#mire soft wallpapers

[soft-mygstuff]

✧ mire ┆ lockscreens ! ★☆ psd by: @noirpsds & iapetite on da

[sushiandstarlight]

Of All The Beds In All The Hotels In All The World... Part 6

Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five

Read this chapter on AO3

An answer to @onthedriftinthetardis​‘ call for The Worst Fanfic Prompts

Dinner was a largely quiet affair, especially when compared with breakfast.  There were plenty of conversations going on in the small dining room, but no one tried to pull either of them into the chatter.  They sat side-by-side, Aziraphale trying to enjoy the roast duck and it’s beautifully seasoned vegetables, Crowley sliding more and more of his helping on to the Angel’s plate when no one was looking.  Every time Aziraphale caught a glimpse of Crowley out of the corner of his eye, the demon was watching him.  He wasn’t trying to hide it at all.  Though, his usual look of happy adoration was a bit mired by the worried creases that sat between his eyes.  Aziraphale supposed they matched the creases on his own face.  He wanted to touch Crowley.  He wanted to sit down and have a long conversation about what all of this meant with Crowley.  Part of him was not adverse to dragging the man up the stairs and to either of the beds in either of their rooms and wringing it out of him with pleasuring hands.  That part... well, it never did quite sit down and remain quiet, regardless of the circumstances.  He would... never be so bold.

Dishes were collected by Gladys some time later and Crowley did not miss the very pointed look she gave him when she took his.  The women had a way with words without using words at all.  A way with looks?  No wonder her plants listened to her.  If Crowley were human, he was sure he’d be sweating under her glare.

“Shall we, Angel?”

“Hmm?” 

“Ready for that walk?”

“Oh, oh yes, of course.” Aziraphale rose and Crowley trailed behind him out the door and along the garden path.  

The night quickly closed in around them, dark but clear enough to be lit with an astounding amount of stars.  Crowley had caught up with Aziraphale to walk side-by-side, but his eyes were fixed on the sky.

They heard the crashing of the waves against the cliffs long before they reached them, but soon enough they arrived.  The land seemed to drop away in the distance into a pool of twinkling constellations.  Crowley remembered them all by names they had long before humans ever lifted a their gaze to see them.  It seemed to him that he could fly directly off the cliffs and be among them again.  For all his talk of running away to them, he had no desire to do so without the angel to his left.  What would be the point?  Long ago he had surrendered to the idea that as bright and wondrous as the stars were, they were a pale comparison to the glow and warmth that came from his best friend.

They stood on the very edge of the cliffs, buffeted by a strong wind coming off the water.  Humans might have found it a bit harsh, but it brushed harmlessly over them both.

“Are we alone?”  Aziraphale’s words broke the silent tension that had settled over them since they left the inn, but they did nothing to dispel the awkwardness.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Could you be sure? Could you check?”

Crowley closed his eyes and concentrated.  The nearest humans were back in the inn.  They couldn’t be seen from here, even if they had brought a light.  No one on the beach outside the normal wildlife.

“We’re alone.”

“Oh, good,” with that Aziraphale shimmied in place, bringing his wings from out of the pocket of existence in which they were kept and shook them out.  Crowley’s heart lodged in his throat as he watched the angel stretch them out behind him and tilt his face to the heavens, eyes closed in quiet pleasure.  His wings were as beautiful as the rest of him: white and downy even to the eyes, glowing softly with ethereal light and grace.  Crowley wondered, idly, if it would hurt to touch them for any amount of time.  He wouldn’t mind finding out.  And if it stung, he would take the pain for the pleasure of it.

“Well?”  Aziraphale was looking back at him when he managed to tear his eyes away from the glory of his feathers.

“Well?” Crowley swallowed.  He knew what Aziraphale was asking, but did Aziraphale know what he was asking for?

“Could we,” Aziraphale shuffled in place for a moment, casting his eyes out over the shore and the stars above it as he searched for the right words.  Crowley was only just now noticing that the moon behind him was catching on his pale hair, giving him a fuzzy halo of sorts.  It did odd twisty things to his heart as he waited. “Could we just be real and solid with one another for a few minutes?  Just... just a few minutes.”  

Aziraphale’s eyes were clenched shut now and Crowley wondered what it was he saw behind them.  Did he think there was any request he could make of Crowley that Crowley wouldn’t give him if it was at all within his power to do so?

“Well, er... Well, yes, of course we can.”  Crowley pulled his own wings into existence and shook the feathers loose.  The wind immediately started to stream through them, shifting and rearranging the feathers.  It felt incredibly good and he couldn’t help but stretch his wings back and out as far as he could to catch more of the breeze.  Not paying attention to anything but the pleasure of it meant that he felt his wing brush against Aziraphale’s more than saw it.  A pleasant shudder ran through him, even from the momentary contact. He quickly pulled away before he could cause offense.  But... Aziraphale’s wing followed his, brushing back against it with gentle purpose.

He turned and looked at the angel with all his questions written in the creases around the sunglasses still on his face.

“Beautiful, thank you.”  Aziraphale took one last look before turning his gaze back up to the stars even as he crept a little closer, pressing their wings further together.  Crowley wanted to argue that his wings were a sign of his brokenness, his fall.  He wanted to pull away before the ebony they held somehow marred the glowing, white feathers.  But he swallowed that down.  Aziraphale could be saying all manner of berating things to him right now- and he felt he deserved that- but instead he had asked for a moment of clarity between them.  If he wanted to speak such lovely things over Crowley, despite it all, who was he to argue?

They stood there in their own thoughts for a long while, even as the cool night deposited dew on everything around them.  Their only acknowledgement of this was to ripple their feathers occasionally to dispel the water, managing to entangle more and more with one another.  After a time, they scarcely knew what feathers belonged to which one of them and that was something beyond a pleasure.

“Ready to go back?”  Crowley drew a deep breath and gave one last deep stretch of his wings.  He watched Aziraphale watch them and didn’t dare place the emotions in his eyes.  When he tucked them away... it had to be his imagination, but the angel’s glow seemed to dim just the tiniest bit.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Aziraphale stretched and tucked his own wings away.  Crowley wondered if the same look he had just moments ago was now reflected in his eyes.  They needed to be real with one another more often.  “We wouldn’t want to worry Gladys.”

“I don’t doubt,” Crowley chuckled, “that she wouldn’t march right out here and haul us back inside herself.”  He reached out a hand to Aziraphale, slowly and with a tilting heart that didn’t seem to want to beat correctly.  Aziraphale looked at his hand for a moment and then his face.  Then he clasped the hand.  His hand was so much warmer and softer than Crowley’s.  It was like a brush of his wing: gentle and soft around the edges.  Neither of them mentioned it, but kept them clasped tightly the whole way back to the Inn.

As they got closer to the inn they noted that the porch light was still on and so was the light in one of the rooms.  For a moment they saw the outline of Gladys before that light went out.  Humans. 

They made their way to their rooms and before long they were standing together on Aziraphale’s side of the ensuite.  Crowley pulled his fingers from Aziraphale’s with as little awkwardness as he could muster.

“Well, g’night, Angel...” He headed through the ensuite and to his room on the other side.

“Crowley, wait.”  Aziraphale was standing in his doorway.  Crowley turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Did you... did you make the wallpaper flowers grow in one of the other rooms?”

Crowley felt the laughter bubble up from within his lungs and spill out in spite of himself.  It was a hearty laugh that left him shaking and after a moment of tutting, Aziraphale joined him in it.

“Have a good evening.”  He said in to the silence that filled the momentary mirth.

“Rest well,” Aziraphale looked as if he wanted to say more, but he let the moment pass.  Crowley shut his side of the ensuite and went to curl up in the suspiciously floral chair.

Aziraphale watched the door close and watched the closed door for several of  the heartbeats that followed before quietly closing his.  Then, thinking better of it, he left it slightly cracked before walking over to the window and staring up at the stars in quiet contemplation.

TBC

Part seven is now up!

[the-sages-pen]

A Child Lamented

A heavy wooden door closed behind the man's heels with a thud that echoed and then faded into silence aside from the strained breathing of the figure cradled in his arms. The moonlight, peeking through heavy curtains in narrow shafts near the door, was enough to reflect on the polished floor and light most of the grand entrance hall, casting an ethereal silver glow on the shining, gilded banisters, carved panels, and checkered tiles. As they went deeper into the mansion's halls, however, the moonlight faded into the distance behind them, leaving only the light of occasional candle sconces. One for every few they passed lit autonomously the moment the polished toe of his show passed them, lighting the next few feet of floor and lifeless doorways that faded into darkness before them.

There was too little light for the girl's weaker eyes. He could see the way her pupils widened and her eyelids slid closer together, squinting to make out the pattern printed on the rich green wallpaper and the subjects of oil paintings whose varnish caught the soft candlelight as they passed.

The girl shifted weakly in his arms and reminded his numbing mind that he could do nothing for her. The scent of sickness and death already swelled from her in too-pungent wafts.

He'd never truly gotten used to how powerful his senses had become, and isolating himself in this deep-forest mansion after accruing his wealth had been partially a result of that; he'd wanted to escape the overwhelming chaos of sights and scents and sounds that came with other people.

But smell had been the worst for him. Catching the scent of vomit in drunks' mouths, the filth from the bottom of shoes, the decay in ill-cared for teeth, and especially the sickly smell of those who were not long for this world more often than not left him feeling ill himself.

And now she had brought that scent here. Despite all his vast wealth, all the dark powers he'd sewn into his soul to gather it, the gruesome price of those powers, and the unnatural number of years he had lived he could do nothing but make his strange, human companion comfortable as she faded.

He himself was no longer human, and had not been for a long time. He'd felt the searing of hellish magic under his skin for over a hundred years now, the taint first claiming him as the blood of his closest friend sank into the chalk-marked stone floor. At the time, alluring whispers of greed assured him that the sacrifice was justified, twisting him into a demon-like vessel of the sin. Nearly 90 years later, love and guilt had found its way back into his heart after a series of events that hurt him to remember, but the compilation of crimes he had committed was enough to weigh on him for the remainder of his long-lengthened life.

The girl had come to him three years ago, stumbling across his ornate forest home after her parents had been killed by a pack of wolves. She'd been on holiday and too young to help him find where she came from.

He took her in. Partly because of her unwavering friendliness towards him, partly in hopes that caring for her would help atone for the friend's child he left fatherless all those years ago, partly because he could find no one better able and willing to take her.

The cobwebs in his home slowly made way for dolls and hair ribbons. Bland meals he prepared for himself turned to cakes and elaborate meals on her request. The empty house, once silent save for the creaking of the wood and the echoes of his footsteps, became filled with her songs and laughter.

They had both been happy for those three years. Carefree, until she'd collapsed before him.

Now he made his way to her favorite place, the conservatory framed in elegant glass windows and filled with a well-tended garden at the back of the house. Even as exhausted as she was he could see her lips curl into a smile as she stared up at the stars painting the windowed ceiling.

At the end of the long room was a sitting area set with a few elegant couches and an ebony grand piano washed a deep blue by the moon. He laid her carefully onto one of the couches, sitting beside her and squeezing her hand gently as he shifted her cold fingers into his.

He struggled to dissolve the silence between them, usually so full of her voice that he'd have difficulty getting in a word even if he wasn't always so lost for words.

"Sing?" The word was so weak in her voice that even he could barely make it out.

His hand tightened slightly over hers. After a moment he nodded. "Of course, my dear. Shall I play for you as well?" Even his own words sounded weak.

At the tiniest nod he pulled her into his arms again, moving her limp form to the bench beside the piano she always occupied on the rare occasions she convinced him to play.

He'd not played as a human, his ability was a result of his powers, but it was still beautiful. As his fingers hesitated over the keys, he wondered what he could possibly play, but another glance at her brought him an answer.. Soon the conservatory was filled with a gentle, hopeful lullaby about the fading of day into night and the promise of the soon-to-rise sun. It was a song she had taught him to sing long ago, one her parents had sung to her.

Though his voice was not the most trained, it was soft and soothing, harmonizing with the piano's strings as the girl formed another weak smile.

The devil's music played around them even as he caught scent of the mouldy fabric of the reaper's robes. It was another smell he hated, even if his crimson eyes hadn't ever revealed the spirit.  

++++++

I hope this is readable, I have no time to edit. 

This was a flashfictionfriday prompt, "The Devil's Music," that accidentally got mired in my drafts, but it’s been awhile since I’ve been able to participate, so I'm gonna post it anyway for people to make of it what they will.

[my-house-of-fashion]

Metanoia – Stairway to heaven by Patricia Bustos

https://designwanted.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/metanoia-1-1041x1600.jpg

Metanoia is a “retreat”, a stairway to a utopian world where inner peace and connection with our environs are the true path of conversion.

An awakening to the beauty of the essential that purifies our body and, even more importantly, our “soul”. Metanoia is an emotional catharsis.

It is the chimera that conceals the desire to find in the tangible what we should be searching for inside ourselves. The shift in direction we’re not too late to take.

The idea that it is imperative to slow down our lives, connect with the universe and once again search for something higher than us, an energy that envelops us, the most powerful one of all: LOVE.

Fleeing from the noise that distorts and distresses our true essence. Learning how to transcend in order to realise ourselves as people and impact the WORLD, leaving our mark, contributing our grain of sand, building something better.

Metanoia is a temple for the body, but also for the soul; a new refuge where you can immerse yourself, dream and profoundly relax. A nook of pleasure where everything is soft, delicate and silent.

This time we wanted to get back to nature, to the essence, but from a different vantage point: from the desire to live in peace and harmony with the universe around us, and with ourselves.

A new “GENESIS” that allows us to rediscover the purest beauty in a fluid, “freemium” space. A luxury bathroom, but a free one far from stereotypes or clichés. 

The paradigm of luxury has changed. We are not so interested in the tangible but instead what allows us to experience or feel the emotional part of the product, connecting with our ideals and principles. Challenging the traditional concept of “status”, the younger generations are choosing freer lifestyles which enable them to have holistic experiences, beyond comfort or luxury. Being aligned with these values connects us with our clients.

In our particular temple, all eyes are on water. Water casts back the light that reaches it, and the windows to the outside world are covered with infinite iridescent panes which suffuse the space with the colours of a spectacular sunset on a cliff with crystalline water… Inside, in a warm cave, a spring continuously brings life to everything harboured there.

The faucets from Hansgrohe’s Rainfinity collection turn the bathroom into a refuge focused on silence and reflection. Its new sprinkler system with delicate, minuscule droplets make it a sustainable product while also providing an almost mystical experience, a sense of natural, enveloping rain which provides a moment of refuge and connection.

The entire space is cloaked in a coat of immaculate white fur that spirits us away to a cavern. In the age of sensory oversaturation, we need to find spaces that beckon contemplation and silence. The adaptable flooring material, both sustainable and acoustic, as well as the fur lining the room, turn Metanoia into a balm for our overactive minds in need of peace and quiet.

The different volumes, organic shapes, and raw materials accentuate the sense of a cavern, connecting us to Mother Earth and highlighting the beauty of the gems and the cool glass surrounding the water area. The contrasts among materials represent our internal contradictions and conflicts, as well as how we can find the beauty of life in them.

Steps lead to the shower, guarded by dégradé glass prisms which serve as partitions while also resembling the distance of the utopian horizon that we dream about.

Lighting is an essential element of the project, evoking distant scenes. An impressive golden, almost scalding sunset, or a cool, delicate mauve sunrise where we can almost feel the morning dew.

The Two Roads ceiling lamp surmounts the space and represents the two directions on a road… It shows us how we can choose between following our instincts and moving forward or becoming mired in fear and withdrawing.

The sculptures in the large central bathtub and sinks are made of plastic, esparto, and wood, all sustainable materials. They emerge from the space like large organic volumes inlaid with quartz, transporting us to a veritable cave and connecting us with our ancestors, back when our homes were refuges in the mountains and we wrapped ourselves in pelts; when the essential was not tarnished with the superfluous noise, smog and constant twinkling of cities.

This noise is represented by the wallpaper in Patricia Bustos’s Diversity collection which covers the façade and entrance to this space, remaining outside, incapable of penetrating the cave of silence.

The dressing table represents mirages, a hole through which we can peer into the utopia and see what a quieter world would be, one where we could hear the stream, the waves in the sea, the wind rustling the leaves. The Fantastic Chair leads us to this world; ergonomic yet surrealistic, it provides a touch of science fiction to the entire space, as does the Dreamland chaise longue. When reclining on it, the promised dream turns out to be closer than ever.

The two Magnetic lamps, both the floor and the table versions, connect us with the space, light our way towards it and hypnotise us thanks to their iridescent rings. And they take us further, to the true utopia we dream about.

Psychedelic and futuristic: that’s what the pieces in this temple are, in contrast to the nature and rawness of the rest of the composition, which provides these interplays and contrasts we need to capture in order to represent the complexity of this world, the paradoxes we face every day, and how, even though we go back to our roots, we always have to look towards the future with enthusiasm and a huge dose of fantasy.

“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.” (Eduardo Galeano)

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[firstjustgoin]

Waiting for June to Come

Oscar and Rosa are sitting on their couch in the living room where they have spent the majority of the last year, waiting for June to come.

Their living room is a testament to years and decor trends past: the greens and yellows and pinks of flowers covering the wallpaper, thick shag carpeting that has undoubtedly swallowed enough lego pieces and toenail clippings to be the site of a disgusting scavenger hunt for hours, a fat box of a TV that has just four channels. The living room gets the best light, their realtor told them when they were first looking at the house, and she was right: when the dark red velvet curtains weren’t drawn as they were most days, the living room lit up during the golden hour, catching every fleck of dust in the air and illuminating it into a thing of beauty.

Oscar and Rosa have their special chairs. For Oscar, it is a cushy La-Z-Boy recliner that can extend long enough for him to sleep comfortably through the night, a common occurrence these days. For Rosa, it is a dark green wing chair and matching ottoman, which, when you get close enough, you can see is covered in tiny embroidered poodles. Rosa has never sat in Oscar’s La-Z-Boy and Oscar would never dream about sitting in Rosa’s poodle chair and, therefore, they always know what to expect when they enter the room.

Today, as every day, the television is turned on to Channel 2: local news. Despite the fact that they rarely leave the house anymore, they know more than just about anybody else in town about the goingson. They watch the 7am local news, the 8am weather reports, the 9am national reports, 10am local news, the 11am Wheel of Fortune reruns, and the noon Wheel of Fortune reruns (usually by then, Oscar has fallen asleep and Rosa has started her afternoon crossword). In the evening, they watch the 4pm local news, 5pm traffic report, 6pm international news –– ”How sad,” Rosa often sighs when watching the 6pm show, telling herself to stop watching it –– and the 7pm Wheel of Fortune live episode. By 8pm, Rosa is brushing her teeth and heading up to bed while Oscar stays up to watch the 9pm comedy specials, which he will only laugh at if Rosa is not there.

It wasn’t always this way, as it almost never is. Oscar and Rosa used to have jobs to get to, friends to see. Oscar was a head contractor for a big construction business in town, well-known and respected for his attention to detail and easy-to-like demeanor. Rosa volunteered at the local soup kitchen on weekday mornings and bottled up homemade peach and blackberry jams to store in the basement come winter. There’s just one bottle of peach jam left, swallowed by dust and cobwebs in the corner of the storage unit downstairs. Rosa had been saving it for a special occasion, but there haven’t been any of those for awhile.

Once every couple days, Oscar will turn to Rosa and say, “Today?”

Rosa might pause, stand up and walk towards the curtained window and peek behind it, then settle back into her chair and shake her head slowly. “Not today, maybe next week.” And Oscar will turn up the volume dial on the television set a few notches and they will settle back into their lives on opposite poles.

At first, they waited for June the way a puppy awaits his owner’s return to his house after work –– eyes alert and searching, breaths frantic and ragged, wearing themselves out with anxiety. But months have passed and they cannot sustain such energy. They sit in their chairs and they watch news of worlds close and far and they are grateful for the moments when they forget what they are waiting for.

When June was a baby, not more than a couple weeks home from the hospital, Oscar took her on a stroll around the block. It was the first time Rosa could not see her in her periphery and she bit her nails down to blood sitting at the kitchen table waiting for their return. It shocked her, disturbed her, how her mind once sharp and logical had turned to a whirlpool of certain disaster as soon as she gave birth.

She had never fully grasped the concept of dar luz –– the phrase that was tossed around in all of the tattered-covered parenting books she had unearthed from her mother’s attic with handwritten notes scrawling around the edges of the pages: hablar con médico sobre el dolor, temes la ausencia más que el dolor, mes 7: la primera patada. But once she watched her baby disappear through the threshold of the door into a world she could not childproof, she knew that she had truly given light to the world and it was too late to take back. Like light, her baby’s life had momentum but no mass, she could not hold it tightly enough to keep it from one day walking away from her.

After she had devoured her nails, she remembered her mother’s book again and ran back to scour for glimpses into her struggle to let her own daughter disappear into the world, even for a minute. But the handwritten notes dried up on the page right before the chapter titled Mamá después del parto. She could only wonder.

Oscar wheeled June back into the kitchen not twenty minutes after he had left, smiling and whistling the chorus of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” He was so Middle-America sometimes she wanted to laugh and cry and kiss him all at once. Oscar with his affection for meatball sandwiches from delis with women’s names plastered to their signs, “Maria” or “Sofia” or “Viola”; Oscar with his proclivity for taking the winding back roads, already ten minutes late for the dentist, because he swore he saw a yellow-bellied warbler flying through the trees; Oscar who still said, “yes ma’am” to his mother on the phone like a thirteen-year-old boy in trouble. Rosa loved Oscar in the same way she loved her Nancy Drew boxed set growing up –– they both allowed her to pretend she had been swept away by a gust of wind, away from the world she had been told she was going to be mired in for life.

She might have allowed herself to be swept away forever if it hadn’t been for dark-eyed, baby June with a head so soft she thought it would turn to putty. Having a child forced Rosa to look herself in the eyes in the mirror and say at least three times a day, “You don’t get to fuck this one up, Rosa. Not this one.”

She had already come to terms with fucking up Oscar, but not this. “Hey,” she’d say lying in bed next to him, just as he had begun falling into his deep, impenetrable sleeps, “It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we broke up, right?”

Oscar would roll back over to face Rosa, her eyes narrowed and burrowing, “Well, I guess that depends,” he’d say, trying not to look as hurt as he felt, “what your definition is for the ‘end of the world.’ Technically, no, the world wouldn’t end. But my world would feel like it had for awhile.”

She’d shake her head and kiss his nose and he’d stop himself a dozen times for asking the dangerous why and they’d both roll back to their sides of the bed and fall asleep imagining other lives.

They had a baby together: a beautiful baby girl with his fingers and her lip curl and his easy laugh and her silent tears. They both loved their baby but Rosa knew that she loved her baby more than her husband did. He had done nothing but patiently change and re-change her diaper, walk her around in circles when she couldn’t sleep even in the coldest hours of the night, and sing to her songs from his childhood, but still she knew. He could never love June has much as she did and so she bit her nails until they burned and bled as soon as he left the house pushing his daughter in the stroller in front of him.

That was all years ago, back when she had an escape plan written out on the lining of her size seven jeans. She doesn’t have those plans or those jeans anymore. She doesn’t dream about other lives when she does finally succumb to sleep. She dreams in ticker tape headlines crawling across the screen: Local Man Hero After Near-Fatal Train Accident; Five-inch Rain Causes Flooding of Area Parks, Country Roads; Man Still At Large After High-Speed Chase. Her world the size of the peach pits buried in the the backyard.

It has been long enough since June has come that she does not remember the curvature of her daughter’s cheek bones, where the freckles that covered her forearms and knees as a child have faded and where they peek through darkened skin. She cannot recall whether she uses “y’know” like her father or “see?” like her mother. She has forgotten if she eats meat anymore or if she’s become a vegetarian or vegan like the commercials say that you should. She hates herself for forgetting, so she asks Oscar to turn up the sound on the television by a couple of notches and strains to guess the phrases on Wheel of Fortune before the luckier contestants.