#lush swap

[theradicalace]

i talked to three (3) other trans people at the mall Ws only

[saturdaymournings]

Damn I’m so proud of myself actually. I got so used to living that I forgot about products and now I don’t even give a shit anymore. Good for me!

[urprettylildoe]

people like yandere gardener didn't get to complain about their lack of privileges. It's all people like him had.

so when his friend told him about a rich lady looking for a gardener for her house, the opportunity was too good not to pass up.

Upon reaching the estate, the first thing he noticed was that it was huge. It stood lavish and imposing, flanked by stone gates. Lush green lawns surrounded the area, dotted with flower beds.

If his breath wasn't taken away then, it sure was when a soft voice spoke behind him.

"Hi!" he turned his head to see you; a stunning woman dressed elegantly and adorned in luxury — the definition of class. "you must be the gardener we hired."

Ah, you were the one who hired him (his friend had spoken to you prior, but he hadn't met you in person before).

He found himself smiling warmly, fidgeting with his collared shirt, wondering if you noticed how it was slightly ripped at the hem. "Yes, ma'am, that's me."

"Oh, you don't know how much of a relief it was to finally find a good gardener. It means a lot for you take up the job," you were practically bouncing on your toes with barely-restrained delight.

Damn, he sure did win the lottery with this one. Nice paying job and a gorgeous lady-?

All the illusion was shattered when a deep, authorative voice spoke behind.

"There you are, sweetie. I was wondering where you went," a mature, wealthy-looking man wrapped an arm around you.

The young gardener's face drained of all colour when you cuddled into him, a dreamy smile on your lips that was reserved just for the intruder. It seemed like had spoken too soon for his own good.

"Darling, this is the gardener i was telling you about." you looped your arm through your husband's.

It seemed like yandere gardener had a thorn in his side. But he was never one to let precious things slip through his fingers. So in front of your husband, he nodded his head in respect.

You showed him around the garden, rambling on and on. It wasn't't everyday that he'd find a lady as sweet as you to work for. Nowadays, they all curled their lips in disdain at anyone who they couldn't leech off of for their money.

But you? Never you.

Always bringing him inside, offering him a cold beverage, smiling all pretty. C'mon baby, don't you know that you're practically begging him to take what he wants?

He decided to test the waters one day, see if you would reciprocate. He comes in, sweaty and chest bared as usual, while you're sat down on the plush couch flipping through a magazine.

You look up, asking: "oh, you're done already?"

Stretching, he sauntered over to you, "yeah, nothing too hard for little ol' me." that comment made you laugh, your eyes squinting adorably and making his jeans awfully tight.

Sometimes, when your husband's away, he imagines what life would be if he was yours. Coming home from his fancy job, kissing you senseless and cuddling up to you.

A man could only dream. But he's spent all his life dreaming, so is it really wrong to turn this one into reality?

"Here; let me pour you a drink"

His fingertips brushed your arm as you pour him a drink, a spark sizzling between both of you. Yet, you continued to hand him the cup. You were so loyal to an undeserving man it hurt.

He knew that your relationship seemed to be good — always all over each other. Still, you could be going through something far worse behind closed doors.

So, he'll bid his time, then sweep you off your feet.

─ ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──── ♡ ─── ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ ──

The house was busy as usual, but not for the same reasons.

Your cheeks were stained with fresh tears, usual attire swapped out for black clothes. Your mother-in-law, equally devastated, tried to console you, but something tells you it wouldn't heal the wound burnt into your chest.

Blunt force trauma resulting from a fall down the stairs.

Your thoughts were jumbled. Your heart was heavy. It was too much. How could you have let this happen? How did you not notice him while he was asleep? Were you such a horrible wife not to hear him fall? How-

"Ma'am?"

You looked up to see the gardener. Somehow, amidst your weeping, you had found yourself back inside the house. His face was softened in concern, and his shaggy hair hung over his eyes.

Sniffling: "yes, yes, i'm fine."

Silence hung in the air afterwards. You didn't fool him. A beat later, " no, you're not."

Unable to hold it all in, your tears spilled over your cheeks once again. "Sobs ripped harshly from your throat.

Too grief-ridden to notice the way his arms wrapped around you so intimately, or how he smiled against his hair, cooing over your state and hushing you. Too vunerable to even refuse his wandering touch.

The days after that were a blur. At times, you were angry at the world. Other times, you were wallowing in your room, curled up on your shared bed. Even too tired to even cry some days.

But he was there. Caring. Hovering. Loving.

He picked you back up on your feet, holding you at rock bottom, reassuring you. It felt rationalised in his mind, almost like a partner comforting his husband. You were too depressed to even pay any mind to him or even assume that he was doing this out of anyone but sympathy,

"Why do you stick around?" You asked one day. Your voice was hoarse, nose runny and eyes puffy. "I appreciate you caring for me but there's no need — you don't get paid enough to do this."

Sitting in your bed, he smiled fondly and brushed a hair out of your face. It was cute how you thought he was in it for the money. "I don't need to get paid to take care of you, ma'am." A pause. "You're already doing enough by letting me stay here with you."

You were so oblivious. You didn't need to know about that his death wasn't exactly an accident. More like a push in the right direction to put it simply.

And when you begin to heal from the tender wounds, he'll glue the pieces of your heart back together in the places he wants them to be. He'll take care of you.

Yandere gardener who every day when he watches you sleep justifies his actions by reminding himself that your late husband didn't deserve all of this wealth and a loving wife.

He did.

[xingumi]

summer with megumi (megumi fushiguro x reader)

notes: did this super quick, thank you for all the love on my last post, really i am beyond grateful!! requests r open :3

tags: sfw, fluff, gn!reader, established relationship, very very fluffy, just cuteness, nonsorcerer au

summer with megumi feels like cotton clinging to your skin because he insists on cuddling despite the heat wave. a thin layer of sweat glues your shirt to you, just as megumi has glued himself to your backside. you’d already swapped the duvet out for a light blanket, which has still been kicked halfway off the bed. “i’m dying, megumi,” you huff.

“i’m fixing the AC tomorrow, the fan’s on and the window’s open. it’s out of my hands…” he mutters into the back of your hair.

“let up for one night?” you plead and push your body forward, but the forearm snaking around your waist holding you to him doesn't budge. you feel his weight shift behind you, and for a second you think he might spare you from his body heat. instead, he reaches over to the comically small fan, switching it to a higher setting before reassuming his position right behind you.

“better?”

you accept your fate and lean back into him, knowing this is a fight you’ll never win. “night, honey.” he whispers. his tolerance for sleeping sweaty is stronger than his tolerance for sleeping without cuddling you.

summer with megumi looks like a living claude monet painting. he walks in front of you and gently holds your hand across the small wooden arch bridge. it whines under the weight of the two of you. you peer over the thin railing to look at the water underneath, reflecting the filtered rays of sun and sparkling like diamonds. “watch your step,” he says as you reach the landing. you’re too busy admiring the water lilies and lush greenery that you don’t immediately notice the picnic he’s set out in a shaded area under a weeping willow. he places a light hand on the small of your back to get your attention. you whip your head back and forth in disbelief between your boyfriend and the date he’d methodically planned. he gives you an amused smile. “go on, i’m right behind you.”

you spend the afternoon snacking on the light picnic spread he prepared in the gaps between quiet conversation. the only sound other than your voices is an occasional birdsong and the constant rustling of breeze-shaken leaves. he lays in your lap with his eyes closed, chest rising and falling with his breathing… has he fallen asleep? after a long, quiet moment, you’re sure he has and you take the chance to press a kiss between his eyebrows. “thank you, megumi…”

summer with megumi sounds like juna by clairo. easy, dulcet melodies that play in blown out speakers at the beach. they sound like waves crashing on the shore, mixed with the clean plunk! of a volleyball being hit around by you and your friends. megumi observes your game as the scorekeeper. his white linen is open with a few buttons undone at the top, letting the sun hit his sharp collarbones and his upper chest. “i can’t see the ball with the sun in my eye,” you both know he’s lying, he would rather just watch you after the first couple rounds. you manage to coax megumi to at least dip his feet into the water.

“what did i get you those swim trunks for?” you ask rhetorically. “humor me, please.” you go back and forth for a few moments and he pretends like he can refuse you when you look so pretty like this. he doesn’t actually mind going in the water, he’d do anything at your request. he just wished it were just the two of you, so he could be as affectionate as he wanted without holding back.

he shoves his balled up fists into his pockets and waddles over awkwardly to where the ocean meets the sand. within a few minutes, you already regret asking him to get in. the air is filled with your sharp cries and laughter as he swipes water at you relentlessly.

summer with megumi tastes like one of everything at the food stalls in the carnival that comes into town every summer. he holds your bag on his shoulder as you practically dart from booth to booth. a long afternoon of waiting on line for rickety rollercoasters had built up quite the appetite for you, and everything just smelled so good. megumi decided you shouldn’t have to choose and passed a handful of cash to you quietly. “get me something small too.”

it makes him happy to make you happy. after making sure you ate to your heart’s content, there was only one last thing he wanted to do before heading home for the night.

the sun had just disappeared below the horizon as your ferris wheel cage approached the highest point of the ride. the lights of the carnival below you were warm and dazzling. you squeeze megumi’s hand as the cage rounds the top of the long arch. “thank you for such a great day, megumi,” you breathed, holding his arm close to your chest and resting your cheek on his shoulder. he looked at you with adoration swelling in his eyes. you meet his eyes with heightened awareness of how close your face is to his. he wastes no time and brazenly presses his lips to yours with a little more force than you were expecting. he tastes the residual sweetness of cotton candy on your mouth and laughs into the kiss. “thank you too,” he cooed lightly.

[sayojin]

Hermit-A-Day May: Day 7 - bdubs 🌱

biome variants of bdubs?? 🤔 (lush caves, birch forest and pale garden)

we made it though week one!! im honestly surprised i lasted even this long 🧍‍♂️

dont forget about @hermitadaymay 's fundraiser for Gamers Outreach with fun milestone rewards and raffle !!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hermitaday Gallery

Impulse - Grian - Tango - Fave Alt Hermit - False - Mumbo - Bdubs - Hypno - Outfit Swap - Gem - Cub - Pearl - Joel - Groups&Collabs - Jevin - Scar - Ren - Fave Build - Cleo - XB - Xisuma - Keralis - Tinfoilchef - Joe - Beef - Zedaph - Wels - Friends - Skizz - Doc - Etho

[somethingstrangeinpavalonmeadow]

www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/pavalonmeadow/review.html

6.2 - Fair

Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow is an unbearably tense modern fairy-tale with aesthetics reminiscent of Japanese horror games such as Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Ringu. It’s packed with beautifully filthy (and just plain beautiful) environments and presents an intriguing mystery.

Unfortunately, its clunky controls, un-intuitive side quests, and glaring bugs make it nigh unplayable.

There’s nothing standing there, right…?

When picturing fantasy elves, most people would imagine a slim, beautiful character with flowing blonde hair and a crown weaved from thin wisps of gold. You’re probably conjuring images of long white robes, glittering chalices, and tall, ethereal beauties.

You’d be better off looking for those guys somewhere around Middle Earth. You won’t find them in the nauseating world of Pavalon Meadow.

RealYou’s Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow offers a modern, unglamorous spin on the typical fairy tale setting. Lush forests and magical kingdoms are juxtapositioned with ramshackle homes and run-down intersections. Here, fairies and satyrs are just as likely to haunt old corner stores (the kind that have bars over their windows) as a glittering wishing pool. Sure, you do eventually venture out of the titular Pavalon Meadow, but even the affluent districts within later areas are permeated with a layer of grime and age. The visuals are without a doubt Pavalon Meadow’s greatest strength.

The game begins with an eerie still of its two protagonists: Anxious shut-in Riley, and plucky witch Yevine. Despite both characters’ presence, only Riley can be selected for now. With Yevine being unlocked later, we’ll be sticking with the former for consistency’s sake.

Our two unlucky heroes.

As Riley, you learn that your uncle has gone missing. An eerie phone call implies that it’s more than the average errand-run. You’ll spend your first hour or so learning the ropes via requests doled out by your neighbors. This is the first big issue: This tutorial is agonizingly long. Even the most basic tasks– I’m talking about a simple sprint, people– have a dedicated quest meant to teach them to players. A word of advice, RealYou: Gamers don’t need their hands held. Most of us can figure out which button makes our character jump!

The afternoon is stuffed with so many chores that I began to wonder if this was truly a horror game. After locating a dog belonging to one of Riley’s older relatives, right as I’d reached the end of my patience with the lengthy tutorial, the park was suddenly bathed in orange– the sun was beginning to go down. Heading back into my own trailer, I couldn’t help but notice how quickly the sun was sinking. Then, Riley’s mother asked him to head down to the store on one more errand.

It was dark out. The intro was over. The real game was finally kicking off.

If the afternoon felt like it was stretching itself out for way too long, the night felt even longer. In fact, that very well may have been the case: the game operates on a constant clock, but said clock was pretty inconsistent. In fact, I’m fairly certain it was randomized entirely! As you’ll soon come to understand, it’s hard to say whether it’s due to a coding error, or if it’s intentional. At any rate, the swap could be considered a more frequent, lower-stakes version of Silent Hill’s infamous otherworldly transformation. NPCs and enemies have their own schedules and rotate out depending on the time of day. We’ll touch on that later.

After cautiously roaming the dead silent street for a few minutes, we are next introduced to arguably the most important mechanic in the game. Dungeons and Dragons nerds will be familiar with the “darkvision” ability that many of its supernatural races possess, including elves. It’s just what it sounds like; the power to see clear as day in the dark. Sounds like the quickest way to kill any tension in a horror scenario, doesn’t it? Keeping things dark and stormy is taught in Building Tension 101.

Oh, that’s not ominous.

Well, there’s a catch to this too-good-to-be-true ability. I had mentioned that an elf like Riley can see in the dark. But we aren’t elves. That’s right: in an admittedly unique twist, the characters are able to perceive things that the players themselves cannot. This is used surprisingly well – these otherwise pace-halting sequences don’t occur so often that they become annoying and they also aren’t so sparse that they feel pointless. While we’re discussing gameplay, however, there’s a pretty massive elephant in the room that desperately needs addressing.

The controls!

Many old survival horror games are rather infamous for their iconic “tank” controls. They’re clunky, yes, but they can be adjusted to with time. I can’t say the same for Pavalon Meadow. Ostensibly it plays just like any current-gen, over-the-shoulder horror joint. But controlling Riley? The more accurate word for it is “puppeteering”. For some ungodly reason, there is a noticeable delay when pushing him in any direction, as if he’s connected to a string. It can be immensely frustrating when dying to a group of enemies because he didn’t want to respond to your inputs quickly enough. At first, I wondered if my TV or my console might be the cause of the input lag, but trying it out on my backup setup yielded the same results. Gunplay is just as difficult, but the game implies that Riley isn’t very experienced with firearms, so I can forgive this a little more. In fact, the shaky aim and harsh recoil noticeably improved as the game progressed, meaning that this feature is, I think, intentional. I can’t say whether the same is true when it comes to the movement, but either way it’s seriously going to affect players’ enjoyment of the game.

While traversing the area, however much Riley fights you on it, you’ll want to note the various NPCs floating around each area during both day and night. Speaking with and assisting as many of your neighbors as possible, while not vital to unraveling the central mystery, can make all the difference when it comes to surviving upcoming enemy encounters. About halfway through your adventure, the difficulty spike is sudden and intense. If you haven’t been bothering to upgrade your arsenal, you’re going to feel it. You’ll want to make use of the helpful items you receive in return for completing side quests before you miss their window. Skipping out on the sidework won’t make the game impossible per se, but it gets pretty darn close.

Vital as they are, far too many of these chores travel down the “high risk, low reward” route. If you’re only in this for the main story, or perhaps you simply don’t care about these people’s problems (you monster!), fulfilling some of these requests straight up isn’t worth it.

This had better be good.

Let’s examine one of these detours to illustrate what I mean. One of the many NPCs in need of assistance is Riley’s neighbor, a fairy named Lanmei. She wanders the trailer park all afternoon and the forest at night offering useful healing spells. Speak with her every day and she’ll eventually mention missing a friend who suddenly moved away. Seems simple, right? Just find another fairy, report back to your neighbor, collect your reward, and move onto the next good deed. If only things were that simple! Not only are you given absolutely no hint as to where to look– or even what the boy looks like– but you may also be caught off-guard by the hidden time limit. Yes, nearly every quest has a limited window to complete. It’s possible to fail quests before even discovering them, and some characters can face consequences of varying severity. The poor girl’s fate upon failure is particularly disturbing. Guess how I found that out?

One reloaded save later I was led nearly as far from the park as you can get, to what might just be the most difficult area in the game. It’s a mansion, and its surroundings are swarming with some of Pavalon Meadow’s toughest baddies. The awkward puppet-like controls are more noticeable than ever as you try to guide your gangly elf through throngs of monsters and hostile NPCs that were all blessed with eagle eyes. The oft-uncooperative stealth mechanic made moving from room to room even more of a slog. And the worst part? Assuming you don’t give up before sneaking into the boy’s room, receiving his memento for Lanmei, sneaking back out, and traveling all the way back to the park, your reward for all that trouble is laughable: A few high potions and a couple thousand gold (An amount that won’t get you much in this world).

This sadly isn’t anywhere near the only example of the game’s lackluster side dishes, but it was one of the most frustrating. I don’t need things to be a cakewalk, but this would have been much more doable if players had been given more direction, and if the reward was proportional to the herculean effort it took to complete it. I need more than the sense of a job well done to make my work feel worthwhile!

Hmm...

Rushed side quests aren’t Pavalon Meadow’s only big problem. Throughout the entire game, beautifully rendered models suffer from severe clipping, especially long hair. Too many times, I was taken out of a frightening moment upon noticing Riley’s hair poking out of his back like angry little teeth, and Yevine’s long hair was almost always sticking through her midsection like an apron. Aside from the visual complaints, I encountered some pretty glaring bugs fairly often. Honestly, it had me wondering if there was any kind of quality control at RealYou. The most annoying of all was a consistent crash when traveling between areas too fast, a side-effect of mashing the X button while waiting for Riley to slowly careen into the door, causing me to desperately wish for some sort of quicksave button.

Most bizarrely, I would occasionally encounter an unnamed elf lurking in particularly dark corners. At first, I assumed he was another one of Riley’s hallucinations (it’s a long story) or maybe a rare NPC encounter. But he was impossible to interact with and not a single other character mentioned anyone like him. He’d pop up in just about any area, even during the day, but whatever it seemed to be leading up to never came to fruition. It seemed to me that he was part of a scrapped story line. I also wondered if I was simply overthinking a creepy easter egg, aside from the fact that his presence really messed up the FPS and would occasionally even cause some textures to frankly freak out. Honestly, with the slipshod presentation, the possibilities are endless.

Sloppy coding, to be sure, but it’ll certainly make a great urban legend someday. Maybe the kiddies fifteen years from now will be swearing that the mysterious elf NPC was appearing in their other games?

I want to love Pavalon Meadow. Its opening captivated me right away, the darkvision mechanic is delightfully stressful, and the beauty of its environments cannot be overstated. There are so many nooks and crannies that I left out, not only as a surprise for future players, but to keep this review from getting any longer than it already is. On the other hand, it seems that RealYou is putting too much of their focus on the glossy exterior. If you begin to to dig into the meat of it, not even very deeply, it’s clear that there’s still lots of work to do. As of writing, the negatives outweigh the positives in a big way. RealYou clearly hoped to invoke Grimm’s fairy tales held up in a modern light, but unfortunately, it just isn’t fun.

Something Strange in Pavalon Meadow is set to release this holiday season.

(written by @dbdonryo, 'lanmei'/ringabell the fairy belonging to her as well)

[milliesfishes]

Omg I could really use some PK coryo angst from you, every time you write an angsty snippet about him I die 😭 PK coryo is something else

꣑ৎ౨ৎThe Bodyguard꣑ৎ౨ৎ

[fem reader] contains: attempted kidnapping pairing: peacekeeper coriolanus snow x fem reader summary: after a scary incident, your father takes what you deem unnecessary precautions author’s note: anon I apologize for not answering this sooner but I hope this fulfills the need <3 tagging @melo-bees thank you so much for this idea lovey!! Pinterest Board Spotify Playlist

Skipping through the town square, you dodged a few stray people, bestowing them large smiles and letting your bag swing as you passed through. You hummed something to yourself, basking in the sunlight. Summer was in full bloom, and you reveled in it, feeling as though you were in a whirlwind of happy things.

Maybe you shouldn't be out here by yourself. Maybe you should have told someone where you were going, like your mother or a maid or something. But it was just a quick pop into the market, to say hello to a few people and maybe get something pretty for yourself.

The arduous years of school had ended in the spring, and you'd proudly taken your diploma and hung it in a silver frame on your wall. A part of you mourned the loss of that time, knowing the innocence of those years would be pried from your hands and twisted into something worth marrying. But the other held onto the spark of youth that somehow hadn't been doused by your parent's warnings of the future.

"A young lady shouldn't wander the streets by herself." "A young lady needs protection." Given your father's prominence, there were legions of Peacekeepers at his disposal, and he'd made empty threats of putting one or more on your tail. But you waved them off. They were nothing but air.

Clasping the hands of a woman behind a vendor's stall, you squealed, bouncing on your heels. "Oh, Ember you've outdone yourself this week." The jewelry spread out across the wooden surface of the table was exquisite, metal twisting around itself, stones embedded as the tiniest of details. You held up a pair of earrings, letting the light catch the gold and emphasize the red shine of the tiny rocks nestled in the crafted design. "Would it be alright if I got these?"

"Of course, honey," she smiled, taking the coins you slipped into her hands. Counting them, she frowned and tried to pass a few back. "That's too much-"

"Really? Could've sworn you undercharged." Grinning, you swapped your old earrings out, stowing them safely in a pocket of your bag.

Ember gave you an exasperated look. "Now-"

"It's been a pleasure, I'll see you next time!" You tossed a few more coins on the table, letting them rattle and clink against each other as you broke into a run, skipping away. Ember's laugh followed you like an echo, and you smiled as you pictured her shaking her fist at you.

Your new earrings bounced against your cheeks as you ran down the alleyway and down the lush forest path, holding your skirts in both hands. It was always while running that you felt the freest. And so you did it over and over again, through the trees and streets, through every place you could think of.

With the wind on your legs, you felt liberty's sweet caress all around. It lifted the corners of your lips and practically made you levitate. If feathers sprouted from your limbs and air built up under your arms, sending you soaring into the clouds, you wouldn't have been surprised.

This could be your life. Dancing around town and supporting your friends in the way they needed you to. Nodding along to your father's requests and then turning your cheek. This was boundless, beautiful-

You smacked something firm, the force of it knocking you backwards. Shoulders hitting the dirt, your hair became a curtain over your eyes that you didn't part right away. The collision had stolen your breath, and you chased it back, finally able to grasp and shove it back into your mouth.

Blinking wearily, you swept your hair out of your eyes and got a good look at what had interrupted your joyful flee. A man, clothes tattered, face streaked with dirt. A hat shaded his eyes, but you could see the firmness in them.

An apology bubbled up, escaping your lips as you scrambled to your feet. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't watching where-"

"You're the mayor's daughter." The words were frozen like glaciers, and you lifted your lips in a sweet smile, hoping to thaw him.

"If you'll excuse me-"

His hands were gripping you tight suddenly, roughened nails leaving imprints on your skin. You gasped, wiggling in his hold and trying to squirm away. "I really...if you'd just let me go-"

"How much d'you think Daddy's gonna gimme for givin' his pretty daughter back?" The question sent snakes slithering up your spine, wrapping around your throat. The look in his eyes was haunting, hungry. You cried out, trying to reach out and push him away but he held your wrists fast, twisting one and sending a sharp pain up your arm.

It happened before you could even think. Your knee shot up like a missile, landing between the man's legs. When he shouted, releasing your arms to clutch himself, you caught a glimpse of his mouth. It was unclear whether he was missing teeth or if they were blackened by dust.

You didn't stick around to find out. Now your running had a new purpose, and you sprinted down the road, sobs moving past your lips choked and desperate. Hot tears stung your cheeks as they poured down like rain.

Fear struck you like an arrow, hitting dead center. Over and over you'd been told of people who would be out to get you solely because of the position of your birth, but never before had you witnessed it. As you reached the edge of town, darting back through the narrow alleyway and leaning on the wall to catch your breath, you shuddered involuntarily and hurriedly wiped the tears away from your face.

"Are you alright?"

A gasp clenched your breath and your head snapped up, heart pounding before you realized who stood before you. A tall man in a Peacekeeper's uniform with blue eyes like cornflowers, clutching a weapon. Your shoulders sagged in relief, and your eyes fell to the ground, foot toeing at the cobblestone. "I'm fine."

"You don't look fine." His voice was low and you managed to meet his eyes, holding your chin high.

Studying him, you were almost surprised at how young he appeared to be. Close to your age, surely. It was such a strange thing, to be so close in age and yet so starkly different.

"I'm fine. I'm just having a bad day," you said, wiping your eyes again. It felt humiliating to talk about what had just happened, and so you sealed your lips.

The Peacekeeper's mouth was set in a firm line, and you could tell he didn't believe you for one second. "May I walk you home?" Now you could see the flicker of recognition in his eyes, and you knew the idea of your father was bouncing around in his head. Maybe he wanted praise, or a monetary reward. The chances of him doing it out of the goodness of his heart were low.

Mustering a smile you hoped was sweet, you shook your head, clutching your bag and sidestepping him. "No thank you. I'll manage."

"You're-"

"I'm fine!" you called, already walking away. This time you clung to the shadows rather than enjoying the sunshine. Nobody else needed to see you like this.

It was embarrassing enough that a man with eyes the color of the sky you so badly wanted to soar into had.

The delicate lace of your curtains looked so pretty in the sunshine, and you clasped them in your fingers, pleased to find them warm. Lying stretched out across your bedspread, you smiled brightly, kicking one foot up into the air. The bundle of wildflowers on your nightstand was tied with a ribbon, and their sweetened scent greeted your nose.

It had been a perfect day in the forest, lying amongst the flora and fauna. You'd brought your picnic with you as usual, reading to yourself and enjoying the quiet. In the past bit you'd hardly been able to have a moment to yourself, making today all the more magical.

Since that awful day a week ago you hadn't breathed a word to anybody about what had happened, although you knew your mother suspected something was wrong when you came home with dried tear tracks staining your face like berry juice.

She'd occupied you with social visits of all kinds, to people far and wide across the town. There were only so many parlors you could sit in, so many polite smiles you could offer for so many days in a row before you went crazy.

Of course she meant well. But today was your day, and you had enjoyed it immensely.

Your father's voice pierced the quiet and you sat up when you realized he was calling for you. Swinging your legs to the side of the bed, you stood and stretched, muscles popping like bubbles. It was rare that he summoned you before dinner, and you wondered what he wanted to discuss now. If it was the prospect of another son of a wealthy acquaintance you wanted no part of it.

Making it to his office, you paused in the doorway. Had you known your father wasn't alone, maybe you would have taken the time to smooth your dress or run a brush through your hair.

Standing there in front of him was a young man in a Peacekeeper's uniform, blond hair buzzed to his scalp, hat under his arm. You shyly clung to the frame and watched them exchange words for a moment before they noticed you.

When the other man turned it hit you like a stone. Those eyes. The color of a summer sky. You were frozen for a moment, staring at him and feeling nothing except your heartbeat pounding your ribs. His gaze didn't tear away from you either, and for a moment you felt as though you were the only two people in the room.

What was he doing here?

Your father broke the tension, clearing his throat. "I'll expect you back here tomorrow."

"Yes, sir." The man tore his gaze from you and nodded at your father, shaking his extended hand. "I look forward to it."

On the way out, he paused, giving you a nod. "Miss." You tried to ignore the flutter in your chest.

It wasn't until the front door shutting announced his departure that your father spoke to you. "That was Private Snow."

"Ah." You nodded, shifting on your feet and further entering the room. "Is he going to be here more often?" Now you were imagining him standing guard with the other Peacekeepers protecting your home and family, gorgeous eyes piercing your soul every time you left the bounds.

"Yes." Your father smoothed his beard, studying you. "He'll be here for you."

Straightening, you tilted your head, brow knitting. "For me? What-?"

"For your protection." Before you could argue, he firmly said, "An incident was brought to my attention recently. Apparently, you were seen hysterical in an alley."

Your lips parted and you tried to speak, the words coming out in a pathetic stutter. "I...it was...nothing-"

He held up a hand, effectively silencing you. Your fingers found your skirt, twisting the fabric and clenching it tight as every possible excuse swam through your head. But you could see now that it would fall upon deaf ears. For every time he'd warned you, he'd finally made good on his threat.

"You've been far too careless," he began, each word with an edge like a knife. You swallowed, bowing your head as he continued. "Running around town and cavorting with whoever you want. That ends now. It's very clear you can't handle yourself."

Tears were pricking your eyes, and you suppressed a sniffle. This was humiliating, to be reprimanded by your father for something that wasn't even your fault. In a whisper, you tried, "I didn't mean to-"

A shake of his head cut you off. "Private Snow will be accompanying you from now on wherever you go. You'll have constant supervision so I don't have to deal with you every time you get yourself into something stupid. There will be no further discussion." He turned back to his desk, waving a hand and indicating your dismissal.

The walk back up to your room was slow and shameful. Frustration brimmed at the edges of you, poking and prodding at your head. Constant supervision...already you mourned the loss of your precious alone time, the freedom you had enjoyed. Now you would have a shadow trailing behind you carrying a gun.

Shutting the door, you let your tears fall freely, though no sobs parted your lips and split your soul open. You tried to convince yourself that maybe this could be okay. It wasn't like your routine would be interrupted. It only meant that he would be there.

Sniffling and drying your eyes, you took a deep breath, eyes falling on the wildflowers again. It would be okay. Everything would be okay. It was for your own safety after all.

You tried to picture it then, a prophetic vision. The man who'd looked at you in a way nobody had before, who'd awoken some strange feeling in your heart protecting you.

It stayed with you for the rest of the day, trickling into your dreams.

In Coriolanus' life, he'd been mildly interested in a great many people. Ones who could aid his journey to the top or help him play the game of the Capitol's choosing and change the rules for him. He'd been interested, is all.

But he'd never been utterly enchanted by anyone before. Not until you.

All too often he chided himself. The daughter of the mayor, the girl he was only supposed to be keeping an eye on. Really, whatever he was feeling needed to stop immediately. It was blatantly unprofessional.

And yet here he was, standing in a field under the shade of a tree and watching you use your skirt as a makeshift basket as you gathered strawberries into it. Tucked haphazardly in the crook of your arm was a messy bunch of wildflowers. Your hair was loose, taken out of the braid he'd watched your mother approve before you left the house.

You were a vision, something not meant for his hopeless eyes.

Coriolanus took every bit of his life as a Peacekeeper seriously, but this was another matter entirely. It perplexed him how much more committed he'd found himself once every aspect of his duties were steered in your direction.

He'd once felt fascination for Lucy Gray, whom he'd pulled every stop for to get her out of the arena. A girl with a voice like a songbird whose dedication to her found family had inspired him. She had been his ticket out of poverty, and he clung to it with every fiber of his being. When his methods had been unveiled, resulting in his life sentence to the military, he'd kept at his trying, attempted to bribe his way to her.

The attempt had failed, and now he was in Two, among forest confines. At least he wasn't breathing in coal dust. And now there was you.

Given strict instructions on where you were and weren't supposed to go, Coriolanus had known you would be a stubborn case. From the moment he'd recognized you in the alley he'd gotten the feeling that you were as free spirited as a bird. Your father had seemed all too happy to hand you off. Coriolanus hadn't understood why until this morning.

"It's not dangerous," you'd protested in the kitchen this morning, cutting a few slices of bread. "I go there all the time. There's nothing but trees."

"Your father said not to allow you to go past the town limits," he countered, voice firm. He felt like a giant next to you as you delicately gathered your food into the wicker basket shaped like a heart, pink linen lining the insides.

Giving him an exasperated look, you brushed a stray strand away from your face. It had been bothering him for a minute, and he'd longed to do that exact thing. "What could possibly happen if you're going to be with me the whole time?"

Huffing slightly, Coriolanus felt the beginnings of a headache twinge at his temples. A week into this endeavor and he could already tell you were going to be difficult. You fought him at every turn, pleading with him to let you go literally everywhere on the list of prohibited places.

The market on the wrong side of town. A nighttime club with live music. And now the forest, which had particularly been emphasized to him by your father.

You'd batted your eyelashes and shut the lid of the basket. "Please? You've done such a good job at keeping me safe. And it's not that deep in the forest, just a little bit of a walk."

The white dress you were wearing was edged with fine spun lace at the neckline, exposing your collarbone. He tried not to stare at it, tried not to make it so obvious that he found every angle of you beautiful.

Unhelpfully, the look you were giving him reminded him of a doe, the pretty one who pranced among snowflakes in the picture books with rich illustrations his mother used to read him. He was struck dumb for a moment, staring at you.

"Okay."

The little squeal you gave was worth it alone, along with the way you grabbed his wrist and squeezed. "Thank you!"

Now he was watching you in your element, feeling like he'd stumbled upon a nymph. Your essence trailed behind you like fairy dust.

You spotted him watching you and threw him a sweet smile, one that gnawed at the edges of his heart. He somehow found it in him to snap to his senses, boots crinkling the grass as he made his way over to you. No longer did he have to carry the enormous Peacekeeper's gun, only a small one at his hip. This was one of many perks of working directly for your family, among being moved from the base to the servant's quarters of the house, and of course, you.

Now close to you, he solemnly said, "We should head back," expecting your face to fall or for you to try and pout your way into thirty more minutes. Coriolanus had grown accustomed to your methods in very little time, as they were tried and true.

Instead, you nodded and tried to shift your flowers up the crook of your elbow. "Could you take these? I want to put the berries in my basket."

Coriolanus removed your bouquet, feeling a little silly as he watched you deposit the strawberries. The skirt of your dress was lightly stained with red juice, and he wondered if it was as sweet as you were.

You reached your hand out from where you were kneeling, about to take the flowers when you groaned, letting your arm fall. "My hair. I have to braid my hair. Hold on-" you gathered it up and let it fall behind your shoulders, clumsily separating it into three sections. Your movements were messy, the result a crooked pattern traveling down your back. Tying it off with your ribbon, you reached up once again, expecting him to hand you the bouquet.

He was staring at your hair, frowning. You re-emphasized your hand. "I can take them now-"

"Your hair doesn't look anything like how it did when we left." He studied the messy attempt, and you half smiled.

"It's fine. Nobody pays attention to that."

Coriolanus pressed his lips into a firm line. If you came back looking even slightly like you'd been in the forest, his entire position could be jeopardized. It was bad enough your skirt was stained, but that could be played off. There was no place in town you were allowed to go where you'd be able to take your hair down. Women around here always had it pinned up or pulled back in some way.

Anxiety pulsed at his heart as he imagined what would happen if you were discovered. He'd be disciplined for not following orders and sent back to the barracks, maybe even demoted. Worse, he wouldn't be allowed to be near you anymore. You, who were quickly becoming what he orbited around.

Dropping to his knees and setting your flowers to the side, he paused before he touched your ribbon. "May I?"

You raised your eyebrows. "it's not a big deal Coriolanus."

He ignored how his name sounded with your lips wrapped around it. That was something he could dwell on later, when he was staring at the ceiling and trying to fall asleep. Instead, he gave you a look. "Just let me."

Shrugging, you faced forward and nodded. He untied your ribbon, fingers unweaving the mess you'd made of your soft hair. It was pretty- tumbling down your back like a waterfall, and he savored holding it.

Coriolanus combed his fingers through it once before meticulously separating the sections. You were perfectly still, the peace of the area enveloping you both. He was lost in the task for a moment, carefully weaving the strands together.

Your soft voice lilted his ears. "How do you know how to do this?"

"My cousin used to have me braid her hair," he murmured distractedly, careful as he smoothed one section before folding it over another. "Every day before she went to school."

"Oh." The word was quiet, and he had the feeling you'd have turned around if he'd have let you. "Do you miss her?"

He was surprised by the question, swallowing and nimbly finishing the bottom half of your braid. "Yes." Nobody had asked him about his family since arriving. The closest had been when he'd filled out the Corso address on the form that directed where his pay would be sent.

Tying the silky white ribbon around the end, securing your hair in place, he cleared his throat and sat back, getting to his feet. "All done."

You lifted your eyes to him, and he was rewarded by that sweet smile again. Coriolanus held out his hand and you took it, standing up with your flowers in one hand and your basket hooked over the same arm. For a moment, your soft hand stayed in his, soft fingers wrapped around his palm. "Thank you," you breathed, meeting his gaze.

It took a moment for him to find his words. Even the mere sight of you shook him to his core. "You're welcome."

On the walk back home, you let go of his hand and he mourned its loss for a moment before you slipped your own into the crook of his elbow, eyes darting around the space. He'd noticed you do this on the walk over too, searching the space as if you were expecting something to appear from the tree line.

As you walked quietly beside him, he thought of the first day he'd seen you, with tears falling and eyes blown wide. You'd come from the forest then too, and he wondered what had scared you so badly it had lingered. You bit the inside of your cheek and took in a shaky breath.

"I'll keep you safe." The words slipped out, but he made no attempt to remedy them.

If his heart was going to spark every time you looked at him, it would be a fire in no time. You searched his eyes, squeezing his elbow. Even through his uniform shirt he could feel your hand warm from the sun. If he wanted to (and he very much did) he could count every freckle you'd gained from your time outside.

With no more than a smile and a sweetheart's demeanor, you'd ignited something so untouchable in his soul, something that almost scared him. It was untouchable, boundless. An ocean of wonder he was only beginning to set sail on.

If the boat capsized and drowned, he'd go happily.

[tragedynoir]

— special delivery: LUSH BLOOM

a modern, nature-inspired, all-in-one multimuse google doc template that can also be easily customized to whatever aesthetic you want to simply by swapping out the images in google drawings. this template offers a first page to include an introduction and any pertinent information, and two designs for your muse list.

what is special delivery?

special delivery is occasional bonus supporter-only content as my way of thanking those who generously support me and help me continue putting out free content! they are not posted on any set or regular schedule.

how does it work?

the most recent special delivery will be accessible via a locked supporter-only ko-fi post to anyone who has supported me on ko-fi recently. for one-time supporters (store purchase or one-time donation), this post will be locked again after 30 days, so please download the content before this happens! for monthly patrons, this post will be accessible for as long as their patronage. when a new special delivery is uploaded, old special delivery content will be put behind a monthly patron-only ko-fi post. only monthly patrons will continue to have access to old special delivery content for as long as their patronage, no matter when they start their patronage. discord server boosters can also gain access to all past special delivery content via a server booster-exclusive channel, for the duration of their support.

how to access?

become a supporter by purchasing something from my store, making a one-time donation or becoming a monthly patron! you will be prompted to create a ko-fi account to access supporter-only content. the source link will lead you to the folder containing all special delivery posts to access and download! alternatively, boost my discord server, and gain access to a server booster-only channel with the links to all past special delivery content. if you have any questions or clarifications, please reach out to me! thank you so much and I hope you enjoy them! ♡

[mothandpidgeon]

P Boy Podcasts

I was swapping podcast recs with @schnarfer and asked her what kind of podcasts would each of the Pedro boys host? (I’m a bit of a podcast junkie. I'm literally listening to one right now.) Well, we were brainstorming and I went and created episode art for each of their shows. Which ones are you subscribing to?

Nic on Nic Get a peek into the brain of legendary talent Nicolas Cage. Cage collaborator (and fanboy) Javi Guttierez is watching everything from Con Air to National Treasure 2. Take a deep dive into the films of Nic Cage and hear exclusive interviews with the man himself.

The Unfortunates There are spies living among us, everyday people living double lives. What makes them do it? And how do they keep their secrets? Each week, Dave York shares a true story from the clandestine world of espionage. 

Foundlings Din Djarin’s parenting journey has never gone to plan because he never planned on becoming a dad! Come along as he navigates the challenges of single parenting a 50 year old son. Each week Din leads insightful discussions with a range of guests— pediatricians, parenting experts, and  other parents that are just trying to figure it all out.

Declassified Drugs, danger, and dames. The fall of Escobar made way for the Cali Cartel. Hear the story from  Agent Javier Pena as he recalls the hunt for the Cali Cartel and reveals details that have never been heard before. 

Tales from the Green Ezra shares spooky fales of distant worlds on this anthology fiction podcast. All set on the Green Moon, these bizarre and enthralling stories introduce you to a lush world filled with intrigue and danger. 

Heist The Mona Lisa only became a cultural icon after it was stolen in 1911. Learn about the greatest capers in the art world with host Marcus Pike. Hear first hand accounts going undercover during his time in the FBI. 

No Cap 4 best friends chat about anything and everything. Hear Santi, Will, Frankie, and Ben give their takes on dating, travel, and current events. You’ll love listening to them react to r/aita. 

UNKNOWN ZONE Alien encounter? Evidence of the lost city of Atlantis? Ghost fucking? Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Join celebrity host Dieter Bravo for real life brushes with the unknown!

Joel’s Construction Corner Have a burning home improvement question? Or maybe you just like a southern drawl? Host Joel Miller has 30 years of experience in contracting and he’s here to share his advice with you. As soon as he figures out how to use this damn computer. Ellie does the ad reads with a pun for every one. 

Hungry History What does the invention of margarine have to do with Napoleon? Did Marco Polo really introduce pasta to Italy? Which Founding Father had a craving for ice cream? Follow your stomach to discover the origins of your favorite foods as we travel back in time with host Pero Tovar. 

--

I might've gone overboard. But I wish these all existed???

If you reblog this please rec me your favorite podcasts in the tags.

[frostgears]

You're smugly proud of the mind control FX in Volume Phenomena II. Sure, the game's barely more than a vertical slice at this point, but the fans loved the Indai in VP1, and when they told your team that the sneaky high-tech psionic faction was going to play a bigger role in VP2, you couldn't wait to start prototyping.

You set up subtle geometry and color distortion shaders to push a game's sense of unreality whenever Indai Controllers were around, trying to get the player off balance before they actually came under psi attack. You added a subsystem to blend the normal tactical UI sounds smoothly into outright commands to the player, slowly turning "Reload!" into "Submit." with every repetition, and the like. The model swaps and UI screws that replaced friendlies with enemies and vice versa were already there from the first game, but you wanted to rub it in, and revamped the effects that taunted the player with their compromise: the infamous pink shader with the twisting fractal spirals looked even better in proper model space, spinning smoky curls off the edges of every object. You were particularly proud of that one.

So you probably shouldn't have been that surprised when you came back from lunch early to find one of your devs smiling blankly into her monitor, which was displaying the latest from the main branch: revamped HUD, orange gas giant rising above the lush green tropical forest of equatorial Midori… and pink spirals everywhere.

"Luna, darlin', you enjoying the new build?"

"Yes, I am."

"Is that the second Indai encounter?"

"Yes, it is."

Her voice was flat, empty. Huge contrast from normal Luna, who loved to drawl a running commentary over every single event in a test playthrough, especially if someone else's new code was involved. And not a bad impression of the player's VA.

"Who tells you what to think?", you joked, delivering one of the taunt lines.

"You do, Controller."

"Pffft. Awesome. Now you think you should take your top off."

Oops. That just slipped out. Too far, probably. The employment contract had some clauses about a "creative work environment" that made that kind of office joke a little more tolerated around here than, say, Microsoft, but you were glad the rest of your team was still at lunch.

You were about to apologize and hope she didn't take it the wrong way, when, without looking at you, she reached down to the hem of her oversized plaid flannel shirt and slowly pulled it and the underlying tank top over her head.

Her long, dark, wavy hair fell back onto bare shoulders. Her bra was blue, and black, and lacy, and cupped Luna's round, full breasts; from the way the fabric tented, her nipples were definitely pierced. There was a little teardrop opal between the cups. Funny what you notice when the higher parts of your brain are busy screaming that if somebody walked in right now, you'd probably lose your job, creative work environment or not.

"Luna! Luna, put your top back on, dammit, that was a joke."

"Yes, Controller," she said, still not looking at you. With no more emotion than before, she slid back into her tank top, then her shirt. A button had come undone at the top, but she didn't seem to notice.

*Well, fuck, now what?*

You bit your lip. The second Indai encounter was bugged. Unfinished. There were three Controllers, but one was placed in an area with a missing nav mesh, and there was no way for the player to reach her and actually take her out yet. Luna wouldn't have been able to do it.

You killed the game, alt-F4, back to the desktop. Luna showed no signs of responding to the change of visuals. She was completely out of it, expression neutral, eyes not quite tracking. You opened the game's asset folder, navigated three levels deep, played raw sound files of Indai death screams. No response. Your team would be back any minute now. Shit, what did the design doc say about accidentally dropping your coworkers?

Actually. Hmm. She had a link to it on her desktop. You nudged Luna's soft, unprotesting hand off her mouse, frantically paged through the Indai section of the huge PDF. The lead designer had written most of the gameplay sections and Priti always had a "Balance Considerations" heading somewhere. Notes from UX studies of the first game, suggesting that some players would prefer a hard counter so they could focus on the boring pure shooty parts…

Well, if this didn't work, you were fired. Worse, probably. You opened the subfolder for UI effects, leaned down to Luna's ear, and in your best sexy suit AI voice, whispered "Psionic interference detected. Null pulse generator discharge in 3… 2… 1…"

You double-clicked. cancel_debuff.flac blasted through her speakers, far too loud.

"Oh, hey," Luna said, suddenly grinning, "back from lunch already?"

You almost jumped out of your skin.

"Yes!"

"Oh, I wanted to show you something, wasn't sure if it was intentional enemy behavior or if the level guy hadn't finished pathing, but looks like your fuckin' hypno shaders crashed the game again," she said. "Gimme a sec, I'll try to get back in there."

"Uh, you don't need to, we have QA for that, it'll be in their next build," you stammered. It absolutely would not be in their next build. You'd figure out some reason to cut the effects down before anyone else saw this.

"QA," she said, "doesn't enjoy this build as much as I did."

"No, really, it's fine…"

She spun her chair around. "QA wouldn't enjoy the guilty blushing as much as I am."

"Luna!?"

The blue-haired engineer held a flash drive between thumb and forefinger. "I've got a pretty nice box at home. More VRAM than this company brick. Bet it runs those shaders juuuust fine. In four hours I'll be getting off the S line five stops from here, 45 Linden Apt. 204, and, you know, given that psi countermeasures aren't implemented yet, who knows what could happen?"

She dropped the drive into her top, buttoned her shirt, and, whistling the theme from VP1, got back to work. □

[youryurigoddess]

The summer that was never supposed to end

You’ve probably noticed how in Good Omens 2 Crowley’s eyes are brighter, more saturated, as if glistening with liquid gold. We’ve already covered his hair. And it’s not only the visual aspect of him — even in objectively stressful conditions, Crowley appears mature and put together, way cooler and more protective than before. Even his faults are heavily romanticized in the past and present scenes, reminding of the S1 body swap, when Aziraphale projected his love to him on the way he played the demon in Hell.

It’s not just the demon. The whole season is more vibrant, bolder, filled with sunshine. Just like a summer that was never supposed to end. Like a memory of a loved one seen through the eyes of someone who thinks of them every day until the end of the world.

S2 seems ridiculously saturated, whimsical, and full of red and gold, just like a certain demon. Aziraphale not only painted his bookshop in his image, but literally colored the whole world in Crowley’s colors. It was such lush and saturated and blooming with warmth and hazy light.

It’s either that all the newest events are just another memory seen through a certain angel’s eyes, or said angel actively made it appear this way — as in, his feelings grew so strong that they’ve started to warp the reality around him. And it’s a well-known fact that Aziraphale has a tendency to affect his surroundings, either unconsciously, when his presence in the bookshop literally lightens up the sky seen through its windows, or very much consciously, when he takes over the position of a master puppeteer and manipulates people with or without the help of his miracles.

S1 was more dramatic and apocalyptic, but not particularly gray — at least not as much as the color grading typically used in portrayal of similar apocalyptic narratives. S2, at least as seen through Aziraphale’s own La Vie En Rose lens, is vibrant and saturated. And those colors drastically fade in the heavenly light of the elevator during the credits, suggesting that they won’t be as visible in the course of S3.

But I don’t want to ramble about the apocalypse sandwich and the three-act structure here, so let’s circle back to S2.

Good Omens 2 was really set in a summer that was never supposed to end. But it did, autumn crept in, and there was no chance of hearing the nightingales sing. They all had left by the time an angel and a demon finally kissed.

In the most literal sense: the very last nightingales usually migrate from the UK to their wintering grounds in Sub-Saharan Africa in the first days of September.

Aziraphale was right that nothing lasts forever — and the passage of time on Earth is marked by subtle details invisible to the immortal eyes.

The main thing about autumn migration is how sudden and hard to predict it is. The birds start disappearing gradually, often without notice, until at some point they are no longer here. Much like the angel leaves the bookshop — their shared nest — to spread his wings and fight.

And it was basically announced on the poster.

Can you see the migratory formation of birds up in the sky? It looks like Aziraphale is the last one to get off the ground and fly.

[utterlyotterlyx]

4 and/or 25 with Eris, please!

Lost In The Fire

Eris x Fem!Reader

Warnings - mentions of arranged marriage, suggestive comments, lots of fluff

(not spell checked sorry x)

What if you - If you're really about to suggest that I sit on your lap, I will kill you. Don't leave me here alone.

Balls had never been, nor ever would be, your thing.

The opulence that came with them was sickening, a waste of precious resources that could be put toward something more beneficial. The gold on display, the mountains of food that hardly anyone would touch that sat as a putrid reminder of power and wealth, and the stench of ale made your stomach churn with distaste.

You would forever curse your brother, Thesan, for giving you over to the Autumn Court, you understood that you had a duty to fulfil, and since you were the sister of one of the more liberal courts, with unmatched spiritual abilities, it meant that you were a high prize indeed.

You had long lost your usual clothing, red and gold loose fitting robes that still had the power to accentuate every feature you held lay dormant in your wardrobe and had been swapped out for tighter fitting garments in an arrangement of greens and browns and oranges. By order of Lady Autumn, of course.

There would be a day when her title would belong to you, and you always had to look the part.

It was a part you played well.

Marriage to Eris, the Heir of the Autumn Court, wasn't nearly as bad as you had expected it to be. It was lucky that your talents in spirituality were so advanced, and you were also lucky that his knowledge of your gifts was so little when you had first met.

Despite his cold exterior, you saw a small boy within him wanting more than anything to break free from the chains that bound him to his position. It was his only defence against his father. But, he knew that you could see through it, see through him in a way that no one else could and part of him was relieved to finally have someone who could understand him.

Things were still rocky, you struggled with their way of life, something Beron despised and spoke of frequently, saying he did not want you leading his court if you couldn't bend your morals and do what was needed. If turning your back on the people who needed you was too stiff, then you didn't want to be leading his court anyway.

But everything with Eris was good, more than good actually, you had actually come to care for him beyond the requirements of your marriage. Eris had moved your rooms opposite his own to have you closer to him, to have you speak him into newfound calm when his duties became too much; to have you closer to him so that he could soothe your clairvoyant episodes that pounced on you from nowhere.

It was meant to be a marriage of convenience, a marriage to forge new power and bonds and produce a litter of children who possessed both of your abilities. A new path for Autumn, a stronger path.

The clouds darkened on the horizon, the moon poked through their curls and illuminated them with a faint pale blue glow. Lanterns lined the garden paths below your window, Eris had made sure to give you the room with the best view, and you watched idly as high born nobles and invited guests to the nights festivities strolled down the cobbled stone paths arm in arm, pointing at the array of intricately carved white marble statues and fountains littered across the lawns, scattered between the hedges and lush flowerbeds.

Ladies swarmed you, tugging at your limbs and shimmying skirts up your legs before huffing and ripping them down again, tapping your calves to tell you to lift your feet so that they could try the next one. Lady Autumn ordered that racks upon racks of opulent dresses be wheeled into your chambers, it was important that you look your best in front of all of the nobles attending that evening, from Autumn and those from other courts.

Even Beron knew how powerful your opinion was to others, not like he would ever listen to it himself. You had been the one to accompany your brother to the High Lords meeting to find a path forward against Hybern. It was your grace and elegance that kept the meeting from boiling over since you were able to feel the emotions of others and force them to simmer down before they consumed the room. It was you who had been able to tell them all of Hyberns movements which no doubt gave them the edge they needed. It was you who saved dozens upon dozens of soldiers from all courts.

You had been the one to help Feyre with the complications with her pregnancy, you had been there for the birth of her son and had given a kernel of your own gift to keep her alive; it made you a very trusted ally to the Night Court, a friend. Helion wrote to you often asking for you opinions on research and inventions, even went as far as to ask for your input on some new policies he wanted to introduce to Day.

It was stupid to suggest that you wouldn't be the perfect High Lady.

Diplomatic. Gifted. Elegant. Poised.

And Eris adored every part of you that you decided to show him, he basked in it actually.

You weren't really paying attention as the ladies around you tugged at your hair and pulled another dress up your body, fitting it tightly around your breasts and hips before standing back and humming in approval. Then you looked.

An assortment of shimmering golds, burnt oranges and flecks of silver, all weaving between one another like the summer tides. It was sheer, enough to be endearing and elegant but not enough to appear indecent. There was a cut out half sphere below your breasts and the bodice flared upward like streaks of sunshine at the crack of dawn. Even you had to admit that it was a stunning piece indeed. Like a stained glass window glowing with dawns kiss.

"This is the one," your fingers brushed around your hips with a faint smile, your hair was unbound and simple, a perfect compliment to the other-worldly dress you adorned, and your makeup was a picture of dewy perfection, shimmers along your cheekbones and forehead, arched brows, glossed lip. "Thank you," you had dismissed the flock of women as soon as they strapped your shoes to your feet, taking a moment for yourself before you slipped from the room.

The quietness of the hallway was enough to tell you that Eris would already be in the ballroom, no doubt sassily quipping the other High Lords and Ladies with cold eyes and a stiff spine. An act that would melt under your presence.

You weren't wrong.

As soon as you had entered the room, it was encapsulated by you. Feyre and Mor rushed to greet you, stroking your hair and running their hands down your skirts, begging for you to tell them where had gotten it. Cassian bundled you into a boisterous embrace which earnt him a curt jab from Nesta for the inappropriateness, Azriel kissed your knuckles as did Rhys, and Helion kissed your cheek in greeting, muttering to you how beautiful you looked in a hushed tone.

No reaction compared to that of Eris however as he remained glued to his seat with lips agape as his russet orbs scoured your figure, the mere action of his eyes on you making heat rise to your cheeks.

Tables lined the room with benches on either side, all packed with goblets of wine and mugs of ale, platters of food scattered at intricately measured intervals. Only Beron and Lady Autumn sat at the head of the hall, the latter of which examined you with approval.

Everyone had floated about you, stealing your attention from the one you desired to give it to. From Rhys asking you, jokingly, to revolt against Autumn and find sanctuary in Velaris, to Thesan pulling you to the side to inquire if you were being treated well. Helion had updated you on the policies you had so gracefully aided him in implementing, and you found a moment to catch up with Kallias and Viviane.

Then you made your way over to Eris who was wrapped up in a conversation with Lucien and Elain, whose gaze jolted from cold to warm in a split second when he saw your dress glistening in the corner of his eye, "Hello, Embers," his voice was as smooth as freshly cracked open whisky as he prodded you with the nickname he had given you, he thought you glowed, not brightly, but like embers on a dying fire, low and warm.

Eris was extremely proud to call you his wife, not only were you clearly beautiful, but you had a heart of molten gold, people sought you out for comfort and aid, you were graceful and poised, and could change the world with your bare hands if you wished it. It was what he needed, a chance of a real future with the woman he was falling in love with.

He couldn't blame you for your feelings toward him, you didn't exactly have a choice in the marriage but you had tried to make the most of it, and you had let him in and spent more time with him away from the duties required of you. Eris thought that you had finally started to feel a certain way toward him as well, from the faint shine in your eyes when you looked at him to the real laughter that sliced through the fogged atmosphere when he quipped something to you. You made him melt, you made him be who he always wanted to be.

"Hello," your voice was as soft as drizzled honey and your hair fell over your shoulders as you leaned forward to place a kiss on his cheek, a necessary act to display your strength as a couple.

Eris felt your eyes trail down his chest and arms, the open collared cream shirt and chestnut brown jacket and pants; he had styled his hair the way you loved it, tamed but still with a playfulness to it, tousled slightly as if he had been stood on the balcony in the wind for a few moments. "Do you like it?" Eris motioned to his suit with that gleam in his eye that made your knees weak, it was certainly a good thing that he wasn't an empath like you, otherwise he'd know his effect on you and no doubt tease you for it.

Just because Eris couldn't feel your emotion doesn't mean that someone else couldn't read you like a book.

You're blushing, a voice infiltrated your mind and you did well to keep a stoic face against Rhys' shit-eating smirk he was no doubt wearing from his seat across the bench from your husband, with his arm loosely wrapped around Feyre's waist, sipping from his goblet with a teasing glint in his eye. Someone might say you might actually feel something for the man.

Ignoring the voice in your head, you spoke, "I love it, we're basically matching."

You'll definitely be matching when both of your clothes are on the floor tonight.

Go fuck yourself, Rhys.

I don't need to. Not when I have my lovely mate.

The walls in your mind flew up then, trapping his talons against the roof of your consciousness with such force that the High Lord visibly winced and rubbed his temple tenderly.

"You look angelic," Eris stood before you, taking your hand in his and pressing his lips against the back of your hand, dipping low and peering at you through his lashes, making no effort to mask the desire in his emotions.

"Thank you," it came out as a whisper and he placed your hand back to your side, sitting down again beside his brother, allowing you to glance along the table which housed not only Eris and Lucien, but also Elain, Rhys, Feyre, Nesta, Cassian, Azriel, Helion, and your brother, meaning there was no space for you, "I suppose I'll go and sit with Kallias and Viviane," you picked up your skirts to turn away when Eris' hand shot out and secured around your wrist.

Eris' eyes glowed in the candlelight, you could see the flames flickering in his russet orbs that had you in a constant chokehold, "What if you-"

"If you're really about to suggest that I sit on your lap, I will kill you," Azriel choked on his wine and coughed as Rhys and Cassian howled in laughter, even Eris chuckled and ran a hand through his hair at your words, standing to tower over you and cup your face in his hand.

"Perhaps later," he smirked and you visibly blushed at the words, even Eris couldn't miss it and he stroked a thumb over your rosed cheek.

In defence, you quipped, "Maybe I'll go back to my chambers then," the words flew from your mouth and you only realised how they sounded when Eris' focus darkened, the tension between you both was palpable to the point that even Azriel let out a whoosh of air he didn't realise he was holding in his lungs.

"So tempting," he took a step closer to you, wrapping an arm around your waist and speaking a low, rough tone, "Don't leave me here alone, you know I don't do well without you."

"Fine," you strained and he grinned victoriously before ordering his brother and Elain to scooch down slightly to make room for you, and you slotted beside Eris like the final piece to his puzzle, thanking him for the goblet of wine you had taken from his offering fingers and looking upward at Rhys and Feyre who both sent you a knowing glance.

Knocking on the doors of your mind, you allowed Rhys to slip in, doing your best to stay distracted against Eris' hand on your hip that sent fire coursing through your veins and heat pooling between your thighs.

I've never known him to be like this, you know.

Like what?

Rhys' eyes flickered to Eris in examination before finding you again whilst Feyre kept the heir ignorant to the conversation between you and her mate.

Soft. Caring. He loves you, Y/N.

Well, it's a good thing I love him too then.

Rhys smirked, raising his goblet to you to which you clinked against your own, sipping the spiced wine and smiling with happiness at his words.

Eris sighed and turned to you, placing a kiss to your cheek, allowing his lips to graze against your cheekbones and his breath to fan down your neck. The rest of the room had moved on, wrapped up in one another, wrapped up in the ale and music, leaving you and Eris alone and untouchable in your little bubble. His eyes scanned you, sketching every part of you onto the canvas within his mind, "Your presence has impacted me so deeply that I'm convinced that if we never met then something would feel missing," he rested his forehead against your own and his hand gripped your waist as his gaze bore into you, "Don't leave me alone, don't ever leave me," a breathless plea that stole your heart.

"I will never leave you, Eris. I will be here to watch all of your dreams come true, I promise."

Flames danced in his eyes and he became unbothered by who could be watching, "They already are," his finger stroked a line up the curve of your throat as he lifted your chin up, wasting no time in pressing his lips to yours in something you could only call ethereal, so tender but passionate that you felt your heart burst with golden light in your chest.

Eris smirked against your lips, a knowing thing, like he knew exactly what had just happened, pulling away, you gasped as your hand ghosted over the fabric of your heart, "You knew?"

"From the moment we met at that meeting in Dawn," his nose brushed against yours, "You were too busy helping Thesan and keeping Tamlin under control to notice, but I saw you, and I knew I needed you."

"You never said anything."

"How could I?" Eris pressed a kiss to your nose, "You had to fall for me on your own, I couldn't influence that."

You inhaled his scent, of crackling firewood and spiced oranges and sighed, you curled your fingers around the lapels of his jacket and kissed him again, more forcefully, and luckily for you both, the room hadn't noticed your infatuation due to Cassian's well played distraction to give you both a moment, one that you needed.

"I need to get you out of here before I take you on this table," his voice possessively growled and it made you shudder in intense delight.

Rhys watched from across the way as Eris took your hand in his own and pulled you from the room, smiling at the large grin on your face and the faint giggles passing through your lips as he saw the silhouette of Eris flinging you over his shoulder cascaded in shadow onto the white stone floor.

If anyone deserved true happiness, a life of wonder and love, it was you, and it was something Rhys believed Eris was now fully capable of providing for you.

Author's Note

Back from Paris in love with the idea of love so expect lots of fluff coming your way x

[bauliya]

it’s funny how a trans woman acting even slightly horny on this site is chased off for being a groomer posthaste but the actual groomer and rapist targeting primarily young vulnerable female fans has a dedicated fandom. very cool of you.

(full article below the cut. photos removed)

SCARLETT PAVLOVICH WAS A 22-year-old drama student when she met the performer Amanda Palmer by chance on the streets of Auckland. It was a gray, drizzly afternoon in June 2020, and Palmer, then 44, was walking down the street with the actress Lucy Lawless, one of the most famous people in New Zealand owing to her six-season stint portraying Xena the warrior princess. But Pavlovich noticed only Palmer. She’d watched her TED Talk, “The Art of Asking,” and was fascinated by the cult-famous feminist writer and musician—by her unabashed self-assurance.

On the surface, Pavlovich appeared to be self-assured as well. A local girl, she had dropped out of high school at 15 to travel to Europe, Morocco, and the Middle East on the cheap, pausing in Scotland—where Tilda Swinton gave her a scholarship to attend her Steiner school, Drumduan—and London to work in the cabaret scene. Eventually, her visa expired and she ran out of money and so, in 2019, she returned to Auckland, where she enrolled in an acting school and took a job at a perfumery. Pale and dark-haired and waifish, she favored bold colors and outrageous outfits. On the day she met Palmer—on most days then—she’d painted a triangle of translucent silver beneath her lower lashes so it looked as though she’d been crying tears of glitter. It was Pavlovich who approached Palmer on the sidewalk outside the perfumery. She was surprised when Palmer texted her a few days later. “It’s amanda d palmer,” she wrote. “Your new friend.”

Palmer, an obsessive chronicler of her own life in songs, poems, blog posts, and a memoir, got her start as half of the punk cabaret band the Dresden Dolls, but she is perhaps more famous for her ability to attract a tight-knit and devoted following wherever she goes. In 2012, she became the first musician to raise more than $1 million on Kickstarter and later became one of Patreon’s most successful artists. As Palmer explained in her book The Art of Asking— part memoir, part manifesto on the virtues of asking for assistance of various kinds—she had built her entire career on “messy exchanges of goodwill and the swapping of favors.” Out of this mess, she argues, a utopian sort of community formed: “There was no distinction between fans and friends.”

Over the following year and a half, Palmer and Pavlovich occasionally met for a drink or a meal. Palmer offered Pavlovich tickets to her shows and invited her to parties for the Patreon community at her house on nearby Waiheke Island, a lush bohemian retreat with vineyards, golden beaches, and more than 60 helipads to accommodate the billionaires who vacationed there. Sometimes Palmer asked Pavlovich for favors—help running errands or organizing files or looking after her child. Pavlovich was happy to assist. She had a crush on Palmer. She didn’t mind that Palmer only occasionally discussed paying her, even though Pavlovich was always strapped for cash. For Pavlovich, who was estranged from her family and without a safety net, Palmer filled a deeper need. In November 2020, Palmer invited her to hang out at her place for a weekend with a group of local artists. At the gathering, Palmer asked Pavlovich to babysit while she got a massage. Early the next morning, Pavlovich wrote a diary entry about the easy intimacy she’d felt in Palmer’s sun-drenched home, where she’d read to Palmer’s son, who was 5 at the time, their limbs entwined. “The years absent of touch build up like a gray inheritance,” she wrote. “I’m hungry. I am so fucking famished.”

On February 1, 2022, Palmer texted Pavlovich and asked if she wanted to spend the weekend babysitting, which would mean bouncing back and forth between her house and her husband’s. Pavlovich had never met Palmer’s husband, from whom she was separated, though of course she knew who he was: Neil Gaiman, the acclaimed British fantasist and author of nearly 50 books, including American Gods and Coraline, and the comic-book series The Sandman, whose work has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. Gaiman and Palmer had arrived in New Zealand in March 2020, but just weeks later, their nine-year marriage collapsed and Gaiman skipped town, breaking COVID protocols to fly to his home on the Isle of Skye. Now, he’d returned and was living in a house near Palmer’s on Waiheke. Their previous nanny had recently left, and they needed help. Pavlovich agreed and was pleased when Palmer offered to pay her for the weekend’s work.

Around four in the afternoon on February 4, Pavlovich took the ferry from Auckland to Waiheke, then sat on a bus and walked through the woods until she arrived at Gaiman’s house, an asymmetrical A-frame of dark burnished wood with picture windows overlooking the sea. Palmer had arranged a playdate for the child, so not long after Pavlovich arrived, she found herself alone in the house with the author. For a little while, Gaiman worked in his office while she read on the couch. Then he emerged and offered her a tour of the grounds. A striking figure at 61, his wild black curls threaded with strands of silver, the author picked a fig—her favorite fruit—and handed it to her. Around 8 p.m., they sat down for pizza. Gaiman poured Pavlovich a glass of rosé and then another. He drank only water. They made awkward conversation about New Zealand, about COVID. Pavlovich had never read any of his work, but she was anxious to make a good impression. After she’d cleaned up their plates, Gaiman noted that there was still time before they would have to pick up his son from the playdate. “‘I’ve had a thought,’” she recalls him saying. “ ‘Why don’t you have a bath in the beautiful claw bathtub in the garden? It’s absolutely enchanting.’” Pavlovich told Gaiman that she was fine as she was but ultimately agreed. He needed to make a work call, he said, and didn’t want Pavlovich to be bored.

Gaiman led Pavlovich down a stone path into the garden to an old-fashioned tub with a roll top and walked away. She got undressed and sank into the bath, looking up at the furry magenta blossoms of the pohutukawa tree overhead. A few minutes later, she was surprised to hear Gaiman’s footsteps on the stones in the dark. She tried to cover her breasts with her arms. When he arrived at the bath, she saw that he was naked. Gaiman put out a couple of citronella candles, lit them, and got into the bath. He stretched out, facing her, and, for a few minutes, made small talk. He bitched about Palmer’s schedule. He talked about his kid’s school. Then he told her to stretch her legs out and “get comfortable.”

“I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘I’m not confident with my body,’” Pavlovich recalls. “He said, ‘It’s okay—it’s only me. Just relax. Just have a chat.’” She didn’t move. He looked at her again and said, “Don’t ruin the moment.” She did as instructed, and he began to stroke her feet. At that point, she recalls, she felt “a subtle terror.”

Gaiman asked her to sit on his lap. Pavlovich stammered out a few sentences: She was gay, she’d never had sex, she had been sexually abused by a 45-year-old man when she was 15. Gaiman continued to press. “The next part is really amorphous,” Pavlovich tells me. “But I can tell you that he put his fingers straight into my ass and tried to put his penis in my ass. And I said, ‘No, no.’ Then he tried to rub his penis between my breasts, and I said ‘no’ as well. Then he asked if he could come on my face, and I said ‘no’ but he did anyway. He said, ‘Call me ‘master,’ and I’ll come.’ He said, ‘Be a good girl. You’re a good little girl.’ ”

Afterward, Pavlovich crouched down in the water and tried to clean herself off. Gaiman looked at her and smiled. “‘Amanda told me I couldn’t have you,’ ” Pavlovich recalls him saying. As soon as he’d heard this, he “knew he had to have” her. “‘God,’ ” he continued, “ ‘I wish it were the good old days where we could both fuck you.’ ”

IN THE SANDMAN, the DC comic-book series that ran from 1989 to 1996 and made Gaiman famous, he tells a story about a writer named Richard Madoc. After Madoc’s first book proves a success, he sits down to write his second and finds that he can’t come up with a single decent idea. This difficulty recedes after he accepts an unusual gift from an older author: a naked woman, of a kind, who has been kept locked in a room in his house for 60 years. She is Calliope, the youngest of the Nine Muses. Madoc rapes her, again and again, and his career blossoms in the most extraordinary way. A stylish young beauty tells him how much she loved his characterization of a strong female character, prompting him to remark, “Actually, I do tend to regard myself as a feminist writer.” His downfall comes only when the titular hero, the Sandman, also known as the Prince of Stories, frees Calliope from bondage. A being of boundless charisma and creativity, the Sandman rules the Dreaming, the realm we visit in our sleep, where “stories are spun.” Older and more powerful than the most powerful gods, he can reward us with exquisite delights or punish us with unending nightmares, depending on what he feels we deserve. To punish the rapist, the Sandman floods Madoc’s mind with such a wild torrent of ideas that he’s powerless to write them down, let alone profit from them.

“THAT SAME VOICE THAT TOLD ME THOSE BEAUTIFUL STORIES when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

As allegations of Gaiman’s sexual misconduct emerged this past summer, some observers noticed Gaiman and Madoc have certain things in common. Like Madoc, Gaiman has called himself a feminist. Like Madoc, Gaiman has racked up major awards (for Gaiman, awards in science fiction and fantasy as well as dozens of prizes for contemporary novels, short stories, poetry, television, and film, helping make him, according to several sources, a multimillionaire). And like Madoc, Gaiman has come to be seen as a figure who transcended, and transformed, the genres in which he wrote: first comics, then fantasy and children’s literature. But for most of his career, readers identified him not with the rapist, who shows up in a single issue, but with the Sandman, the inexhaustible fountain of story.

One of Gaiman’s greatest gifts as a storyteller was his voice, a warm and gentle instrument that he’d tuned through elocution lessons as a boy in East Grinstead, 30 miles south of London. In America, people mistakenly assumed he was an English gentleman. “He spoke very slowly, in a hypnotic way,” says one of his former students at the fantasy-writing workshop Clarion. He wrote that way, too, with rhythm and restraint, lulling you into a trance in the way that a bard might have done with a lyre. Another gift was his memory. He has “libraries full of books memorized,” one of his old friends tells me, noting that he could recall the page numbers of his favorite passages and recite them verbatim. His vast collection was eclectic enough to encompass both a box of comics (Spider-Man, Silver Surfer) from his boyhood and the works of Oscar Wilde he received as a gift for his bar mitzvah. For The Sandman, a forgotten DC property he had been hired to dust off and polish up, Gaiman gave the hero a makeover, replacing his green suit, fedora, and gas mask with the leather armor of an angsty goth, and surrounded him with characters drawn from the books he could pull off the shelves in his head, from timeless icons like Shakespeare and Lucifer to the obscure San Francisco eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton. Norman Mailer called it “a comic strip for intellectuals.”

Gaiman and the Sandman shared a penchant for dressing in black, a shock of unruly black hair, and an erotic power seldom possessed by authors of comic books and fantasy novels. A descendant of Polish Jewish immigrants, Gaiman had gotten his start in the ’80s as a journalist for hire in London covering Duran Duran, Lou Reed, and other brooding lords of rock, and in the world of comic conventions, he was the closest thing there was to that archetype. Women would turn up to his signings dressed in the elaborate Victorian-goth attire of his characters and beg him to sign their breasts or slip him key cards to their hotel rooms. One writer recounts running into Gaiman at a World Fantasy Convention in 2011. His assistant wasn’t around, and he was late to a reading. “I can’t get to it if I walk by myself,” he told her. As they made their way through the convention side by side, “the whole floor full of people tilted and slid toward him,” she says. “They wanted to be entwined with him in ways I was not prepared to defend him against.” A woman fell to her knees and wept.

People who flock to fantasy conventions and signings make up an “inherently vulnerable community,” one of Gaiman’s former friends, a fantasy writer, tells me. They “wrap themselves around a beloved text so it becomes their self-identity,” she says. They want to share their souls with the creators of these works. “And if you have morality around it, you say ‘no.’ ” It was an open secret in the late ’90s and early aughts among conventiongoers that Gaiman cheated on his first wife, Mary McGrath, a private midwestern Scientologist he’d married in his early 20s. But in my conversations with Gaiman’s old friends, collaborators, and peers, nearly all of them told me that they never imagined that Gaiman’s affairs could have been anything but enthusiastically consensual. As one prominent editor in the field puts it, “The one thing I hear again and again, largely from women, is ‘He was always nice to me. He was always a gentleman.’ ” The writer Kelly Link, who met Gaiman at a reading in 1997, recalls finding him charmingly goofy. “He was hapless in a way that was kind of exasperating,” she says, “but also made him seem very harmless.” Someone who had a sexual relationship with Gaiman in the aughts recalls him flipping through questions fans wrote on cards at a Q&A session. Once, a fan asked if she could be his “sex slave”: “He read it aloud and said, ‘Well, no.’ He’d be very demure.”

But there were some who saw another side of the author. One woman, Brenda (a pseudonym), met Gaiman in the ’90s at a signing for The Sandman where she was working. On signing lines, Gaiman had a knack for connecting with each individual. He would ask questions, laugh, and assure them that their inability to form sentences was fine. After the Sandman signing, at a dinner attended by those who had worked the event, Gaiman sat next to Brenda. “Everyone wanted to be near him, but he was laser focused on me,” she says. A few years later, Brenda traveled to Chicago to attend the World Horror Convention, where Gaiman received the top prize for American Gods, the book that cemented him as a best-selling novelist. The night after the awards ceremony, she and Gaiman ended up in bed together. As soon as they began to hook up, the feeling that had drawn her to him—the magical spell of his interest in her individuality—vanished. “He seemed to have a script,” she tells me. “He wanted me to call him ‘master’ immediately.” He demanded that she promise him her soul. “It was like he’d gone into this ritual that had nothing to do with me.”

THIS PAST JULY, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. Since then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them. (Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.) I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs. I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence. Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. The youngest was 18. Two of them worked for him. Five were his fans. With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand. By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women. “Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy.

Katherine Kendall was 22 when she met Gaiman in 2012. She was volunteering at one of his events in Asheville, North Carolina. He invited her to join him a few days later at an after-party for another event, where he kissed her. The two struck up a flirtatious correspondence, emailing and Skyping in the middle of the night. Kendall didn’t want to have sex with Gaiman, and on one of their calls, she told him this. Afterward, she recorded his reply in her diary: “He had no designs on me beyond flirty friendship and I believe him thoroughly.” She’d grown up listening to his audiobooks, she later told Papillon DeBoer, the host of the podcast Am I Broken: “And then that same voice that told me those beautiful stories when I was a kid was telling me the story that I was safe, and that we were just friends, and that he wasn’t a threat.”

At a reading ten months later, Gaiman suggested that Kendall and two other girls wait for him on his tour bus so they could all hang out after he was done signing. When Gaiman showed up, he pulled Kendall into the back of the bus and lay on top of her. He kept saying, “Kiss me like you mean it,” Kendall remembers. She tried to get into it, but she was panicked. Eventually, Gaiman rolled off her. “‘I’m a very wealthy man,’” she remembers him saying, “ ‘and I’m used to getting what I want.’ ” (Years later, Gaiman gave Kendall $60,000 to pay for therapy in an attempt, as he put it in a recorded phone call, “to make up some of the damage.”)

Gaiman had been having sexual encounters with younger fans for a long time. Kendra Stout was 18 when, in 2003, she drove four and a half hours to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to see Gaiman read from Endless Nights, a follow-up to The Sandman. She met him in the signing line. Gaiman sent her long emails and bought her a web camera so they could chat on video. Around three years after they met, he flew to Orlando to take her on a date. He invited her back to his hotel room, put on a playlist of love songs, and held her down with one hand. Gaiman didn’t believe in foreplay or lubrication, Stout tells me, which could make sex particularly painful. When she said it hurt too much, he’d tell her the problem was she wasn’t submissive enough. “He talked at length about the dominant and submissive relationship he wanted out of me,” she tells me. Stout had no prior interest in BDSM. She says Gaiman never asked what she liked in bed, and there was no discussion of “safe words” or “aftercare” or “limits.” He’d ask her to call him “master” and beat her with his belt. “These were not sexy little taps,” she says. When she told him she didn’t like it, she says he replied, “It’s the only way I can get off.”

Gaiman told Stout he had been introduced to these practices by a woman he’d met in his early 20s who had asked him to “whip her pussy.” At the time, he claimed to Stout, he was such a naïve Englishman that he thought she meant her cat. Then she handed him a flogger and told him to use it on her vagina. “‘This is what gets me off now,’ ” Stout recalls him saying. A similar anecdote shows up in an interview Gaiman gave for a 2022 biography of Kathy Acker, the late experimental punk writer Gaiman befriended in his 20s, but he offers a different account of how it affected him. When Acker asked him to “whip her pussy,” he found it “profoundly unsexual,” he told the interviewer. “I did it and ran away.” He identified himself as “very vanilla.”

In 2007, Gaiman and Stout took a trip to the Cornish countryside. On their last night there, Stout developed a UTI that had gotten so bad she couldn’t sit down. She told Gaiman they could fool around but that any penetration would be too painful to bear. “It was a big hard ‘no,’” she says. “I told him, ‘You cannot put anything in my vagina or I will die.’ ” Gaiman flipped her over on the bed, she says, and attempted to penetrate her with his fingers. She told him “no.” He stopped for a moment and then he penetrated her with his penis. At that point, she tells me, “I just shut down.” She lay on the bed until he was finished. (This past October, she filed a police report alleging he raped her.)

According to the podcast, which quoted Gaiman through his representatives, his position was that “sexual degradation, bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism may not be to everyone’s taste, but between consenting adults, BDSM is lawful.” (Gaiman declined to speak with me despite multiple requests, but through a legal representative, he responded to some claims.) If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases. The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him. But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing. An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of longstanding norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it. This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse. And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect. Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws. “Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”

AFTER GAIMAN GOT INTO the bathtub with Pavlovich, she retreated to Palmer’s house, which was vacant at the time. She sat in the shower for an hour, crying, then got into Palmer’s bed and began to search the internet for clues that might explain what had happened to her. She Googled “Me Too” and “Neil Gaiman.” Nothing. The only negative stories she found were about how he’d broken COVID lockdown rules in 2020 and had been forced to apologize to the people of the Isle of Skye for endangering their lives.

At the end of the weekend, Palmer texted Pavlovich to say how pleased she was to see Pavlovich and her child get along. “The universe is a karmic mystery,” Palmer wrote. “We nourish each other in the most random and unpredictable ways.” Palmer asked if she could babysit again. She needed so much help. Would Pavlovich consider staying with them for the foreseeable future?

Pavlovich was living in a sublet that was about to end. She was broke and hadn’t been able to find a new apartment. She’d been homeless at the start of the pandemic, when the perfumery closed, and had ended up crashing on the beach in a friend’s sleeping bag on and off for the first two weeks of lockdown. The thought of returning to the beach filled her with dread.

She didn’t consider reaching out to her own family. Her parents had divorced when she was 3, and Pavlovich had grown up splitting time between their households. Violence, Pavlovich tells me, “was normalized in the household.” One close family member beat her with a belt. Another would strangle Pavlovich when she got upset and slap her across the face until her cheeks were raw. She began to regularly cut her arms and wrists with a knife when she was 11. She became bulimic, then anorexic. By 13, Pavlovich had grown so thin that she ended up in a psychiatric unit at Auckland Children’s Hospital and spent weeks on a feeding tube. When she was 15, she left home and never went back.

In the years since, she had been looking for a new family, but many of the people she’d encountered in that search turned out to be abusive as well. “After all of this, Amanda Palmer was an actual creature sent from a celestial realm. It was like, Hallelujah,” Pavlovich tells me. Palmer was famous for speaking out about sexual abuse and encouraging others to do the same. In songs and essays, she had written of having been sexually assaulted and raped on multiple occasions as a teenager and young woman. Pavlovich didn’t think someone like that could be married to someone who would assault women.

Sexual abuse is one of the most confusing forms of violence that a person can experience. The majority of people who have endured it do not immediately recognize it as such; some never do. “You’re not thinking in a linear or logical fashion,” Pavlovich says, “but the mind is trying to process it in the ways that it can.” Whatever had happened in the bath, she’d been through worse and survived, she thought. And Gaiman and Palmer were offering her the possibility of a shared future. Palmer’s vision of herself as the central figure of a utopian community could, according to some of her friends, make her careless with the young, impressionable women she invited into her and her husband’s lives. “Her idealism could blind her to reality,” one friend says. (Palmer declined to be interviewed, but I spoke with people close to her.) Palmer told Pavlovich they might travel to London together, and to Scotland, where Gaiman was shooting the second season of Good Omens. Pavlovich had wanted to leave New Zealand—her “epicenter of trauma”—for as long as she could remember. These conversations filled her head with fantasies “of finally being on solid ground in the world.”

After Palmer’s offer, Pavlovich texted Gaiman: “I am consumed by thoughts of you, the things you will do to me. I’m so hungry. What a terrible creature you’ve turned me into.” The following weekend, she packed up her sublet and boarded the ferry to Waiheke.

THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, Gaiman has written about terror from the point of view of a child. His most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, tells the story of a quiet and bookish 7-year-old boy. Through various unfortunate events, he ends up with a hole in his heart that can never be healed, a doorway through which nightmares from distant realms enter our world. Over the course of the tale, the boy suffers terribly, sometimes at the hands of his own family. At dinner one night, the boy refuses to eat the food his nanny has prepared. The nanny, the boy knows, isn’t really a human but a nightmare creature from another world. When his father demands to know why he won’t eat, the boy explains, “She’s a monster.” His father becomes enraged. To punish him, he fills the tub, then picks up the child, plunges him into the bath, and pushes his shoulders and head beneath the chilly water. “I had read many books in that bath,” the boy says. “It was one of my safe places. And now, I had no doubt, I was going to die there.” Later that night, the boy runs away from home; on his way out, he glimpses his father having sex with the monstrous nanny through the drawing-room window.

In various interviews over the years, Gaiman has called The Ocean at the End of the Lane his most personal book. While much of it is fantastical, Gaiman has said “that kid is me.” The book is set in Sussex, where Gaiman grew up. In the story, the narrator survives otherworldly evil with the help of a family of magical women. As a child, Gaiman had no such friends to call on. “I was going back to the 7-year-old me and giving myself a peculiar kind of love that I didn’t have,” he told an interviewer in 2017. “I never feel the past is dead or young Neil isn’t around anymore. He’s still there, hiding in a library somewhere, looking for a doorway that will lead him to somewhere safe where everything works.”

While Gaiman has identified the boy in the book as himself, he has also claimed that none of the things that happen to the boy happened to him. Yet there is reason to believe that some of the most horrifying events of the novel did occur. Gaiman has rarely spoken about a core fact of his childhood. In 1965, when Neil was 5 years old, his parents, David and Sheila, left their jobs as a business executive and a pharmacist and bought a house in East Grinstead, a mile away from what was at that time the worldwide headquarters for the Church of Scientology. Its founder, the former science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, lived down the road from them from 1965 the church. By the late ’60s, David was the church’s public face and chief spokesperson in the U.K.

It was a challenging job, to say the least. The U.K., following the example of a handful of other governments, had issued a report declaring Scientology’s methods “a serious danger to the health of those who submit to them.” Hubbard would routinely punish members of the organization who committed minor infractions by binding them, blindfolding them, and throwing them overboard into icy waters. Back in England, David gave interviews to the press to smooth over such troubling accounts. The church was under particular pressure to assure the public it was not harming children. In his bulletins to members, Hubbard had made it clear that children were not to be exempt from the punishments to which adults were subjected. If a child laughed inappropriately or failed to remember a Scientology term, they could be sent to the ship’s hold and made to chip Scientology lingo, is what happens when you complete one of the lower levels of coursework.) What was happening away from the cameras is difficult to know, in part because Gaiman has avoided talking about it, changing the subject whenever an interviewer, or a friend, brings it up. But it seems unlikely that he would have been spared the disciplinary measures inflicted on adults and children as a standard practice at that time. According to someone who knew the Gaimans, David and Sheila did apply Scientology’s methods at home. When Neil was around the age of the child in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the person said, David took him up to the bathtub, ran a cold bath, and “drowned him to the point where Neil was screaming for air.”

As a teenager, Neil worked for the Church of Scientology for three years as an auditor, a minister of the church who conducts a process some have likened to hypnosis. One former member of the church who worked with Gaiman’s parents and was audited until 1967, when he fled the country and began directing the church from international waters, pursued by the CIA, FBI, and a handful of foreign governments and maritime agencies.

David and Sheila were among England’s earliest adherents to Scientology. They began studying Dianetics in 1956 and eventually took positions in the Guardian’s Office, a special department of the organization dedicated to handling the church’s growing number of legal cases, public communications, and intelligence operations. The mission of this office, as Hubbard wrote, was its “covert use in destroying the repute of individuals and groups.” On the side, the Gaimans ran the church’s canteen, lodged foreign Scientologists in their home, and opened a vitamin company in town, where they supplied courses of supplements for Scientology’s “detoxification” programs, a business that grew exponentially alongside the expansion of rust for days or confined in a chain locker for weeks at a time without blankets or a bathroom. In his book Going Clear, Lawrence Wright recounts the story of a 4-year-old boy named Derek Greene, an adopted Black child who stole a Rolex and dropped it overboard. He was confined to the locker for two days and nights. When his mother pleaded with Hubbard to let him out, he “reminded her of the Scientology axiom that children are actually adults in small bodies, and equally responsible for their behavior.” (A representative for the Church of Scientology said it does not speak about members past or present but denies that this event occurred.)

David used Neil as an exhibit in his case to the public. In 1968, he arranged for Neil to give an interview to the BBC. When the reporter asked the child if Scientology made him “a better boy,” Neil replied, “Not exactly that, but when you make a release, you feel absolutely great.” (A release, in by Gaiman recalls him as precocious and ambitious. It was unusual for a teenager to have completed such a high level of training, he tells me. But the Gaimans were like “royalty,” he says. In 1981, David was promoted to lead the Guardian’s Office, making him one of the most powerful people in the church. But the same year, he fell from grace. A new generation of Scientologists, led by David Miscavige, who eventually succeeded Hubbard as the church’s leader, had Hubbard’s ear, and David was “caught in that grinder,” as his former colleague puts it. A document declaring David a “Suppressive person” was released a few years later. It accused him of a range of offenses, including sexual misconduct. David, the document claims, put on a “front” of being “mild mannered and quite sociable,” adding that his actions “belie this.” His greatest offense, it seemed, was hubris. “Gaiman required others to look up to him instead of to Source,” it reads, referring to Hubbard.

In the ’80s, David was sent off to a sort of rehabilitation camp. It was around this time that Gaiman set out to make a living as a writer. Charming and strategic, he used the contacts he developed as a journalist to break into the business of genre writing, endearing himself to the giants of that world at the time: Douglas Adams, Arthur C. Clarke, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, Alan Moore. “When I was young, I had unbelievable chutzpah,” Gaiman says in the documentary Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously. “The kind of monstrous self-certainty that you only get normally in people who then go on to conquer half the civilized world.”

GAIMAN AND PALMER MET in 2008, when she was 32 and he was 47. Both were at a turning point in their lives and careers. Gaiman was in the midst of finalizing a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had three children, and on the verge of breaking into Hollywood (nine of his works have been turned into movies or TV shows); Palmer was in a fight with her record label that would culminate in a split. Palmer had a collection of photos of herself posing as a murdered corpse and wanted Gaiman to write captions to go along with the pictures. Gaiman liked the idea, and the two met to work on the project, a book tied to her first solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. As Palmer described in The Art of Asking, they were not attracted to each other at first. “I thought he looked like a baggy-eyed, grumpy old man, and he thought I looked like a chubby little boy.”

Gaiman was the first to propose a romantic relationship. In an interview, he later said, “I got together with her because I couldn’t ever imagine being bored.” Palmer could. Ever since she’d gotten her start as a street busker, painting her face white and standing on a crate in Harvard Square dressed as a silent eight-foot-tall bride, she prided herself on a low-rent, bohemian lifestyle, couch-surfing when she toured, playing random shows in the living rooms of her fans. She had no savings and didn’t own a car, real estate, or kitchen appliances. Gaiman owned multiple houses. He was too rich, too famous, too British, too awkward, too old. And they didn’t have great sexual chemistry. But he appeared to be kind and stable, a family man, and they shared a dark, fantastical aesthetic. She also felt a little sorry for him. He seemed lonely, in spite of his fame, and Palmer found herself hoping that she could help him. “He’d believed for a long time, deep down, that people didn’t actually fall in love,” she wrote in her book. “ ‘But that’s impossible,’ ” she told him. He’d written stories and scenes of people in love. “‘That’s the whole point, darling,’ he said. ‘Writers make things up.’ ”

They wed in 2011 in the Berkeley home of their friends Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, the novelists. Their union had a multiplying effect on their fame and stature, drawing each out of their respective domains of cult stardom and into the airy realm of tech-funded virality. They became darlings of the TED Talk circuit and regulars at Jeff Bezos’s ultrasecret Campfire retreat. Gaiman introduced Palmer to Twitter, which he had used to become fantasy’s most beloved author of 140-character bons mots. Palmer, in turn, leaned into her growing reputation as a crowdfunding genius. Online, they flirted, went after each other’s critics, and praised each other’s progressive politics. In an interview with Out magazine in 2012, Palmer said that the main “other” relationship in both of their lives was with their fans: “Sometimes when I’m with Neil, and go to the other room to Twitter with my followers, it feels like sneaking off for a quick shag.”

This wasn’t strictly a metaphor. During the early years of their marriage, they lived apart for months at a time and encouraged each other to have affairs. According to conversations with five of Palmer’s closest friends, the most important rule governing their open relationship was honesty. They found that sharing the details of their extramarital dalliances—and sometimes sharing the same partners—brought them closer together.

In 2012, Palmer met a 20-year-old fan, who has asked to be referred to as Rachel, at a Dresden Dolls concert. After one of Palmer’s next shows, the women had sex. The morning after, Palmer snapped a few semi-naked pictures of Rachel and asked if she could send one to Gaiman. She and Palmer slept together a few more times, but then Palmer seemed to lose interest in sex with her. Some six months after they met, Palmer introduced Rachel to Gaiman online, telling Rachel, “He’ll love you.” The two struck up a correspondence that quickly turned sexual, and Gaiman invited her to his house in Wisconsin. As she packed for the trip, she asked Palmer over email if she had any advice for pleasing Gaiman in bed. Palmer joked in response, “i think the fun is finding out on your own.” With Gaiman, Rachel says there was never a “blatant rupture of consent” but that he was always pressing her to do things that hurt and scared her. Looking back, she feels Palmer gave her to him “like a toy.”

For Gaiman and Palmer, these were happy years. With his editing help, she wrote The Art of Asking. They toured together. And when Palmer was offered a residency at Bard College, Gaiman tagged along to give some talks, then ended up receiving an offer to join the faculty as a professor of the arts. After they’d been together for a few years, Palmer began asking Gaiman to tell her more about his childhood in Scientology. But he seemed unable to string more than a few sentences together. When she encouraged him to continue, he would curl up on the bed into a fetal position and cry. He refused to see a therapist. Instead, he sat down to write a short story that kept getting longer until it had turned into a novel. Although the child at the center of the story in many ways remains opaque, Palmer felt he had never been so open. He dedicated the book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, “to Amanda, who wanted to know.”

IN 2014, THE CRACKS in Gaiman and Palmer’s marriage began to show to those around them. While they were at Bard, they decided to buy a house upstate. Palmer would have preferred to live in New York City, but Gaiman liked the woods. Eventually, he picked a sprawling estate set on 80 acres in Woodstock. It was Gaiman’s money, a friend who accompanied them on the house hunt says, “and he was going to have the say.”

Later that year, Palmer got pregnant. She and Gaiman were spending more time at home together and talked about slowing down and devoting their attention to their marriage. She wanted to close the relationship, and he agreed. But when she was eight months pregnant, Gaiman came to her with a problem: He had slept with a fan in her early 20s, taking her virginity. Now, Gaiman told her, the girl was “going crazy.” He promised to change, and they met with a couples counselor. Gaiman was prone to panic attacks and had never been in treatment. “Amanda was shocked at how traumatized Neil was, given his public persona and the guy she thought she’d married,” a person close to them says.

One of the people in whom Palmer confided about her marital issues at the time was Caroline, a potter who, along with her builder husband, Phillip, had been living on the Woodstock property and working as a caretaker. Gaiman had made them an offer that seemed too good to be true. They would build an addition on one of the cabins on the land at Gaiman’s expense, and in exchange, Gaiman would sell them a five-acre parcel, allowing them to put up a barn-style home to share with their three daughters. They tended to the garden, ran errands for guests, and rehabilitated the buildings, which needed plumbing and electrical work.

At lunch one day, Palmer told Caroline she hated living in the woods and was disturbed by what she was learning about her husband. “‘You have no idea the twisted, dark things that go on in that man’s head,’ ” Caroline recalls Palmer saying. Palmer said she wished her marriage were more like Caroline and Phillip’s, but their marriage of 11 years was falling apart, too. In 2017, Phillip moved out of their house. Caroline, 54, spent her days in bed crying and drinking. She stopped eating and, for the most part, stopped working. It was then that Gaiman began paying attention to her. He would bring juices up to her cabin and fret that she was losing too much weight. The first time he touched her, in December 2018, she was sitting on his couch next to him, crying from exhaustion. Gaiman told her, “You need a hug.” She stood and he hugged her, then slid his hands down her pants and into her underwear and squeezed her butt. She does not recall saying or doing anything in response. “I was stunned,” she says.

Over the next two years, they had a series of sexual encounters, always when Palmer was away. When Gaiman wasn’t around, they occasionally engaged in phone sex. At first Caroline, who hadn’t been with anyone since Phillip left, went along willingly. But at the end of their second encounter, she remembers asking Gaiman what Palmer would think about their romance: “He said, ‘Caroline, there is no romance.’” After that, she tried to keep her distance from him, darting away when she saw him on the estate. He was difficult to avoid. He kept an egg incubator in Caroline’s cabin and would come down and check on it, entering without texting first. On one of these visits, he found her crying by the fireplace. He walked over to her, stuck his thumb in her mouth, and twisted her nipples. She told Gaiman the arrangement was making her “feel bad.” She recalls him replying, “I don’t want you to feel bad.” But nothing changed. Caroline had no income at the time and was borrowing money from her sister to get by. She worried that if she didn’t appease Gaiman, he’d kick her out of her house and then she and her three daughters would have nowhere to go. “ ‘I like our trade,’ ” she remembers him saying. “ ‘You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.’ ”

Sometimes she would babysit. Once, Caroline and the boy, then 4, fell asleep reading stories in Gaiman and Palmer’s bed. Caroline woke up when Gaiman returned home. He got into bed with his son in the middle, then reached across the child to grab Caroline’s hand and put it on his penis. She says she jumped out of the bed. “He didn’t have boundaries,” Caroline says. “I remember thinking that there was something really wrong with him.”

In April 2021, Gaiman informed Caroline that the land he’d promised her was no longer available. That summer, she stopped responding to his attempts to engage in phone sex and Gaiman increased the pressure on her to leave his property. One night in December 2021, Gaiman’s business manager, Terry Bird, called Caroline and offered her $5,000 to move immediately if she’d sign a 16-page NDA agreeing to never discuss anything about her experience with Gaiman or Palmer or to take legal action against Gaiman. Caroline recalls saying to Bird, “What am I going to do with $5,000? I need therapy. This is maybe $300,000.” Looking back, she says she didn’t know how she came up with that number, but Gaiman agreed to it, and she signed. (Gaiman’s representatives say Caroline initiated the sexual encounters and deny that he engaged in any sexual activity with her in the presence of his son.)

TWO MONTHS LATER, Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke. By then, Palmer and Gaiman were divorcing. According to Palmer’s friends, she asked for a divorce after Rachel called to tell her that she and Gaiman were still having sexual contact, long past the point when Palmer thought their relationship had ended. She was hurt but unsurprised. “I find it all very boring,” she later wrote to Rachel, who recalls the exchange. “Just the lack of self-knowledge and the lack of interest in self-knowledge.” In late 2021, Palmer found out about Caroline, too. “I remember her saying, ‘That poor woman,’” recalls Lance Horne, a musician and friend of Palmer’s in whom she confided at the time. “‘I can’t believe he did it again.’”

By the time she asked Pavlovich to babysit, Palmer was fed up with Gaiman’s behavior, but “she still had some faith in his decency,” a friend says. Still, she knew enough to warn Gaiman to stay away from their new babysitter. “I remember specifically her saying, ‘You could really hurt this person and break her; keep your hands off of her,’ ” the friend says. And Palmer still hoped, according to those close to her, that she and Gaiman would be able to negotiate a peaceful co-parenting arrangement. She found a school for their child and the two houses on Waiheke. “She was going to do her best to keep Neil as a presence for her son,” one friend says.

One evening, Palmer dropped Pavlovich and the child off with Gaiman and retreated back to her own place. Pavlovich was in the kitchen, tidying up, when he approached her from behind and pulled her to the sofa. “It all happened again so quickly,” Pavlovich says. Gaiman pushed down her pants and began to beat her with his belt. He then attempted to initiate anal sex without lubrication. “I screamed ‘no,’” Pavlovich says. Had Gaiman and Pavlovich been engaging in BDSM, this could conceivably have been part of a rape scene, a scenario sometimes described as consensual nonconsent. But that would have required careful negotiation in advance, which she says they had not done. After she said “no,” Gaiman backed off briefly and went into the kitchen. When he returned, he brought butter to use as lubricant. She continued to scream until Gaiman was finished. When it was over, he called her “slave” and ordered her to “clean him up.” She protested that it wasn’t hygienic. “He said, ‘Are you defying your master?’ ” she recalls. “I had to lick my own shit.”

Afterward, she got into the shower and tried to wash her mouth out with a bar of lavender soap. It had a grainy texture and tasted of metal, acid, and herbs. She noticed blood swirling down the drain. He hadn’t used a condom, and she worried she might have gotten an infection. She had a migraine, and her whole body ached. But she didn’t consider leaving. She’d hated herself her whole life, she tells me, “and when someone comes along and hates you as much as yourself, it is kind of a relief, without it always being consent.” She says she understands how Scientologists might have felt when they were sent to the Hole, a detention center where they were forced to lick the floor as punishment. She’d heard of how some would stay in the room even after they were allowed to leave. “People keep licking the floor in that horrible room,” she says.

The nights with Gaiman blurred together. There was the time she passed out from pain while Gaiman was having anal sex with her. He made her perform oral sex while his penis had urine on it. He ordered her to suck him off while he watched screeners for the first season of The Sandman. In one instance, he thrust his penis into Pavlovich’s mouth with such force that she vomited on him. Then he told her to eat the vomit off his lap and lick it up from the couch.

A week or so into Pavlovich’s time with the family, their son began to address her as “slave” and ordered Pavlovich to call him “master.” Gaiman seemed to find it amusing. Sometimes he’d say to his child, in an affable tone, “Now, now, Scarlett’s not a slave. No, you mustn’t.” One day, Pavlovich came into the living room when Gaiman and the boy were on the couch watching the children’s show Odd Squad. She joined them, sitting down next to the child. Gaiman put his arm around them both, reached into Pavlovich’s shirt, and fondled her breasts. She says he didn’t make any effort to hide what he was doing from the boy. Another time, during the day, he requested oral sex in the middle of the kitchen while the boy was awake and somewhere in the house. “He would never shut a door,” she says.

On February 19, 2022, Gaiman and his son spent the night at a hotel in Auckland, which they sometimes did for fun. Gaiman asked Pavlovich if she could come by and watch the child for an hour so he could get a massage. It was a small room—one double bed, a television, and a bathroom. When he returned, Gaiman and the boy ate dinner, takeout from a nearby delicatessen. Afterward, Gaiman wanted to watch a movie, but the child wanted to play with the iPad. The boy sat against the wall by the picture window overlooking the city, facing the bed. Pavlovich perched on the edge of the mattress; Gaiman got onto the bed and pulled her so she was on her back. He lifted the covers up over them. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that he should stop. She mouthed, “What the fuck are you doing?” She didn’t want the child to overhear what she was saying. Gaiman ignored her. He rolled her onto her side, took off his pants, pulled off her skirt, and began to have sex with her from behind while continuing to speak with his son. “ ‘You should really get off the iPad,’ ” she recalls him saying. Pavlovich, in a state of shock, buried her head in the pillow. After about five minutes, Gaiman got up and walked to the bathroom, half-naked. He urinated on his hand and then returned to Pavlovich, frozen on the bed, and told her to “lick it off.” He went back to the bathroom, naked from the waist down. “Before you leave,” he told Pavlovich, ��you have to finish your job.” She went to the bathroom, and he pushed her to her knees. The door was open. (Gaiman’s representatives say these allegations are “false, not to mention, deplorable.”)

Three weeks after Pavlovich arrived on Waiheke, Palmer told her that the child would be traveling with Gaiman to Edinburgh in a few days to visit the Amazon production of his series Anansi Boys. They wouldn’t need her for a couple of weeks. That morning, Pavlovich came down with COVID. Palmer and Gaiman agreed that she could isolate in Gaiman’s empty home. They still hadn’t paid her for a single hour she’d worked for them.

TEN DAYS AFTER Gaiman left New Zealand, Pavlovich went to Palmer’s house for dinner. She asked Palmer if she could tell her something in confidence and made her promise not to tell Gaiman. She begged for reassurance that she would still keep her job as the child’s nanny. Palmer assured Pavlovich her employment was not in danger. Sitting in the kitchen, Pavlovich told Palmer that Gaiman had made a pass at her. She told Palmer about the bath. “I didn’t have any choice in the matter,” she said. “He just did it.” She said he had been having sex with her ever since. She withheld some of the most brutal details and did not describe her experience as sexual assault; she didn’t yet see it that way.

Palmer did not appear to be surprised. “Fourteen women have come to me about this,” she said. She mentioned that Gaiman had slept with another babysitter during his first marriage, and that she’d heard from other women who were disturbed by their experiences with him. Pavlovich waited until the end to tell Palmer about the child being present in Auckland. Afterward, she recalled, Palmer was silent. She appeared shocked. Palmer insisted that Pavlovich spend the night in her guest room. She told her, “I’ve had to do this before, and I can do this again. I will take care of you.” Pavlovich lay down in the bed and heard Palmer pacing back and forth in her room upstairs until 3 a.m.

Palmer called Gaiman that night. According to Horne, the musician, she asked Gaiman whether their son had been wearing headphones while he and Pavlovich were in the hotel room. He replied “no,” then hung up. The following day, Palmer emailed Gaiman and their couples counselor, a man named Wayne Muller, a minister and “a sort of marital companion,” as he put it to me. According to Muller, who relayed the contents of the email to me, Palmer wrote that Gaiman needed psychiatric treatment and had finally agreed to seek it. “Everyone was trying to make the best of what was clearly a difficult situation,” Muller tells me. Palmer then flew to Edinburgh, where Gaiman was staying with their son, whom she collected. Meanwhile, Pavlovich received a text from Gaiman: “Amanda tells me that you are having a rough time and you are really upset with me about what we did. I feel awful about this. Would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to make anything better?” Pavlovich didn’t respond immediately. “My reflex was to fix the situation,” she tells me. The next day, she wrote, “Hey. We’ll speak soon … hope you are doing good.”

In the days and weeks after Pavlovich’s revelation, Palmer was solicitous, checking in frequently over text and sending warm notes: “From the minute you entwined your fate with mine on ponsonby road i’ve been glad i met you. That is tenfold so now.” She helped Pavlovich find a temporary apartment and invited her over for meals. In late March, Palmer sent a message to a friend of Pavlovich’s, a 41-year-old ceramicist named Misma Anaru, in whom Pavlovich had confided about Gaiman. “I’m glad she had you to take care of her,” she wrote. “It’s been a rough month for everyone.” Anaru’s partner, Kris Taylor, was a doctor of psychology who had lectured at the University of Auckland on coercion, consent, and rape. Although Pavlovich had never used the words rape or sexual assault to describe what had happened to her, both Anaru and Taylor believed Gaiman had raped her repeatedly. Anaru felt Palmer bore a share of the blame. Replying to Palmer, she wrote that “the majority of my rage is directed at Neil.” But she couldn’t understand why, with all Palmer knew about Gaiman, she had sent Scarlett into that situation. “Did you not see this coming a mile away?” She added, “And yes I know you asked him not to do that to her, but honestly, the fact you even felt that was something you should ask is fucked up in ways that defy comprehension.”

Around the same time, Pavlovich followed up with Gaiman. “I had a very intense dream about you last night,” she wrote. “Are you doing okay?” In his reply, he made a reference to something that had happened two weeks earlier. In a session with Muller, Palmer had said that Pavlovich was telling people he had raped her and was planning to “Me Too” him. “I wanted to kill myself,” he wrote. “But I’m getting through it a day at a time, and it’s been two weeks now and I’m still here. Fragile but not great.” He expressed dismay at Anaru’s message, which Palmer had told him about. “I’m a monster in it,” he wrote, “and Amanda seems to have bought it hook line and sinker.” Apologizing for “bringing any upset” into Pavlovich’s life, he wrote, “I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed.”

Pavlovich remembers her palms sweating, hot coils in her stomach. She was terrified of upsetting Gaiman. “I was disconnected from everybody else at that point in my life,” she tells me. She rushed to reassure him. “It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she wrote. Anaru had been “triggered by something I think,” she added.

“I am so glad that you messaged me,” Gaiman wrote. “I thought you were a monster.”

Gaiman asked Pavlovich to speak with Muller. “Knowing that you would be prepared to say, ‘It’s not true, it was consensual, he’s not a monster,’ makes me a lot more grounded,” he wrote. Muller reached out to Pavlovich to offer a “safe harbor.” When they spoke on the phone, Pavlovich told Muller what Gaiman, who was paying for the session, had asked her to say. After listening to Muller’s “esoteric, spiritual claptrap,” she felt worse. “I really felt it was all my fault.” Muller, for his part, tells me that ethical boundaries prevent him from sharing anything about his sessions with Gaiman, but he apparently felt comfortable sharing details of his conversation with Pavlovich. “What she called to speak with me about was feeling pressured—from very diverse, mostly older women in her community—to take action that she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable taking. I accompanied her on a journey to help her figure out the answers for herself to that issue.”

In the weeks that followed, Muller connected Gaiman with the Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric facility in Massachusetts. According to Muller, Gaiman had several preliminary phone calls with the facility and was considering entering a six-week inpatient evaluation process. But Gaiman never followed through. “I don’t remember why not,” Muller says.

Pavlovich grew suicidal. She hoarded zopiclone and aspirin and walked around the city surveying bridges. She decided she’d take the pills and told Palmer about her plan. At Palmer’s urging, she checked into an emergency room. “You are loved,” Palmer texted. After a few days in a respite center, feeling slightly better, Pavlovich reached out to Palmer to ask if she could resume working as the child’s nanny. The apartment Palmer had set her up with was temporary, and she needed a place to stay. “It would be really good for me I think to have something to do and people to be around,” she wrote. Palmer argued that it was not the time for her to take on the responsibility of caring for a child. “Your job is to care for you,” she replied. She proposed they get together when Pavlovich got out, promising to help her get back on her feet, and suggested in the meantime she go home to her parents. This infuriated Pavlovich. “There is a reason I have divorced my parents,” she wrote. “I’m starting to feel very much on my own and like I hate everyone.”

“I can’t offer you exactly what you want from me,” Palmer wrote, “but i can still be here. remember this.”

“Babe I am more alone than I’ve ever been in my life,” Pavlovich replied. She wished she’d never agreed to be their nanny: “If I hadn’t gotten on that first ferry I wouldn’t be where I am now.”

That night, Pavlovich texted Gaiman. “Amanda keeps saying she will help but it seems more philosophical rather than actually like she will help.” Two minutes later, she added, “I’ve been thinking of you so much.” Gaiman replied that he’d be happy to help in a tangible way. Pavlovich then received an NDA dated to the first night of her employment, when he had suggested she take a bath. She signed it. A month later, she received a bank transfer from Gaiman: $1,700 for her babysitting work. Two months after that, she received the first of nine payments totaling about $9,200.

Over the course of the year, Pavlovich’s perspective changed. “As he faded away, I began to let other voices in,” she says. Friends connected her with women who were experienced in dealing with sexual assault and abuse, including Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein’s and an advocate for ending the “misuse of NDAs to buy women’s silence.” (Caroline and Pavlovich broke their NDAs when they spoke out about Gaiman.) These women encouraged her to go to the police.

In January 2023, Pavlovich filed a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault. At the station, she gave a formal interview about the case. After she told the officers her story, one of them told her that Palmer’s cooperation would be essential for the case to move forward. Pavlovich assured them Palmer would participate. “I said to them, ‘She’s a public feminist, and she knows what happened. She’ll want to protect me. I’m sure she’ll speak.’ ”

When the police contacted Palmer later that year, she declined to talk with them. Gaiman never spoke with the police either, though he did provide a written statement. Whatever feelings Palmer might have had about the situation went into a song she performed on tour in 2024, one she wrote shortly after Pavlovich’s confession. It was called “Whakanewha,” named after a park near their homes on Waiheke. “Another suicidal mass landing on my doorstep—thanks a ton/A few more corpses in the sack/You’ll get away with it; it’s just the same old script/This world is shaped to have your back/You said, ‘I’m sorry,’ then you ran/And went and did it all again.”

THIS PAST FALL, Pavlovich began studying for a degree in English literature at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. As it happens, the university had awarded Gaiman an honorary degree in 2016. In December, Pavlovich approached the head of the university, Dame Sally Mapstone, to share her experience and ask the university to review the decision to honor Gaiman. Mapstone was sympathetic but indecisive; some on the board, she told Pavlovich, would likely want evidence of prosecution to rescind his degree. As far as the police report goes, the “matter has been closed,” a spokesperson says. Gaiman’s career, meanwhile, has been marginally affected. A few pending adaptations of his novels and comics have been put on hold or canceled. But the second season of The Sandman is set to premiere on Netflix this year, as is Anansi Boys on Amazon Prime. (Amazon did not return a request for comment.) He and Palmer are entering the fifth year of an ugly divorce and custody battle. Gaiman has “bled her dry” in the divorce proceedings, according to someone close to her. She’s moved back in with her parents in Massachusetts. (Gaiman’s representatives alleged that Palmer was a “major force” driving this story in light of their contentious divorce.)

In December, Pavlovich flew to Atlanta to meet some of the other women who had made accusations against Gaiman. They had been unaware of one another’s existence until they’d heard the podcast. Since then, they had formed a WhatsApp group and grown close. “It’s been like meeting survivors of the same cult,” Stout tells me. “It’s impossible to understand unless you were there.” On New Year’s Eve, Pavlovich, Stout, and Caroline gathered around a bonfire at the Athens home of the musician Michael Stipe, an old friend of Caroline’s. Kendall joined them on Face-Time. With their dark hair and delicate features, they looked like they could be sisters. Around 11 p.m., they wrote down their intentions for the year and cast the scraps of paper into the fire. Pavlovich had written that she wanted to “release the yoke of victimhood” and “invite in self-acceptance.” The next morning, she woke before the others, made coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and sat on the porch in the winter sun. “Am I happy?” she wrote in her journal. “No.” But she also noted that she wasn’t alone. “There is no need to feel abandoned anymore

[katyawriteswhump]

the holiday 💝

For @stevieweek movie marathon prompt, ‘the holiday,’ @steddieholidaydrabbles day 27 prompt ‘traffic’ (also, 28, ‘pining’); @steddiemas prompt ‘surprise.’

WC: 990; Rating: M; CW: none. Tags: transfem supermodel Stevie, ordinary British bloke Eddie, meet-cute, strangers to lovers, modern AU, inspired by the movie ‘The holiday’ but you don’t really have to have seen it.

💝💝💝💝💝💝

Stevie huddled, shivering, under her house-swap’s thickest duvet.

When she’d left LA for her ‘holiday’ near London, nobody warned her the heating hadn’t been updated in centuries. Nor that it was a ‘flat’ in a crumbling Victorian mansion, with traffic roaring by constantly.

Not that she’d sleep tonight. It was 4pm back home! She might’ve placed half the world between her and Jason, but sleeplessness still equalled wrathful pining…

A door rattled.

Crap! What was that?

The flat’s front door creaked open. In the half-light, her frantic gaze alighted on a hockey-stick. What were the laws on self-defence in this crappy country? She hid behind the bedroom door, waited till they neared, then…

Crack!

“Bloody Hell!” yelped the burglar. Stevie had—stupidly?—not hit hard. Chiefly, because the guy was sexy-as-fuck. “You’re not Chrissy!”

“Chrissy? No, I’m—”

“World-famous supermodel Stevie Harrington! Why are you in my sister’s flat?”

“Your sister?” The hockey-stick slipped from her trembling hands. He’d got long dark hair and obscenely beautiful eyes.

He rattled a door-key: “See?”

“Oh shit,” she mumbled. “Not a burglar.”

“No. Um, sorry, but I’m inordinately pissed and… really need the loo.” He grimaced, hopping toe-to-toe. “May I?”

When he returned, she gave him ice for his bruise, and he slumped on the sofa.  After learning about the house-swap, Eddie—as he introduced himself over brandy—explained how Chrissy wanted to escape her loneliness following a break-up.

“Yeah,” sighed Stevie. “I relate.”

Eddie’s sad smile touched and intrigued her. Before she dared ask, he winced at his cell. “Ten missed calls from Chrissy. I’m a terrible brother.”

“Yeah? I should sue her for false advertising.” Stevie sat down beside him to share the house-swap pics, which he explained were taken on a rare snow-day.

“Seriously, you’re not gonna sue her?”

Her turn to wince. He was intense, clearly super-protective of Chrissy, which made her sigh inwardly. He was literally the anti-Jason. “I won’t. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“Please yourself. Honestly, South London is cool. Jude Law grew up nearby.” Stevie shrugged. “The Stones? David Bowie?”

“Bowie? Wow!”

Eddie’s smile finally lit those eyes. He sent a Bowie playlist to Chrissy’s speakers, while leaning dangerously into Stevie’s personal space. Or was she being pulled, magnet-like, into his?

Warmth blossomed in her chest, radiated out with every beat of her heart. They were laughing and joking and… her focus flitted to Eddie’s lush lips.

His slid… lower.

“Honestly,” he said, in that totally-growing-on-her accent, “these days, Bromley is considered pretty desirable.”

He stared so hard at her cleavage, she gasped.

“Sorry.” He discarded his brandy, pinched his brow. “This is weird. Me hanging with Stevie Harrington.”

Stevie sighed. “You think I’m shorter in real life?” It was one of Jason’s fave put-downs.

“No.” That smile again, and she was dying happy. “The biggest surprise is your Winnie-the-Pooh PJs. I pictured you sleeping in baby-doll lingerie.”

Stevie blinked. He pictured that BEFORE we met?

Okay, she'd modelled slinky stuff, but… Dammit, she’d barely had time to be embarrassed about Pooh.

“This was gonna be a ‘me-break,’” she flustered. “Wasn’t expecting company.”

“Yeah, sorry. Again. Um… can I kip on the couch? Be gone before you wake.”

If Stevie had worn her matching Pooh slippers, her heart would’ve plummeted through them. Then instantly skyrocketed. Eddie leaned waaaay too close again. Trouble was, even his beer-breath proved alluring.

“Yeah, fine,” she stammered. “Tho’ this sofa is tiny, and…”  She brushed her mouth against Eddie’s, the whispering ghost of a kiss.

“W-wow?” stuttered Eddie.

She licked her lips. He tasted boozy, but she liked. And omfg, what had come over her? Her knuckles caressed his cheek, trembling like she was the drunk one. “I’ve never kissed a stranger before.”

His flirtatious snicker warmed-up long-neglected places inside her. “Really? I do it all the time.”

They tumbled into the next kiss, which heated, sizzled, lingered smoochily, till she asked, breathless: “Seeing as you’re super-hot, and I’m leaving tomorrow… we should have sex.”

“Stevie, you’re the hottest girl in the world—sure you’re not a dream?”

They barely reached Chrissy’s bed before they fucked, with Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ cheering them on. Stevie had never done anything this spontaneous. And, for someone ‘sozzled’, Eddie sure knew how to please a partner… over and over and over.

Eventually, Stevie watched him sleep, cursing her surging 'feels.'

This heartache was crazy. Why couldn’t she enjoy a one-night stand? Eddie seemed sweet. Also, a stranger! She was on the rebound, still kinda pining… or was she?

Honestly, she felt closer to Eddie already than she ever had to Jason.

Stevie, you’re jet-lagged and over-emotional. Go home. To a fresh start.

And nope, she couldn’t make that new life here.

Next morning, Eddie apologised about basically everything.

“Chill,” said Stevie breezily, over their Deliveroo banana-chocolate crepes. “I had fun.”

Not gonna be clingy and tragic.

“Still leaving?” he asked, doe-eyed.

She nodded. Her chest panged, and it didn’t help that Eddie resembled a kicked puppy. He fluffed his hair, awkward.

“Stevie, listen. Firstly, that ex of yours who said you sucked at sex? He’s a liar. Secondly, my life is really complicated.” Indeed, his cell bleeped with messages all night. Another reason Stevie’s ‘feels’ were madness. “But… if you change your mind, I’m having dinner later at the pub on the corner.”

The hug, and their tender farewell kiss, choked her up. Shit, she never fucking cried!

Her limo sat in traffic for two hours on its way to the airport. Three more, after Stevie demanded the driver turn back. In the pub, she got tons of stares in her cute cocktail-dress and even signed some autographs. When Eddie finally arrived, his surprised smile was beyond delicious.

“Hey,” she said, deserting her Chardonnay.

“Hello, Gorgeous.” He slid his hand to her waist, drawing her into a sensual kiss that was somehow comfortably familiar and the most startling, exciting thing ever.

She was definitely gonna stay the whole two weeks. Then… who knew?

💝💝💝💝💝💝

No pressure tags: @wheneverfeasible 💚❤️💚 and also a billion thanks for helping me get this going… I would very much like to flesh this part out in a longer version and tell Chrissy’s story in LA with Stevie's friend Robin… that said, it was also nice to set something somewhere I know for a change even if the details were few and chiefly unnecessary! Anyhow... I might continue and have more fun with this, who knows… 😉) My fic on ao3

[ashesinthewest]

Three months into the new year and I'm already making great progress on my resolution for the year. The goal was to complete two of my UFOs with a stretch goal of 4-6 total depending on how the year goes. I've met my original goal and finished two blankets!

Kind of wish I thought to take before pictures to show where the project had been left off when it went from a WIP to a UFO to go along with the completed project picture. Oh well, I'll make sure to do that for the following projects. But I think I'm going to go ahead and increase the goal from 2 to 6 UFOs to be completed before the end of the year.

✨Here are the two completed blankets! ✨

The first blanket is the Yarnspiration's "Wave to Granny" made with Caron yarn in Deep Violet, Midnight Blue, and Peacock Variegated. I decided to swap the regular tassels for twisted tassels on the Chevron points. This blanket will be going into storage for now.

The second blanket is a modified Lush Life also from Yarnspiration's. It is massive! I used the original colors of Bernat Blanket yarn in Silver Steel and Vintage White used in the pattern since this blanket was originally for my youngest brother who mentioned wanting more neutral decor colors before it was later revealed that he dislikes the feeling of crocheted items. My other brother was there for the conversation with our brother and immediately called dibs on the resulting blanket. It will be a fine addition to his collection of crocheted items he's either taken from or been gifted by me.

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 11

There's a forest near Redania that is lush with color and flora. Every time Geralt camps there, he gets the best sleep of his life. There's always plenty of game for when he's hungry, and the birds follow after him, singing him songs. Every time he comes back, more and more odd qualities of the forest show. Most recently, flowers spawn wherever he or Roach steps. Roach finds this amazing (and very tasty), Geralt meanwhile is starting to find this suspicious. He's begun to hear a song in the breeze, and that's when he kicks roach into high gear and gets the hell out of there. But no matter how far he travels, in the back of his head, he can still hear the sad song, sung from a shaky voice. Eventually, he finds himself along the trail of the forest, and decides to risk it. The voice swaps immediately to a happy tune, and Geralt is being showered with deer and rabbits who are suspiciously suddenly always just near his camp, fish literally jumping out of the river toward him, birds flying after him to drop flowers on him. He decides that whatever is controlling the forest must be harmless, and even wishes it well as he rides off, only to hear the sad song start again as he leaves. He assures the forest he'll return again, and the song lightens to a cheery jig once more. When a monster known for spreading rot wherever it goes suddenly appears in Jaskier's forest, Jaskier knows his only chance is to sing his witcher back (and perhaps convince him to bring Jaskier with him next time.)