#like just one is too limiting and too dull for pearl she can work with any pokemon

[pcktknife]

Ur right + i think pearl and Marina would specialise in different types. Maybe Marina could do steel type since that’s kinda sciency? Idk what pearl’s type would be but she should have a loudred on her team

anon is reporting live from my brain rn

[nonovyabuisness]

Life series X Pokemon :

Each lifers will have one ‘fully’ evolved pokemon that I believe suits them in all of the life series ( series such as X life or New life will not be included).

[Some members may have shinies ✨]

The members are listed in alphabetical order.

Bdubs: ✨ Scrafty

- Both enjoy fighting and look like they get beaten up often even if no fights happened that day.

- It’s a shiny because Shiny Scrafty’s green clothes (?) is reminiscent of Bdubs’ moss cape skin.

BigB: Breloom

- A kind being that should not be taken lightly.

- Also Breloom’s spores can paralyze or poison opponents, just like BigB paralyzed Grian with his gaslighting and can easily poison others by lying.

Cleo: Delphox

- Arson fox that is super effective against Etho’s pokemon and BigB’s.

-Also a reference to Witchcraft!SMP where she was one of the finalists. Plus Orange hair so Orange pokemon.

Etho: Bisharp

- Etho reminds me so much of the Shadow Triad so I decided to give him their titular Pokemon.

- I considered Greninja but as a redstoner, Etho might not appreciate the water.

- Plus it’s funny when the two scary looking beings are actually the most easily frightened.

- Fun fact, Bisharp hasn’t battled in so long that its blades have almost become dull (both are washed up /j).

Geminitay: Bewear

- In Limited Life she acts like a mama bear towards Scar.

- Is overall very friendly but is a menace (especially towards Etho).

- Now that she’s in Secret Life, Bewear works well with the cherry blossom and band theme she has going on.

- Plus, just like Bewear accidentally harms others by trying to show affection, Gem hurts herself and her allies by creating other alliances that don’t last.

Grian: Archeops

- Pesky bird.

- I put Toucannon at first and almost put Honchkrow but both look too serious to be associated with Grian.

- So goofy prehistoric parrot that is easily demotivated (defeatist ability) for the button man.

Impulse: Ampharos

- The yellow color scheme as well as the fact that Impulse is generally more on the kind, gentle side but is also able to hold his own.

Jimmy: Kilowatrel

- Canary in a coal mine.

- Kilowatrel is one of the best yellow bird Pokemon that isn’t too mocking ( Yellow Oricorio) or too serious ( Pidgeoto/Blaziken/ shiny Sirfetch’d).

- The pre-evolution looks a bit silly tho.

Joel: ✨Turtonator

- An explosive fella.

- Also a Pokemon that serve as a reminder that most of Joel’s trap/plan either don’t work or backfire on him or his allies.

- Shiny Turtonator because the shiny colors match Joel’s Green and yellow color scheme.

Lizzie: Togekiss

- Avoids conflict and is generally content with roaming around, peacefully picking flowers. Head in the clouds.

- But remains a strong and smart opponent that shouldn’t be underestimated.

*Volo and Cynthia war flashbacks *

Martyn: Trevenant

- A fierce and loyal protector of his home but still remains a solitary being.

- Trevenant’s ability to blend in with the surrounding trees in forest and gather information by communicating with the forest, is a nod to Martyn’s ability to sneak around undetected gathering valuable intel.

Mumbo: Sableye

- Hermit hiding away in the shadows (bunker) and using (end) crystals to attack.

Pearl: ✨ Absol

- Wherever they go, disaster soon follows. Seeing them is a warning to all.

- Shiny Absol because the colors matches with the ‘Scarlet Pearl’ skin.

Rendog: Sirfetch’d

- A king and a knight, unwilling to let go of their flair for the dramatics even after their kingdom as fallen. I thought of Kingambit or Aegislash but both are too serious and only fit 3rd Life Ren. Sirfetch’d is regal yet remains goofy like Ren.

Scar: Liepard

- Shady business man and his cat jellie. Both mischievous and not against stealing.

- Also it would be funny to picture all the Jellie interruptions as just him talking to his very real Pokemon partner.

- Jellie would definitely try to eat Grian’s Archeops.

Scott: ✨ Gallade

- Always honorable and upholding their end of the deal. But aren’t against using force to achieve what they want.

- Shiny so that the colors match ( also provides a good contrast to Pearl’s shiny Absol).

Skizzleman: Braviary

- A brave being that leads the team.

- All of Braviary’s dex entry mentions it battling for its friend even if it’s injured.

- The pokemon White dex entry mentions that the more scars a Braviary has, the more respect he’s has from his peers. Skizzleman’s skin has scars on its arms.

- Also Skizz is often represented with angel wings so why not give him a bird.

- I don’t know if it should be a shiny or not however.

Tango: Rapidash

- A being with a unruly temper that does not take kindly to betrayal or competition.

- Could have helped with the whole Torchy task.

- Tango is often represented with hair that lights on fire when upset, just like Rapidash’s mane burns hotter when upset or fighting.

[solkteaa]

Hello! I saw in one of your posts you were wanting headcanons, so here's some of mine :]

Pearl x Marina-

Not much of a headcanon, since it is somewhat cannon but Pearl and Marina are so gay for each other they always are thinking about each other and with any chance they get, they will talk about the other, this mostly applies to Pearl. I also think that Pearl would totally think she is the "one with the pants" in the relationship, but shes really just a big ol simp for Marina and will do anything for her

Agent 8-

I have a headcanon of them being mute, since in game they dont talk anyways, I also headcannon them having a kinda shyish personality

Captain 3/Agent 3-

They have grown cold and have PTSD from everything they've seen. When they first became an agent in splatoon 1 they always dreamt of being Captain, but after everything they've experienced they don't feel the joy of helping others that they used to feel when they were younger

Thats about all I have, hope this helped!

Try not to die, Agent 3!

[This took so long bc of school, it's literally the first week and I'm already being slapped in the face with piles of work. I also rushed this as well when I worked on it especially at the end, it's definitely not my best work. I used the captain headcannon for tgis btw]

Sometimes the people forget the Captain joined the New Squidbreak Splatoon when they where a child. At times Captain wonders if they even one hundred percent consented in the first place. Cuttlefish did basically just point at them and say "you're Agent 3 of the Squidbreak Splatoon, you have to save the Great Zapfish. Try not to die, kid!"

Agent 3 was sat on the ground criss cross, as they listened to whatever this old man had to say. They really did just zone out mid way when after he pointed out that all they were doing was saving the Zapfish. Three figured it was like turf war, it was easy enough. What's the point of listening?

Worse mistake ever.

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

"Not too bad, kid."

Agent 3 had made it through the kettle unscathed so far, besides stepping in octarian ink a few times. A burning sensation, shot through their shoulder, sickly magenta ink connecting with the suit's armor. Getting hit with ink didn't cause pain? In turf wars it was a dull thud at most. Getting splatted was fast and painless, you couldn't feel anything but slight annoyance.

Agent 3 shifted into squid form, (more like fell to the ground and pathetically coward in their ink) and snuck around to hide behind a box to nurse their injury.

"Agent 3? You alright?" Cuttlefish'e voice crackled through the headset. Three let out a grunt and nodded, could he even see them nod?, "Be careful, I would hate for you to be splatted on your first mission."

The pain faded fast but it was a rude awake up call that this wasn't Turf War. This wasn't where the worse punishment you can get is your rank lowering or angry teammates yelling at you.

Eventually they gained enough confidence to continue on. The rest of the kettle goes on with shots grazing their body, or narrowly avoiding getting splatted. Three felt a bit dazed as they staggered back with the Mini Zapfish in their hand.

The moment Agent 3 spotted Captain Cuttlefish again. "Why did it hurt? It's not like that in Turf War."

"You weren't listening, were you?" Agent 3 shook their head with a nervous grin, knowing that he was probably disappointed.

He cleared his throat before beginning, "weapons like the Hero Shot or octotrooper vehicles-" Cuttlefish pointed to the gun in Agent 3's hand with his cane, "don't have the same safety limits as the ones back in Inkopolis. Weapons in turf are for inking, the ones that you have is for powering through enemies with higher pressure and bigger damage. They are made for actual war."

Agent 3 look down at the Hero Shot in their hands, well that explained a lot. "So getting splatted is extra painful here?" Agent 3 was hoping Captain Cuttlefish would reassure them that everything would be fine. He did not.

"Octo Valley, even with the Great Zapfish, barely has enough energy. To get troops and checkpoints running it takes lots of juice. Our own respawns are even harder to wire up without the Great Zapfish."

His expression suddenly dimmed, "Three, if you get splatted three times in a kettle. It's over. You die and there's no bringing you back."

"oh."

"But I'm sure you'll be fine! Just don't get splatted!" Captain Cuttlefish pats Agent 3 on the shoulder to reassure them, though it was a little too late now. The warmth of the Mini Zapfish in their hands did nothing to warm the feeling of cold fear in their heart, nor did the Captain's words of 'encouragement.'

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

After that Agent 3 experience as an agent wasn't as bad as they thought it would be. Muscle memory and habits built in the kettles transfered to turf. Eventually, Agent 3 started to take pride in their role of the New Squidbreak Splatoon. If it wasn't for the fact the NSBS was supposed to be a secret to the public, they'd probably be rubbing it in everyone's face about now. It's the fact that they were contributing to something so much bigger than them that they loved so much about the job. I mean- imagine being the captain one day- that's a even bigger deal! Before this they were was just a pathetic wannabe Dj with decent turf skills, now they're actually doing something with their life! (Unlike their hygiene.)

But then deep sea metro happened. For some reason, something switched. They weren't exactly outgoing but they were definitely more playful. Now it was like they were more mellowed out. Everyone noticed, at first they thought maybe they were just maturing, but then they started talking less and less. Not to mention, they started becoming less passionate about being an agent.

Eventually Craig had to retire, I mean, he was over a hundred years old. The role would've naturally gone to Agent 1 or 2 but they had they're careers as the Squid Sisters to worry about already. Agent 3 was second with the most experience. Honestly, they would've probably declined if it wasn't for the fact they were the best fitted for the job. They probably wasn't the best choice anyways as in they didn't have the same spark as they used to, but someone had to do it.

They kinda wish they would've stuck to music. Honestly the whole 'being a agent is the best' thing was probably because they were young and loved adrenaline, but when your 23 and spent majority of your teen years saving the world from people or AI that wants to destroy the world, you get tired of it. Three just didn't find joy in the work anymore.

Hopefully the new agent doesn't end up like them, as well.

[sleepingdeath-light]

relationship hcs ; blue diamond

requested by ; anonymous (24/04/23)

fandom(s) ; steven universe

fandom masterlist(s) ; here

character(s) ; blue diamond

outline ; “hey since you did relationship hcs for white diamond could you do some for yellow and blue too :D? (separately) love your works!^^”

warning(s) ; none, just fluff!

by its very nature, a relationship with any of the diamonds is going to be very unusual because of just how strict and isolating the hierarchy in gem society is — this means that it’s going to take blue diamond quite a while to break out of her old mindset and learn how to be a good partner for you

earlier on in your courtship blue’s behaviour towards you ends up coming across as condescending and patronising more often than not, even though that’s far from her intention — she’s overprotective, somewhat dismissive of your feelings, oversimplifies her explanations when she does talk about her responsibilities, refuses to let you go about your life without at least a pearl and a few guard gems accompanying you, and she looks at you like you’re an adorable little oddity rather than her lover

so while her intention is to keep you safe, entertained, and to not bog you down with all the stresses she’s facing with her colonies, she accidentally ends up making you feel like her helpless inferior or a passing fancy of hers which… isn’t great — if you sit her down and have a proper discussion about this and explain your perspective to her then she will correct herself moving forward (she does love you, after all), but if left to her own devices she will continue doing what she’s used to as a diamond and she won’t pick up on your discomfort unless one of the gems assigned to your care brings it up to her

won’t use pet names on her own (aside from adding a ‘my’ in front of your name out of respect), but is extremely receptive to any pet names you have for her — bonus points if it’s something ‘cute’ sounding like ‘love’, ‘sweetheart’, ‘baby’, and so on, but really she’ll respond to anything that you call her as long as it’s not… you know… derogatory

quality time is a big thing for her and she insists on spending as much time with you as possible — like she can just be sitting in her palanquin or overseeing some dull data relating to the progress of her colonies and she’ll insist on you perching yourself on her shoulder or lap and doing whatever you need to do from there (you two don’t even need to talk to each other during these times, just knowing you’re with her at all is enough for her)

she’s extremely generous and will gift you any and everything she can if she thinks it will make you smile: colonies, resources, personalised gems to serve you, a larger home, trips to other planets, ornate accessories, beautiful clothing, etc. — if she gets the slightest hint that you might like something then she’s sending lower ranked gems out to fetch it on her behalf

blue is the most physically affectionate of the remaining diamonds and isn’t the sort to shy away from kissing or just holding you close to her as she goes about her business (she’s much too large to, say, actually hold your hand or spoon you but she does what she can) — of course during formal public appearances with her fellow diamonds she’s going to be more inclined to limit herself to just keeping you close, but otherwise she doesn’t care who sees her fawning over you because she loves you that much

whenever you’re ill or injured and she’s unable to take the time to see you in person, she sends her pearl to keep you entertained and oversee your care in her absence — and, rest assured, blue pearl has been very well educated on how to look after you and anticipate your needs so you’re in great hands

if you have a fondness for the organic life on one of her colonies then she’s more than happy to have your own zoo constructed so that you can safely observe and engage with it without putting yourself at risk by setting foot on the actual planet — she might not ‘get’ why you like it, but she’ll do whatever you ask her to without complaint

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls

- Chapter 13 - ao3 -

The wedding of a sect leader with the stature of Wen Ruohan was, as Lao Nie had predicted, an experience unlike any Lan Qiren had ever had before.

It was also, as Wen Ruohan had predicted, loud and full of crowds, things that Lan Qiren didn’t especially like. Luckily, despite being the groom’s ‘brother’, Wen Ruohan wasn’t requiring Lan Qiren to actually participate in any way, and he was just able to watch from a distance.

He tried not to think of Wen Ruohan’s casual admission that he had, in fact, devised the marriage just to deal with the issues with Lan Qiren’s reputation – and Lao Nie’s concern thereof, no doubt – and reassured himself that the bride was undoubtedly well prepared for her new life and would soon find her footing as the mistress of the Wen sect, where she would more than likely be happy in time.

That was how such things went, wasn’t it? Even with his sect’s notorious tendency towards love-madness, the people like his father, who married for love, were the exception and not the rule…

(He also tried not to think about the fact that Wen Ruohan accepted all the toasts for his wedding using a drinking bowl in Gusu style, painted with a border of vermilion birds, or the fact that, despite Lan Qiren having gifted a set, it was the only one of its kind on the table, leaving Wen Ruohan's new bride to drink from a much fancier gold-gilded bowl – but that was more because he didn’t understand what it meant, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.)

“Did you even get a chance to see him?” his brother asked when they returned, looking coldly disapproving.

“I did,” Lan Qiren said, thinking to himself less of the dinner that they’d shared with Lao Nie and more of the brief moment when the Lan sect delegation been about to leave, a servant appearing and whisking him off briefly back to the family quarters where Wen Ruohan, looking as composed as ever, pressed a too-familiar hand to his head and told him that he was sure he’d be seeing him again soon. “He didn’t say much.”

Nothing his brother would care about, anyway.

His brother nodded, looking unsurprised, and dismissed him, remarking unnecessarily, “You missed the first few days of classes,” as if Lan Qiren wasn’t aware of when each season of classes started for the disciples better than him. After all, Lan Qiren hoped to become a teacher one day, when he tired of traveling, and to do for future generations of the Lan sect what his teachers had done for him, and he took it as seriously as he did anything else.

The seasonal classes were his favorite, largely because such classes were open not only to the Lan sect disciples but to certain guest disciples – typically the children of rogue cultivators that the Lan sect wanted to encourage to join the sect, which meant that they had to pass through the same rigorous standards applicable to the usual sect disciples. Lan Qiren had always thought it was a shame that their classes were so limited in scope, although he acknowledged there wasn’t much to be done about it; after all, how many sects would be willing to send their children to be taught by outsiders?

A puzzle for another day.

For now, Lan Qiren made his way to the classroom, taking advantage of the lunch break to settle his things in his familiar seat at the side of the room. He hoped that coming in during the middle of the day would reduce the number of whispers that seemed to invariably greet him these days – luckily much more inclined to see him as a source of information rather than a victim or, worse, a perpetrator – but he didn’t have much faith in it.

“Hey, you’re in my seat.”

Lan Qiren looked up: it was a female disciple. Her face was unfamiliar to him, which suggested she was a rogue cultivator – while men and women lived separately in the Cloud Recesses, they came together for meals and other such events, and despite his introversion, Lan Qiren knew most if not all of his peer group by now.

“Sanren,” he said politely, rising and saluting. “Forgive me, but this has always been my seat.”

She frowned at him. “You didn’t claim it at the start of classes.”

“I missed the start of classes due to an unavoidable conflict.”

“I’ve been using it all week,” she said, and looked at him expectantly, as if anticipating an answer.

Lan Qiren wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say here. “I’ve been using it all my life. What’s your point?”

“So you’re not going to give it up for me?”

Lan Qiren stared at her. “Obviously not.”

She grinned toothily at him. “All the boys give up their seats for me. I understand that it’s a matter of etiquette.”

“Whoever told you that was lying,” he said flatly.

“Oh, I like you,” she said, and crossed her arms – an aggressive posture, although her tone, like Wen Ruohan’s, seemed more amused than anything else. How strange to see a sudden resemblance, when they very clearly had nothing else in common. “How would you know? Maybe it’s in the rules.”

Well, that was a mistake.

“Really,” Lan Qiren said, and smiled. “Why don’t we examine that supposition?”

She blinked at him, suddenly wary, but it was too late: if there was one thing Lan Qiren knew, it was his sect’s rules. Learning how to beat people over the head with them on purpose was a more recent development, and he was still working on fine-tuning that – most people started begging for mercy while he still felt irritated, but when they continued listening with apparent interest, as the rogue cultivator girl did, he swiftly forgot that he was trying to make a point and shifted over to actual enthusiasm for the subject.

“Cangse Sanren!”

Lan Qiren’s listener started and very nearly fell over – she’d put her chin on her hands at some point during the discussion of the origin of the rules regarding interactions between men and women, and hadn’t accounted for that when twisting to see who was calling her.

It was a mixed group of sect disciples, with some of Lan Qiren’s cousins and disciples of other surnames that he recognized, plus a few more that were likely rogue cultivators’ children as well.

“Oh,” she said. “You. What is it?”

“I see you got caught up in one of Lan-er-gongzi’s boring rule lectures,” one of the disciples said – one of Lan Ganhui’s friends, with Lan Ganhui himself nearby, grimacing at him in an attempt to make him stop. Lan Ganhui had gotten a lot more likely to leave Lan Qiren alone ever since Lan Yueheng had decided to befriend him, even intervening to make his friends leave off, but this time the other disciple ignored him, his eyes too focused on those ahead of him to pay him any mind; he was smiling intently at the rogue cultivator girl in a way that was clearly attempting to seem charming. “Don’t feel like you have to listen to him just because he’s main branch, you know! No one else does.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” one of the others muttered, glancing warily at Lan Qiren. It wasn’t apparent whether he was concerned about Lan Qiren’s rank, personality, or family connection.

For his part, Lan Qiren just felt tired. He would like to think that they were all part of the same sect, learning the same things, but he knew that wasn’t how the world worked. There were good people and bad in every sect, and the undercurrents that came with any community were inescapable.

“You’re joking, right?” the girl – who had the title of Cangse Sanren, apparently – said unexpectedly. “His explanation is three times more interesting than the stupid learning by rote we’ve been doing so far.”

“Learning by repetition has a long history of being the most effective way of learning something,” Lan Qiren objected. “Even the most unrepentant scoundrel would learn the rules by heart if he had to copy them down for a month, and then when that was done and the foundation built, you could get started on explaining the why of them.”

“But repetition’s not as interesting,” Cangse Sanren said. “I really liked that story about Lan Yi.”

Lan Qiren looked at her suspiciously. He’d never outgrown his tendency to speak in a dull monotone – one of his peers had once compared it to the thudding of grinding stones in a mill – and it was the rare person who actually appreciated the rules the way he did. His teachers, of course, and some of the other more studious disciples did, but even with them he’d be hard pressed to say they actually liked his rambling.

She held up her hands. “Really! I feel like I understand why she put the rule in place now, whereas before it felt like I was just learning the rule for the sake of learning the rule.”

“That’s because you need to learn the rules before you learn the background,” he said. “The rules are a house built without nails, each piece in its place doing its part to maintain the whole - one rule backs another, while being supported in turn. Only once you know what the rules are can you move to understanding the reasons behind them.”

And from understanding to accepting, allowing our ancestors’ wisdom to act as a guiding light that clears the fog from your path, he wanted to say, because he loved the rules, truly and sincerely.

People made fun of him sometimes, thinking him boring or stuffy or overly strict, with no flexibility and too little empathy, saying he was obsessed with the rules for no beneficial purpose, but to him the rules were a gift from the past to the future. The Wall of Discipline represented the accumulated life experience of dozens if not hundreds of Lan sect disciples before him, turned through debate and contemplation into advice they thought would be able to help guide those that came after them to living a good, clean, happy life. As their descendant, how could he fail to honor that which those people, who had loved him without knowing him, had strained themselves to give him?

In just the same way, it was his duty to love the future generations that had yet to be born, to act as the bridge to that unknown future, entrusted by his ancestors to carry to them the rules that would be both his inheritance and his legacy. Those nameless faces dressed in Lan white, unborn children with his brother’s face or even his own, of his cousins and fellow disciples alike, all those souls that had yet to enter this world but who he loved so much already – if he could spare them a single iota of pain through his own experience, how could he not do so, and gladly? How could he not do everything he could to give them everything he had received from the rules, that sense of pride of their history, the strength and wisdom that could be passed down no other way? How could that be a burden?

Lan Qiren had never really had the chance to explain any of that to anyone, his tongue too stiff and clumsy to convey what sometimes he felt could only be expressed in song or poetry, and he did not have such a chance now: as usual, the other disciples were already laughing, dismissing him as a teacher’s pet, overly rule-bound, obsessed with homework and test-taking, a boring old fart whose soul was prematurely aged.

“What’s wrong with being old?” Cangse Sanren asked, her voice flatter than it was before, and the boys in front of her suddenly scrambled to start apologizing so fast that Lan Qiren was left wondering what exactly he’d missed.

“Class is starting soon,” he said instead of asking, though he promised himself he’d ask around later. Surely someone would know. “Everyone should take your seat – no, Cangse Sanren, as I’ve said, that one is mine.”

She grinned unrepentantly at him and stepped back over where he’d kicked his foot out to block her. “You win, this time,” she said, and took the seat next to him with absolutely no remorse for whoever might have been sitting there before. “Watch yourself, stick-in-the-mud.”

Lan Qiren glared, though somehow Cangse Sanren’s teasing didn’t feel as annoying as the other disciples’ usually did. Even if she did make several more attempts on his seat over the course of the day, causing him to have to fend her off or think ahead to evade her latest attempt.

He initially thought that she might try to come to class early the next day to try to claim it before he did, but instead she dragged herself in only moments before class was due to start, face haggard as if waking up at the very tail end of mao hour was the equivalent to rising at yin, although she was back to her regular form soon enough, bright and clever enough to make any teacher fond of her.

This became something of a pattern, in fact – sluggish wakening, intellectual jousting during class and an unspoken competition over the seat that had formerly been reserved for him outside of it. In the afternoons she usually went off with the more martially minded disciples, while he spent his time in the library or musical halls, though at some point she started dropping off random foodstuffs by his door in the early evening as if she thought he was too thin.

“Maybe she has a crush on you!” Lan Yueheng said enthusiastically; bizarrely enough, he seemed to like romance as much as his explosions or his math.

“I think it’s a little closer to treating me like a stray cat that she found and took a shine to,” Lan Qiren said, shaking his head. All the boys in the sect would have paid in gold and jewels for Cangse Sanren to give them a second look, and she didn’t care one whit for the best of them; there was no need for her to go courting when she could get three serious offers of marriage just by winking. “Give them here, I’ll redistribute them to the younger children.”

“You can’t do that!” Lan Yueheng looked offended. “It’s her sincere offering! From the heart!”

“It’s food she purchased in town,” Lan Qiren said doubtfully. “It’s not as if she baked them herself. Anyway, I can’t eat this many sweets without getting a stomachache. What else am I supposed to do with it? Let it rot?”

“Qiren-xiong, you’re the most unromantic person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m going to assume that’s a bad thing,” Lan Qiren said, not taking offense. “Do you want some? Last offer before they’re gone.”

“…well, I mean, if you’re going to give them away anyway…”

He told Cangse Sanren what he was doing the next day, as a matter of politeness in the event that she wanted to stop once she knew what he was doing, and she just laughed – she always laughed at just about everything, he’d found. She didn’t stop delivering food, either, which he might have expected, though she did shift over into items that were easier to distribute.

Their entire mode of interacting was simultaneously very annoying and also not, and Lan Qiren didn’t have the slightest idea about what to do with it.

And then he got his first letter from Wen Ruohan.

[goddessofthundathighs]

VIII. CONFESSIONS

The dull morning sky was soon cloaked in light as the sun made her grand appearance. Blankets of orange and pink illuminated the sky, casting an ethereal glow through the large bay window of O’Shea’s bedroom. The soft, sensual sound of Ari Lennox’s voice could be heard faintly in the background, the perfect soundtrack to the lovemaking that was taking place. O’Shea panted softly as Erik lazily thrust into her, slowly and deliberately, making sure she felt each stroke. Her hair was a messy halo around her face as she gazed up at him, eyes blown in pleasure. Her vocal cords had been silenced some time after Erik choked her and told her that she was his and his only. One of his hands was currently fisted in her coils while the other gripped her headboard, anchoring his position above her. Her nails dug deep into the skin of his back, a sting that hurt so good as Erik’s hips snapped into her, grazing her g-spot with deadly precision.

“What’s my name, Princess?” he whispered against the shell of her ear before pulling on her earlobe softly with his teeth. She choked out a soft whimper as her walls repeatedly clenched and released around him.

“You cummin’ again, ma? You ‘bout to coat Daddy’s dick with that sweet cream again?” Her nails dug deeper into his back as she felt that familiar tingle building in the pit of her belly.

“Give it to me, baby,” he groaned, prolonging his release until she came undone again. She chewed her bottom lip, opening her eyes to finally look up at him. The sight took her breath away. His dreads were a mess atop his head and his bottom lip was between his teeth revealing his golden canines. The sunlight gave him a golden glow, one that made him look more like a God than a man. The sight brought tears to her eyes.

“What’s my name, Princess? You doing more whimpering than talking. Tell me who owns this pussy. Tell me who Daddy is..”

The theme song to Game of Thrones pulled O’Shea from her slumber.

“Son of a bitch!” she screamed as she rolled out of bed and stomped angrily to her alter, muttering nonsense as she lit her goddess candle. The black and gold statue of Bast stared back at her, almost teasingly as she lit her white sage and cleansed her bedroom as well as herself.

“If you’re not gonna manifest him as my man, keep him out of my dreams,” she spat before praying and asking for forgiveness for her foolish words. She knew better than to disrespect her goddess and set out some honey and chocolate as peace offerings. Once she finished her morning prayer ritual, she showered and headed to the shop. Today was the day Erik was to return home and she needed to get through her day as quickly as possible if she wanted to see him. Per his request, she had refrained from calling or texting him and in her opinion had done well in not thinking about him in general until two nights ago. That’s when he began manifesting in her dreams, each time they were either having sex or he was professing his love to her. She took those as positive signs, but currently their situation was still very much one-sided. She wondered what he’d have for her when they were finally face to face. Would this meeting end in goodbye? Had she gone through this whole come to Jesus meeting for nothing? She shook her head softly to rid herself of negative thoughts. It had been a long week and no matter how things would play out on the relationship front, she missed her friend and was happy that he was back.

**

“I got the grant!” Skylar screamed happily from her office chair, causing O’Shea to jump from the sudden squeal.

“What grant?” O’Shea asked quizzically, meeting Sky in the doorway of her office.

“Recently I’ve been looking into surrogate partner therapy and its effects on the female orgasm and I just got the funds to begin independent research and practice!”

“What in the world is surrogate partner therapy?” “It’s what the name says it is. The therapist of a single client will implement a surrogate partner to help said client in their sexual dysfunction.”

“So basically a prostitute for the sake of mental and sexual health?” “Yes and no. The difference between prostitution and SPT is that prostitution focuses solely on sexual gratitude. With SPT, sexual and sensual touch is rarely involved. It mainly focuses on helping clients build social and physical self-awareness, consciousness, and skills in the areas of physical and emotional intimacy.”

“Interesting. So how much funds were we given for said research?” “Eight figure funds,” Skylar cheesed, still unable to contain her excitement. “We should go out to celebrate! Everything on me,” she exclaimed.

“Hell yes, we should. Who knows, you might get yourself a freak for the night,” O’Shea teased, causing Skylar to turn her nose up playfully. 

“Well if you must know, I already have my eye on someone.” “That little light bright that came in here the other day? What was her name? Oya?” Skylar smiled softly at the thought of her latest potential conquest.

“Yes, Oya.” “Do you and Erik make moves on all of your patients?” O’Shea teased, which caused Skylar to clutch her imaginary pearls.

“If you must know, you and Oya are both special cases. I’ve been too hung up on Monica and Erik was a stickler for keeping his business and personal lives separate.

“I was only teasing. You and her would be cute together though and we already know she’s a lesbian so there’s a plus there.”

“You’re right, but I’ve gotta take things slow. It’s very much illegal and unethical for us to engage in any type of intercourse while she’s my client so I’ll have to tread lightly in that area.”

“So like you could lose your license?”

”If things went sour and the board found out, yes. The difference between Erik and I is, he’s using himself as the surrogate and on paper, I’m listed as your therapist. A loophole so to speak.” “But Erik and I haven’t had sex.” “No, but you’ve explored other methods of intimacy and other sensual practices, correct?” O’Shea was quiet as she thought about the time she and Erik had spent outside of his office. There were many instances in which lines were crossed, but she had no idea they held such severe consequences. Sky noticed the worried look in her eye and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Calm down, kid. Everything’s going to be fine.” “But you just said --”

“I know what I said and I also know Erik Stevens. If everything plays out the way we want, everyone will get their happily ever after and the board will be none the wiser.” O’Shea nodded, trusting her friend. Her mind couldn’t help but dwell on the words ‘happily ever after’. Did this mean that she and Erik shared similar feelings? She smiled to herself as she walked back to the design table, stealing a glance at the time. She wanted to text him, but stopped herself.

“Only a few more hours to go.”

**

Skylar’s deep wavy locs blew in the wind as she made her way to The Grove. She and Oya had agreed to meet at Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar to discuss how the toys she’d suggested had worked out. She also wanted to apologize for the way their last meeting had abruptly ended thanks to Monica. The Grove was one of her favorite places to go for lunch because of its open concept. It was springtime and the last thing she wanted was to be cooped up inside while the weather was so nice out. She smiled softly as Oya’s curly blonde fro came into view. As she stepped closer she saw that she was wearing a black cropped top, ripped blue jeans and open-toe sandals.

“Hey there, gorgeous,” she said with a smile as Oya pulled her in for a hug. 

“Hello yourself, Dr. Greene. You look amazing,” Oya replies looking her up and down. Though her outfit was simple, a red and yellow top that said ‘ Honey’, some blue jean shorts and matching Vans, Oya watched her as though she were otherworldly. After exchanging hugs and hellos, the pair sat down and began looking over the menu.

“Before we discuss the toys, I want to apologize about how our initial meeting ended.” “No need, I didn’t feel offended. If anything, I wanted to pop ole girl for the way she barged into your shop. Is she always like that?” “Yes and no. She has her days, but you need not worry about that anymore. Now, down to business, how did the toys work for you?”

“They worked surprisingly well for a minute, but I think I need something…. More.”

“Explain.”

“I enjoyed being able to time the toy and the thrill of trying to make myself cum, but edging is so much more fun when you have someone else setting your limits, you know?” Oya explained with a sly smirk.

“So you like being told what to do and when to do it?” “Oh I love it, almost as much as I love not doing what I’m told.” “So you’re a brat?” Oya’s answer wasn’t verbal, but her smirk said it all. “Have you been in a domme/sub relationship before, Ms. Ramirez?” “Yes, but my last domme wasn’t what I needed. She was good at playing scenes, but it was hard to pull herself out of the dominant role and she never gave me any aftercare.” “So she was an emotionally abusive bitch that got off on your pain?” “Pretty much.” “Terrible.” “But, when I spoke to Dr. Stevens, he said that you could possibly help me. I get domme energy from you.” “Domme energy?” Skylar asks with a chuckle. It was true that she and Monica had done a few scenes during their relationship, but she hardly considered herself a domme. 

“Yeah, domme energy. You command attention when you step in the room and I feel that if you snapped your fingers, every man and woman here would kiss the ground you walk on. You might not see it, but you have serious big dick energy.” Skylar laughed then, because Oya wasn’t the first to tell her that.

“Are you asking me to be your domme, Ms. Ramirez?” “I’m asking you to treat me and if that treatment involves me being your submissive, I wouldn’t be opposed,” Oya replied smoothly. Skylar nods as the waitress comes over to take their order.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

**

Megan Thee Stallion’s voice filtered the club as Cash Shit thumped through the speakers. Behind the velvet rope of the VIP section, Skylar and O’Shea sat with Erik and a few other colleagues as three cocktail waitresses came by with 3 bottles of Ace of Spades topped with sparklers.

“Congratulations to my best friend on securing the bag for her research,” Erik toasted as he poured Sky another glass.

“Thank you bestie, glad you could make it.” “Now you know I wouldn’t miss this night for the world, no matter how jetlagged I am,” he said with a wide smile, cutting his eyes at O’Shea every now and then. He had been watching her intently since he stepped foot in the section, admiring how well the gold long sleeved dress accentuated her curves and complimented her skin. She looked like a trophy and he was ready to have her on his arm officially, but he had to tread lightly. He didn’t want to be too forward and scare her away, but he also didn’t want to move too slow and push her into the arms of someone else. He was still fighting an internal battle that was pulling him in different directions. 

“This shit is smoother than I thought,” O’Shea quipped as she finished her third D’usse Sidecar.

“That means you’ll be drunk before you know it,” Skylar noted, picking up on how relaxed and loose Shea appeared. “Ready to take it in?” Shea nodded swiftly, stumbling slightly as she stood from her spot on the couch.

“Guess it’s a good thing you drove,” Erik stated to Sky as he lead O’Shea out of the club by her hand.

“Yep, I already knew how this would go. I’m gonna take our Princess home and I’ll call you once I make it in.” “Sounds like a plan. Night Princess,” Erik gestured to O’Shea as he walked back to his NSX.

“Night Daddy,” O’Shea slurred slightly as she slid into the passenger seat of Skylar’s Maserati. Erik stopped, turning to chance one last glance at O’Shea as Skylar guided her into the passenger seat. He contemplated jogging back over to her, using the fact that they needed to have another session as a means to linger in her presence, but he resisted. He decided to wait until they were both completely sober, that way they could both clearly articulate whatever it was that they were feeling. He opted to follow Skylar, using the fact that he wanted to make sure O’Shea got home safely as an excuse before closing the door to his NSX and revving the engine. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Skylar, he just needed to see O’Shea one last time before he called it a night.

The ride back to O’Shea’s was quiet. Skylar chuckled softly as she glanced over at the sleeping beauty, her head nestled between the glass of the window and the passenger seat. She snored softly, a sign that she’d partied a little too hard. Skylar helped her out of the car before fishing the house key out of her bag and guiding her inside to her bedroom.

“Do you need me to stay with you?” “No, I’ll be fine,” O’Shea’s soft voice called from the bathroom. Though she was drunk, she was still coherent enough to remove her makeup and finish her other night time rituals before climbing into bed. No sooner had her head hit the pillow did her mind drift back to Erik. He looked and smelled amazing with the all black sequin tux and his dreads braided to the back. He had purchased another set of fronts while he was away in Wakanda, this one being white gold with diamond settings and the sight of it shining in the low lights of the club had O’Shea itching for the chance to feel them against the sensitive skin of her vagina. The memory alone had her clenching her thighs. It had been months since the banquet where he'd had her wrapped around his fingers, literally. She wanted her thighs wrapped around his neck. It would have to happen sometime soon. Her hands found the inside of her thighs as she laid on her side. In her mind his fronts gleamed as he smiled, that professionally distant but slightly lustful look in his eye. Her thoughts faded.

Once Skylar was back in her car and on the road, Erik facetimed her. She had something to say and she'd been waiting all night, he could tell. He looked over at her face in the low light of the car. 

“So how was the trip?” she asked as she weaved through traffic back to her condo.

“I was cool. I hadn’t realized how much I missed my family until I saw them, T’Challa included.”

“Well that’s good. Have you had time to think about your current situation?” There it was. That’s the question that Erik had both been dreading and waiting for. 

“I have and I think I’m ready to make a move.” “You want to be with her?” Erik didn’t answer verbally, he just nodded.

Their conversation was interrupted by an incoming text message on Erik’s end. He waited until he came to a stop light to open the message, chuckling softly once he realized who it was from.

Shea smiled sleepily before placing her phone back on the nightstand. Her Daddy had missed her just as much as she missed him and hopefully he would give her one of the orgasms she’d been missing for the last few months. That thought alone was enough to lull her to sleep.

“What’s so funny and why you got me paused?” Skylar’s voice rang from the phone screen.

“My fault, ma, I got a message.” “Mmm. The little drunk baby misses her Daddy, huh?” “Man, chill on me. But if you must know, yes it was Shea.” “Oh I know. You two were eyefucking each other all damn night. Somebody needs to put on their big girl or big boy undies and say something.” “I got it, Sky. I set up an appointment for her tomorrow.” “That soon?” “I know me, I can’t put this off too much longer.” “Well whatever you decide, I’m behind you. You know that.”

“I know and I appreciate you for everything, ma. Have you met with Oya yet?” “I have. Her symptoms are almost like Shea’s but I think she’s more interested in hardcore BDSM and I haven’t dabbled in that in a while.” “Oooh, Oya about to meet Mistress Sky,” Erik teased with a wide grin.

“Nigga shut up!” Sky giggled. “Mistress Sky has long since hung up her whip and fishnets.” “”Mmhm, you saying that now. I think Ms. Ramirez might give you a run for your money.”

“We’ll see as time goes on. For now, I’m going to coax her into trying my methods on the partners she has now and if that doesn’t work, then we’ll try the SPT. I think she’ll take well to vabbing.” “Vabbing? You mean pussy juice perfume?” Skylar’s shoulders bounced as she laughed.

“I swear you get on my nerves.” “But that’s what it is! Rubbing pussy juice on ya neck for perfume.” “It’s more than that, asshole! The pheromones attract potential suitors. I was gonna have O’Shea try it too.”

“Aye! She don’t need to be tryna attract nobody else. Her suitor is right here.” “Oooh, somebody’s spicy,” Sky teased with a smirk.

“Mhm, keep playing, Nola."

**

O’Shea’s heels clicked happily against the marble floor of Erik’s office. She’d been excited all day at work, impatiently waiting for the 5:00 hour so that she could be back in Erik’s presence. She bounced happily in the seat across from his desk, waiting for him to finish a conference call before acknowledging him. 

“You look beautiful,” he finally smiled, hanging up to take in her full appearance. She felt like she was glowing under his gaze. 

"Thank you, Dr. Daddy," she grinned, hands clasped excitedly on her knees. "You look very handsome today."

"You think so," he teased resting his elbows on his desk. His hands folded under his chin as he leaned forward. "You had a long night. How's my Buttercup feeling today?"

"Buttercup misses you terribly," she pouted fussing with the hem of her skirt. Erik held his arms out, gesturing for her to come nearer until she was close enough for him to gently tug her arm. Pushing from the desk in his rolling leather chair, he pulled O'Shea into his lap, both of her legs turned to hang over the side of the chair while she clung to his shoulder. 

He trailed his index down the smooth skin of her arm. The alluring scent of her perfume cradled his nose. 

"I missed you too, Buttercup.. I missed all of you." O’Shea melted, allowing the feel of his body to warm her to the core. She inhaled, letting his signature Coach cologne dance throughout her senses.

"Speaking of.. we've been putting off this discussion. How do you feel about extending sessions indefinitely?"

“Indefinitely?”

“Yes. I picked up some new methods I’d like to try with you, but only if you’re ready to move forward.” O’Shea pondered a bit before nodding her agreeance.

“So how was your trip?” O’Shea asked as she curled up into a ball in his lap, much like a baby kitten. She watched his lips intensely as he licked them before beginning his explanation. He told her of the great palace and his royal lineage and of the delicious foods Wakanda has to offer, more specifically, the ice cream.

“Y’all have ube?”

“Mmhm and taro too,” he replies, noting how wide her eyes got. He learned of her obsession with the purple goodness on one of his random ice cream pop ups to the shop while she and Skylar were working.

“Is there Disney in Wakanda?”

“Not yet, but my little cousin is working on it,” he replies with a chuckle, brushing a curl behind her ear. “How were things around here while I was gone?”

“Quiet and a little boring, however, Skylar did get me into ganja yoga which is surprisingly really fun.” “Weed and yoga? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good time,” Erik remarks as he stared down into her brown orbs. He’d forgotten how easy it was to get lost in them and for a second he was stuck staring. That was until her smile stretched into a sly smirk.

“What’s so funny?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You. You do this thing where you just stare at me and it used to make me think I had something on my face, but then Skylar told me that that’s what you do when you really like someone.” It was his turn to smile now, more so from embarrassment that his own best friend had revealed part of his secret.

“Wooow, it really be your own people,” he says, burying his nose in her hair. 

“So you do like me,” she exclaims, sitting up so that their eyes meet one another. Erik rubs his neck nervously before lifting his head to match her gaze.

“It’s complicated.” “Explain.” “It’s a long story.”

“I got time.”

“How did I know you would say that?”

“Because aside from Skylar, I’m the most difficult person in your life yet you trust me with your most guarded secrets.” “You sound pretty confident, Ms. Powell,” he says, growling her name lowly as a means of throwing her off her game. It worked briefly, but she quickly regained her resolve and moved to sit in front of him atop his desk while he explained his answer.” “Spill it, Stevens.” He watched her intently as she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to continue. He watched her eyes and the rest of her body language waiting for a change, any indication that she wasn’t being genuine in wanting to know about his past, but there was none.

“I’ve only ever felt this strongly about two women in my life. The first was a girl I grew up with back in Wakanda. Her name as Lynda. She was the daughter of one of the merchant tribesmen and at the time, the center of my universe. We did everything together and had planned to marry one another. Our families approved, so in my eyes, things were good. Well, of course, I chose to go to college here in the states and we didn’t talk as often, but I still had it made up in my mind that we were gonna be together.” O’Shea listened intently as he continued his story.

 “So fast forward to Christmas break of my freshman year. I’m excited to see her again so I’m calling and texting her, but I’m not getting any response. I chunked it up to her being busy because Christmas is a big deal in Wakanda. When I got there, however, I found out that she’s married to a member of another tribe and she’s pregnant with his child. I was crushed and for a while, I ain’t gonna lie, I was a dog ass nigga. I wanted to make other women feel the way Lynda made me feel. Looking back, I know I was trash as fuck for that, but that’s how I felt in the moment. After that I stopped going home and a few months later I got a call from my aunt saying that she had passed away giving birth to her daughter, which she named Ericka.”

“I’m so sorry, Erik.”

“Don’t be, shit happens. I said all of that to say this, yes, I feel very strongly towards you and I want to give us a shot to see if we’d work out, but I’m also extremely apprehensive because of past experiences as well as the parameters of practice. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.. Anyway, I'm not comparing you to Lynds and I'm not saying that you’d do the same, but I don’t want to make myself that vulnerable again only to have the same thing happen, you know?”

“I understand that completely,” O’Shea says with a nod as she gazes into Erik’s eyes. The sincerity and vulnerability in his eyes was something she hadn’t seen before and she was happy that he felt comfortable enough to reveal that side of him to her.

“One question?”

“Yes ma’am?”

“You said she named the child Ericka. Is she..?”

“I’d asked, but her father was adamant that she wasn’t. I’ve seen pictures and in my personal opinion, she’s the splitting image of her mother.” “Did you ask for a DNA test?” “The merchant tribe doesn’t believe in them. My aunt watches over her, though. Just in case she is one of us. Now, your turn. How do you feel?” O’Shea was taken aback at how quickly he changed the subject, but answered anyway.

“I feel a lot of things, to be honest. Having someone to acknowledge my little personalities and cater to each of their individual needs is something I’ve never experienced in a relationship and I’m happy that you were the first to not only accept them, but nurture them as well. I realize that it’s your job as a therapist, but it means a lot to me. On the same hand, I’m also apprehensive. Skylar said that you could get in trouble if the board found out about us.” Erik sighed softly. It was something he’d been considering ever since he realized that his feelings for O’Shea were more than professional and weren’t going away.

“I’ve thought about that and I have a solution. I’d stop being your therapist.” “But what about my treatment?” “You’d still be getting it, just not from me. Well not from me on paper.” “So you’d list Skylar as my therapist?”

“Yes, and she’d do the same for Oya if the two of them became serious. Small loopholes to ensure happiness,” he said with a wide grin which O’Shea happily returned.

“So what happens now?” she asked, sliding back into his lap.

“How about some ice cream?”

"As soon as I ask you ten more questions. So, you sound unsure of whether or not you're the father. Is that it? Or will you stay close?" 

"Partially, yes. However, I won’t continue to impede on their culture. As I said, my family does keep an eye on her in the event that she is mine.”

"Did you ever wish she was yours? Do you want children?" O'Shea asked. Erik sighed, thinking before he spoke. It was a complex question.

"Yes, when I was still in love with Lynda. Yes, when I was bitter. I wanted her to be mine out of spite, although I know that was childish. I actually wouldn't mind having kids and if something happened to her father, the merchant, I'd probably try again to see about having her tested. But that's really neither here nor there. She has a father."

O'Shea hesitated trying to think of another question as Erik waited patiently.

"No more questions?" He asked. O'Shea looked deeply into his eyes before standing from his lap.

"One more. Can we make it Coldstones?"

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[queenofnohr]

Cu Alter Interlude 2 - Kill Like a Beast, Fight Not Like an Asura

Got commissioned by @tainbocuailnge for this one! Narration has no tags, player options are in block quotes if they both lead to the same dialogue, results of player choice are in block quotes if there is variant dialogue (for whatever reason this Interlude draws A Lot of attention to how tumblr does not have the best setup for this sort of stuff). Anyway, enjoy!

—He said that to understand himself is pointless. Understanding leads to hate. Hatred invites error. One must not think they can understand a Berserker. Because they are a Berserker.

Cu Alter: Tch…….

> You okay?

Cu Alter: I’m fine. Right now, I must keep winning.

> Can you fight?

Cu Alter: ……A good question, Master. But unfortunately, asinine. I am always able to fight. After all, I’m alive, aren’t I.

Cu Alter: Even though this is the worst possible situation. Leyshifting is impossible, communications are down, and I’m the only Servant here. On top of that, all the enemies seem to of the normal Classes.

> And on top of that, we don’t even know what era we’re in

Cu Alter: Yeah. No matter where we go in this untouched forest, strong magical energy pierces the surrounding air. It might be on the level of the Age of Gods.

> Do you think it’s a Demon Pillar?

Cu Alter: Who knows? It doesn’t matter.

> I wonder what the cause is

Cu Alter: It could be a Demon Pillar, but it doesn’t matter.

Cu Alter: What’s important are the seven other warriors. If we can’t defeat them, it’s pointless. Whether we defeat one at a time or seven all at once— To correct the singularity, this is unavoidable. We’d better get started without delay if we want to get this done. Because, in the first place…… you’re about to reach your physical limits. Isn’t that right?

> But……

Cu Alter: If you’re going to tell me to value my life— Then you are not qualified to save humanity. Now that the Grand Order is complete, it seems you’re just a shadow of a Master, fine with anything.

> Are you okay?

Cu Alter: Do not worry about my wellbeing. Crush that necessity regarding Servants for the sake of existence.

Cu Alter: Your hesitation will lead to an easy annihilation. Do not compromise, do not deign to protect me, do not treat me as a person. ……It will only blunt the tip of my spear. With that, I’m done talking. Fight, fight, fight until the bitter end - do whatever it takes for you to return. Are you prepared?

> ……Yes > Let’s go!

Cu Alter: The first two Servants……!

> Watch out for Robin Hood!

Robin: My, my, what a cautious Master to yell something like “Watch out!” in regards to a second-rate Servant. Well, I don’t make a habit of torturing Masters to death, so you can breathe a sigh of relief at that, at least.

> Watch out for Semiramis!

Semiramis: Hou, what a discerning Master. But the Servant is a Berserker; it’s like having pearls thrown before swine. It’s alright, though. When I am victorious I will express my respect by giving you a pleasant death.

Cu Alter: Save it. From the start, you two had no chance of winning!

[battle]

Cu Alter: There!

[attacks Semiramis]

Semiramis: Hmph, so I was only able to get this far……. I’m not happy about it at all.

[she disappears]

Robin: Oh well, the end is the end. I’ve done my duty so I guess this is fine…….

[he disappears]

Cu Alter: ……tsk.

[Cu coughs up blood]

> Poison……!

Cu Alter: Tch…… So that’s it. Don’t worry; even if I don’t recover, I’ll be fine.

> You need medical attention!

Cu Alter: Don’t waste your time. It’s poison from the world’s oldest poisoner…… Semiramis. You can’t treat it by normal means.

Cu Alter: Now about the remaining five…… I’ll defeat them before the poison can spread.

[at the sea cliffs]

Cu Alter: It seems there isn’t anything to identify the age or signs of a singularity, huh…… That’s fine. More important is being able to find where the other Servants are. ……What’s with that look. You’re worried about the poison, aren’t you.

> I’m worried about that, but……

Cu Alter: Oh?

> You don’t seem to consider anything about yourself

Cu Alter: ……It’s always the same with you.

> I don’t understand you

Cu Alter: It’s fine if you don’t understand. A Servant is just a machine. You can give affection to a machine, but there’s no point to it.

Cu Alter: ……I’ll return to what I was talking about before. This singularity is strange. It’s like it’s both the Far East and South America. Furthermore, it seems like a place humans haven’t found. There’s a limit to how much we can search. What shall we do? Master, do you have a plan?

> Can’t we go somewhere by sea?

Cu Alter: ……Stop. Both of those are bad leads. We won’t be able to get anywhere on the sea or in a cave.

> What about a cave……?

Cu Alter: Well, we could. Would it be wise to search for a cave, if it’s only so you can rest……?

Cu Alter: For the time being, I’ll aim for a cave. But before that—

[Karna and Medb appear]

Cu Alter: I’m going to strangle these nuisances to death. Stand back, Master. Karna: ……No hard feelings - this is simply work. Medb: Look at that, Cu-chan is the enemy. What a shame! So, what will you do? Won’t you turn traitor? Cu Alter: Very funny. That functionality does not exist within me. Karna: That’s wrong. You are simply faithful. Even as an Alter, that is a constant. Medb: Either way, a Cu-chan who betrays is not Cu-chan. So, with how things are in this Holy Grail War, I’ll be happy if you kill me! Cu Alter: “This Holy Grail War”? Karna: There’s no point in talking to those who are about to die. Let’s go. Medb: Taking on a poisoned Cu-chan feels as shameful as locking him a Geis for life, but— Just kidding. Just like before, my heart is pounding! I’ll mercilessly corner you, then kill you! Cu Alter: That’s fine by me. I’ll grind you both into dust……! Karna: I see. Of course one with such a ferocious disposition is a Berserker. Is it because the scope of vision is narrowed that one becomes greedy for purpose? But you would do well to remember this, O Warrior of Ulster - that part of yourself is a burden to your Master.

[battle]

Every time I breathe, a dull pain hits me. My thoughts are hazy, indistinct. What I must do is unclear. So, I tear through the enemies before me. I can devote myself only to this. From the start, I’d been a warrior like that. That side of me has only grown as a Berserker. Karna: A true hero kills —with his eyes! Cu Alter: Tch……! Medb: Come, now! Chariot My Love! Cu Alter: Don’t underestimate me, Medb! Medb: He stopped it head on……! Cu Alter: I’ll return the favor, Karna. Take this……! Karna: ……! Medb: Karna! Karna: ……So this is as far as I go…….

[Karna disappears]

Cu Alter: You let your guard down, Medb. Medb: ! Damn i— Cu Alter: Gae Bolg—!

[screen blood splatter]

Medb: *cough* Cu Alter: It’s over, they’re both dead. Medb: Fu- Fufu…… It hurts……. It’s okay- Ending it here…… This time, I lose. But…… I wonder if you can win against the remaining three with your body like that? Cu Alter: Shut up. Medb: Fufu……. I’ll be waiting for…… next time…….

[Cu coughs up blood]

> Cu Chulainn! > Alter!

Cu Alter: ......Next…… Let’s move on…… to the next one…….

> Let’s rest for a bit

Cu Alter: ? ……Yeah, alright. You stay here. I’ll…… go settle things with the remaining three Servants.

> You can’t trust me?

Cu Alter: ……No, it’s not a matter of not being able to trust you, it’s about both of us not getting killed. ……. ……. ……Karna said my way of being is a burden to you……. Maybe this is the correct answer. Without regard for myself, no matter what must be done……. I will end this my way, by myself. Friends, partners, brothers-in-arms…... Properly speaking, I am to shoulder your burden, but it’s something too heavy for me to bear. It’s the same for you, too, Master. My way of being is burdensome for you to try and take on, just as you are burdensome to me. So, wait in the cave. I will go forth to settle this.

[in the forest]

> He said that and left me behind, but- > I can’t accept this……

???: Oh ho, what do we have here? You must be Chaldea’s Master.

> Anderson……!?

Anderson: Right you are. It is I, the singular person in this entire war to voluntarily drop out, the third-rate Servant, Anderson. If you know me, saying any more than that is superfluous. Now then, why are you here of all places? Is your Servant not participating in the Holy Grail War?

> Although you say it’s a Holy Grail War……

Anderson: The form this one takes is certainly different than the classic battle royale. We seven are the defensive players, tasked with protecting the grail to the bitter end. The single offensive player must charge through our defenses. Well, my presence has no bearing on the battlefield. Therefore, I’m spectating from over here. In the first place, no matter how many are defeated, one will remain in the end. The great hero of Greek Mythology, Heracles, as your enemy.

> Heracles……!

Anderson: Indeed. If a normal Servant is a gorilla in heat, he’s a starving dinosaur. Fighting him is a fool’s errand. So. Why are you here, Master of Chaldea?

> Actually……

Anderson: Hm. So you’re fine with being alone, is it? I wonder if I can pin down Cu Chulainn Alter. The original seemed to be a Celtic warrior who could be friends with both enemy and ally alike depending on his mood, but— That is why Cu Chulainn Alter rejects everything. Other people are weak, is the way his logic goes, if I am alone, I am strong, and that is good. To keep away from those that should be protected, being injured is acceptable. What a comical script! And on the side of who is being protected, what tragedy! With the way it is, it seems you too will be hurt, cowering.

> I see

Anderson: Oi, if you understand, go.

> So that’s the feeling……

Andersen: Were you convinced? If so, there’s only one thing to do.

Andersen: Hurry and go to him. Past this forest and to the left there is a cave. That is the battlefield.

> Thank you

Anderson: Your words of thanks are unnecessary. This isn’t a situation where I can charge you the price of a book. Hurry on, now. And fulfill your duty as a Master. If you defeat the remaining two Servants, this singularity will disappear.

[in the cave]

> I hear them……!

Cu Alter: I’ll kill you———!! Heracles: *roaring* Cu Alter: *pant* *pant* *pant* ……! ……. ……. Master, you…… Why are you here?

> I came to fight > For your sake

Cu Alter: ......Tch. Do what you want.

> Right back at you

Arturia Alter: —So the Master has appeared. But, you’re too late. No blade will reach me. This Berserker will be the victor. Heracles: *roar* Cu Alter: ……! Not yet. I can still……! My body is breaking down. My spirit is breaking down. The strongest hero in Greek mythology. A man who overcame the Twelve Labors and became immortal.  Even though he should have been killed many times over, each time he revives, and destroys. My bones are cracked. My flesh is torn to pieces. And for what. To win, to continue to win, that is what I am here for. ……I have no need for a Master. They should be unnecessary.

Cu Alter: Tch……!

> Healing! > Strengthening!

Cu Alter: I’m grateful, but move away. ……It’s fine if you stay over there.

—Yes, it’s extremely annoying. My power, my spear, seems only to increase in power by having her here……! Arturia Alter: —Hou. So you’re trying to hit me with your spear without defeating Heracles. ……So be it. Then I shall draw my sword as well. —Come, Warrior of Ulster. I will engrave this holy sword into your body. Cu Alter: Unfortunate. Master, don’t just stand there. Win.

> Yes……!

Cu Alter: All curses unleashed, no limits.

[Cu starts glowing]

Cu Alter: —Your death comes. Curruid Coinchenn……!

[battle]

Cu Alter: Haughhhh!!

[dark screen blood splatter]

[Heracles disappears, Arturia Alter is disappearing]

Arturia Alter: —Splendid. Cu Alter: A Caster isn’t showing up, but…… It seems you were the last one. Arturia Alter: Correct. Cu Alter: Then why were you summoned in the first place? Arturia Alter: —I do not know. There is only one thing I understand. We did not fight amongst ourselves, but simply waited for your arrival. We were given orders to kill you, nothing more. As for intention— It seems there’s someone out there who despises Chaldea - despises you. Cu Alter: ……I see. So this was a test. Arturia Alter: Perhaps. ……Be careful, Master of Chaldea…….

[she disappears]

Cu Alter: It’s over. Da Vinci: Heeeey, Gudako! Oh, thank goodness. It seems that more than anything, you’re safe and sound. Audio communications broke down, and we couldn’t track your vitals……. But it seems like you’ve been stable since the beginning. Did anything happen out there?

> I’ll tell you when I get back

Da Vinci: Hoho, my interest is piqued.

> Well, something like that……

Da Vinci: I see, I see.

Da Vinci: Well, seems like you finished up over there. Prepare to return. Well then, I’ll be waiting. Cu Alter: ……Resentment, huh? Is there a surviving demon pillar somewhere out there with a grudge? To be hated for restoring the human order seems like a rough life. But, well— If you need me to kill an enemy, just yell. I’ll come any time. That is my role as a Berserker.

—Ah, it really is annoying. When I die it will be in a truly wretched manner - that is inescapable. But it seems, perhaps, that in my final moments……. There will be a single person to mourn me.

[pepperstrawberry]

While I am slowly working on art things... have a bit of fiction?

So, I did a post earlier about Elly, and figured that I should post this maybe for amusement. It’s a drabble I puttered on after being inspired by @wearepaladin‘s post that I linked up there... There is more that is starting to form. I was originally going to add her to my ‘Dragon Quixotic’ story (and she still kinda is, but becoming less and less direct so), since the main city I came up with has a strong history of Paladin stuff (now thanks to this drabble is called ‘Mithvalor’... for now at least XD )

Going to put it under a cut cause it’s like a few pages long on the googledoc XD

Note: This was tossed together as a sort of ‘character moment and background’ thing… Feel free to make any commentary, but please do it in the light that a) I haven’t really tackled Paladins until very recently in any tangible way and b) this is more or less a rough draft take on a scene that popped in my head.

Note the second: One of these days I -will- make a straight forward paladin, but I’m still in that beginning ‘break all the things/see where things stretch to phase of character creation ^_^;;; (I do have a whole story that plays with the idea of gods, paladins, right and wrong, good and evil, and all that where the heroes do end as more or less proper pallys, but the start isn’t what it seems… at the moment that idea is on the back burner though)

The Gods are fallible.

This statement was the backbone of her faith.

Elizabeth Camilla Makeda had come to distrust any priest that would proclaim the perfection of any single god. Not in that she hated them or thought they were leading people wrong. It was more that they had blinded themselves to the bigger picture.

In a world where there were multiple gods, each with their own domains and focus, she could not believe that any single god could understand enough of the universe on their own to be anything but a flawed, incomplete creation. For many, this revelation would bring a deep distrust in the gods if they believed in them or even a complete rejection of any value in religion if they didn’t. But for her?

It brought her a sense of relief.

If the gods were fallible, then it just meant that the problems of the world, how sometimes monsters could win, how children could die from plagues, or how people could fall to their own vices made more sense.

Some gods would show a streak of hubris just as man does. Other times, it was pettiness. Some gods tried so hard but their domain was limited in scope, and thus was their ability to change things.

If she viewed the gods much as she viewed her fellow man, it made a lot more sense.

It was these thoughts she took into the academy of her city of Mithvalor. Paladins were a traditional position in her home, a place of many faiths, working together to make a stronger world. Her home, a hub city of trade and community, had once housed a council of seven paladin kings known in legend as ‘The Faith’. It had been many generations since The Faith was broken, but the grand tradition of this land to be a bridge between countries as well as the material and the ethereal worlds made being a Paladin both a privilege and an honor.

While she had a leg up thanks to her mother being a Paladin of the God of Courage, it didn’t mean she had a free ride either. Her family had always been about hard work and helping others. Her father had helped her train her body by working the fields of their farm on the outskirts of the city. She was put to work during festivals to help bring food around to those that needed and deliver parcels of ingredients to cooks preparing the big feasts.

Her father was big on the God of the Harvest and while her parents where in a bit of a bet of who she would chose, they knew she would make the right decision for her and continue the proud traditions of both the city and her family.

And so it was that her training began. And trouble soon showed it’s head. When it came to lessons on the gods, she would ask strange questions. Not improper ones, only ones that kept everyone guessing with which god would she finally plague her oath to, let alone what that oath would even look like. Many thought she might side with either the God of Knowledge given her persistent questions, the God of Wisdom due to how they were worded and thought out, or even the God of Mischief given how vexing some of the questions could be.

It would be the day she found her weapon that would reveal all…

---

“Come on, Elly. I know you have been paying attention to your lessons.” Sir Dulgear sighed.

Elly was once more on her butt. Her sword and shield to either side of her, the result of being so astoundingly disarmed. Again.

“It… It’s just doesn’t feel right, Sir.” She growled.

Dulgear knew that growl well. It was not directed at him in the least. It was directed inward. Her mother, the Lady Gallamir Pearl Makeda was one of the absolute best with a sword and shield. Having actually been her training partner when they were in Elly’s position, he could confirm it without any doubt. And he could see some of the parent’s talent in the child. Hell, she was worse with a warhammer or even a mace. They had tried many other combinations and while she wasn’t bad with any, she was never that great either.

And the forces she might have to face needed to be met with greatness in all aspects.

This girl had something in her, he knew it. It’s why he kept as an instructor. His best was in seeing through the rough bits to the shining gems that were waiting to be revealed. Still, he was getting worried. While she excelled in all other areas, she needed to be able to protect those around her as well as herself. And right now, she was barely above a regular great of soldier.

“Come on Elly. I know you can do this. Remember…”

Elly stood, picking up her arms and took her stance. “Think around the problem, then push through” she repeated. It was Sir Dulgear’s way of saying ‘stop and think’. She rather liked it, and it had fit her own way of thinking very well.

And thinking was what she was doing. Dulgear stood ready. She was to make the first move, so she had time, not forever, but some. She, too, stood. It was a perfect stance, the forms where never an issue. She could swing any weapon as is with just as much aptitude as any other recruit. Of course, those were also practice weapons designed to do little damage and be primarily for training and nothing else.

In her hand was a live sword. A dull blade, sure, and her trainer had protections all over him. But it was still a live blade.

A blade can cut with ease, sometimes too easily. She had seen even veteran guards accidently do too much damage to someone they were trying to subdue during a tavern fight. A mace can disfigure or even cause permanent brain damage with a strike to the head. A warhammer can crush unenchanted platemail with ease.

Deadly. All her options were decided to kill as their primary function, with little thought to what other potential these things might have.

Of course, staves, saps, and other blunt weapons didn’t quite feel right to her either, but they rarely served as good weapons for a Paladin. Those you would more often see in the hands of a monk or a cleric. Not that she didn’t try them. Still, a stave felt too ‘reed’y to her and even a sap felt like it would be better just to…

She had an epiphany.

Dulgear saw Elly square her shoulders and then charge him. He could already see the sword strike a mile way. Infact, there was even less finesse then before. Could Elly be getting tired? Or maybe she was about to try something? He smiled and brought up his shield rather than dodge. This lesson was about getting used to live weapons and focusing the potential of using a Paladin’s most universal and signature attack: Smite.

Sure, the magic the trainee’s were bless with only simulated the power, as they had yet to take their oaths, but the mook smite could be used against anything with a nice pop of pressure to give positive feedback for a success.

The sword hit the shield as was intended by both parties. Dulgear flicked his gaze to the shield being raised. For a split second, he wondered if she was going to try to bash him with it. She was always a touch more defensive minded then many of the other recruits, and while exceedingly rare, it was not unheard of for a paladin to make their weapon of choice some modified take on a shield.

However, he discarded that notion as soon as it came to mind. With how quick her bulky frame was, he would have been already feeling it. Clearly she was assuming he would strike back, and he did so not wanting to disappoint.

His sword came down and she moved the shield to properly block him. The clang didn’t have time to fully echo when he noticed something felt off about the block. She twisted and pulled to her right. That didn’t make any sense. That was her sword hand, and you don’t get another chance to strike if your opponent has locked swords with you.

The moment Elly felt her trainer’s sword make contact, she flicked both shield and sword down to her right, letting them go. Her foot work shifted, sliding her right foot back and around her left, before left followed along. She turned her entire body around, a clockwise spin, bringing her out of danger of counter attack as her shield was still between her and Dulgear’s sword.

The first weapons she learned would always be her most trusted. She had to use them against thieves in dark alleys when they tried to catch her unawares when on errands for her mother. She had employed them against drunks that would get a bit to roudy when she visited her uncle’s tavern. And she made plenty of use of them in play with her elder brother.

Spinning her body completely around was a showboat move, but it was the easiest way to allign her attack and make sure it connected. With concentration, she pushed the energies down her arm. Her right fist clenched within the gauntlet.

Dulgear had a split second to see Elly had already fully turned herself around, and her fists up near her face. His eyes widened in complete surprise.

Elly’s feet finished their turn and she planted the ball of her left foot to the ground, twisting her hip, continuing the force of her spin, drawing power from the earth, through her leg, the alignment of her hips, her upper body leaning into the motion and finally the strike.

The last thing Dulgear saw was the golden energy collecting at the knuckles of her gauntlet as Elly’s left fist fired out. The strike  connected right against the side of Dulgear’s helmet right at his cheek. And then a burst of light blinded him as he felt his entire body followed with the arc of his head being thrown back. He flew through the air and landing square on his back several feet from where he once stood.

Pieces of her gauntlet floating in the air as her fist made it’s follow through, the armor not built to handle power flowing through it in such a fashion. The glove under was smoldering from the radiant fire that exploded from impact.

Many of the other students that had been watching, as well as a few of the teachers, were rooted to the spot in shock. They had never seen something like that from a paladin before. All of them stared save her mother, who had subbed in that day for a friend. Her smile was incandescent.

Elly didn’t mean to knock him back that hard. She ran over quickly, checking her instructor for injury. While the side of his helm was dented a bit, the magic protecting him was still intact. Fortunately for him, the wards on his armor were ‘one size fits all’ in that they didn’t just keep it to the power level that should have come through the pseudo-smite effect, but from a full attack. Of course, the enchantment was also one shot, so the helmet needed to be repaired and re-enchanted before the next time it’s used. But that was just working as intended.

What was less expected was being thrown that hardback by a punch from a girl a spare few years from full adulthood. Even one as strongly and stoutly built as Elly.

Dulgear was surprised, “That… wasn’t the test spell. You… used the power ‘Smite’. The actual ability…” It wasn’t unheard of for those that had already taken an oath to seek formal training here. Hell, he was one of those sort. When he had sworn to his god, the divine being specifically led him here for training. But no one was aware that Elly had taken any oath. In fact, by all accounts, no god seemed fit for her in any direct manner, at least if her many questions during lectures and her interesting debates with some of the scholars was any indication. “When did you take the Oath? And with whom?”

As Dulgear took her hand, Elly smiled warmly, “I took no single god. The gods are fallible. I do not deny their greatness, but nor will I ignore that if all the stories are true, they are no less weak to lying, cheating, avarice, or any other vice known to mortals. I could not swear any more devotion to a god then I would to any man.”

Once her trainer is standing again, she holds his hand in both of hers, turning his hand palm up, “Faith in a friend is a powerful thing. I have that faith in many gods. But I can not worship them. I do not worship anything. For many, worship is liberating. For me, it’s stifling.”

She looked back into his eyes, “Sir Dulgear, I swore my oath on the roof of my home, laying and staring at the stars. I had thought to myself, ‘The gods are fallible’ and I was not afraid. I was happy. A god is like a king, a force for good or ill, a seat of wisdom and a source of authority and hope. But a king can fall.”

Dulgear wanted to say something, but he remained quiet. This wasn’t just one of her debates with a scholar, she was speaking her oath. “If an Angel can fall, a Devil can transcend. A god can make a mistake just as a mortal can. And we work together, we strive for better. So to do the gods together. I seek no one master, but I vow my word to the very heart of what a Paladin is: the hand of the gods in the world of man. A hand to help, a hand to defend, and when needed a hand to bring low the true monsters of the world.”

She looked back at her sword, “Blades kill too easy. But my fists are my hands. A sword must be sheathed to be seen as peaceful. I need only open my hand and offer it to do the same.”

Having spoken it out loud for the first time in years, Elly was able to start to form a more codified version. Stepping back, she held her hand out, palm down, “The gods are fallible as are men. My oath is to the very concept of Honesty, Compassion, Honor, and Duty. That I might serve the needs of all gods, all men, all that have good will and the need of help.”

She turns her hand palm up, “The Angel can fall, and the Devil can transcend. I will give quarter to any that ask save a true monster. A true monster is that which has actively rejected all light from their heart. Such beings, whether in heaven or hell, deserve my full wrath.” She punctuates her statement by clenching her fist and punching it into her left palm.

She spread her arms wide, hands open again, “I pledge to help any that I can. To do the least harm I am able. To strike down the true monsters. To lead the fallen and the lost to the light, and I look to all the gods and all my friends to help me stay in that same light.

“My oath is to the Hallowed Hope that springs eternal in every heart”

Sir Dulgear smiled, “Unorthodox, and while I don’t fully agree, I can’t see any personal fault with your view point. Such an oath would normally be a tenous thing. Swearing to the very nature of things. So nebulous. But… you don’t look at it that way. Your faith is in a deeper ideal.” He offers his hand, “I hope you find strength in your oath always and that the gods find favor in your devotion, even if it’s not directly to them.”

Dulgear smiled. Sure, a paladin could get silly with their speachafying, but it was also a part of what they did. It wasn’t so much pageantry of words as much as their words guided by their faith and hearts. “Elizabeth Camilla Makeda of the Sacred Oath of Devotion to the Hallowed Hope. I welcome you.” He grinned wider, “Now, let's look into designing you some ‘hallowed knuckles’ to go with that oath of yours.”

[thesinglesjukebox]

THE BAND PERRY - THE GOOD LIFE

[4.92]

"Good" may be a stretch for some, but controversial is not!

Ian Mathers: "You know, when I asked how things were going since the divorce, I didn't actually need this level of specificity. Also it's weird that your brothers are here." [3]

Thomas Inskeep: What the fuck happened?!? The Band Perry's last album, their 2013 sophomore effort Pioneer, is a sublime, Rick Rubin-helmed country record. And now apparently they want to be, what? Chainsmokers? Actually, this isn't even that good; it sounds more like a Paris Hilton record. I'm embarrassed for them just listening to this. [1]

Katie Gill: You've got to give The Band Perry some props. If they kept putting out songs along their earlier sound, more music like "Chainsaw" or "If I Died Young," they would probably still have halfway decent airplay on CMT. Instead, whether it's due to a musical evolution or (what I'd put my money on) blatant trend chasing, The Band Perry refuse to be limited by their best known sound. That being said, holy shit this song is grating, obnoxious, and downright immature at points. [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "Glad I never had your baby / This will be a cleaner cut / You can keep the labradors": three lines so simple, so cutting, so savage, that while stationary biking at the gym, I literally had to stop pedaling, clutch my pearls, and whisper "Oh my god" when I listened to this for the first time. I shouldn't quote the whole song line by line, so here's another highlight that deserves special mention: "I don't wanna still be friends / I just wanna break your neck." No words minced here, just the most systematic takedown of a cheating bastard since "Sorry" or "Before He Cheats," made even more thrilling because of how unexpected it is coming from The Band Perry. [7]

David Moore: The Band Perry does the reverse Lil Nas X and takes their big dark energy to the hip-hop charts...ten years ago. But hey, I loved 808s and Heartbreak, and Kanye never wrote a line as ice cold as "you can keep the Labradors." Damn, dude, she doesn't even care about the dogs anymore, you must have really fucked up! [7]

Joshua Lu: Even despite the colossal genre difference, this song reminds me of how in the chorus of "If I Die Young," The Band Perry progressively got more ridiculous with every line, with requests of satin, some roses, a sunrise, and then a love song. In "The Good Life," they similarly don't know where to stop their wonky details, except instead of romantic imagery, they utilize awkward slang ("bro" is barely tolerable; "hoes" isn't at all) and clumsy statements ("You can keep the labradors/"). There are some passably impactful lines, like "This'll be a cleaner cut," but they're vastly outnumbered by those edgy stinkers, and it's all drowning in a goopy Weeknd-lite backdrop. [2]

Katherine St Asaph: Those invested in The Band Perry's country career likely see this as a trend-chasing outrage -- at least "Old Town Road" mentioned a tractor! Fortunately, I am not invested in their country career, and can thus recognize this as one of the best pop singles of 2019. You can too: Pretend it's the new Kelly Clarkson single, which it basically is, plus Kanye's "Heartless." (Kris Allen strummed so The Band Perry could burble.) The only country remnants are the specificity in the first verse, but unlike crossover patient zero "The Middle," "The Good Life" isn't remotely shiny. Nor is it remotely chill, nor really conversant with the pop zeitgeist. (The bridge, with its lone spotlight synth, kiiinda resembles something Max Martin might write, but five years ago, and only if you stretch.) Instead, the level of bitterness equals Natalie Imbruglia's "Want" and maybe even approaches Tori's "Blood Roses" (that second verse comes awfully close). [9]

Alfred Soto: Grant them this: if "The Good Life" is Nashville, I'm Squeaky Fromme. "I just wanna break your neck," Kimberly Perry coos over a wobbly electrobass backdrop. Too outre for Nashville, perhaps, not outre enough for contemporary pop, where wobbliness is the coin of the realm. [5]

Michael Hong: So The Band Perry are releasing "edgy" Spotify-core synth-pop now, huh? While the whole thing has the distinct markings of a club track, it simply feels lifeless because the vocals, coated in their hazy atmosphere, only dull the pulsing synth. That lifelessness creeps into their lyrics, and The Band Perry's attempt at something devastating with the line "you gave it up for hoes" never really registers because of it. [2]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Coordinates indicated that The Band Perry were aiming for new musical territories, but "The Good Life" is the song they needed to justify the change. The new sonic direction and dramatic synthwork help sell the disgust in the lyrics: the revulsion of prior physical intimacy, the remorseless desire to snap necks, the relief that she never bore children with this dude. That the lyrics are analogous to things we often hear in country music only makes them feel more caustic, like the severity of ill-will that Kimberly harbors is fully unveiled in a way that couldn't in country pop radio. The vocal delivery is clunky at times, but it's honestly these moments of awkwardness that sell the song--after all, how often are post-break up diatribes flawlessly executed? The 808s & Heartbreak-indebted bridge is a fun bit of worthwhile, borrowed empowerment. The "Good Life" that Kimberly's seeking, though, is a bit different than what Kanye ever talked about; she wants retribution, and it's palpable. [7]

Edward Okulicz: When I close my mind and pretend this is a new single by, like, The Veronicas, I love it, because it's like a perfect even more bitter follow up to their "Think of Me." But it's still great as a new single by The Recording Entity Perry too. The jagged edges of the music aren't revolutionary, but they provide something of a distorted mirror to reflect the ugly twistedness of the vocals and the story. To me, the overall effect is that of impotent rage against an indifferent target, which makes it more relatable than is comfortable. [8]

Joshua Copperman: It's not as bad as contemporary Little Big Town's horrible pop crossover, but it's really weird. Despite the intent, Kim Perry says 'hoes' like a 12 year-old cursing, and the "damn good rhyme/line" lyrics would be okay if there were more damn good rhymes/lines in the song. (There are some good lyrics, but they're scattered and don't rhyme - "Sick I ever touched your body/Sick you ever tasted mine" is one such oasis.) The titular line doesn't work as a hook. The distorted 808s don't work as the beat either. Nothing coheres whatsoever, but there are enough interesting elements to make this listenable, if only as a curio. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[zevzevarainai]

same anon from before,, ;u; how did you like,,, give them filters?? they're very pretty, not to mention my gifs are always over the limit for some reason, even when they're extremely small

i’m flattered that you have chosen to come to me!! under the cut i will be covering the most basic of basics in my gif making processes. i use photoshop CS5 but these are likely transferable to other versions of photoshop dont take my word on it ok buckle up kids

Sizing

To get started you obviously want to find what you want to gif. Generally, I’ve found that the less realistic the footage is, the easier it will be to make it a small file. For example, making an adventure time gif will be much easier to get under tumblr’s limit than a live action movie or show. Remember that tumblr’s gif size limit is 3MB. There’s many factors you can control to get the picture size down, but the main two are the amount of frames in a gif and the pixel size of the image. 

I try to keep my frames between 80 and about 130. The fewer frames will help decrease file size, but you have to watch the animation for sometimes too few frames can make the gif hard on the eyes or tacky (for lack of a better word).

For image size, I first crop the image to the part I want to gif and then reduce it to a width of around 500px. This is for the standard 2x4 post I usually do (example). It might look small in photoshop, but remember tumblr shrinks it to fit in the post. 

Coloring

The best way to color gifs (or add filters) is to experiment. There’s really no correct way. I’ll show you where you can find the tools to start experimenting.

First, I like to put all my layers into a group folder. Then, you’ll want to click on this black and white circle which will open a drop-down menu. It’s fun to mess around with all of them, but I’ll talk about the ones I use the most: Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Vibrance, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, and Selective Color.

Brightness/ContrastThis one is pretty self-explanatory. This feature makes your picture lighter or darker and can add more contrast between the colors in the image.

Let’s start with the base image. I’ve taken a random clip of pearl and agate for the purpose of this tutorial. This is what it looks like in its unaltered form. The brightness and contrast window is right next to it.

Unaltered, the image is already very bright by itself. You’d play with this setting if you wanted to make a darker gif with that scene or maybe bring out the colors with less contrast. It might help with a pastel gifset, which I will talk about in Levels.

LevelsI’ll be honest, I didn’t know what this meant until I wanted to try pastel sets and searched for tutorials. 

Levels is going to give you a weird ass lookin’ graph like this. It will vary depending on the original image, so don’t panic if it looks different than my example. Bringing the middle arrow to the right of the scale makes the image darker and more vibrant, like so:

On the opposite end, bringing the arrow to the left will give a more pastel effect.

It’s best to just play around with this one; results really depend on the original image. You might want to go only a little to the left, or much higher -- you’ve got to use your eye and what you think looks best. 

ViberanceViberance is a good choice for when I want to bring out the colors of my gifs or even tone them down.

If you look back earlier at the original image, this picture altered with the viberance adjustment has a bit more color. It’s more... vibrant. Saturation is used to make the colors pop (going right) or make the colors more dull (going left). I upped the saturation in the image above; let’s see what happens when you go down:

It takes out the color, but not so much so that it is made black and white.

Hue/SaturationThis setting is similar to the saturation in viberance, but you can get more detailed in this one. Let’s say I want to tone down agate and bring the focus on pearl. We’re gonna go back to the unaltered clip. In the window, there’s a drop-down with different colors. These are the main color categories photoshop works with, so to speak.

Let’s go to blue, as that is agate’s main color. Our options to mess around with are the hue, saturation, and lightness. I’m going to take down (move the arrow to the left) agate’s saturation and lightness. 

Now she’s practically black and white while pearl, who doesn’t have any blue on her (it’s cyan), stays the same.

Wondering what the top bar is for? You can use that to change the color. Let’s say for some reason, I wanted to make this blue agate one of pink diamond’s agates instead.

Move that bar around +90, you’ve got a pink agate. It was a little grainy, so I messed with the lightness too. You can experiment with all kinds of colors!

Color BalanceI rely on this one a lot. Here we are with the unaltered image again. In this window, you can see three tones -- shadows, midtones, and highlights -- as well as three color bars. The highlight setting colors the pictures highlights, the shadows color the shadows, and the same for midtones. This is a good setting for a “filters.”

I would be lying if I didn’t say my main strategy here is to just mess around with it until I get something that looks decent. I’m going to give this a pink/magenta-y color balance setting as 1) I like it on Pearl and 2) I just like it in general. This image is a bit over-exaggerated for the sake of a tutorial.

As you can see, moving the arrows toward magenta and blue have given it a pink “filter.” It is up to your best judgement to decide how far those arrows go down the bar, and don’t be afraid to combine changes in the other tones, too!

Selective ColorThe main reason I use this adjustment is to avoid whitewashing. It’s easy to do it by mistake when making pastel gifs. Let’s take Marina from Splatoon 2 and say I want to make a pastel splatoon set. Here’s the original image. I already used Color Balance to get the color I want.

Now I’m gonna add the pastel with Levels -- AHH! What happened to her skin?? NO THANK YOU. BAD. 

Let’s fix that immediately. Here comes Selective Color! It will give you the option of colors to alter. We want to choose Red, as where that’s where most of the brown comes from. She also had a bit of yellow in her face, so I altered that too. Go to the bar labelled ‘black’ and push it to the right.

Better! She keeps her dark skin while still keeping the pastel feel. 

What a cutie!!

You can use this adjustment setting when you don’t want a certain color to be as altered as the others.

Saving SettingsSaving your gif is probably the most frustrating part of the entire process. I sit waiting for it to load, asking it to please be under 3.0 MB. If you don’t already know, File>Save for Web & Devices will look like this.

Sometimes, Photoshop will make your gifs look like garbage. This is frustrating. To work around it, you are welcome to copy my settings. Be sure to change the colors to 256 for the best quality. 

Luckily, my gif came out to below 3.0MB. If yours doesn’t, don’t panic. Make the image smaller or take out some frames.

Hope this helped! Happy giffing!!

[kristie-rp]

What Is Life (But a Series of Inspired Follies)

Pandora spends weeks perfecting the portrait.

The initial idea is for a series. Body positivity. She plans to include various shapes, not just the media-sanctioned hourglass stick figures, and disabilities of the sort that involve prosthetics. It is both an attempt to develop an exhibition that will mean something to more people than just her, and an attempt to address her own body image issues in the only manner she knows. She gets caught up in the first painting and the plan for a series fades to the back of her mind, all her attention on this piece.

She finds dozens upon dozens of reference pictures, roping Olympias and Vince and Travis into the research for diversity of image – disabilities and physical shapes. They are the sciencey ones, they will be fascinated by it. Vod and Cas and even Morgan join in to point out the things they think look cool. Mostly, they contribute by venturing out to take and find photos of people of every gender and ethnicity, charming strangers into impromptu photo shoots (Cas more than the women, who prefer blunter methods), and photocopying pages from books when they cannot find digital versions. By the end of the effort, Pandora has more reference pictures than she has ever bothered to collect, preferring to paint from her imagination. This project is supposed to be different, though, and realism matters more than in her other works. It’s not quite her usual style, but she plans on making it work. She’ll adapt. She’s good at that, with her art if nothing else. Even she is willing to admit it.

The others leave her to her work, and she gets to it, starting with concept sketches. They seem almost endless, but she needs these to feel like real people. An African man with vitiligo marking his face and chest, a person with albinism and a non-specific gender, a plus-size woman with a crooked nose. It is the prosthetics that hold her attention, because they have the potential to be something more beautiful than the human body. She works them into her other designs, taking people with varied shapes and giving them amputations in myriad combinations. Then she designs them replacement limbs, prosthetics pictured from every angle.

She gets Oly to pick which design she starts with, because she doesn’t see a reason not to. She’s secretly delighted when her twin picks the one she has already redrawn more than the others. It is a woman, curvy enough to be considered plus-size but not fat by any descriptor. In the sketches, she is Hispanic with a hint of something else, a little bit Korean and a little bit African-American.

Pandora feels guilty as she removes the right leg from her sketches from just below the knee, but that gets better as she thinks up the stories. Not lost in an accident, but instead a consequence of a birth defect; Vince spent two days researching dysmelia to tell her all about it. Meromelia, she decides as the specific cause, feeling no qualms about limiting it to one limb; her right leg just slightly too short to make walking a comfortable experience. Removal would have been voluntary, not medically required. The prosthetic would have been a custom design and custom order, paid for by her parents. Part of Pan wishes her canvas would allow for more detail, but she makes do with the myriad concept sketches. The subject of the painting walks a fine line between delicate and edgy, and Pandora is trying to get that personality across in the leg alone, though more details will be emphasized by the rest of the character design.

The leg itself is metallic, and would be coated in a protective resin; scratching would ruin it otherwise. She ignores the option of using lace, because it is too obvious: instead, she winds vines and flower petals up the sides of the leg, carefully creating the illusion that it is carved instead of painted in the surface. She works a series of triangles into it, hidden among them but clearly intentional. She plans on repeating those throughout the image, in the clothing and jewellery the woman wears.

Pandora talks to herself as she works, and to her portrait. It’s about everything and nothing, a running commentary about the thoughts distracting her and her process as she paints. Anyone listening would be quietly absorbing the information, but Pandora only means it as an outlet.

The woman is painted into high waisted denim shorts, washed out from their shade of dark blue, because jeans will obscure the leg, and that is not what she wants. It takes patience to make this obvious, considering the fact that she wants to paint the woman seated. It takes time, but she decides a less feminine slouch will be fitting, sprawled out the way Vod and Jasmine do on a sofa. The shorts are paired with a thin, loose-fitting tan sweater, neckline so stretched one of the sleeves slides down. The combination puts two things on display, incongruous with the otherwise soft form the woman has been painted in: a black bra, covered in impractical silver spikes, and inked feathers starting from her shoulder. She paints her feet bare, toenails painted in patterns of black and a soft pink; this, of course, brings a return to the triangle motif.

The next mission involves details of a sense of style Pandora wishes she could pull off herself. Delicate golden chokers loop around her neck, one, two, three of them, one a chain, one with tiny faux pearls, one with the triangle motif again. She has painted her head turned enough to the side that the golden threader earrings catch the light painted into the image, running through two low piercings. Her nails are painted in dusty pink and yellow gold and black, and she wears no jewellery on her wrists her hands.

The face is the challenge. Pandora needs to implement an array of resources and about ninety sketches before she gets the face exactly right. A wide nose and full lips, a heart shaped face with rounded jaw and chin – yes, she likes this. The eyes blend the photos she has of Mexican, Korean and African-American people, and she is pleased with the results, with how warm the brown eyes end up seeming. Brown skin merges carefully mixed paints for each ethnic group she has combined, and she hesitates before painting three tiny acne scares onto the jawline. The hair is trickier: Pandora decides to make it thick and dark and paints it caught in a braid over her covered shoulder, and after some deliberation and an unexplained text poll, adds in soft, barely there silver-purple as streaks, pastels almost like chalk in the hair.

It works brilliantly. Her design, when it comes together weeks after she begins, is gorgeous. She could be half in love with this woman on looks alone, she thinks. She’s not sure if that’s lack of energy talking, or if it is pride in her creation, or if it is something more.

Pandora texts her father a photo, because she wants him to name the final piece, and wolfs down some pasta that probably Oly has left her at some point. It’s cold, because her microwave is still broken and she hasn’t made time to fix it, but it still tastes decent. “My dream date has to be able to cook,” she tells the painting, breaking off with a wide yawn. It really has been too long since she last slept.

Ethan texts back then, and by some miracle the chime doesn’t startle her. She glances at the text she’s received back, a one word (one name?) message followed immediately by a second containing a link. She opens the link without reading the article to look at later, and carefully copies the name onto a sticker. Pandora presses it to the wall immediately beside the place where she has left her masterpiece to dry, and there is a soft smile on her face. For the first time in a long time, she looks at a painting that she’s finished and doesn’t immediately resent it.

“Galatea,” she mouths, then repeats aloud, crystal clear. “Pretty. Night, Gale.”

The first thing it is aware of is motion.

Under normal circumstances, it doesn’t feel much of anything. It exists in two dimensions only, and since it experiences nothing at all until the creation process ends, at the very least, it does not know what it is to change. Thus – it is concerning, if nothing else, when they feel something against skin that should not feel at all. It feels quite pleasant, all things considered.

Still. They feel something beneath their skin, something distinctly alive. It’s an unfamiliar sensation, but not an unwelcome one. That does nothing to stop their breath –they think that is the term for what this is – coming quickly, at a speed they are fairly sure is faster than generally recommended. Recommended by – they don’t know. They stop, refuse to pursue that topic. Instead, they focus on the unfamiliar sensations they can detect.

Something soft against the flesh of their upper body, thin and soft and nothing close to warm. A cool, smooth something against their face, fine. A dull, unpleasant sensation somewhere below the waist, much lower – leg, the word comes. Whatever is touching that is cool, too, smooth and larger than the smaller one. It feels at once familiar, which is impossible, and unnatural, which makes more sense. Nothing about this is natural, after all. She’s just glad she doesn’t itch, because that would be the absolute worst part of all this.

She has no idea where she is, she has only a ghost of an idea who she is, and she has no idea what is happening. Her breath is coming too fast – though as she focuses, she finds she can slow it slightly, and then a little more. She flexes limbs she has no memory of moving before, every movement done on instinct alone. Her lips part in surprise when she feels fingertips brushing together, and she gasps aloud. The sound startles her, and she finally opens her eyes.

She blinks up at the ceiling, glowing stars stuck above her head. They are blurry, blurry enough that one star looks like two fuzzy ones. She doesn’t expect it to get any clearer, though she cannot say why. Perhaps she is not designed to have good eyesight. Or, perhaps she is not designed to see a world she was not created for clearly.

An outsiders’ perspective makes her eyes hazy. There is some irony there, she thinks.

Tiring of the static stars, she pushes herself upright with arms that tremble. The blurred vision does not lend itself to helping in this, but she tries nonetheless.

A hole in the wall – window, supplies something inside her – allows the fabric over it to move, and it occurs to her that this is a breeze. This is what has been making her shiver, skin prickling in response to frigid air. She is wearing something soft with sleeves the length of half her arm; when she reaches to tug on them, they extend further, not quite to her wrists, but far enough. She does not try to pull up the collar that has her shoulder on display.

The place is a mess, chaos incarnate. It smells of something artificial, something acutely familiar – it’s paint. Colours blend together in the little light filtering through the window from lights on the street. It’s all sort of grey.

There’s a stand of sorts behind her. It is home to a canvas that appears to contain a painting of a comfortable looking chair; either it is painted in shades of gray, or the lighting has combined with her eyesight to make it seem that way. She eyes it curiously, thinking that that chair is the most recognisable thing she has registered since her awareness began. The stand is against a wall, and the wall has a little white thing stuck to it, with some word scrawled across it. She huffs in frustration, because she cannot read it. It is not clear enough, and words are a hazy concept to her. It will come, in time, but not right now.

Her arms are still shaking and her legs aren’t going to be much better. She reaches, grips the table beside the stand. As she pulls herself upright, getting both feet – real and fake – beneath her, she learns that the table was home to three separate cups, and a palette. The wet paint on the palette is on her fingers, but she does not trust herself to release the table, lest she fall on her ass. She snorts aloud at that, shakes her head.

She reaches without thinking to pull her hair back over her shoulder. Her knees tremble. She grabs the table quickly. The gesture is too abrupt, but only just: she bumps one of the cups. It falls.

She doesn’t even try to catch it, knowing she will miss.

Of course it shatters, and it feels like the loudest sound in the world.

The sounds of something draw her gaze to the other end of the room, and it is only then that she notices a bed with a heaped person in it. The person – they must own this place, she thinks, brow furrowed – stirs and jerks upright, reaching blindly for something. They produce a long weapon, something rounded and pole-like. “I know how to hit a bitch,” comes the voice, inexplicably.

She doesn’t understand what that means, and clears her throat to ask, “What?” Her own voice startles her, and she releases the table. This time, somehow, her knees do not shake. Her accent is like the one of the person in the bed, and her voice is rougher, deeper. She steps back, hearing the cool thing – metal – press against the hard floor, and then the soft pad of a human foot.

“What?”

She doesn’t answer, because that is an echo of what she said, and she does not know what else to add. There is nothing; she is still too confused. The person in the bed moves, stretching, and presses something. Light floods the room, and her eyes start to burn immediately. She lifts the paint-covered hand in a doomed attempt to block it out. Of course it doesn’t work, but she does get the joyful experience of paint smearing against her face. It isn’t so unpleasant, just cold, made colder by the fact that she is still shivering from the breeze. “Why’s your window open?”

“Ventilation,” comes the reply. The person in the bed yawns loudly, startling her again, and begins to push themselves out from their nest of blankets. She envies them the fact that they are probably warm, much warmer than her, and feels guilty for making them get out. Even if it seems to be because they want to hit something. “Paint fumes give headaches.”

That makes a weird kind of sense. “Oh.”

“Listen, if you broken in through the window just to tell me to close it –” Another yawn comes, and the person – girl? – stretches again, bat held limp in their hand.

“No, I – I didn’t come through the window.” How did she get in here? She doesn’t even know where the door is until she looks for it. It’s behind her, the other end of the room. That – probably makes sense, one way or another. “I don’t know how I got –” she cuts herself off. Now is not the time for uncertainty. “Sorry for waking you,” she offers instead.

The woman shrugs and yawns for a third time, somehow. It is a lot of yawning. It is making her want to yawn, too. She clamps her jaw shut and bites her tongue instead of allowing it, as if her will is stronger than her body. As if she is her will, and not – “I don’t really care about being woken up,” the woman is saying, “but if you touched anything that’s still drying, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“Just the table,” she says faintly, gesturing vaguely. She takes another step backwards. She shouldn’t be here, in a place that isn’t hers.

The womans gaze drifts to the table, nodding thoughtfully. She scratches her arm as her uninvited guest looks on, gazing blankly at the stand – the easel. Something seems to catch her attention, and she narrows her eyes. “What the -? What did you do?”

“I – just touched the table, like I said?” It comes as a question because she’s only half sure she did, and she’s not entirely sure what is wrong.

“Then why isn’t the painting of Galatea there anymore?”

There’s frustration in the womans voice, that much she can tell. It sounds soothing, though, somehow familiar despite the fact that they’ve never met. “Galatea?”

“From the easel!” She gestures. “I texted dad a photo, he named her, she was on the chair, she had a prosthetic and this smile and this hair and –” The woman cuts herself off abruptly. She has finally looked at her guest, and she is completely bewildered by what she sees – what she recognizes. She blinks. “Gale? Galatea?”

The guest frowns at her. “Yes?”

“I – I painted you,” she says, still baffled. She lets herself collapse to her knees, exhaustion and confusion  driving her to her knees. “I just stopped – I – what?”

She looks on, hesitating, before cautiously stepping closer to the artist. Her steps are slow – metallic clang, gentle patter, alternating one by one. She very carefully lowers herself to the ground before the woman she has woken up. “I wasn’t here,” she says, by way of explanation, “and then I was. There’s been nothing else.”

The artist pauses, considering. She looks like she needs a drink, or a therapist, or answers. “I need to call my sister,” she says, once again much to her confusion.

The guest – Galatea – doesn’t complain. Instead, she offers her a hand, touches the artists knee with gentle fingers. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t think I have anywhere to go.”

The artist swallows.

She had to paint the most attractive woman she can imagine, didn’t she?

[ask-de-writer]

GONE TO SEA : World of Sea : Science Fiction : Part 9

GONE TO SEA

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

WORK IN PROGRESS (Word count unknown at this time)

copyright 2018

Writing started 2005

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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Chapter 05. School On Dock C

Pele stood on the auditorium stage and looked at the small sea of children's heads all watching her.  She grinned somewhat nervously at them all and said, “Well, kids, this is what I get for opening my mouth at the wrong time.  Cora's Crowd came up with a really great boat project.  It was big enough to need a supervisor, so I pitched their idea to the Executive Committee.  I thought that that it could be a useful part of your schooling.  A project like this will teach you guys why the stuff that you learn in the classrooms is important.”

Warming to her topic, Pele came out from behind the lectern and began to gesture freely.  She had the screen lowered and the lights dimmed. “This is what you guys came up with!  No grown up, not even me, thought of something like this!  Now that we live here on Sea, that is where everything in this project will come from!”  The screen lit up with a projected image of Mala'klea's sketch.  

Pele stood proudly to one side and let the assorted children get a good look at the picture.  “We will have a whole lot of things to figure out to get the first ship built.  Almost all of you have been basically told to go and play while the station's scientists and engineers look for IMPORTANT STUFF.”  

Pele laughed.  “None of them are looking at these kinds of things.  This whole idea grew out of wanting to make a Frisbee to play with!  You did that too!  You have the chance to not only learn - - Stop groaning out there!  You have the chance to build a small ship and get it into use before the station gets theirs done!”

Pele took a deep breath and faced her audience squarely as she said, “The Station's Council agreed that the project could be valuable as an educational tool.  Then they appointed me to run all of your schooling along with the boat project.  I get to both teach you and learn from you at the same time that we build this thing.  

“Luckily, the Council didn't realize how much fun we are all going to have or they would have figured out some way to suck the joy out of it for all of us.  For some reason, lots of grown people, who should know better, think that learning should be dull.  I can promise you this, the project may not be easy but it will not be dull.”

“I called this assembly to lay down some ground rules.  We can't have a job this big without some rules.  You kids have already chosen the first one.  This is it.

“If it does not come from this world of Sea, we don't use it.  Our brains and ourselves are the only exceptions.

“The next rule is equally simple.  Before we build, we think, we plan and we test.  We do not want to wind up putting a lot of effort into something that doesn't work.

“Another simple rule is learn to speak, write and calculate clearly.  If you have a good idea, the rest of us can't use it if we can't understand what you mean.

“A vital rule that you have all heard too many times before is NO horse-play in the work areas.  Tricks played there can hurt people or damage our boats.  Yes, boats, plural.  Part of building the big boat will be smaller ones to test ideas and catch or gather the many things that we will need.

“Finally, I do not know how many of you know this or care, but Mister Angerson has been put to work directing the building of the first of the Station's big twenty meter ships because he has an engineering background.  Why is this important to you?

“I will be blunt.  I don't like him at all.  He beat and belittled the lot of you and that is simply wrong.  How many of you would like to return the favor by kicking Mister Angerson's feet right out from under him by making a better and faster ship than his?  I see hands up all over this room!  Good for you!  Any questions?”

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Pele was seriously examining a smooth pale tan fish skin.  It still had small holes around the edges where it had been stretched to dry. Looking up at the committee of children who had produced the skin, she smiled and asked, “How did you get this hide to be so smooth and supple?  You are right, it looks like a good candidate for a parchment type of writing material.

“Any ideas for an ink?  Have you tested the ink and parchment together?”

Confidently, seventeen year old Jessie Lim, the leader of the student committee on writing materials, replied, “Cora's Crowd made the skins.  She can tell you all about them.  We have several candidates for ink.  They are all from different species of the Haggers ammonite.  Pearl's Divers caught them for us to test.  

“The smaller ones with the shells all make ink, a lot like an octopus from Earth.  The schools of free swimming ones are hard to catch but the bottom crawlers are easy to get.

“We can prepare the ink several ways.  Here are some samples of writing that we tried.  I like this one here.  We just cut the raw ammonite ink about ten to one with distilled water.  Once it dries, it is waterproof.”  He handed Pele a sheet of the same parchment-like skin with several lines of writing on it.  Each line explained how the ink that it was written in was mixed from the raw ink.

Cora Halyn handed Pele a thick stack of the parchments.  She proudly said, “We made a hundred of these sheets in one afternoon.  Jase and a couple of other kids went out in one of our small boats and netted a bunch of those parrot fish that are such a nuisance.  We made a lot of the stretcher frames.  The fish don't have scales and they are really easy to skin.  All that we need to do is work the drying skins with this smooth bone polisher and they come out flexible like that after about four hours of sun drying.”  She proudly held out a wide, polished piece of bone, equipped with a working handle of glued Strong's shark skin.  “Mikal Novotony figured out how to make the stretcher frames and he made the polishing tools for us.”

Pele encompassed all of the writing materials committee with a big smile and said, “This is excellent work, all of you!  The working materials group got something good that you might find useful.  They rendered that tallow-like stuff from the Goo fish to get as much of the oil out of it as possible.  That left this.”  She dropped a block of firm tan colored material on her table, in front of her students.

Mikal Novotnoy picked the block up and tried to scratch it with a knife made of Strong's shark tooth.  The fang easily made a deep cut.  He took the butt end of the knife and rubbed the material back together and made other lighter marks and rubbed them out the same way.  Pele noticed that the others were watching him with concentration.

Mikal looked up at the others and said, “We could melt this into shallow trays and use a scribe or stylus made out of almost any hard bone to write with.  Let's go over to the shop area and see what we can come up with.”  He took the time to say, “Thanks, Pele.  Looks like we will be out of your hair for the next few hours.”

Pele promptly retorted, “You are supposed to get into my hair!  That's why I'm here!”

Her next group was the Math committee.  It was headed up by an older girl, nearly seventeen.  Kala Marks said, “We have been looking for a way to make a good general use calculator.  Lee Shin showed us an abacus and some of how to use it.  She said that you suggested that we ought to look into it.  It is really handy but it has some limits for what we wanted.

“We were also studying those logarithm tables that you had printed out for us.  Multiplying and dividing is done by just adding and subtracting the the logarithms of the numbers in the tables.  We checked that out pretty carefully because it almost seemed too simple.

“Mark was having some trouble with manual adding and subtracting by hand because sometimes he forgets to carry.  He figured out that if he just set two rulers next to each other, sliding them back and forth would do the adding and subtracting for him.  That gave us an idea that we wanted to ask you about.  Can we make rulers with these logarithms instead of centimeters?  That way we could add and subtract them really fast, if it will work.”

Pele gave them a delighted grin and said, “That certainly will work! The idea extends to trigonometric functions too.  We can add them into the basic the device later.  I am not going to tell you how to make it.  This is your project.  Now go start figuring out what you need to do and when you have a plan, hit the shop area to make up a test unit, OK?”

The whole Math committee gathered around Kala and said, “Way to go! You were right, Kay!  Let's get on it!”

A shadow fell over Pele's work table where she was making notes on particular students in her records.  She looked up.  Mister Makle stood there, watching her.  When he noticed that he had Pele's attention, he said, “A lot of parents, me included, were worried when the first thing that you did was get rid of age related classes. I've been watching the school pretty closely because of that.  

TO BE CONTINUED

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[carryforthtradition]

Wrestles with Books by Masha Savitz

Excerpt from magical realism memoir, Fish Eyes For Pearls 

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of Israel, people of the book. 
Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.

I’m a stranger in a foreign land and although I seem to speak the same language, I don’t understand.

This foreign place is school.

I am a character in my own imagined sequel to Camus’ book that I am assigned to read in high school, but never do.

Why would someone who claims to be an existentialist bother writing a book in the first place?

School is the first box.

People banter around the phrase, ‘Think outside the box.’ I didn’t know there was a box. I don’t know of this common system.

Some of us are born in the box, some are herded in soon after, while others need maps and instruction for finding it and operating within its proximity.

Some of us need this instruction drawn in colourful pictures depicting icons and landmarks associated with related emotional resonance. Some need mathematical equations, precise data with circumference for com- fort. Some prefer nautical, elemental references, including the movement of stars, time of year for bird migration and weather patterns.

Still others need it sung in a lullaby.

How does one enter The Box, and what might the consequences or rewards be for doing so? Can you get back out once you get in, are there emergency exits, public transportation, equal access for all?

Kindergarten is lovely, but all becomes alien thereafter.

I’m not indifferent, just different.

In third grade, I wonder how everyone else knows what to do, when I am so lost. We build a huge Noah’s ark. I make the lions. This, I get.

My father asks about my homework assignments. I don’t know. Why don’t I know there are homework assignments? He is frustrated, loses his temper with me. I feel bad that my smart papa has a dud for a daughter. I burrow deep into myself.

In high school, I sit down to study for a final exam, pulling out the year’s notes, all utterly incomprehensible gibberish, turns me cold and sick inside.

Like the moment we find out that Jack Nicholson, in The Shining, has spent all his time writing a book comprised of just one sentence, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, repeated a bazillion times.

That sick feeling.

Frightening- because this looks like the writing of a mad person. I burrow deeper. Never tell anyone.

But as an art major, I get into university. My personal essay and portfolio are strong. In painting class, I come to sense my intelligence.

I feel like NASA, discovering intelligent life, my own.

It has its own way of organizing, perceiving, analysing, it doesn’t live in my mind, no, somewhere deeper.

I will cherish and slowly learn to trust it, defend it, cultivate it, as it cultivates me- moving from the non- verbal languages to the written, expanding into my mind and heart, eyes and hands and into empty space.

At eight years old, I am fascinated with the back cover of a children’s scrapbook that my grandparents buy me. It is decorated with astrological symbols and signs. The written word, now, begins to interest me.

I read my first books in my twenties.

Astrology books allow me to match my own perceptions and knowing with the written words before me, creating a symbiotic relationship between my thoughts and words in reverse, a process which will eventually begin at the written word and lead to comprehension.

For the first time, the written word, this collection of letters and symbols, has a relationship with something I know. A pathway is forged in my mind for associating words with cognitive ideas and thoughts. Though decoding is still arduous, with effort I crack the codes.

My mind doesn’t build files. So, like a computer, if there is no file or system to save it to, bye-bye.

I don’t make this connection until after an entire summer of trying to organize my apartment, I find at the end it is no more organized than the day I started.

I walk around with a photo album or box of chargers and extension cords, trying to figure out where it goes, can’t decide, and pick up another object. Weeks of this make Jack a dull boy.

To support myself through college I get a job teaching at a religious after-school program at a synagogue outside of Boston. But I am ambivalent about being a teacher, since I had loathed school. I feel like a traitor.

There are children and there are grownups. Us and them.

I cannot conceive how it can be that grownups don’t remember how it was to be a child. Do they really forget? How does this happen?

When I am still a child, I wish as hard as I can to imprint this on my soul and mind, instructing my future self never to forget being a child.

This may be in part the reason it is easy for me to connect with children.

I never forgot. And I don’t forget. And some things about teaching become evident:

1. I have the opportunity to make school for others what it never was for me.

2. Whatever I hope to achieve as an artist happens more readily, efficaciously in a classroom.

I can create a small community of joy and expansion, honouring the individual, while working and sharing together as a collective.

I spot all the kids who are drifting away. I see their manoeuvres to keep me off their trail, so that I won’t suspect they do not understand the lesson.

I know where they are, I know how they feel. I know how to bring them back.
We expect children to meet us where we are. That is impossible.

Like someone adrift on a raft in the ocean, it’s a search and rescue mission.

We must get into the cold water with a life jacket in hand, because they are scared. They would rather fail from not trying, than fail after trying, because that is too humiliating. They will do what they can to avoid any more bruising. Protecting their fragile ego.

Because I am them, I know how to find them and get them safely back to shore. I won’t let you drown I try to say to them in the silent language of my gaze. Ich und Du, I and thou.

In this space created between us, the atoms that will form pathways, bridges, avenues trails and rails. Seeds yielding life.

While working with children I will often sense the profound field that is created, and the words I and Thou, coined by Vienna born philosopher, Martin Buber.

My first awareness of Buber is in a Jewish Encyclopaedia, where in volume ‘B’, there is in an old photo of Buber from the early 60s. My young father’s face beams out from among all the parade celebrants at the side of the eighty-year-old philosopher!

Without having read his work, I sense that this is in part Buber’s thesis, his foundation. Success lies in the space between. The mutuality. Where, sharing that same space, rapport is experienced. Then, can come communication, where all is possible, a third entity of commonality. The new colour made between two primary colours. The fertile green ground of potentiality created between yellow and blue.

The students, like works of art, require similar skills from me. It will be a dance between my will and their potential- a process of discovery.

 My cousin, a child psychologist, connects me with a job to shadow an eight-year-old boy in a private Cambridge elementary school.

W has moved out. This gig should be lucrative and maybe rewarding. I meet Jared, the boy, and his mother for a preliminary interview over coffee.

He is quite a frail little thing, sleepy heavy lids, freckled chipmunk cheeks. He smiles politely, wiggling in his chair with feet dangling a foot from the floor.

I am now part of the second-grade class. The children pet my burgundy velvet full bodysuit. Jared throws blocks across the class at some other children and then runs out of the building. The teacher wants Jared out altogether. His meagre demeanour becomes meaner and meaner as he morphs into a petite terror.

I am given my own little office in hopes that I will occupy him for the school day and keep everyone safe.

Initially, I am told that Jared gets frustrated because he has learning challenges. Squatting on the floor of my office, he sharpens a pencil, and with great fervour, stabs my booted foot repeatedly, a maniacal grin across his face.

‘How is Jared doing? Is he learning his math?’ Asks his quaffed and tailored mother, sitting in my office a few days later in all shades taupe. ‘Well, when we can get past his anger.’ I answer.

‘He’s not angry,’ she replies, placing her hands in her lap.

‘Actually,’ I respond, ‘he is REALLY angry. ‘She smiles and clearing her throat explains, ‘Oh no, he’s just acting angry.’

Jared, though abusive, seems to need me. I’m the only one he has here, the only one who acknowledges that he is angry. But after years of a marriage with anger hurled in my direction at light speed, on the subway platform fresh from work, I hold back tears.

I sceptically purchase a book on energy healing from a local bookstore.

I sit at my kitchen table and read. This all makes perfect sense to me. Traditional therapy only builds a road between the emotional to that of the mental. To contextualize feelings, very important, a start, but ultimately limited. I learn that there are aspects of the self that the self cannot access. This speaks to my floundering stuck state. It seems I should consult someone that has studied with the author. I successfully track down someone in the Boston area.

After reading the book I make an appointment with Perry, an energy healer, I explain my situation...Jared is so angry and W was so angry...and I can’t take anymore anger. They need me, but abuse the one closest.

‘That’s because you are angry.’ Perry explains. ‘I’m not angry.’ I shuffle uneasy in an easy chair. He smiles, ‘No, you’re angry.’

 ‘Jared is not separate from you,’ he explains, ‘but rather an extension of you, and you need to see him as such, and only then, will you both heal this.’

The next morning, I take Perry’s advice. Jared and I go to the gym, and at the count of three, I instruct, we will hurl ourselves into the mats that are hanging on the wall.

‘One two three.’ We leap into the thick foam rubber blue plastic. SMASH. A shock as our bodies hit the mats.

Release. Laughter. And again.

Jared’s moods improve, as do mine. As he lightens, his academics, handwriting, and focus improve along with a joy of learning. They have diagnosed him all wrong. It’s not his school performance that makes him upset, but rather his upset that makes it impossible for him to concentrate on school work.

We write, do math, and research his favourite subject - dogs. We read about Max, a beat poet puppy and Jared writes poetry. But his parents become very concerned the day he punches a pillow.

I had brought in a pillow for him to punch as a way to express and expel the excessive, unmet anger. And, because I am now no longer threatened by anger myself, there is no invisible cap or limit to what I can handle. He is free to fully rage, and I am comfortable letting him go as far as he needs.

His slight boy frame collapses to the ground in exhaustion. Then he crawls back up and swipes some more. And when he is done, he is done. It is done. There is peace.

The next morning, we compose a poem together about the pillow, which he has beaten and thrashed the day before.

The Nothing Pillow, by Jared N.

My pillow is the colour of a sunset, it is soft as cloud, sits nice and warm like sitting by a warm fire in the winter, I want to lay on my pillow, to look at it, and make sure its ok. I call it the nothing pillow because it doesn’t do anything, and when I lie on it, I think of nothing. The stuffing is like cotton candy, I want to eat it. When I hold my pillow,

I feel happy as can be, I feel happy like a warm bed. Good night.

His parents accuse me of riling him up.

By the end of a winter that had left Cambridge squinty bright when the sun reflected off the miles of chalky white snow, that fell that year, Jared has a new school.

A few weeks later Jared’s prominent lawyer father calls to apologize for accusations and to thank me for ‘keeping it together’ when everyone else was ‘going under.’ Jared’s Head of Child Psychology therapist lauds me for seeing what even he missed. He writes me a letter of recommendation for a Master’s in social work at an East Coast school, but West cost is beckoning.

At my new job, I am asked to tutor Eric, athletic, magnetic smile and sweet nature.

He slips through years of Hebrew classes without learning how to read. Now, I am hired to catch him up, prepare him to come in front of the community for his Bar Mitzvah, leading and chanting prayers and scripture in Hebrew.

I work with Eric and he makes great strides. When I move to LA, another teacher takes over for me. She calls me and wants to know the secret of my success.

‘How did you do it Masha? Did you find out his diagnosis?’

‘No,’ I explain, I have a distrust and disinterest in diagnoses. They are too often wrong.

‘Then how? You did really well with him. What did you do?’

‘I played football with him,’ I answer.

‘What? Football? What are you talking about?’ He is athletic, and I show up on the football field, looking inept where he is a star. I’m on his turf, willing to be incompetent, willing to look foolish. So, he is prepared to take a risk with me, in my classroom.

We are equals, willing to go beyond protected boundaries, defended borders, trusting that the other will gently guide us towards success with encouragement and aplomb.

I hadn’t really had a plan, just instincts. I hadn’t been trained, I was unorthodox, just showing up empty and trying to intuit with the children, something no one had done for me. My dyslexia creates empathy and understanding, but I have no direct or received method for guiding them through.

With Rabbinical aspirations and schooling, I sometimes tutor and officiate the Jewish coming of age ceremony for those thirteen years of age, a Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.

Many of the tweens I work with are outside of the synagogue school system for one reason or another - a parent not Jewish, kids with learning issues, or the child that surprises parents by wanting the ceremony when the family is not particularly religious.

Because many of the students have no Jewish background, my lessons encompass everything from reading and writing Hebrew, learning about holidays, customs and liturgy, while preparing for the ceremony that they will lead in English and Hebrew.

We often meet at coffee shops accompanied with warm sweet drinks and pastries.

Each child is a riddle with a pad lock keeping them from full success. I unscramble codes and unlock each child, one conversation, lesson, or exchange, at a time.

Ich und Du

Mitch and Devon are twin brothers. One is very sensitive, polite, deeply moral. The other is sweet natured and only interested in baseball. Neither one wants to be studying for a Bar Mitzvah. Both are only doing it for their parents.

Mitch is certain this is not for him, but reconciled. He finds religion superfluous since all humans, in his estimation, know innately how to behave and do the right thing.

Dyslexia teaches me that, because I don’t have answers like a glossary of terms I can retrieve on demand, I am empty, open with receptors up. I understand I need to approach each child on his and her own terms, comfortable with not knowing. And, through listening, with the desire and faith to prevail, there is only the Ich und Du. There, I will find the answers, in the space between us. All is revealed.

Writing the Bar Mitzvah speech offers great opportunity to crystalize and articulate beliefs and ideas. It is a way to forge the nascent adult identity, affirming the individual within the context of family and community.

The individual within society, a balance we have not been able to quite achieve. A society which prizes the self at the expense of the greater collective breeds sickness, but also, failing to value the individual weakens the strength of the collective. Middle path says Buddhism, middle path.

Mitch expands on the idea of empathy ‘You know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’

Devon recites, ‘I discovered that Judaism and baseball are similar in many ways. Baseball and Judaism both have rules which allow everyone to play together, a way to measure yourself, and a standard to strive for. Both try to push you to be your best, the rabbi is like a coach, they can guide you, try to help you improve, but it is really up to you.’

After the service, I overhear Mitch say to his younger cousin, ‘Are you going to have a Bat Mitzvah? You should, it’s a lot of work but it’s so worth it.’ He sees that I overhear him. I lower my eyes, smiling in my heart.

Everyone has given up on Alex having a Bar Mitzvah. He is now fourteen.

I am told his ‘condition’ prior to our first lesson. He is diagnosed with mild Asperger’s. He needs structure, I am instructed. Well, if that’s what he needs, that’s what we will do. So, although I am more fluid in my approach, I will adapt to him, I will meet him.

But, structure is not what he needs. During my introduction, I outline in detail a very regimented schedule, and at the end remark, ‘But, I like to be open to inspiration.’

He smiles saying, ‘Yeah, that works for me.’

I ask him to repeat this, making sure he heard and understood.

We never have a rigid schedule from that day onward. He thrives. What I learn about him is the opposite of what the specialists advise. His emotions are very strong, if not addressed at the onset he is moody and unfocused. He must identify his feelings, needs, options, solutions, choices. We have incredible success, and fun. He is philosophical, creative, sensitive and sincere. He craves to express himself, to be heard. As do we all.

Maddie is bright and sassy. Her father is a professor of neurology and she, with the mind of a scientist and the attitude of a Westside girl, thinks that God and Hebrew school is a waste of her time. For weeks I try to find a way to reach her, bring her into the conversation. I explain that her agnostic voice is relevant and welcome in our class, that she too is an equally valuable part of the class. This doesn’t seem to mean anything.

I am losing her. It is like struggling with a painting. I will not give up.

We are making a short film based on a line from Deuteronomy, ‘Love God with all your heart, all of your soul, all of your everything.’ I open a conversation with her saying, ‘This project might be challenging for you to work on since you don’t believe in God.’

‘Yup.’ Only half snarky.

‘Let’s see if we can figure this out, a way for this to work for you.’

We discuss theology, science, creation, belief. She is unsure. ‘So, it’s a mystery to you?’ I reframe. ‘Yeah.’

‘What if we replace the word God for ‘Mystery’, I suggest. Instead we will say, ‘I love The Mystery with all my heart all my soul and all my everything. Would that feel right for you? Would that work?’

Bingo! Game changer! Maddie, is able to find integrity and meaning in her studies from this point forward.

The Bat Mitzvah makes sense as she can place herself comfortably in the tradition. When it comes time for her Bat Mitzvah, she uses the term, ‘The Mystery’ in her speech to the community, she learns her material quickly and easily.

Establishing trust is paramount.

Carl Jung believes and trusts implicitly that his patients must and will arrive at the right decisions on their own.

Since this marks one’s journey towards adulthood, I point out that this is a good example of exercising adult wisdom.

There is a time I had abandoned Ich und Du, and the consequences are not good. When I seek advice from ‘the experts’, my life lessons overwhelmingly expose their deficits, imploring me to trust my own wisdom.

A teenage boy directs a comment to me during class, ‘I thought of you the other day- in my bed.’

I consult the school therapist. ‘You need to talk to him, tell him this makes you uncomfortable.’ She insists.

I ask to speak to him after class and it’s awkward. I’m uncomfortable. These are not my words, my real sentiments. He looks shamed, mortified. He thought he was being cute.

My discussion with him hadn’t come from an authentic place in me, or acknowledged our genuine connection.

Sometimes, I handle sexual inappropriateness with a bit more levity and mastery. Two boys in the back of the seventh-grade class attempt to shock me.

‘Masha, is penis a bad word?’

‘No, penis is my favourite word,’ I respond. Screams from the back row. They babble and yell, arms flailing in adolescent gainliness.

‘Are you serious? ‘No sillies, let’s get on with work.’

I never have a behaviour problem again with this class. Putty.

And then there are the teachers that are pivotal in my life.

Geraldine Jackson, five feet of feisty, with pixy short hair and reading glasses that slide down a slightly pug nose. Lean and sparky. Often scary. She is the math teacher. I am a computative disaster. She puts me in the lower group and ignores me. The next year, she teaches English.

There is no awareness of different learning styles at this time. I assume stupidity is the culprit. ‘She’s sweet, creative.’ Is the best a teacher can say of me.

I am even a creative speller!

Every week Mrs. Jackson gives us a creative writing assignment. One week, though mine is short, my story on re-gifting makes her laugh. She reads it to the class. I am now on her radar.

From this point forward, I rise and rise to the bar set before me, becoming one of the two highest graded students in the class for creative composition. Myself and my friend, Missy.

I am not much for competition, more the Aphrodite than the Athena or Artemis. I am thrilled for us both. She is driven, petit though complains she is fat, frets about failing tests when she will score a ninety-eight.

Chances are I will score a thirty out of a hundred and I am woefully chubby. Eleven years of age.

The thesaurus is now my trusty companion, my favourite game - the wonderment of words! I seek them out, hunting words like a scavenger, a canine on the trail, a pirate for loot ‘n booty. Then, savouring the delight of the hunt, I tack them to sentences like animal heads to plaque and wall.

My treasury of gemmed jewels to which I will devote myself first comes in the form of the sixth grade Friday creative compositions where, I pull all-nighters, writing and rewriting.

Here, it starts. Deep into the hushed amorphous night, I am most awake, discovering shapes in the shapeless, word-less, time space, planting and harvesting in the rich fertile darkness. I am free.

Construction of the bridge begins.

I am born into the tribe of Israelites, the Children of

Israel, people of the book. Israel, Yisrael means ‘wrestles with God.’

What does it mean to be dyslexic as one from the people of the book?

I’m one who wrestles with books.  

[breakingdownsu]

A String of Pearls Chapter Ten

Continuing my burst of sudden free-time-having creativity, I bring you another chapter of this fic, as well as another spamming of my now-available-on-Amazon novel that I finally got finished and uploaded. The better I can do with my original work the more free time I'll have to work on both original and fanworks, so please excuse me for spamming the link. Also for a limited time, you can get it for free, I only ask that if you do get it for free that you leave an honest review after reading:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BGSPPBY

And now, back to our somewhat regularly scheduled pearl-related shenanigans.

…..

Champion

It started as a joke. It was never meant to go so far.

The matches had been getting dull; the initial thrill of running something illegal right under the noses of Homeworld's higher ups ran out after a few dozen matches, and there were only so many times you could watch a big burly gem beat the stuffing out of another big burly gem before the shine wore off.

They had never had any problems sourcing the fighters; most of the time they were retired Jaspers looking for some action, or Amethysts stuck working boring jobs who missed out on breaking up riots and storming black market compounds. Occasionally a rogue Topaz or a collection of fused Rubies would join in just for flavour, but nine times out of ten the match was Jasper vs Amethyst.

The betting pool still brought in decent cash, but even the regular betters were getting tired of the same old thing. The Hematite running the operation was not a gem that tended to get stressed out, but this was worrying her. The betters were starting to drift away.

“I don't know, throw something in,” her companion Larimar had muttered after listening to her complain about it again and again. “Something they're not expecting. A pearl or something.”

Hematite stopped dead in her tracks.

A pearl?

A pearl had no chance of winning even if they wrapped it in protective layers and put an electron charge on it, but it would be something to see. Hematite knew there were certain subsections of Gem society that paid good money to see pearls destroyed. On a personal level she thought those gems were creeps, but their money was as good as anyone's.

“Yes, a pearl,” she mused out loud. “Why not? For the novelty....”

“Well, don't look at mine,” Larimar retorted, pulling her own pearl onto her lap. “I just had it redesigned.”

“Of course not,” Hematite scoffed. “I'm not going to use a good one. We can get some worn-out scrap from the black market, doll it up to look like new. The patrons won't know the difference.”

They found the 'worn-out scrap' two cycles later; it was a former barracks pearl, with its gem still miraculously intact. Hematite set Larimar up to make the pearl look as sweet and dainty as possible. She was given a redesign in shades of pink and aqua, her hair cut to a neat waifish bob and outfitted in a plain white frock with a single layer of ruffles on the edge. It looked harmless.

As expected, the first arena match of the night was sold out in parsecs, gems clamoured to see the pearl get smashed to pieces live and in person. Even the regular fighters begged to be the ones to do it; in the end Hematite chose a particularly large Jasper with deep battle scars to contrast the tiny pearl.

“Just...do your best,” Hematite said when the pearl asked what her orders were.

The fight started, and it looked like it would be over in parsecs when the Jasper swung an enormous hammer down on the pearl.

Except the pearl dodged out of the way, nimbly ran up the handle of the hammer and the Jasper's arm and drove a loose screw she had found somewhere into the Jasper's eye. The Jasper howled, pulled away, and the pearl swung around her head to the back of her neck and drove the screw in there.

The audience were silent, too dumbstruck to comprehend what they were seeing.

Once the Jasper's spine had been immobilized and she collapsed to the ground, the pearl dropped neatly to the floor, managed to pick up the hammer and brought it down on the Jasper's head, hitting her gem dead one.

Boom. The match was over.

Hematite couldn't find a single word. The pearl stood in the middle of the arena, in the dust of her conquered foe, waiting for instructions. The audience mumbled and stared. They had paid good money to see the pearl destroyed, but this was so unexpected they just didn't know how to react.

“Well, it looks like we have a winner,” Larimar said at last, striding with (fake) confidence and holding up the pearl's skinny little arm in victory.

For the next few cycles, as they wrestled with themselves over what to do, the pearl sat in a corner with Larimar's pearl, calmly waiting for more orders.

“It was a fluke,” Larimar hissed for what seemed like the hundredth time. “They are not made for fighting, for Core's sake! I slapped mine the other day and she fell over! It was just a defective Jasper.”

“That Jasper won fifteen matches,” Hematite hissed back.

“Well, then, she must have taken damage,” Larimar retorted. “That hammer wasn't as solid as it should have been, otherwise the pearl would never have been able to lift it. She was on the verge of crumbling anyway and just didn't have the decency to say it to you.”

Reluctantly, they staged another match. This time, they chose an Amethyst who was relatively new to the arena, and proven to be strong.

Her strength didn't matter in the end; the pearl prised a long shred of metal from the fence and dug it in behind the Amethyst's gem, snapping it in two.

When they sent another Jasper in afterwards, the pearl managed to break both of its arms by dodging her throws at the last minute, then stepped neatly on her windpipe and kicked her gem until it was destroyed.

The audience were morbidly fascinated, and it kept them coming back every time. No matter who the pearl was set up against, she always managed to find a way to kill them.

Not beat. Kill.

Even in the roughest matches before the introduction of the pearl, a gem shattering was a rare occurrence. The loser usually yielded when they felt their lives were in danger, but going up against the pearl meant they had no time to yield.

It was frightening, too, how the pearl always managed to find something to turn into a weapon. Even when they removed as much debris from the arena as possible she found something; a piece of the flooring, a chunk of concrete, a shoe thrown by an audience member, even her own severed arm. Her preferred technique, it seemed, was the opponent gem's own manifested weapon.

She had no shortage of opponents. Hematite had worried that the pearl's vicious track record would stop other gems from wanting to fight her, but it had actually become a matter of pride for the fighting gems to be the one to finish her off. They died in their tens, and then twenties, and after a time in their hundreds.

Rumours were spread that the pearl was infected with a zoatox, and it still didn't stop gems wanting to fight or audiences wanting to watch. Hematite desperately wanted to end the matches and have the pearl liquidated but the proceeds made up so much of her income now that she couldn't afford it.

At the end of every match, she had to bring the pearl back to her home, perch it in the corner with Larimar's pearl, and hope that the pearl had decided not to target her.

Sister, you are doing well. Are you happy?

I am quite happy. Many are gone. I shall destroy many more.

Why did you do this? You said you wanted your gem destroyed. You gave me your memories.

She told me to do my best. And so I did.

…..

Distracted

It was a bad idea to bring a pearl with them. That's what they had been told, even though they all spluttered and insisted that they didn't have a pearl, it was against the rules.

(They did, of course. She was under the floorboards.)

The cycle before they were due to leave, five of them individually had the idea to take her out of hiding and stow her in the pipes of the ship. They happened to bump into each other on the way to get her, and swore each other to secrecy. The pearl, for her part, amiably crouched in the pipe for the entire journey with no more damage than a face full of soot upon landing.

The planet was meant to be mostly unoccupied. A handful of zoatoxes, that was what they had been told. When they were rushed, Jasper 72-BF panicked, grabbed the pearl and ran for her life. Somehow, they managed to get away.

Jasper co-ordinated with some of the others that had gotten away, but they were deep in zoatox territory now with no hope of getting out. The ship was overrun and they were a long way from the nearest warp pad.

“We go in shield formation,” the defacto leader told them grimly. “Everyone takes a turn on the outside, no exceptions.”

“What about the pearl?” Jasper 72-BF asked.

“Doesn't count,” the leader spat.

So they proceeded in shield formation, the main body of the group surrounded by the shield Jaspers looking every way possible for danger, and the pearl skipping nonchalantly three paces behind them. When they did trigger a nest awakening, the pearl moved out of the way to let them fight, as ordered.

Three cycles in, they were down to just seven individuals, worn out and wounded. The warp pad was still a good distance away.

“I don't think I can do this any more,” Jasper 72-BF mumbled, more to herself than anyone listening. “Just shatter my gem now. It's better than being taken by those things.”

The other gems groaned in agreement. Their leader had been taken during the last attack and their morale had been taken with her.

“Excuse me?”

The pearl's melodious trill was incongruous to their surroundings and their situation, so at first they thought they had imagined it. Some of them had even forgotten the pearl was still there, unharmed.

“Um...I think I can help? If you need it,” she insisted.

The Jaspers gaped at her. The pearl rarely spoke unless spoken to, and even then not much beyond stroking someone's ego or agreeing with something.

“Okay, whatever,” Jasper 72-BF muttered, sinking to the ground. “Let's hear it.”

“Zoatoxes are not interested in pearls, and I can communicate with them. I can lead them away from you if you like.”

The Jaspers looked at each other in stunned silence. This was an option?

“Why didn't you say anything before?” one of them finally asked.

“Jasper 46-BF ordered me to stay silent. She is gone now, and the order is nullified.”

That made an awful sort of sense. To think, they'd had a way out of this mess the whole time but one of them had screwed it up by throwing her weight around. Typical.

“Okay, sounds good to me,” Jasper 72-BF admitted. “I'm willing to try anything. But what happens if you lead them away and we get to the warp pad without you?”

“You leave me here,” the pearl shrugged. “I will be fine.”

They didn't like it, but it was better than nothing.

They continued in shield formation, but this time the pearl walked ahead of them, gesturing back for them to stop when she had located a hive. They watched from a safe distance as she made some odd movements with her limbs, and to their astonishment the zoatox got up and left.

“How did you do that?” Jasper 72-BF whispered when she got a chance.

“Pearl gesture-speak and zoatox language are very similar,” the pearl replied.

Pearls have their own language?

They located the warp pad, and as expected it was crawling with zoatox. The pearl readied herself to go to them, but before she did she gave Jasper 72-BF a small object made of cloth.

“Please give this to the next pearl you own,” she said, and then she was gone.

They warped out as soon as the last zoatox clattered away, landing to answer hundreds of questions about the planet, the infestation and how they had managed to survive. They explained about the pearl but it was laughed off as impossible, and they were all determined to be suffering from 'zoa-pox', the madness that usually hit after encountering the zoatox.

A new pearl was illicitly purchased for the remainder of the squadron, and on Jasper 72-BF's first night with her she gave her the little object.

“What is it?” she asked curiously, still thinking of the pearl wandering around alone on that planet surrounded by zoatox and shuddering.

“It is for pearls to know,” the new pearl answered, and no more was said.

[qqueenofhades]

I have a somewhat historical question I guess that I was wondering if you knew anything about. A common trope I see in any media taking place in any time period before early to mid 20th century is the mother dying in childbirth thing? And I was just wondering (even just in regards to the time period of your expertise) what we're the mortality rates for women in childbirth?

Heh. Well. (This is probably going to be way more than you wanted to know, but I believe in being thorough.)

First, childbirth has always been risky (women still die from it in modern countries in modern hospitals with all of 21st century medicine behind them, and it’s still a major health concern for countries in the developing world – Sierra Leone in Africa has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world, with up to 1,360 deaths per 100,000 births, or a 1 in 17 chance). So childbirth in the pre-modern era, without possibility of surgical intervention (unless to save the baby and kill the mother), painkillers, modern hygiene, X-ray/ultrasound equipment, and sterilized hospital settings, was dangerous. Ignaz Semmelweis and Alexander Gordon, two 18th/19th-century obstetricians who investigated the causes of puerperal fever or childbed fever, and concluded that it could often be prevented by the doctor just vigorously washing his hands between deliveries (and not, you know, performing an autopsy on a dead body and going straight to deliver a baby) were treated with complete ridicule by the scientific establishment and branded as charlatans. (This, as you may notice, will become a theme.) Modern germ theory and sterile instruments weren’t established until the late 19th century. So yes, the risk was very real, and noble and common women alike died in childbirth. We obviously don’t have anything resembling detailed demographic information, but we can conclude the rate would be similar to a developing country today.

However, this is very far from saying that no kind of maternal or prenatal care or practice existed. This is once again where we discover how terrible the late medieval/Renaissance era was for women’s rights/education/professional liberty/basically everything (seriously, Renaissance, your art is nice, but otherwise you can fuck off). In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the famed medical university at Salerno, in Italy, fairly freely accepted female students and professors, and their most famous professor and scholar on women’s health was Trota of Salerno, who gave her name and a good deal of her own experience to the three texts known as the “Trotula.” These were each written by a different author under Trota’s supervision and authority, and the first two books, “Book on the Conditions of Women” and “On Treatment of Women” represent a detailed gynecological handbook with advice on all kinds of pregnancy/childbirth-related ailments – uterine prolapse, perineum tears, medicines, and other solutions from a practitioner who, unlike her male counterparts, could actually touch and study her patients’ bodies. Trota is referred to as a “magistra” (the female form of Latin magistro or master) and her work was widely circulated and read in England and Normandy as well as Sicily (which was under Norman rule itself from about the mid-eleventh century). So she was a famous doctor and scholar in her own day (until, of course, she was obscured/changed to male/ignored/nearly forgotten until the twentieth century). Another “magistra”, Hersend of France, accompanied Louis IX on crusade in the thirteenth century and treated both the king himself and the female members of the crusade contingent. 

Of course, ordinary women would not have had access to these highly trained female physicians, and most midwives had no special or formal training aside from their own practical experience. As well, almost everyone writing medical texts was (shockingly!) a man, making it nearly impossible to know much about these actual practitioners. Since pregnancy was, of course, a result of sex, the church had plenty of opinions on it as well. The suffering of childbirth was supposed to be the proper punishment for original sin, so anything that dulled the pain was frowned on, and when actual training of midwives was instituted in the later medieval era, the concern was mostly on whether they knew how to perform an emergency baptism for the child’s sake, rather than any care of the mother. (Wow…. this sounds… awfully familiar, doesn’t it?) Nonetheless, there are literally dozens of texts from antiquity to the Renaissance, representing folk/informal recipes and methods for contraception and abortion. We don’t know how well any of these worked, if at all, and they were usually (again) written by men trying to tell women what to avoid (but having the effect of also giving them the information if they wanted it). But there was a vast and probably at least somewhat effective corpus of traditions/medicines/rudimentary contraceptive methods available and transmitted through female practitioners.

None of this was ever taught to men, naturally, and the universities, as they became more established, did their damndest to stamp out “unlicensed” practitioners, which really meant women. The 1322 trial of Jacoba Felicie, a female doctor in Paris, is basically representative of the later medieval pushback against women practitioners. Jacoba’s patients, both male and female, testified that she was a highly skilled doctor and they had gotten better after visiting her – but the court’s judgment was that since she was a woman, she couldn’t possibly be as good a doctor as a man, and she was barred from practice. (If this post was Misogyny, Take a Shot, I think we would all be hammered by now.) That decision also led to legislation to keep women out of universities/medical school in France (in 1421, Henry V also banned them in England). So once again: You Suck, Renaissance!

This also involves questions of medieval sexuality, religion, and general hygiene/attitudes toward cleanliness and medical care. First, aside from the texts mentioned above that discuss folk remedies for contraception, a medieval woman had various strategies to space her children that didn’t just rely on hoping her husband didn’t rape her too much (as I have ranted about before). Also, it’s worth pointing out that children were a natural and expected part of medieval marriage, and most couples would be more interested in ensuring they had children, rather than preventing them – limiting family size to the average 2.5 children is a modern conceit once more linked to capitalism and the de-coupling of marriage/family/household from its function as a unit of economic production, as I wrote about here. Children were valuable as heirs to noble families or working members of a lower-class family, and with likewise high infant/child mortality, you could sometimes have a number of children and hope that one or two of them made it to adulthood. 

However, that didn’t mean that all medieval women just pumped out babies until they couldn’t have any more. The third-century Roman physician Galen’s theory of female orgasm being necessary to conceive was considerably well-known in the medieval era. While this backfired on rape victims, as it was figured they couldn’t have gotten pregnant if they didn’t enjoy it (paging Todd Akin… wow, this is depressing, isn’t it?), it also meant that your average medieval married couple would have believed that the woman, not just the man, experiencing pleasure was necessary to have children. Cue the church clutching its pearls in the background, but the official Catholic theology and teaching of sexuality was, again, mutable. The thirteenth-century sect of the Cathars viewed all sex, married or otherwise, as evil, so in response and opposition to them, the Catholic church began glorifying marital sex to some degree. There was a recognition that both spouses owed each other sexual availability and pleasure, and marriages could be dissolved if this wasn’t upheld on either end.

As well, since close to half the days of the year (Wednesdays, Fridays, Sundays, Lent, Advent, holy days, six weeks after childbirth, etc) were regarded as impermissible for sexual activity, that meant couples (if they were religiously observant, or if they just wanted to avoid the possibility) had the option of spacing out procreative sexual activity. There wasn’t any institutional or official acceptance of sex outside marriage (though oh boy, it happened – up to 30% of brides were pregnant at their wedding), but there was also a lot of argument about what constituted marriage. It could just be as simple as saying “I take you as my wife/husband” without any church framework or institution whatsoever, and then having intercourse. (See chapter three, “Sex and Marriage,” in Sexuality in Medieval Europe.) The church viewed these couples as fornicators if they hadn’t been married formally, but what we would consider cohabiting unmarried couples (similar to a couple living together before actual marriage today) were fairly common. Noblewomen in particular were expected to give their husbands heirs, but after that, if they didn’t like each other much, he would have mistresses and she could be excused from it. The noble couples we know of with a high number of children seem to have been the ones who genuinely liked each other/had happy marriages anyway, and thus continued having sex even after the succession was secured. 

Plus, the ideal of chastity, both inside and outside of marriage, was very socially influential. The late medieval English mystic Margery Kempe managed (after having fourteen children with her husband) to get him to agree to a chaste marriage (we have him sadly asking her if she would prefer to kill him with a hatchet rather than letting them have sex again – which, after fourteen kids, she might). Women who chose to be virgins or abbesses or nuns were also excused from childbirth, although they sometimes faced pressure from their families to marry and continue the line. But chastity was admired in both men and women, and considered a prerequisite for holiness, so it was a way to avoid sexual activity (and thus more children) as well as getting in the church’s good books.

Lastly, there’s the general idea that people in the medieval era were filthy, dirty, foul-smelling, had rotten teeth, etc. Medieval people probably had structurally better teeth than we did (though obviously without modern dentistry/orthodontics) albeit worn down from grit/particles, because processed sugar wasn’t part of their diet. Next, while obviously they did not know about germs/the root causes of illnesses, they logically associated filth and bad smells with disease. Most cities had ordinances about where you could dump your waste and strict punishment for litterbugs. Full-body bathing was rarer than today, because of how much time and effort it would take to fill a whole tub, but they washed hair, hands, faces, etc regularly, and bathhouses were a part of medieval town culture. They prized sweet smells and perfumed/fragrant herbs, so while they would obviously have more body odor than we do with daily showers/soap/deodorant/etc, they wouldn’t be some strange shit-smeared, rotten-toothed rustic barely one step above a caveperson. In the 1400s, we find the Hotel-Dieu, the major hospital in Paris, believing that pregnant/postnatal women should have three baths a week and their linen washed regularly (that whole article is worth a read – said hospital was also entirely staffed by women/religious sisters).

Since this has gotten super long (as I said, more than you want to know), allow me to summarize. Midwifery/women’s health care has (surprise!) a very long history and was intentionally destroyed/excluded from male-dominated university curriculums, medieval women giving birth did die but not outlandishly/without any treatment at all, and the presence of women in medical school/practice was increasingly restricted up to and around the Renaissance. (It’s a subject of debate how many midwives were targeted in witch hunts, but some of them definitely were.) This also connected to medieval attitudes about sexuality, procreation, religion, and women, and the options that medieval women had for controlling the number of children they had or didn’t have, and their relationships with their husbands and what was expected of them as a result.

I will also note in closing that the “dying in childbirth” thing in historical fiction is a way to easily invoke the ever-present Dead Mother trope in a historically plausible, if rather lazy, way. Since everyone knows women did die (and do die) in childbirth, it becomes an easy way to kill off the protagonist’s mother or to make some point about The Dangers Of Women’s Lives Back Then (whether in-universe or intended for the modern audience). All of which is absolutely the case, but which ignores, as usual, the complexity of the ways in which premodern medicine for women, and women themselves, created a corpus of knowledge and treatment that remains unacknowledged, overlooked, dismissed, or otherwise intentionally destroyed by a patriarchal, misogynistic system.

/takes a bunch of shots

/falls over

[docholligay]

Silverleaf 7: Penthouse Floor

So many thanks to Ben on Patreon for sponsoring this series! Feel free to leave a thank you on this post! Or just leave me a comment, because my ego must be fed. All of Silverleaf is here. 

The building was as intimidating as Michiru herself, the marble of it gleaming even in the dim light provided by the moon and the streetlights. Even those were different here, fashioned in wrought iron and glowing softly in an old-world way, none of the harsh fluorescing of the streetlights back in her neighborhood.

She held her flowers a little tighter. She had even gone to a flower shop, along the way, not stopping at the grocery store as she usually did when she just wanted to brighten up her own home. Michiru deserved flowers from a shop. Fancier ones. But even they, those lilies that she had selected so carefully, cradled together with the classic roses, seemed cheap and inelegant compared with the marble building, the name of it carved in script at the door, the doorman in his neat wool coat cut to his figure as much a decoration for the place as any of the carvings near the entrance.

But she had known Michiru was wealthy when they had made the plans, and she couldn’t see herself giving up just because something was finer than she was used to. Silverleaf was finer than she was used to, wasn’t it? The cafeteria served balsamic glazed salmon, for God’s sake, and she’d done fine at the school, so far.

No, she pulled down on her vest and straightened her tie, there was no reason to fear something being a bit more formal than the world she lived in herself. She displayed her flowers proudly. The woman at the flower shop had tied a nice ribbon around them.

She strolled up to the doorman, who shifted just slightly, just enough to be blocking her way, with a smile on his face.

Haruka recognized it for what it was. “I’m here to see Michiru Kaioh.” She said, hoping it sounded confident.

He nodded, looking at her quickly, and opened the door. It was very likely that Michiru had told him she was coming, but she chose, at the moment, to believe that her confidence had carried her through, and allowed it to bolster her.

The entryway gave no relief from the feeling that her shirt was perhaps just a bit too tight around her neck, the inlaid stone weaving out intricate knotted designs on the floor, and Haruka could feel them grab at her legs like vines.

“Miss Tenoh?” The elevator operator called to her, gesturing toward the far elevator.

There was an elevator operator. Who knew her name.

The illusion that sheer bravado had gotten her through the front door was somewhat dulled.

She nodded, trying to take a deep breath, trying not to seem as endlessly nervous as she was,  and stepped into the small elevator at the end of the lobby. The operator reached in, slid a card through a scanner, and pushed a button that simply said ‘Kaioh’ and Haruka noted that there were only four buttons on the panel itself: Staff, Kaioh, K2, and Pool.

There wasn’t near enough air in this elevator, as far as Haruka could tell.

The elevator went up with a frightening speed, and before Haruka could rethink her tie, her choice in women, and, in fact, the whole of her very life, the doors opened before her, revealing a mahogany door with no name or number attached to it, the only thing in the tiny atrium.

The scent of her too-common lilies wafted up to her nose, the crystal chandelier on the ceiling throwing points of light like bullets on their petals.

She took a deep breath, and walked toward the door, the soles of her dress shoes gripping hard against the marble floor, and she found herself grateful she’d sprung for the Dockers with the grip.

What the hell are you thinking, standing in a place like this thinking Dockers are okay? One of her shoes probably cost as much as your entire outfit, look at what you’re wearing, I know for you a Men’s Wearhouse suit is nice, bu--

“Oh shut up,” she mumbled to herself, “she took me to a fancy restaurant in my workout clothes, she knows I’m not rich.”

These people are beyond rich, Haruka.

She only gave one knock before the door opened, a dour-looking man in a suit quickly glancing up and down at her outfit. “Miss Tenoh, I presume?”

Again with the knowing her name, without her saying. It was meant to be complimentary, Haruka supposed, in this type of world, reassuring that she was known before she ever had to say thing, but it did not make her feel known so much as examined, put under the microscope and found wanting.

She stepped inside, nodding her head.

“May I take your coat?”

“Oh, we won’t be but a moment,” Michiru did not walk into the entryway so much as she glided into it, the delicate chiffon of her mint dress wafting behind her and surrounding her, a nymph caught in  the forest mist, “I’m afraid the grand tour will have to wait for another time.” She gave an inauthentic laugh, the tone of glass beads falling on a tile floor.

Haruka extended the flowers out in front of her in a motion she hoped seemed more gallant than graceless. “These are for you.”

“Oh, how perfectly lovely.” She took them out of Haruka’s hands, smiling, as she opened the carved walnut cabinet against the wall, withdrawing a vase.

“I know they’re not really--”

Michiru turned back to her. “My grandmother told me once that it was presumptuous to reject one’s gift on behalf of another.” She gave a closed mouth smile. ‘The thought was that if the recipient enjoyed the gift, you were calling into question your recipient’s tastes, and that is rude, don’t you agree?”

Haruka was not entirely sure what she’s said, but she knew enough to know that it boiled down to: Stop trashing the flowers.

Michiru set the vase on the credenza, and took a pair of clippers out of the drawer, arranging the flowers artfully and quickly in the sparkling crystal. She indicated to the china vase on the credenza, filled with peonies spilling their petals like explosions into the world.

“Find a more appropriate home for that, I think.” She did not so much as glance at the butler, and he simply nodded, spiriting the arrangment away into another room.

“That’s a pretty vase.” Haruka offered.

“Oh, thank you, it’s a limited edition Martin Ryan. Waterford put it out last year, and Mother simply has to have the newest thing, sometimes.” She clipped a lily and set it near the top of her arrangement, and the flowers that had seemed so simple became art in her hands.

“You’re really good with flowers.”

Michiru looked back at her with what seemed to be a bit of pride. “Yes, well, Mother did have us trained in the classic arts.” She turned back to her flowers, just clipping the accents now, inserting them here and there. “I was also quite the painter, once upon a time. I was, of course, encouraged to follow music, as that’s my true gift, I think it could be fairly said.”

“You paint?” Haruka looked at her, wondering how so much talent could take place in one person. Haruka enjoyed artistic things, she supposed, or at least, she enjoyed going to the art museum, especially on cold days when there weren’t many people, just wandering around and looking at things. Different things gave her different feelings, and sometimes it was nice to be alone with them.

She couldn’t tell Michiru any of this, of course, because it might come out that she didn’t KNOW anything. She could tell you she liked the dark colors, the dramatic movement,  in that Italian painting, in a lot of those ones from the 1600s, but she couldn’t tell you about the movement itself, couldn’t always remember the names, didn’t understand the brushstrokes or anything, not like Michiru did. She didn’t know why the Impressionists painted so thick, like you could fall into a lake of paint and emotion, why it felt to her  that they painted how things felt rather than how they were. She couldn’t tell you why she sometimes felt sad when she looked at that modern Spanish painter, when everyone else just thought they looked weird, but it looked to her like a dream and a nightmare, and she felt like she was losing something when she looked at this paintings, but she didn’t know the year they weren’t painted, and couldn’t remember the style.

It would end up just being embarrassing, all the things she didn’t know, and so she didn't say any of these things, just stood and looked at MIchiru, waiting for an answer.

“Oh,” MIchiru waved her hand away, “only in the most casual sense.”

Right then, Haruka wanted to cancel every plan she’d made, wanted to sweep her away to one of those little bars where you pay to paint, wanted to see her hand glide across the canvas in the effortless way she did everything. She wanted to tell Michiru that she’d always wanted to try it, but never had the courage.

“Maybe you can show me sometime.” Is what she said.

It all seemed so easy sitting there with Mouse in her apartment, practicing what she would say, and how she would say it, but here, in MIchiru’s entryway, the scent of her lilies hung in the air against the scent Haruka could only understand as ‘wealth,’ that same scent that she’d smelled working as a catering waitress in college, her awkward black pencil skirt just hitting under the deep scar where the surgeon had cut her life away.

She stood in the entryway, standing out against like the shiny red raise of the same scar, which prickled uncomfortably against her pant leg.

“You look lovely.” Michiru’s voice lilted into the destruction of Haruka’s thoughts.

You idiot, you forgot to tell her how nice she looks. This is why Yu--

“You’re so beautiful, Michiru.” It came out of her mouth softly, almost stumbling out of it like water over rocks in a stream, and just as pure.

Michiru did not say anything for a moment, simply looked at Haruka with a look Haruka could not decipher, another piece of art that refused to give up its secrets to her. She touched the pearls with the pink hue around her neck.

“That is very kind of you to say,” she looked, for a moment, almost shy, but recovered herself, “And what might my gentlelady caller have in mind for this evening?”

“Well,” Haruka remembered herself and swooped around to her side, taking Michiru’s coat from the hands of the butler, who had magically reappeared, unbidden, and sliding it over her shoulders, so close to touching her skirt, as desired and forbidden as any canvas, “there’s this little wine bar over by my apartment, it’s nothing fancy, but...I thought you might like it.”

It was a lie, but only a small one. It was little, it was by her apartment, and she had thought Michiru would like it. By the light of day it was nothing much. It had been a stationery store in a another life. But in the night, it transformed, and  to her it was fancy, intimate tables swaddled in white linen cuddled together under low lights, like captured fireflies hung above the couples in love she looked in on with envy. The cool claret of dark wines painting the inside of thin crystal glasses. She dreamed of sharing that small chocolate cake, smiling as the tines of their forks touched.

It was fancy in the way she was fancy, common but dressed up in a nice enough package, shined and polished and beautiful enough under dim light. Fancy in the way Haruka felt when she made a nice meal for her and Mina, with a paired wine, nothing much to the world, but the world to her, something she thought she could never be.

She shrugged, and Michiru buttoned her coat, and looked up at Haruka.

“I think it sounds quite perfect.”