surprise at that, it shifted her arm into her peripheral vision. Only, it wasn’t her arm; lightly tanned and perpetually sporting bruises and scrapes from time spent outside. It was blue, marked by swirling silver designs, the wrist scarred under a trio of woven bracelets much like the ones Saoirse herself wore. She remembered the answer to her question even as a hand rested on her shoulder.

“Saoirse. Saoirse.” Elihu shook her gently. “Are you alright.”

She blinked and the ivy was back, curling around everything. Keeping her gaze on the marble throne, Saoirse raised one hand to cover the one Elihu had rested on her shoulder. She gave it a reassuring squeeze as she spoke to the statue.  “Steward.”

“You remember.” The Steward’s tone was wistful. “I’m unsure whether to be grateful or apologize that our connection had such consequences for you.”

Saoirse shook her head. “I... don’t think it was you,” she said slowly. Her mind was reeling from a literal lifetime’s worth of new memories, but she was pretty confident in that. “I think it’s just... being here.” She glanced around the hall, chest aching with remembered care. “The life that knew you... She bonded strongly to this place.” It wasn’t a question.

 “Moreso than any of the occupants before or since,” the Steward confirmed fondly.

“This was her home, in a way few ever find it,” Saoirse murmured, the ache flaring into pride at her home. But it wasn’t. It had been this past life’s, the Watcher. Lucky woman.

“Yes,” the Steward said, her voice warm with memory. “Lady Emiri fought very hard for this place. She even rebuilt it, twice. She was quite happy here, and I hoped...” She hesitated. “It might be foolish, but I did hope that bond would draw her--you--back. So I could see what you made of yourself in whichever life returned here. I take it from your attire you’re Glanfathan now?”

Saoirse nodded. “Trained as a druid, yes. My father is anamfath of the Twice- Split Arrow” --she squeezed Elihu’s hand again-- “Welcomers of outcasts.”

“A fine life.” The Steward’s voice brimmed with motherly pride. “It does me good to see you so happy, my lady.”

“Just Saoirse,” she corrected with  a chuckle. “Like I said, I’m no one’s lady.”

“If that is your wish, I will respect it, but you will always be my lady, Saoirse.”

“I’ve always wanted the loyalty of a ruined, sentient castle,” Saoirse joked. “I imagine there’s lots of exploring to be done here?”

“Oh, yes. A few parts have fallen into dangerous disrepair, however, so I would advise caution.”

“And the full light of day,” Elihu murmured in her ear. “If we’re not back soon, the rìow will start worrying.”

He was right and she knew it. The light was fading fast and this part of the Dyrwood teemed with predators at night. “Well, then I’ll have plenty of excuse to come visit, won’t I?” she said, both to him and the Steward.

“Oh, my-- Saoirse. I would appreciate that very much.” The Steward sounded so happy, Saoirse half expected her to start beaming, despite being made of marble.

“Alright, then. I have to train new druids tomorrow, but the day after, I’ll be back.”

“We’ll be back,” Elihu corrected. His hand slid from her shoulder down her arm, fingers linking with her own. “Exploring’s not a thing to undertake solo, Saoirse. And this place is fascinating. I’ll come with you.”

She flashed him a giddy grin before turning back to the Steward. “So you’ll see both of us the day after tomorrow, then.”

“I will look forward to it,” the Steward replied. The marble expression didn’t change, but her voice carried a smile.

After a beat more hesitation, bouncing slightly in excitement, Saoirse tugged Elihu’s hand and the two of them headed out the way they’d come. Elihu ducked as they passed through the doorway, narrowly missing a trail of ivy trying to snag on his horns.

Outside was darker than expected when they exited the hall, and Saoirse shifted by reflex into her cat form, removing any concern about seeing. She could only hold it long enough to get them back to the forest, but that was better than picking  their way across the rubble-strewn river blind.

“Well, that was..  an adventure,” Elihu said dryly, clasping her hand once more as they strolled briskly through the woods back towards camp. “Not every day you meet a talking statue.”

“Yeah,” Saoirse mumbled. She could feel Emiri’s sense pressing close to the surface, near-bubbling with excitement over something; though whether a memory or something else she couldn’t tell. The feeling of overwhelming, giddy joy only increased when Elihu squeezed her hand. Apparently her past Lady Watcher life had some strong, fond emotions tied to walking through this part of Dyrwood.

“It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with, right?” that soft voice from inside the keep laughed in her mind.

“I would have to agree with you,” the deep, kind one Emiri remembered as Kana replied, his tone light and happy. “Good company can vastly improve all manner of circumstances, and yours is among the very best, Emiri.”

Saoirse felt the thrill Emiri was quick to tamp down as she shyly mumbled yours as well and bit back a smile. Oh, that’s cute. She was sweet on him. Wonder if she ever did anything about it. And why I’m seeing that now... She glanced at her hand, still clasped in Elihu’s.

“It’s not where you are, it’s who you’re with.”

She grinned as glimmering suspicion turned to near-surety. Well, even if she didn’t, I sure did. Impulsively, she pulled Elihu closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for having my back, El.”

He chuckled, and she could feel his bemused gaze as he squeezed her hand again. “Always,” he promised.

Warm as the sentiment had made her in the past, this time Saoirse couldn’t help but smirk. Darling, you have no idea.

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

Time for notes!

I was all set to write this other, bittersweet idea I’ve been holding onto for ages that would have ripped my heart out in the best way, when randomly, out of nowhere, I remembered the chorus to Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away” (”In another life/I would be your girl/we’d keep all our promises/be us against the world”) and my brain went HEY DO THAT INSTEAD. 

Obviously someone somewhere found a way to fix the, uh, Events of Deadfire’s ending. Not necessarily Emiri, just someone.

Saoirse and Elihu are both elves(Elihu is a nature godlike) and are childhood sweethearts

Yes, Elihu absolutely has Kana’s soul like Saoirse has Emiri’s. This is not necessarily Soul Twin-ness and is more I wanted to do something nice for my girl after the frankly ridiculous amount of crap she goes through as Emiri

So, yes, I gave her the guy she liked in a later life where both of them will live to be 250. Ish. They’ll be gloriously happy together and adopt kids and fluff will abound and no one can stop me. NO ONE.

Saoirse’s Awakened soul falls somewhere between what the Watcher gets with the Inquisitor and Aloth gets with Iselmyr(Emiri’s memories are more frequent, Saoirse gets a few little cipher powers on top of her druidic abilities, but Emiri’s voice isn’t ever gonna come spouting out Saoirse’s mouth)

I sort of played with the future of the world, since this is a good 500-ish years down the road, but I really wanted the Current Life to be Glanfathan, bc I think their culture is neat

All of the things Saoirse “remembers” in Caed Nua are from my fics or the game itself. There’s one from Secrets and two from Stories, then her conversation with the Steward is game dialogue. That last one(”It’s not where you are...”) isn’t, but now I wanna make it be

I think that’s everything?

Oh, and I absolutely did NOT make Saoirse in Deadfire to see how Oracle (Druid/Cipher) plays out functionally. Nope. Totally didn’t.

Didn’t use Emiri’s worldstate to do it, either.

[dstickman-blog]

Interlude 1 - pt.2

Abather Crowley “What'sa Teleportation? Why is there a room for it in a mine?…” I would hold my chin, absolutely confused as to what the sign means. “Do ya know where ta find the room, ser?”

DM Jameson looks at you blankly, then back at Nuria. “Who is this? Is he trustworthy?”

Abather Crowley I extend my hand, smiling in a nervous fashion. “Abather Crowley, Ser.”

Nuria Quil “He’s my body guard, it’s all good. If he makes any trouble I’ll beat him up! But I think we have a bigger problem. If it actually is a teleportation room, that means the mages had a reason to come here. Which means that room is not the end of this. There’s likely something big and bad here.”

DM Jameson shudders. “I’m glad we have a cleric here to investigate it. I am loathe to think of us stumbling on this a few weeks ago, before your arrival.”

Nuria Quil “Well, luckily you don’t have to. Let’s go figure this out.”

DM He motions you on through the tunnel entrance. “Follow the main tunnel, and then take a right down the shaft still lit by lamps.” He hands you each copper lanterns, each about half full of oil. “May need these I think. The other human miners use them too.”

Nuria Qui “Thank you.”

Abather Crowley I hang the lantern on a hook fastened to my belt, making sure both hands are free. A full hand will only get in the way of using a bow. “Ready when you are, Miss Cleric.”

Nuria Quil I’ll hold the lantern in my sheilds hand and continue.

DM You both walk walk tentatively into the mine. The first 20 or 30 feet of the tunnel are heavily reinforced and dug out from dirt. The ground there is pack by hundreds of footsteps but fairly soft. You can tell instantly when this changes to stone. It’s like stepping into the inside of a seashell, the way the silence sounds like waves off the walls. The tunnel becomes non-uniform, with outcriopings of lumpy rock protruding into mine shaft from all sides and ceiling. You pass by a small collection of dropped or set-aside tools as you approach the side tunnel that Jameson described.

Nuria Quil “Well, I guess it’s now or never.” I begin walking down the tunnel

DM You lead the way. The ground here is a little less even and packed down. Bits of gravel and loose dirt crunch under your feet as you follow the lamplight further into the depths of Colley Hill. Pretty soon you see the collapsed wall–like Jameson said, it would have been impossible to miss. The stone has collapsed inward, with large chunks of rock scattered around a huge, trapezoidal opening. There is a gentle breeze coming from within, and you can vaguely make out silhouettes and shapes in the darkness.

Nuria Quil “Hey Abigail, what do you think we should do here?”

Abather Crowley I take my hand crossbow into one of my hands, and load a bolt into it. “It’s Abather, Miss… Follow me. If there’s anything in there… Well, if I can sneak up on a rabbit, this’ll be a sinch.” I then slowly step into the opening, trying to keep my steps soft and light. I look around as I step into the room, trying to adjust to the small amount of light the lantern on my hip gives me. “Unsettling place…”

Nuria Quil “I’ll just, stand in the back. Tell me when I’m good to move up.”

DM Abather, it takes a long thirty seconds for your eyes to adjust to the dim light. Even then, you’re not entirely sure what you’re seeing. The room before you is cracked by intruding rock formations, but you can tell that once upon a time this room was something like a meeting area or foyer. After a moment you finally put together what it is that’s bothering you about this space: there’s no seams. No individual stones, no mortar, no beams, no framing. It’s as if the room was sculpted out of one huge block of granite, or simply grew into this shape without the need for masonry or joining artisanship of any kind.

There are two bodies in sight, although in their current state they look more like vaguely human-shaped husks. They’ve been emtombed here for a long time and seem to have dried into mummified versions of what they were in life.

Abather Crowley My skin begins to crawl at how unnatural it feels; I’m growing more nervous with every step closer toward the bodies. Feeling no immediate danger, I turn to bid Nuria to come closer behind me. I would mutter to myself as I turn back to the bodies. “Scary things, you are…”

Nuria Quil I slowly walk forward, trying to keep from jingling.

Abather Crowley I bend down to examine the bodies further, to try and estimate what they once where. “It'sa tomb, I think, Miss Cleric. I reckon you know a lot more about this stuff th'n me.”

DM The skin has dried into something like a brittle leather covering bones–you think that the structure looks Elven but you’re not completely sure. The room itself seems more or less otherwise empty. There’s some broken furniture, including a huge longtable made of oak that has long since collapsed under the weights of itself and time. There is a door beyond that appears to be bowed inward, barely attached to the door frame any more. It looks likely that there’s collapsed rock or some other debris pushing in on it from the other side. From here and in the dark the door seems a little strange. Like it’s textured.

Abather Crowley “Y'should stay here, Miss Cleric. I'mma check that door…” I approach the door, hand crossbow raised. After making my way there, I sling my shovel over my shoulder, off the hook on my backpack, and poke the door with the long handle, seeing if what’s behind it will give way if the door budges.

DM With a simple poke, the door thunks woodenly. It does not seem to budge in either way, wedged into place.

Abather Crowley Slinging the shovel back over my shoulder to hang beside my backpack, I place a hand on the door, trying to see what it might be made of. Afterwards, I then look for a way to open it. “Stand back, Miss. May get a little tricky, what might happen.”

Nuria Quil “I am not moving from this spot.”

DM Abather, you find a gap between the door and the frame and wedge the edge of your shovel into it. Based on the feel and the scraping sound, you wager that it’s mostly loose rock that’s pushing the door in.

DM You put your shoulder into the shaft of the shovel, using it as a lever to pry open the door. It doesn’t seem to move. You strain harder and the door squeals, inching open. You hear the rocks shift behind it. Suddenly, it pops open, sending a small avalanche of rock, silt, and plaster into the room you’re in. You feel pretty good about it until you see the head of your shovel–it’s bent to the point of near uselessness.

Abather Crowley Waving my hand to clear dust from my face, I simply sigh, and sling the ruined shovel back over my shoulder. “That’ll have ta be fixed later… Shall we continue, Miss Cleric? Or are d'ya wanna focus on the bodies?”

Nuria Quil “There is nothing I can do for these. Let’s continue.”

DM The next room, illuminated by lantern light, seems partially collapsed. The floor is caved away in places and a small trickle of water Cascades down the far wall and disappears into craggy cracks and the floor. Some, but not much, of the original architecture is still intact, including a handful of large marble floor tiles that have a partial Circle designed into them with runes dotting the outer edge. Some of the walls and areas of the floor have mushrooms and lichen growing. They fill the room with an earthy, musty scent. There is a body in this room as well, crouched in the corner with its arms raised over its head as if to Shield it from some long gone Danger.

Nuria Quil I’m trying to commit the runes and symbols to memory.

Abather Crowley “Y'got any idea what this is, Miss Cleric? I’ll admit, I’m a tad lost… I can’t tell what even caused all this, either…” I look up to the cieling above the body, and then around the room itself; I want to try and get a clear picture of what happened in this room.

Nuria Quil “I don’t have any clue… I’m a woman of faith, not magic.” I walk around the room clearing debris and other objects to see the runes underneath, and commit them to memory. “Well, I don’t know what any of this means. Ready to keep going?”

Abather Crowley “Y-yeah… Let’s keep going. D'you see an opening anywhere? More rooms nearby?”

Nuria Quil “Scared?”

Abather Crowley “I’m no coward, but… I’m from Riverview, Ma'am. Just a simple farmboy. All this… Magic stuff makes my skin crawl…”

Nuria Quil “I don’t quite see what happens from here. I figure this would be either a broom closet, or the entrance. So we should probably work backwards from here.“

DM As you two poke around in this second room, Nuria gets a bit too close to a mushroom. It shrinks back,withering in some sort of self defense mechanism. Then, the mushroom next to it does the same. And the one next to that one. Like a wave rippling across the walls and floor, all the fungus in the room withers back. For a few seconds, nothing else seems to happen.

Nuria Quil "Abby, look at these cute little mushrooms!”

DM With that, they shake, pop open, and explode, sending thick clouds of spores into the enclosed space. Constitution saves at disadvantage

DM Between the sheer volume of spores and the tightness of the space there’s just no avoiding it. You breathe them in. Lungfuls of spores that tingle–not unpleasantly–as they coat your throat and the inside of your chest. Your vision starts to blur, and you lean against the walls for support. You make panicked eye contact for a moment. Before either of you can speak a word, Abather slips to the ground, unconscious. Nuria struggles a few more tottering steps before she, too, slips away into endless black.

Nuria, you are floating in nothing, twisting and turning in a void without light, without gravity. Before you is the corded door to The Slumbering World. The silence presses in on you from all sides.

Nuria Quil I swim over to the door.

DM As before, the door seems to invite you in spreading away from your body as you approach. Beyond it you can see the room you were in moments ago. There’s no one in it and the mushrooms as well as the circle of runes are undisturbed. When you flip through the door gravity seems to gently assert itself, and you drift upright to your feet.

Nuria Quil I walk through the doorway we will enter through in a few moments.

DM Beyond it is the city from your dream before. You find yourself in the burnt out town square, the familiar muted sounds and over vibrant colors of before. This time, two things are different. The town is no longer on fire–it looks like that’s gone out days ago. Smoking charcoal and debris are all that remain in the twilight. Secondly, Abather is there.

Nuria Quil “Abby! Can you hear me?”

Abather Crowley I look around, feeling a little more than lost and confused, maybe even scared. Hearing Nuria call out to me, I turn to her immediately. “Miss Cleric! W-where are we?… Am I dead? Are WE dead!? You’re a Cleric, yeah? What’s going on?”

DM Your voices have a simultaneous bigness and smallness to them, like shouting in a soundproof room.

Nuria Quil “You’re totally dead.”

Abather Crowley I immediately gasp, not quite wanting to believe Nuria, but… She is the authority on this stuff. “W-well what abou’ you? Y-you sound… Awfully fine with this.”

Nuria Quil “Oh, i’m fine. You however, are one hundred percent, for sure, very dead.”

Abather Crowley “Where’m I, then? Did I make it ta the other end?… Do I get to see Elaine again!? Please, Miss Cleric, if she’s here I gotta find her.”

Nuria Quil “Wow, okay. Sorry to break your dreams, but you’re dreaming. I uhhh, didn’t realize you had any loved ones you wanted to see… Sorry.”

Abather Crowley Giving Nuria’s shoulder a quick punch, I draw my scarf up to hide my face, quite upset at all of this. “That was pretty mean spirited, y'know… Wha…. What now? We’re dreaming? Of what?…”

DM Abather, you glance around from the burnt out town square. There’s not much left to recognize, but even taking that into consideration you’re fairly certain that you’ve never been here before. One thing does stick out to you–a roof poking up from behind some collapsed buildings that seems untouched by flame. From here it looks like a simple two-story house, somehow miraculously spared from whatever fires consumed this place.

Abather Crowley I shake my head. “Not a clue where we are, Miss. Seems like some sorta… Wildfire went through here.” I then point to the lone standing building. “There'sa place intact there, Miss. Should we go look?…”

DM Nuria, the building that Abather is pointing to is the house you went in the first time you were here, you’re sure of it. It completely defies chronology that it is fully restored.

Nuria Quil “If you want to, it’s not often people can join the Slumbering World. Explore, you can lead here.”

Abather Crowley I reach for my hand Crossbow- not even entirely sure if it’s there- and pull my scarf from back over my face. “O-okay! We’ll go look, then. Let’s go, Miss.”

DM Abather, you lead the way. The ground buckles under your feet, like walking through wet sand. The world is eerily quite. There are no birds, there’s no breeze. Looking up, you’re not even sure there’s a sun. The town around you is just… lit somehow.

Abather Crowley Feeling my skin crawl from how unnatural this world feels, I take deep breaths to keep myself calm, trying to ignore the inconsistencies and contradictions this place has with the waking world. “So… How long are we supposed to be here? Before we wake up from the dream, that is?…”

Nuria Quil “Until we need to.”

Abather Crowley “Do you know why we’re here, then?…”

Nuria Quil “Probably because we’re asleep. Last time I went into that same building, so it’s probably important.”

Abather Crowley “Not t'be rude or anything, Miss, but… You’re bein’ pretty vague about all this. Do we have something t'do here or not? Do the Gods have a task for us?”

Nuria Quil “The gods never say anything. They just… Do stuff. I’d really love to say more, but I honestly don’t know.”

Abather Crowley I shrug, continuing the trek to this building in the distance. “You’d know better than me… Say, y'look young fer a Cleric, Miss. Not t'sound disrespectful or anything.”

Nuria Quil “I never had many friends. I just read the books all day. After a while the temple decided I spent enough of my time reading and figured it was about time to get rid of me. So I got out early. You don’t need to be so formal with me, your older than me anyways.”

Abather Crowley “Oh no, that won’t do, Miss. My Ma taught me to be polite ta Ladies. M'head hurts just thinkin’ about her Ladle on m'head. Wonder if she’s still using it to keep Pa in check.”

Nuria Quil “Hmmm. I’ll break you one day. Where are we going?”

Abather Crowley “The only building standing, Miss. Y'did say it was important. Besides, not much t'be found in ashes.”

Nuria Quil “Alright.” I walk towards the building.

DM As you get closer you can see that the house is indeed fully intact. It’s as if someone rebuilt it board for board right after the fire died down–or maybe that the flames simply steered clear of this house. The front door is open, just as it was the last time you were here, Nuria. You can see some of the furnishings and the staircase leading to the second floor from outside.

Abather Crowley I enter the building, pointing my Hand Crossbow at any doorways as I look. “D'you know what this place is, Miss?”

Nuria Quil “It was on fire last time I was here, some girl was trapped inside.”

DM When you both cross the threshold into the house, it’s like a cosmic switch is flipped. The inside of the house is now a burning inferno, as it was the last time. The town behind you is peaceful and calm, like nothing bad had ever happened to it. Going up the stairs you see yourselves. A mirage-like, semi-transparent Nuria and Abather climbing the melting staircase. They pause, looking over their shoulders to wave you forward. Then they go to the second floor and out of sight.

Abather Crowley Absolutely confused and panicked about what’s going on, I freeze for a moment. It’s like I’m being barraged with too much at once. But I collect myself, drawing my scarf over my mouth and nose to try and keep out smoke, as I rush to where our ghost-like apparitions were waving us to.

Nuria Quil I rush up the staircase.

DM You see the second floor, same as before–the young woman is awake this time, staring off into the distance. She seems awake but unconscious. The glass orb is in her hands. Then, she falls. She hits the ground and the glass rolls out of her hand, landing exactly where it was the last time you were here, Nuria. Then, she disappears, leaving the orb behind. The house is burnt out. The fires are gone. The beams have collapsed and there are gaping holes in the floors and walls. You can make out the glint of glass in the middle of the room .

Nuria Quil I pick up the bead.

Abather Crowley “W-what’s that there, Miss?… Is it why we’re here? Some sorta sign?..”

Nuria Quil “Who knows. It was here last time, I didn’t get a chance to look at it though.”

DM The bead glows softly, as if it is containing a universe of fire within. Then, it flashes. With a start, you both awaken in the room under the mine.

Nuria Quil I groan, rolling over on my side as I rub sleep from my eyes. “Abs, you awake?”

Abather Crowley I groan awake, brushing hair out of my face as I sit up. “Nnnn….. Nuria? What… Are we back?…”

Nuria Quil “I think so… I don’t… That orb popped me out last time too…”

Abather Crowley I shake my head to quickly wake up, and look around myself; have we remained in the room we slept? Where we moved? How in the WORLD did our Lanterns not catch fire? “D'you feel any different? Feel any more… I dunno, holy? We did do godly stuff, didn’t we?”

Nuria Quil “I don’t know man! Usually I just dream about long walks on the beach and fluffy animals!”

Abather Crowley “More pleasant ‘n what I get, mostly… D'you think… There’s more t'this cave? Like a room we’re missin’? Some purpose we’re not gettin’? The miner did say it was… I dunno whatchya call it… A 'Teleportation’ room?”

DM Before you can say anything else the room spins. You both see spots, and vomit. Abather first.

Abather Crowley It’s not a pretty sight, either. If any man could vomit gracefully, it wouldn’t be me.

Nuria Quil I have been surviving on a diet of gruel and oatmeal. Mine isn’t a pretty sight either.

Abather Crowley After recovering from such a gruelling process, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve, and check to make sure none of it got on my scarf. “Urgh… Y-you okay? Urk-… Nuria?”

Nuria Quil Looking slightly miserable, I whipe my mouth off. “Well. Bad news, I think I’m dying. Good news, my dog isn’t here to eat it this time.”

Abather Crowley Getting up to my feet, I turn and offer a hand to Nuria. “D'we still got business in here? Was all that the 'Teleportation’?”

Nuria Quil “I have no idea.” I take his hands up.

DM You pull each other up, and the room tilts slightly, sending another wave of nausea through you. For a moment you’re not sure if it’s still the residual sickness from the spores, but you start to realize that the world feels different. It’s extrasensory, like suddenly being able to detect magnetism or see infrared. You realize that the runes that you’ve memorized are more than just script. They’re a map that describe this location. A literary representation of some kind of universal coordinates. You both let the room settle for a second and slowly start feeling like yourselves again. You can’t help but focus on the body in the corner. It looks like it’s shifted slightly since you last looked at it.

Nuria Quil “Hey uhhhh, Amy… Does something look different to you?”

DM You do notice that the corpse seems to have shifted slightly–but more importantly, you notice something different about Nuria. Nuria, what is it?

Nuria Quil Nuria’s hair has seemed to lose its brown tone, and taken on a phantasmagoria of reds, blues, yellows, and every color in between.

Abather Crowley “N-Nuria! Your hair!- What in the… What happened to it?” Grasping my head in my hands, I get a worried expression. “Did MY hair do that too!?”

Nuria Quil “Do what? You look normal. Am I bald!?”

Abather Crowley “It’s! It’s-… Rather pretty, actually. Ghah! It’s like you have a field'a flowers on your head!”

Nuria Quil “Did I turn into a pot or something?”

Abather Crowley At that, I take the pot hanging off my backpack and point the bottom at Nuria, to try and make a makeshift mirror; it probably won’t work, but hey, I can try.

DM Nuria you can vaguely make out a warped reflection of yourself in the shiny pot bottom. It’s clear that your hair is vibrantly colored many flowering hues.

Nuria Quil “Why am I pink now!?”

Abather Crowley “Your guess is better'n mine! Y'feel any different? Maybe somethin’ in the room changed you? Whatabout the runes on the floor? Are they different?”

Nuria Quil “I mean, maybe! I… We should just go, it’s probably dangerous in here.”

Abather Crowley “Wait… We should stay a bit. Something is still off. The body moved.”

Nuria Quil “That’s exactly why we should leave. Bodies don’t just move on their own, Ana.”

Abather Crowley “Well, we move. And we’re bodies, yeah? So why can’t he?” After stating my internal logic, I walk over to the body and examine it again, wondering if it’s even the same body at all.

Nuria Quil “I’m standing ten feet back. Good luck.”

DM You both scan the room, looking for differences. Abather, while you check the body, it’s clear someone–or something– has rifled through it, perhaps looking for something. Nuria, you also see signs that someone has been here. Mushrooms along the left side of the walls have shrunken back, like they did when you got too close. There is a single half footprint in the dirt and rubble leading back into the smooth room. It’s angled to enter the room you’re in, but you see no signs that whatever it was went out the same way.

Nuria Quil “Annie, someone was here.”

Abather Crowley “Yeah,. I can tell…..” Making sure my hand crossbow is loaded, I begin to try and follow where the man may have come from. “Stay close. Dunno if they wanna hurt us.”

DM Heading back into the first room, you can’t help but be struck again by how unnatural the construction is. But you don’t see any signs of entry–or exit–other than your own.

Abather Crowley “D'you think they took something from US? Check yer pockets, this may’ve been a setup to steal from us.” I then check my pockets for all my important belongings, and for the silver ring tied on a cord around my neck.

DM Everything you had, you still have.

Nuria Quil “Hey, amy, I hey an idea, but you have to promise not to get mad.”

Abather Crowley “Well, I figure you know more th'n me. I got no reason ta get mad. Go ahead n’ hit me with the idea.”

Nuria Quil “Alright, you also can’t tell anyone, becuase this is extremely dangerous.”

Abather Crowley I nod, scratching my head. “If you say so, Miss Cleric. I promise to let ya handle this.”

Nuria Quil I sit down and begin to pray under my breath, conducting some sort of ritual.

DM Nuria, while investigating, you find your mind wandering back to the Slumbering World. Before long, you realize you are still connected to it–you can see it, superimposed over the real world like a projection or a mirage. The room now glows with weaves of magic a thousand years old. You can’t tell what they are, but there is a fresher weave as well: a weave that someone used to pull something from another world into this one. You get a sense that this was done within the last four or five hours.

Nuria Quil My face quickly contorts into one of fear and urgency. “ABATHER! WE NEED TO GET BACK TO THE TOWN!”

Abather Crowley Upon hearing how urgent she sounds, I grab her by the arm and help her get to her feet. Once she’s up, I run ahead of her out of the mine, trying to remember the way out. “What’s goin’ on, Miss!? Is the town in trouble!?”

Nuria Quil “WHILE WE WERE ASLEEP, NOTHING LEFT, BUT SOMETHING CAME IN!” I start running to the town as fast as I can.

DM You both tear out into the mine. It is pitch black. The lanterns have burned out of oil.

Nuria Quil I channel the power of Qoth through my shield, causing it to burst into light.

DM Abather, this is a lot for you to take in all at once. Between the dream world, and the ruins, and now the obviousness of Nuria’s magic, you are approaching an anxiety attack. You’ve been raised all your life to believe that magic is evil and unnatural, and that those who use it are soulless and power hungry sacrileges. Since meeting Nuria you’ve been steeped in magic and relics of the past best left untouched. Now, you’re seeing her cast with your own eyes.

Abather Crowley Losing control of myself, I fall to my knees. It becomes difficult to breathe, to move; to even think. This is wrong, I tell myself. She’s a witch. A monster who ruined the world. Before I can even get a grip on my senses, or my thoughts on the situation, my Crossbow is in my hand. She clouded us from Qalda’s light. No, I don’t want to believe it. But here is my proof. She steeped you in her magic. Affected you; changed you. You just don’t know how yet. I begin shaking my head, hands clenching and unclenching. This is wrong.

Nuria Quil “Ab? Ab!? are you okay?” I stop running and go to help him up.

Abather Crowley I push her hand away from me, and not even thinking, hands horribly shaking, I point the hand crossbow at her. “W-why?… Tell me…. Why’d the world break?…” You know why.

“D-did'you do it?…” You know she did.

“Y-you’re using….” The one greatest Taboo.

Nuria Quil “Ab, calm down. I don’t know how this is happening either. I’m just as scared as you, but we need to keep it together. The whole town could be on fire by now. Right now our lady mother has given me the power to save everyone, and there’s some mage in town probably preparing to forsake everything. You can kill me, or anything else you see fit, but not until every last person in this town is safe. Not until then.”

Abather Crowley “I… No… I won’t…“ My hands drop back to my side, unable to bring myself to take someone’s life. Not yet. "If… If there’re people ta save… We do it my way. No tricks.. No… Heresy. I… If ya really wanna save people, don’ do it with the power tha’ forsook 'em so long ago. Do it the good, honest way.”

Nuria Quil “I can’t promise that, but I will promise that if I fail, if we can’t save them… I will subject myself to whatever justice you deem upon me.”

Abather Crowley “I'mm a good, honest man. It ain’t my place ta enact justice. I jus’ do what’s right. Now enough dallying! We can deal wi'this later!”

Nuria Quil “Atleast you still have that much sense left in you.”

DM Abather, in your addled state it’s all you can do to follow Nuria as she leads the charge out of the mine. Emerging, Nuria, you notice that it’s late evening. You’ve been in the mine for most of the day. As you emerge, Jameson comes over to meet you. “Well,” he says. “That was quick.”

Nuria Quil “James! Something may have come out of the mine!”

DM He looks puzzled, and slightly alarmed. “What do you mean?”

Nuria Quil “We aggravated some mushrooms in there, and they knocked us out. When we woke up there were tracks that weren’t there before…”

Abather Crowley “Ain’t a thief, either. Didn’t take a thing off us, and… Well, didn’t find no man’s tracks. Somethin’ else, I bet.”

DM Jameson points to the miner next to him, who shakes her head. “None of us seen anything go in or out since you all did about ten minutes ago.”

Nuria Quil “It may have been earlier. I managed to… Inspect the runes. Something used it today, but that’s all I can tell, I’m not a witch, this is new to me.”

DM The other miner looks uncomfortable at the talk of witchcraft. Jameson shakes his head. “You weren’t in there all that long. Nothing in between. We’ve all been sitting right here.”

Abather Crowley I shake my head in disbelief, trying not to freak out again. Surely more of this…. Witchcraft. Something’s wrong. “There’s… There ain’t no way that’s jus’ ten minutes. Ain’t no way. Where’s Mr. Chivay? Has he been lookin’ for us? Surely he’s been lookin’ fer me for hours, now.”

Nuria Quil “Clearly we just lost track of time well we fell asleep. I need you to do something very important right now. Can I trust you?”

Abather Crowley “I ain’t no liar, Miss. Y'can trust me.” Even if I can’t trust you.

Nuria Quil “Great. Follow James to my house. When you get there I need you to find my ink and quill in my desk. Oh, also, James, you’ve had a hard time, feel free to take a nap, sleep is important for stress. Abather will take care of everything, he’s nice.”

Abather Crowley “Erm.. Wh-what am I suppose'ta write, Miss?…”

Nuria Quil “I’ll write it, I just forgot where I put my stuff, so I’d like you to fish it out for me.”

Abather Crowley “Right… Erm, I’m new ta town, Jaaa… James? Can ya show me the way ta the cleric’s home?”

DM “Uhhh… yeah.” James and the other miner share a look, and then James sets off for town.

Abather Crowley I simply walk with them, not entirely sure what Nuria is up to myself.

Nuria Quil I walk over and start calming down some of the other miners and blessing them. Though, I ask one of them “How long ago did Ab and I go in there?”

DM The miners all look at each other. “Maybe half an hour?” Another pipes up. “Honestly, glad for it. Less time means you probably didn’t find any curses or relics.”

Nuria Quil “Hmm, alright. I guess I’m thrown off from sleeping late.” I follow behind Abather and James.

DM You follow. Abather and James arrive back in town in no time–Chivay’s cart is no longer set up and it seems quiet around here. James leads you through the center of square and to a small two-story house on the edge of town. “This is it,” he says.

Abather Crowley I nod, giving his shoulder a pat as I walk by him. “Much obliged, Sir. Much obliged.” I then head inside and I do as instructed. Looking for some paper, a quill, and ink to match. Having no idea what Nuria might be planning to do with all this, I stuff them into my backpack, and head out of the house. Who knows what’s she’s thinking.

DM As you exit you run into Chivay chatting with Jameson. “Ah!” he says. “There you are. What a day it’s been! Sold almost the whole cart!”

Abather Crowley Despite the recent stress, I put on the best smile I can, adjusting the massive crossbow on my shoulder. “That’s great, Mr. Chivay! Whatcha got left? Y'did say when we’re done, I could get some of what’s left, along with a silver or two. Ahh- Nevermind, we can chat about all that later, I gotta get back ta the Cleric.”

DM “Yes yes, we can talk money later. After all, it’s been a long day.” Jameson nods approvingly. “I must say, Mr. Chivay, I’m impressed. Here less than an hour and already sold all your wares? There must a be a silver tongue in that mouth of yours.” Chivay looks confused. “An hour? You chaining me? I got here in the morning.” He points at the sky. “It’s got to be at least seven bells by now.” Jameson’s face scrunches. He looks up at the sky and winces, putting a hand to his head. “Yes… yes I suppose you’re right.”

Abather Crowley “Speakin'a time, Mr. Chivay… How long d'ya think I was out, doin’ work with the Cleric?.. I’ve been in the cave all day, an’ everyone tells me different then what Qalda’s light tells me.”

DM “All day is right. Ran off this morning and just now seeing you.” Jameson opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. He looks confused, then he squeezes the sides of his head. Then, he collapses.

Abather Crowley More of this Witch tomfoolery! “Sir? Sir!?” I shout, kneeling beside the man. After a moment, I try to wake him up, pouring some of my waterskin on his face. “Things’ve been real odd, Mr. Chivay. Somethin’ ain’t right about this town, and… Makes me feel a bit queesy jus’ thinking about it. Something’s… Wrong. People tellin me the wrong time, a 'teleportation’ room in the mine, and….” She may be a witch, but she has done no evil. Not yet. “Well, jus’ odd folk.”

DM It’s been awhile since you’ve seen someone die, and you can’t help but think about those whose losses hit you the hardest. Jameson’s body is slack and his eyes are rolled back in his head. Another person you were not able to save.

[chameleonspell]

200: heart

How to climb a mountain. Step by step, inch by inch, hand in hand. Falling in crevasses and getting back out again, because this is not the hole you're going to die in today. Magic when you can spare it, rope when you can't, and always hands and arms and legs and backs and hearts, yours and others. I know, it hurts. Keep going anyway. It really is a terrible metaphor. There's nothing special about being higher up.

Are we the Bal Molagmer, then? Is that why we climb? Nameless, faceless heroes, braving the mountain of fire, and stealing burning stones? I never did find out what those were for. Perhaps we can use them to rebuild our burned bridges. Burning bridges, building paths, climbing mountains, escaping pits. So many clichés. But they're not supposed to accurately represent the chaos, they're maps out of it. Prophecies are just stories with happy endings, and you can write your own as you go. Leave them behind, so that others might find their way. They'll never know if it was true, and it won't matter. We go different, and in thunder. Each to the beat of our own doom-drum. I'm going to break his heart. That's not a metaphor. According to Vivec, there is no bone that cannot be broken, except for the heart bone. Proving that for all his poetry, he was not immune to sentimental clichés. Of course, with Vivec, the danger is always that it might not be a metaphor. God has no need of theory and he is armoured head to toe in terror. I'm scared, too. But unlike Vehk, I am shielded by my mortality, and I cannot be trapped in the cracked crystal of my (im)perfections forever. Shift ye in your skin, I say to the Trinimac-eaters. Pitch your voices into the colour of bruise. This whole island, ruined and reborn. Surviving the fire, again and again. All of us, finding new ways to survive... and then surviving those. Surviving the forms we had to take, to stay alive in the places we found ourselves, learning to breathe ashes, drink poison, eat shit. We can do this, because whatever survives, grows. And whatever happens next, something will survive of me, because I exist now. I have already existed, and this cannot be undone, short of deeper magic than I'll ever know. Survive, if not intact, then by parts. My blood will join the ash and feed the mushrooms. My bones... my bones will be quiet, unthreatening. My soul is energy, in which all lost possibilities are regained. For now... we are Nerevarine. Failed, false, fallen Incarnates. You are Nerevar, my love, as I am Nerevar, as all of us breathing air and ash and magic are Nerevar, because he died and we live, and we are all the Changed Ones. All Trinimac, all Malacath, bruise-tinted, shit-stained heroes. Stealing whatever godhood we can. Wearing our curses as badges of honour, because fuck you, Azura, that's why. We have no ancestors guiding us. We banished them all, again and again, though they wait beyond the door, always returning. Sometimes because they love us, but love alone is not enough. But then, love is never alone. It is born of, and parent to, so many ugly and beautiful things. Things to grow, to nurture, and be nurtured by. Things to build. A city of swords, to cut ourselves into better shapes. A city of gods and monsters, to be razed and restored, brick by brick. A home, secret and safe as any pocket dimension, which is to say, never as safe as you hope, but... sometimes doors need opening from the outside. I move, and I pulse at the heart of a web of threads... no, a net... no... a bloodline. A lacing network of living support, easily grazed at the edges, but more healing and resilient then I could ever imagine. It's not a thing I can leave behind, because it isn't there, isn't outside. I'll carry it with me. I grew it myself. I'm taking it all. Taking all my blood and ash, all my ghosts and bones. To find what lies beyond my burning, in the pathless, unstoned places between is and is-not-yet. What was and what could be. To plant something new... no... to help something different grow. Not an ocean, wild and unpredictable, sinking all who incur its disapproval. Not a garden, clipped into a false, symmetrical notion of beauty, weeds pulled up by the roots. Something in between, blurring the boundary, like a swamp. If my mother is earth and my father is water, then I am neither and both, a new experiment, my own substance and solution. Soft and yielding... but sometimes, when people think swampland is solid, they drown themselves, trying to step on it. The stone that recalls it is really water... what if it knew how to be both? It's no deception. Unless it is. Say no elegies. Welcoming the living, the dead and the in-between, all who need to rest somewhere with no need to choose between sinking and swimming. A place to be vague, for a while, indistinct. Cocooned, liquid and lingering in the grey maybe of creation, to see what solidifies. Of healing and metamorphosis. Of absorbing toxins, and nourishing sprouts. Tangled and illegible. Hard to translate, because its definitions keep shifting. A ward to its enemies, but part of its charm, to its devotees. Who know that love demands no dissection, no labels. I still hope you might choose to be there. I think you'd understand, too. I don't think ashland is so different from swampland. The Velothi say that on certain days, all the hidden seeds of a certain plant will all bloom at once, and flash the whole land one colour in a brief, day-long frenzy of purple or gold. I'd love to see it. But I already know the Ashlands will teem with flowers, if you're there. I have to go back, because I've changed and it hasn't. I can see the invisible, now. I can see in the dark. I can see through walls, see the pale-fringed lichen on the other side. I can see gently, obliquely. Out of the corner of my eye, for some vanish under the weight of too much visibility. I can see, and be seen, according to my will. I can slip into the molten margins, where touching another soul is possible, and extend a hand. My other will always be yours. I look at you across the fire. And you aren't my true-love, that isn't a thing. But I love you, and we dragged each other through the hardest year of our lives. And whoever I love next, and whoever I am loved by... it was you that taught me how. So until the next change comes... until the ash takes and remakes us, until we are eaten again... look back at me, through the air and ash. See me here, in this moment, alive and whole, safe from all possible harm. If we fall, and they find us, my hand will be in yours, and they'll know who we were. He drew a long, clear breath that lifted and filled him like the sail of a boat. His heart rising with the wind, Iriel moved forwards. end. thank you for reading. previous: 199: keening beginning: 1: numb