#like it was legit just handed as a small sample to me and changed my life

[bam-stroker]

Just want to throw out there to the world (because of disability pride month)

If you are ever having frequent migraines write them down and go see a neurologist. I downplayed my experience with them of like "Ooo they're like.. maybe 3 a month!" for years and suffered because of it. What I was counting as 1 - was just day 1. In reality I was having multiple days of my life taken away because of them where I'd just have to sit in a room alone in darkness.

You deserve the chance to get medicine to live a better quality of life.

I know how absolutely rancid experiences with doctors can be (I have been through some shit)

But! I hand you my pro tips (taken from US viewpoint but certain things may be applicable elsewhere) and I guess these things could be used towards other afflictions you might deem as small and have kept ignoring. If your life quality is lowered it's worth trying to chase down help.

Keep a health journal. I mean it! Write down the days you're dealing with your shit, how long it goes on, every little detail of how shitty you feel. When ever you go to a doctor you gotta come in (sadly) proving yourself. So have that written down and handy and get in the habit of writing or even just making little marks in your calendar of all the days you deal with a thing.

If you can - find out about said doctor/specialist. I made the mistake early on of just picking anyone who had an opening. I had A Bad Time. It's laughable but look on google reviews for the office. It's one of the few public places grievances can be posted by most patients. If a lot of them are trending in the "They do not listen to me" realm.... look for a new doctor.

Remember that journal? Well, if things start to get BETTER from treatment - write that shit down too! I have many a fight with US health insurance of why I have the audacity to use said insurance... and having the before and after things handy in those times is great. It's also great if you need to go to a different/new doctor and they wonder if your past treatment is worth it or not.

If you have anything you're worried about and want to go over during a doctor visit... guess what.. WRITE IT DOWN! There is something about a dr's office where the chronic illness jumps from my body and I question everything I've ever experienced. So I have handy everything written out of recent problems/symptoms and my questions on them. Also you could have some one else there with you, like a friend/family/etc, to help remind you of your questions so they don't get ignored. And if your doc does keep ignoring them... Leave them for a new doc.

These are just some very basic things I wish I'd known early on. But I hope they help someone else out. I will say I am so, so lucky that I ended up finding medicine that works for me (#team ubrelvy - which you can technically get for free with certain insurance and by going through the ubrelvy manufacturer coupon sight) but what works for me doesn't always work for others. It takes time to find the right mix of care and medicine.

But if you are spending multiple days a month in solitude/pain... It might not be as small a thing as you think and you deserve the chance to ease that pain.

I wish all of you kindness and rest this pride month and every month <3

[january-summers]

Yeeeeeee \o/ also, tell me more Abt the confusion?? 👀👀 Oh to have the impressions of someone who has gotten to know the show through Tumblr gifs

I'm still trying to figure out if the 'devil' part of 'devil judge' is just because he's a hardass judge with questionable ethics, (like judge judy but hands out death sentences like give away samples. Lawful Evil at its most handsome. except he's maybe Chaotic Neutral when he wants to be?) or if it's literal.

Like for the most part it seems to be a judge with a case of asshole personality maybe being gay for his minion? but dude (who i assume is devil judge) just shot a bus driver because the riot police wouldn't (to save said minion who was trying to protect a small child with his squishy mortal body) and acted like zero repercussions for killing a dude.

do judges get to do that? be judge-jury-and-executioner pre-trial if they catch a bad guy in the act?

also there is a lady minion? who I heard from a discord friend is suffering the curse of 'being a lady in a bl fandom' despite being pretty cool?

I legit know basically nothing about this show, but based on how wrong I was about the plot of The Untamed, I am so prepared to spend the majority of my time going "oh wow context makes so many changes."

[falcor-thee-luck-dragon]

What a Time to be Alive - Diego Hargreeves x reader Season I

Chapter 6- The Day That Wasn’t

Summary: Eyyy another family meeting, and let’s see if you can get Klaus sober again.

Masterlist - where all the other chapters are⚔️

Tagged: @sambucky8 @white-wolf-buckaroo @2cuteforyourlies @la-vie-en-amour1 @fandomoverlord221 @thatfandombitcch @alonewolfsblog @starrrybarnes @winterboobear11

You’ve been summoned yet again for another Hargreeves family meeting, you’re not even a legit Hargreeves either. But alas, you’ve known them since you were 12 and this is kinda Diego’s family so, even a bigger reason to be here. You’re all positioned in various spots around the bar area, as Allison kindly hands everyone a coffee while her and Luther talk about what Five said earlier. Diego’s sitting on your left while you lean into his side, the both of you sharing a cup of coffee since Allison’s container only held four. Klaus is sitting on the floor in front of the other chair-type-couch opposite of you and Diego, Luther is seated on a barstool while Allison stands next to him, leaning herself against the bar.

“Three days?” Questions Allison, at the literal bombshell of learning that the apocalypse is coming.

“That’s what Five said.” Replies Luther taking a cup from her.

“The old bastard did mention the apocalypse, come to think of it. He just left out the part about how soon.” Says Klaus, taking a small sip from his cup.

“But can we trust him? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Five’s a little...” Allison makes a circular motions to her head as she whistles. Klaus chuckles, “Our little psycho.”

“He was pretty convincing. If he wasn’t trying to stop an apocalypse, those lunatics wouldn’t be chasing him.” Explains Luther. You give a small nod while Diego hands you the half empty cup with his non injured arm.

“Yeah.”

“What did Five even see?” Allison asks Luther, the rest of you staring intently, listening to the crucial information he’s about to tell you next. His face seems to fall a bit, like he doesn’t really want to reveal any details. “Uh....apparently, we all fought together against whoever was responsible.” He pauses, looking at all your faces, clearly still hiding something. Now this information you hadn’t had a chance to hear yet, so you’re all ears to learn how the world ends. Luther then gets up off the barstool, “Okay. So, here’s the plan. Uh, we go through Dad’s research..” The four of you all start speaking at once, definitely not interested in searching through any old papers. “Hold on, hold on.” “Wait a tick, wait a tick, wait a tick.” Diego and Klaus interrupting each other.

You finally speak up, gaining everyone’s attention, “Luther, we’re missing a...oh I don’t know... a minor detail here, what happened the first time around? What did Five see?” He looks at you nervously, well that can’t be good. “Yeah. What are you not telling us? Come on, big boy, spit it out.” Adds Diego. Luther’s eyebrows furrow, he looks almost scared. For a good five seconds he stares back at the four of you, then he looks down at his coffee cup before taking a sip he says something you almost didn’t catch, “We died.” He whispers as he takes a long sip, your nerves prick, you definitely heard that right.

 “What was that?” Wonders Allison wanting to hear it louder.

 Luther brings his cup down, clearing his throat for a second, “I said, uh, we died.” He says louder this time.

 Everyone’s faces morph into that of complete shock and evident surprise. Just hearing him tell you everyone dies again, still sends your nerves into hyperdrive, a wave of fear washing over you instantly, and it’s only Wednesday.

——

Some time passes and more squabbling ensues, now your all sitting around the bar practically interrogating Luther about the apocalypse, he’s doing his best to answer your rapid fire questions. You suddenly hear the sound of Vanya’s light footsteps roaming around the Academy with someone following her? They don’t appear to be of any threat either. Huh. “No, outside the house. Everyone died.” “You don’t say” “That’s terrible.”

“Hey.” Says Vanya, finally revealing herself and her less then suspisous looking friend, who’s smiling oddly at the five of you. The others look up from their conversation. “What’s going on?” She wonders.

All of you shift around awkwardly, “It’s a family matter.” Replies Allison, you cringe inside, eh probably not the best thing to say to Vanya right now, considering no one invited her.

“A family matter. So you couldn’t bother to include me.” Scoffs Vanya, disappointed but not surprised at her family’s tendencies.

 “No, it’s not like that. We were...” Starts Luther, apologetically, “Don’t let me interrupt.” Vanya cuts in turning to walk away.

 “Wait.” Says Allison rushing over to a retreating Vanya, “I’ll fill you in later when we’re alone.” She pleads, trying to make amends.

 Vanya waves her off, “Please, please, don’t bother. And I won’t either.” Snaps Vanya turning to face Allison.

“Vanya that’s not fair.” Jabs Allison, uh just leave the poor woman alone, you think. Vanya’s face falls, “Fair? There’s nothing fair about being your sister. I have been left out of everything for as long as I can remember. And I used to think it was Dad’s fault, but he’s dead.” She turns angrily to look at the rest of you by the bar, “So it turns out you’re the assholes.” She sourly ends with, turning away and walking out of sight, her friend trailing behind her.

“Ouch.” Comments Klaus, you raise a glass to that, downing the whole thing in one gulp. Allison turns around to face the rest of you, “I’m gonna go find Vanya and explain.” She says, not feeling right about what just happened. “No, wait, there isn’t time. We need to figure out what causes the apocalypse. Now there are loads of possibilities.....Nuclear war, asteroids. But I’m thinking this is about the Moon. Right? Dad must have sent me up there for a reason. And I was giving him daily updates on the conditions, I sent field samples.” Rambles Luther, you share a bored look with Diego, then to waste time you stick your tongue out at Klaus, who returns the favor. “The first thing we need to do is find his research.” Klaus suddenly cuts in, “Hold the phone. We all died fighting this thing the first time around. Remember?” Points out Klaus.

“That actually makes sense, surprisingly. What gives us the upper hand this time around?” You wonder, hoping this meeting will end soon, you’ve got assassins to hunt.

 “Five. Last time we didn’t have him. We weren’t all together.” Answers Luther as Klaus gets off the barstool holding a hand up to his mouth like he’s about to vomit. Luther continues oblivious, “This time, we’ll have the full force of the Umbrella Academy. That’s what we need.” States Luther ever so confident in his leadership skills.

 “Okay, little problem. Five’s MIA once again.” You add bluntly, leaning yourself against the bar, raising your eyebrows at Luther who’s on the other side.

 “Well, he had a plan to change the timeline. He’ll be back soon.” Answers Luther, only a tinge unsure of himself, you roll your eyes at him. “I’m going after those masked motherfuckers.” You growl, not wanting to waste anymore time. Luther looks at you in slight confusion, Diego speaking up to clarify, “Hazel and Cha-Cha.” You push yourself up off the counter, walking around the bar and past them as Luther questions why, “What, right now?” Diego follows you turning to answer Luther, “Hell, yeah.”

Luther then does his best to stop you, “I know you wanna avenge your friend, but we got bigger problems here.” You swiftly twist around walking in closer to Luther, if he didn’t know any better he’d probably be a tad bit afraid, “She didn’t deserve to die like that, neither have countless others. If I’m gonna die....and I mean actually die. I want to know it was me who killed those fuckers.” You hiss, fed up with being forced to listen for 20 boring minutes about the apocalypse and how we’re gonna stop it. Five’s not even here to help, so what’s the point. You needed more information first. Not caring for an answer from Luther, you turn around and head elsewhere.

——

After a bathroom pit stop cause lets be real coffee does that to you, you walk into the hallway, not hearing a single sound. Alright where did Diego go? You close your eyes and listen, hyper focusing on the world around you, searching in the darkness for a sliver of sound. Your ears prick at the creaking of floorboards up above you and the familiar thump of Diego’s boots along with Klaus’. Got em, they’re in the attic.

Silently walking up the wooden staircase you turn to your left, walking into the room to see Diego tying Klaus up to a chair. “If I see a boner, I’m out.” Grumbles Diego, who’s walking around Klaus in a circle while tightening the blue rope. You snort, “Is this a bad time?” The two of them shoot their heads up to look at your amused face. “Oh, hello there Y/H. I’m gonna get sober.” Says Klaus casually, his face scrunching up as he starts to laugh. You smirk, folding your arms together, “Interesting. End of the world and you wanna get clean? I mean, you go Klaus, but I’d guess you’d wanna pop every pill in sight.” You wonder, truly puzzled as to his true motives. “Oh, the thought did cross my mind, believe me, but there’s something I need to do, and the whole pesky thing doesn’t seem to work unless I’m sober.” Explains Klaus as Diego gets on his knee to tie down Klaus’ legs. “Is this about conjuring the one you lost?” Asks Diego, Klaus just sighs sadly. “What was her name?” Diego wonders, still working on that knot.

You notice how Klaus’ face shifts from sad to happy to sad again, “His name was Dave. We soldiered together in the A Shau Valley...in the Mountain of the Crouching Beast.” He let’s out a shaky breath, you feel for him, the way he talks about Dave and how his body language changes with different emotions, the way he smiles adoringly at his sweet memories. It’s almost like how Diego looks when he’s complimenting you on something. Your heart hurts for Klaus, you couldn’t imagine a world without Diego in it, life would be so much more dull and quiet. “He must have been a very special person to put up with all your weird-ass shit.” You tell him while smiling, he snorts breaking out into a large grin, “Yeah. Yeah, he was...He was kind, and strong, and vulnerable, and...beautiful. And I was foolish enough to follow him all the way to the front line.” He explains, his voice changing with every emotion. Diego looks up in surprise, “You fought in the shit?” Klaus looks at him, “Oh yeah, war couldn’t take enough bodies. Please. Including his.” Klaus’ face darkens, but only for a moment, “Hey, look at us. Logging in some quality bro time before the end of the world.” Cheers Klaus, Diego gives a slight chuckle, finishing the last knot and getting up to walk towards you.

 “Ah, shit.” Whines Klaus loudly, both of you turning to see what’s the matter. 

“What?” Asks Diego.

 “I need to pee.”

You roll your eyes looking around the room, spotting what you had in mind, “Okay good, here’s a bucket.” Walking over to it, you pick it up, setting it down next to Klaus. “Piss, shit, throw up, whatever you need to do. It’s your multipurpose bucket, have a blast.” You tell him sarcastically, giving him a kind smile. He looks back up at you with an unpleasant gaze, wanting to argue but knowing to well that you’d just harass him more. Diego turns to leave, you following right behind him, “No wait, come back. Come back! Come back you pricks!” He shouts defiantly, you don’t want to but it’s for the best, so you ignore him. Trailing Diego down the stairs.

Reaching the bottom of the steps, you just need a moment to chill, maybe a ten minute break. With that in mind you walk towards your old bedroom, Diego silently following your lead.

Walking inside you stop and stretch, taking in your surroundings, “Damn, this room is nicer then the one back home, er...well...we don’t exactly have a bedroom.” You tell him, walking over to the large bed, where you jump on it, laying sprawled out on the whole thing. Ugh, you forgot how comfortable it was, and so soft too.

Diego stands in the middle of your room, fiddling with his arm brace, since he did get shot and all. He suddenly looks up at you smiling, laughing to himself, “What’s so funny Hargreeves?” You call out to him, still staring up at the ceiling. He chuckles again, “Remember when Luther burst through here, cause he thought we were doing something else. When we were really just jumping on the bed, smacking each other with those foam swords you bought at the dollar store.” You smile at the memory, letting out a breathy laugh. “I honestly can’t believe none of them ever actually caught us in the act. That was a true miracle.” You mutter. Diego starts walking over to you with a hint of something new in his eyes, your face falls into a frown when you hear the oddly familiar humming of, Grace? But that can’t be, how is she?

Noticing your abrupt change in mood, Diego stops, confusion and a bit of disappointment flashing through his dark eyes. You make eye contact with him, “This is gonna sound crazy. But I can hear Grace humming downstairs.” You tell him, his eyebrows furrow, he definitely was not expecting you to say that of all things.

——

The both you walk cautiously down the stairs and into the main living room where Grace is dusting the head of a warthog. Humming to herself as casually as ever, you stand in the doorway, letting Diego walk up to her. He questions how she’s able to walk around like nothing bad ever happened to her. Grace answers cheerfully, smiling brightly. You decide to let them have their peace, so you turn around and wait by the front door.

Diego and Grace walk aimlessly into the front room, it appears that Grace would like to go for a walk in the park this evening. With nothing better to do and no clear idea where Hazel and Cha-Cha could possibly be, you follow along.

By the time you all make it halfway through the park, it’s dark out and the night air is cool, your personal favorite time of day. Not a lot of people are walking around, the world is quieter, and there’s no sun to blind you when you forget your sunglasses. Grace suddenly stops, a look of concern melted onto her smooth features, “There’s something else that needs to be said, Diego. Pogo and I...we’ve been lying. Lying to all of you.” She states, you walk in closer to her, “What do you mean Grace?” You ask her, perplexed as to what she might tell you next.

——

The six of you gather around the bar, all conversing about how the apocalypse could start and how we might be able to stop it. From your spot behind the bar, next to Diego, you get the oddest feeling of deja vu. When a flash of blue unexpectedly appears, bringing Five with it. He falls onto the table in front of you, landing hard on a black briefcase. The rest of you, jumping back in surprise, definitely not expecting Five to randomly teleport from out of nowhere.

“You guys, am I still high, or do you see him, too?” Asks Klaus bewildered, as Five rolls off the side of the bar.

 “Five, where have you been? Who did this?” Demands Luther as he and Allison go to help Five up.

 “Irrelevant.” Snaps Five, on to more important things.

 He takes a coffee cup out of Luther’s hand, and downs the whole thing. As you all watch, completely dumbfounded as to what’s even happening right now. Five finishes his drink, turning around with a hard look on his face, “So, the apocalypse is in three days. The only chance we have to save our world is, well, us.” He explains.

“The Umbrella Academy.” Says Luther, stating quite the obvious.

“Yeah, but with me, obviously. So if y’all don’t get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves, we’re screwed. Who cares if Dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us? No. And to give us a fighting chance to see next week, I’ve come back with a lead.” Five says, holding up a white folded piece of paper, “I know who’s responsible for the apocalypse. This is who we have to stop.” Allison takes the paper from his hand, the rest of you gathering around her to see what it says. “Harold Jenkins?” She wonders aloud.

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?” Questions Diego.

[simple-heroics]

Momo Yaoyorozu Fluff Alphabet | Part 2 | Letters M-Z

 Guys, I love her so much. This took awhile to finish but here it is! Read Part 1 here.

credit to creator of the fluff alphabet prompt list here

Marriage - Do they want to get married? How do they propose? What would the marriage be like?

In a word…yes.

However, Momo never dreamed of marriage as a little girl nor did she ever feel like she needed marriage - or any relationship - to be happy. She has her family, friends, a fulfilling career, tea, and other passions (i.e advocacy, fundraising, etc.) to keep her busy. 

Momo doesn’t date to get married or because she’s lonely or needs another person to feel complete. She dates you because she loves you. She marries you because she wants to spend the rest of her life with you. (Oh, and the legal benefits. One of which is that threats against spouses of various federal employees is a federal crime. Including pro heroes. Don’t fuck with Creati’s baby :) :)  She will use every possible way to ruin a person’s life forever if they come after you.)

Basically, YOU make HER want to get married. And you bet your ass she’s gonna put a ring on that.

Forget about “stimulating the economy” and that trickle down economics bull shit. Momo is making your ring - a symbol of YOUR LOVE - herself, and only the best of the best for you. She spends hours researching designs, meanings of various gemstones, the durability of metals. All the “samples” she makes are a small fortune in and of herself.

When she proposes, Momo takes you to a botanical garden - the same one you both went to on one of your first dates. Literally rents the entire place out. While you walk around, you start to get nostalgic just as she hoped and reminisce. 

Holding your hands, Momo talks about the first time she saw you, her favorite memories, how you’ve made her so happy. She tells you how you’ve changed her and helped her grow as a person, how everyday has been such a blessing.

Then she makes the ring, right then and there, for you. Softly, reverently, she asks, “Can we spend the rest of our days together like this?”

Marriage actually makes Momo much more comfortable with PDA. Whereas before she would only go as far holding your hand, now she presses loving kisses to your face and strokes your hair and is in general at least 20% more touchy. Marriage gives her a sense of security and - in a weird way - “propriety”. It’s one thing to lovey dovey with a datemate in public; it’s another to be affectionate with one’s spouse.

Oh, yeah. She loves the sound of it. Whenever your name comes up, it’s always “my spouse, y/n” or “y/n, my spouse”. It just makes her so giddy to say.

The feeling’s mutual of course. Anytime Creati is on TV, kicking ass or looking so pristine in an interview, you’re like:

Nicknames - What do they call their s/o?

Momo is full of sweet, doting nicknames: darling, my love, dear, dearest, beloved. These are usually accompanied by a kiss on your hand or temple. 

All in private, though. You’d have to take her by surprise with a sudden visit to the office or it’d have to be an intensely emotional situation for Momo to call you those sweet names in public.

But Momo doesn’t need to call you a pet name in public for people to know who you are to her. Just the soft, almost reverent way she says your name - practically cooing it - says it all. Everyone knows that you’re her darling even if she doesn’t outright call you it in public.

On Cloud Nine - What are they like when they are in love? Is it obvious for others? How do they express their feelings?

Okay, so this is gonna be a little contradictory but…I see Momo as being both the most relaxed she’s ever been in her life and more focused than she’s ever been before.

You teach her that it’s okay to be herself and not this image of her “best self” she always has in her head. You make her feel safe enough to be let go of her perfectionism and accept her enough that she gradually drops one insecurity after another. She can be messy around you. She can be loud or quiet or giggly or grouchy or literally anything else. She’s just Momo with you.

Finally with some kind of outlet, the explicit permission to be free, it’s like watching an entire lifetime of tension slip away. 

But….because you make her feel this, so happy and light and free, Momo is overwhelmed with gratitude and love that it kind of kicks itself in reverse. She has to be absolutely perfect for you.

And it can become a cycle. Not a great one, either. So please keep in check with each other and help balance yourselves out. Please. She just wants to make you the happiest person on earth which - in her view - is hard because you already do that for her.

Like I briefly touched on above and will even more so below, it’s Very Clear that Momo Yaoyorozu is in love. People who have known her for years have never seen her happier nor have her own colleagues ever seen her so…intense.

Because Momo has a very solid, very real reason to make it through missions waiting for her at home. She has a precious person to make the world a safer place for now. She was absolutely dedicated before but now? Now it’s personal.

PDA - Are they upfront about their relationship? Do they brag with their s/o in front of others? Or are they rather shy to kiss etc. when others are watching?

Given Momo’s upbringing, the answer to most of these is no. Definitely not. Not only is Momo shy about PDA but she was taught that doing so is disrespectful to people around you and even your significant other. Japanese etiquette only affirms this. The most you can expect from your girl is holding hands or linking arms while you walk around.

That doesn’t mean Momo stops touching you in public. In fact, sometimes it’s like she can’t keep her hands off you but her affection is expressed in small, subtle touches disguised as helpful gestures.

Tucking your hair behind your ear, straightening your collar, dabbing the corner of your mouth, brushing imaginary lint off your shoulder. 

As for bragging…Momo doesn’t necessarily “brag” about you. But she does talk about you. A lot.

Out with a friend? “S/o said hi!” Doing paperwork? “S/o got me this pen.” Eating dinner with a colleague? “I should bring s/o here.”

Momo absolutely adores you. Even though she doesn’t go shouting this to the word, it shines in the little things.

The biggest giveaway? The way she looks at you with those bright, shining gray eyes. 

Quirk - Some random ability they have that’s beneficial in a relationship. I just love this prompt for BNHA imagines.

Momo has a lot of secret talents that you’re always discovering at random. Her parents put a lot of thought and care into their only daughter’s upbringing, especially her education, and it shows. Your favorite so far?

Her dancing.

And it’s not like Ashido’s dancing or really many people your age. I am talking classical ballroom, mostly for the sake of those fancy banquets and soirees that the Yaoyorozus often attended. Momo knows how to elegantly through a ballroom as well as she does in the field. 

But that’s not what you’re interested in. It’s the quiet, private part of your lives where’s it’s just the two of you in your home. No one else, no demanding tasks, no where to be. Just you and some lo-fi music.

Momo will gently take you in her arms and sway you around the room. And this is where you see her at her most relax, taking one of those skills hammered into her from a young age and just…letting go of all the rules. She makes it her own and just moves fluidly to the music, taking her with you.

Catch me when I swoon.

Romance - How romantic are they? What would they do to make their s/o happy? Cliché or rather creative?

Extremely romantic! Didn’t I tell you that she’s doting? And affectionate? And absolutely mesmerized by you?

And looord, does she know how to treat you.

As she grew up without want for any tangible object in the world, Momo is not a gift giver. Love, to her, is expressed in the time you spend with a person. This leads to fun weekend trips, surprise visits on lunch breaks, concerts, you name it. 

Momo always finds a way of incorporating a little personal touch into the most cliché of clichés and making them entirely your own thing.

Support - Are they helping their s/o achieve their goals? Do they believe in them?

You have been nothing but supportive of her pro hero career - one that demands so much from Momo and by extension your relationship with her. And Momo is READY to support you in any way she can.

This girl legit researches and creates an entire long term plan on how you can achieve your goal, whatever it may be. School-related? Hello, Momo-sensei. Fitness goal? She goes to the gym and exercise with you, encouraging you the entire way. Artistic goal? Oh, what a coincidence. That random gallery owner happens to be a friend of her mother’s!

You maaaay have to pace her a little bit. She believes in you wholeheartedly but needs to be reminded that they’re your goals and you’re the one working towards them. Not necessarily you and your enthusiastic girlfriend. 

Thrill - Do they need to try out new things to spice out your relationship? Or do they prefer a certain routine?

Momo has a high risk job where people’s very lives are at stake. For god’s sake, she was thrown headfirst into danger in her first two weeks of high school with USJ incident and it’s just been one thing after another ever since.

Give her a routine. Give her that calming domestic bliss. 

Seriously. It’s crucial for your relationship and Momo’s own mental health that she has some sort of routine with you. Routine is comforting; routine provides a sense of security and safety. For that, Momo sets some serious boundaries between her personal life - with you specifically - and work. 

You won’t be going on skydiving dates or anything with Momo. But you will wish each other good night every night, whether you’re in each other’s arms in bed or phone when she’s away or even just text if she’s on a stakeout. It’s these little, consistent things that make your relationships so strong.

Understanding - How well do they know their partner? Are they empathetic?

Part of the way Momo shows her love is learning you and everything about you. She’s spent hours dedicated to studying and now she studies you. It’s likely that she knows you better than you know yourself.

She knows everything about you: your favorite food, your hobbies, your goals, where you were born, who your best friend in high school was, everything. 

She collects every piece of information about you, always listening and observing, and holds it close to her heart.

That said…and don’t hate me for this…but Momo isn’t the most empathetic person. Of course she’s kind and caring and an overall lovely person. But she is a person who follows things by steps, who uses logical thinking to predict people. Sometimes she gets so wrapped up in her line of thinking that she…misses out on the emotional side. 

You’re probably the more empathetic person in this relationship, trusting your instincts and just letting yourself feel out situations while Momo tries to think her way through them. Both have their pros and cons, and it honestly teaches each of you a lot about each other.

Value - How important is the relationship to them? What is it’s worth in comparison to other things in their life?

Momo’s a busy woman. If she takes the time and energy to not only enter but maintain a relationship with you, you mean the absolute world to her.

And she reminds you of that every. single. day.

However…Momo is a selfless person. She gives a lot in the relationship and to you but to her, it’s not a necessity (close, though) but an indulgence. She sees herself as selfish for keeping you in her life, ever aware of the dangers of dating a high-ranking pro hero. She sometimes thinks of herself as selfish by staying with you, loving you, as she does.

Her worst fear is that you’ll suffer for her “selfishness” or be used against her in some way. Or worse still…that she’ll be forced into a situation where she’ll have to choose between you and her duty as a hero, between saving you or the public.

Even Momo doesn’t know which she would choose. She prays she’s never, ever put in the situation where she would have to make such a terrible choice.

Wild Card - A random Fluff Headcanon.

You know that one cool couple who is always hosting fun get-togethers with friends? Like, there are all of these monthly hang outs and yearly traditions that literally everyone in the squad looks forward to every year?

That’s you guys. 

Momo LOVES playing hostess and you know how to have fun. Seriously, you’ve expanded Momo’s world beyond posh banquets and afternoon tea and she adores you for it. You host regular hot pots. Movie nights. Brunches. Beach days. White elephant parties. Every year there’s a cake baking competition with a golden whisk as the prize along with a full 365 days of bragging rights. (Bakugo, who didn’t even want to come, won it last year and will die before giving it up. Nobody cares who wins the golden whisk next year as long as it’s not that gremlin.)

Y���all know how to throw a party.

Probably of one the best things about this relationship is that you’re not in a “couple only” bubble. You cherish your other relationships, and it shows in how you often include others in your lives. :)

XOXO - Are they very affectionate? Do they love to kiss and cuddle?

Doting. Doting is the exact word that comes to mind when I think of Momo and affection. Almost immediately after meeting you, Momo was just so achingly fond of you and those feelings simmered for loooong while before the confession finally happened.

Now she just can’t help herself.

If she’s not playing with your hair, she kissing your fingers. If she’s not doing that, she’s hugging you. If it isn’t a hug, it’s a full on cuddle session where she kisses your face and holds your hand and murmurs sweet affections and -

Yeah. Momo restrains herself in public to subtle, sweet gestures but once your alone? She makes up for lost time.

Her favorite is leaving soft, delicate kisses on your temple after tucking your hair behind your ear and whispering how much she adores you.

Yearning - How will they cope when they’re missing their partner?

Momo keeps incredibly focused and on task at work. But as soon as it gets quiet and she’s alone…she yearns. She pines. She sighs. And she video chats you.

She does a very good job of staying in touch and communicating when you’re separated for any reason. Like I mentioned above, Momo always wishes you good night. And good morning. No matter what. 

Please send Momo encouraging texts throughout her long, hard day. Please send her cute pictures. Please tell her love just because and tell her you can’t wait to see her again. It’s those little things that get her through missing you.

On a more angsty note…Momo worries about you. A lot. She has actual nightmares about something bad happening to you - being held hostage for ransom, a villain looking to get revenge against Creati, you getting caught up in a random public attack and her being unable to save you. These nightmares are at their worst when she’s away from you. The longer the separation, the more vivid and terrible they are. There have been times that she’s called you in the middle of the night just to hear your voice - the only thing that can calm her pounding heart and soothe her enough to go back to sleep. 

So while she keeps in close constant because she does miss you a lot, Momo also does so to give herself some peace of mind. She needs to know you’re okay.

Zeal - Are they willing to go to great lengths for the relationship? If so, what kind of?

Y E S. Oh, my god, yes. Momo would do anything for you.

Sometimes, it honestly scares Momo how much she would do for you. She’s always been a dedicated person, a true perfectionist that approaches everything with well thought out strategy. She does things by steps. She’s the woman with a plan. 

Then you came along and her whole universe imploded, forming a whole new one in the dust of her past and creating something new and unfamiliar and beautiful and terrifying.

So much so that even Momo doesn’t know her own limits anymore - not when it comes to you. She had lines before, boundaries, places she would not go. But with you? God only knows what she wouldn’t do for you.

Momo doesn’t like to linger too long on what kind of incredible, possibly terrible things she would do for you if pushed. But she promises herself that she’ll do everything in her power to keep it from coming to that.

[wrongfullythinking]

Science and Data and Freedoms

There are millions of these rants around, so you are under no need to read mine.  In fact, what I am about to say here should not be taken as anything more than one person’s opinion.  OPINION.  I have several qualifications (I will get to those in a second), but still, this blog is primarily concerned with, as the title suggest, wrong thought.  And yes, thoughts can be flat-out wrong, but that’s another topic for another time, yes?  I primarily abandoned this blog when tumblr decided to advocate for censorship, and well, if you don’t think that was very bad thinking, then I can’t help you and you certainly should stop reading now.  But mostly, I find myself needing a little bit of a platform to rant, so here it is.  This is not for you.  This is for me.  But maybe, if you read it, and you learn something, then it was a little bit more than that, and that’s entirely unnecessary but I’ll be fine with it.  Don’t worry, I’ll keep it a secret.

My qualifications 1) I have a Ph.D. from a major research institution in America.  What that means, most importantly, is actual training in how to read and understand academic writing. 2) I teach statistics, among other things, and I teach in a public health college at another major research institution in America. 3) I work with epidemiologists, though I don’t claim that title myself (I describe myself a psychometrician with an expertise in educational measurement), and I am currently working on several projects using epidemiological methods. 4) A portion of my work in educational measurement focuses on critical thinking, particularly the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Premises So, let’s organize this in a logical manner.  To do so, we generally start with a series of premises.  Here are some of mine. 1) Most people are afraid of dying. 2) The fear of dying plays some part in how people live their lives. 3) People are willing to make some tradeoffs between Safety and Liberty. 4) There is an inverse relationship between Safety and Liberty.  The more liberty, the less safety.  This is only a unidirectional inverse relationship (as liberty ascends, safety decreases), and NOT true in the opposite direction (as safety ascends, liberty must decrease).  This is VERY IMPORTANT. 5) People are poor estimators of their own odds of death, and especially how certain events (say, getting drunk at a party or smoking a hallucinogenic drug or driving recklessly) contribute to their risk of death. 6) There is much unknown about the “novel coronavirus” or SARS-COV_2 or Covid-19 (use whatever term you are comfortable with, the distinction between all of these is arbitrary and unimportant... the root of communication is exchange of messaging between two parties, and all these terms work fine in most cases, since we’re hardly in a lab where it is very important to separate out disease, virus, symptoms, and classifications). 7) Action has been taken by governments and individuals exceeding their statutory authorities. 8) Some of the actions taken by governments and individuals makes no difference in the ability of people to live disease-free, but does have other impacts. 9) The “other impacts” in Premise 8 can directly cause loss of life, as well as other ramifications (lack of social mobility, inability to secure safe food supplies, increase in spousal/partner/child abuse, lack of ability to achieve an education, etc.) that have social and personal consequences for potentially many years, if not generations.  This is the most controversial premise, because it has a tendency to operate on some slippery-slope type logic, which is exactly what I am going to rant against in a second.  Be wary of this one!  But it is important too.

Statistical Problem #1: Never Believe a Point Estimate If you take (my) Stats101 class, and hopefully anybody else’s similar course, one thing that should be a key takeaway is “NEVER BELIEVE A POINT ESTIMATE.”  That’s huge.  Never.  Believe.  A.  Point.  Estimate.

So, for the people who haven’t had a Stats class recently, what is a point estimate?

When you see something like “an estimated 2.2 million Americans will die from the coronavirus if action is not taken,” that “2.2 million” is a point estimate.  It is a single point.  And point estimates are a hallmark of bad reporting of often bad science.  In statistics, any time we make an estimate, we generate a confidence interval: that is, the range around which we believe that estimate to be actually correct.  This is because we don’t measure everybody; we measure a small sample, and use math to make estimates.  Since we didn’t measure everybody, there is some degree of uncertainty, and so we calculate a range that we think is very likely to contain the actual number.  This is called a confidence interval.  The wider the confidence interval, the LESS confident you are.  The narrower the confidence interval, the more confident you are.

An example.  The New York Yankees hit 306 home runs last year, and had 5561 at-bats over 162 games, meaning they hit a home run about once every 20 at-bats.  Let’s say I believe the season will be cut in half (so, 81 games instead of 162).  So, I want to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit in this shortened season.  Let’s work through several examples.

The worst example (okay, not actually the absolute worst, because I could just guess, but pretty bad). In half the games, the Yankees will hit half the home runs.  So that’s 306/2, so that’s 153.

Here’s another BAD example, but it does look legit, doesn’t it? Half of 162 is 81.  So in half the games, they will have half the at-bats, so that’s 2780.5 at-bats.  They hit a home run previously in 5.5026% of their at-bats, and 5.5062% of 2780.5 is 153.  The Yankees will hit 153 home runs next year.

A much better example The Yankees averaged 1.8888 home runs a game (306 / 162) last season.  If we take the low-end of 1.5 home runs per game (or three home runs every two games), and a high end of 2.25 home runs per game (or 9 home runs every 4 games), we expect the Yankees to hit between 121.5 and 182.25 home runs in the shortened 81 game season.

Is there a perfect example? No.  This is a great question.  Introductory statistics students will start to add all sorts of great considerations to this question: in the shortened season, won’t pitchers have less time to get warmed up, so home runs will go up?  But the same is true for batters, so home runs might go down?  If the shortened season starts later, and is played in more colder weather, are there fewer home runs?  How did the Yankees roster change?  Are they playing against more fly-ball or ground-ball pitchers?  Who changed in the rotations of the teams they will play most?  Will the rule change about facing three batters or the end of an inning increase the amount of home runs?  What about conditioning of athletes who are homebound?  No statistical estimate can take into account all factors.  And we don’t try to.  We just play the games and then call it history. So, what are the problems with the “much better example” besides not adding in all those other things? There is nothing wrong with it, it is just not very precise.  A range between 121.5 and 182.25 is more than 60, which is basically half of the low-end.  We could be like, 50% wrong from our low end and still be in the range!  That’s not very precise!

So, what does this have to do with the current issues? Mostly, I want you to very carefully consider any number you hear without a confidence interval.  If you hear a number like “2.2 million,” realize that without a stated confidence interval, the interval could be ANYTHING.  Something like, oh, I don’t know... 2.199 million.  Yep.  In other words, the only thing you could take away from that number is “anywhere between 1 person and 5 million people.  And how much are you willing to give up for that particular risk?

Statistical Problem #2: Confidence Intervals WITHIN models So, to this point, hopefully I’ve described all the things that can go wrong if you don’t use a confidence interval in your ANSWER.  But what about in the MODEL (or the prediction) itself?  Let’s say that, in the above example, we wanted to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit, and we know that MLB will shorten the season.  But we don’t know by how much.

So, let’s say that I estimate the season will be between 60 and 100 games.  That’s a pretty big margin.  Using my earlier estimates, now my confidence interval expands again: 1.5 x 60 for the low end is only 90 home runs, and 2.25 x 100 is 225 home runs!  Now my range is [60:225].  That is VERY imprecise!

The important part is that this problem compounds each time we don’t know something.  You get a wider and wider range, the less you know.  So, the more you want to put into a formula, the more you need to know... and the less you know, the wider your estimate.

Statistical Problem #3: The Missing Denominator None of the math here is particularly difficult, especially with the aid of computers and a bit of training.  So, if somebody is presenting it to you like it is super complex, think of them like a stage magician: distract, watch the glitter, and you will never notice my hand pulling the pigeon out of my coat pocket and putting it into my hat.

So, what have models been hiding from you?

The big missing piece is the denominator, or in this case, “how many people have the virus.”  That’s a VERY important number.  We need several things to build an epidemiological model, and without even an estimate of “how many people have it,” then all the rest of this is pretty much pointless.  This is because “how many people have it” is needed for at least the following: 1) Transmission Rate 2) Infection Rate 3) Fatality Rate

Luckily... we’re actually getting close to having that number!  Or at least, a confidence interval for that number.

Understanding recent data

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

Basically, that paper says that in one county with a lot of cases, they estimate there are somewhere between 2.49% and 4.16% of the population infected, and they wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers are between 1.80% and 5.70%.  There are about 1.93 MILLION people in Santa Clara county.  1,930,000, and between 2.49 and 4.16 are ALREADY infected. So, let’s math that out, and I’m using their narrower confidence interval here.

Low End (2.49%): 48057 already infected High End (4.16): 80288 already infected.

So, now we have an actual denominator!  Or at least, RANGES of one.  They’re pretty confident the actual number is somewhere between those.

The date is important here.  The data here is April 1.  That range (48000-80000) the number of infected people as of April 1.  As of April 17th (over two weeks later), Santa Clara had reported 73 deaths.  63 of those had one comorbidity, and only 5 had no comorbidities.  Here’s the source.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx

So, what’s the fatality rate?

LOW pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 48000 = .0001041666. LOW: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 48000 = .00141666 HIGH pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 80200 = .000062344 HIGH: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 80200 = .00084788

We’ll go broad here, and assume one comorbidity.  Hey, a lot of us have something that is an issue, right?  But let’s apply those number to the American Population of approximately 330,000,000 people.

LOW (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00141666 = 467,497.8 HIGH (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00084788 = 279,800.4

There’s your number.  WOW, you say!  Wow!  A QUARTER TO HALF A MILLION PEOPLE MIGHT DIE!  That seems shocking!

It is, super shocking.  Remember, that’s the zero-case scenario.  The scenario where we do nothing.  Worst-case.  No vaccine, no medication, no treatment, no social distancing, nada.

Oh, let’s go ahead and go over some other numbers.  Not scenarios, actual data.

Motor Vehicle Deaths (2018): 36,560 Medical Error Deaths (2011): Between 210,000 and 400,000 https://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx Accidents (2017): 169,936 Diabetes (2017): 83,564 Influenza/Pneumonia (2017): 55,672 Suicide/Self-harm complications: 47,173 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

((Note, because somebody will inevitably ask: The “Death by Guns” rate is a tough one to count, because the majority of gun deaths are also suicides.  The Gun Homicide+Accident fatality rate is likely between about 10,000 and 13,000 per year (about a third of the car accident fatality rate).  If you’re interested in that number, be sure to look at the data split by category, or if you are interpreting suicides with guns in your gun death count, just be explicit about it, don’t be a pigeon-holding magician.))

Interpretation: Doing nothing at all, we would expect Covid to jump the rates of Influenza/Pneumonia deaths from 7th to 3rd in America, with somewhere between about 340,000 and 530,000 deaths.  I arrive at that number by adding 60,000 to the estimates above, for other non-Covid related Flu/Influenza deaths.  That would put Influenza/Pneumonia above the estimates of death due to medical errors, and well behind the two leading causes of death in the US (CVD and Cancer).  This is provided that there is no emergent medical option.

So, what’s the downside?  Why not do all these drastic things (like shelter-in-place orders and be forced to shut down your business) if it prevents between 1/4 and 1/2 of a million deaths? That’s a good question!  The point here is that orders have consequences, and most of them are unknown at the time of the order.  For example, let’s take a pretty simple policy: requiring every driver to car insurance.  Seems like a fundamental thing, right?  Well, now you’ve also driven the price of car ownership up.  More rural areas (which are often poorer) now have an additional cost burden, that is not shared by people who live in major cities with large public transportation networks.  And you’ve created a secondary market (insurance agents) who now have incentives to raise prices, and huge potential for collusion.  And what about people who defy that order?  Well, that’s tricky-- in some places there are additional policies for covering wrecks involving uninsured drivers, and in those places, car insurance costs more.  So you’re paying more, out of your pocket, because somebody else didn’t follow a policy.  And that means you have less money to go shopping or go out to eat, which means fewer people at stores have jobs.  All of this ties together.

So, what are the unintentional consequences of the shelter-in-place and business-shuttering orders?  The most obvious ones are the losses of income, including jobs, and the 10 million accompanying jobless claims.  But is that such a big problem?  Think about what is happening in homes without jobs... and remember, you are still legally required to pay car insurance.  So that’s the direct one.

But there are multitudes of indirect ones.  For example, this is not an academic article, but...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/03/21/coronavirus-pandemic-could-become-child-abuse-pandemic-experts-warn/2892923001/

And remember, a lot of children who are subject of abuse are from low-income families.  And what did they normally get?  Free and reduced-price lunch at schools.  Now, they aren’t getting those.  Sure, in a few places here and there, some schools are delivering similar meals.  But the vast, vast majority of elementary and high-school aged students on free/reduced lunches are not getting them.  So that leaves parents (or caretakers) to pick up the burden.  Those same parents and caretakers who are filing the 10 million unemployment claims.  Uh-oh.  Sounds stressful.

Guess what stress does to people?  It makes them sick.  And you know what happens when you get an ulcer?  Hopefully not much, but bad ones can end you up in a hospital.  Where there are many procedures, but most of them minor.  Unfortunately, hospitals right now are being forbidden from doing elective surgeries.  And elective surgeries helped pay for other services, like necessary surgeries and emergency care.  So, the ER is literally understaffed, even in regions where there are no COVID patients, because the state has forbidden the tummy tucks that pay the salaries of ER nurses.

You see the tumble here?  This is where I cautioned earlier about the slippery slope argument, and it is an absolutely valid critique of what I’m putting here.  But we’ve gone past speculation territory and are now in data territory.  And (again, work in health care education), I know some people who are starting to see these effects.  One of the faculty at my school (teaches our Law course) is a lawyer for a rural hospital service.  He has watched them lay off or furlough over 60% of workers.  And they have had... wait for it... 0 covid cases.  The few that were suspected, they flew down to a much larger hospital.  At high cost, because they can’t charge for COVID services.

Meanwhile, you’re talking a rural system that was one of the top employers in four different counties.  Laying off or furloughing 60% of workers.  The guy was so upset telling me about this that he almost cried, especially because he knew the families of so many of the people his board had just let go.

Any caveats to add? The big caveat that I place on the interpretation here (basically, that’s we’ve VASTLY oversold the risk of this thing) is that we don’t know about secondary infections.  If you can get infected twice, and that second infection is harmful or make you able to spread the disease to others who are then harmed, then all these numbers are too low. Bottom-line it for me, WT. Fear leads to the dark side, where you have no freedoms.  Don’t give up things because you were scared and because somebody showed you a point of data that you should not believe.

[jortsman]

Yooo 2 and 13 for before the century was stolen?

yessssss love both these! I’m gonna answer 13 first because 2 is long, hah

13.  What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

I listen to so so much, except certain scenes when I’m getting really into them, I turn everything off and get into this super-focus mode. But! I actually have a playlist for writing this (though I throw in random stuff all the time) and here is that playlist. It’s 2 hours, hah, but that first song on there especially gets me into some feelings that are very blupjeans appropriate (like, put in some headphones and close your eyes and just chill while listening to that song and get totally emotionally wrecked. The song after it is pretty oof too). 

2: What scene did you first put down?

It was their conversation in the lab in ch.14 (I’ll post the scene below the cut). I just finished relistening to TAZ and got blupjeans super stuck in my head, specifically during Stolen Century, and I read all of the fic that I could find that was in that particular vein of what I wanted to read. But, my brain was still all wrapped up in it and I was running scenarios in my head while doing my mindless job, and then was like... what if I wrote this down? I felt positive that I couldn’t actually write a legit fan-fiction or stay committed to a thing, but I convinced myself to just write this one scene, and it ended up being way longer than I thought, and I actually kind of liked it. 

But then I got really into the idea of figuring out how/why things got to a place where they would have a conversation like that and started forming all of these ideas. And then I thought maybe I should actually try writing something for real, figuring that I probably wouldn’t be able to stick to it for very long, but it would be good writing practice. But now it’s been *looks at watch* 5 and 1/2 months, and I’m still so invested in this, and I’m just really glad that I allowed myself to write that first scene, because I was really close to not doing it and speed-running sudoku instead.  But anyways! The scene is under this! 

The lab was filled with a low, warm, golden light. Barry had obviously been hard at work since before the natural light from the couple of small circular overhead windows had disappeared into darkness.

Barry had the automatic lighting of the Starblaster disabled in the lab; sometimes he would need it to be completely dark or to have light focused only in a certain spot, so he used his own, manual light sources. That night, there was only one dimming, dying bulb on above his work space. Lup wondered if maybe he needed more light and was just too engrossed in his work to notice, but she was really digging the atmosphere; it was very homey and not so clinical or science-y. Lup was sitting in the swivel chair on the opposite end of the long, curved counter that made up the back half of Barry’s workplace. She kicked back away from the desk a bit, fully slumped in her chair, arms hanging off the armrests, fingers almost dragging on the floor, looking very obviously bored. She straightened and scooted towards Barry, who was moving between plant samples and his notes every few seconds.

Lup kicked at the ground to roll towards him, almost knocking her chair into his. “Baaaarry. I want something to do.”

Barry looked up from his work for the first time in over an hour. “Oh damn, yeah sorry, I was so involved in what I was doing that I forgot to catch you up on -- what it is that I’m doing. Which is not a great way to get your help,” and he chuckled even though he was obviously nervous and blushing. He was getting back to being a little bit more open after having clammed up some over the past couple years. He was talking with her so much more and frequently joking again instead of stammering out apologies over and over. And his laugh. She was getting a lot more of that lately, and it was the best laugh and she did what she could to hear it often.

Her boredom dissolved and she lit up knowing that he was about to teach her something new or just get her involved in some shit. And, that she had his attention. No, no, no. It was about learning and working, not about Lup being noticed. Lup was always noticed, but she didn’t always get to learn and gain new skills; that’s what made it exciting to spend time with Barry in the lab.

Time with Barry was productive and fun. Time with other people was about being noticed and the center of attention, which happened without her even trying or necessarily wanting that. But, there was something about having Barry’s attention that felt so different, and she couldn’t figure out why that was.

“So, I’m trying to develop a way for us to be able to determine if uh, starting with plant based food I guess, if we can find out what’s safe to eat in a more efficient, and faster way and with clearer results, y’know. This stuff is hard; testing things according to our standards and our knowledge of biological makeup of plant matter when we’re literally on alien planets. But, I figure I can do this now while we’ve got some down time, and it can save us time in future years. Figure the faster we can know what’s safe when we start a new cycle, the sooner we can get to real work.”

He was obviously genuinely enjoying working on a project that he came up with and assigned to himself apropos of nothing. He could have been using the opportunity for some rest, as most of the others were. Not Barry, though; he loved to work. But, she was also there, looking to him and his work to solve her boredom, so what did that say about her? He was about to talk, but she cut him off before he could expand on his idea.

“So, you came up with something to work on now, so that you can get to other work faster in the future. And I’m gonna guess that it’s probably so that you’ll have more time to work on other things between and after work? Maybe some things that will, hmmm, let’s see; give you more work?”

“What can I say,” he said brightly while shrugging, “I’m not livin’ if I’m not science-in’.” He laughed faintly, not because what he said was at all funny, but just because he was happy. Obviously, visibly happy.

After he he had spoken, while still wearing his goofy smile, he transitioned seamlessly into a fake, stereotypical, super nasally nerd voice and pushed up his glasses -- not in his normal way, but in a well timed, intentional way, and said “Me and science are best friends.” And Lup died laughing.

He was in such a fun mood and uncharacteristically confident and Lup was ecstatic.  

“You!” she said with lingering emphasis, through a huge smile. “Are. SUuUch a NERD!” And then Lup did something that she’d done tons of times before; socked him somewhat gently on his arm. And then Barry did something he’d never done. The same thing, back to her.  

And Lup was surprised. In a good way, but definitely surprised, and Barry saw her surprise and realized what he had just done.

“Oh gods, Lup, I am so sorry, I-I-I I don’t know why I did that or why that happened, what is wrong with me, I-I-I-- ” he was spilling out bits and pieces of words impossibly fast, his brain exploding as he saw flashes of their entire friendship collapsing within a moment. Lup interrupted him by leaning forward a bit and grabbing him by the shoulders. He stopped talking, but his mouth was still slightly agape and his eyes clearly showed the immense shame and panic he felt.

“B-a-r-o-l-d,” she said his name firmly and drawn out and with emphasis on both syllables, as if she was trying to wake him from a trance, which she might as well have been. “That. Was hilarious. I am so into this Barry that you are Barry-ing tonight, and I do not want you to freak out and never be like this again. Because one, it’s fucking cool and two, I don’t want you backing off from our chill hangs again, like last year.” He visibly calmed, though still a little nervous. Only really enough for her to be able to tell though; she’d become an expert of reading his face.

“Look. You shouldn’t ever feel bad about reciprocating, yeah? I punch you in the arm, it’s fair game to punch me in the arm. We are buds and it is okay! And, Barry?” She waited for him to make eye contact with her, and she was glad that his eyes had relaxed and were meeting hers in such a natural way; it was kind of distracting. “If anything ever did happen between us that wasn’t okay, I would let you know and we would talk. Listen. I would never throw our friendship away or let it change over some tiny thing. Or even a medium sized thing. Medium-Large, though? That could be taking it too far.” She smiled and he smiled with her.

He pulled in a deep breath as she let go of his shoulders and leaned back into her chair. He exhaled and said “I’m sorry I can be so, I guess easily shaken, and sorry that I --”

“Hey, Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“ Stop apologizing. ”

“Heh. Yeah, I’ll try. That’ll be a tough one,” and he drew in another deep breath, trying to pull his body back into sync, his adrenaline still a little bit off.

“I’m sor -- nope, stop,” he caught himself and partially covered his face with his hand in exasperation and momentarily closed his eyes, trying to think of how to say what he felt needed to be said without tearing himself down or apologizing profusely; things he had never even thought about working on before Lup.

“Your friendship is really important to me. And I guess -- hitting you in the arm like that felt really disrespectful. And, Lup.” He purposefully met her gaze again, “I have so much respect for you. You’re an amazi-” and his adrenaline was flooding him and his heart was gearing up to go wild, and gods, why did he start that sentence? He took a short breath, lowered his tone a bit, and forced some calm into himself just be calm for a second, he begged his body. Try to summon some of that professor mentality from way back when, from a lifetime ago.

“You’re an amazing person. I am constantly impressed and surprised by your work and how unnaturally fast you can learn. You are a good friend, a good sister, and a good colleague to us all. You are so needed and cared about.” He took in a sharp breath and gulped. “By everyone. And I don’t want to do anything to disrespect you.”

The words had to be forced at times, and he was getting more and more light headed, but it all came out and nothing was stammered or unfinished and left hanging or surrounded by apologies. He didn’t say a word wrong or spontaneously forget a word completely. He said it all, and he felt good about what he said.

What a fucking feeling .

Lup was taken aback. Just by virtue of being Lup, she had gotten lots of compliments throughout her life. She didn’t believe them all and she knew some come from a place of self gain. Many others she knew she deserved. Absolutely no one aside from Taako had ever said something even close to that sincere to her before, though. Was it only because she’d let basically almost all of her barriers down around him? Would everyone be that sincere with her if she were even less guarded with them? No -- that was just Barry. And she was either going to cry or say something really stupid if she didn’t reel the conversation back, at least a bit.  

“That means a lot to me Barry, truly. Even though that first half felt a little like I was getting a pep talk from a dad or a teacher.” She got a small laugh out of Barry.

“You need to loosen up around me!” She went on, trying to turn the flood of feelings into excitement and sincerity and to drown out anything else that was knocking around in her head. “I am never going to be put off or offended or uncomfortable about anything you do, I’m sure. I want Barry unchained, let loose, uncensored, free roaming, all natural 100% grade-A-Barold, got it?” He smiled and exhaled and gave a relieved laugh. He got it, and he knew he was going to do whatever he could to be that for her. They met each other’s eyes with mutual gazes of deep warmth and calm.

But, she realized; there was something else very important that needed to be addressed. Couldn’t end on a joking note quite yet.

Her face went soft and then formed a furrowed brow and slightly downturned lips. She took both of his hands into hers as they faced each other.

“Barry. What you said about not doing things like that out of respect for me…” and she involuntarily, abruptly paused, something forming in her throat and not allowing her to continue. It was not quite a lump or a hiccup but more like a strain; a sudden half-second restriction of her breath. Because she was barrelling head-first into “serious conversation” territory, and that was territory that she had successfully danced and tiptoed around for most of her life, save for the conversation with him back in their ninth year -- but that was all about him, not about her being vulnerable. Now she was walking around the edge of a boiling vat of her own vulnerability and was about to either decide to jump down to safety or intentionally let herself fall into it. And why would she choose to do that? To fall? Why was she definitely about to do that? Her eyes couldn’t face his; she was looking down at his hands in hers.

“...do you think that I don’t respect you?” And at the end of that sentence, there was definitely a lump in her throat.

There was a long pause between them and then Barry stammered through several different beginnings of a response that he didn’t have. His voice shook and he was even more nervous than usual because he was taken off guard by the question and by Lup’s sudden shift in demeanor (and definitely, and probably mostly, by her hands holding his) and also because he didn’t know how to answer, because either he had to lie to spare her feelings (but he could never lie to her) or… he had to admit that he didn’t feel like he was respected. It wasn’t something that he was angry or resentful about and it absolutely was not something he demanded or needed or even wanted. It was just something that was absent, though he wasn’t even actively pursuing it or trying to get it from anyone. It was simply a fact that he was aware of. That he was certain of. He wasn’t respected.

As he stammered and fidgeted, Lup took her right hand away from his and raised it to his face. She cupped his cheek and let her thumb lay over his mouth to hush him. It was an intimate and soft gesture that made him lightly gasp but also, as her hand settled perfectly around the curve of his cheek and her thumb lay still on his lips, made him warm everywhere and loosened all the tension in his body at once.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said in a voice softer than he thought was possible to come from his boisterous and loud friend, softer than when they had talked on a more serious level in the past. She sounded sad, and his heart dropped. And him being warm and without any tension and a heart that just free-fell, he completely melted and his shoulders dropped, too.

She was looking straight at him, searching his eyes for something, and Barry was looking into her eyes without glancing away or lowering them as he almost always did.  

“Barry. I respect you immensely. You are one of the -- no, actually, the most intelligent person I have ever known. I have learned so much, just by being around you. You’re approachable and kind and willing to share your knowledge, without so much as a trace of pretension. There’s no stick up your ass, like most of the people I’ve ever known who thought they were smart,” she barely smiled and exhaled sharply through her nose in a kind of almost-laugh. Then she was completely serious again; a look that Barry didn’t know what to do with or how to react to.

“You are — so knowledgeable, and you utilize that and apply it to your work, to which you are dedicated in a way that I have never seen anyone be dedicated to anything . And you constantly push yourself to learn more, and you share and teach everything you can to anyone who wants to listen, and you do it with patience and kindness, and…” and then she was the one nervously rambling. That was not Lup. She let her hand drop from his face and scooped his free hand back up.

“I have a lot of respect for you, Barry. So much. And I trust you, completely. But,” she paused and felt like she was on the verge of tearing up. “I’ve never said that. And I’ve never done anything to show it.”

She sighed and looked back down at his hands in hers, feeling warm at the sight, but still guilty. Barry was trying to put together a response, to protest, to tell her that she did so many things to show her trust in him, but he couldn’t find the words. All he could do was sit there with a slightly agape mouth and sad eyes as Lup continued.

“I can’t just expect you to know how I feel. So, now I’m telling you. And if you know me at all, you sure as hell know that I wouldn’t say any of this or get this vulnerable if I didn’t mean it.” She looked back up at him and she was finally actually smiling; a little bit weakly and through slightly watery eyes, but a real, happy smile. Barry’s entire body felt like it was on pause. But then, she dropped his hands and raised hers to smoosh each side of his face, looking directly at him and putting on her best mock serious expression as she leaned in close. Barry’s heart shot back up and into his throat with Lup that close to him.

“But, now that you know, you will never see me this mushy again, Barold,” she told him in an assertive tone. “You only get one Lup heart-to-heart, and you’ve just burned yours, cowboy.”

And she laughed, and Barry laughed even though tears were free-falling from his eyes without him even crying.

[seouledbysisi]

Moonlit

Chapter 6

Saturday morning had finally arrived. Sapphire was pretty excited for her date with Woojae- or Woodie, she wasn’t exactly sure which he would rather be called seeing as they now had a personal & professional relationship of some sorts.

Her phone pinged with a notification. We’re still on for today, right? She immediately dropped her head seeing as she had forgotten all about Bloo planning to show she and Riley around Seoul. She sighed and ran to Riley’s room. She knocked since the door was closed.

“Come in!” Riley yelled from the other side of the door. “Since when do you knock?” She asked as Sapphire cascaded on in.

“You might’ve been changing or something.”

“That’s never stopped you from coming in before.” Riley giggled as she laid out some outfits on her bed.

“I’m practicing good manners.” Sapphire said as she bounced onto the brass bed in Riley’s room. “So we have a dilemma. . .”

Riley looked up at her with her brow raised. “What kind of dilemma?”

Sapphire took a deep breath. “I got a text from Bloo a minute ago asking were we still on for today.”

“And you said what?”

“I haven’t responded yet. I totally forgot about it until he wrote me and I don’t have the heart to not go.”

Riley shook her head a bit. “What about our dates?”

“Woojae isn’t picking me up until like 3.” Sapphire was trying to figure out how to make this work.

Riley threw her a thumbs up. “Well have fun!” She said as she crossed the room.

Sapphire stopped her in her tracks. “I’m not going alone! He invited us both therefore you’re going too!”

“Do I have to? We both know that he really wants to hang with you.”

“I’m not going alone, if he wanted it to just be me he should’ve said that.” Sapphire shrugged.

Riley huffed her breath. “What time?”

Sapphire sent a quick text. What time again?

Riley started at her waiting on a response. The only thing she wanted to do was be in Junwon’s presence today to be honest but for her best friend she’d do just about anything.

Sapphire’s phone pinged. Pick you up at noon.

“He said he’ll pick us up at noon.” She related to Riley as she moved to her feet off the bed.

Sapphire rolled her eyes a bit. “You better be glad that I love you. I hope he knows that we have to be back home at 2. I’m not making Junwon wait!”

Sapphire nodded. And left out to find something to wear. About an hour later Bloo has texted that he was waiting outside for them.

Riley

Sapphire

Bloo pulled up to a winery. “They have the best wine here. Figured you ladies would enjoy a good wine tasting, am I right?”

Sapphire gave him a small smile. “Of course.”

Riley stepped out of his car almost eager to get some wine in her system. Suddenly she was feeling all the nerves of what was occurring that night. She was going to be alone on a legit date with Junwon and she wasn’t sure if her headspace was ready for it. “Wine sounds perfect right about now.” She walked ahead.

Bloo lingered back with Sapphire. “You don’t sound excited about this. . .”

Sapphire shook her head. “No I am, I think this is great it’s just I have a meeting in a couple of hours so I can’t drink too much. I’d hate to be tipsy.” She giggled a bit.

“What kind of meeting?” He asked. He wanted to pick her brain and see what other plans she had going on. He felt like a jealous boyfriend but the funny thing was he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend. He didn’t do relationships, they were too hectic and honestly he didn’t have the time nor patience for the drama that came along with relationships. No doubt he liked Sapphire but the fact remained that he wasn’t a relationship type of guy.

Sapphire cleared her throat. “I’m meeting a friend at some type of festival thingie. Nothing huge but it sounds fun.”

“Sounds like you’re making friendships pretty easily.” He sat in the chair across from her as she took the one next to Riley.

Sapphire nodded. “Seems like it. So what do you do outside of rapping?”

“That’s mostly all I do. I’m constantly in the studio and if I’m not doing that I’m performing. Music is my life.” He replied as he took a sip from a white wine that one of the servers poured.

Sapphire took a sip and immediately regretted it. “Ew. I hate dry wine.”

Riley giggled as she chugged it down. “It’s just what I need.”

Sapphire swueezed her leg and leaned closer to her. “Don’t drink too much, you don’t wanna be drunk for your date.” She said just above a whisper.

“Date?” Bloo smirked.

Riley blushed a little just with the thought of how good Junwon was going to look today.

“You seem excited. Must be a lucky guy. I guess I better report back to Loopy that you’re for sure not interested.” He said with a chuckle.

“He likes me?” She said as she burst into laughter.

“I mean he likes any person with a vagina but especially if she’s pretty and you definitely fit the bill.”

Riley became a bit uncomfortable. She always felt weird when someone called her pretty because she just didn’t see it. She felt like she was average looking yet she was okay with that. People seemed to rage about these great looks that she just wasn’t sure she possessed. “Well he’s nice and all but not my type. Not really into the man-whore type of guy.”

“Riley!” Sapphire’s mouth flew open.

“Well it’s the truth. He even tried to holla at you!”

Bloo rolled his eyes a bit. “Yeah, he’s something else but he means no harm.

They talked for a little while longer all enjoying one another’s company until it was time to leave. Bloo had more planned but since they had other engagements to attend he was fine with cutting it short and brought them home.

The girls rushed into their apartment. They literally only had 45 minutes to get ready.

“Riley!” Sapphire yelled.

She ran into her room. “What’s wrong?”

“Which outfit?” She asked. She held up two outfits.

Riley tapped her chin in thought. “That one!”

“You’re a lifesaver!”

The ladies got dressed and waited for the guys to show up. The nerves were starting to show up and it seemed out of their control.

Sapphire

Riley

“What if Woojae realizes just how awkward I am? He’s going to hate me.” Sapphire paced.

“You’re not awkward and even if you were it’s his loss if he doesn’t like you after tonight!”

Before Sapphire could answer there was a soft knock on the door. She answered it immediately after taking a deep breath.

Woojae smiled as he looked her from head to toe. “Well you look pretty.”

“Thank you.” She said as she looked away a bit.

Junwon followed after him through the door.

Riley met them at the door was well.

Junwon gave her a shy smile. “Hi gorgeous.”

Riley’s breath hitched in her throat. Hearing him say the word gorgeous made her stomach tingle.

“Ready to go?” Sapphire posed against the wall.

Woojae nodded. “Yes, so we came in sperate vehicles because after the festival we’re actually going to split up if that’s okay with y’all?”

Riley’s eyes bulged a bit. “Okay?”

“I have somewhere special I want to take you.” Junwon explained.

Sapphire smiled at her best friend. This guy was pulling out all the stops to impress her and she was definitely approving of him. “Cool with me, y’all need some alone time.”

Woojae grabbed her hand. “And I have something that I need your help with.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.” He said with a slick smile and pulled her out to his car.

Woojae held Sapphire’s hand as they walked around the festival.

“Basically its a food festival so there a lot of old traditional Korean foods that you can walk around and sample.” He shrugged. “I thought it would be cute to bring you here.”

She smiled. “I love it! Something different!” She said as she picked up a sample of Kimchi. “Mmm so good! Spicy but good.”

He took a bite as well. He held his chopsticks out for her to taste something else. “Here.”

She took the food into her mouth. As she chewed she made a weird face.

“You don’t like it?” He asked with a laugh.

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.”

He laughed a bit more. “Don’t apologize, I don’t like it that much either.”

“Why the heck are you eating it?” She hit his arm a little.

“Might as well try everything.”

Junwon and Riley trailed just behind them with his arm draped over her shoulder keeping her close.

“You enjoying this?” He asked her.

She nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t found anything that I don’t like the taste of.”

“Good. I’m glad you agreed to go out with me. I didn’t think you would.”

Riley looked up at him. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know I guess because we’re doing business and you don’t seem like the type to mix business with pleasure.”

She giggled a bit. “I don’t normally but you give me a feeling that I can’t explain and I figured why not explore it. Plus I’ll never turn down a free meal.”

“Oh so you’re using me for a free meal?!”

She rolled her eyes. “Well of course!”

Suddenly Sapphire came to a halt.

“Well I didn’t think I’d see you again today!” A male told her.

Sapphire became quiet.

Woojae just stared at the guy.

“Funny, you didn’t tell me that your ‘meeting’ was actually a subtle way of meaning a date. Two dates in one day you’re on a roll.” Bloo blurted out. He clearly had been drinking.

Sapphire shook her head and looked towards Woojae but he wouldn’t look at her.

“Y’all have a good rest of your date.” He said as he patted Woojae on the back and walked away with his buddies.

Sapphire turned to Woojae immediately. “I am so sorry that he did that. Me and him have never gone on a date, Riley was there too!”

Woojae chuckled. “Babygirl things like that don’t bother me. Are you in a relationship with him?”

Sapphire shook her head.

“Exactly and you’re not in one with me either so you can date whomever you want to-“

“But that wasn’t a date!” She interrupted.

He threw his hand up to stop her from speaking more “Even if it were, it doesn’t matter to me. It doesn’t change a thing, I’m just trying to get in where I fit in. I still like you, Phire. Okay?” He tipped her chin.

She nodded. “You sure about that?”

He licked his lips. “I’m certain.”

After the festival was over they went their separate ways.

The air whipped through Sapphire’s braids. “Where are you taking me?”

They pulled up to a building. She was becoming a bit more nervous with the unknown.

She opened the car door and stepped out. He came around the front of the vehicle to grab her hand and walk her into the building. She saw the H1ghr Music logo everywhere she looked.

“We’re at the studio in case you’re wondering.” He revealed as he opened one of the doors on the inside. She took a seat on the couch which was against the wall.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this time with you but why exactly are we here?” She asked becoming a bit on edge and impatient.

He turned a song on. As she listened to the words of the song it sounded so familiar. After the first verse there was nothing but the instrumental.

“It’s not finished but I after I met you in the coffee shop, our interaction seemed like a good story line for a song.” He blushed a bit.

She covered her face. “Wow!” Was all she could say.

He sat on the couch next to her and pulled her hands down. “What do you think?”

She breathed in. “I think it’s great. I like it. It’s kind of funny how we met though, who would’ve knew I’d be soliciting your services for my grand opening.”

Woojae chuckled. “Who would’ve knew you’d be in this studio with me or agree to go on a date with me.”

Sapphire kissed his cheek quickly and looked away.

Riley was laying on a blanket staring up at the stars while Junwon sat up with his knees pulled into his chest.

“So what’s so special about this place or than the fact that the sky is in perfect view?”

Junwon smiled. “I go here to write. It’s my secret writing spot I guess. It’s like my muse.”

She couldn’t believe he was sharing something like this with her so early on. Most people wouldn’t see the beauty in this gesture but to Riley, the small things counted the most. “Thank you for sharing you secret spot with me. Have you brought anyone else here before?” She was scared of what the answer would be.

“If you’re wanting to know if other females have been up here with me the answer is no.” He laughed.

Riley sat up. “No I wasn’t I just-“ she cut herself off and sighed. “Who am I kidding, yeah that’s exactly what I wanted to know.”

“I know. You’re the first.” Hopefully the last. He thought to himself.

He became quiet for a moment.

“What’s on your mind?” She asked.

He looked around at her for a moment then stared at the ground. “This may be hard to believe but I haven’t done much dating since I got to Korea. Music has been my main focus.”

She was thanking God in her head. “What makes me so special then?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to figure out myself.”

[cryinggameff]

Seventy-Two

Randi

I spent hours tossing and turning that night, and I knew why. I had been apart from Cayden for 3 days now, and i was starting to lose my mind. I got up out of the bed and decided to try and take a shower, hoping it would relax me, then got back in bed. The baby started doing all kinds of flips and tricks and I instinctively reached over to get Cayden’s attention because he loved feeling the baby move, he said it was the only time he got to connect with the baby, I carried it around all day. I sighed. But of course my hand came up empty.

I knew I had made a mistake leaving the house, but I was feeling so many things towards him, it was hard to lay next to him. clearly he hadn't hurt me on purpose but i couldn't get past the betrayal, and honestly insecurities i felt. I thought i was giving Cayden something he didn't have, his first child, something no one could take away. Now i just felt stupid and i wasn't sure i could handle another woman having a child with my husband. What was I supposed to do if Cayden really had another son? Would I leave him over that? Something that happened before I even knew him. That sounded unfair. I threw off the blankets in frustration. Just then the doorbell went off downstairs. I paused. My stomach knotted, i was pretty sure i knew who it was. Only one person came by at such odd times. I got myself off the bed and put my robe on to answer the door.

Cayden stood with his hands in his pockets, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. I had talked to him on the phone a bit, he was checking on the baby, but i hadn't seen his face and had forgotten just how annoyingly attractive he was.

“What are you doing here? It’s 3 in the morning,” I pulled my robe closed. He stepped inside past me so i closed the door behind  him. He looked down at me.

“Pack yo shit Randi. We going home,” he said simply, looking at me seriously. I looked at him like he had lost his mind.

“Do you think you’re my dad now?”

“No. I’m your husband, and I’m taking you and my kid home one way or another. This is ridiculous. I can’t sleep because I’m worried, I know you not sleeping either, which ain’t good for the baby. Your friends ain’t gonna take care of you the way I do, I know they not about to rub your feet or help you in the mornings,” he said. I hated that he was right. The only reason I was surviving this pregnancy was because of him. I still had really rough mornings and he made me smoothies or juice, something I could stomach since my morning sickness refused to go away even so late into the pregnancy, he ran my baths and often carried me to them. I was spoiled. Plus he gave amazing foot rubs, or on my lower back, which was beyond sore right now.

“You can't just ignore all your problems and act like things are ok Cayden, even if i come home the problem still exists," i pointed out.

“I’m not ignoring it. I’m gonna be a man and sort it out, either way, but I need you by my side. Because I’m...terrified Randi,” he confessed. "This shit is as shocking to me as it is to you, and i have no idea what the fuck to do. Im a grown as man but im scared." My face softened and my heart broke. Cayden so rarely showed vulnerability that it meant a lot when he did.

"well so am i," i mumbled, wanting to cry again. He saw that and cupped my cheek. I closed my eyes. When i opened them his face was hovering over mine. He brushed his lips over mine and my body turned to jello. He kissed me so i kissed him back. His hand moved into my hair and he got a fistfull of it, tilting my head back. He kissed behind my ear and down my neck, stopping just before the spot i loved to have kissed. He pulled away and looked me dead in the eyes, his were dangerous, unpredictable and warning of trouble. That was Cayden, but that was also me. He took my hand in mine and started for the stairs with me in tow.

I wasn't sure what this was gonna help when he was hovering over me, kissing me and positioning himself with my entrance. He hiked my leg up, and pushed into me. I whimpered, at a loss for words as he moved in and out of me with slow, purposeful strokes. I always thought pregnancy would make sex awkward but Cayden always knew what he was doing and so far it hadn't been an issue. He had me on my side now, thrusting his hips from behind me, a really comfortable position for my bump and my back as well. His mouth was by my ear and his hand gripped my hip. He was grunting in my ear which honestly set me off and i felt myself peaking as he did.

He rolled over onto his back and brought me into his side". You gon bring yo ass home now?" he asked in my ear. I nodded like a fool. After that how could i not. He chuckled, bringing his hand to my bump.

"He's been really active today," i said, looking down at his hand on my stretched skin.

"He gets that from me. Gonna be a ball player," he smirked.

"Im gonna have my hands full i already know. I just hope he looks like you,"

That's how he convinced me, and the next morning i found myself in my bed at home, with him laying beside me. I was awake and he was sleeping with his arms around me. I was looking over at him just thinking. We had talked after our little distraction and Cayden had apologized to me for the drama this had caused. He also made it clear he had reached out to Keisha and they would be going to get a DNA test today actually but the results didn't change how he felt about me and our baby. Now i was just trying to make peace with the possible outcomes.

"You okay?" Cay asked, eyes still closed.

"I thought you were sleeping. Yeah im ok. Are you ok?" I asked. He opened his eyes and nodded. He looked at the clock on the bedside table.

"I have to go soon," he said, looking over at me. He was going to the doctor with Keisha to give samples for the paternity test. I nodded. He got up and took his ring off to get in the shower. I wasn't sure if i was supposed to go with him or just stay out of it, i felt awkward because he hadn't asked me to go. He paused. "You coming?" he asked.

"Do you want me there?" I sat up.

"I always want you there," he said. So i got up and went to shower with him. I wasn't sure where we stood or what all i was gonna do, but for now i was gonna stay by his side.

Cayden

I was scared shitless. I didn't know what the fuck was going on and what this meant. One minute i was having a baby with Randi, and the next i might have a 5 year old son. When i had reached out to Keisha i asked her if the kid was mine and she said it was possible. I was beyond pissed. Why would she not tell me that i might have a kid? I would have wanted to know. I would have helped her out and handled my shit.

Even worse than the fear though was the guilt i felt for throwing all this on Randi. She was 7 months pregnant and more vulnerable now than ever, and i wasn't sure she could handle this. She was beyond upset and i was afraid she resented me now. I was the one who wanted the baby and made her all these promises about how our life would be, now this. Last night she had told me it would kill her if someone else had my first child, and i wasn't sure what to do with that. She came home with me anyways but i was pretty sure her staying was dependent on the results. I couldn't help but think about how we had just started moving into the new house, even started working on the nursery.

She sat beside me at the doctor's office, one hand in mine and the other on her belly. I was glad she had agreed to come with me because she kept me calm. Keisha and her son were sitting across from us, waiting as well. The whole thing felt like a twisted maury episode and i was beyond uncomfortable but it was more awkward for Randi. She wouldn't say a word to Keisha or even look in her direction. After a few minutes a nurse came and called our names. I kissed Randi's hand before letting it go. "I'll see you in a lil bit," i said.

"I'll be here," she said with a small smile.

I gave a bunch of samples like blood and saliva, they even look some hair. The nurse said we wouldn't find out for a week, they had to take everything to a lab then they'd call us. So another week of this not knowing.

I had to go talk to Pat so i dropped Randi off at home then drove to the warehouse. Driving up to it i suddenly got a wave of memories from long before i met Randi. When Trey was still alive and i was doing drops or working on corners. In a way life was easier then, i didn't have any responsibilities, i just had to focus on me and my job, not 100 other niggas and what they doing. But it was sldo harder, i saw a lot when i was doing drops or working on corners. I lost a lot of friends, got shot for the first time. I thought i'd be doing this shit forever, and i was ok with it until SHE came into my life.

"So this it? You really out man?" Pat said, passing me the blunt he had lit.

"Me and Sean madea deal, so its done," i shrugged. "Im just getting my shit in order now."

"So what you gon be doing?" He asked.

"Imma get more involved in my legit businesses, be on some CEO shit. Im working with these nerdy niggas on this app right now and shit is pretty cool, and we bout to make soe mad coin to top it off."

"On some legal shit huh. I see you cuh."

"If you ever get sick of this shit i got you man," i shrugged.

"I appreciate that. You a real one. Eh let me know when that kid get here, i wanna see you on some fatherly shit," he laughed. I chuckled.

"Bet," i said.

After seeing Pat i called Ty so see where he was at. I hadn't told him about everything going on even though that was my nigga, this just felt like something i had to figure out privately first. The dude knew me like a brother though and he guessed something was up i guess from the way i was talking.

"You and miss attitude fighting again?" he asked.

"Nah, not that. Just some shit going on," i said,making a turn at the light.

"Yall gon be aight, i know that for a fact. Can't neither one of yall live without the other," he said.

"I hope you right fam," i said. I pulled into the parking lot. I was stopping by the store to pick up flowers and ice cream for Randi. "let me go in this store real quick. Imma catch you later." I hung up and got out the car.

When i got home Randi wasn't downstairs so i went up to the room to look for her. She was sleeping in the bed but she got up when i opened the door.

"My bad," i said, "I didn't know you were sleeping."

"It's ok," she said sitting up.

"I got you these, and ice cream too. Its downstairs," i handed her the flowers.

"They're beautiful" she smelled them.

"You're beautiful," i said, she laughed. "No seriously." I grabbed her chin affectionately. "You still love me right?" She nodded.

"Im always gonna love you Cayden," she said, which gave me hope. "even if we aren't together." That last part was like a knife to the heart.

Cole

Ty had agreed to move in with me after some persuading and well thought out arguments. He realized it was easier for him to commute than me because he didn’t work on a set schedule. I had to be at practice or games at strict times.

We were moving all his boxes in to the apartment. My place was really nice and spacious. It was a big apartment downtown and a few guys from the team lived in the building. Ty was coming in with a box when Devon walked by, in his way to his place down the hall.

“Ah shit! Is this the boyfriend?” He hollered, stopping in the doorway. I chuckled when I saw him and his huge grin.

“Yes. This is him. Ty, this my homie Devon,” i introduced them briefly.

“Cole hasn’t shut up about you moving in man,” Devon said. Ty grinned, feeling himself. I rolled my eyes.

"I said it once," i said, opening a box that was on the floor.

"He's a clingy nigga," Tyga said, "But i like it."

"Whatever," i said, walking to the door to leave and get more stuff. I was the clingy person in our relationship though. Ty was a bit more withdrawn, but it worked.

Devon left after a while and it was just us again. I was opening a box when i started thinking about the fact that i never thought this would work with me and him.

"You know, we never would have gotten back together if you hadn't almost died," i pointed out. He paused for a long time, thinking back to that time. "Sorry, i didn't mean to make you think about all that,"i said quickly, realising.

"It's ok. I guess you right. It took a coma and almost dying for me to fully accept myself and my feelings for you. Guess my mama was right, i am hardheaded." We both laughed. After a few minutes i asked,

"Do you still think about it?" i asked. I meant getting shot.

"Sometimes, randomly. Not like actually getting shot but mostly about being knocked out for so long," He said, unwrapping something.

"What was it like?"

"I don't exactly remember. I just remember wanting to wake up, to get up, and i coudn't. That...was pretty scary. Sometimes i be having dreams about that, wanting to move but i can't," he said quietly. I stopped what i was doing to really look at him. Vulnerable Ty was so rare.

"That sounds scary," i said. "I have bad dreams sometimes to. That you didn't make it. But not so much anymore," i explained. He nodded. We continued packing and that was that. That little conversation was a lot for us though.

After some unpacking we ordered food and ate it like animals. We hadn't eaten since breakfast and it was 5pm now.

"So you staying here tonight?" i asked. I knew he had a lot of work to do because things were busy now. Cayden was getting out and Sean was taking over so people were in a bit of panic. He was helping Cayden sort things out.

"Nah. I gotta go back. Imma be here tomorrow though," he said. I nodded.

"Ok. I guess i can start putting some of your  stuff away, if you don't mind," i offered.

"Awe, how sweet," he teased. I scowled.

"Put away your own shit then," i said, turning to leave. He grabbed my arm.

"Nah but forreal that would be lit, you know im bad at being organized and shit."

"Oh i know, ive slept at your place," i said. He gave me a mug and i howled. "Im playing," i pulled him closer by the arm to kiss him.

"I gotta get going soon," he said. I nodded.

"Do your thing. I have practice in a few hours anyways," i said. I wasn't really phased by his coming and going because i understood that was the job, and we generally weren't attached at the hip. I think it worked because we both had our own thing going. But not gonna lie it was nice to come home to someone at the end of the day and now we'd be doing that more.

"I'll see you tomorrow night," he said. He paused. "I love you," he said. I grinned.

"Bruh you soft," i said. His face dropped and i laughed. "I love you too," i kissed him one last time.

[muziklovez]

A New Method of Studying pt.1

    Hi again all. So like I wrote a smut on my freakin husband lol. x fem reader!

· Warnings: smut, like legit filthy smut. Minors ain't welcome.

·word count: like a hella lot so it's in 2 parts?

· & like don't copy my work kus like be real man. & like sorry for errors kus I wrote this on phone.

  In your room, you were tired from sitting on your butt all day at school, you needed a change of position. You knelt on the edge of your bed, books, notebooks, and highlighters on the neatly made mattress. You had a test the next day and was lowkey nervous. You were a good student, but still, who wouldn't be lowkey nervous for a midterm? You placed your palms on your forehead, trying to soak in all the information you wrote. You were trying your best to concentrate.

  "Jagiya~," excitedly walks in your boyfriend. "Why did you just leave me on the couch by myself?" he pouted. He knelt right next to you, looking at the scattered papers on the bed. "Aw, I'm sorry baby," you said as you kissed him. "I get back from tour & this is how you treat me?" he spoke dramatically. Yuta got back from the Origin tour 2 days ago and both of you missed each other of course.   "It's just that you know I have this midterm tomorrow and ..ugh it's not my favourite subject," you groaned at the last word.  "Ah, I see, hey well can I help? I may have a way so that information can stick to your noggin," he said gently stroking your head.  With curiosity you asked, "what did you have in mind?"   Yuta takes the notebook from your hand and smiles, flipping through your notes.  Not understanding his rules of his 'game', you looked at him in confusion, "hey hey wait!"    "Tell you what," he started, "I'll ask you a question and every time you get one right, I'll give you a kiss." He gave you a little aegyo. You couldn't say no to that lol, so you decide to go ahead.

    You got a few kisses so far from getting the questions right: some on your lips, some on your cheek, on your shoulder, hand, & nose. He never failed to shower you in his love, especially when at home.

    "Well, that's everything," he said as he closed your notebook. "Really? Wow.... i guess that did help a bit...thanks" you said shyly. You grabbed your notebook to just flip at the pages. Yuta was staring at you. His hand supporting his jaw, he got so hypnotized by you. How did he get so lucky to find someone as wonderful as you? Perhaps you wondered how you ever got lucky to find him? Questions left unanswered but you both knew that you were meant for each other.

    Absent mindedly, he reached out his hand to play with your hair for a second before putting a strand behind your ear then lightly tracing your cheek then ending up on the tip of your chin. This made you look over at him. He slowly got closer to you. He glanced down to look at your lips until they both met. You closed your eyes, letting his lips lead the way. It was such a feather-like kiss. He paused then looked back into your wonderful eyes. You always thought of them as average, but to Yuta, they were incomparable. "What am I going to do with you?" he asked, not necessarily expecting an answer, "you're so smart." You timidly looked away. He gently grabbed your hands to stand up. You thought his hands were delicate, but he handled yours like as if he was carrying glass. You placed your hands on his shoulder. He placed his hands in your back pockets and brought you closer to him.   "Baby, are you needy?" you asked jokingly. He chuckled, "aniya, it's just that I thought I should reward you for getting all the questions right." He got closer to your ear and whispered, "Be a good girl for me and get under the covers will you?"   Blushing a little at the sudden request, you did as asked. It felt awkward being in regular clothes under the sheets but you did anyways. He took off his shirt then started crawling to you under the covers. You felt the weight on the bed get closer. He peeped out his head from the covers looking at you. "Boo," he said.  You giggled at his silliness. Who said sex had to be serious anyways? It can be fun, right?

    You caressed his neck and he came closer kissing you again. Using one hand for support as the other busied itself making its way to the hem of your shirt. He then was able to get his hand under your shirt. He let his fingers ghost on top of your tummy. He drew tiny invisible circles, slowly making their way up. You shivered at the tickles he was making you feel, trying to not break the kiss with a laugh. The most you could do was smile. He must've felt it and couldn't help but smile as well. Yuta's lips left yours with a slight kissing sound and he lifted up your shirt, scrunching it just below your breasts. He lowered himself down to tummy-level. You closed your eyes in embarrassment; you weren't the sporto type, so you felt really self conscious about it. Your boyfriend never saw what the problem was, you were perfect to him and for him and he always tried to show you and "scolded" you if you thought otherwise.

      You felt his hot breath hovering over your tummy. He slipped his tongue out and started drawing stripe like patterns. You inhaled sharply but quietly. Trying to look down at his actions but your view was block by his perfectly toussled, dyed hair. You failed an attempt to move the covers lower to see what was happening. He started to gently suck on parts of your skin. Tummy hickies? Whatever they were called, you knew pink-purple tone marks would appear. He moved himself up again, this time to remove your shirt. "You don't need this," he said as he tossed it halfway across the room. You weren't wearing the "sexiest" bra, because A) you weren't prepared lol & B) it was just school you went to?  It didn't matter to him anyways because he was going to be the one to take it off. He glanced at your still clothed breasts and bit his lower lip.  He immediately reached to them and started licking the your upper breasts. His licks made you aware of the cool air once he stopped, your top part having trails of his saliva.  He reached under you to get rid of the bra, you arched your back to help him out. His delicate fingers sliding the straps down your shoulder, once again, tossing it away. Drool accidentally slipped from his lips at the bare-chested sight of you. Quickly, he covered his mouth. "Wow...um sorry, you just... Look so...wow," he said trying to giggle his embarrassment away. You covered up a giggle too. He reached to both of your breasts and started massaging them. Circling around and light squeezing them.  Mmm.. was all that slipped from your closed lips. You felt the hairs on the back of your neck started to rise. You looked at him as he squeezed one upwards and attached his plump lips to it. Inside of the mouth, that boy worked wonders with that tongue, flicking your nipple. On the other side of your valley, he gently traced the other. Detaching his mouth, a small string of saliva was seen. He was really sucking on, eh? He switched his mouth to the other half of you only this time, your lonely breast didn't receive the same attention as the other. His finger trailed down to your clothed core, still trapped with the tight jeans. He gave it a squeeze.  "Ooo- Yuta.." you barely muttered out stroking his hair. He looked up at you.  "Mm? What is it love?" he asked acting oblivious. "Do you like it when I touch you here?" he asked palming your core.  You bit your lower lip before answering, "Yes."

      "Can I?" he asked motioning to your jeans. You simply nodded. He slid them off making you feel a little bit more free. He gave a small smile at the cute tiny bow in the center of the band of your panties. He moved himself even lower, your core at his eye level. He separated your thighs, kissing the insides. Once he reached in front of your heat, he pressed his lips to your clothed ones. The slight pressure felt amazing as you try to cover a moan. Your reaction meant approval. His next step was to feel you. He moved your panties to one side, he hovered a finger over your heat. He took a closer look. "Baby, am I seeing this right? You're dripping for me." he said.  His teasing was too much but it felt so damn good, you loved the way he worked you up.  "I think I need a closer look," he teased as he grabbed the waistband of your undies and sliding them down and away. He moved the covers to the side, finally giving you a full view. You felt the cool air of the room and shuddered. Staring at your wide open core, "Jagiya, you are wet for me," he informed you. Legs wide open, you could have sworn you felt your juices started to leak down to the covers.

     Not able to take anymore teasing, "Yuta... Please... I need you...inside me," you practically begged.  "Is that what my princess wants? What is it exactly that you want inside of you? Do you want me to prep you with my fingers first?" he asked as he stuck 2 fingers inside of your hole. You heard his fingers circle around and curled inside you.  "YU-!! Mmm.." you sighed. Trying not to touch him, you grabbed a fistful of the covers that were to your side.  "Baby let me know if this is ok. I want to hear you moan for me, can you do that baby girl?" he said. You were hesitant to his request because you knew you could be uncontrollably loud, but you still nodded.  After a few swirls around your pussy, his fingers came out of you, they were glistening in your juices. You felt slightly embarrassed at how wet they looked, but really, he just wanted you to witness him lick and slurp his own fingers clean.  "You're so delicious," he told you, "I think I want more than just a sample."   He positioned his arms under your thighs so his arms could keep you pinned down. He pulled you closer to his mouth. You placed your index finger at the edge of your lip, looking girly. Then you felt his tongue flick your clit. "Aaahh.." you moaned. Jeezus did his tongue have skill.

    He then went just below your clit to find the hole where your juices were coming from. You moaned louder this time. You arched your back and squirmed but his hands kept you down. He could keep your body down with one hand actually because the other was searching for your hand to hold, interlocking fingers. You heard slurping coming from your lower half, turning you on even more if that was even possible. You stroke his head ever so gently with your free hand, enjoying the view of his face between your thighs.

   He finished, his mouth leaving your core with a slight pop sound. You saw him covered in your juices from nose to chin. "You're so tasty," he said licking his lips.  He grabbed the nearest random clothing piece to wipe himself. You were going to ask if you could touch him but he answered your unsaid question by saying, "today's all about you princess. You did so well studying. I'm so proud of you."

[kennethherrerablog]

40 Legit Ways to Get Free Amazon Gift Cards in 2019

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How to REALLY Get Free Amazon Gift Cards

Your 2019 Complete Guide for Hacking Your Way to Free Amazon

Today we are able to buy just about everything on Amazon. From groceries, to movies, to clothing and even cars, Amazon has everything you will ever need.

Which makes getting free gift cards to Amazon just about as good as cash, right?

So then, how do you truly get free Amazon gift cards?

I know what you’re thinking – nothing in life is truly free. Fair enough, but what if there were companies out there that reward you with Amazon gift cards for extremely simple tasks? Even better, what if there were companies who would pay you in free gift cards to Amazon for doing things you’re already doing?

Personally, we do very well each year with free gift cards from Amazon. In fact, I generated over $4,000 over the past twelve months in Amazon gift cards. And 100% of that went to things we were going to spend cash on anyways.

Now, are you going to read this and start making thousands of dollars in gift cards? Not a chance unless you create a blog like this one and have thousands of readers each month.

But, if you’re looking to make $100 or more dollars every month in free Amazon gift cards, then let me show you how.

We will start off with earning gift cards through taking online surveys and then show you how to

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How to Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: Best Online Surveys

Survey Junkie

Ipsos I-Say

PrizeRebel

Swagbucks

InboxDollars

National Consumer Panel

MyPoints

GlobalTestMarket

Opinion Outpost

EarningStation

Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Playing Games

Appdown

AppNana

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Shopping

Honey App

Ebates

Shopkick

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Scanning Your Receipts

Ibotta

Receipt Hog

Punchcard

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: From Other Gift Cards?

Gift Card Granny

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: From Amazon

Reload Your Amazon Gift Card Balance

Promote Amazon Products

Sell on Amazon

Amazon Trade-In

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: The Other Ways

MySurvey

CashCrate

TopCashback

Survey Spot

instaGC

Recyclebank

MobileXpression

Toluna

American Consumer Opinion

OneOpinion

Microsoft Rewards

TestSpin

AppKarma

iRazoo

GiftHulk

Valued Opinions

Questions You Probably Have

The Takeaway: This Isn’t Really Hard Is It?

How to Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: Best Online Surveys

One of the easiest ways to get your hands on free gift cards from Amazon is through online survey sites. Most of these sites are similar, however they do differ in how and when you can “cash out” your gift card.

Survey Junkie

My number one choice is going to be Survey Junkie. I love this site because out of all the survey sites, they are by far the most user-friendly.

For every survey you take, you will generate points once completed. A typical survey will pay out 100 – 200 points and once you have 1,000 points, you can cash out for a $10 Amazon Gift Card. With Survey Junkie, every 1,000 points is equivalent to $10.

I also have a Survey Junkie tutorial here if you would like to see exactly how it works.

Another reason why I really love Survey Junkie is they go beyond just Amazon gift cards.

In fact, at the moment you can redeem the following gift cards:

Groupon

iTunes

Sephora

Target

Walmart

Starbucks

You can get your gift cards instantly (digital gift card) or you can just get the cash value from the points via PayPal. As you can tell, I am a huge fan of Survey Junkie for a reason.

Ipsos I-Say

Ipsos I-Say is another large, long-standing survey company and I-Say is their online survey site. Users of I-Say can live in the United States, Canada and the U.K.

The great thing about I-Say is you can actually cash out your gift cards starting at a $5 balance.

And, just like most other survey sites, you will earn points for taking online surveys. One hundred points is equivalent to $1, therefore you will need 500 points to claim your first Amazon gift card of $5.

I-Say will also digitally deliver all of your gift cards. And similar to Survey Junkie, Ipsos-iSay will allow you to choose beyond just Amazon gift cards. Here’s just a sample of what other gift cards they have to offer:

Home Depot

Sephora

Gap

Banana Republic

Old Navy

XBOX

Target

Playstation

Walmart

Starbucks

Visa Gift Card

PrizeRebel

I really love PrizeRebel right now for many reasons. One is that they have been around a long time. In fact, PrizeRebel has paid out over $17 million to over 8 million members since 2007. To say they are one of the pioneers of the online survey space would be an understatement.

They of course have Amazon gift cards to cash out, but they also have over 500 other gift cards to choose from! Usually I will add a list below, but I’ll let you put your imagination to work since there are over 500 places to shop!

Also, the smallest Amazon gift card they offer is only at $2. PrizeRebel can be used by anyone living in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Denmark.

Swagbucks

Swagbucks is one of the most flexible ways to get free Amazon gift cards because you have several different ways to earn rewards points:

Online surveys

Free product trials

Watching videos

Playing games

Shopping online

Performing web searches

As a new Swaggernaut, you will also have the opportunity to earn a $5 sign-up bonus that you can redeem for hundreds of gift cards including Amazon.

Another reason Swagbucks earns a top spot on this list is the low point requirements. Amazon gift cards are available in denominations as small as $3 during a Swagbucks promotion. With other online sites, you may have to accumulate at least $10 or even $20 in rewards before you can cash out.

We also have an step-by-step review of Swagbucks here to learn more.

Beyond Amazon gift cards, you can also redeem for plenty of other gift cards as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

Walmart

Fanatics

Home Depot

Sephora

PayPal

Starbucks

Target

Visa Gift Card

iTunes

InboxDollars

Another way to earn Amazon gift cards by doing what you already do online is with InboxDollars. You earn cash rewards for completing surveys, shopping online, testing products, and watching videos or playing games online.

Once your rewards balance reaches $30, you can redeem your balance for an Amazon gift card, cash, or other retail gift cards.

To learn more, here’s an Inbox Dollars breakdown showing all the good and bad before you get started.

National Consumer Panel

Another way to get Amazon gift cards by scanning receipts is with National Consumer Panel. Once a week, you scan the barcodes of all the items you buy with the smartphone app. If you don’t have a compatible smartphone, National Consumer Panel will send you a handheld scanner.

You can also take online surveys to earn bonus points. As a loyalty bonus, NCP rewards you with more points per scan by becoming a long-term panelist by sharing your purchase history on a regular basis.

You can redeem your points for Amazon gift cards, cash, or merchandise. As an additional bonus, you will also get free cash sweepstakes entries by scanning your barcodes too.

If you’re reading this on Desktop, head on over to the NCP desktop version here.

MyPoints

MyPoints is the sister site to Swagbucks mentioned earlier in this article. You will get paid to take surveys, play games, watch videos, and shop online. Joining MyPoints in addition to Swagbucks helps ensure you capture the best earning opportunities and point redemption rates as both sites still operate independently of each other.

GlobalTestMarket

GlobalTestMarket is one of the very few surveys sites that lets international panelists take surveys for Amazon gift cards. Since 2016, members have redeemed more than $30 million in rewards by sharing their opinion on consumer brands, restaurants, automobiles, current events, and many other topics.

Opinion Outpost

Opinion Outpost is another one of the best online survey sites that lets you redeem your points for the following rewards:

Amazon gift cards

iTunes gift cards

PayPal cash

Another reason to consider joining Opinion Outpost is for their quarterly $10,000 cash prize drawing. You earn a free entry for each survey you complete plus earning rewards points.

Membership to Opinion Outpost is only open to U.S. residents.

EarningStation

If you have time to each day to earn rewards points that can be redeemed for EarningStation, you may enjoy EarningStation more than the other get-paid-to sites.

You can earn an extra $3.50 by completing a series of tasks for at least 10 consecutive days. The smallest Amazon gift card is $25 and can be delivered by digitally or by mail.

Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Playing Games

Are you someone who already loves playing games online or from your phone? If so, you may as well get paid in real money or with Amazon gift cards. The ones listed below will pay in Amazon gift cards, but we have a whole list of games that will pay you in cash, cryptocurrency, or other gift card retailers.

Appdown

Do you like to play games on your smartphone? Appdown pays you to try the latest and greatest games, plus you earn bonus points by referring friends and sharing your victories on social media. Membership is open to over 100 countries and Appdown works on Android and iOS devices.

If playing games online is something you love doing, here are the top sites that pay you play games online.

AppNana

Test apps and games on your phone or tablet and earn rewards points (nanas) that can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards or paid apps. The testing opportunities are always changing and you can uninstall the app after the trial period if you don’t like it and still keep your points. AppNana is available for Android and iOS devices.

Many of the other get-paid-to sites only pay you a few points per day to watch videos, but you can earn up to $5 a day–enough to earn a $5 Amazon gift card every day!

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Shopping

If you don’t want to take online surveys, no problem! Did you know you can earn cash back when you shop online? Or, did you realize not only could you be saving tons using some of these apps, but they will also pay you in Amazon Gift Cards for sharing it with others?

Honey App

Honey is my absolute favorite find when it comes to online shopping. Before Honey, I would get to the checkout and then open up another tab and Google “promo codes”. Then I would go back and forth and test dozens of the ones I found to see if they worked or not.

Finally, the Honey App solved that problem for us. Honey is a extension for any major website browser and will automatically scour the internet and test all found promo codes. Once it’s done, it applies the one the saves you the most money!

Here is a full review of the Honey App with screenshots of it in action here.

But what about the free Amazon gift cards, right?

It’s simple: Your friends are going to think you are amazing for showing them this little online shopping hack. For each friend you refer, Honey will pay you $5!

You can then cash out for Amazon gift cards (or other gift cards) in increments of $10 and they are all sent to you digitally.

Ebates

Ebates is one of the most popular online shopping portals. You can shop online directly with the store, or you can go through the eBates portal to save lots of money in the form of cashback.

What I love about eBates is not only can you save on purchases through Amazon, but you can also be paid out in the form of Amazon gift cards! And remember, it does not cost you a penny extra to shop through the Ebates portal. In fact, they have made it so simple for you by creating an eBates browser extension that will work in all major web browsers.

Ebates also has cash-back for in-store shopping as well. Here is a full rundown of how eBates works and how to make the most of your cashback options.

Shopkick

Shopkick is another free app that will pay you in points for shopping in both stores and online. The points you earn are called “kicks” – hence the name Shopkicks. You can start redeeming Amazon gift cards starting at $5.

Beyond just shopping online or at a store, Shopkick will also rewards you for:

Scanning barcodes on selected products

Purchasing something with a linked card

Purchasing and submit a receipt

Just visiting online stores

Viewing online products

Watching videos

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: For Scanning Your Receipts

This one is so easy because I know all of us have receipts. However, before you throw them away, you can use any of these apps below to to upload your receipts. And those receipts can be exchanged for free Amazon gift cards!

Ibotta

Ben Franklin once quipped that death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. I think he forgot about the necessity to eat. Without food, we’re as productive as a car with an empty gas tank.

Ibotta can be one of the easiest ways to get free Amazon gift cards because you don’t have to do anything extra besides activating offers and scanning your grocery receipt at any major grocer or discount store like Kroger, Walmart, and Target. You can get cash back on specific brand items and any brand.

My wife and I use Ibotta each time we go to the grocery store and always save at least 50 cents. When your balance reaches $20 you can request payment by PayPal, Venmo, or gift cards.You will automatically earn $10 bonus cash by redeeming your first offer.

Receipt Hog

Receipt Hog has you simply take a picture of your receipt after shopping and send it to them. It can be anything from groceries, to clothes, electronics or even buying gas. After you send them a pic of your receipt, they will reward you with “coins”. Those coins can then be traded in for Amazon gift cards or even cash via Paypal.

Punchcard

Before you throw your paper receipts away, take a picture of it with the Punchcard app. You will earn rewards points that can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards. For every six receipts you scan, you get a free spin on the prize wheel to win a bonus reward.

Gce during commercial breaks and the regular programming.

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: From Other Gift Cards?

Yes, there are sites out there that will buy up your old gift cards you’re not using and pay you in Amazon Gift cards. If you have a gift card from somewhere you know you will never use, you may as well “cash” them in for one from Amazon.

Gift Card Granny

By buying gift cards on Gift Card Granny and reading Granny’s newsletter, you earn rewards points that can be redeemed for free gift cards. Even if you don’t have enough points for a gift card yet, you can still buy Amazon gift cards at a discount to save a few dollars.

Beyond just Amazon gift cards, you can sell your unwanted gift cards or purchase gift cards for a huge discount. Recently, I sold my unwanted gift cards I no longer wanted and found gift cards to my favorite restaurant at a 55% discount.

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: From Amazon

Reload Your Amazon Gift Card Balance

If you have at least $100 to buy an Amazon gift card directly from Amazon, you can get a $5 reload bonus. Think of this hack as a buying a prepaid debit card. You will be spending the money at Amazon regardless so it’s worth getting a $5 bonus of free money.

Promote Amazon Products

This idea takes some additional hustle but is one of the few ways to earn continual income. By becoming an Amazon Associate, you can earn Amazon cash by recommending products on your blog or YouTube channels. When somebody makes an Amazon purchase through your referral links, you earn a portion of the sale.

It only takes 15 minutes to create a blog and earn Amazon gift cards indefinitely as people visit your website to find answers to their questions.

Sell on Amazon

Whether you want to sell your unwanted items or you like to flip items you find at local garage sales or thrift stores, Amazon is the largest online marketplace for new and used products. While you can get paid in cash, Amazon gift cards are another payment option.

It only takes a few seconds to list a product, so what can you list right now?

Amazon Trade-In

Use Amazon Trade-In if you want to avoid the hassle of actually selling your items to people. Did you know Amazon is willing to buy back your old tech devices, video games, and books; even if you didn’t buy them on Amazon? You simply mail your items to Amazon with a prepaid shipping label and they reward you with Amazon credit!

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s online survey and micro-task site with academic studies, data entry, audio transcription, and internet research jobs. Most tasks only take a few minutes to complete and you can get paid via direct bank deposit or Amazon gift cards. You must be a U.S. citizen at least 18 years old to join.

Get Free Amazon Gift Cards: The Other Ways

These ways listed below are also great, but they aren’t among the top ways mentioned above. They are worth looking at, but only after you tried out everything above.

MySurvey

MySurvey lets you take online surveys and polls from your computer or mobile devices. Rewards points can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards and more. Membership is open to U.S. residents at least 16-years old.

CashCrate

CashCrate is another get-paid-to site that pays you to complete a variety of online activities from online surveys to playing games to shopping online. You can redeem your points for Amazon gift cards after earning $20 in rewards points.

TopCashback

TopCashback is an online shopping portal that gives a cashback on every online purchase you make through their shopping portal at over 4,000 online stores. Unlike other cashback portals that have minimum reward thresholds, you can request an Amazon gift card regardless of your balance amount. By requesting an Amazon gift card, you also get a 3% redemption bonus.

Survey Spot

Taking surveys with Survey Spot lets you redeem your points for Amazon gift cards, iTunes codes, PayPal cash, or frequent flyer miles. You also get an automatic entry into the quarterly $10,000 prize drawing for every survey you complete. Membership is only open to U.S. residents and it’s one of the fastest ways to get started.

instaGC

Do you want $1 Amazon gift cards? With instaGC, you can redeem your points in $1 increments for Amazon gift cards. You can earn points by taking surveys, watching videos, shopping online, and surfing the web.

InstaGC is open to residents in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Europe, India, and Japan.

Recyclebank

Help protect the environment and be rewarded for recycling and learning about sustainability with Recyclebank’s online learning modules. Amazon gift cards are occasionally available as a reward in addition to gift cards to local businesses.

MobileXpression

If you’re okay with sharing your mobile browsing history for market research, you can install the MobileXpression mobile app and earn rewards points for your mobile surfing activity. You can redeem your points for cash, gift cards, or merchandise. Being an active user also gives you free entries into the weekly sweepstakes to win cool prizes.

Go to MobileXpression for Android

Got to MobileXpression for iOS

Toluna

Toluna is another large paid survey community that lets you take surveys, test products, and interact with other Toluna community members to earn rewards points. While non-Amazon gift card rewards start at a $10 balance, the smallest Amazon gift card option is $50 making this one of the more time-consuming ways to be rewarded with a gift card.

American Consumer Opinion

With American Consumer Opinion you can answer surveys, test products and new advertising, and participate in focus groups to earn points you can redeem for Amazon gift cards. The most lucrative surveys pay up to $50 and most surveys only take 10 minutes to complete. Membership is open to the entire world, but you’ll only receive a few survey invitations each year and it’s a good idea to join another survey site to consistently receive survey invitations.

OneOpinion

OneOpinion pays you points for surveys that can be redeemed for Amazon gift cards. The minimum redemption requirement is a bit high at $25 (25,000 points) however membership is open to the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and Australia making OneOpinion one of the few ways to get Amazon gift cards if you live outside North America.

Microsoft Rewards

By making Bing your default search engine and creating a Microsoft Rewards account, you will earn rewards points that can be redeemed for $5 Amazon gift cards. You can also take daily quizzes and shop at the Microsoft Store to earn additional rewards points too.

TestSpin

Earn up to $600 a year in Amazon gift cards when you participate in TestSpin surveys and focus groups. Each survey pays up to $10 and focus groups pay up to $30. You can redeem your points (itcoins) in $10 increments for Amazon gift cards and membership is open to multiple countries.

AppKarma

YouTubers that like to upload video reviews of mobile apps and games need to check out appKarma to earn 50% more points. Even if you don’t have a YouTube channel, appKarma will still give you gift cards to test apps and games on your Android and iOS device.

iRazoo

iRazoo puts a unique twist on the traditional “get-paid-to” site earning model. You will earn rewards points for these activities:

Surveys

Testing apps

Watching videos

Playing games

Completing offers

GiftHulk

Earn coins for doing what you already do online through GiftHulk. You earn points each time you take a survey, watch a video, play a game, or surf the web. In addition to entering the regular prize drawings, you can also redeem your points for Amazon gift cards.

Valued Opinions

Valued Opinions pays up to $5 per survey and you also get paid to open sponsored emails. Amazon gift cards are one of the many reward options available and the balance will be transferred to your Amazon account within 24 hours. Only U.S. residents at least 13 years old can join Valued Opinions.

Questions You Probably Have

Are Amazon Gift Cards the Best Reward?

Since you can buy just about anything on Amazon, a gift card can be easier to redeem than PayPal cash or other gift cards. Chances are Amazon is your #1 choice for online shopping. Sometimes, you get a redemption bonus by getting a gift card instead of cash!

While you can spend PayPal cash virtually anywhere online, you can skip a step in the redemption process by transferring the money from your PayPal account to your bank account before you have enough money to cover an Amazon purchase. As soon as you receive your Amazon gift code, you can redeem it on Amazon and the money is in your Amazon account ready to spend.

Who Can Get Free Amazon Gift Cards?

Each rewards program has different membership requirements. All of these recommendations are available to U.S. residents; certain programs only offer Amazon gift cards to U.S. residents and only offer to cash payments to international participants.

You might also have to be at least 18 years old to join, but many of these recommendations also let teens at least 13 years old join with parental consent.

How Long Does It Take to Earn a Gift Card?

Most activities only take 15 minutes or less. Some apps work in the background and reward you for your activity with no additional effort required after you sign-up and install their app on your computer, phone, or tablet.

Can I Join More Than One Platform?

Yes, and I recommend it. So many of the ways mentioned above involve already things you’re doing. I’m sure you can scan a few receipts and I am positive you have shopped online. I bet if you had an extra hour per week you could take an online survey. The more things you try, the more things you can buy again on Amazon.

Are Online Surveys the Best Way to Get Amazon Gift Cards?

That answer depends on what you enjoy doing. Online surveys are the most common way to earn gift cards because you only need 10 to 15 minutes at a time, but they aren’t the only way. As you can tell from this list, it’s possible to earn gift cards for doing anything you already do on a regular basis. You need to find the tasks that you enjoy most and pursue them. After that, join the website with the highest payout per task or best redemption options to maximize your effort.

What is the Smallest Available Gift Card Amount?

Some programs offer Amazon gift cards as small as $1, but others can be as high as $25. The average minimum reward amount for most programs is $5, and you usually don’t get a discount for “banking” up you points for a higher award amount. In other words, you will pay 500 points for a $5 card and 2,500 points for a $25 card; not 2,000 points for a $25 card.

Personally, I prefer using platforms with smaller balance amounts because it means I can cash out sooner and maintain a constant momentum of getting a gift card on a regular basis! If you don’t frequently visit a website, it can take almost a year to get a $25 gift card, and you’re more likely to give up and not earn anything at all.

How Are Amazon Gift Cards Delivered?

Most gift cards are digitally delivered via email within 24 hours of your request. Some websites still have the option to mail your gift card if you prefer a physical gift card instead.

The Takeaway: This Isn’t Really Hard Is It?

As you can see, there are so many different ways to get free gift cards to Amazon. Instead of doing just one thing, you should try a mixture of them to maximize your opportunities.

Start by taking a survey while your waiting at the doctor’s office. Then shop online or in-store through one of the portals mentioned above. After shopping, take a picture of your receipt to earn even more gift cards and then reload your gift card to earn even more.

Simply take a look at the list above and ask yourself, what am I already doing?

Next, just add in some of the things mentioned above to your daily routine and before you know it you’ll have a few hundred dollars worth of free Amazon gift cards!

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The post 40 Legit Ways to Get Free Amazon Gift Cards in 2019 appeared first on Money Peach.

40 Legit Ways to Get Free Amazon Gift Cards in 2019 published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[propshophannah]

Sorry if I sound kinda uneducated but I just saw the post about gynecologists and I wanted to ask what exactly happens when you go to one(like what exactly is a Pap smear, etc.) Also is there a specific age to go to one? Thank you so much. Just know that you have taught me more than any sex Ed program I have been shown.

Hi! And thanks! I’m glad I can help. 

So at the beginning of this post, I mention the right age in which to see an ob-gyn (13-15), and I also go into detail of what actually happens when you go.

Keep in mind that the post is my perspective, and because I have a family history of cancer, and I wanted to get on birth control, and I was sexually active. So I got (and get) the full exam when I went/when I go. If you are not sexually active, have no family history of cancer/issues with female reproductive organs then your visit will likely be different. (Also, all the websites I link/get info from are legit and reputable. I’m not getting info from sites that aren’t run by legitimate organizations that cannot be verified, or are not ethically allowed to speak about women’s reproductive health.)

“An obstetrician–gynecologist (ob-gyn) is a doctor who specializes in the health care of women. Girls should have their first gynecologic visit between the ages of 13 years and 15 years.” (acog.org)

So if you’re in that age range, or older and you haven’t yet gone, you need to go. They’re just going to make sure you’re healthy. Your first visit may just be talking with the doctor.

They may also give you a breast exam, or a pelvic exam (to make sure your ovaries and uterus are in the right spots/not lumpy/healthy etc. and maybe a pap smear.

They will also ask you about your relationships. They’ll want to know your sexual orientation and if you need information or help on safe sex. They will absolutely ask about your periods. They’ll want to make sure they’re normal, and if you can manage them, or if you need help managing them. If you have a heavy flow, or a too light flow, or if your periods are very painful, or of they’re inconsistent, or if you spot bleed in between cycles, or if you skip cycles—all of that they need to know and they can help you with.

They’ll ask about your mental health. They want to know if you’re depressed, or anxious, or if you’re being abused. They want to know how you feel about yourself—do you have a positive or negative self image? Do you struggle with being overweight, underweight, or maybe you have acne and it makes you embarrassed or it’s just annoying and everywhere.

ALL OF THOSE THINGS, the ob-gyn (sometimes it’s a nurse practitioner too btw) will help you with. Birth control can with things like acne and various period symptoms. The ob-gyn can also prescribe other medications to help you in other ways, and look at the ones you’re already on and say, “this medication can increase your chances of depression or anxiety,” or “this medication will make intercourse more painful,” and they will help you and give you instructions on next steps for how to get your medications to work for you better. They are there to help you.

SIDE NOTE: I’m starting to realize, that you should ask about your hymen skin. Ask your ob-gyn what shape it is. I’ve recently been on the hunt for actual, peer-reviewed medical studies of common and uncommon hymen shapes. And while there seems to be a lack of information on that topic (I’m not surprised no one wants to fund research on vaginas. #UghThePatriarchy), I’ve also been reading through a lot of forums where women think they have “an extra flap of skin” in their vaginas. And many of them say that their ob-gyn has never mentioned it.

These women don’t realize that they likely have a septate hymen. It’s where there is a piece of skin running across the vaginal opening. That kind of hymen might be to common to ob-gyns, that they don’t think to mention it. So I think you should ask about your hymen skin. Because if you have one that is thicker or that is shaped in such a way that it is painful (some people can’t finger themselves or use tampons) or could become painful—you have options for how to stretch it out, or you can get a hymenectomy (see this post for more info on hymenectomy).

And also, if you can prevent painful intercourse, why would you not? I’m realizing, some hymen skin is a LOT thicker than others. We’re taught that it usually kinda stretches out on its own or even breaks and goes away by the teenage years. And we’re also taught that what’s left can make sex hurt. But I’m finding that if it’s thicker, or shaped in a way that makes it more covering that it will break painfully and can heal back. I think we should all be aware of the options we have to prevent painful sex and/or to improve our quality of life with our vagina.

The following is cut and paste verbatim from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (acog.org):

What should I expect at the first gynecologic visit?

The first visit may be just a talk between you and your doctor. You can find out what to expect at future visits and get information about how to stay healthy. You also may have certain exams.

Your doctor may ask a lot of questions about you and your family. Some of them may seem personal, such as questions about your menstrual period or sexual activities (including vaginal, oral, or anal sex). If you are concerned about confidentiality, you and your doctor should talk about it before you answer any questions. Much of the information you share can be kept confidential.

What exams are performed?

You may have certain exams at the first visit. If you choose, a nurse or family member may join you for any part of the exam. Most often, these exams are performed:

General physical exam

External genital exam

You usually do not need to have a pelvic exam at the first visit unless you are having problems, such as abnormal bleeding or pain. If you are sexually active, you may have tests for certain sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Most of the tests that teens need can be done by the doctor with a urine sample. You also may have certain vaccinations.

What happens during a general physical exam?

During the general exam, your height, weight, and blood pressure will be checked. You also will be examined for any health problems you may have.

What happens during an external genital exam?

In this exam, the doctor looks at the vulva. He or she may give you a mirror so that you can look at the vulva as well. This exam is a good way to learn about your body and the names for each part.

What are the pelvic exam and Pap test?

Even though you probably will not have a pelvic exam, you should know what one is. Another test that you will have later (at age 21 years) is a Pap test. This test checks for abnormal changes in the cervix that could lead to cancer.

The pelvic exam has three parts:

1. Looking at the vulva

2. Looking at the vagina and cervix with a speculum

3. Checking the internal organs with a gloved hand

(Click here to see the picture the ACOG provides with this info!)

The doctor will use a speculum to look at your vagina and cervix. When you have a Pap test, a sample of cells is taken from your cervix with a small brush.

To check your internal organs, the doctor will place one or two gloved, lubricated fingers into the vagina and up to the cervix. The other hand will press on the abdomen from the outside.

——

And that’s all I got! I hope this helps! Let me know. And check out the ACOG website or sexetc.org. They’re great resources.

[mad-hats]

A Matter of Life and Death, that’s the title of this story I’ve been working on...it’s my first legit thing so don’t hate on me.

Lei and Melody Pond pressured me into posting this ASAP last ight so it’s all I could do. But hey, I gotta say it’s some cool stuff about the universal entities, Life and Death...plus some other dudes.

I dedicate this novel to my family and friends who inspired me and helped me write this story...and to readers like you!  Yes...you reading this...right now.

Prologue

Tony Torelli, unlike most people Death came accross, was satisfied with his life.  He had managed to stay alive for 99 years, which was far longer than any of his uncles, aunts, or his parents had.

Tony was rather impressed with himself, considering that he had immigrated to America with nothing but his wife by his side and his ambition.  After starting his own bakery with the money from selling little pastries on a cart and from Mrs. Torelli  doing the neighborhood's laundry, Tony had a total of five children, who each provided two grandchildren for Mr. And Mrs. Torelli.  

Death recalled meeting his wife, Abrielle Torelli in 2010, she was surprisingly rather calm considering she had just died of lung cancer with no actual knowledge of how the “Passing Procedure” functioned.  Although he was never entirely sure about what lied beyond each of the  doors to the afterlife, Death knew that the sweet elderly Italian woman would be heading for something pleasant.  So Death felt a wave of satisfaction, knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Torelli would be united as soon as Tony Torelli finally finished groaning in pain and collapsed on his kitchen floor.

As his heart stopped beating, a wisp rose from the old man’s body and formed into his ghost.  Death gave a little wave from his seat at Mr. Torelli’s kitchen table.  The ghost of Tony Torelli stepped back, scared and confused, Death pondered whether Torelli was more scared by his own ghostly appearance, or by the sudden appearance of a black cloaked skeleton with a scythe against his chair. Either way, he looks like he’s seen a ghost, Death silently chuckled at his own horrible joke.

“What is this, am I dead? Are you- are you the Grim Reaper?” Torelli asked worriedly.  Death stood up and brushed off his cloak, “Yes and yes, but don’t worry, most of this isn’t so bad as most think” he said in a surprisingly comforting tone.  

“It works like this; I ask you a few questions about your life and if you are honest and if you meet the qualifications, you can go to the afterlife of your choosing”.  Torelli nodded slowly, despite the baffled expression on his face, he seemed to understand.  Huh, this one’s a strong one.  

“So Mr. Torelli, how did you die?”  

Tony Torelli thought for a moment, “Well it seems like I have just died of a heart attack,”

Death nodded in approval.

“That’s right, not the most noble death, but the noble ones always tend to be the most painful anyway.  Moving on, do you think you were a good person?”

“Well, I suppose.  I’ve never been involved in anything illegal, I tried to provide the best life I could for my family.  Of course I’ve sinned, but I ask our Lord and Savior for forgiveness regularly, I try not to judge others...I’m not going to hell am I?”

Death glanced into the old man’s soul.  He’s just too innocent, it’s a bit disturbing really,  but as always, Death could sense that Tony definitely wasn’t lying his way to a better eternity.  Death raised a finger over one of the ancient symbols carved into his scythe, it glowed white.  Yep, he’s a good one.  

“No Mr. Torelli, you’re a decent man, even though I’m only a gatekeeper, I’m sure that you’ll be joining your wife today”.  Death swung his scythe in the air and planted it firmly on the floor, a stream mixed of shadows and light bled from the end of the scythe, the stream gathered together and created a sudden archway.  Even over millions of years, Death couldn’t quite find a way to describe it, it was the most beautiful and most threatening thing Death had ever seen; an array of conflicting shadow and light, he supposed, much like that of the stream.  Tony Torelli drifted towards the portal and disappeared.  One down, another several hundred to go.  Before he could teleport to his next destination, Death froze to a stop.  Something changed, Death could feel it within the scythe, he could feel it in the air.  He took a deep breath and smoothed out his cloak, regretting that he had chosen his skeleton form.  Why today?  “Hello old friend, it’s been awhile since we’ve spoken,” Death turned around to face Life.  Of course, she was as obnoxiously radiant looking as usual. “It’s been a week, and a rather peaceful week too,” Death chided.

“Why did you have to reap Tony? A few more months and he would have been a hundred years old.  One. Hundred. I don’t get to do that very often and it’s really annoying when you just come along and reap them at the last minute”.  

Death sighed, “Life darling, he died of a heart attack, everyone has to die eventually, and I help make the transition easier.  You don’t create children, you just open their lives to the world.  Are you okay Life? Something seems to be troubling you.”

Life sighed and bit her lip.  “Well, I came here to talk about far more than a possible hundred year old man...Death, we have a problem.  You know our friend Noir? She’s gone missing”.  Death laughed, “Well I doubt that, she’s a reaper; she’s most likely just off doing paperwork for some particularly complicated death, our jobs aren’t easy you know”.  Life’s expression darkened, switching her aura of serenity to something far more sinister in a matter  of seconds.  

“That isn’t the case Death, you sense people dying, I sense people living; Noir is alive, but she’s oddly distant, there’s something going on that may affect more than just one of your Reapers”

“Distant, you say?  Life, you know that Noir is more than just one of my helpers, she- she’s a close friend. If you truly think there is something going on, I’ll need your help investigating it”.  Life nodded, and pursed her lips, “well, there’s something else too, you know  how the most accurate way to connect to reapers is through blood or DNA, well since we don’t have Noir’s blood sample on hand, I’ve recently discovered, um, another possibility”.

Death twirled his scythe in anticipation, “Yes?”

“She apparently had a child with a mortal named James Mourn about twelve years ago,  especially considering that the girl has inherited Noir’s abilities, she’s our best and only hope.”

Death fell silent, “she never told me that she had a kid, she never told me- never told me any of it...of course  you’re right though, I’ll find the girl, you keep gathering more information,” he said quietly.  Life nodded, deciding it was best to leave her friend to his thoughts as she turned to leave, “her name’s Lucy.  The girl, her name is Lucy Mourn”.

Chapter One

“What if I had a death that was so tragic that my favorite bands would feel the need to come play at it? I mean that would be so cool, maybe Panic at the Disco could play “Far Too Young to Die” or something, I’ll add it to the list of stuff on my will,” Lucy Mourn cheerfully wondered out loud as her math class drew to a close.  The new student sitting next to Lucy glared at her, “You’re so weird, why do you have a will already? We’re only in 7th grade, isn’t it a bit creepy?”.  Lucy tilted her head and smiled as her pale green eyes widened, as if this was a questioned that she loved answering.  “Why, it’s never too early to write a will, we could die any day now, at any moment at all.  I don’t see why I shouldn’t be just a tad bit prepared,” she chirped.  The kid next to her gradually scooted away, unnerved by Lucy’s nonchalance on the subject.  

“Okay class I know that it’s winter break but that doesn’t mean you can’t study your geometry, we have a test a week after you return from break!” Mrs. Harrison desperately called out as the students gathered their backpacks and headed out the door.  The new kid who had been talking to Lucy rushed away from her before the bell had even finished ringing.  Lucy’s shoulders slumped as she put on her black cat-ear beanie with the little pins on them; one normal smiley face, one with x’s for eyes, and finally a little skull pin, along with a few from various bands.  Another failed attempt at friendship but that’s okay, I’m just too brilliant to share my friendship with anyone.  

She swung her black and pastel pink backpack over her shoulder and skipped out into the preteen-packed hallway.  Lucy weaved past the packs of students scattered about the hall and left school for Winter Break, it was a shame, she tended to feel less lonely when she was at school; at home everything just turned into an abyss of time, boredom and loneliness. Outside she saw half of the kids going home by foot, or bus, and the other half being picked up by parents or relatives.  She couldn’t help but feel a tinge of envy at the sight; her Father was often at work as an accountant and she had never met her Mother.  Every time she tried to bring her up while talking to her Dad (which wasn’t very often), he quickly tried to change the subject.  As a result, the most she had ever been told about her mother is that she was a green eyed French woman named Noir Arquette who had ran off not long after Lucy’s birth.   Lucy climbed on the bus and took the only seat that had not been taken, (which was most of them, including those in which kids suddenly sprawled across the seat in a precarious position as she walked by).  After Lucy finally sat down, she looked out the window on the bus as she sketched a scene of unicorns and zombies into her notebook.  By the time the bus came to a stop Lucy had drawn an intricate portrait of rainbows raining over a trio of bloodthirsty unicorns trampling on zombies as the undead creatures tried to bite back at the unicorns in vain.  Satisfied with the sketch, Lucy jumped off the schoolbus and skipped towards her house on Briarwood Boulevard.  The house was pretty small and it was always a little cold, and the inner decor was a little too grey and unwelcoming, but it was Lucy and James Mourn’s home.  

“Dad I’m home from school and it’s time to start Winter Break fun!” Lucy sang as she dropped her backpack, threw off her black jacket and striped scarf as she danced around the house.  Of course there wasn’t a reply; her Dad was still at work, as always.  Lucy untied the shoelaces on her bowtied boots and kicked them off as she went to the kitchen to heat up some ramen noodles from the pantry shelf that she could barely reach due to her petite height.  Before she could do so, Lucy stopped and her heart lifted as she saw a little note on the kitchen counter.  Dad might've left a note to apologize for not being here, that would’ve been so nice!  Yet as Lucy reached for the note her heart fell straight back onto the little hole it was in a moment before.  The note on the counter wasn’t written in James Mourn’s handwriting.  Thanks Dad.

Dear Lucy Mourn,

I’m sorry I didn’t meet you in person today, but most humans tend to be quite frightened upon meeting me. Essentially, I am Death, you might think this is a prank from your dad, but it’s not. I can’t really prove it but if you notice that the flowers next to your kitchen sink were alive this morning and now they’re all wilted. Sorry about that. Anyway as you may or may not know, I am a friend of your mother, Noir, and I am in need of your assistance in order to help her. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow at noon.

Sincerely,

Death/Grim Reaper/Shinigami/Thanatos/etc.

P.S. You may or may not be in grave danger.

Lucy tilted her head, and couldn’t help but giggle.  “I have no idea what’s going on but I also don’t know whether I should be amused or disturbed,” Lucy said to herself.  Ask Dad about it later, it’s definitely not a prank, he’s not cool or weird enough for that, her mind answered back.  Thanks self.  Lucy made the ramen for herself and went to her room to put her earphones on full blast as she started a new sketch, this one of a vengeful little ballerina puppet strangling it’s master with it’s strings.  By 6:49 Lucy heard the door unlock as her Dad came home.

“Hiya Dad! Did you see that weird note on the counter? I saw it earlier and decided to ask you about it,” she called as she skipped to the living room.  James Mourn set down his briefcase and began to undo his tie as he sat on the couch.  “Hey Lucy-Luz, what note are you talking about, there’s nothing here but the ramen packaging you must’ve forgotten to throw away earlier,” he sighed.

Lucy went to the kitchen counter and sure enough, the note was gone.  “It was right here, a little note, it said it was written by Death, like the Grim Reaper.  He was talking about my Mom, did you put it there as a joke?”

James Mourn froze, then sighed. “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here Luz, but I’ve had an exhausting day at the office and I’m not ready for your weird goth crap,” her Dad snapped in exasperation.

Lucy drew back, surprised and hurt.  “First of all, I’m not lying, and that ‘weird goth crap’ is just how I am, but you wouldn’t even know that would you?,” Lucy said with all the calmness she could muster.

“Don’t sass me, Lucy, I’ve had a long day and I’ll be having another one tomorrow, just go to bed,” her Dad scolded.  Lucy scoffed and drifted back to her bedroom, where she practiced smiling until the tears stopped and she changed into her skull covered pajamas.  Since it was still only 7:05, Lucy decided to listen to music and watch anime for hours, and hours, until she fell asleep in a tangle of blankets and earphones.  

Lucy sat alone in a dark room that resembled the old ballet studio that Lucy used to attend, despite the teacher being exasperated with the alternative dance style Lucy practiced between warm-up sessions.  The teacher, Ms. Warrington was never very patient with the children she taught, and Lucy was the only one that actually excelled in the class while still being the most hated by the teacher.  Eventually the teacher had an angry outburst and yelled at Lucy, causing James Mourn to take Lucy out of the class.  But this wasn’t Lucy’s 4th grade ballet class.  It was dark, and there weren’t any instructors or students in sight; It looked wrong.  Lucy would have liked to say she was alone, but the mirrored wall with the barres against them reflected images of Lucy, except...different, she looked older, and sadder...it was all wrong.  Along with the twisted reflections, there were dark shadowy figures surrounding her. It was impossible to tell how many because of the mirrors, but Lucy was surrounded.  Even her reflections looked panicked, and  began running towards the surfaces of the mirrors, screaming until they dissolved into black feathers.  The spidery, shadowy figures didn’t seem to notice as they advanced towards her, and a little light rose from Lucy’s screaming mouth.  ‘You can’t escape’, the shadows sang as their shadow fingers wrapped around her throat.  

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Lucy’s jade green eyes popped open and she gasped for breath as she sprang out of bed to turn off the alarm she had set on her phone.  Since school was out for a few weeks she had set it to 10 am instead of 6 am.  After a long shower Lucy changed into a black t-shirt with a pink broken heart design on the front over a pair of buckled black jeans.  James Mourn had already left to go to the office that morning, leaving Lucy to do a few chores around the house.  So, after consuming a small bowl of cornflakes Lucy got started on dusting the house.  All the while Lucy nervously checked the clock, waiting for Death. Lucy laughed at the idea of it.  She looked up at the clock in the living room.  Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.  

Eventually it was noon and Lucy was still home by herself. No Death, no information about Noir.  She scolded herself for being stupid enough for even considering that Death would come knocking on her door.  Lucy sighed and took a moment to be jealous of those who wouldn’t have given the notion a second thought, or whose parents would’ve just given a simple “yes or no” without getting triggered and angry. She shrugged it off and finished up dusting the kitchen and began  to make herself a sandwich, until she froze to a stop while passing the trash can.  What if Dad had the nerve to throw away the note?  Lucy flipped open the trash.  There was nothing inside except the ramen packaging she had finally remembered to throw away.  “Finding anything interesting in there?” a low voice asked from behind her.  Lucy whirled around to see a black hooded figure standing in her living room.  He was holding a tall black scythe with unfamiliar engravings lining the handle.  

“You’re Death,” she whispered with a smile.  

Death stepped back, taken aback by the terrifying look of delight on the young girl’s face.  “Yes, that’s me, shouldn’t you be a little more, I don’t know, alarmed?”

Lucy kept smiling, “I am alarmed but I’m also pretty happy, I thought I was being crazy and stupid but now I think it’s just plain crazy, but I’m used to that part anyway”.

Death tilted his hood back, revealing a rather confused looking skull.  How can he look confused while having no expressions? The world may never know!  “You’re late you know, your note said you would be here by noon but now it’s 12:16, you should have said ‘approximately noon’ in your note, then it technically wouldn’t have counted as late”

Death still looked perplexed “I was busy dealing with a guy who had been murdered up in Scotland, he kept on trying to deny that he was dead and it took a surprising amount of time to convince him otherwise.  You must be Noir Arquette's daughter, Lucy Mourn”.  

Lucy nodded, “So upon reading your letter I wondered; if you’re friends with my Mom then do you know why she’s never been around for me?”

Death seemed to frown, “I didn’t even know you had been born until another friend told me yesterday, I didn’t know that she had abandoned you either”.  

Lucy sat down to process everything for a second, “where is she now? Can I speak to her?”

“Well, you see that is exactly why I came to see you.  First off, I have large group of people called reapers who help me with my duties as the Grim Reaper, after a while of serving me they develop some of my powers such as teleportation, and being able to reap the souls of the dead by themselves.  So when people die, the reapers and I cooperate to open up the doors to the afterlife for them.  Your mother, Noir, well she’s- she’s a friend as well as an especially powerful reaper.  Yet as I said, I’ve been informed that Noir is missing, and since you have a blood connection with her-”

“I’m your only hope at finding her,” Lucy finished.  Death nodded grimly,  “I’m also not quite sure if you noticed, but you should have inherited some of your mother’s powers as well”.

Lucy grinned like a maniac, “I can teleport and reap the souls of the dead? I’ve always wanted to do that!”

Death tilted his head, “somehow don’t think that was sarcasm...anyway are you going to help me or not?”

Lucy looked down at the pink little bows on her boots, I’m gonna help my Mom, then I’m gonna give her a little wrapped up box of hell.  Lucy reconsidered the offer one last time.  “Yep, that sounds like a plan”.  Death raised his scythe and slammed the bottom of it towards the ground, suddenly the world erupted into shadows.  When light returned, they were standing in a large, dim study with leather bound books lining the walls.  Lucy staggered, “Did we. Just. Teleport?”

Death nodded and chuckled, “you must be Noir’s kid considering that you haven’t vomited on my new robes yet”.

“Ha, but um, I forgot my jacket though can we go back for a sec?”

After teleporting back in order to get Lucy her jacket, gloves, and phone, Death teleported them back to his ‘house’, which really seemed more like one of those cool gloomy castles that served as a secret lair for villains in movies.  Lucy sat down at the study’s sofa as Death poured some tea.

“So do your deathlings live here too?”

“First of all they’re called reapers, never call them deathlings again, and yes, some of my most trusted reapers live here”.

“Does that include my mom?”

Death paused, “yes, Noir normally lives in the northern wing over there,” he said, pointing towards the staircase down the hall.  Lucy laughed bitterly, “I’m in my mom’s house, I’ve been standing where she stood, it’s just so weird”.  Death finished pouring the tea, “I um, I understand that this isn’t easy for you,so would you like some feel-better madeline's to go with you tea?” Lucy bit back a laugh.  The Grim Reaper eats little pastries with his tea?  “Hey, hey stop laughing at my madeleines, I get enough of that from your mother and Life”.  Lucy stopped laughing and thought for a second before gaping, “Life? Is- is life a person too?”

“Technically she’s more of a magical entity sorta thing like myself, she’s the friend who informed me that Noir was missing, and of your existence.  You know since she like senses people’s lives and things, she should be joining us in a few moments now”.  Lucy opened her mouth to say more-

“HELLO DARKNESS MY OLD FRIEND!” a feminine voice sang from the other room.

“Damn it Life, I’ve been telling you to stop doing that since the 1960’s, can’t you just say hello like a normal person?”

The door to the study swung open for a beautiful woman in a long white and cream dress.  Her skin was a radiant shade of caramel and her blondish hair was pinned up so that only one wave of curls hung by the side of her head.  Yet it was her eyes that intrigued Lucy, at first she thought they were dark brown, but they were frequently shifting to a moonlight shade of pale gold; like some brilliant array of shadow and light.   “Why, I’m just making a fun first impression, Death, and look at little Lucy here, she looks- wow she looks just like Noir doesn’t she?”

“Hmm, that’s an exaggeration, she just has Noirs’ face shape and eyes. Oh, and don’t get too enthralled by Life, Lucy; she’s crueler than she looks”.  Life’s radiant eyes dazzled as she flipped her curls as a wicked smirk spread on her face. “You always have to spoil the fun”. Death laughed, “well someone had to warn the child, didn’t they? Come now Life, join us for tea and madeleines”.

“Pfft, you and your little tea cakes-”

“Shut up,” Death said as he poured another cup of tea for Life.  “So, Lucy how do you like your tea?”

“Sugary and creamy”Lucy chirped, still watching the way Life almost seemed to glow and bring light to the dim study.  “Ugh you monster, oh well, some cream and sugar for Lucy, and I know that Life likes her tea with honey and lemon”.  Life produced a lemon out of thin air and squirted a bit into her cup of tea.  Lucy opened her mouth to speak. “No puns please, the ‘life gives you lemons’ jokes get really, really old” Death said quickly.  “Come now Death, the only thing that gets old around here is your weird skeleton aesthetic, I mean it’s just overly dramatic in my opinion” Life said with a mischievous grin as she sipped her tea.  Lucy watched in awe as Death grudgingly shifted from a cloaked skeleton to a dark haired man in a black suit.  Death muttered something about aesthetic as he took a sip from his cup.  “You guys can shapeshift? Can the reapers and I shapeshift too?”

“Not in a thousand years, literally, we haven’t seen anyone do that by themselves in a little less than a thousand years.

“Oh well, I kinda expected that.”

“You might learn someday, your mom did it once”

“A thousand years ago?”

“She wasn't human; when someone becomes a reaper, they are immortal”

“So, she was born in medieval times?”

Death nodded, “I think she was in her early twenties at the time, just beginning as a reaper.  A wicked man with a strong soul had died, and he wasn’t very happy about it.  After becoming a ghost he drifted off to haunt an enemy of his by driving him mad and chasing him off a cliff.  Noir distracted the ghost at the last minute and reaped him.  Yet while doing so she ended up falling off that cliff, as I ran to help I saw your mother vanish into thin air, and a crow flew in her place.  The crow flew up to me and suddenly transformed into Noir, who if I recall had been grinning like a maniac the whole time.  That’s the last actual shape shifting I’ve seen from a reaper”.  A thousand thoughts and emotions filled Lucy’s mind.  Her heroism would’ve ended her, perhaps she’s gone missing for similar reasons.  “Well, that’s the last time a reaper has shapeshifted, but I had a kindler who shapeshifted into a cat around three years ago, yet I always thought he seemed more like a dog person,” Life said, changing the topic.

“What are kindlers?”

“Death has his reapers, I have my kindlers, they go around, sparking life into pregnant mothers”.

“Doesn’t that mean that a kindler had to spark life into my Mom, a reaper?”

Life nodded, “Yes, it does seem a bit odd, I’ve been looking for the kindler that sparked you into existence since yesterday.  Despite being easier said than done, I found her this morning, she’s the same kindler that sparked your mother, a few other reapers, and even a few of her fellow kindlers,  so I thought that we could pay her a visit to ask about Noir’s absence”.  

“Good plan,” Death said in agreement as Lucy looked down at her tea in confusion.  She found it pretty unnerving that they would be meeting the person who practically gave life to both herself and her mother along with countless others just as part of her daily routine.  The thought actually seemed put her off her tea.  Death saw her reaction and snickered, “oh Miss Mourn, if you think this is strange already then you’re in for quite a ride”.

Chapter Two

Once they were finished, Death waved a hand over the tea set and it vanished into darkness.  “Shall we then?” Life asked as she twirled out of the living chair she had been sitting in and strutted out of the room.  

“Oh, she meant now? Like- we’re going right now?” Lucy asked.  Death sighed and straightened his tie as he rose from his chair, following his lively friend out of the study.  The hallway outside had a similar, stylishly gothic style as the study.  Lucy took note of the picture frames on the walls, most filled with people whom Lucy assumed were various reapers.  She paused before a portrait of a green eyed woman with high cheekbones and long black hair.  Despite having a smile on her face, the woman had a very brooding, shadowy look to her.  Lucy understood what Life had said about there being a strong resemblance between her and her Mother.  With a little smile, she joined Life and Death at the foot of a staircase.  “Life, you do realize that we could just teleport to your kindler’s house right now?”

“Yes but your study looks gloomy and just a little bit sad, it’s nicer in this hallway, you need to put flowers in there or something”.

“I always end up killing flowers after trying to water them.  You know this, you’ve seen it happen many times”.

“Yes but I like to encourage you to do otherwise because you look like a depressed kitten every time you fail at gardening”.

“That’s insulting and it doesn’t even make sense…”Death muttered while blush spread across his face.

Life shushed him as a gold staff appeared from her hand and the world disappeared into glimmering light.  A second later they stood in what appeared to be in the kitchen of a luxury apartment with a view of the busy streets of New York City.  “Amy are you home? Me, Death, and Noir Arquette’s kid are here, we want to talk to you”.  The only response was silence.  “Let me rephrase that, Ambrosia Galanis you better get out here, ‘cause it’s a matter of Life and Death and I will personally release my wrath against you”.  There was some shuffling heard from the other room and a woman rushed in.  She was tall with curly brown hair and tanned skin, despite having a gleam in her eyes that Lucy normally would have found a little intimidating, the effect was ruined by the terrified expression on the Ambrosia’s face.  “Guys, I didn’t know anything about Noir’s disappearance, I just heard about it yesterday, I’m sorry but I can’t help you”.

“Well you seem a little worrisome considering that you know nothing,” Life noted with a skeptical glare as her staff began to glow as her eyes darkened.

“No I’m telling the truth! Well, I felt her grow distant, you know? I thought it was nothing at first but after a while I got worried…” she trailed off with a look of terror in her eyes as she backed away from the dangerous glares coming from Life and Death.  Lucy looked at Ambrosia, who was practically cowering in front of her.  So this is who sparked my existence?  Her patience was growing thinner by the second.  “Listen up, I don’t care how much these two scare you.  If you know anything about what happened to my Mom you might as well spit it out right now instead of sitting here like a pathetic bundle of fear,” Lucy growled as she stepped forward from Death’s side.  If anything, this somehow seemed to frighten her more than Life did.  She mustered a smile as she looked down at Lucy’s green eyed stare.  “Look how you’ve grown up, you remind me of Noir”

“So I’ve been told. Information. Now.”

Ambrosia’s smile faded, “look, I last saw her the other day reaping a suicide after sparking someone a few minutes before.  Of course, I stopped and said hi to her, apparently she was going to meet up with the Balthazar Jones so she was in a bit of a hurry.  But I’m sure that Balthazar had nothing to do with the disappearance; he wouldn’t do anything like that I’m sure”.   Death shifted his jaw, “Balthazar is one of my strongest reapers; if he was responsible for this, I’ll impale him with my scythe,” he growled, gripping his scythe tightly enough for Lucy to see the whites of his knuckles.  “Thank you for your reluctant cooperation, Ambrosia.  But I’ll keep a careful eye on you considering just how willing you were to hold back information from me,” Life said to Ambrosia, who had a look of relief on her face before it was filled with shame once more.

“Of course,my Lady, I promise to keep in touch if I learn anything”.  Life gave a nod of approval, and with a wave of Death’s scythe, the room disappeared into darkness.  Lucy blinked and staggered into what appeared to be an empty store. ”You know what Mr. Death I think I would like a warning next time we teleport, what are we going to do now anyway, where are we?”

Death sighed “well since Life’s almost-traitor didn’t have an answer to whatever happened to Noir, I suppose I’ll have to go beat it out of Balthazar”.  Life shifted her jaw, “it’s not my fault that Ambrosia was tight lipped about the subject, she’s been loyal to me since ancient times, I won’t punish her too much for her weird thing for Balthazar.”

“She’s been around since ancient times?”

“Yes, she’s one of my oldest followers, yet I thought she would’ve at least developed some better tastes in men over time”.  Death laughed, “Well, I won’t judge people’s interests, Balthazar isn’t so bad as he seems; of course, that was before I knew he was involved in all of this”.  Lucy was curious about this Balthazar Jones now, she looked around again, “Oookay but you still haven’t told me why we’re in a store, that doesn’t have any items, or employees, or anything?” Life and Death looked around, as if they were just noticing this.  Death didn’t have an emotionless skull to hide his annoyance, “this was a shop for dress clothes a few weeks ago, wasn’t it Life?”

“It had a sign saying that it was clearing out in two weeks, Death”

“Oh,” he said looking disappointed, “very well, we’re in a mall in Seattle, Balthazar hangs out here most of the time, let’s go,” Death proceeded out of the shop and into the busy shopping mall as Life turned to Lucy and murmured,

”he truly is horrible at remembering dates like this, I keep telling him to put little reminders on his fridge but he’s impossibly stubborn”.

“Isn’t anyone in the shopping mall going to question seeing a man and woman holding scythes and staffs?”

“Ha, nope, we go completely unnoticed by mortals, unless we want them to see us”.

Sure enough no one questioned Death, who was twirling his scythe like a cane, or radiant Life, who was strutting through the shoppers without receiving a single glance, not even from the group of guys who were snickering at a display in a lingerie shop.  They went unnoticed by everybody, all except one.  

Sitting by the edge of a fountain, a messy haired man in a leather jacket was giving the trio an impish grin.  As Lucy drew near she saw that the curtains of mousy untamed hair were hiding a long scar that ran from the bridge of his nose to his cheekbone, despite his grungy appearance, he still had a somewhat handsome face.  “Hey Mister Grim, it’s been a while!  This isn’t about that time I used my scythe to open that door even though it turned out that the door wasn’t stuck, just a ‘pull to open’ door I was trying to push?”

Death looked befuddled as he processed that question. “No, um, we might talk about that later but that’s not why I came here.  But I think you know that, Balthazar.”

Balthazar Jones went pale as Death looked him in the eyes.  He pushed a lock of matted hair back and stared at the floor, “I know what it might look like, but I just wanted to warn her.  I knew what was going to happen and I told her to prepare herself, is...is she okay?”

Life’s staff began to glow and spark in an violet manner, as if it was ready to explode.  Death looked eerily calm for a second before he swung his scythe at Balthazar and stopped the blade as it was only an inch away from his throat.  Life put a hand on Death’s shoulder, “Come on Death, you don’t want to kill him, you want to keep him alive so he can suffer.”

Death ignored this comment and kept his dark eyed gaze fixed on Balthazar.

“Zar, I know that you’re actually a good guy, but if you don’t tell me the whole story people are about to be quite startled by such a sudden decapitation,”

Balthazar Jones whimpered, “really man? I thought this whole threatening stuff was more of Lady Life’s sorta thing.  B-but yeah, I understand.  I knew that they were going to set her up.  That’s why I’d wanted to talk to Noir, to warn her.  She just wouldn’t listen she said that if they wanted her she would go to them and start a fight”.  Lucy summed up her courage and slowly moved Death’s scythe away from Balthazar’s throat, thankfully he didn’t put up much of a fight.  

“Who took her? Tell me what happened to my Mom.”  

Balthazar took a deep breath, “Death and Life have lost reapers and kindlers in the past, sometimes they themselves are reaped, other times, they just disappeared.  They overused their magic, or got caught in a barrier, so they left without Death’s guidance; we always assumed that they died or just erased from existence” he breathed shakingly.  

“We were wrong.  They- they transformed”.

Life scoffed as her staff’s glow began to go out of control as it burned white hot, “they transformed into what? Into dust? Don’t chide about lost kindlers and reapers, Jones, or you might just join them.”

Balthazar swallowed. “I’m not kidding, or chiding- whatever this isn’t a joke! Reapers and kindlers, we’re immortal, magical even, but deep down we’re still human, these things, I don’t even know what they’ve become. I saw them, among them I saw Chetan Malhotra, he was a friend and fellow reaper, until he disappeared a hundred years ago.  He was different when I saw him, a monster, his appearance and even his...mentality was unrecognizable. Like a monster, with..all these shadows, not like Death’s, these ones were just...wrong.”

Lucy recalled her nightmare from the previous night and shuddered.  It was all wrong.

Yet Life arched an eyebrow, unconvinced.  Death looked as if he was ready to swing his scythe right back at Balthazar’s head.

“Just how do you even know this, how did you know what would happen to Noir?”

“Well you see, that’s where it get’s weird.  It um, it kinda came to me in a dream”.

Lucy stared, unblinking. “You expect me to find my Mom based off of some dream? I had a dream that Cthulhu became a ballerina against his parent’s wishes and that hasn’t happened yet...at least I don’t think it has-”

“What Miss Mourn is trying to say is that you’re an idiot when you’re awake and I think your brain turns into solid rock when you sleep.”

Life smirked at this comment while Balthazar looked a bit hurt.  “Yo that’s a bit harsh, Mr. Grim.”

“My point is that you seem pretty unreliable at the moment”.  

Balthazar’s voice wavered, “That’s what Arquette thought before she was set up.  She didn’t believe me but I had a dream, no, a nightmare where they surrounded me, one second they were the kindlers and reapers who I used to know and the next they showed themselves as what they’d become.  They want a world without Life or Death, they want the rest of the kindlers and reapers to join them,  First they tried to make me become like them, they told me to open up a barrier and fall through it and I would be like them, I could kill whoever I wanted without consequence, I would never have to die, I wouldn’t have to struggle through life; I would just join them in their sick version of peace.  When I said no to them, the dream shifted. I saw a cage with a little light inside it, a little bird, a crow I think, flew towards the light, when suddenly the others, their arms sprouted from the bars of the cage and dragged the bird in, when it entered the cage it turned into Noir”.

Lucy’s mouth went dry as she looked up at Death.  “My Mom turned into a crow once,” she uttered, but she was thinking so much more. A little light.  Death nodded grimly, “Indeed, okay Zar, this um...this seems like a pretty legitimate dream, do you know where they are right now?”.  Balthazar shook his head, “I’m sorry man, I know that Arquette was-”

“It’s okay Balthazar, you’ve told us all you could, I’ll keep in touch with you.  Unfortunately people are starting to stare at you and Lucy talking to yourselves right now so we’ll have to get going”.  And so he promptly turned and walked away.  “I’ll see you later, Jones,” Life said before running after Death.  Lucy thought over everything that Balthazar had said about his dream.  

‘Lucy Luz’. L u c y  L i g h t.

In my dream I breathed a light while being strangled by shadows.

“Well that’s interesting,” she said aloud.  Lucy had caught up with Life, “What’s interesting, that Balthazar Jones just happened to have a dream that explained what could be going on right now while also bringing up an issue to distract us from Noir?” she asked sarcastically.  

“Um, nope. That’s not what I found interesting.  What I did find interesting is that a light was in a cage, my Dad’s only nickname for me is Lucy Luz, my Grandma was hispanic so she taught him spanish while he was growing up, apparently ‘luz’ means ‘light’ in spanish. Plus I had this nightmare the other day where a light came out of my mouth.  Isn’t it a little more than weird that my Mom just happened to be flying towards a light?” she asked quietly.  Life furrowed her brow, “that is rather interesting”.  When they caught up with Death, he was waiting for them in front of  a coffee shop.  “Lucy, this seems to have grown to be a far more dangerous problem than I had anticipated, I think you might have to begin a career as a reaper”.

Chapter Three

“I’m sorry what now?”

Lucy asked as her cat eared hat nearly flew off as she skidded to a halt.  Life appeared just as startled as Lucy did. “Um, Death? You’re my oldest friend, my business partner, and as much as I hate to admit it, you’re a bit of a genius too.  But I don’t know where you’re going with this.  I’m not sure if you know this, but Lucy is only twelve years old, she’s a child. You can’t force her into this!”

“Life darling, I’m not forcing the girl into this, it’s just a suggestion! With danger on the rise she’s going to need to tap into her powers to defend herself!” he snapped back.  “Don’t ‘Life darling’ me!”

Lucy ran the words over in her mind as Life and Death’s argument blurred out into the background.  That was until their argument got loud enough to make it hard to block it out.  Lucy took a deep breath and looked up. “SHUT UP!” she shrieked.  Life, Death, and a few shoppers stopped and looked at Lucy, who had now fallen silent.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be that loud,” she added, lowering her voice,”anyway I accept your offer, I think I should be able to have some magic on hand and I would love to help you with your work”.  Death had a brief look of satisfaction as Life glared at him with eyes like golden daggers.  She didn’t look convinced.

“Lucy, this business is not a game, you’ll grow up, but after that you won’t age unless you choose to eventually retire, but I have seen that humans find immortality addictive.  You can see your home, your friends, family, everything you know may grow old and perish, you may even be the ones to take them to the afterlife.  I’ve seen immortals get torn apart by this, yet they still feel the need to live forever.  I don’t want you to get drawn into this unless you truly want to”.  Lucy pursed her lips, “well, I don’t have any friends and I barely have any family so I guess I might as well do something cool like reaping the souls of the dead,” she said decidedly.  Death gave Life an ‘I told you so’ look of smugness as she stared in puzzlement.  “Are you sure you don’t have any friends? Not even a crush or good acquaintance, you seem like a likeable girl”.   

Lucy lit up, “Wowee, do you really mean it? Plenty of adults say that and regret it later but I think you really mean it!  Actually the sad part is that I think you guys are the closest thing I have to friends. Huh, that’s depressing when I say it out loud”.

While Life smiled awkwardly, Death’s face softened in pity as he smiled, “if you truly feel ready, then let’s go get you a scythe”.

“So this scythe is mine? You’re actually giving a magic, fully functioning blade to me, a child?  That. Is. Awesome!”  After teleporting back to Death’s house, he had led her back to his study and held out his hands, producing a small, ebony handled scythe with ornate carvings and a smooth, curved blade.  “What kind of metal is it?”

“Honestly I just call it death metal.”

“Like, the music genre?”

“Yeah…I think one of my ex reapers coined the term for the music genre to annoy me…just put your hands on the handle.”

“Oh, okay.”

It was more like a mini-scythe, smaller than a baseball bat, but it still had odd aura of power around it.  Lucy placed her hands on the scythe, it felt right in her hands, like it had been a missing part of her before.  “Don’t get too excited Lucy, you still need to agree to the terms and conditions,” Life said from her seat at the reading chair, engrossed in a book. Death rolled his eyes amusedly and turned his gaze back to Lucy.

“Lucia Nicolette Mourn, do you swear to obey the laws of Death?”

“Yes, but I’ll like to hear the laws and how the heck do you know my full name? That’s a bit creepy.”

“Just shut up and continue the ancient ritual.”

“Did you name the laws after yourself?”

Death ignored her and continued. “Do you swear to send the departed souls to their rightful place, to be unbiased as you open the various doors to the afterlife?”

“I do”

“Do you swear not to use the power of the scythe for greed, and with the exception of my permission, to use it only to transition the deceased?”

“I do”

“Do you swear to remain loyal to me and to Life for the rest of your immortality?”

“I do”

“Then do you accept all the duties of being a reaper?”

“Yaaaaasss!”

Life bit back a giggle as Death facepalmed, hiding his half-smile.

“A bit of an untraditional response but okay. Lucy Mourn, you are now a reaper”.

Lucy released a shriek of maniacal laughter as she did a violent little victory dance that caused Death to step back nervously.  “Can I have my scythe now?”

“I’m seriously regretting this decision,” he said as he set the scythe in her hands.  “Wait a minute I have something else too,” he said as he stood up and reached into the desk behind him, pulling out a leather container.  “You can switch down the blade of the scythe- no not like that you’ll slice your hand off-that’s it-okay now you have it, anyway after switching it down it can fit in this case which you can wear on your back, almost like a quiver”.  Lucy put her scythe in the case and slung it over her back, “sweet, but what if someone asks what’s inside?”

“There’s a symbol by the opening flap-there you go, now mortals can’t see it.”

“Couldn’t it just be a button, why is it a fancy little symbol?”

“That’s what I suggested,” Life interjected from her reading chair.

“Magic symbols look cooler, plus the magic used to place the symbol is a lot easier than having to manufacture a button on them.”

“That’s a good point,” Life agreed with a frown as she put down her book.  Lucy reached back in her case and pulled out the scythe.  “So how do I use this? It doesn’t seem long enough to plant into the ground like Death does it”.  Life laughed, “he does that for aesthetic and style, it actually doesn’t need to be that dramatic.”

“You do the exact same thing.”

“I can have style and aesthetic too.”

“Aside from style and aesthetic, all you need to do to activate it is will it to do as you ask, sometimes planting it into the ground or doing a sort of pose is the thing that helps you bring out your own power, like the old quote from Galileo Galilei, ‘You cannot teach a man anything; he must find it within himself’. Basically it’s your scythe, you can figure out how to use it,” Death explained.  

“When do I start?”

“Tomorrow, approximately 11 am, it’s getting late, I think your father may be getting off work soon,” Lucy checked the time on her phone, of course Death was right, it was 6:20, James Mourn would be home soon enough.  

Lucy Mourn took a shower and changed into her pink nightgown. Upon being teleported back home, which now looked even more mundane than it had before  It’s been one hell of a day, now I’m one of Death’s reapers on a mission to save my Mom.  Lucy began to process how eerily calm she was about the matter. A matter of Life and Death?  She giggled and skipped to her room, where she took out the scythe out of her case and ran a finger down the carvings on the handle, my new favorite toy.  “Lucy Luz, I’m back from work”.  Lucy sighed, shoved the scythe back into it’s case and placed a finger over the symbol by the opening a second before her Father walked in and adjusted his glasses, “I wanted to apologize for how harsh I was yesterday, I understand now that you were acting out because you just wanted to talk,”

“Sure Dad, because my weird changing body and my weird changing mind are rendering me incapable of starting a conversation like any other human being”.

“That’s a bit much but yeah, that’s what I gathered from it”, he responded, apparently ignorant to the overpowering sarcasm in her voice.  “Anyway I thought that I could make dinner tonight, does spaghetti sound good?”

Lucy sighed again, at least her Dad got something right. “Yes, spaghetti’s good.”

“Maybe after dinner we can,um, talk? About stuff?”

“Sure, Dad, I need to- um study some maths. We have a test after break.”

“Oh, okay Luz,” he said after going to start dinner.

It was moments like this where her Dad seemed to try, and that’s what mattered.  She wished she could tell him about everything that had happened that day.  She wanted to see his face when he learned what her Mother had been up to for the last twelve years.  The mother of your child reaps the souls of the dead for a living.  Lucy giggled, she wouldn’t tell him yet, she would wait to tell him after finding her Mom so that they could all tell the story together.

Like a normal family.

The thought of it put a smile on Lucy’s face.  She pulled out her sketchbook and started dragging a pencil across one of the empty pages.  By the time she was finished she was looking at a cartoonish sketch of Death, Life, herself, and her parents.  She had remembered her mother’s face from the photograph she had seen earlier, Death wasn’t too hard to sketch, in fact Lucy had drawn Grim Reaper-looking figures before, so the only difference was that instead of posing in a surreal manner, he was simply having a cup of tea. It was hard for her to capture Life’s supernatural beauty on the page, but she had managed to draw an alluring woman with Life’s same features and style, which was close enough. Then she drew James Mourn, sitting down and listening intently as Lucy held her new scythe and talked to him.  She drew the picture as something to work for, no matter what sort of trials she was going to end up facing, the sketch would be a promise.  A promise that Lucy was determined to keep with all of her being.  

“Dinner’s ready!” her Dad shouted from the kitchen.

“I’m coming,” Lucy replied as she hastily put away her sketchbook and skipped over to the dining room to set the table for two.

“So Lucy, what did you do today?” James Mourn asked once they were seated.

Lucy froze for second, afraid she would spit out her drink.

“Stuff.  I did stuff. I did the chores I needed to do, um…”

It was never this hard for Lucy to think of normal thing to do before then.  “TV, I read TV, watched books, y’know...things”.

“Um..cool, that’s cool. I did stuff too. Not that kind of stuff of course, I was doing paperwork and things all day.”

There was a minute or so of awkward silence.  “I gather that you wanted to talk about your Mom the other day, you were wondering if she’s dead?”

Given the recent information from Balthazar Jones, Lucy was starting to wonder that.  “Well, I guess, we don’t talk about her often, and sometimes I wish that I knew more about where I came from”.  And I did receive a load of that so I can’t complain much.  

“Well then, if you really want to know more about her, we met while I was in college. I was a student at Cambridge University and I was trying to take the bus to school that morning but since there was such a horrible car accident, there was enough traffic that I decided that it would probably be faster if I just walked the rest of the way instead.”

Lucy put quite a bit of effort into keeping a straight face as she was beginning to grasp that her Dad had likely interrupted her Mom in the middle of a reaper work shift.  

“As I got off and started walking I saw her walking away from the area where the accident was.  I figured it must have been pretty bad if the accident had delayed the traffic for such a long time so I went up to her and asked if she knew if the drivers were okay.  I remember her taking off her sunglasses and I panicked for a second because I realized I had just spoken to such a pretty woman.  She looked oddly calm as she was telling me that they’d died.  It seems a bit sick to fall in love with someone as they talked about dead people, but I did so anyway, I think it was the French accent.”

Lucy put her fork down.

“Please tell me you didn’t make plans for coffee after several people had just died, that’s just a tiny bit too weird.”

“Of course not, I asked if the crosswalk where I needed to get off to the University was blocked and well, it was, getting rid of my plans for the day.  I don’t think she had much else to do either, given that she had started a conversation, asking if I was a student and such, so a few moments later I knew that her name was Noir Arquette, it seemed like a fitting name, she had a dark sort of look to her in a way, as if she was constantly mourning, maybe that’s why she started dating me after I saw her again and we talked few days later.  It seemed to be a second chance for me to ask her out, so I did.  She didn’t like to talk about her family, saying that they had died long before then, but she said that she worked at a morgue, making the irony of all of it even sweeter.”

You don’t even know the scale of the irony here.

“We fell deeper in love over time, and over a year later she found that she was pregnant with you.  Even though we weren’t married, everything went smoothly for a while, Grandma and Grandpa were supportive of us and we were happy.  And when you were born everything was complete for a while, I’d never seen your mother smile quite so brightly after seeing you for the first time, and that’s saying a lot because she was always smiling, a lot like you do.  But one day I woke up and she was gone, there was a note that said that she was sorry and she hoped to see us again, but that was it, half of her belongings were still there but she was gone.  After thinking it over I realized she had a few friends she had said were back in France.  There was a guy named Mort who she had been friends with.  She said they were friends, and that guy Mort worked with another friend named Liv, I just assumed they were a couple, but your Mom didn’t talk about them too often.  In the end, she could’ve ran away with Mort, or maybe she just wasn’t ready to have a child.  Either way, she was gone”.

Lucy looked down at what was left of her spaghetti, she didn’t know what to say.  Hey Dad, Mort and Liv are actually Death and Life, and they’re all just good pals that deal with dead people and living people as their job?  She figured that probably wouldn’t go over well.  “You’ll know the whole story eventually Dad, I know it”.  James Mourn looked up, suddenly looking older and more worn than before.  

“If you say so Lucy Luz...but um, I hope dinner wasn’t too poisonous, and I have to go do the dishes”.  Lucy gave a reassuring smile to her Father and went back to her room.  She was determined to have a conversation with her Mother when she found her, and she was eager to have a talk with Death the next day.

By the time she woke up the next morning, Lucy’s Dad had left for work and she had started getting ready for her training with Death.  By 11:24 Lucy had been waiting for a little while and Death appeared in a shroud of black smoke that had disappeared as soon as it had materialized.  

“Good morning Lucy, are you ready for our training session?”

“Yep, right after you tell me why my Mom wasn’t able to stay with me when I was a baby.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“My Dad said that before leaving she had left a note saying that she had to go.  Why couldn’t she have stayed?”

“Well, there’s no reason she wouldn’t have been allowed to, I have plenty of reapers with mortal spouses and families, heck I have reapers whose entire families work with me and Life.  She could have simply told me that she had a family instead of running of to ‘work’ or hiding away all the time.  I’m sorry Lucy but I don’t know why she would’ve left you,” he said with a touch of bitterness on the subject.  Lucy nodded in understanding as she picked her scythe case off of the chair she was sitting in and pulled it over her shoulder.  

“Well then, I guess I’m ready to do some training.”

Death gave an odd skeletal look of approval before slamming his scythe into the ground and teleporting them to a sidewalk in a busy city with plenty of tall buildings looming over their heads.  “Where are we?”

“Seoul, South Korea, and if my scythe is correct, as it always is, we’re about to see someone die”.

Chapter Four

“You can’t just say that someone’s about to die and then start walking down the street!  It’s not very polite for anyone as confused as myself.”

“We’re about to reap a soul, it’s a rather major part of the job.”

“So we’re reaping a soul in Seoul?”

“Was that pun really necessary?”

“Yep.”

Death tilted his skull in a way that suggested that he was rolling his eyes.  “Seoul has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, so one of these buildings is more than likely going to have someone fall down the side of it in three....two...one…”

A screech rang out and before any of the surrounding people could process what had happened, a woman was lying face down on the pavement.  

“Holy- you’re right, there’s a dead person!” “Is it really? I would never have known,” he said with his words dripping in sarcasm.  

“Well, Jesus I’ve never seen someone’s death before, oh my god shouldn’t we do something?  I feel like I should be much more disturbed than I am right now,why am I so calm about this?”

“Everyone is calling the police, the hospital, etc. But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead...- come on Lucy don’t look at me like that- watch this”.  Lucy watched as a wisp rose from the woman’s grotesquely sprawled body and transformed into a ghost.  The woman’s ghost rose, with a petrified look on her face as she saw medics take away her body, then her gaze shifted over to Lucy and Death.  She began frantically speaking in Korean, looking like she was about to cry.  

“Don’t worry Gi, I’ll be here to make sure you’ll get to your afterlife, you can’t change anything now”.

Lucy was confused.  After thinking for a moment, she realized that it was only reasonable that Death should be able to understand every language, everyone (no matter what country they lived in) died eventually.  Death seemed to notice Lucy’s puzzlement as he placed a cold, skeletal hand on Lucy’s shoulder.  Suddenly the ghostly woman’s words became clear.

“I was just getting so tired of living and now, here I am! But now I can’t believe I’m dead, I’m regretting it a little actually...it’s too late now though, isn’t it?” she asked Death with translucent tears in her eyes.

“I’m afraid so, Miss Gi.  But everything should be alright after I ask you a few questions, with my assistant,Lucy Mourn, here to help,” he explained, gesturing towards Lucy, who gave an awkward little wave.

And for the magician’s final act, assisted by the lovely Lucy Mourn, he takes a suicide victim to the afterlife!*applause*

Death pulled a small, leather bound booklet out of a pocket in his robe and handed it to Lucy, “go to page 3 and read the questions,” he murmured under his breath.

Lucy fumbled with the packet and found page 3, much to the confusion of the ghost woman, Gi. Lucy bit her lip as she looked down at the paper and saw a series of questions written.

How did the deceased die?

“So um, Gi, this is a stupid question but how did you die?”

Gi pushed back a ghosty strand of hair, “Young girl, did you not see me just jumping off of a building?”

“Yes. Yes you did.”

She looked down at the second question.

Did the deceased find themselves to be just of heart?

“Do um, this is really weird, do you think you’re ‘just of heart’?”

Gi tilted her head and furrowed her brow.

“Um,” Death interjected, “she just means if you think you’re a good person.”

Gi’s expression softened.  “No, I’m useless and I don’t fit into society, that’s why I left.”

Lucy looked at Death for help.

“But if you looked at the world in a different light, and if society didn’t break you, then how would you see yourself?”Death asked softly.  

Gi looked down, “if I was able to fix everything, if I could find a purpose, then I would be good, looking back, I wish I could have talked to my family.  My aunt might miss me.  I feel bad about it now.”

Lucy’s scythe began to give of a bizarre, gentle vibrating feeling.  She looked down and saw that one of the sigils along the sides seemed to glow white-ish.  “You’ll see her again, sooner than it may seem,” Death assured her.  

“Now Lucy, this is when you open the door to the afterlife.”

“What.”

“You can do it, trust your scythe.”

“What.”

Lucy bit her lip and gripped her scythe tighter.  What if she thought of it less as an object? It felt like a part of her, but what if it was a part of her?  Then all she would need to do is make a simple cut with the blade, cut open the door.  Lucy thrust out her scythe and cried out as a bright yet shadowy sort of stream shot out of the blade and formed itself into an archway.  Holy crap that worked.  

“That was faster than I expected,especially considering that it’s her first day on the job,” Death explained to Gi, who for a second seemed to be regretting her decision to die. Yet within a moment she drifted towards the archway and it all vanished.  

Lucy staggered and took a deep breath, “so this is what you do?”

“Yes, this is what I do, and you’ve completed your first training session.”

“It’s pretty cool, I hope she went to heaven, or...whatever...what happens afterward anyway?”

“Hell if I know, why would the doorman know what happens at the party?”

“That’s a good analogy. But is the afterlife-opening always so dramatic?”

“No, it actually looks a pretty choppy and anticlimactic the first few times, but at least now you have the main idea of it. I’m actually quite amazed, I was certain that I would need to help you at some point.”

Lucy smiled smugly “I’m special.”

“Well, yes...yes, it would seem so.”

“I’m the chosen one.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“Nope I’m the chosen one”.

Death sighed, “now that you’ve activated the scythe, it should notify you when there’s a death you can take care of.”

“But people die every second,”

“Yes but I have quite a few reapers working for me, so the worst case scenario is that a ghost ends up haunting something for a short period of time but it’s nothing that can’t get cleaned up later.” In a whirlwind of darkness, they arrived in Death’s study, where Life was putting some yellow flowers in a silver, skull shaped vase on the ebony desk.  

“Does she um, live here?” Lucy wondered aloud.  Death chuckled.

“It seems like that sometimes, but no, she kind of leaves for a while then shows up to annoy me again, a bit like weeds. Life darling, did you teleport in here without my permission again?”

Life stopped fussing with the flowers and rolled her eyes.

“It would be nice if you stopped assuming that, Your reaper Mei Katayama opened the door for me.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be in Japan?”

“She’s down in the Halls of the Departed, doing paperwork, apparently six men shot each other at the exact same time so she’s trying to file who killed who.”

“Poor girl, I’ll have to give her a pay raise for this month,” Death sympathized.  

“What are the Halls of the Departed?”

The yellow flowers went into full bloom as Life gave them one last touch, “it’s basically where Death keep files on all dead people in history. Halls of the Departed just sounds nice and intimidating.  My place has the Halls of the Living, which is essentially the same thing but with files on all living people,” Life explained.

“Actually, I was just about to take Lucy by there to the Location Center to further our search for Noir,” Death said.

Lucy raised an eyebrow, “I assume that the Location Center is for locating people?”

“Exactly, I can locate all of the reapers from there,” Death responded as he took a black box from his desk and left the room, black cloak flowing behind him.  “I’ve never understood the skeleton aesthetic,” Life muttered as she and Lucy followed him as he continued down the hall and began to go down the stone staircase.  They had entered a part of the house Lucy hadn’t seen before.  It was similarly decorated to the rest of the house but with more portraits and art on the walls.  As they turned the corner the trio nearly collided with a bespeckled young woman in a leather jacket with several folders in her arms.  

“Death! Life! How nice to see you, I-i’m sorry I was just about to ask you to check these files, I think I’ve finished them up but I want to make sure I know who killed who.  Y’know because these guys all shot each other at once-”

“Yes, Life told me.  It’s nice to see you too Mei,” Death said as the bespeckled reaper, Mei, handed Death the folders.  After running a skeletal hand over them with his head lowered he looked up and nodded, “excellent job Mei, you’ve managed to figure out that Haru shot Gyo who shot Kyle who shot Yuki who shot Greg who shot Ben who shot Haru.  If I didn’t know better I would say that you’ve been working here for forty years instead of fourteen.”

She sighed with a relieved look on her face, “that’s great because for a second I thought that Gyo shot Ben who shot Yuki while he shot Haru while he shot Kyle while he shot Gyo while he, finally, shot Greg.  I would’ve been in the Halls of the Deceased all night if that was the case.”

“Nope, although that would’ve been a disaster, you got it right.” Death said with a proud smile.  Mei’s gaze fell on Lucy, “and who’s the little goth girlscout?”

Lucy took this condescending remark with a smile, “actually I think I’m a little too old to join girl scouts, and it’s too much of a time commitment anyway.”

Mei raised an eyebrow as she glanced questioningly at Life and Death.

“Noir Arquette’s missing and we’re trying to find her with her daughter’s help.  Death also had the genius idea of making Lucy the youngest reaper ever recruited,” Life said with a skeptical glare in her color-shifting eyes.  Death only smiled smugly and cleared his throat.

“Actually, Life darling, you should know that Lucy just performed her first reaping a few moments ago.  And she did so within seconds.”

Mei pushed her rectangular glasses further up her nose,“within seconds, for the first time? Huh, little miss girlscout has a bit of a gift for the necromantic arts.”

Lucy did a little twirl, “necromantic arts, gosh that almost cooler better than soul-reaping, I think that’s what I might call it sometimes”.  

Death looked back at Mai, “we were about to take her to the Location Center to find Noir, would you mind assisting, Miss Katayama?”  

Mei nodded and continued around the corner to a large set of double doors.  Above the doorframe there was a golden plaque.

The Location Center

Lucy’s eyes widened as she entered the circular room.  There were quite a few small, silvery black stones placed along the walls, each stone had engravings on it’s edges, just like the engravings on the scythes. In the center there appeared to be a raised pool filled with a luminous substance resembling mercury.  

Lucy smiled in awe, “wow, what’s that shiny stuff? Can I touch it?”

“Do you want your hand singed off?” Death asked grimly.

“I can’t tell if that was a warning or a threat but still want to touch it.”

“Uh, Girl Scout, I would strongly advise against that. It’s the torilnkal, when an immortals’ DNA comes in contact with it it can help locate them or their recent reaping. Yet it’s pretty deadly for anyone other than Life or Death to touch it” Mei explained.

“I said I wanted to, not that I was going to. It just looks so pretty.”

Mei shook her head, “as insane and fun as your little reaper seems, I’ve gotta get back to Tokyo, there’s this other kid and a lot of murder, and then this rubber duck,” she explained as if that made perfect sense.

“Anyway see you later guys,” she then twirled her scythe and disappeared.

“I like her. Anyway what about the deadly silver stuff?”

Life laughed as she ran a smooth brown hand along the wall’s silvery black stones, “I have a kindler who touched the torilnkal, she got a really high quality prosthetic foot though.”

“A foot?”

“Somehow she thought that if she used her toe to touch it t wouldn’t be as deadly...to be fair she was a bit drunk when she did it though.  Moral of the story; don’t be an idiot and get drunk while standing next to torilnkal.”

Lucy joined Life by the wall stones, “What are these?”

“There’s a stone for each reaper, I’ll get you one too soon enough, now go up to the torilnkal.”

“I thought you said my hand would burn off?”

“Don’t touch it, just approach it, gosh Lucy pay attention.”

Lucy shrugged and skipped towards the silvery pool.  As she grew closer it smelled like paper and pencil lead, with a hint of Cedarwood.  Lucy drew close enough for the glimmering light of the torilnkal  reflected on her face.  

“Now what?”

Death reached for her hand and before Lucy could react he grazed it with the blade of his scythe. Lucy gasped and sprung back, clutching her bleeding hand.  Death calmly dipped the edge of his scythe in the torilnkal, letting Lucy’s blood drip into the shimmering liquid in a grimly beautiful manner.

“You just cut me you old skeleton bastard!”

Death recoiled a little at these words as Life stifled a giggle “That’s a bit of a harsh thing to say, but yes I’m very sorry, I can get you a bandage and fix it up?” “No you just cut me! You literally just sliced my hand open, what the hell man?”

“Things like this hurt less when they’re unexpected. I didn’t want to hurt you more than necessary”

“Yes but it still hurts. Because I’m bleeding. And you just cut me. I mean you could’ve just asked me for a blood sample.  Bastard…”

Death waved his hand and a spool of bandages appeared, he looked at Lucy reproachfully “I can bind it, and Life can heal the cut.”

Lucy cautiously held out her bleeding right hand.

At least it’s not my dominant hand…

Lucy pouted and scowled as Death wrapped a bandage around her hand, “I’m not trusting you. You had gained some Lucy Trust Points earlier but you just lost them.”

“Once again, I’m sorry, and that hurts Lucy, it really does.”

“Not as much as  my damn hand.”

“But you have something called ‘Lucy Trust Points’? That’s speaking in the third pers-”

“My hand. Is still. Bleeding.”

Death hung his head as he finished up the bandage and Life stepped forward to grasp her bandaged hand.  Life’s own hands started glowing as a sharp pain shot up Lucy’s arm. Lucy cried out when the pain suddenly stopped as soon as it had started.  

“Healing sometimes hurts kiddo, you have to used to it,” she said with a wicked little smirk.  Lucy took a mental not to take away a few Lucy Trust Points for Life later.  

“Look, the torilnkal’s taking effect,”

Lucy whirled around as her gaze fixed on the silver and red pool, which was now swirling around and shaping itself into a human figure, a woman’s figure, who appeared to be swinging a scythe before walking away.

“Noir,” Life breathed as Death stared at the pool, transfixed despite being familiar with the torilnkal’s properties.  Another figure appeared in the blood.  It was twice as tall as the female figure and was sickly distorted, with multiple, long, twisted limbs.  It wasn’t the only one, all they needed to do was approach the female figure and she seemed to writhe in pain.  A little whine filled the air as it increased into a violent scream.  

Lucy gasped as her green eyes widened in fear, Mom?! The scream was laced with chokes and sobs.  With every second, Lucy began to feel her mother’s agony stronger and stronger. A tear slipped down Lucy’s face as she watched her mother’s silhouette writhe in pain.

“THAT’S ENOUGH!” Death yelled as the image in the torilnkal disappeared.  Lucy’s breath hitched and she stepped back.  Death swallowed, “I’m so sorry Lucy, you shouldn’t have seen that.  But she’s alive, I could sense from the torilnkal that they brought her to some...other realm, like another layer of reality, underneath Paris.”

“I suppose they wanted to kill her in her birthplace…” Life breathed bitterly.

Death’s expression hardened as his dark eyes seemed to look more like voids.

“Was that. Really. Necessary, Life? You couldn’t just acknowledge the situation without saying anything, could you?”

“I’m sorry but it’s the truth. These things aren’t the reapers you used to train, these are hollow monsters that by the looks of it, are planning to add a bit of irony to your fvorite Employee of the Month’s death.   I’m sorry you have to hear this, especially you Lucy, but that’s how it’s going to be unless we pick up our staffs and scythes to save her.”

Lucy blinked away her tears and nodded in understanding before looking at Death.  For a second it looked as if he was about to lash out and cause some sort of mass genocide, but instead he sighed.

“You’re right...you’re right again Life.  We just have to carry on.”  Lucy’s shoulders relaxed as exhaled she backed away from the torilnkal.  She hadn’t realized that she had been holding her breath.  “So...now what? My- my Mom’s being tortured in Paris. Are we gonna go there and ‘carry on’ as you put it?”

Death tilted his head as he saw Lucy forced a determined fire in her eyes, “so far you haven’t ceased to amaze me Miss Mourn, I searched Paris for her yesterday but as I said I’m starting to believe that they opened up another realm.”

“Another realm...like an alternate universe or something?”

“Not quite,” Life answered before Death could open his mouth.

 “It’s more like, a little disposable pocket based on reality where you can do whatever the hell you want, we’re in another realm right now, Death and I created our homes in alternate universes, you know because we wouldn’t want anyone knocking on Death’s door,” she said with a sly grin when she got to the pun.  Lucy smiled, and she felt her spirits lift a little.

“The puns between the two of you are going to become unbearable,” Death murmured, “but yes, that’s an adequate description. Noir’s in a realm of Paris, we just have to figure out where.”

“Then let’s go to Paris and look for a monster realm.”

“Now that you say it like that it sounds stupid.”

Life rolled her eyes at Lucy and Death as she began to glow brightly for a second, When her glowing faded- wait. Was it his glow now? Life appeared to have morphed into a handsome, fair haired man in his late teens.  

“Dress up time guys, I’ll play a college student who’s lost while looking for their campus and looking around France like an idiot.” he said with a French accent.

It seemed as if Death couldn’t help but grin and was immediately cloaked in shadows for a second, when they lifted a young girl not much older than Lucy stood there.  As Lucy half expected, Death was rocking a bit of a gothic look with his- her dark hair and makeup.  Lucy began to feel uncomfortable by how beautiful Death looked, especially in comparison to herself.  “So...do you guys even have genders, if you’re, y’know, universal entities and stuff?”

The pair glanced at eachother and Life shrugged. “We’re whatever we want, really. Does it really matter considering how beautiful we are in every form?” Life asked with a sarcastically innocent bat of his eyes as Death scoffed.

Death was about to swing her scythe, which was now nearly taller than she was, when she stopped and looked at Life.

“What if I’m you’re clueless American cousin who’s confused in a foreign land?”

“Good idea, we’ll do it like that time in Constantinople.”

“I actually had an okay feeling about this plan until you compared it to the Constantinople Incident of 1792.” she said before she swung her scythe into the ground and everything erupted into shadows.

Chapter Five

“So this is Paris? It’s very...Parisian, isn’t it?”

Lucy asked as she attempted to pry her eyes away from the eiffel tower in one direction and the Notre Dame Cathedral in another.  They seemed to have shown up on the patio of a French cafe’, luckily the locals and tourists didn’t seem to give them a second thought.  Life raised an eyebrow at Lucy’s question as he leaned up against a wrought iron fence,“you know what Lucy, no, it’s Egypt, you can tell because of the Eiffel Tower right over there.”

“Keep an eye on your saltiness, buddy; you might turn into Death, anyway how are we finding this realm-portal thingamajig?”

“Normally Death and I can just teleport, but since we were unaware of the realm before now, we’ll have to find the right frequency.”

“Frequency?”

“We’ll have to sense it using our magic, like Death is doing right now, yet she kinda looks stupid while doing it,” he explained while gesturing over to Death, who was standing a few yards away and lowly waving her fingers by her sides as she stared off blankly into the distance.  Despite the her odd movements, Death didn’t really look stupid with  her long black curls billowing in the wind.  Lucy looked back at Life, who’s bright gold eyes assumed a similar distant look as he scanned his surroundings.  Lucy tried to see if she felt anything different, or otherworldly-realm-portalish, but all she noticed was a man approaching the trio with a confused look on his face.  

“Do you kids need any help?” he asked.  The man spoke french, and strangely enough, Lucy could easily interpret it.  She recalled needing Death’s help to understand other languages before, but now that she had performed her first reaping, she must have been just as bilingual.

“Um...well you see sir, um..”

Am I speaking french? Wait, I am speaking french. Gosh that sounds nice…Wait a second-

Lucy nudged Life, who seemed a tad distracted in finding the portal frequency.  He looked over.  “Oh forgive me monsieur, My cousins and I have never been to the Citiy of Love before, and we’re simply taking in the sights,” he casually replied in french as he tousled his thick glossy hair.  The man raised an eyebrow as he looked between Life, Death and Lucy.  The entities certainly could’ve picked forms that looked a little more like Lucy, for between the freckled green eyed girl, the olive skinned dark haired girl, and the fair skinned and haired teen didn’t seem to have much of a resemblance. Fortunately, with Life’s charisma, the man walked away with a shrug, wishing the trio a safe journey.  “Works every time”, Life chuckled with the same wicked snicker he had in his previous, feminine form.  

Death snapped out of her trance, “I’m sorry did I miss something?”

“Just the stupid look on your pretty little face,”

“You know what Life? Look who’s talking,” she snapped through the mild blushing on her cheeks.

Lucy rolled her eyes and stopped as she felt a cold buzz from her scythe sling.  She reached back into the leather container and brought out her scythe, so cool and comforting in her hand.  The scythe began to pull at Lucy, drawing her away from the cafe’ patio and towards the Notre Dame Cathedral in the distance...

“Lucy wait!” Death said, placing a hand on Lucy’s shoulder after catching up with her.   “I felt the pull too, it’s a dead person,”

“Well I kinda gathered that by the fact that I felt it from a scythe meant for reaping the souls of the dead,” Lucy chirped.

“Yes but it’s a trap.”

“Someone died specifically to trap me?” Lucy asked skeptically.

Death pulled her closer with a grim look in her jet black eyes.  “That death is just by the Notre Dame, according to Life, that’s where Noir was born.  Now isn’t it curious, that as we search for mother, we are distracted by a murder in that exact same spot?”

Lucy gasped as her blood ran cold, she gulped.

“Is it her?”

“No. But it seems as if they’re luring us.”

“So do we follow them and find my Mom or do we find an alternative?”

Death shapeshifted back into his suited form and straightened his tie, greatly disturbing Lucy who was watching a pretty teen transform into a grown man in a flash of shadow.   Death kept his hand on Lucy’s shoulder and began to lead her back to the cafe’.

“Wait where are you taking me? Aren’t I gonna help my Mom?  Isn’t that why you’ve been keeping me with you guys this whole time? To find her?”

“I needed your help in finding her, but not saving her, you are going to stay here with Life while I go negotiate.”

Before Lucy could respond she heard someone clear their voice. She turned around to see Life standing not a foot away from them, back in her female form with her arms crossed over her chest.  

“Excuse me, Death but I’m not going to be babysitting Lucy while you go storming off into some unknown realm.  I’m scarier than you anyway.”

“That’s a fair point.”

Life rolled her eyes.  “You know how realms can be anyway, let alone one ruled by monstrous psychopaths.”

“Well what now? We let Lucy strut right in with us, maybe they’ll have mercy on her if she sells them some Girl Scout Cookies-”

“Once again...I’m not in Girl Scouts,” Lucy protested, “and I really want to-”

“No” Death snapped.  Life looked down at Lucy and made what looked like an attempt at a sympathetic smile, “Lucy, you literally became a reaper yesterday. Death’s not even stupid enough to let you in this.”

“Thanks Life”. Death scoffed.

“Anyway, I think you can see our point,” Life reasoned.

Lucy could feel her eyes tearing up.  Life gave a submissive sigh while Death was struck with a panicked expression as he saw the young girl try not to cry.  

“Don’t fret dearie, I have a plan.”

“Is it as good as the ‘Hey-let’s-make-this-kid-a-reaper-and-tell-her=she-can-help-us save-her-mom’ plan?” Life interrupted.

“I think I have a babysitter for her.”

Lucy clenched her fists and began to argue, “NO YOU CAN’T DO THIS-” but before she could finish, Death teleported her with a twirl of his scythe.

When the shadows cleared, Lucy’s scream rang out as she fell onto the cold hard ground.  Wherever she was, it looked as if it was the middle of the night.  She got up on her knees and looked up, there were a lot lit up signs (which Lucy could now read as Japanese) advertising for bars and restaurants.  Great, just dump lil’ old me into some dark alley in a foreign country so that I’m confused and alone, that’s way safer guys! She thought while rising to her feet.

“Y’KNOW WHAT? THAT’S IT. NO MORE ‘LUCY TRUST POINTS’ FOR YOU TWO! ASSHATS!”

She shouted as she stomped her feet on the ground.  But she wasn’t alone.

“What do you think you’re doing, screaming around at this time of night, kid?” barked the gruff voice of a nearby local, who’s stumbling walk suggested he was drunk.  

“The dead man’s right about one thing, you better watch your language, Girl Scout.”

Mei Katayama stood waiting by a motorcycle at the end of the alley, twirling her scythe in her hand.

The man scowled, “what did you just call me?”

“A dead man.  Don’t ask me how but I’m especially good at sensing these sort of things.”

“You’re crazy, all crazy,” he proceeded to mutter about craziness as he walked out of the alley and towards the busy street.

Mei scoffed as she stomped towards Lucy, “I just got a text from Death..I guess that makes me your babysitter...as if I haven’t had enough to deal with.  I mean I know he’s saving Noir but can’t someone else watch you...? I just hope this isn’t like the Constantinople Incident.”

“Did you just let that drunk man walk into the street?”

“Why would I not? Even if I told him not to, we can’t change fate; he would die at the same time, even if not the same exact death.”

“Huh,” Lucy mused.  Another thing Death probably should have told me before dropping me off in Japan.  She looked up at the night sky.

“What time is it?”

“4:00 am, I’m ending my work shift after this guy,”

“Long day?

“Child, you don’t even know.  Long story short I’ve officially decided to never have kids-”

Screeeeech.

Lucy heard the tires from the street.

Mei strode to the side of the road, where a ghostly man stood, dumbfounded.  

“You were right. I’m dead.”

“Uh huh, that’s what it looks like,” Mei said as she turned to Lucy.

“Go ahead, work your magic. I wanna see if Death was right about your skill.”

Lucy swallowed and stepped forward, then stopped.

“Do you have that handbook?”

“What?”

“There was a handbook with the judgment questions in there..?”

“Oh yeah I haven’t looked at that thing in at least a decade,” she laughed as she pulled a leather bound booklet from the bottom of her scythe sling and tossed it to Lucy.  After fumbling the booklet and barely grabbing it before it fell, Lucy flipped to the page with the questions.

“Okay Mister I’ma ask you these questions, and if you’re an alright person and you answer them right then you go to an afterlife of your choosing.”

The ghostly man looked down with a puzzled look on his face, “but I’m an atheist.”

“Oh, sucks to be you then...yeah I have no idea what’s about to happen-”

Mei cleared her throat loudly,

“-but I have confidence. So, how’d you die?”

The ghost man looked at his mangled body on the street, saying nothing.

Lucy winced, “okay yeah I get your point...are you just of h- I mean, were you a good person?”

The ghost man scratched his translucent hair, “I had a drinking problem, dying seems to have sobered me up though...I guess I’m not that bad when I’m sober... I’m a jerk though.”

Lucy’s scythe symbols glowed grey.  Lucy tilted her head and looked to Mei for directions.

“Just do the thing, the symbols don’t have much of an effect on the actual job.”

Despite confused looks from the ghost, Lucy focused and held out her scythe like before, a stream blasted out and formed an archway.  

“It was nice meeting you, good luck!” Lucy chirped as the man drifted into the portal.  

Mei stared in disbelief.  

“You not only just performed a reaping suitable for at least a year-long member, but you freaking wished him luck as he got taken into the gateway of death.”

“Well I don’t think I gave a very good description and I figured it would be nice to make up for it by wishing him luck,” Lucy replied with a shrug.

Mei smirked and tilted her head, “I’m starting to like you, you’re a really nice kid, creepy as hell...but nice.”

“I get that a lot,” Lucy said with a grin as Mei started walking towards her motorcycle.  

Lucy froze in her steps, “can I ride it?”

Mei turned around, “no, you’re going to run behind my bike as fast as you can until we get to my house.”

“Couldn’t we teleport there?”

Mei shrugged, “Yeah, but Suzy is a smoother, not-as-nausea-inducing ride.”

“Suzy?”

“The name of my Suzuki bike.”

Mei hopped on her bike and turned on the engine, then gave Lucy an expectant glare.  She cautiously pulled herself onto the bike, sitting awkwardly behind Mei.  

“What? Do you wanna end up like our friend on the street? Hold on, Girlscout.”

Lucy gripped her arms tighter around Meri’s waist, close enough to smell her leather jacket and for Mei’s dark brown ponytail to whip Lucy’s face.  Suddenly they took off, and as Lucy suspected, the ride was far more pleasant than a teleportation.  

“Whoohoo!” she accidentally cried into Mei’s ear.  Lucy muttered an apology as Mei clenched her teeth and the bike wavered dangerously.  Yet the apology was swept away by the wind rushing in her ears as Lucy stuffed her hat in her coat pocket and let her hair whip around her head.  Through the brown locks over her eyes she could see the bright lights and signs of Tokyo.  She continued in this daze of bewilderment until Suzy slowed to a stop at a modern, narrow house that looked a little more like a high end apartment.  

Mei took off her helmet and adjusted her glasses, “So, this is the place.  I didn’t want to watch any more damn kids today but it seems like a matter of life and death-err, Life and Death...whatever.  Until I get more details about the ‘shadows’ Death gave a brief description of, I’m keeping an eye on you guys.”

Lucy’s knees wobbled as she climbed off the bike.  “What do you mean ‘any more kids’, and what am I gonna do about my Dad? What will I do, text him that I’m hanging out with some strangers on the other side of the world?”

Mei grinned as she fumbled with a keychain.  “You’re a curious little Girl Scout aren’t you? Heh, at least you’re asking the right questions...there’s this other girl, around your age.  Whatever shadows Death’s talking about, she’s been connected to them too, I’ve been running around with this kid all day, I know reapers aren’t supposed to get too involved with mortal business but I knew there was something more than that.”

“I thought you were the one mocking Death for recruiting me.”

“For your information, I’m not recruiting Akiro, I just want to keep the kid safe.  And as for your dad, just tell him you’re sleeping over at a friend’s house, or that you’ve been kidnapped, whatever you kids do these days.”

“Yeah, yeah, sleepover or something, he’ll think I’m just in a weird teen rebellious phase and stay out of it…anyway tell me more about this Akiro kid you’ve been babysitting,” she said while walking into Mei’s house. The interior was as modern as the outside, but with a few traditional twists such as the shoji panels and paper lanterns that hung over the living room that gave the room a warmer feel.  

“Shoes off.” Mei demanded, stepping out of her sneakers in the entryway of the house.  Lucy nodded and slid off her own boots, dusting off the little pink bows on the ankles as she did so.  

The space was chillingly silent, and it was only broken with Mei’s sigh as she slumped into a nearby chair.  “C’mon sit down, I’ll make some tea or open up some snacks in a sec.  As for Akiro, I think her father has something to do with these shadowy beings, apparently she was staying at his house the other day when the shadows started surrounding her and her sister.  I was reaping that group of guys who shot each other all at once when I saw them running down the street.  I asked them what was wrong, I wouldn’t have believed them if I didn’t see the fear in their eyes.  The younger one couldn’t have been much older than five, no five year old should look that afraid.  So I told them to stay put while I investigated, their dad was lying on the floor, cut and bruised.  Apparently he’s in some sort of coma now.  I called 911 and took them to their mother’s house.  But both of them kept ranting about these ‘tall shadows’ trying to grab them, especially the little girl, Natsumi. I tried to calm them down but Akiro was persistent and determined to find answers.  She’s clever, that one.  Later in the day she went back to her dad’s place to pick up a few of her and her sisters’ things, the shadows appeared again.  I was watching this time, I wanted to keep an eye on the kid, but when those things reached out for her...something happened, they recoiled back from her, and by the time I was ready to fight they just faded away.  I mean Akiro is almost as creepy as you but not enough to prevent an attack like that.  So, I’ll keep an eye on her for the next few days while she stays with her mother...you could see why I didn’t want to tell Death or Life about this,” she explained.  Lucy nodded,but at the mention of their names her thoughts immediately strayed back to whatever Life and Death were doing at the Notre Dame.  

Are they helping Mom? Is Mom hurt? Are they hurt? Wait- can Death die? Can Life die? Is everyone dead? Wait nononononono...Shut up conscience, SHUT UP.

She shuddered and tried to focus back onto the information she had just processed from Mei, wondering what the beings wanted from Akiro and how she was able to prevent them, unlike Lucy had in her nightmare.  

“Well, anyway, that’s what I was did today and I think that’s enough disturbing topics for today, I’ll get some food made, I guess I’m making two servings now...I have some mangas in the shelf over there, a few of them are in english so knock yourself out”.

Lucy pulled out her phone, the timezones had changed on the clock and it was now 4:31 am, Japan time, Lucy was too lazy to calculate whatever that was back in America, but she wasn’t that tired, so she figured it was in the afternoon.  Considering what Mei said about her manga, she walked towards the bookcase by the t.v.

“Sweet mother of manga…” she murmured, the shelves were almost entirely full of various mangas.

“Don’t judge me, Girlscout, mangas are actually common reading material her in Japan,” Mei called over from her kitchen.

“I’m not judging I’m admiring, and no one gives you weird looks or asks why you’re reading comic books here either?” “Pretty much,” she answered, followed by a series of clanging pots and pans.

Lucy let herself smile as she found one written in english and engrossed herself in it until Mei had prepared lunch, or dinner, whatever it was.  For a brief while, Lucy wasn’t worried over her family or immortal friends or long shadowy beings coming to strangle her, just whether the demon hybrid princess was going to go on the quest the prophecy foretold.

“Food’s ready,” Mei announced. Lucy’s stomach growled in an oddly lod manner as Lucy put down the manga and skipped over to the low, wooden table Mei was waiting at.  Lucy didn’t quite recognize some of the foods, but she could see that the meal included fish and rice.  Lucy sat down on one of the low chairs across from Mei and sat there in silence.

“Ugh you’re the ideal awkward houseguest. Go ahead and start eating I didn’t make this food for nothing,” Mei said with a smile.  Lucy dug into her food with her chopsticks, and although Lucy knew how to use them, bits of rice fell back on her ate as she attempted to eat them and it took Lucy longer than she would have liked to figure out must how to grab certain things with them.  She assumed it looked pretty pathetic judging by how Mei was barely hiding a Life-like smirk.  

“This is really good, I honestly don’t know half of what I’m eating right now but it’s still great.”

Mei looked down at her food proudly, “You should try Death’s cooking, I’m telling you Death’s like a freaking master chef, they’ve had like centuries of practice but there’s still some serious talent there.”

Lucy raised an eyebrow, “Death can cook?”

“Oh yeah, it’s one of the things that Death rubs in Life’s face all the time considering that Life may or may not have started the Great Fire of London over some burnt scones, it’s never really been proven but I’ve heard that it’s a possibility.  People have like, cried after eating Life and Death’s cookies, for two very different reasons and two very different cookies.”

“Huh,” Lucy said as she took a bite of fish.  

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Braxton Manley (u/braxleybands) of Braxley Bands, a brand that makes elastic apple watch bandsSome stats:Product: Elastic Apple Watch BandsRevenue/mo: $100,000Started: May 2017Location: AustinFounders: 2Employees: 0Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Braxton Manley and I am a 23-year-old living in Austin. I started Braxley Bands with Grant Andrews as a class project at Texas Tech about 3 years ago.We created an elastic Apple Watch band and starting making them by hand on my grandma’s sewing machine. We have since scaled the business from an original $20 upfront for materials to $100K a month on Shopify. No other capital or investment was ever put into the business.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?I always had a creative bug and a passion for art. Once I realized that entrepreneurship is basically the business of creativity I knew it was my path. The idea started because of a personal desire for a more comfortable Watch band option and the need to come up with a project idea for my marketing class. My band at the time was the original band Apple included which is made from cheap-feeling plastic. Furthermore, the only options out there at the time were very plain solid colored designs. We wanted to spice it up.I had absolutely no background in anything related to business when I got started aside from me being a Junior marketing major at Texas Tech. While I did learn some foundational stuff in business school, most everything was learned either from podcasts, books, people on social media, or trial and error.We didn’t have a big budget at all when we were getting started because we didn’t want to take an investor (that way we could play by our own rules and no answer to anyone. Also, who would ever give us money? So we had to learn everything ourselves. Everything from accounting to photoshop to supply chain management.https://www.instagram.com/p/B4DXH7IgUEc/Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.What I think is especially unique about us is that we literally only put about $20 into this and that is the only money that was ever invested to this day.We would buy elastic and Apple Watch adapters off of eBay and then hand stitch them. My partner Grant happened to have taken a sewing class in high school (Solely for the reason of meeting girls) so he actually knew his was around the machine my Grandma gave us to use.After we realized that stitching the bands ourselves was not scalable, (We were selling about 20 bands a day and also were full-time college students) we went to a local alterations store and they produced about 100 for us before we realized that they were charging us way too much (~$4 a band and not good quality).About a year into the venture we finally outsourced to a real factory in my hometown of Austin. They were great up until we ran into quality issues and long turnaround times. We would hand package (On wooden grilling planks + rubber bands) and ship out everything ourselves. When we needed extra help we would pay our friends $10/hr for extra hands on deck.The bands are now made in Hong Kong in PO’s of about 20,000 units. Fulfillment is done in a 3PL warehouse in Dallas. Establishing this was not easy and recently we had to deal with a new manufacturer we were wanting to switch over to but they delivered us a test run 6000 bands with extremely low quality stitching. None of the bands can be sold and none of the time developing that can be recovered. Some of the money can be recovered by the lesson learned was always go through an intensive product sampling process before proceeding with a full order.I recommend the best way to begin getting a product developed is to go through a ‘middleman’ in America. They take a small but it is well worth it just off time and travel savings alone. The company we went through for this is named Gembah and they are good guys.imageimageimageDescribe the process of launching the business.We leveraged the fact that we were students to get exposure by using it for class projects (We were studying business/marketing and many of our class projects were centered around business development projects).Texas Tech was amazing to us because they legit supported us in so many ways. They have us free 24/7 office space as well as exposure in the school news, etc.Again we literally scaled the business off of $20. This is sort of how we scaled it.Cash on hand: $20 - Bought materials for ~10 bands and sold them to our friends for cash/Venmo.Cash on hand: $200 - Built a basic Wix website and ~50 bands worth of material + shipping materials.Cash on hand: $1,000 - Filed an LLC and began growing an Instagram audience through ads and follower gaining services like falcon.io.Cash on hand: $10,000 - Outsourced production from in house and by hand to a manufacturer in Austin. Began running ads on FB and Instagram.Cash on hand: $50,000 (About 1 year since launch) - Started paying ourselves a small salary and outsourced production overseas. Transferred to Shopify and Bronto as an email service provider.The biggest lesson learned was to be patient and steadfast. Timely is better than perfect and you can’t expect results overnight. Celebrate failures but learn from them. Experiment with everything.imageSince launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Driving traffic to the site but with an emphasis on capturing emails and encouraging then to follow Instagram. We put a lot of effort into engaging with our customers and turning it into a community. For example, we held a Halloween costume contest and got some incredible submissions!We try to promote the functionality of our product in the copy but use high-quality photos so that they understand the well-designed style of it as well. This definitely attracts attention because we make them think the bands that Apple includes with the watch are attractive and uncomfortable. Sort of a “Didn’t realize I needed this until I saw it” strategy.We also cycle out designs seasonally and promote them as limited edition to encourage repeat buyers who want to change out their band with every outfit.imageimageimageimageimageHow are you doing today and what does the future look like?We just had our highest earning month ever in October by about 36% and it is largely due to us improving on all of our branding and marketing efforts as well as consistently reinvesting in more and more product. The largest inhibiting growth factor in this business has been having enough product. We have many SKU’s and it is not easy to forecast the needed inventory accurately.Our bands technically only cost about $4 but after fulfillment costs, returns and exchanges, packaging, and CAC it costs us closer to $12 / band.This is why it’s really important for us to have a high LTV and AOV. Our conversion rate generally hangs out around a 4 when we have a full inventory and 2 when we get low on stock.We have around 80,000 email subscribers and 33,000 Instagram followers.100% of our sales are through our online store.If an ad we are running performs below a 3x ROAS we consider it a failed ad. On a good ad, we will hit around a 6x ROAS.Our short term goal is to match the year to date revenue over the next 2 months (holiday season).Our long term goal is to optimize bottom-line revenue and build the business around the best lifestyle possible. (No stress, jobs we don’t want to do, etc).I would eventually want to sell the company once it reaches a valuation of about 10 million.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?In this industry, there is rarely a need to ever meet with anyone in person or pay for office space. Working remote is the future and it has allowed us more personal freedom, the ability to spend less on overhead and ultimately grow the business quicker. We have never met in person with any of our ad buyers, supply chain managers/ middlemen, customer service reps, etc.My partner Grant and I generally try to see each other about once a month as an excuse to travel to new places and use some of our AMEX reward points.Which brings me to a big one… START COLLECTING CREDIT CARD POINTS. We have AMEX Platinum and Gold and it is so awesome. We travel for free and get to use airport lounges anywhere we go. I also got a free year of global access to WeWork just for signing up (May have been a limited promotion). Countless other benefits too. Make sure you are spending all that cash on the right card. It’s so worth it.What platform/tools do you use for your business?All the things I will list here are recommendations because if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t use it. Shopify is great. We bought a main template and then hired a local web developer to make small periodical tweaks for us. We run our emails on Bronto. LiveRecover is an amazing abandoned cart recovery tool at leverages SMS and real humans we have over a 20% recovery rate, which, when compared to our emails is about 5x more effective. We use Bazaarvoice as a review platform. Our fulfillment is done through a family-run warehouse in Dallas.Generally, we try to hire small companies/ freelancers over firms (Especially with digital ads and SEO). It’s a better value and they are easier to work with IMO. My partner and I constantly update a google doc that functions as both a personal and business to-do list along with things like goals and personal habits we want to build.imageWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?It’s important to make all the media you consume relevant to your business mission. For instance, my Instagram is just filled with mentors and similar brands so that I can study what they are doing. Podcasts are free gold. I especially recommend The Unofficial Shopify Podcast there’s so much advanced and hyper-relevant information on here that is hard.Follow all the DTC bloggers on Twitter to stay up to date with the industry and what current trends are (@Webb). If you are completely new to this, start with The Four Hour Work Week book by Tim Ferriss. It was my bible when I was starting out.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Patience is a virtue and focus on making your personal life as optimized, balanced and happy as it can be. Being rich won’t make you happy but being happy might make you rich.Prioritize your health and nutrition first and you will have more energy, more creativity, look/feel better and have a higher functioning brain. All the things you need to be successful in business. Don’t listen to all the BS ‘hustle porn.’ Get 7+ hours of sleep. Go outside and play. Be compassionate and listen to your body/mind.Also, sometimes delegating tasks to other people can take up more of your time and money than if you were to just do it yourself. Also if you do it yourself you’re investing in new skills that you can use later on. (e.g., learning FB marketing).Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We are not looking to hire anyone full time but we are looking to collaborate with artists and designers on awesome new band prints and designs!Where can we go to learn more?WebsiteInstagramIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!imageLiked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[snkret-photography]

Let Me Go

It’s the county fair. The day is hot but full of people rushing from stand to stand. The one day that Ms. Crowley loosens her lap band so she can eat as many fried Oreos and cheese samples as her heart desires. Karen, the neighborhood red head (because literally everyone has a resident read head in their space) dropped her second funnel cake and expects everyone to stop because the moisture in her hands won’t. The sun beats down and insights the beads of sweat to pulse down everyone’s necks. There are clowns and animal balloons tied to the wrists of every little boy and girl there. One hand for their burger, one for their soda and a wrist to ground their wiener dog that no one is going to want to bring home. Adam is there. Small and somber. He’s looking up to the sky as his father runs over to ask him why he stopped behind the family. “I let it go,” the boy said. His father responded, “well let’s go get you another. Do you want a red balloon this time?” “I… I…” the boy stammered, “I want to know where the balloon goes. I want my balloon back, so we have to go wherever it goes, and I have to hold onto it so that it never leaves me again.” The father looks up to the sky and with a deep breath, “it’s gone, you just get a new balloon and if you find your old one, it’s usually deflated or belongs to someone else now.” “Purple… I want a purple balloon.”

I often find myself looking up to the sky, wondering where my balloon went. Wondering how I could be so careless to let it go. Then trying to get familiar with a new one. Made in the same shape, to similar dimensions that are only minutely different, but somehow fashioned different. I always seem to let the balloon drift off in the sky hoping that Ill find the balloon that can stay affixed to my wrist. If it has not become clear at this point, I am the slipping balloon. Or rather, the iterations of me that I’m always trying to find. The version that is nicer or can maintain happiness. Or the timing of me in which problems didn’t exist and the biggest complaint was vegetables with my dinner. The older one gets, the more they often wish for the things in life they hurried away. But that balloon doesn’t ever really go anywhere, or rather, it doesn’t live forever. Think about it, a balloon that can sit in your house, properly inflated, for over a month is a great feat but you are also usually waiting for it to deflate. At parties’ end, we all run around with whatever sharp, pointy object we can find and create the infamous “pop” for the next 5 minutes. As adults, we view balloons as a festive decoration to add warm cheer to an event but immediately discard them when said event has ended. Meanwhile, children mourn the loss of balloons after a mere 2 minutes of growing attached to whatever foundation allowed them to have a thriving, albeit swift, connection. And yet, as adults, we mourn the previous versions of our lives we no longer lead, knowing all too well they don’t serve us where we’re at.

And here comes the crux of the post: how do we stay evolutionary without constantly losing ourselves? Well, if we take my life for a biased view, we don’t. It is a constant battle in losing something core to your being and realizing it was a cope or façade to survive wherever we were at. Whenever I am no longer in a space, habits I built up to operate in that space suddenly become the sheer antithesis of who I am. I can’t function, I can’t think, I have no sense of self or being. Just hyper aware that I’m not acting in accordance with who I presently am or who I’m trying to be. In this case, I would more liken it to trying to keep the balloon on your wrist and the more you try to pull it back down to you, it fills with cement, dragging you down as you try to move forward. There are just traits that we simply outgrow. And it’s not for the worse, it is in whatever direction we’re trying to go. For this I think about coping mechanisms. When I was younger, I was depressed but I was also in college with a bunch of other depressed kids who were engaging in their first tastes of freedom and learning why I classify people into buckets from acquaintances to friends and how most people end up on the lower end of that spectrum. Now what do newly liberated kids do when they don’t want to deal with their feelings, don’t want to bog everyone else down and also fit in? They drink until the moon has ran 3 full cycles! I don’t really even like alcohol now. I do enjoy my work and it is my newfound coping mechanism. However, the setting is different, my goals are different, and I’ve learned more effective methods of dealing with the parts of life I don’t want to show up to. Namely, not showing up to them and using the fact that I don’t want to as the first, second, and fifth excuse.

Backtracking a bit, I guess it’s important to maneuver how I arrived here. I can’t nail down the time, but I’d say somewhere in the mix of when I decided I didn’t want to date, I felt that energy shift and my responses followed suit. But now I’m in an interesting space that I haven’t navigated before and my coping mechanisms are a bit confused. I had pretty much developed the cope of work extra hard towards what you want when you’re uncomfortable and take plenty of rest days when you don’t have it in you to interact in the world. Plus, I’m an accountant, I legit only need a computer and internet access to do my job, I barely even need to interact with other people. However, the current space I’m in is having independent living (fucking finally), a job I’m less than enthused about, family issues I never once thought I’d encounter, health issues I’m sick of dealing with, and to cap it off men being the bullshit excuse for suitable partners that they often are. If it has a penis, it’s probably wrong and it probably sucks with teeth, speaking from experience. Dudes being annoying aside, the bad has been outweighing the good and my depression has been louder than usual, and I have been sleeping more than usual because if I’m not awake, I can’t deal with it. However, when things have reached a pinnacle, I oftentimes find myself here, behind my computer, doing something productive but also wondering why I can’t even force myself to go buy a pint of ice cream, take a few shots of any alcohol available, and invite some guy over that I never want to see again but will undoubtedly tell me about his ex or his mother… or his wife. At this point in my life, I’ve come to understand that alcohol gives you a headache, an empty stomach and whatever problems you thought you could avoid upon sobering up. Ice cream makes you fat, but damn does it taste good all year long. And he is more than likely going to tell you about his wife, past or present, and we’re getting a bit old to gloss that one over. And while all three of those options sounds like a hell of a Tuesday night, none of that is going to fix what I’m avoiding nor take me where I’m trying to go. None of that is going to type or edit or take pictures or write stories or talk to others. None of it fixes and it barely serves as a band aid. And I think that is the evolution of coping. I think that is how you can meet a person with the same name and attributes at 23 and 34 but they have a completely different character. People change, grow and evolve throughout life and so to, do our responses to the stressors around us.

Enough about me. This actually isn’t about me. This is all a reference point for you. How do you cope? What happens when you let the balloon release? Does it weigh you down if you catch it? Is anything you’re doing effective or catering? If you paid attention in that last block of rambling, I switched “cope” to “responses” ever so casually. Because that is the difference in the approach. A cope allows us to put off the stress and find a piece of harmony until we simply have to deal, or the problem rectifies itself. But a response allows us to tackle what we’re dealing with head on and never be weighed down by that balloon again. Because which one of us isn’t being swept away by the wind with something unnecessary trying to hold us down?

Stop coping, start responding. Stop wishing, just do. With every finger you leave attached to your past, you weaken your grip on your future.

[dkeyebrowsbeautyhn]

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The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics

I hesitated in writing this guide. The world of teaware is vast and intimidating, and can be a money pit of fakes and forgeries. It is also where so much of the joy in loving tea can be derived. Ultimately our team felt Tea Week would be incomplete without some sort of feature on teaware. My very best attempt at this here in 2019 is what follows.

For coffee lovers, you might think of teaware as like the espresso machine of the tea world. To casual drinkers or the untrained eye, it just looks like a nice object that makes the thing you drink—and nothing more. But for those who obsess it can become an endless quest of sourcing and seeking, of pride and cost. A life’s pursuit, even. There is no small amount of money to be spent at the top end of teaware buying—may I call your attention to the infamous Chengua-era “chicken cup,” which sold for $35 million at Sotheby’s in 2014. For our purposes this guide caps objects at the $500 range, with prices average considerably less for most of the offerings.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Note that this guide only barely touches on the world of Yixing, the traditional tea pottery of Jiangsu, made using porous clay in a style dating back to the 10th century. This is its own whole world, a vast guide I don’t feel prepared to lead at this time—perhaps in a few more years.

For now, these wholesalers and makers are more than enough to get you started and find new favorites. The guide below is hopelessly biased towards my own personal taste but hey—teaware is supposed to be personal. That’s part of the fun, and it’s something I hope you are inspired to explore further with support from this guide

  A Solid Foundation

Photo courtesy of Rishi Tea.

Rishi Tea

Rishi is a truly solid place to get started with home teawares, offering for example this workhorse starter gaiwan for $12, and this cute little basic tea tray for $25. They’ve also got a lovely collection of flex items, like this stunning blue studio-made celadon “fairness pitcher” from Taiwan, or this rustic clay and mineral cup. Rishi ships free domestic at $25, which is plenty to get started making gong fu cha—pair that $12 gaiwan with, say, a couple of oolong samples (we like Rishi’s Iron Goddess of Mercy and Phoenix Dancong) and you are off to the races.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Breville

Breville is the presenting sponsor of Tea Week on Sprudge—for which we thank them!—but they also produce a range of tea-focused hot water boilers and teamakers we have no lie legit been happily using in Sprudge Studios for the last few years, long before this content package was a twinkle in the editorial eye. The Breville Tea Maker Compact‘s tech allows you to set up brew parameters for whatever kind of tea you’re into; the machine’s automated basket then plunges your brew into water heated to your temp of choice. When the cycle is done, the basket lifts out of the water, ensuring you won’t oversteep. I’d liken this machine to something like a nice home batch brewer, a simplifier that’s perfect for tea making on a busy morning or for large groups (for which the classic Tea Maker is a bigger, better fit).

Another option is the Breville Smart Tea Infuser, which we especially dig these Tea Makers for their handiness with single-steep tisanes, like those from Smith Tea, Song Tea, and Tea Dealers featured in our tisane spotlight. We also really like their IQ Kettle Pure (pictured above) for heating water consistently and at scale—you can transfer from there into a ceramic kettle for service, or pour directly from the Breville IQ.

If you are looking for a fusion of tea, taste and tech, this is the gear for you.

Photo courtesy of Manual.

Manual Tea Maker No1

Chicago tinkerer Creighton Barman puts out new stuff each year, typically pre-funded on Kickstarter, but we’re still in love with this 2016 release, the Tea Maker No1, a modernist reinterpretation of the gaiwan built for ease of brewing. Double-walled glass is the hook here, which keeps the Tea Maker cool to the touch throughout the brewing process, and also gives you peek-a-boo viewing at all that beautiful steeping action. I think these gaiwans offer a rare degree of utility no matter where you are in terms of tea knowledge and experience—they are rad and very forgiving for beginners who are still mastering the whole gaiwan thing, but also fun for experts who want to incorporate western and modern influences into their teaware collection.

  Let’s Geek Out

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Bitterleaf 

With full respect to Bitterleaf’s collection of teas for drinking (featured in our buying guide), the site’s assortment of teawares, tea tools, tea pets, and assorted Chinese tea ephemera is truly deep and excellent.

From beautiful little studio tea cups (starting around $8) to Chaozhou teapots in a range of classic styles (more like $80) to really cute hand-painted animal vessels ($35) to all manner of entry-level trays and supports (prices vary) and much more, there are hundreds of pieces of tea kit to shop from and swoon over at Bitterleaf. I especially like their selection of “tea pets,” little clay figurines typically depicting children or animals, incorporated into tea service as a symbol of good luck. You “feed” the tea pet with excess water or tea throughout the teamaking process, with the clay left to develop a lovely luster over repeat feedings. (It’s fun. Don’t @ me.)

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Song Tea

Song Tea are also featured in our tea buying guide for their literally life-changing (as in it changed my life) compendium of meticulously curated tea offerings. But the ceramics offered by Song are on another level. Founder Peter Luong has an eye for relatively young and emerging artists, making commissions across his travels to Taiwan. Works by artists like Zhang Yun Chen (Nantou), Qiu Qing Yun (Meinong), and Hu Tie Ha (Jiefen) evoke what’s possible at the blurred edge of collectible art and practical working pottery. I cannot realistically see myself being someone who collects art to hang on the wall, but the idea of owning this Husk #2 tea bowl by Zhang Yun Chen gives me heart palpitations. If you are, say, truly enjoying tea week and would like to, you know, say thank you as a grateful reader or whatever, please buy this for me. DMs are open.

Photo courtesy of Pu.Erh.Sk

Pu-Erh.Sk

Based in Slovakia, Pu-Erh.sk is an online webshop shipping worldwide, focused on sheng and shou Pu’er teas from Yunnan. Their tea sourcing is concise and well-considered—the gushu heads love ‘em—but for me the site’s focus on Eastern European ceramicists and teaware artisans has been a revelation. Czech artists like Jiří Duchek and Jura Lang are building truly compelling, one-of-a-kind teawares that fuse traditional regional clays with far-flung design influences from the east and west. Pieces like this gorgeous Jura Lang shiboridashi (a kind of Japanese easy gaiwan) are handmade, wood-fired, visually stunning, and sure to grow in beauty over repeated use. For beginning collectors and enthusiasts to be able to get in the door with an artist-specific work like this at just €65 is really special. Elsewhere on the site, Swedish artist Stefan Andersson makes a range of gorgeous wares, while Norwegian brand Ad.Infinitum offers bespoke and vintage tea ceremony linens. All of these makers are brands with followings in their own right, collected by Pu-Erh.sk for easy ordering and global shipping.

Everybody’s taste is different, and a lot of tea ceramics collections start and end in Asia, with no deviation. But I really grok the vibe of this stuff coming out of Eastern Europe. To get in at the cutting edge of small maker European ceramics artistry, go here.

Ceramicists To Watch—And Collect 

*A note: While I am personally passionate about ceramics and hopelessly biased towards its validity and urgency as an art form, I also think you—whomever you are reading this—might really dig works from the artists below. The idea of placing a commission with an individual artist might seem intimidating or overly expensive, but we’re not talking George Ohr here; works from these artists don’t typically cost more than $100 for a single piece of teaware, and more like $30-$50 for a handmade cup or set of cups. For less cost than a single dinner at a fancy restaurant you can own and put into daily use your own personal work from a talented artist. It will make your tea taste better, your kitchen look cuter, and who knows—in 50 years you might get a segment on the Antiques Roadshow.

Here are a few talented and emerging ceramicists to follow.

Photo via Song Tea.

Lilith Rockett

Portland ceramicist Lilith Rockett works across a range of expressions for home pottery, including plates, lighting, vases, and abstract decorative objects. Her style—lustrous soft milky white porcelain, entirely handmade—translates well into tea, especially the stunning wheel-thrown porcelain gaiwan. A significant amount of tea consumed for the purposes of Tea Week on Sprudge was steeped in just such a piece. Rockett has a webshop, and also accepts limited commissions. You can find her work at some of the best restaurants in the United States, including The French Laundry (Napa), Smyth (Chicago), Saison (San Francisco), and Nodoguro (Portland).

Follow Lilith Rockett on Instagram.

Photo via Carole Neilson.

Carole Neilson

Buzzy San Francisco-based artist Carole Neilson fuses the rural pottery traditions of her native Alsace with an irresistible contemporary immediacy. Her eye-catching signature glazes evoke smoke fumes and clouds of dust, making for pottery with an earth-dappled glow. Neilson’s range of works include original sculpture pieces and stunning bowl and plate sets, but for tea (and coffee!) drinkers her small cups and pitchers make a lively addition to any collection. Neilson’s work is blowing up, with a growing list of stockists, gallery exhibitions at spaces like Hugomento, pop-up dinners around the country (including a recent dinner at Omaha’s Archetype Coffee), and a successful recent series of artist grants. She is truly an artist to watch. Neilson has a webshop and accepts limited commissions.

Follow Carole Neilson Ceramics on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Qi Pottery

Kim Whyee Kee of Qi Pottery first learned his art behind bars. After serving time in the Singaporean corrections system for gang-related crimes, Kee graduated from an arts college, helped co-found a variety of initiatives working with at-risk youth, and launched Qi Pottery in 2016. His style echoes ancient tea traditions, but does so through a burst of heart-stopping colors that demand attention. Vivid pinks, deep blues, mesmerizing blacks, coral reds—Easter egg pastels that fuse the practical nature of teaware with the elegance of a home statement piece. But this is no gimmick maker—Qi Pottery’s mastery extends to more simple forms, like these beautiful rusted large format cups.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

It’s simply some of the most beautiful ceramics work I’ve ever seen, and for an artist with just a few public showings so far, you can certainly expect these pieces to become more and more sought after and valuable over the years. Qi Pottery has a website, but no webstore. If you’re interested in purchasing an existing piece or making a commission, please contact the artist directly via email or Instagram.

Follow Kim Whye Kee of Qi Pottery on Instagram. 

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez

A full-time artist dedicated to original teawares, Arturo Alvarez is based in Olympia, Washington, and crafts art in a range of styles and expressions. We commissioned Alvarez for our office tea set at Sprudge Studios (we’ll be serving tea there this week as part of the Tea Week fun), and follow his regular updates on Instagram, where his account @your_pencil is part of a thriving Instagram ceramics community. Perhaps his most distinctive pieces involve incorporating found materials, including driftwood handles made from wood found across Puget Sound beaches, but this is an artist growing and advancing his craft before our very eyes, letting it all play out online. Follow him and watch along—it feels like he’s debuting new pieces almost every day.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Arturo Alvarez sells a limited number of teawares online via Etsy. Contact the artist directly via Instagram for commissions or to purchase pieces featured on his account.

Follow Arturo Alvarez on Instagram.

Photo by Anthony Jordan III.

Andrzej Bero

A teaware potter out of Warsaw, Andrzej Bero specializes in the shiboridashi—a gaiwan variant that’s easy to use and, in the right hands, a piece of working art. Bero’s shibos are made from clay that feels coarse and tactile to the touch, in a range of dark reds, greens, and blues. This style translates especially well to larger pieces, like his 300ml teapots, which are hotly in demand for tea services around the world. Andrzej Bero has a website but no webstore; a limited number of his works are available for purchase via the aforementioned Pu-Erh.sk. Contact the artist directly for commissions and availability.

Follow Andrzej Bero on Instagram.

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

Editor: Scott Norton.

Top photo by Anthony Jordan III (@ace_lace). 

Sprudge Tea Week is presented by Breville USA.

The post The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics appeared first on Sprudge.

The 2019 Sprudge Guide To Teamakers and Ceramics published first on https://medium.com/@LinLinCoffee