#like it isnt meant that way at all but sometimes hes veering one step to close in that direction unintentionally

[muirneach]

reading an essay collection about the concept of winter which is pretty enjoyable but every time this guy mentions like. ‘northernness’ i go 😬😬 lets not get white supremacist with it here brother….

[aminiatureworld]

HI! Quick note: write this whenever you want and be sure to take care of your health first! Your works are amazing and masterpieces take time, I can be patient <3 Hope you have a lovely day! (also, 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠: trigger themes like attempts of suicide, probable hints to dissociative amnesia? I was inspired by it at least and some... Limb being bitten off as well as latest archon quest spoilers so readers be cautious!)

Anyway, I'd like to request for Xiao, Albedo, Zhongli, Kaeya and Diluc (if the number is too much you can cut off whoever from the list) with Traveller! s/o that like has no memory of their past but have clues through these... "Visions/Dreams".

It started out a little simple; every once in a while, Y/N would see these little figures floating around their environment. Shadowy wisps, sometimes ghosts talking to them. But in real life, people can't see them and only sees them talking by themselves (and some are a little weirded out). But then one day, while they were out adventuring in the ruins slimes or seelies... Whatever small cute creatures can exist in Teyvat suddenly gathered in Stormterror's lair and they grew curious cuz they heard... Music? Playing? It was echo-y and creepy but then they heard a very familiar tune that they KNOW is linked to their past so they followed and went into the vicinity

(As reference, or for some idea: https://youtu.be/JZ6buLNIgs8)

The moment they stepped inside and pinpointed where the music is coming from they bolted up the stairs (if there are any, which probs not but in reader's case there is) and suddenly the stairs lead them to a hallway from a tower/palace, and walking further, there were two huge doors that lead to a ballroom with more than dozens of ghosts waltzing and singing with the music

(No they did not question why would stormterror's lair have a hallway or how it even has a ballroom inside, nor why creatures would gather in said lair. Questions that break away from dreams are nonexistent)

So obviously they were happy at the wondrous sight and began waltzing along with everyone from strangers to... Unrecognizable but familiar faces? Until They danced with this boy their age. The more they looked the more they were enamored and the world around them was but a hazy dream (as vague and hazy the environment in their head can get) but the boy became more and more vivid and so did the music until they practically sang together. But then as the music stopped and s/o turned their back for a second; the boy sang: "And a song someone sings..." And wisps suddenly flew out of him and towards Reader, making them fall unconscious into their arms as the Prince of the Abyss sang in their ear. "Once upon a december..." Before Aether disappeared and he was but a dream.

And then all of a sudden Reader was yanked away from their dream; almost literally. They turned to see their lover holding onto their arm with concern all over their face and explained to them they were so close to the edge dancing away they could've fallen off of the third floor (which was already high!).

And that's when things get a turn to the worse.

Every dream gets worse than the last; anything that involved the abyss, or seeing these star pendants like what Paimon has on her hair or Kaeya's little decor on his clothes or involving Khaenriah or whatever Albedo's research is rn lure them into a dream vivid than the last and it gets even harder and harder to break them off their dreams. One night of going to bed they suddenly had a dream of their old family/friends swimming in the ocean and telling them to join them, and they wouldve if their lover didnt sweep them off their feet and broke away from another dream they didnt realize was 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 a dream. And the realization that if they jumped off, their bones wouldve broken cuz a bunch of boulders and rocks on a steep cliff would make a nice floor for landing right?

But still, Aether and the abyss (which in their dreams were ghosts and just... this blond guy you knew but never realized it was your brother and the abyss) are recurring themes. Coming across any of the factors instantly puts them in a dream and reader cant tell whats reality and what isnt. Everything is too vivid they didnt see a bubble coming their way or an attack coming towards them and they were about to be thrown off. It got to the point Reader was getting claustrophic from the rooms suddenly shrinking as they were cornered by these ghosts that turned frightening and whenever they fight back they end up nearly murdering someone of mindlessly attempting to destroy one of The Seven statues.

It lead Reader to be.. Kinda suicidal. Not just because they hate themselves and their situation its cuz its the 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑦 they knew how to escape the dream and wake up in a bed in their lovers arms. And because reader cant distinguish reality from dreams sometimes even if their lover is present they see these ghosts and think 'this must be a dream I have to wake up from!' cuz in the long run theyve learned fighting back meant hurting someone so they.. Redirected the pain to themselves so theyre very confused to see their lover throw their dagger across the room and they end up breaking down no matter where they are (or in worse cases in the middle of battle). Reader grew dependant on them and panic attacks after these dreams became more frequent until they cant even trust their surroundings whether its a dream or not.

(I'm very sorry with how long this is and I rambled in grotesque detail you may polish it however you want :"DD)

This can be in any format you'd like! But I mostly prefer headcanons + scenarios? like the bullets then comes scenario etc. But ye write however you want sorry for rambling hope you have a nice day thank you

As a Romanov history enthusiast this request was both very interesting and very difficult. Mostly because I found myself veering off into “lore dumping” for lack of a better term. Still I hope the general feeling of your request was captured well.

I spread various aspects of your request around as best I could, depending on character, outline, fic structure, etc. The only thing I didn’t keep in was the suicidal ideation. This is for various reasons, some personal, but in a more general term I think that it can be very difficult to portray something like that in a way that isn’t excessively triggering and is worthwhile to read for a variety of people. The way one person would process through such emotions and put them to paper could be harmful to another. Overall I thought it best to steer clear from such a topic, with the knowledge that I didn’t find it necessary to the story and thought it would be an imperfect addition on my part. Not that I find never addressing such topics necessarily the right path either, only I think that in this case better not to. I hope I explained why adequately. 

I know that wanting to read and write about such topics does not directly correlate to being in such a mental state but I do hope you also take care of your own mental health. Though getting out of such crises can be difficult I want to tell you this at least. You aren’t alone in feeling this way, even if others in your direct vicinity cannot understand. And also sometimes finding a direct reason for continuing on comes later. Sometimes surviving is enough. And even if you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, that doesn’t mean you should take a step which you will never be able to reverse, the only step you will never be able to reverse in your existence.

I also leaned into the Romanov family dynamic, rather into that of the traveler siblings. Whether the reader is the traveler is kept vague on purpose, as I generally as a rule don’t write the siblings. I also found that in keeping them specifically canon compliant to the traveler siblings I’d have to cut back on the more historical illusions. Being a total history nerd I chose the latter option. 

Otherwise my fics varied in complete accuracy to the prompt, though I hope you find it enjoyable to read nonetheless.

Here they are in order of Albedo, Diluc, Kaeya, Xiao, and Zhongli. I hope you find them a worthwhile read and thank you for your request. I hope you have a lovely week.

[sagittariusboyfriend]

What have been some creepy encounters you've experienced? Story please?

ive waited quite some time to respond to this message, like literally a long ass time lol, probably more than a year, sorry. i feel like i have several encounters to tell you about, but what im going to relay to whomever might be reading this right now is a thing that went on over the course of an entire year.

quick backstory: during the better part of 2017 i lived with my then boyfriend (who now is just my best friend since we broke up in october this year) in the old parts of the city center. all buildings in that area are from around 1870, and the building where we lived is one of the first ones to have been erected. his aparment was on ground level and it has all the features of turn of the century housing with the fireplace, original floors, weird nooks and crannies etc, and looks as if it was meant to be lived in by service people/kitchen personnel. it also had its original door (i suppose) with the kind of springy locking mechanism where you have to turn the key and pull down the handle real hard simultaneously to open from the outside, the knob is very tough to turn from the inside, and it locks itself instantly once you close it (so if you forget your keys youre basically screwed). it makes a loud brassy springy clicking noise when the lock shuts or opens. takes a lot of effort to open this old door and its loud, is what im saying. the entire apartment is all original details, the flooring in the corridor has its original wood planks, original ventilation, weird but beautiful glass panels on the door etc.

the key and the door unlocking from inside

first off, when he moved in, the landlord was missing a key in the set of four. my then boyfriend, lets call him C, didnt really think about it. he moved in, gave his dad one of the extra keys. the first weird thing that happened was when C got back from work in the afternoon maybe two weeks after moving in. in the middle of the corridor, on the floor, he sees the missing key. like smack dab in the middle of the narrow corridor leading from hallway to the bathroom, next to his boots. its too far in to have been thrown in by someone through the letter slot in the door, and could not have been dropped there by neither him nor his father since they had all of their keys. so he’s like, weird, but doesnt really think about it. he also told me that around that time he heard coughing from the corridor when inside his bedroom (it opens up to the right from the corridor once you step inside the apartment), but also waved it off since it might as well have been neighbours just outside in the hall.

next weird thing that happens is after we had started dating and i pretty much lived there with him, and this time i experienced it. i started work around noon whereas C left around 6 in the morning. so im in bed and its maybe 10 o’clock, and i wake up to that loud, springy clicking noise of the locking mechanism in the door. and im like, what is he doing home at this time? so i get up, but no one is there. the door is also juuust a little bit askew, as if someone was going outside but then decided not to, like its just shoved open enough for the lock to click open, but the door isnt opened, its still within the width of the doorframe if you get what i mean. so i look outside and the hall is empty. i should have been able to hear steps in the very echo-y stairwell (which is also old and the acoustics are fantastic because we hear everytime a neighbour passes by, and subsequently opens the building entrance door which is also a loud, heavy door), but heard neither steps, up or down the stairs in the hall, nor anyone opening the heavy entrance door, or any evidence of human activity. all is quiet. i get a bit freaked out, because that means that unless someone else had a key, our door was unlocked from inside.

i tell C when he gets back, and after this is where shit starts to ACTUALLY go down.

im going to try to remember all of this in the correct order, but i know it started in january 2017, and went on until he moved out in december.

the song in the hallway

C talks a lot in his sleep. sometimes he even sings, he speaks in english (we’re swedish) and  he has been known to get up and take a shower at one in the morning while still asleep thinking hes late for work. for those who are on heavy sleeping medication, u get it. its not weird, mostly its funny, and its just because of the medication. these things go on literally every night and it was a bit hard to fall asleep to loud talking and incoherent words sometimes because he used to go to bed three-four hours earlier than me, but i managed just fine. one night we were in bed, it wasnt that late but C was asleep, i was on my phone next to him. i hear this weird melody being hummed, thinking its coming from C i take out my earplugs and check, but its coming from the fucking hallway. again, no one outside in the stairs, just someone or something humming a melody in the hallway. i remember my hair standing up all over my body and i was glad i slept closest to the wall, C shielding me from being viewed directly from the hallway. somehow i manage to fall asleep. and this part is going to sound weird and like its made up, im very aware, but having been through this crap i dont really care because i know it happened: the morning after C was off from work, and i for once woke up before he did. if i wake him up and his medication hasnt ‘wore off’ yet i guess (dont really know how that works) he’ll be disoriented and it takes a few minutes for his brain to register that hes awake and he can speak coherently. i did not poke him, i did not try to wake him up, but all of a sudden i hear him humming that same melody, very much deep asleep. that freaked me out.

the mimicking begins

another night around that time, i was up at around 2-3 am to go to the bathroom. i wiggle out of bed, out into the corridor, at the end of the corridor is the bathroom. when im done, i scurry back into the bedroom, information of value here i guess is i always sleep with my socks on so im wearing socks, aka i dont make a lot of noise when i get up. when im back in bed, looking at my phone, i hear footsteps - from the corridor. the freakiest thing is its like they are imitating the way i walked back from the bathroom, i can so CLEARLY hear sockless, BARE feet on the creaky floor of the hallway, literally stepping at the same pace i did. that was my first thought; someone is imitating my footsteps. i can hear them from behind the wall in the hallway, coming to a stop at the opening into the bedroom. like someone is standing there, watching. i get so scared i hide under the covers and press myself close to C and cant stop feeling icy shivers down my spine. i also cant stop thinking that someone or something waited for me in the kitchen, then walked behind me, mimicking me, and is now standing at the beedroom threshold, watching me. somehow i fall asleep, or i dont, i cant remember.at this point, im thinking somethings up with that hallway.

the poorly covered hole

this part isnt anything scary/supernatural really, just uncomfortable and kinda sets the tone for living in this apartment at the time: in the bedroom, C had placed a clothing rack next to the old 1900s floor-to-ceiling ventilation pipe that is plastered into the wall in the corner. literally just a wide ass pipe in the corner of the room that isnt in use anymore. behind the rack, leaning against the pipe, he had put a rarely used pink neon tube light and i decided it would look cool to try it out, but it was dusty in that little nook thing where it was so i had to clean it up a bit. while moving the clothing rack to vacuum, i realize there is a hole at least as big as my hand in the side of the pipe. i was like ??the frick is this? and i poke into it and there is just this thin paper membrane covering it. you could almost fit an entire head through there, and i can literally feel wafts of cold wind moving through it. there probably used to be an attached pipe of some sort to allow smoke from the kitchen to go up into the ventilation like a hundred years ago, but the thought that this at least 1 meter wide pipe, wide enough to fit a person, goes up through probably all apartments above us, up through the attic, ending as an open chimney in the roof, has this big hole in it is just… unsettling to me. obviously the pipe is not in use anymore, but that kind of only made it scarier. ive seen enough scary movies for that to make me feel a bit paranoid lol. i was almost expecting a hand to push through that paper when i touched it. but i covered it back up with the clothing rack and nothing really happened with that.

the mirror incident

one night, me and C were getting ready to go out. im getting ready in the hallway, because thats where the big wall-sized full figure mirrors are (of course). C comes out of the bathroom, runs past me infront of me, veering off to the left into the bedroom, wearing only underwear. i look after him in the mirror, i can see him in the bedroom, in front of his clothing rack. im fixing my hair at the time, both hands on my head. to my direct left is the front door and the space with our shoes and jackets. right in front of the door, for a split moment while im turning back to keep looking at myself in the mirror, i see what looks exactly like C but paler, wearing only underwear, standing in the same position as me, turned away from me as if the thing is also looking in a mirror. heads on its head like its fixing its hair, just like me. imitating me. i get shivers just typing this down. i tell C what i just saw, i literally went: ”uh C? i just saw a man infront of the door”, dumbfounded, and we both got a bit freaked out, and got out of there pretty quickly.

learning about demons

a few weeks later, C invites his friend to comes to visit. im not there at that time so i never met her, but she apparently had a knack for sensing ghosts and picking up on energies etc. he told me that when he got up to get them more wine from the kitchen and left her alone in the couch in the bedroom, she said she really felt very uncomfortable sitting with her back to the hallway corridor. she also told him that ghosts and spirits are usually not malevolent and you can get by fine living in a ‘haunted’ house. but when he told her what we had experienced so far, she told him that ghosts usually dont behave that way, and that a rule is that if something is imitating or mimicking you, its probably not a ghost, but might be signs of fucking DEMONIC ACTIVITY. apparently demons like to mock and impersonate people. friendly caspers dont do that. fun.

realizing the triangle/cursed ground

so, yeah. weird things kept happening. but we had jobs, sometimes you just gotta ignore that shit and try not to live your life terrified of demons. which we still were for the record; i dont think we ever left each other alone in that apartment for any longer than necessary after that, i remember C actually staying at his dads during the time i went away to see my family.

anyway, when we had started dating C had introduced this podcast to me. its a swedish one where a guy called jack reads creepypastas, analyzes spooky stuff, old folklore, all that stuff, and also reads original content and real stories written by listeners. its really good and really creepy. so that podcast had been going for maybe two years by then so i had a LOT to catch up with, wich wasnt a bad thing at all. i remember by this time is was summer and i was out on the street smoking a cigarette after doing dishes, and the episode i was listening to was about the last of the execution spots/gallow hills (?? i guess is the correct term? not sure) in sweden. remember, we lived in the old part of the city center, in the northern part of the city. very old buildings, very old everything. so jack commences to talk about the famous last gallow hill in [our city] and where it was located, when the final execution took place and for what, how many people had been killed there and its entire bloody history. i almost drop my cigarette, because he says it was located on zenithgatan (”zenith street”), and where the gallows used to be there is now a kindergarten. so im on our street, just outside our kitchen windows, looking right at that specific kindergarten. just across the main road. i will provide a screenshot of a map and a street view of what i was looking at to let you know i am not making this up:

so the street we lived on is called döbelnsgatan (”döbeln street”, döbeln is apparently a city in germany, i just googled that), at the very end of the street, our citys main old cemetary is juuust beyond our line of sight to the right from the kitchen windows and where i was standing. however, across from us: zenithgatan, with all of its bloody history. i couldnt help but to wonder how far the blood could had flown from there and where the bodies had been thrown, if this entire part of town is built on bloody ground etc. it really gave me massive creeps.

a few years later (which would be a few months ago, when i moved in to the room where i live presently) i happened to land a conversation about ghosts with my new flatmate. turns out she also used to live in those neighbourhoods, in an apartment on the third floor literally overlooking the cemetary, but on celciusgatan, which would be the next street over from döbelnsgatan (see map). and she told me, without me having said anything at all about all of this, that that part of town including her apartment has always been haunted. she used to see a shadow of a man through frosted glass doors, moving around in rooms that were closed when both she and her son and her sister were in the kitchen. she didnt experience any malice however, and also had someone come check it out for her, but apparently she just had nice ghosts. but we agreed that yeah, these buildings are literallty inbetween a cemetary and the gallows; there are probably bound to be a lot of lost souls wandering around.

this could also be over-analyzing it, but if you draw lines from the cemetary to the site of the executions to döbelnsgatan/celciusgatan, it makes a perfect triangle. while googling the translation of ‘döbeln’ just now it says right in the wikipedia description that it is located ‘somewhat in the middle of a triangle, made up by three cities’. coincidence, perhaps. probably. but still. by now im pretty conviced of anything that could hold any significance about all of this.

the painting

later on, maybe by a few months, and C tells me when i get home from work that he had woken up that day, after i went to work, from the painting atop of his big secretaire/chiffonier/bookcase (its really a big piece of heavy furtinure, but lets call it bookcase just to be simple) coming crashing down behind it. that painting had stood there since january, at least 9-10 months, and had not fallen down ONCE. it was leaning against the wall, perched safely and steady on the bookcase, with at least a centimeter bookcase until the gap between wall and furniture. i remember thinking last time i looked it was covered in dust because no one even as much as dusted that thing off, and there had been no weird vibrations in the walls that would have shook it either. by this point we’re both very, very uncomfortable in this apartment.

the painting and the hollow in the wall

and here comes the final thing that happened before he moved out, the part that we have on film. ill have to ask my ex for the footage if anyones interested in it, which is fine.

C was doing a collaboration with some people on instagram, an educational account about depression, self-harm, anxiety and such. they gave him the assignment to film himself talking about personal experiences, i think they wanted maybe 13 videos or something like that, the theme being ‘death’ (those videos are still up, im unsure if they posted this one as it kind of strayed from the mental health stuff a bit, but i know C has it still). so at this time - maybe september or october? i really dont know exactly when this was, i could probably scroll on their instagram account but im too lazy - he was filming himself a lot. so, he brought up the painting crashing, and filmed us both while demonstrating how it physically could not have moved and crashed down behind the bookcase because of the way it stood on top of it. it would have been one thing if it fell forward, but then it would have landed on its front and fallen in front of the bookcase, probably shattered the glass. but it fell BEHIND it. on camera, you can see my hands pushing on it to demonstrate the way it went down into that snug space inbetween. you would have had to physically push on it, at least a centimeter back, from the front. so for some reason, i get the very random idea to knock on the wall behind it. which means, i stand in the corridor and knock on the corridor wall that divides the bedroom from the hallway. and i swear to god, this is ON FILM. i knock all over the wall and its all concrete - except for THE SPOT EXACTLY BEHIND THE FUCKING PAINTING. the wall is hollow. right behind the painting. where it stood leaned against on the other side. i cant explain why i all of a sudden tried knocking all over the wall, or why the actual fuck there is a hollow square in the middle of the corridor wall, but that really fucked us up. there were just too many weird coincidences, you know.

like, all of this happened, or seemed to be centered around, the corridor. as if our hallway was some nexus for supernatural activity. and with that hollow thing, it was like it was starting to make its way into the bedroom, you know? unsettling.

thankfully, C moved out of there in december and we didnt have to stay there anymore, but i sometimes pass by and think about asking the current tenant or the neighbours if they experienced anything strange. its just so eerie. the mimicking parts were the scariest to me, and i get chills thinking about them and reading it even now.

so, thats my long, long overdue creepy encounter. i am VERY aware i sound insane but, hey. what can i do. i am not one for lying and i know that so thats all that matters tbh. i have other encounters as well, but living in that apartment takes the fucking cake.