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algolagniaa · 8 months ago

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You take a sip of your drink to steady yourself. The wine is excellent, sweet and full-bodied and obviously very expensive. It would probably be best to explore a little, you reason as you watch people stream past you to other delights. It’s not as though you know where you’re going, after all, and if you want to blend in with the crowd you’d be better off by participating. But no matter what you tell yourself, logic has nothing to do with why you join the crowd. The night, the revelry, the magic has its hooks in you now, for better or for worse.

You can only hope it’s not for worse.

You’re currently on the second floor of the east wing of the mansion. There appears to be two or three more rooms further down the hallway, with Luna’s room just to your left and the stairs to the first floor slightly further in that direction. You briefly step into the room next to Luna’s, but there doesn’t appear to be a performer other than a string quartet. People stand around talking and drinking while listening to the music, which really is quite extraordinary. As you make your way around the room, you pass by the musicians and notice that none of them have sheet music sitting on their stands. Each has a bloody body part balanced on the ledge: in front of one violinist is a hunk of long blonde hair with the scalp still attached, while the other has a handful of teeth bloodied at the root. The violist’s stand holds an ear with a jeweled earring shaped like a teardrop, and perhaps worst of all is the severed child’s finger for the cellist. The cellist meets your eyes and a tear slides down his cheek from beneath his mask but he does not pause in his playing.

Before you leave you do notice that all of the people you see marveling at the grandeur of the mansion or talking nervously about the impossibility of the entertainers seem to have a companion who has attended before. Are newcomers required to have a sponsor before attending the Masquerade? That may be important to keep in mind as you mingle with the other partygoers.

The next room is a gallery, but not like any you’ve ever seen before. Sculptures sit on pedestals or larger pieces stand alone. All are in varying shades of pink, red, or brown. The guests murmur quietly to each other as they inspect each piece in turn, admiring the skill of the artist. The small placard next to the first artwork reads “Alexei Danyarov.” Perhaps that is the name of the artist, though it isn’t one you recognize. The art is a kinetic work: a very thin piece of some unidentifiable fabric, stretched so tightly between two slender, off-white columns it is slightly translucent. At first you’re not sure what to make of it, but as you watch red droplets very slowly move from one side to the other, forming a shifting kaleidoscope of images. You stand there for a few minutes watching the fluctuating of the red liquid. It’s almost hypnotizing in the way a flickering fire or running water is.

The next sculpture is a lovely shade of deep brown. It’s abstract, an asymmetrical cup shape that reminds you a little of a calla lily approximately two feet in height. You can’t tell what it’s made out of – it’s not metal or stone or wood. Perhaps painted ceramic? The placard next to this reads “Adelaide Toussaint,” and you frown slightly in confusion. It’s clearly the same artist, something in the dynamic grace of the art is the same in both pieces, and yet the names are different.

You move to the next piece. Yet another new name on the placard, this one reading “Evangeline White.” Another abstract sculpture, this in an olive shade of tan with two twisting prongs coming out of the base in a way that vaguely resembles coral. Another guest bumps into you and you reach out to steady yourself, accidentally brushing against the statue – which shudders beneath your touch. You back away quickly, staring at the sculpture. Surely you imagined it. But as you watch, you can see the sculpture move very slightly and rhythmically as if it was breathing. Taking a quick look around to make sure no one is watching, you place your hand on it again. The statue is warm and soft and slightly yielding, exactly like human flesh. It flinches from your touch yet again.

“I didn’t think Hawthorne could do better than that tree-thing he made last year, but this is remarkable,” says the man coming to stand next to you. He wears a mask you think might be a mongoose and his companion is a woman in a glittering gold mask and a gown to match. You jerk your hand away from the statue.

“Oh no darling, it wasn’t a tree at all! Obviously it was meant to be lightning,” she replies, laughing.

“Lightning!” he scoffs, and turns to you. “What do you think?” asks the grinning man in the mongoose mask. “A tree, or lightning?”

Instead of replying, you make some noncommittal sound and brush past them back out into the hallway and walk to the next room, which you realize is not a room after all but another staircase spiraling up out of sight. From what you remember of the layout of the manor from the outside, this is likely to the tower. The steps and the walls are all cut stone, and the air is slightly cooler here than in the rest of the manor.

After far too many steps, you reach the top of the tower, slightly out of breath. The room is small but thankfully unoccupied by either party guests or living sculptures. The walls are stone and decorated with tapestries of unnerving images: a starving-thin wolf, titanic in size, lunging to swallow the sun, two arms blood-soaked to the elbows placing an iron crown on a weeping and terror-stricken woman, a ring of people holding hands, with a person set ablaze and smiling joyously in the center. But the most unsettling of all was also the simplest. A young woman holds a branch in front of her, the leaves obscuring her face. You have the strangest feeling that as you look at it the picture might move, that she might bring the branch down so you could see her clearly and that her face – her gaze -would be terrible. The thought makes you shiver and you imagine you can feel her sightless scrutiny as you look around the rest of the tower room.

The interior of the cupola is painted to look like the night sky, though you do not recognize any of the constellations. For some reason looking at it makes you feel faint and dizzy, as though you are looking down from a very great height and may fall. You sway slightly on your feet and pull your gaze from the ceiling, shaking your head to clear it. The room is sparsely furnished, containing only an enormous telescope pointing out the window up at the night sky, a small bookcase with a few books about astronomy, a deep blue armchair, and an antique orrery sitting on an elaborately carved wooden table. The base of the orrery is dark walnut wood, polished to gleaming, with each of the astrological symbols painted in tiny precise detail on the sides. You lean in to get a better look at it: each of the planets are carved out of a different precious gemstone, and the mechanism that turns the planets is golden metal and clockwork. It’s lovely and no doubt very expensive, but too fragile for you to try to carry off. You turn away from it with a sigh and approach the telescope.

You are at the highest peak of the manor; below you lies the City, lit by lamplight. Out of the window you can see a few parties that have spilled out into the streets, celebrating the Masquerade. The moon is the color of old bone and hangs low and full in the sky. Stars twinkle throughout the midnight sky like diamonds scattered across jeweler’s velvet. The telescope beside you is cool to the touch.

Do you look in the telescope, or return to the party?

ok this is literally all my worst party fears turned up to the max. act like you are cool enough to be here and convince everyone around you of such or you will Literally die. am going to have to watch the people who have attended before and mimic their behavior. but first i have to take a breather and what’s more calming than the stars? I look through the telescope.

(I know that this will yeet me into space, however my character doesn’t know that, so I can’t take precautions 😭 o well)

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legendsofmyriad · 8 months ago

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Legends of Myriad: Arc One - Chapter 24: Sanguine

Chapter 23 | Chapter 25

Arc One Masterlist

-- -- -- -- --

Jade smoke crawled within the centre of the diamond-shaped clock above the mantlepiece, pointed hands striving through the dewy light to chart the passing seconds. One low tick. Then another. Rotating time while outside, clouds of blue hazed fog pressed wisps and dewy droplets against the window.

The shadows of smog created a captivating spectacle on the chiselled walls as shaded oval beads raced down the unfurling petals. Oscar could almost hear the rhythmic knock of the slender tool on the wood in the pulses of rain, each discrete bump in the patterns revealing the craftsmanship that forged the magnificent design.

“Why is it that historians have to disagree so much?” Demetrius commented with a grumbled sigh as he flipped the page of the musty text in his lap. “This one is convinced it is purified necromancy that sustains the gateways, and the one over there believes it is the power of an outer-world being. And don’t even bother with this gibberish.” He picked up the hefty tome in question and flung it over his shoulder, the sofa exhaling a displeased huff as it landed on the plush fabric. “I swear he must have been drinking concoctions aplenty when he wrote that.”

“There has to be something that links them all,” Lysander reasoned.

“Professor Spark told me that the gateways on Solgarde use Eventide crystals to power them,” Oscar explained, rolling up the cuff of his shirt to reveal the silver bracelet and the accompanying suspended crystal. “Many other places do too, but Lucarian definitely doesn’t. I tried to charge the one in the demon stronghold, but it wouldn’t respond. The magic here is different. I can feel it.”

“So,” the Phoenix guard mulled, clicking his tongue in thought, “that rules out the practice Eventide magic and necromancy since that has not been common in Lucarian for some time, and Oscar was able to travel through an active gateway.” Pen in hand, he scratched out a couple of items in the notebook beside him. “Discount everything that has not been around for the past three hundred years.” More ideas met with a scribbled line. “Whatever we are looking for, it has to hold a substantial power. Perhaps something waning?”

“Could be anything,” Demetrius shrugged. “Magic here dwindles and rises all the time. It is going to be a tricky task figuring out which is linked to the gateways.”

“No,” Lysander said, “the solution is here, we just need to figure it out.” His eyebrows knitted, and he quietly murmured to himself as he reorganised the volumes until he had a specific selection in front of him.

“Maybe it isn’t magic that powers it,” Demetrius aired. Stretching out his long, slender legs, he propped his elbows on the sofa behind him.

“Which would make our endeavour more difficult.”

As Lysander shifted to trace a line of text, Oscar glimpsed the golden etchings encircling his bicep. The candelabra glare drenched the metallic lines and seeped warmth into the ring of alternating symbols. “The tattoo on your arm,” he said, unable to squash his curiosity, “what is it? I saw a woman with something similar at dinner, but she didn’t look like a vampyre.”

“Adelaide?” Demetrius replied. “She isn’t, she’s an Attendant of Sanguine.”

“Most beings of Lucarian have lived in relative peace for centuries and are understanding of each other’s conditions,” Lysander quickly explained. “Vampyres can feed off of energy, but sometimes they need blood. They refuse to take it unwillingly, so they have attendants, people brought into the clan who allow their lord or lady to drink from them. They are held in high regard, and once their five years of service are completed, they are granted land and a generous sum of money. Some chose to remain within their clan to help where they can.”

“You serve one of the nobles here?” Oscar asked.

Lysander’s gaze slipped along the towering stacks of books with their dusty smells until it settled on the vampiric lord seated by his side, fingertip ghosting his smooth cheek. “Not just any.” Demetrius pushed into his touch, relishing the sensation and brushing a gentle kiss to his palm. “Our situation is unique. My body is different to a typical human attendant, and I plan to serve Demetrius for life.” Bound in blood, they had vowed after countless arguments about the agreement with both his guardian and Demetrius’s father.

“The style is incredibly intricate,” the mage said. “I think there are tapestries with a similar theme near the ballroom, aren’t there?”

“That’s right,” Lysander confirmed. “Demetrius designed the tattoo to combine the Volkar style with that of Bertram’s emblem. The tapestries are personal family trees, which is where he got the idea.”

In the silence of Oscar’s observation, the flames beneath the mantlepiece crackled behind their cage to compete with the relentless downpour hammering the manor. He turned to the rest of the room, taking in the eclectic artwork, the complex trinkets, and the mesmerising engravings that climbed the feature wall. He wondered how it connected them, if it weaved through their personal histories all the way back to the founders of that ancient bloodline.

How many of his own ancestors had he walked past in Mora every single day, oblivious to their accomplishments and how they had shaped the world he knew? Never once acknowledging the blood rushing within him. Never even knowing their names.

“Why does this floor have to be so hard?” Demetrius grumbled, his palms flat on the unyielding surface as he wriggled and squirmed in his irked search for any relief from his discomfort.

“It’s a floor, not a four-poster bed,” Lysander reminded him, tossing him a satisfied smirk. Demetrius poked at his arm. Scowling, he rubbed at the prodded spot. “When you have quite finished flicking me, will you pass me that book?” He gestured to a worn, hardback tome close to him.

“This?”

“No.” Lysander pointed again.

“Oh, this one.”

“I’m pointing to it.”

Directing a well-manicured nail at a leather-bound collection, Demetrius tilted his head.

“I’ll get it myself if you’re going to be silly,” Lysander huffed. He reached across the clutter and snatched the silver-edged volume, setting it in his lap and leafing through the crinkled pages.

“I thought you found it endearing when I acted silly,” the mischievous lord whispered, shuffling closer and resting his chin on his shoulder. Their eyes locked in a clash of ruby red and unimpressed gold, the metallic glimmer subsiding when he pouted.

“Stop getting distracted,” Lysander told him, a soft edge tinging his tone. “Right now, we don’t have time to waste.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Phoenix guard bit his tongue, suppressing the retort that threatened to escape, and pointedly cleared his throat.

The candles had melted into a sticky, smouldering mess on the bronze plates, tendrils bathing the sitting room with the waxy scent, and the rain outside had hushed. As time ticked, the stack of books they examined expanded into a futile effort as they continued to find nothing worth noting.

There had to be something. The Phoenix library held all information known to Lucarian. Or so Bertram had claimed. He had been drunk when he made the bold statement, stumbling around the aisles and clumsily bumping into the shelves, but Lysander took in the vast selection and believed every word.

Now his confidence faltered.

“I’ve been thinking,” Oscar said, lowering his legs down from the bay windowsill and his cushioned seat, “perhaps we’re looking at this with too much of a literal lense. My tablet is still working, so maybe I just need to connect it to something else to power the signal. Once I have contacted Professor Spark, he can tell me how to sort the gateway.”

“Is that a straightforward thing to do?” Demetrius questioned.

“I’m not sure,” the mage admitted. “If I take it apart, I could risk destroying it, and then I’ll have no way of contacting anybody.”

“Then I would leave that as a last resort.”

With a gasp loud enough to startle the others, Lysander vaulted up and grabbed a book from the discarded pile. He held it out to them and tapped the inlaid crest on the front cover.

“That’s the Clan of the Banshee emblem,” Demetrius said, eking out his response. “What have they got to do with anything?”

“They’re experts on this kind of thing,” he answered, rejoining them.

“Granted, they understand a lot, but they are seers. They only warn about bad things to come.”

“If the magic that sustains the gateway is failing, it may point to a bleak future,” Oscar speculated.

Lysander’s hopeful smile grew. “Indeed. This isn’t just a matter of getting Oscar home, but ensuring the safety of Lucarian.”

Throwing his hands over his face and temporarily blocking out the muted glow of the room, Demetrius groaned, muffled mumbles leaking through long fingers. “Why can’t it be as simple as flipping a switch?”

“Where is the fun in that?” the Phoenix guard replied, adventure tugging at the hem of his shirt.

“You and I have a very different idea of fun.”

Lysander pushed himself to his feet and arranged the used books on the side table, keeping the more useful ones separate. He counted the chalky tomes to ensure none were missing. “That’s all of them,” he confirmed. “I’ll start taking them back.”

“Let me help,” Demetrius said, balancing the second stack in his arms.

As Oscar made to aid them in tidying their mess, Lysander stopped him short.

“We can manage. You should get some sleep,” the guard suggested. “With all the respect in the world, you look dead on your feet.”

“And we should know,” Demetrius added with a chortle, earning himself an elbow to the ribs from his partner.

“Go rest, Oscar,” Lysander said kindly. “We will continue our investigations tomorrow.”

* * *

Night unfurled to clear a path for the stars. Every supernatural being felt the magnetic pull and their blood coursed with awakened power.

The longer Oscar stayed with the Phoenix clan, the less daunting it became. He grasped the variation in aura, the bloom of undead energy around him, and it brought its own warm familiarity. He had even begun to outline the differences for his research, documenting how not only the people altered, but how the buildings transformed too, as though their own structures sipped the essence of the night.

With a hushed exhale, he sank into the silk sheets and feather-filled pillows of his bed, but rest evaded him. Every time he reached out to catch it, it zipped away like a firebeam bug, trilling its whining little noise to taunt him. He took one step towards sleep and it retreated fifty until he couldn’t see that relaxed, blissful state through the darkness behind his eyelids.

Giving up on the notion of rest entirely, he draped a cosy blanket over his shoulders and tiptoed across the creaking floorboards. Midnight air rushed in as he pushed open the top window. Rustles in the courtyard several storeys below livened the quiet bedroom, pursued by a trickle of laughter and a distant howl from the mountains.

With a wind of inspiration, Oscar retrieved his sketchbook from his satchel and flipped open the next empty page. His hand floated above the sheet, the tips of his fingers making meticulous movements to craft an outline. His eyes flitted between the silhouetted scene outside and his canvas as he composed the image of harmonious rolling hills and the smattering of villages with their pinpricks of light and smoking chimneys. In the daytime, Phoenix territory lacked any sort of charm, but as night fell, it transformed into an ethereal wonderland that roused the souls of the undead.

As the picture came together, his mind reeled back to the countless hours he had devoted to honing his skills at the academy. His friends had watched in reverent, fascinated awe whenever he allowed. While some artists found people to be a distraction, he blossomed in their company, finding an inspiring warmth that ignited the creator within him. It flourished in his blood like a birth gift, an innate inclination that he could neither resist nor stave off. The desire to create was bound to him, and him to it. They existed as one to bring artistry and magic to life.

Putting himself forward for the Cyrogen Academy had been as natural as the wind. His parents had ecstatically embraced his pursuits and revelled in the joy of seeing what he had achieved. He considered himself fortunate to have the freedom to forge his own path, relying on his intuition to lead him to his goals. And despite being stuck, he reasoned Lucarian was where he needed to be in that moment.

Little by little, the landscape unfolded on the page, and he admired the grandeur of the distant peaks, with their gentle slopes and dramatic cliffs. Muttering to himself, he carefully positioned them amidst the backdrop and cast shadows on their rocky forms.

Throughout his late-night sketching, his thoughts fixed on his friends and the vacant place within his soul that they usually occupied. I hope they’re okay, he pondered. I hope wherever they are, they’re safe.

A few worried speculations rushed to the surface before he firmly shoved them back down. Esther and Alek were both accomplished mages and were more than capable of taking care of themselves. Yet for years they had been a team, ready to lend a hand at a moment’s notice, and the prospect of not being there to assist them in their troubles unsettled any ease he may have felt amongst his gracious hosts.

By the time he had completed his piece, the pastel horizon began to sprout with the first glimpse of dawn. Tilting the sketchpad, the magic inside glittered from silvery night to radiant day. Crinkles drove into the side of his eyes as he smiled at his creation, and he rested it in his lap to add one final detail.

He passed his index finger over the bottom corner of the sketch. In neat, curved lettering beside the drying tear splotches, shimmered the words ‘For Esther and Alek.’

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If you enjoyed this chapter, please consider reblogging. Reblogging helps to get work out there and seen.

#legends of myriad #legendsofmyriad #fantasy #fantasy writing #story series #writblr #creative writing #fantasy story #writing #fantasy series #ko fi #ko fi writer #ko-fi #writers on tumblr #kofi

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thedragonagelesbian · 2 years ago

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A Lesson in Drowning with Prophet Delilah Dubois

Adelaide first saw the headlights. The rain scattered their light, diffusing the fluorescent brightness into a hazy glare that consumed the whole world. She was standing square in the middle of the road, but she did not wince as the car beared down on her. She was too busy wondering what it would be like for it to consume her too. Would she also disappear into the white noise? Or would it be more like a classical devouring, replete with metal tongue and a cavernous chrome stomach?

She stood her ground.

Then, the jeep swerved. It missed her by inches, sent a shower of muddy water up her stockings, and rattled to a stop some yards away.

Adelaide’s next instinct was to run. She could sprint between the well-manicured lawns to her right or scale the nearest fence to her left and take her chances with Warwick Lord’s German shepherd howling something pathetic in his yard. But she had barely taken one step toward her escape when the driver’s door swung open. A tall, slender figure stepped out, features obscured in the storm.

Still, she knew who it was.

“Adelaide Lenora Dellouise, just what do you think you’re doing out here?”

The full name did make her flinch, but Adelaide squared her shoulders and set her jaw, trying to hold herself taut enough that she couldn’t shiver.

“Walkin!”

As he came around the back of the car, Adelaide caught a glimpse of her father’s dour expression in the red sheen of the tail lights, all furrows from his sandy hairline to the bridge of his nose.

“In the middle of a shelter-in-place advisory? Without so much as a raincoat on?”

For all his exasperation, Wyatt Dellouise didn’t have to strain to be heard over the sound of the raging storm. Then again, he had his deacon voice on. This wasn’t the soft muttering of a man who seemed perpetually ashamed to be alive for risk of deriving some pleasure from the whole ordeal, but rather the preacher’s booming, fit for a pulpit and louder than thunder.

Adelaide responded with a shrug. As much as she tried to hide it, though, she couldn’t ignore how cold and damp she was now that she had stopped moving. The wind ripped through the thin, soaked fabric of her sundress, and she had so much water in her shoes her toes squelched with every slight shift of her body. A moment later, her teeth began to chatter, and they wouldn’t stop knocking against each other no matter how hard she pressed her lips together.

Her father folded his arms and moved between her and the trunk of the car. Shadow eclipsed his face again, and all Adelaide could make out through the sheets of rain was his hazy red silhouette.

“Are you fixing to get pneumonia?”

“I was thinking I’d let the storm wash me out to sea, actually!”

The silence that followed delighted Adelaide so much she almost didn’t care how true her words were or how deep they hurt her. She’d swallow a knife and let it rend her from the inside out if it meant he knew it was his fault she was bleeding.

“Quit this foolishness,” her father said at last, sighing like a tempest gale. “Just come with me, Addie, please. We’ll go shelter together in the church.”

“Just drop me off at home!”

“Get in the car!”

And that was that, as Adelaide knew it would be since the moment the jeep rolled up, an outcome equal measures inevitable and terrifying. Who, after all, could ignore a direct order from Deacon Wyatt Dellouise? The voice of the First Church of Her Will spoke. You listened. That was the way the world worked, as immutable as any law of physics. Adelaide couldn’t fight that, no matter how hard she had tried over the last two years. For as many days as she had spent steeling herself against her father’s influence, in that instant she withered under his ironclad certainty like she was still seven years old and arguing about her bedtime. She could not help but be compelled.

She took a few teetering steps toward the jeep as an arc of lightning split the sky above them. In the crack of white, she saw her father’s face soften.

“Thank you, Addie.”

She shivered, tucked in on herself, and said nothing.

The worst part was that it actually was nicer in the car. Her father had already turned up the heat all the way, opened the passenger-side vents, and switched on the seat warmer. She didn’t want it to feel good. She wanted to resent it like she resented everything her father touched, but her body obviously hadn’t gotten the message. Feeling returned to her slowly, nipping at her numb extremities and stiff joints and hunched, frozen spine.

“Weeeeeell, Lady Dellouise… So kind of you to join us.”

Adelaide bolted upright as a low, smooth voice from the backseat interrupted her involuntary relaxation. She whipped around, damn near relishing her skittering pulse and tight lungs because it meant her defenses were still up, but there was no monster behind her. Just a man. Slimy John, as he was colloquially known, was certainly one of Harborview’s more disquieting citizens, with a penchant for selling knives to children. But he was still just a man, and he gave her a toothy, human smile.

“Johnathon and some other residents will be sheltering in the church with us.” Her father had climbed back into the car. There was a megaphone in the driver’s seat which he rested in his lap as he closed the door, dampening the storm. “Folks who’d be safer there than anywhere else, you understand. The Davises are cooking up dinner for everyone, and the Owens have lent us some camping equipment to help stay comfortable while we wait this thing out.”

“I am much obliged, Deacon Wy,” commented Slimy John. “Y’all really don’t have to go to so much trouble.”

“We’re a community. We take care of each other.”

Adelaide scoffed under her breath. She knew exactly where this so-called community’s care ran out, and it was at crossing her father.

They drove straight back to the church. As they trundled through Old Harborview, her father rolled down the window to blare his pronouncements about the shelter-in-place advisory and the church’s open doors, but he didn’t slow down to accept any other transients. Adelaide could only assume the new haste was for her benefit. The sooner she was locked inside, the better, right?

Adelaide dug her nails into her skin, glanced at her phone, and started counting the minutes til the storm’s passing, just like she and her best friend Nat used to do during Sunday School. Whoever could go the longest without checking the time got the other’s oreos during snack break.

She always lost.

Lit beneath by a pair of austere spotlights, the First Church of Her Will surged from the darkness, its single spire towering and curved like a giant rib jutting out into the night sky, a carcass picked clean. As the car pulled up, the wind’s rabid howling grew louder, screaming against the windows. Adelaide, who could finally wiggle her toes again, couldn’t decide which would be worse: braving the storm once more or facing whatever was waiting for her in the cathedral.

“I’ll get the umbrella out of the trunk,” her father announced. “No need for you to get any wetter than you already are.”

He turned off the engine. The car plummeted into darkness, and when the heat cut out, Adelaide shuddered, an ugly, reflexive twitch.

She snapped, “I’m fine,” and reached for the car door.

Before she could open it, however, Slimy John let out a long, low whistle of a laugh.

“Whew! She really got Melanie’s quick temper, don’t she, Wy?”

Adelaide and Wyatt both went rigid.

For her part, Adelaide was rarely ever equipped to talk about her mother, fifteen years gone and mourned more in the last two than at any other point in her life. On that particular day, when she was already hanging on by a thread, just the name was enough to send her trembling.

Worse than the name, though, was her father, who mirrored her tension in the corner of her eye. The symmetry between them, clamped tight around the same loss, made Adelaide sick to her stomach. Suddenly, she needed to get out of the car as fast as possible. Even the church had to be better than sitting in that moment of connection.

She threw herself out into the storm. It swallowed her up for a moment, but she ran up the slick steps and through the heavy double doors, and in an instant, the hurricane disappeared. In its place, the First Church of Her Will opened up before her for the first time in a year.

And in that instant, Adelaide knew she had made a mistake: this was worse.

Like her dad’s car, like the mansion down the road, like just about every inch of Harborview, it felt so much like it should’ve been home that she nearly burst. The memories slammed into her, cresting and crashing from every corner of the nave: the worn pews where she and Nat used to play hide-and-seek, the glinting prayer candles where she had knelt after her mother’s funeral, the lectern where her father had stood for so many days of so many years still larger than life, the painting behind the altar rendering the church’s founder, Our Lady Prophet Delilah Dubois, in severe beauty, each stroke of her countenance exactly as Adelaide remembered it after spending one too many sermons lost in her oil-slick eyes, each detail another mouthful of saltwater she couldn’t swallow.

And mercy, it was warm like the undertow wrapped around her throat

And it was full. The smiling faces of familiar strangers dotted her horizon, all brought together under the banner of community care and that stubborn, unerring streak of self-sufficiency that defined Harborview, and Adelaide hated it so much she could’ve choked on it.

The storm surge of her rage broke through its levee, and she was too full too sudden and sputtering for air as her vision blurred white-hot. Her mind churned, dizzy and desperate, around one furious thought: how dare?

How dare this no longer be her home? How dare he spoil that too?

And how dare they abide it? Her so-called family friends, the congregation that had raised her and now sat by twiddling their thumbs while her father drowned her?

“Adelaide!”

In one moment, the entire world was tilting around her, as if she were a liferaft thrown out to the roiling sea.

In the next, there was a hand on her shoulder. Her focus broke, and everything went still and straight again.

Nat’s father, Duke Owens, beamed down at her and tugged her inside.

“So good to see you, kiddo. How long’s it been?”

Adelaide blinked and stumbled after him. Sluggishly, the social scripts of polite society and normal conversation came back to her.

“Too long…”

“Well, it’s great you’re here. Sarah Davis is making her famous collard greens, and her, uh, third… the current husband brought over a huge batch of potato salad, and we’ve just put on a pot to cook some corn. We’ve also got water, juice boxes, even a lick of bourbon if you think you can get away with it.” He winked as he directed her down the aisle.

A shake clearer-headed, Adelaide got a better sense of who else was milling around in the shrine to her poisoned youth. About two dozen of Harborview’s fine citizens sprawled out across the pews. They were split half and half between those who were dispensing the charity and those who were receiving it. Among the latter, Adelaide identified a smattering of residents from the trailer park at the west edge of town, a stoned vanlifer, a young city couple whose car had probably broken down, a handful of farmers who didn’t trust the structural integrity of their houses, and Madame Tilly, the congregation’s oldest and most devout member.

The other half—composed of Mary Owens, her two sons, Sarah Davis, her daughter, her current husband, one of her ex-husbands, and another priest—clustered at the front of the nave. That, Adelaide knew, was her destination: the insufferable snare of small town small talk with people she had known all her life and resented.

The altar and the lectern had been pushed back to make room for a pair of mismatched folding tables. One held the Owens’ camping stoves and large, bubbling stock pots, while the other was attended to by the younger generation, who were setting out plates, bowls, silverware, and napkins. Combined with the drink coolers and the warming tupperwares of potato salad, the spread could have been any church potluck or community barbecue.

Indeed, the only indication of the hurricane was Adelaide herself, tottering to a stop in front of them and once again failing not to shiver.

The fussing began immediately.

“Oh, sweetheart, what happened to you?” cooed Mary Owens.

“Poor thing, you gotta go change!” exclaimed Sarah Davis. “I’ve got some spare stuff in my duffle…”

“Dang, Adelaide, you’re gonna get sick going out dressed like that,” tutted Nat’s older brother, Jack.

“That’s what I told her.” Adelaide felt her father’s hand on her shoulder like a vice. “I found Addie halfway back home. She got caught out in the storm when the advisory went into effect, but, mercy be, we’re all safe here now.”

The others, ever the faithful parishioners, nodded and intoned, “Mercy be.”

Smothering the urge to gag, Adelaide cleared her throat and mustered up her most charming cheerleader smile.

“Mrs. Davis, that change of clothes sounds swell just about now.”

The church’s holiness had never quite extended into the single-occupant bathrooms in the basement. The consecration stopped short at the harsh fluorescents, speckled linoleum tiles, grimy ceramic, and the half-empty trash can perched on its throne of wet, crumpled paper towels. The closest thing to sanctity in the room was the pastel cross-stitch wall art reminding its viewers that Delilah preached moderation in all things… except cleanliness!, and even that couldn’t compel anyone to actually throw their paper towels away.

It was as close to an escape as Adelaide was going to get.

She had to peel her sopping clothes away from her skin, like wearing away the adhesive of a band-aid until she was hunched and nearly naked in the middle of the bathroom with two handfuls of dripping fabric. Her flats were coming apart at the seams, and her stockings were so drenched and muddy that she abandoned any hope of salvaging them. Instead, she threw both articles of clothing in the trash before trying to ring out her dress over the sink. The twisting and squeezing yielded some measure of success, so she stuffed the dress into the plastic bag Jack had offered her.

She then began to rifle through Sarah Davis’ assorted athleisure: a pair of neon pink and green tennis shoes, socks that said namaste, two tight yoga pants, and an assortment of sporty tank tops emblazoned with bubble text that ranged from mere novelty (KEEP HARBORVIEW WEIRD) to outright suggestion (MY EYES ARE UP HERE). Adelaide picked one that said FINE LIKE WINE not because it suited her particularly but because it had the loosest fit. Both pairs of pants, however, were as form-fitting and skin-tight as the wet stockings she had just taken off, hugging every curve and divot of her legs.

In the end, she was dressed but exposed, unable to control something so simple as her appearance, hating the glimpses of herself she caught in the mirror.

Even her face seemed foreign to her. The rain had ruined her makeup, leaving streaks of mascara down her cheeks and blotchy patches of red lipstick on her mouth. Her hair hung from her in frizzing, ropey strands plastered to the sides of her face and neck. She didn’t recognize the face staring back at her with the tears rimming its wide, desperate eyes.

That other person trapped in the glass snarled, wrenched a paper towel from the dispenser, and clawed the rest of its makeup off. A moment later, it raked its nails through its hair in a biting impression of a brush, gathering the strands together in a loose ponytail with a scrunchie from Sarah’s duffle bag.

At least she had control over something.

At least she could still control the muscles of her unvarnished face, massaging out the furrows in her brow and slackening the tension in her jaw and schooling her lips into an effortless smile.

When she looked in the mirror one last time, she almost resembled herself again.

Supper was up by the time Adelaide went back upstairs. Townsfolk were gathered at the front of the chamber, salting and buttering ears of corn and taking deep, indulgent whiffs of the collard greens, laden with thick-cut bacon and leftover ham hock. Strains of jovial conversation reached her by the stairwell. How is so-and-so doing? Some weather we’re having, huh. Got any holiday plans? How old is so-and-so now? She’s where? Oh my, but they grow up so fast…

Adelaide heard Nat’s name in the mix—something about an athletic scholarship at Clemson—and felt sick again.

Her empty stomach grumbled its complaints as she turned away, but she ignored it, forcing her attention to settle on Madame Tilly, who had not joined the others for dinner. Rather, the old woman, sporting her trademark purple velvet cap and elaborate gem-encrusted beetle brooch, was still kneeling by a box of candles near the front door, lost to the world as she muttered her prayers.

Adelaide reasoned that that, at least, was a conversation she could handle.

Matilda Lawrence had been just as much a part of Adelaide’s life growing up as the Owens. For as long as she could remember, she and her father had been checking up on Madame Tilly after Wednesday service. It had been Adelaide’s earliest act of charity, a kind deed for a kind elder whose mind had wandered even in her youth. Even longer than those visits, though, Adelaide recalled her unwavering faith. As distracted as she might be elsewhere, in church, Madame Tilly was nothing but resolute and focused. Indeed, her knowledge of canticles, verses, and hymns was second only to Deacon Dellouise himself.

Adelaide used to think it would be nice to grow up and be someone like Madame Tilly: refined, devout, at peace.

Nowadays, she just barely had one of the three.

Adelaide squatted beside the prayer box, three tiered rows of tea lights set in small glass bowls. Only a few of the candles were lit, each a pinprick prayer glinting above a puddle of grey wax. She watched them flicker as she listened to Madame Tilly continue her supplications without so much as a glance in her direction.

The words were as familiar as the low, hoarse voice that mumbled them:

“That I may deliver my own salvation, I bequeath upon myself a clear mind and a strong heart. That I may shoulder my own burdens, carry my own weight, and discipline the limits of my own desires, such that I never exceed the boundaries of restraint and propriety. That I may survive the oncoming storm, I pray for clarity, fortitude, and tenacity…”

“And in so praying,” the words spilled forth from Adelaide’s marrow, deep and reluctant as every fiber of her being, “I grant upon myself such virtues as foreseen by our lady prophet.”

Madame Tilly lifted her head, blinking, and smiled up at Adelaide, slow and indulgent.

“Little Addie,” she murmured, gums stretched wide. “How are you?”

“Surviving by someone’s grace.” Adelaide didn’t know if it was her own or her father’s or Delilah’s herself. Probably wasn’t her own. “How ’bout yourself?”

“All is as we will it.”

Typical Order of Dubois bullshit response. Adelaide smiled back.

“Well, it looks like dinner’s up, if you’re hungry.”

“Oh, that’s very kind of you, but I can’t stop praying. There’ll be time to feed myself later. Harborview needs my prayers now. It is as our lady prophet says.” Madame Tilly tapped her forehead with the second knuckle of her right pointer finger, tracing a loose oval between her brows. “‘In seeing clearly, might all the Earth resolve itself in perfect and accurate order.’ Worship is the only way to a clear mind’s eye. A clear mind’s eye is the only way to a righteous world.”

Righteousness seemed a terribly inappropriate framework for understanding a natural disaster, but Adelaide’s good sense told her not to argue.

Instead, she picked up one of the lit prayer candles and tilted it forward. The melted wax pooled to one side, threatening to drown the pinpoint of light quivering inside the glass. When she narrowed her eyes, the flame blossomed into a thin white line across her vision. Its expansion was an optical illusion, she knew, but if she focused hard enough, she could trick herself into thinking that the glass was heating up, cracking, splintering, shattering…

“We could all use some clarity just about now,” Adelaide remarked as she spun the bowl, watching the silvery wax swirl like wine.

“Don’t I know it… You seeking clarity yourself, little Addie? I haven’t seen you around here in a while.”

“Y’know how it is.” Eyes open, eyes closed, flame thinning and widening and winking like blinding starlight, glass hotter and hotter against the pads of her fingers. “One day, you’re suddenly an adult, and you gotta take some time to figure things out.”

“I’ve been an adult for quite a while, dearie. I did all my figuring out long ago.”

“And how’d that go for you?”

“She simplified things a good bit.” Madame Tilly nodded toward the back of the church, and Adelaide followed her gaze to the oil painting of Delilah Dubois. The prophet’s watchful steely eyes stared back from underneath a windswept cowl. “I was a wild and wayward soul once upon a time, but I wandered back to her eventually, and she set me on the straight and narrow… You could always come back too, y’know. Give it all a second chance.”

Adelaide’s grip on the bowl tightened.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Ah, but showing up is only half the work.” Adelaide glanced back at her out of the corner of her eye. Madame Tilly responded by touching her finger to her forehead again. “You still have to have faith, dearie. Otherwise, it’s only a paper moon.

“That was the first lesson Lady Delilah taught us, after all. She saw the end of days on the horizon, the plagues and the storms and the fires that would burn this world to its core, and she turned to prayer. Not just mumbling a few half-hearted words, you understand, but complete dedication of body and soul to her worship. That was her salvation.

“And it’s saved Harborview dozens of times since then. Right before you were born, actually, we had another hurricane. This one got so close the state put us under an evacuation notice, so your daddy rented a whole fleet of buses and he went out in his jeep with his megaphone to round folks up and make sure they got out safe and sound before the storm got bad.

“But instead of leaving with them, he and Melanie came back here, and the three of us set about doing what Delilah mandated we do in the face of travesty. We dedicated ourselves to our piety. We didn’t eat, we didn’t drink, we didn’t sleep, we just prayed.

“And we were rewarded, as Delilah said we would be. For all those weather boys saying we would be wiped off the map, the hurricane only grazed us. Oh, there was some superficial damage to a few buildings on the Docks, and we lost the old community center to the flooding, but we survived. Harborview survived, as it always has, on the back of its own self-efficacy.

“That is the power of faith, child: making divine and mortal providence one in the same.”

But much of Madame Tilly’s sermon had fallen on deaf ears, for Adelaide could not let go of the thought of her mother holed up in this church listening to the world end around her. She pictured her crouched before this same prayer box, hands clenched, eyes shut, trembling.

Had she wanted to stay? Or had she been coerced, her husband never being one to let his things wander too far from his domain? She was a devout woman, but did her faith hold? Did she believe Wyatt when he told her devotion was the only way to salvation?

Did she have any other choice but to believe, to paper a smile over the worry and go through the motions of her worship while her fear gutted her from the inside out? How many screams and sobs did she smother because doubt was still the worse sin in the eyes of her husband?

Did she nurse some secret seed of resentment toward him for condemning her to die alongside him?

Adelaide’s own fear spiraled as sudden as a lightning strike. It was an old anxiety at this point, but it hadn’t yet lost its edge or its weight: that moment of feeling the entire ocean bearing down on her chest. Too tight to move, too heavy to breathe, just the water in her lungs trying to drag her down.

Trapped.

Crack!

The candle holder exploded.

Madame Tilly yelped as glass and wax showered the ground. The still-burning wick hit the carpet. A chorus of gasps and shrieks and questioning grunts surged from the other side of the church.

But all Adelaide knew was the flame. The orange glimmer cut through the fear, and for a blinding moment, she had that holy clarity that the Order of Dubois revered so much: a crystal-clear image of the church reduced to smoldering ash and burning rubble, so real she could taste the heat and smoke sweet on her tongue. If she just focused…

Some smell like ozone and chlorine hit Adelaide square in the nose. Her vision blurred, head swimming as that sublime image warped before her eyes. She tried to hold onto it, but it vanished out from underneath her, like missing the last step in the dark. For a moment, she reeled in the free-fall, stomach plummeting and body lurching, staggering back onto her heels.

Then, her vision settled. She was back in the church. It was normal and whole. The flame was out. And her father was staring hard at her from across the room.

Outside, the thunder boomed as loud as any pipe organ, deep enough to shake the church’s foundations.

The power went out.

The congregation gasped again as the darkness took them. The precious few points of candlelight were quickly joined by the glare of cellphones at the front of the nave. Madame Tilly merely shook her head and resumed her praying, while Adelaide stared at the faces huddled near the altar, cast in a waxy and uneven sheen by the weak flashlights they clutched to their chests. An anxious murmur bubbled up amongst them until their deacon cleared his throat so loud even the rain seemed to hold its breath for him.

“There’s no need to panic, folks.” Wyatt Dellouise only owned a flip phone, so for a moment, his voice seemed to emanate from the darkness itself, ever-present and ever-vigilant. Duke Owens switched on a camping lantern, suffusing the back of the church in a too-white glow. Wyatt appeared, his features ghastly as the light carved steep shadows into his countenance. “We knew this was a possibility, but the church has a generator precisely for this situation. I’ll go out back and turn it on. Duke, you mind if I borrow a flashlight or a lantern?”

“Of course, Wyatt, and if you need someone else to go out with you—”

“I’ll go.”

The glaring cellphones all turned toward Adelaide as she stretched her hand up into the air. A stuttered silence followed. Her father’s thin silhouette shifted.

“That’s awful kind of you, Addie, but—”

“You shouldn't have to go out there alone, Daddy!” Adelaide interrupted brightly. “I wanna help.”

He couldn’t deny her this, not when she was playing the dutiful, smiling daughter he wanted so badly to have back. With a nod and armed with raincoats and a high-powered flashlight, her father led her out the back door of the church.

Stepping back out into the storm, Adelaide’s mind wandered to her other childhood best friend, the one she tried her damnedest not to think about. Once upon a time, before Adelaide had ruined everything, Zak Ibis had been the genderqueer prom king to her prom queen. As the self-proclaimed arbiter of good taste and cultural relevance in a backwater town he resented, Zak could deliver gospel as well as any priest over DairyQueen blizzards or in the Barracuda’s locker rooms. Their vast but shallow reserves of amateurish expertise included computer science, film, sports, economics, and numerous pop science areas like sleep health, fad diets, and wolfpack dynamics as allegories for the human condition.

One such lecture came to mind as the first splash of rain hit Adelaide’s face, turned up toward a patch of clouds where the faint light of the moon filtered through the storm. She remembered one of her many late night break-ins to the lighthouse down the street from the Dellouise Mansion. With Nat giving her a boost, Adelaide would shimmy into the cracked second story window and open the door. Nat provided the snacks, Zak the weak booze, and they’d spend hours playing card games or listening to Zak pontificate.

Over cold, congealed nachos and watered down beer, Zak had once opined about the mammalian diving reflex— in his words, how to trick your lizard brain into thinking the world’s not ending by being in some water about it.

And in the storm’s totality, it did feel like being swallowed up by the sea: the whole world disappeared in the torrent, no ground, no horizon, no body, just the numbness where the droplets pelted against her skin.

Zak was right, it was kind of relaxing.

Would that she actually were in the ocean, sinking into the abyss so that her corpse could give rise to untold and monstrous ecosystems deep beneath the tides. Instead, the swinging of her father’s flashlight, cutting sharp through all that wet nothing, reminded Adelaide of where she was.

“The generator’s just back here.”

“Mhm.”

“Hold the flashlight, will you?”

Adelaide lifted the light up to illuminate the boxy grey generator on the ground and the paneling in the wall above it, which her father began to fuss with. She watched him work in silence, trying to puzzle out the function of the multitude of switches and blinking lights. She didn’t have the faintest idea what her father was doing with them.

Then again, that was the way the two of them functioned, wasn’t it? She didn’t have to know much of anything because daddy dearest could always solve all of her problems.

The irony of being dependent on a man who had dedicated his life to preaching self-sufficiency was so bitter that Adelaide drew in on herself, shivering in Mary Owens’ raincoat and Sarah Davis’ yoga outfit and despising the kindness they had shown her.

“What are you going to do if we ever have to evacuate?!” she shouted over the roar of the storm.

“We won’t need to evacuate,” he responded evenly.

“Sure, not this time around, but there’s always next time, ain’t there, and the time after that? We have a million fucking storms every summer, what are you going to do when one of them finally threatens to wipe this miserable shithole off the coastline?”

Her father’s hands paused, hovering over some button or another. Adelaide could not see his face, but she watched the outline of his Adam’s apple quiver.

“Watch your language, Addie,” he mumbled at last. He pushed the button, and light flooded out of the stained glass window suspended above their heads.

“That’s not an answer, and you fucking know it! Tell me what you would do!”

Desperation seized her as he finally turned toward her, mouth set like a tombstone to match the hard granite of his eyes. Adelaide could not feel her lips spluttering around her words, but she tasted the rainwater against her teeth.

“Would you let me go?!” She came so close to pleading that she wanted to retch. Barely swallowing the bile, she spat, “Or would you trap me here like you trapped Mama?!”

What little color was left drained from her father’s face.

“Addie, don’t—”

“You’d rather see me dead than gone!” The tempest didn’t stop for her like it did for him, but she could match its fury. “You’d let me drown before you’d let me leave!”

“I’d— I’d protect you!” He reached for her, stammering out familiar pleas and supplications. Adelaide shrunk away from his grasp. “I’d keep you safe, like I always have!”

“You’d just keep me!”

He tried to grab her again. Adelaide stepped backwards, slipped on the slick grass, and plummeted to the ground. He lunged to catch her, but she slapped away his hands as she fell. She’d rather have the pain: the sharp ache of a future bruise thrumming through her thighs and up her spine, the scrape of her knuckles against the ground, the twist of her wrist as she held onto the flashlight like a liferaft.

Standing above her, Wyatt’s face contorted, no longer the picture of the austere deacon but of a tired, sad old man.

“Addie, please,” he whispered, extending his hand again, “please just stop this. You’re only hurting yourself.”

In response, Adelaide chucked the flashlight as hard as she could in the other direction.

Somewhere in the darkness above her came a sigh, followed by heavy footsteps headed toward the flashlight, which had rolled to a stop near the fence of the cemetery. Still, Adelaide made no move to pick herself up. Instead, she leaned back to lay down in the mud, letting the rain wash over her.

She couldn’t see the sky.

She couldn’t see much of anything, but she knew Harborview’s geography well enough to draw a straight line from her outstretched fingertips to her father’s house, less than a block away but lost in the storm. She could extend that same, unerring line through to the lighthouse, that last bastion of unspoiled childhood, and she could stretch it out further to the ocean beyond.

She could feel it out there, roiling just out of sight. And if she closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, she could almost feel it inside her too. In her mind’s eye, she saw a wave as tall as the sky cresting over the town, poised just before breaking. It would flood every street, level most buildings, wash away thousands of lives, erase Harborview from the face of the Earth and drag its fractured remains out to sea… and maybe that could free her.

Maybe it would be enough to call her father’s bluff and scare him into breaking the magic that tethered her to Harborview.

Or maybe the magic would break on its own if there was no Harborview.

As soon as it had occurred to her, Adelaide couldn’t let that thought go. The flood, the catastrophe, the destruction, the death. The horror sunk its fangs deep into her, gnawing the edges of morality and logic alike, and she let that callousness fester because it burned oh so tenderly even as she was slowly losing feeling in her limbs.

Why, after all, should she care about the wellbeing of the people who showed up twice a week to suckle at the teat of her father’s dogma despite everything he had done to her?

Why shouldn’t they drown too?

Who was Adelaide to deny the prophecies of her Lady Delilah?

#adelaide posting #okay shes DONE #topping out at 6000 words #this was legit originally just going to be the convo about what adelaide & wyatt would do if there was an evacuation notice #and it was just going to be a bit of dialogue in their house #and then i was like 'wait wouldnt wyatt be at the church during a shelter in place advisory'#and things........ spiraled from there #i have so many meta thoughts but im trying not to add too much commentary for the integrity of the piece #just. ugh. im screaming a lot inside.

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stressfreewaterjet · 1 month ago

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Unlock Precision and Efficiency with Waterjet Cutting in Adelaide

For businesses and industries that require high-precision material fabrication, waterjet cutting in Adelaide offers a powerful solution. With its ability to slice through various materials—ranging from metals to glass—with unmatched accuracy, waterjet cutting eliminates the need for heat or mechanical stress, preserving the integrity of your materials.

Visit: https://stressfreewaterjetcutting.com.au

#waterjet cutting adelaide

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houseoforbs · 3 months ago

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Sustainable Interior Design: Eco-Friendly Choices for Adelaide Homes

Creating Eco-Friendly Interior Designs for Sustainable Homes in Adelaide

We are all now aware that sustainability is more than just a trend; it's an obligation to which we must act collectively, in whatever form.

Advantages of Eco-Friendly Interior Design in Adelaide

HomeImageContextRecognition_TRNSFORMATIONFor home owners all over the continent, harnessing a green design philosophy is not about following suit to some ever-roused trend but creating living environments that mirror values depicted towards our environment. By incorporating green features into our homes, we can reduce stress on the planet and improve living conditions to create healthier, more efficient places of dwelling. Here, we delve into how we can create a place to select from considering mindful decisions that transform Adelaide homes in case at home.

Sustainable building materials

From choosing the materials to use in our designs, we lay out at its core what Eco-friendly interior design is all about. Gone are the days when an environmentally friendly home consisted of building within a cardboard box: today Adelaide homeowners creat more sustainably with materials that serve to reduce environmental impact and also look good in our built environment. Take the speed at which bamboo grows as an example, which can be used for flooring, cabinetry and furniture making. This doesn't change the fact that from a durability and liveability perspective, olive wood is proper "design" choice for many design styles.

Using reclaimed or recycled timber is a sustainable choice for those who love the quintessential character of wood. Packed with personality and traces of reclaimed history, reclaimed wood varies drastically in texture and shade from piece to piece. Another unique option is cork (which provides ample tree-harvesting-specific benefits; it grows back) especially for flooring purposes.

A locally sourced natural stone such as limestone or sandstone are therefore great candidates for countertops, wall features and similar reducing the carbon count. Many of the materials used in sustainable interior design are highly durable and never go out of style.

Deliberate Design for Energy Efficiency

In interior design, using energy efficiently is essential for an environment-friendly designing concept. With the shift in weather patterns here in Adelaide, buying a home that is environmentally friendly can assist with saving on energy and costs. This can be helped by maximizing the presence of natural light through well-placed windows and skylights. This creates an atmosphere that is not only warm and welcoming, but also decreases the necessity of artificial light during daytime hours.

Energy-efficient windows and doors will improve the insulation of your home making it warmer in winter, cooler in summer. It is essential to think about double or triple glazing for windows which assists in lowering heat loss and receive. Designing with thermal mass materials in such a manner can help to regulate the interior temperature by absorbing and releasing heat when necessary.

In addition, other forms of energy-efficient lighting such as LED bulbs and smart home systems controlling the lights heating and cooling in a house further increasing a homes efficiency. These minor changes reduce our carbon footprint and save us a great deal of money in the long term.

Combining Sustainable Furniture and Fixtures

While I expand this admired concept, interior decoration should consider the furniture as part of our house. If you have any furniture concerns are must Provides us with sustainable or recycled material pieces. Furniture of reclaimed wood, recycled metal or organic fabrics not only looks attractive but contributes to ecologically careful behavior.

If you are in need of new furniture, look for manufacturers that focus on being eco-friendly by using FSC-certified environmentally sustainable wood with low-VOC finishes and natural lubricants over MDF or particle board which uses formaldehyde as the glue to bind it together. When you invest in quality furniture that will last you a longer period of time, this could save countless replacements and just make more sense all the way around.

Choose items made of natural and organic materials like cotton or hemp for decor elements such as rugs, curtains, cushions. Moreover, adding indoor plants to your decor also can enhance the quality of indoor air and bring a bit of nature into living spaces; making it even healthier.

Designing with intent to reduce waste

At the heart of all things sustainable interior design, there is a firm effort to reduce waste. Design to lastOne of the most useful ways for reducing waste is a durable, long-term design plan. Resist the urge to wait for fads, and consider timeless design features that history shows will hold their appeal decades from now. It reduces the frequency with which updates and partial replacements get implemented, ending up in waste.

One of the ways waste can be minimized is by reusing or upcycling dispersed materials and furniture. It is possible to freshen up the old furniture with a repaint or re-upholstery and save any leftovers from past projects by adding them in another… Not only does this save waste, adding a touch of home grown rustic control then to your house.

Finally, also be mindful of how materials and products affect end-of-life. Wherever you can, choose to use sustainable or recyclable materials and recycle them when finished with instead of throwing away. This approach of mindfulness in production, use and disposal is what our future generation have to grasp for interior design sustainability.

Conclusion

Creating sustainable Adelaide home interiors is a worthwhile journey that serves you and our earth. Once you choose greener materials setting up energy-efficient and aesthetically pleasing decor, utilizing sustainable furniture, picking recycled elements or simply desisting from overconsuming the environment in more than one way. These options demonstrate a commitment to our planet, and also the future that means your home will continue to be comfortable as wellas attractive for years ahead.

#adelaide #house of orbs #home automation #home improvement

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a1anco · 1 month ago

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#welding services Adelaide #metal fabrication Adelaide #steel fabrication Adelaide

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apexservices · 8 months ago

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Crafting Excellence through The Importance of Metal Fabrication in Adelaide

Metal fabrication is a crucial aspect of many industries in Adelaide, ranging from construction and manufacturing to automotive and aerospace. Finding the right metal fabrication company is essential for ensuring the success and quality of your projects. Here are some key factors to consider when choosing a metal fabrication in Adelaide:

Experience and Expertise: Look for a metal fabrication company with extensive experience and expertise in the industry. Experienced fabricators will have the skills, knowledge, and equipment necessary to handle a wide range of metal fabrication projects, from simple to complex.

Capabilities and Facilities: Consider the capabilities and facilities of the metal fabrication company. Choose a company that has state-of-the-art equipment, technology, and resources to meet your project requirements efficiently and effectively. This includes cutting-edge machinery, spacious workshops, and skilled personnel.

Quality Assurance: Quality is paramount in metal fabrication. Ensure that the company follows strict quality assurance processes and adheres to industry standards and regulations. Look for certifications such as ISO 9001 to guarantee the quality and reliability of their work.

Customization and Flexibility: Every project is unique, and you need a metal fabrication company that can tailor their services to your specific needs. Whether you require custom designs, precise measurements, or specialized finishes, choose a company that offers customization and flexibility to accommodate your requirements.

Materials and Techniques: Different projects may require different materials and fabrication techniques. Choose a metal fabrication company that works with a variety of metals, including steel, aluminum, and stainless steel, and offers a range of fabrication methods such as cutting, welding, bending, and machining.

Project Management and Communication: Effective project management and communication are essential for the success of any metal fabrication project. Choose a company that provides clear communication channels, regular updates, and responsive customer service to keep you informed and involved throughout the process.

Safety Standards: Safety should be a top priority in metal fabrication. Ensure that the company has robust safety policies and procedures in place to protect workers, clients, and the environment. Look for certifications such as AS/NZS 4801 to demonstrate their commitment to safety.

References and Testimonials: Research the reputation of the metal fabrication company by checking references, testimonials, and online reviews from past clients. Positive feedback and testimonials are indicative of a reliable and reputable company that delivers high-quality results.

Cost and Budget: Establish a budget for your metal fabrication project and obtain quotes from multiple companies to compare prices. While cost is important, prioritize quality and reliability when making your decision. Remember that investing in high-quality fabrication services can save you time and money in the long run.

By considering these factors and conducting thorough research, you can find a reputable and reliable metal fabrication company in Adelaide that meets your project requirements and delivers superior results. Whether you're in need of structural steel fabrication, custom metalwork, or precision machining, partnering with the right fabricator is crucial for the success of your project.

#metal fabrication adelaide

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thelocalguyspestcontrols3 · 4 months ago

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Effective Rodent Control in Adelaide: Safeguard Your Home and Health

The Importance of Rodent Control

Rodents are more than just a nuisance; they are carriers of various diseases that can affect humans and pets. Some of the diseases transmitted by rodents include leptospirosis, hantavirus, and salmonellosis. These pests contaminate food, surfaces, and air, leading to serious health risks. Furthermore, rodents can cause extensive damage to property by gnawing on electrical wires, insulation, and structural components. This not only results in costly repairs but also increases the risk of fire hazards.

Signs of a Rodent Infestation

Identifying the signs of a rodent infestation early can help prevent a minor issue from escalating into a major problem. Common indicators include:

Droppings: Small, dark droppings near food sources, in drawers, cupboards, and along walls.

Gnaw Marks: Rodents chew on wood, wires, and other materials to keep their teeth sharp.

Nests: Shredded paper, fabric, and other materials used by rodents to create nests.

Noises: Scratching or scampering sounds in walls, ceilings, and floors, especially at night.

Unpleasant Odors: A musky smell caused by rodent urine and droppings.

Effective Rodent Control Methods

Effective rodent control involves a combination of preventative measures and professional intervention. Here are some strategies to keep rodents out of your property:

1. Seal Entry Points

Rodents can squeeze through incredibly small openings. Inspect your property for gaps around doors, windows, pipes, and vents, and seal them with steel wool, caulk, or metal mesh. Ensure that doors and windows close tightly, and install weather stripping if necessary.

Maintain Cleanliness

Rodents are attracted to food and water sources. Keep your home clean and free of crumbs and spills. Store food in airtight containers and dispose of garbage regularly. Fix any leaky pipes and ensure that pet food and water bowls are not left out overnight.

Remove Clutter

Clutter provides hiding places for rodents. Declutter your home, rodent control adelaide especially in storage areas like basements, attics, and garages. Keep firewood and compost piles away from the house.

Use Traps and Baits

Set up traps and baits in areas where rodent activity is suspected. Snap traps, glue traps, and live traps are effective for capturing rodents. Be cautious when using poison baits, as they can be harmful to pets and children.

Seek Professional Help

If the infestation is severe or persistent, it’s best to call a professional pest control service in Adelaide. Experts have the knowledge, experience, termite treatment gold coast and tools to effectively eliminate rodents and prevent future infestations. They can also provide advice on long-term rodent-proofing strategies.

Choosing the Right Pest Control Service

When selecting a pest control service in Adelaide, consider the following factors:

Reputation: Look for companies with positive reviews and a track record of successful rodent control.

Experience: Choose a provider with extensive experience in dealing with rodent infestations.

Safety Measures: Ensure that the company uses safe and environmentally friendly methods.

Guarantee: A reputable pest control service should offer a guarantee on their work.

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closetdropau · 5 months ago

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Choose the Best from I AM DELILAH’s Latest Collection

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#Rent clothes #Clothing rental #Dress hire #Designer dress rental

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naturalfloorsmel · 8 months ago

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Natural Fibre Carpets & Flooring

When it comes to cheap flooring ideas, sisal flooring is a good choice for people who are hard on floors, so if you have children and pets, it’s a smart selection get to know about the best flooring for dogs. It’s also one of the hotter flooring options out there, make sure to check out the others. The new designs for floors and laminate tiles have transformed into modern, on-trend designs. To make the choice easier take into account these ideas when choosing laminate flooring - sisal flooring melbourne.

Sisal carpets, rugs and runners are versatile and hardwearing and perfect for living rooms, halls and as stair carpet. The original white fibre means that the natural sisal fibre dyes incredibly well and the metallic hues shine through. Choose from textured chunky sisals or fine sisal, all intricate and softly tactile. We recommend that all of our floor coverings be installed by one of our alternative retail partners; however, we do have some tips so you know what to expect. Treading lightly and doing the right thing means the world to us. We make carpets with a conscience, being totally transparent about what’s in our products - sisal rugs Adelaide.

All floor coverings have slightly different needs, so its important to know how to look after me to keep my looking my best. Choose from tried-and-tested traditional to gorgeous woven art rugs. Where will your imagination take you? Go stripey, designer, rocky, or demure. Browse through our selection of wonderful, snuggly rugs below. Select your favorite and then make it into a bespoke, made-to-measure rug with your choice of border style, fabric, and color. This option is not only cheaper than hardwood, it’s tough and can withstand a lot of abuse. Another benefit to flooring is that the planks look similar to hardwood. For more information, please visit our site https://thenaturalflooringcompany.com.au/

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adelaideriedesel · 9 months ago

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Reddit to the Rescue - Week 6: February 16, 2024

It’s Valentine’s Day for storytime! Since it was Valentine's Day last week, today's theme was all about hearts and love. We did our usual three books along with heads, shoulders, knees, and toes and other songs. The kids handed out Valentine’s cards and made a little wreath with pink and red hearts and the occasional marker scribble.

After the bi-weekly ritual of storytime, we went on a little adventure to the ice box! It basically now acts as an extra storage. Our reason for going to the ice box/storage was to get a very big ladder to replace the lightbulb in the projector in the Imagidome theater. The theater is basically a huge room that has a circular moving section and a movie about the St. Johns river and the DeBary hall. The brave soldier Lisa went on the ladder to replace the lightbulb. I’ll spare you the long process that was to get the light to shine and replace the lightbulb again and listen to the movie 2 to 3 times until we finally got it to work!

After we finished with the lightbulb it was lunch! Then I got to work on my project. Since I am done with the bins, I am now in the research phase. I procrastinated a little bit last week so I emailed my research professor and the professor I TA to ask about what direction I should go and any advice they have. There is a circular metal ring thing in the white box and I asked the docents what they thought it was. They gave some funny answers, but Judy and Ed said that maybe it was to clasp for a pipe. I thought to post it on the Reddit subpage r/whatisthisthing and Redditors truly delivered. This link to the Reddit page will be at the end and as of today at 9:00 PM there are 132 upvotes, 20 comments, and 97.5k total views. I have had a range of answers from it being just a band heater to adding more specific context. An example is someone who said “Pipe band heater. In the orange juice industry, they are used in pipes moving orange juice to slowly bring the temperature up as it flows through the pipes, so they can pasteurize the juice without causing it to boil.” This is very plausible as the DeBary family had orange groves during the 1880s. Someone else said “With it being for a very old house in Florida I can guarantee it wasn't for freeze protection but likely part of a #6 fuel oil heating apparatus for the boiler system. That stuff turns to paraffin wax at room temperature but burns with the heat of Hades. Immersion heaters are pretty standard for that kind of fuel. Unless they were into custom steel fabrication and needed something for heat treating.” I will need to do some more research on the property to know exactly what this is, but this has been a great start to the investigation. I also emailed the Collections Manager at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments if she could have any information about this as well. I deeply love this part of my internship as it is so fulfilling and interesting to find out information that no one has found yet. And I love that eventually all this information will be available to the public and stored in the house as exhibits. Every Friday I am reminded of how grateful I am to be able to pursue something I love.

For this week there’s a picture of me during storytime that Tracy took of me, the huge ladder, and the now known band heater.

See ya!

Adelaide

https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/1asfc3i/metal_circle_with_electrical_components_on_the/?share_id=Dj2lrgjNwAWy4ibcwAlmx&utm_content=2&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1

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aangussca · 11 months ago

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Gallery visit: MCA - The National 4 and others PART 1 (12.4.23)

Note that I may do some research on any of the artists featured here. MCA info plaques for each work is attached.

Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association Artists' YOYI (dance) (2020, projected short film installation)

Description: YOYI (dance) is a collaborative, artist-led video work by Jilamara Arts and Crafts Association in Millkapiti, Tiwi Islands. It features 30 artists, each performing a ceremonial yoyi (dance) on Country near Paluwiyanga (Goose Creek), Purumpanali (Karslake), and Yapilika (Maxwell Creek).

The artists take centre-stage in each scene, donning ceremonial objects and jilamara (designs) of natural ochre collected on the Country where they dance. Passed down patrilineally, these markings and gestures resemble their individual totems, including the Tartuwali (Shark), Yirrikapayi (Crocodile), Kapala (Salling Boat), Jarrangini (Buffalo), Jilarti (Brolga), and Jarrikarlani (Turtle).

Performance and the body are central aspects of Tiwi ceremony. This immersive video installation is the Jilamara artists' first collective exploration into digital media; a significant act of recording ceremonial dance for future generations, both within the community and beyond the Tiwi Islands. Video offers a medium through which the performative roots of Tiwi Jilamara and ceremonial objects can be captured on Country and widely shared.

Esme Timbery's Shellworked Slippers (2008, sculptural installation: shoes made of shells, glitter, fabric and cardboard)

Description: "Shellwork is very important to me. My great-grandmother was the first one to do it, and my mother. And now I'm doing it, now my daughter's doing it, my grand-daughters are doing it." - Esme Timbery

Bidjigal elder and senior artist Esme Timbery is renowned for her decorative shelled models and objects. Her work is part of the Bidjigal matriarchal shellwork tradition, passed down from generation to generation, associated with the Aboriginal community of the south-eastern Sydney suburb of La Perouse.

This work's mass of empty shoes forms a poignant memorial to the 'disappeared' children of the Stolen Generations - Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families in the 19th and 20th centuries by church and state. Comprised of 200 tiny velvet slippers in a rainbow of colours, each adorned with intricate shell designs, glitter and lace, the work also embodies an enduring connection to culture and Country, honoring the resilience and self-determination of the Bidjigal women and their community.

Allison Chhorn's Skin Shade Night Day (2022, installation: 4 digital short films projected through a tent made of cloth and coir)

Description: Memory and trauma as they relate to migrant experiences are central to the work of filmmaker and visual artist Allison Chhorn. Skin Shade Night Day, the artist's first video installation, takes the form of a shade house, an exact replica of one she built for her parents to grow vegetables on the outskirts of Adelaide. This immersive video installation, which was filmed over a period of six months, meditates on the daily routines of her Cambodian-Australian farily as they tend to their vegetable crops over a growing season.

For Chhorn, Skin Shade Night Day is also haunted by memories of her family's experience living in a refugee camp on the Cambodian-Thai border before migrating to Australia in the early 1980s.

Léuli Eshrāghi's afiafi (2023, installation: 2 digital short films, vinyl poem on walls, and cotton sarongs decorated with metallic foils and iron powder) - from the installation series Siapo viliata o le atumotu (2020-ongoing)

Description: "Meaning 'day', 'afternoon' and 'fire' in Samoan, aflafi, the fourth work in the Siapo viliata o le atumotu series (2020-ongoing) bears witness to tropical futurist time where sensuality, pleasure, sexuality, and spirituality in symbiosis with kin animals, deities, and territories are deeply embraced. Looking to the diplomatic work of the penultimate monarch of Hawaii, Mö'T Kalakaua whose efforts to create a confederacy between Hawaii, Samoa and Tonga in the late 1880s were foiled by German, American, and British colonisations, afiafi affirms the joy of communities bound by recent and ancient pilina/kinship as ola/living and, su'ifefiloi/remixing, what Samoan scholar Lana Lopesi terms the 'Moana cosmopolitan imaginary. This is not a response to the invisibility of Indigenous-gendered peoples in Eurocentric worldviews upheld across the Great Ocean, but is instead a tender yet rigorous offering for today's challenges of intersecting violences against fa'afafine, fa'atama, mahú, bakla, queer, trans, and non-binary bodies, and of Indigenous territories spanning the Great Ocean bearing the brunt of climate catastrophe.

Asserting the continuity of Indigenous cultural memory, afiafi draws on Samoan barkcloth dating from the 18th century and 19th century photographs currently held in French, British, German and Australian colonial collections. The cotton 'ie/pareu/sarongs seen here feature hand-drawn motifs and were made using screenprinting techniques and metallic foils. Malo/loincloths, that feature in the filmed performance included in this installation were made with emergency blankets, belts, and jockstraps. These were complemented by the sweat, laughter, stories, and mana/ power of my collaborators in Honolulu. Moving between collective moments of arriving, receiving, greeting, visiting kin makai / at the shore, and connecting, feasting, revelling, and sweating mauka / in the highlands, afiafi celebrates cumming together as beautiful, well- travelled peoples committed to Indigenous sovereign balance on the rims through to the centres of tropical futures already made possible." - Léuli Eshrāghi

Amanda Williams' Phytograms (High Plains, Great Dividing Range) (2023, unique phytotype on orthochromatic film displayed on a lightbox and custom plinth)

Description: This installation offers another impression of the landscapes of the Alpine National Park in Victoria and Kosciusko National Park in New South Wales, the subject of Amanda Williams' large format black and white photographs in the adjacent room. To make this work, the artist used the phytotype technique, a camera-less photographic process first developed in the 19th century involving the chemical interaction between plants and light-sensitive material.

Williams exposed her film in the environment to make these phytotypes. The resulting images emerged from the chemical reaction between organic matter and the light-sensitive gelatin silver emulsion of the film. The objects recorded, such as plants, soil or rocks, made a direct 'print' or impression on the negative. This light-sensitive material became the final work.

"I hope this experimental process offers another 'view' of the landscape and an insight into material process, the materiality of film and light sensitivity. Importantly, the images offer the viewer direct impressions of the landscape I experienced. Conceptually, the fugitive nature of the process, the uncertainty of final outcomes and the unstable nature of the unfixed surface of the negative - a surface that continues to change over time - mirrors the ecological instability of these alpine landscapes, and the contested histories the landscape bears witness to. I have also worked against traditional methods of 'fixing' the negative, allowing the negatives to continue to change over time. The image is not a frozen moment, it is a continuously unfolding moment." - Amanda Williams

#art gallery #thingstonoteforfutureprojects

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