#mostly that some writing of the women leaves much to be desired(mostly for echo)

[mellowmaidenhairs]

i love echo and the smoke room to bits but i will be honest i can’t help but be a little disappointed that there’s no queer girl characters in there

[la-fille-en-aiguilles]

The Only Living Thing

Billy Russo x Female Reader

Warnings: Language.

Synopsis: You’ve been friends with BIlly Russo for as long as you can remember. Then, on that one night in New York, feelings get mixed up with the liquor that burns and everything spins out of control. So much for being the only living thing that Billy Russo has ever cared about... Or is it?  A/N: This just sort of happened. I may be writing more if you guys want, I think I can definitely take this further? I have a pretty hectic schedule but I might make it happen x

Song : Adam French - The Only Living Thing

New York, November 2019. 
 

Breathtaking. 


You are breathtaking, like the most beautiful view from atop the mountain or his biggest fear coming alive under his stare. 
 You’re a mix of excitement and terror, and you are enchanting enough to keep him on the tips of his toes, second-guessing everything, his every decision and every word... 

You are meant to leave him wanting more.

The night New York has never looked so good on a woman before.

Billy’s vision goes blurry for a second, his stomach hot and heavy.

You are glowing.

You radiate a kind of a warm sepia glow, so beautiful and genuine and so fucking effortlessy...

Smooth and unapologetic.
 


Messy strands of hair framing your face, your blushing cheeks, as you laugh your heart out, throwing your head back. Your pearl teeth flash in the dimness of the bar. Your thin black tights are torn at the thighs, your lips are red and irritated as you sink your teeth in, again and again.

Your laugh is flamboyant, intoxicating. Raw.

You are something else...

When suddenly, you see him, your black eyelashes fluttering as you wink at him. Billy’s chest feels too wide, too fragile and too hot. Do you see those unspoken words shining out of his drunken eyes?

When you make your way to him through the crowd, he’s paralyzed, afraid to move forward, afraid to scare you off, but mostly, afraid to let everyone see how desperate he is for your touch.

This is wrong, so fucking wrong, but why in hell when you come over, throwing your elegant arms around his neck, your cute perky nose touching his chest - it feels so. fucking. right?! Like you were custom-made for each other?...

Before he can stop himself, he slides an arm around your waist. You say something to him, something funny, for everyone around him snorts and chuckles, but his mind, his entire world - suddenly comes down to that spot just below his cheekbone where you plant a soft peck of your velvet pouty lips.

“Those twenty bucks we bet on? I win,” you half laugh, half exhale in his ear, your lips brushing against the lobe. “Madani is fucking obsessed with you”.

“Ah,” Billy smiles, both of his hands snaking around your waist now as he looks down at you.

...And I am fucking obsessed with us.

“And you just enjoy rubbing us - this! in her face right now, aren’t you?” he mutters instead, his temples buzzing with the gin and tonic he has been downing all night. 

God, he hopes you’re too buzzed to have noticed his slip of fucking epic proportions.

He promised himself he wouldn’t drink, not with you still around - because whatever it was that he felt for you mixed with liquid that burned equaled a very bad outcome. 

He might be well into the tipsy territory by now but Billy isn’t delusional. The chances that you would go back to his place or even kiss him back are entirely too slim.

Because friends don’t do friends.

Friends might as well become a new f-word for all Billy cares at this point.

When you throw your head back in an explosive laugh, Billy’s distracted. He gets an extensive view of your elegant neck, your delicate collarbones, but mostly - of the swell of your mouthwatering breasts, as your black silk top tightens over them. 

Fuuuuck him.

“Fuck you, Russo”, you echo his thoughts somehow as you wink at him once you’ve restored your breath, not stepping away from his embrace, however, letting him keep his hands on you. 

It’s always like this between the two of you. You’ve known each other for a while now - four, five years? After Billy bumped into you at a brunch at Liebermans’ and spilled his frappuccino all over your gorgeous rack. He wasn’t even going to come - but boy, was he glad he did - even though you wasted no time opening that sassy mouth of yours and verbally eviscerating him.

This wasn’t a love at first sight. 
 For you, at least.

“At least buy me a dinner first,” Billy barely manages, his vision a tad blurry.

He notices you giving him an unimpressed stare. Feeling stupid all at once, Billy blinks quickly and lets go of your waist...

Only to tremble on his feet and almost fall on his face.

“Heyyy,” he registers your breath on his cheek before he hears what you’re saying, your small hands holding him in place. Your touch burns through the fabric of his button down shirt as your palms slide up his sides to his shoulders. “You okay there, Russo?”

Billy squirms, chomping on his bottom lip as he grabs you by your elbows.

���’M fine”, he says quietly, but doesn’t let go. When he lowers his stare to meet your eyes, he almost wants to cry. There’s concern in their bottomless depths, worry for him and desire to make it all better. He just wishes there was more heat there, and less of that f-word that ends with -riends.

“You don’t look fine, lover,” you retort, wiggling and pushing and pulling onto him until you’re snug under his arms and carrying his dead weight to the exit. “Let’s go get some fresh air, come on.”

Billy utters something half-heartedly, his head feeling like it’s filled with cotton. He didn’t even drink that much, as least he doesn’t think so. Must be your fucking intoxicating perfume, sweet but voluptuous and so fucking tempting...

Pure sin. 


Even drunk out of his fucking mind, he’s still the envy of every guy at that bar because he’s with a stunning, breathtaking, prettiest woman in the whole damn world that is you.

“If you were able to stand right now, that line might have gotten you laid,” you inform him with a laugh, basically carrying him to the exit on your shoulders.

Through the drunken haze, Billy realises he might have spoken those words out loud, but the terror is quickly replaced by...

“Are you shitting me?” He slurs, trying to stay vertical. “Are you saying you want me?”

By the time the words escape his mouth, you have pushed the exit door wide open and nudged him to step out. Losing his balance, Billy crashes into Frank, Stein and Madani, smoking outside.
 Dina’s eyes flash mischievously as you step out of the bar, immediately throwing your arms around Billy protectively, helping him to steady himself.

“Oh, so it’s common knowledge now, then?” Dina ventures, licking her lips bloodthirstily, her eyes never quitting yours. “You’ve finally admitted you want to drag that fine Caspian ass in your bed?”

The running joke aimed at Billy looking like a Disney prince feels out of place; all conversation is silenced out as you narrow your eyes at Madani, your grip around Billy’s waist instantly becoming tighter. Frank clears his throat in an attempt to defuse the awkwardness, but doesn’t intervene.

And Billy is... well, happy. Over the moon, actually, and still drunk off his ass.

Apparently, you have been wanting to drag his ass into your bed for a while now!

That does mean you see him more than a friend, right? 

What if... What if all this time you were just as hung up on him as he was on you, but neither of you had the balls to say anything?

In his picture perfect drunken world, Madani makes sense and his heart sings.

You want him.

If it were a Disney cartoon, animals would be singing and dancing around praising your couple. 

Frankie would have probably made a sick unicorn.

“Oh Dina”, suddenly your voice cuts right through Billy’s happy fantasy, and there’s way too much sass in that voice for it to belong to a Disney princess. “Just because your friend Sam here and your own desperate fan-girling ass carry a boner for some fucked up teenage fantasy that involves boinking Prince Caspian, doesn’t mean all women have that same one-track mind. Some of us can actually look past a dick and see a friend. So why don’t you lay off that Cosmopolitan and fuck off, vodka-cranberry sure ain’t making you brighter”.

Billy frowns, deep lines creasing his forehead.

Frank snorts with laughter, not even bothering to conceal his reaction. 
 
 You hold Dina’s hateful stare.

“Whatever, bitch” the latter one finally utters, throwing her cigarette away. “I never fucking liked you. Maybe after this your little fanboy here will see you for what you really are - a fucking coward and a tosser”, Billy’s stares at her in disbelief, his mind still foggy. Madani’s dark eyes flash dangerously in his direction. “Of all women, Russo... Karma is a bitch, isn’t she? Your little princess here only loves herself, lover. Get out while you fucking can”.

Smashing her shoulder into yours, Madani goes back into the bar, leaving equally dreary and awkward silence behind.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Frank isn’t laughing anymore as he folds his hands on his chest, giving you a questioning eye. 

You roll your eyes dismissively. 

“Well, she’s obviously shit-faced,” you shrug, sliding your hands off of Billy. “What, you’re surprised she hates me?”

It’s a whole another world there, in Billy’s head. Have you just distanced yourself from him after what Madani said? What, you thought he’s so drunk he wouldn’t fucking notice?

“...so just because I have basic restraint and actually appreciate a man as a friend, I’m a damaged bitch with a twisted sense of humour? Look, I don’t know, Frank”, you rub your eyes tiredly with the back of your hand.

“I do,” Billy suddenly chimes in hoarsely, his eyes bloodshot and dark, darker than usual, as they narrow at you. “Know. I know.” Billy stutters, then takes a deep breath. “That’s all I am to you then, sweetheart? A friend?”

Billy wavers a bit as he speaks, but his words are deadly. Your eyes pop wide open at his words, like Russo has just grown a penis on his forehead. Frank’s mouth forms a silent O.

And just like that, the tension is back.

“Well, of course you are my friend,” you say slowly, stretching out your hand in an attempt to grasp Billy’s wrist. Your eyes are searching his face, but he’s locked, like a goddamn prison cell. “You’re my friend and I love you”.

Wrong answer, if Billy’s expression is anything to judge by as he recoils  from your touch. His face is a mix of disappointment and anger, his lips a thin line as he turns away.

“Fucking idiot,” he mutters under his breath as he turns on his heels and makes a tentative step towards the bar. Only his body is ruled by gin and whatever shit he chased it with, so his feet get mixed up together. Billy trips over his own shoes. 

“Hey, easy there, tiger”, Frank, who’s been standing closer, grips Billy by his arm to help him keep his balance. “What’s gotten into you, man?”

Billy chuckles, throwing his head back, and that has got to be the most bitter sound you have ever heard. You shudder involuntary, watching Russo like a hawk.

“I would have given you the fucking world, you know that?” Billy stares you dead in the eye, grabbing the door handle in front of him. “You just keep fucking with my head like a fucking sadist, and I live by the shit you give me!” you blanch as Billy goes on with the program, hurt dripping from his mouth. “Must have always thought that should be some spectacular pussy you’ve been packing, totally worth all your shit”.

“Bill!” Frank calls him out sharply, his expression terrified. 

But the damage is done. 


Your eyes are brimming with tears, but you stay silent, unblinking. Your chest seems a little caved-in, but you hold your chin high as your trembling lips start to move.

“Fuck you, Russo”, you spit, “Fuck you, friend”.

The next thing he knows, Billy explodes in a fit of bitter laughter - even though all he wants to do is fucking cry.

This just goes to fucking show there’s no such thing as Disney fairytale in real life, is there?

“Oh don’t worry, friend, somebody will,” he promises you, swinging the door to the bar wide open. “Gonna go help Madani fulfil her teenage fantasy. While you can stay here, think about us fucking like rabbits and feel better about yourself”.

With those words thrown over his shoulder, he steps into the crowded bar, the sound of the door shutting behind him sounding final. 

Plot twist. Curtain falls.

Frank can’t even venture a look at you - he doesn’t even hear you breathing.

“He’s just piss off drunk, that’s it. He doesn’t mean it,” Castle attempts to do some damage control, even though he knows that that ship has most definitely sailed.

“Thanks, Frank,” he hears you say quietly, and as he raises his eyes, he catches the sight of you wiping your cheeks quickly.

You inhale slowly, closing your eyes and fisting your hands.

“Tell Karen and the guys I wasn’t feeling so hot, okay?” you ask, and there’s definitely pleading in your voice.

You never plead.

Before Frank can ever mutter anything about Karen having his head if he lets you walk away at night all alone, you wave at him dismissively. 

“I’ll see you”, you say as you collect your hair in a ponytail and walk off, your silhouette soon lost in the bustling New York night.

[dxmmymxmmywrites]

Old Flames

Tsunade Senju x F! reader smut

Warnings: cursing, angst at the beginning, oral sex, scissoring

Very excited to be writing for my bi-awakening queen Tsunade 🥰🥰🥰 love her so much, she needs more content AND appreciation

This is also less smutty than I usually do, so I may come back to this later when life allows to add more to the spicy bits

The sky is dark with the coming storm when you make your walk to the Hokage’s office. It’s the perfect environment to match your inner turmoil, broiling over with too many uncertainties for your liking.

You kept away as long as you could. And honestly, it probably wasn’t the best decision. Now you were just angry with yourself for not coming sooner and so sexually frustrated you could palpably feel your need aching between your legs.

You had done whatever you could in your early days as a Kunoichi. You had always been a little power hungry, but with a desire to actuate positive change in the leaf village. It had led you through to an established reputation as a feared ninja across the Shinobi nations, and along the way you had manage to leave some good behind you.

For some, it had to be hard to imagine you as a naive young woman in your youth. You were hardened by the world quickly, but it didn’t stop you from holding your favorite people very close to your heart.

The new Hokage happened to be one of them. Tsunade Senju.

The two of you had grown up with the same peers, and had observed each other from afar when you were placed in your Genin teams. When you did interact more often, you became quick friends and confidants— two hotheaded and insanely smart girls that were ready to encourage the other to take on the world.

It was a brighter time, before tragedy had shaped you both. Tsunade losing both her brother and promised lover nearly destroyed her, and you did what you could to comfort her when you could.

It became a new way to bond with her teammates, as you all took the time to check in on her, but it would shape your view of Tsunade most.

Despite everything, she still held so many qualities you admired despite losing her faith for some time. She was a damn hard worker, brilliant as ever, and had a kind soul once you got past her shell. It made you weak every time you thought about how you realized your feelings for the first time.

It was a classic case of someone falling head over heels for their best friend. With this of course came the companion cliche of not wanting to ruin your friendship by confessing your love in any way. So you kept your thoughts to yourself as long as you could.

And it was painful. But eventually, they came to a head at the worst possible time— when Tsunade was preparing to leave the village.

Although... the outcome initially was not as bad as it could have been.

You convinced her to delay her exodus for a week. That entire time, the two of you were nearly inseparable. And you fucked like raving animals.

It was a life changing event for you— enough to cement the fact that you, indeed, loved women. But most of all, you loved her.

At some point after an exhausting collection of rounds in bed, you had known your time with her was coming to an end. You couldn’t stop the years even if you tried, because in that moment life sucked and it wasn’t fucking fair that you couldn’t keep anything good in your life.

You had been so tired then, but you have vague memories of her holding you close, and her velvety lips kissing your tears away. It made her absence the next day all the more painful.

She had left at some point in the night when you fell asleep, thought she could never tell you how long she waited in the window before leaving you. You had woken up a love in her unlike any other— and it terrified her. She had lost enough people already in her life, so she followed what her heart told her was the best course of action; leave, before you’re broken again.

It hardened both of you emotionally. Everything was a threat, nothing worth letting down your walls for. While she abandoned her ninja way for years, you clung to yours with everything you had. It might have paid off, but what worth did it have when at home you sat by yourself, when your select companions were away?

You thought of her every night all the same. Sure, you could enjoy others from afar as you once did, but no one was her. No one could ever fill the void she did.

And little did you know, when you least expected it, she would come parading into your life again.

You hadn’t thought Jiraya would be successful in retrieving her, as cynical as it may sound. But then there she was, accepting her role as Hokage before the village in all her fame and glory like she was born to do it. And you had never been so proud, and had never wanted her so badly than how you did in that moment.

Even with the time apart, your reunion was not as horrendously awkward as it could have been. You greeted each other as old friends, and within the week you became one of the honored members of her council. No one bat an eye at this, because you had earned the right to the seat three times over. But Jiraya did grin when Tsunade announced your appointment.

And life went on. It wen on. And on. And on.

And it drove you insane.

Your friendship rekindled in a way you had not expected at all. And she never even mentioned anything regarding your week together before her disappearance.

It pissed you off how unbothered she appeared by it. You bickered like an old married couple and defended each other like the war heroes you were, but goddamn it did you want more validation than a fancy new job where you got to eyeball the woman you had been in love with for most of your life.

So onwards you went to the Hokage’s office. You would settle this, and you would settle it that night if it was the last thing you did.

If anyone notice your darker mood, they steered far out of your path as you travelled. It wasn’t as late as it could have been, so Tsunade would mostly likely still be at work in her office. Later in the day was usually when Shizune could successfully corner her to do paperwork anyway.

Inside the building, you begin to hear the echo of rain from outside.

You take the precaution of knocking on her door with the formal greeting, and she allows you in.

She smirks at you and prepare a remark— but you don’t let her start.

“We need to talk.”

Her expression becomes stern instantly. “What’s wrong? Any threatening reports?”

You cock your head at her, then shake your hands “No, no, this isn’t about work. This is personal.”

She couldn’t have looked more confused if she tried. However, she did remain silent, so you continued with your thoughts. And you locked eyes with her.

“Are we ever going to talk about what happened when you left? At all? Or did it mean nothing to you?”

Her eyes widened, but knowingness came to them. “I didn’t think you would—“

“Whatever you think I just need to hear the truth.”

“I think that—“

“And don’t bullshit me on feelings—“

“Damn it Y/N, shut up!” Tsunade rose from her desk, leaning over it. Her irritated look is intimidating, but you know better.

A quiet moment follows, but your voice betrays you. “I just need to know,” you admit, sounding more defeated than anyone— especially Tsunade— had probably ever heard you sound.

There’s a part of Tsunade that’s fuming at being interrupted so many times, undoubtedly. But some aspect of her fury is doused when she sees how dejected you look on the other side of her desk. She didn’t think she had ever seen you look so small, and like you wanted to curl into yourself.

She never wanted you to make yourself lesser around her. The thought of you being in pain when she fled...

Emotions were swirling within her like a maelstrom.

“Come here,” she commands. She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t need to.

Anyone else would have gotten a snide remark addressing you like that. But you walk until you’re directly in front of the desk, and she pushes her chair out of the way to stand before you.

When she stands fractions of an inch away from you, your heart rate quickens. The intensity of her expression is almost scalding. But it is not angry.

You open your mouth to speak again, but she breached the gap between you. Both of her hands grasp your face in such a mash of assertiveness and tenderness— but what knocks the breath from your lungs is the powerful kiss.

You wish you could say you responded immediately, but you were so shocked all you could do was tremble. Eventually, you felt her hands slink down to tenderly hold your neck as her tongue slipped past your lips.

Part of you wanted to fight her off. To get the last word in, or have the last snappy response. But you couldn’t fight how badly you wanted her to tighten the grip over your windpipe.

“I have never forgotten you,” she pants when gasping for air. “Not even once.”

She dives in for another kiss, and this time you have no regrets about giving in to it. Her hold around your neck tightens, and she’s upon you in an instant. Years upon years of tension and unsaid affection finally come crashing together in an emotional storm akin to the one outside Tsunade’s doors.

Just as she presses her chest to yours, her tongue slips into your mouth and you can’t help but to groan. However, you’re not one to give in so easily— and neither is she. Your sharp nails run over clothed back enough to give her goosebumps, and she reciprocates by sliding her hands into your hair to firmly tighten her grip. In the moment, it’s almost like neither of you need to breathe— your tongues dance in unison and all you can feel is the building heat in your gut as you melt into the other’s touch.

When you finally do part for air, she grins, devilishly.

“I see you still have a dirty mouth.”

You can’t help but turn red. “Shut up and get on the desk.”

That does catch her attention— it had been a while since anyone had the balls to mouth off to the Hokage. It was sexy as hell... and it made her recount all the reasons she fell for you in the first place.

She does step back to sit on the desk, and you follow after her just as she perches like a cat, eyeing you with ample amusement. Just as you set your hands beside her waist and lean in, she pulls at the wrap of her tunic and opens her strong legs.

“Are you going to stand there Y/N?” She purrs. “Or are you going to actually do something?”

It makes your blood boil, but you can’t help the excitement that comes from wrapping your arms around her again. She melts into your kiss the same way you did with hers, but your head starts to swim when you feel her legs wrap around your middle. Who in their right mind wouldn’t let their hands wander to glide up her thighs, listening to her moan, to firmly squeeze her love handles before returning the love to her ass?

You certainly were not going to waste the opportunity. And an opportunity you make it.

And despite being the one above her as you gently push her down against the desk, you melt into her kiss all the same. You throw one knee onto the desk to steady yourself enough to lovingly stroke her sides as you begin to nip marks into her neck.

It makes the grips her legs have on you all the more constricting. She rolls her hips upwards deliciously into yours, leaning to expose as much of her collarbone to you as possible. Any control at that point is abandoned— you nearly purr as you kiss and suck as much exposed skin as possible.

Who would have thought you would have the chance to hear her lovely voice again, much less her tantalizing moans.

“I think I may be one of the only people alive that can say I’ve knocked one of the Sanin on their backs,” you muster with confidence, and give her a sly grin.

There’s a slight glare from her, but she snorts all the same and chuckles. Tsunade raises forward and takes your lips with hers once more, pushing you to climb all the way on top or the desk.

Neither of you can fight the passion between you any longer. Your gasps and moans become louder, and the two of you begin to strip between feverish kisses and gropes. And not a single ounce of self control remains between you when Tsunade peels your underwear down your legs.

It’s like a volt of electricity goes through your body when she unabashedly spreads your legs and licks a stripe up your wet cunt. Her searing gaze locks with yours as she moves her mouth, and your eyes roll backwards when she plunges her tongue directly into your core.

It makes you squeal but she holds your thighs in place as you shake— and there was no way in hell you were getting out of her grasp. You wouldn’t want it any other way.

Her tongue swivels inside you and laps at your insides, stoking every ounce of pleasure out of you that you could think to feel. She remains as unashamed as ever, relishing in the wet noises of your arousal as she begins to thumb your clit and slurp your building orgasm.

You chant her name over and over as she tastes you— ravished you— but in an instant you tap her three times with your pointer finger. Your old signal to stop during sex makes her pause, not just to respect your boundaries. It feels odd to remember an old habit again.

She looks to you for an answer, and you order a smile. “I don’t want this to end yet.”

She grins, but before Tsunade can counter your remark you offer her a hand to pull her up to you. Quickly, you wrap your legs around her middle and shift your weight, putting her beneath you (despite having to save her from nearly falling off the desk.)

Who knows how many people would give their all to be in your position, crawling over the fifth Hokage, trailing your tongue up from her center. Tsunade looks just as pleased, watching you navigate her skin with a hunger you’ve only ever seen her display at war.

And a hunger she proves when she locks her tongue with yours again.

Your bodies writhe against each other with the most tantalizing friction, and you can feel her legs begin to quiver. “Y/n,” she starts, and trails away.

There’s not much you can imagine she would want to say in this moment. “What?” You ask her.

And she smiles at you. The genuine smile you fell for over and over again in your youth, and the one that lingered in your head for years on end.

“I love you. But hurry it up.”

It’s as close to endearing as she would be willing to get, but it still makes the heat in your face reappear. And it ignites the final fuse in your cunt.

You reach to hold the back of her head gently, just as she licks your bottom lip. She practically purrs your name when you put one of your knees beside her waist, and ease to lay your other leg flat.

It’s like electricity across your skin when you finally get to move against her this way. The two of your bare, sloppy cunts squelching together as you both bucked into the other.

You had to touch her everywhere. You could feel the tingle in your spine, and the insatiable desire to lick her and massage her breasts. She was everything you had every wanted, and everything you had ever wanted to fight for.

The gods themselves would have to pry you away from her now.

[nehemia-deserved-better]

Elorcan deserved about 500 more chapters all to themselves, so I decided to write one of them. I intended this story to be as canon-compliant as possible, so that it could plausibly be considered an extra Elorcan chapter in Empire of Storms. It would be set a day after their fight over Lorcan killing the ship owner in chapter 43, and before the next time we see them where Elide claims to have not spoken to him for 3 days. 

So without further ado: How The Light Gets In

The nightmare began at the top of a stone stair. Elide’s heavy, uneven footfalls echoed ominously in the tight space as she descended, spiraling down into the fetid air of the dungeons. The chains snaking around her ankles rattled and slithered with each step. Yet it was not that sound which frightened Elide; it was the cacophony of despair emanating from below. Women’s voices: moaning, screaming, and—worst of all— pleading. She tried to flee back up the stair, but a phantom hand seized her chains and sent her pitching headlong into the unforgiving stone. Her fingernails splintered and bled as she scrabbled for purchase, fighting to crawl away from that horrible noise. But the pull on her chains was relentless. Elide was dragged downwards into that ocean of misery, each voice crashing over her until she was drowning in sound, unable to distinguish her own screams.

—————

Lorcan stood at the prow of the ship, illuminated by the light of the stars, and cursed his keen fae hearing. He couldn’t block out the soft whimpers coming from within the ship’s cabin, or the rustling of a small form tossing under the blankets. He didn’t want to know that Elide was having a nightmare, didn’t want to care. After all, why should he? Pathetic she had called him, nearly spitting the words in disgust. Jealous, lonely, pathetic, unhappy—each insult flung from her with greater conviction than the last. And when she had finally finished, face mottled red in rage and chest heaving, he couldn’t even muster a convincing facade of anger. Instead, as he looked down on that tiny, furious woman, he felt only admiration and a surprising amount of desire. When was the last time someone had dared speak to him with such candor? He had killed males for lesser offenses, and she knew it. And yet, she remained stubbornly unafraid. 

But when she had followed that outburst with a demand to leave the ship, to leave him... Lorcan realized belatedly that the gut-wrenching sensation he'd felt then had been fear. He tilted his head up to look at the stars, admonishing himself for that weakness. This human should not have such power over him. Still, he knew he would not allow this fierce creature out of his sight. He wanted more of her. He wanted to feel her thick, dark hair between his fingers, and to do more with that red mouth than just gaze at it. But mostly, he wanted more of her passion, honesty, and bravery— her ability to see right through to the core of him with those cunning eyes. Lorcan found himself striding for the cabin door before he could think better of it.             

—————

It is a peculiarity of nightmares to seamlessly blend one horror into the next, forgoing transitions in exchange for an unending montage of terror. And so, Elide suddenly found herself standing at the base of the stair. She pressed her palms over her ears to no avail; nothing could block out that endless, many-voiced wailing. A long hall lined with torches and iron doors stretched out before her. She knew what lay beyond those doors, though her mind recoiled from the thought of witches and alters and demons. In the flickering light of the fires stood a ghostly woman draped in black. Kaltain raised a finger to her lips and, as though by her command, a curtain of silence fell over the hall. Elide didn't spare a moment to be relieved. She stepped toward Kaltain, trying to tell her that they must run, that they weren’t safe here. No words passed her lips— they never did, in her dreams. The Lady merely stared at her. “You can’t save them. Only I can do that now.” Elide furrowed her brow in confusion, prompting a breathy laugh from Kaltain. “Don’t you remember? Or did you forget about my sacrifice so easily?” Her lips split wide in a mockery of a smile, her mouth opening and opening until the flesh peeled away completely. Beneath, shrugging off Kaltain’s skin like an oversized coat, was a pale woman with blood red lips. “And what of my sacrifice, my darling girl? What became of me?” Elide reached for her mother, but she crumbled to ash between her fingers.  

—————

Lorcan’s breath caught as he laid eyes on Elide sleeping fretfully in the narrow cabin bed. The blankets were twisted around her legs, becoming thoroughly tangled as she continued to shift in agitation. A sheen of sweat glimmered at the base of her throat. Distress was clear in her expression, despite her face being partially obscured by her disheveled hair. Lorcan had no idea what to do. He wanted to soothe her and provide comfort, but he had no experience with such things. Besides, if Elide’s resolute silence of the previous day was any indication, she would likely not welcome his presence. And yet, he found himself unable to walk away, as though some gravity beyond his control were pulling them together. 

Gently, Lorcan reached down and brushed the loose strands of hair from her face, smoothing them behind her ear. His hand lingered for a moment, brushing against her cheek. He marveled at how small she seemed under his broad palms. She stirred, and he quickly retracted his fingers, scolding himself for his stupidity. How incensed would she be to wake and find him standing over her? He began to turn away. 

“Stay.” The word was a single breath, so quiet that Lorcan was fairly certain it was a hallucination brought on by wishful thinking. But then it came again, soft as a prayer, “stay.” He simply stared at her. Elide didn’t even seem to be awake. It was very possible that she was speaking to someone in her dream, utterly unaware of his presence. Just as he was convincing himself of this, a hand lightly grasped his own. Her fingers were so little in his, delicate like the bones of a bird. But he knew the strength that lay there, knew she had calluses and scars to mirror his own. Lorcan softly lowered himself to sit on the edge of the bed, Elide's hand still in his. He wasn’t used to holding something with such care, not with these hands that had wrought so much death. He found that he liked the change. 

“Elide?” he whispered. No response. “Are you awake?” Her eyes remained closed but she spoke slowly in reply.

“Lorcan...You’re not usually here.”

“In the cabin?”

“In my dreams.”

 He took a moment to absorb that blow to his male ego. Before he could think of a suitable response, Elide was tugging on his hand, trying to pull him closer. Lorcan was conflicted. She was clearly not fully awake, hovering in the limbo of her dreams. As much as he wanted nothing more than to lay down and pull her close, to see just how well the curves of her body fit with his own, it didn’t seem right to take advantage of her hazy consciousness. And in addition, there was no way his massive frame would fit on that bed with her unless she was nearly on top of him. He struggled to divert his imagination away from that particular path of thought.

When he looked back at her face, he was startled to find her eyes wide open. The gaze that met his own was clear, apparently awake. “Stay,” she repeated, and the last of his reservations disappeared. She scooted up against the wall, occupying the narrowest strip of bed possible. After some adjusting of bodies and untangling of blankets, Lorcan wound up on his back. His shoulders took up the entire width of the bed, and still he was precariously close to the edge. Elide was pressed between his body and the wall, her limbs sprawled out across him: an arm resting on his chest, a leg bent up over his own, her foot pressed between his calves. Gingerly, he slid his arm underneath her head, providing his bicep as a pillow. 

“I thought you were still angry with me,” he grumbled.

“I am. I don’t think I’ll ever speak to you again, because you are a cruel bastard,” she responded sleepily, snuggling closer. Lorcan had gone past the point of confusion and was now hovering somewhere in the realm of utter bewilderment.

“I’ll find a way to manage without you.” Why could he never find the right thing to say to her? 

“No, you won’t, because you promised.” She paused there for a yawn. “As mysterious as you think you are, I know that promise matters to you... that I matter to you. Why else would I dream of you after a nightmare?” She yawned, more pronounced than the first time. When she began speaking again her voice was thick with exhaustion. “I know I’m safe with you. I know that you will protect me.” And with that, she was fully asleep once more. Not a trace of the nightmare remained on her face, and her breathing was deep and untroubled.  

Lorcan could only stare at the top of her head, stunned. Despite how lucid she seemed, she had clearly still been half in the grip of her dreams. But her words, her absolute confidence in him, the comfort she had found in his arms...He had never experienced this before. Receiving affection without sex or motive, soothing fear instead of creating it— this was all uncharted territory. Something in him fractured with astounding force. It was as though every place their bodies touched was cracking open and she was the light pouring in, pushing back all that darkness he had gathered throughout the centuries. He had no word to name this feeling coursing through his blood, but he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so unburdened. He pressed his lips to the top of her head and whispered “I will always keep you safe”. Then, he laid his cheek atop her hair and listened to her breathe for a long while before he fell asleep.      

—————

Elide woke to the smell of cooking trout, and the soft sound of water lapping against the boat. Even through her closed lids she could see that daylight was pouring through the windows of the cabin, meaning she must have slept very late into the morning. She rolled over with a groan and reached out a hand for...for whom? Was she expecting to find someone in her bed? Sitting fully upright now, she looked around in confusion. She’d had a very strange dream. Lady Kaltain had been there, in the dungeons of Morath… she shuddered at the memory, both of the dream and its real-life inspiration. She’d vomited for days after she saw behind those iron doors, and had no desire to recollect the specifics either awake or asleep. 

But then she’d left the dungeon and arrived in the ship’s cabin, where her fear-addled brain had conjured an image of the only true safety she had known for the last decade: Lorcan. A soft smile graced her face at the thought, quickly replaced by a grimace as she remembered him killing that man, and their resulting fight. He provided safety for her, perhaps, but he brought only death to those who got in his way. Her thoughts lingered on the barge owner who had once slept in this bed, dutifully cleaned the cabin windows, adorned the small table with an embroidered cloth— she bolted out of the bed and through the door, suddenly needing to be anywhere else.

Fingers gripping the ship’s railing so tight that her knuckles threatened to pop out, Elide leaned into the wind off the river water. Lorcan may well have saved both their lives by ending that man’s. An innocent bystander he may have seemed, but one likely to jump at the chance to profit from their capture. Lorcan had done it, as he seemed to do everything these days, to protect her. 

That thought brought her back to her dream. It had been so real. She could recall the way his breath had stirred her hair, the feeling of his muscular chest under her fingers and his considerable bicep cushioning her head, how she had confidently declared how much he cared for her— she stopped as though her thoughts had crashed into a stone wall. She felt the blood drain from her face. She never, never spoke in her dreams. 

A gentle tap on her shoulder had her shouting in surprise; Lorcan couldn’t normally sneak up on her, to his eternal annoyance, but she had been too deep in thought to notice his approach. Wordlessly, he held out a plate of trout. He betrayed no expression beyond a slight quirk of the eyebrows, likely in reaction to having a small woman scream at him in a pitch only bats and immortal demi-fae could hear. Elide studied the harsh planes of his face as she accepted the food in silence. She found nothing there to suggest she had spent the night curled in his arms. He seemed to be examining her expression as well. His lips parted, as though there was something he wanted to say, but something in her face seemed to convince him to remain quiet. With a soft shake of the head and a furrow in his brow, he turned away.     

As he walked back toward the prow, she let out a sigh of relief. It had just been a dream. She felt an unexpected disappointment at the thought. It was harmless to admire his power and strength from a distance, or to feel sparks of desire as his gaze slid to her lips every damn time they spoke, but to spend the night in his arms? She watched him tirelessly propelling the boat  with a long pole, his dark hair sticking to his neck in the hot midday sun. No, it had been a dream, and that’s all it would ever be...right?            

Thanks for sticking around all the way till the end! It would mean a lot if you would comment and let me know what you think of my first ever fanfiction :)                      

[thebladeblaster]

Rebirth of A Samurai (Part 2)

Summary: This fic is a what if scenario to SMT4 Apocalypse. I would go into more detail, but I don’t want to spoil too much of what this fic entails. If this fic gains traction I may continue the story on from this one-shot. Warning: This is a long one.

This may be the last I write for awhile with college right around the corner. I won’t stop completely, but it will become a lot slower.

“I can’t just leave father to tend the crops alone I’ve gotta-“, Flynn said before he was caught off guard when Issachar hoisted him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

The woman looked amazed at Issachar’s strength.

“You're going back to sleep, you can work later.”, Issachar said.

“B-but!”, Flynn stuttered in a flustered tone.

Issachar gave him a stern and annoyed look as his fellow tried to push himself in his current condition. Flynn has always been like that. Overworking himself even to the point where he sometimes got sick because he too often thought of others before himself. Flynn squirmed indignantly in his grip. Issachar didn’t budge not wanting him to work after he’d nearly been taken over by a self professed god. He knows if he was gone for good. For all he knew he would spring on Flynn again when he was weak and take him for good. He brought Flynn over to his humble abode and knocked in the door.

After a few moments the door creaked open to reveal a woman with long blonde hair and green eyes. Blonde hair was a rather unusual and rare trait in Mikado especially green eyes which was the source of Flynn’s own green eyes. He remembered many rumors floating around when he was young about his exotic mother, especially with her fiery personality. It was because of that personality however that gossip wasn’t acted upon by anyone because they were all too scared to do anything to Flynn or herself because they didn’t want to face her fury. She wore a brown dress with a white headdress. She frowned at Issachar and grabbed Flynn out of his arms.

“What do you think you’re doing, handling my little boy so roughly?!”, Flynn’s mom questioned in an angry tone only making Flynn more flustered, especially at her still calling him ‘her little boy’.

“M-mom I’m 18 now I’m not a little boy.”, Flynn said in a embarrassed tone.

“You will always be my little boy, Flynn. You can leave now Issachar. Flynn’s not becoming a samurai and he never will he’s staying here! Your little childish dream is over.”, Flynn’s mom said.

Issachar couldn’t help, but sweat drop at the comment. She certainly did hide how pleased she was that Flynn wasn’t going anywhere. She had never approved of their dream of samurai always dissuading Flynn from such notions telling him to stay in Kiccigiorgi. The women had never liked him, considering him a bad influence on Flynn filling his head with ‘silly’ notions above his station and getting him into ‘mischief’ that would make the other villagers gossip about them. She was probably a big contributor to why Flynn was so submissive and obedient she raised him to be that way. Though, he’s whittled away at it a bit over the years. She was the prime example of an overbearing, overprotective, and controlling mother at its finest. She held Flynn close to herself thinly hiding her disdain of Issachar.

“You shouldn’t associate with this miscreant any longer.”, Flynn’s mom said, he was about to say something before his mother slammed the door in Issachar’s face.

Issachar’s eyes twitched in annoyance at the women’s behavior. He sighed far too used to his best friend’s mother’s antics.

“Just my luck. Why did she have to be the one to answer the door?”, Issachar questioned.

Issachar turned to leave as his thoughts drifted to what he would do about his transformation. He was now undead and he had attacked and probably killed a few patrolling samurai. He hoped he wouldn’t be found after all, Kiccigiorgi was a rather small farming village out of the way. There was no way in hell he could ever return to the capital now.

“It’s pointless to run. This has all been pointless. It has always been pointless fifth son, you will soon vanish like you once desired.”, a dreary voice said, Issachar frantically looked around for the source of the dreary voice.

That voice made him shutter from deep within his soul. It felt disturbingly familiar to him it was his voice yet it wasn’t at the same time. Fifth son...it felt wrong to be called that for some weird reason he felt that Flynn should be called fifth son. Whatever fifth son meant. He tried to clear his mind of these thoughts and go about his day though he avoided going home for a while not wanting to deal with his parents. He ended up just wandering around aimlessly getting ‘lazy’ and ‘useless’ comments from the other villagers.

Flynn was still flustered as his mom cooked breakfast in a very happy mood. Honestly, he expected this reaction from her but dang...she was smug. He shuffled awkwardly in his chair. His father sat down around the time his mom had finished setting everything up. His father was a rather tanned and burley man due to his many many years working tirelessly in the fields. He had short black hair with sideburns and a light beard and light blue eyes, another rare oddity in Mikado. He wore simple brown peasant clothes like himself without the poncho. People in the village often joked about how such a masculine man somehow had such a girly looking son. It was mostly light teasing about his looks which was the most he got. After all, between his firecracker of a mom and his very muscular dad not many in the village had the guts to do more than lightly tease him. He personally didn’t think he looked that feminine, but others seemed to think so especially when his hair was down which is the reason he preferred to wear it up most of the time and because of how hot it could get. He could always cut his hair, but for some unknown reason he never felt like making it shorter than a certain length.

“Looks like you didn’t get to become a samurai. Don’t get too down kiddo not many get chosen. After all, considering how peaceful Mikado is, we don’t have too much use for warriors. What we do need is plenty of farmers.”, Flynn’s father said, patting his son on the back and giving him a hearty chuckle.

“Oh you are so right honey.”, his mother said as she sat down with a smile on her face.

“I guess you’re right…”, Flynn said, quietly looking down as he ate.

For some reason this all felt strange to him. Coming back home like this he felt like this wasn’t supposed to happen, but he didn’t know why. His gaze briefly drifted over to his right arm which felt strangely light like...something was supposed to be there. He remembered that’s where they had placed the gauntlet during the rite. The weight then felt familiar to him somehow. He could practically imagine a strange feminine voice a little too excited to register new quests for him. He rubbed his head with his finger trying to determine why he felt this way.

“I’m just being silly.”, Flynn thought, mentally chuckling to himself.

He had an overactive imagination, honestly to imagine a woman in gauntlet. It was just crazy like something from a fairy tale. He looked around, seeing his parents bright smiles. This was undeniably right, this was where he was supposed to be. Nothing was wrong. Though, he thinks Issachar would have been a great samurai. Issachar is right he’s not even sure he would have been that good. Briefly a strange image of Kiccigiorgi burning and screams echoing flickered in his mind.

“What was I thinking? This is right, nothing is wrong. Everything happening right now is right. This is how it always should have been.”, Flynn thought almost dreamily.

He rested his chin on his hands. A strange smile flickered in Flynn’s face; his green eyes seemed cloudy again.

“Flynn…”, Flynn briefly snapped out of it when he heard a faintly similar feminine voice.

Issachar sweated nervously when a group of samurai walked into the village. His heart would be pounding if he still had a heartbeat. He even started to notice he actually didn’t need to breathe anymore. Two of the samurai were young men. One had unruly spiky black hair and strangely light purple eyes. His white robes under his blue uniform hung loosely revealing his toned muscles. He also wore a blue scarf around his neck and had piercings on his ears only further adding to his strangeness. The other man had fluffy curly black hair and golden brown eyes. He wore his robes much more properly than his fellow and a yellow scarf hung from his neck in a fashion similar to how gentlemen would wear their neck cloth. One of the samurai was a woman with short brown hair and brown eyes. She had on red mascara and wore her uniform properly like her curly haired fellow. She wore a red scarf like one would wear a bow tied in the front. The final one was an older man with short white hair and a goatee. His uniform was white unlike the others who were prentice samurai. Like the others he wore a gauntlet on his right arm and wore a scarf. His was blue, worn in the typical fashion you would see scarf’s worn.

“Hoy, there young man I am commander Hope we are searching for a criminal who had killed some of our kin. We heard it was a Casualry man with a brown ponytail and brown eyes. Though, unfortunately many people meet that description. So you have any leads on who it could be?”, the old samurai asked.

“No idea sir.”, Issachar replied, trying not to sound nervous as the samurai looked him over.

He matched the description perfectly and he hoped they wouldn’t notice. He sweated a bit as the one with curly hair seemed to pick up on his nervousness and they locked eyes.

“Well would you mind aiding us in our search? I am Jonathan, a prentice samurai.”, the curly haired samurai said in a way that made Issachar suspect he was onto him.

Issachar gulped trying not to increase suspicion.

“Of course not.”, Issachar answered.

“I hope we find him fast. Searching around is so boring I rather fight. Name’s Walter. I'm the son of a fisherman and now as of yesterday a samurai.”, the unruly samurai introduced.

“My name is Isabeau.”, the woman samurai introduced, simply seeming to be the most reserved one of the bunch.

Flynn ignored Issachar’s words and returned to working on the fields after breakfast. Besides, it wasn’t right to doze off while everyone was working hard. He was surprised he didn’t feel as exhausted as usual while working long hours. He was glad for it since he got a lot of work done.

“Oh ho, you must not be as down about not becoming a samurai as I thought.”, his father joked.

“Yeah...I’m not, though I still feel bad for Issachar though. Honestly I thought I’d be more broken up about it, but I’m fine. ”, Flynn replied.

“Flynn…Flynn...”, there that feminine voice was again nagging at him.

He shook off the strange voice completely ignoring it though, some part of himself warned him he shouldn’t.

“Don’t ignore her. She needs you. Tokyo needs you. Everyone needs you. Wake up!”, he thought, before clearing the strange thoughts out of his mind.

“Shut up! I don’t know any Tokyo or who that girl even is.”, he thought, as the fog reappeared in his eyes as he was struck with another headache.

He stumbled a bit and his father caught him.

“Hoy you need to rest a bit, son. I know you got a lot done but you don’t look so hot.”, his father said.

He reluctantly nodded not thinking he could focus on working well with this roaring headache. He stumbled over to his small room falling onto his straw bed. He groaned, tossing and turning his headache would not let up.

“Flynn...I’m so close...I c-can’t…”, the feminine voice said as Flynn’s eyes squeezed shut.

Somewhere else in a strange fleshy chamber a woman who looked just like Isabeau laid on the ground in a pool of her own blood. Her hair was disheveled, her body was littered with cuts and bruises and her samurai garb was torn. Her sword laid to her side cut clean in half. She desperately reached out to the door. Her heart beat desperately against her chest as she heard cold footsteps and shadow cast over her.

“Pathetic. Even in the end she calls out his name. To think her last words would be about someone else. Go ahead kid kill her so we can get that sword.”, a voice with a strange accent said.

The voice belonged to a strange redheaded dark green being with green eyes. It’s face faintly resembled a human skull and it had long points on its shoulders. It wore a massive golden belt and two separated black cloths trailed behind it. It had strange gold orbs embedded into its body parts along with strange carvings. In between its eyes was a yellow stylized question mark. It’s hair was a mohawk and it had a beard.

Underneath herself Isabeau had a sheathed katana which she covered with her body. Her other hand which wasn’t reaching out held it in a vice grip. The shadow of someone over Isabeau raised up a blade to end her.

“No! No!!!!!!!”, Flynn shouted as the world around him started to distort.

He could hear the distressed cries of his parents in the background.

Tears fell down Isabeau’s face. She imagined a blonde haired woman with a green visor, a black haired teen girl with goggles, a black haired girl in all black, a brown haired man in all white, a white haired teen with a yellow jacket, Walter, Jonathan, and another prentice samurai with a brown pompadour and finally Flynn in samurai garb wearing a white scarf like a bandanna around his neck smiling kindly.

“Flynn...you have to live...You have to get out of here...You're the hope of humanity...I wish I could have stayed at your side for l-longer…”, Isabeau mumbled weakly as her strength faded from her.

The imagined Flynn’s smile dropped and he unsheathed his blade and pointed it at her. The look in his eyes was a coldness that made Isabeau tremble.

“N-no Flynn!”, was Isabeau’s last words as a sworn pierced through her back and into her heart.

Flynn screamed in rage. He felt that chill from before again. A distressed wail roared out from deep within his soul. Issachar looked extremely spooked as the village around them flickered between normal and in flames. The people around him besides the samurai shifted between humans to demons or from normal to dead. The samurai’s eyes minus the commander’s widened who strangely didn’t seem to even notice the change.

Gentle, loving arms wrapped around Flynn and he heard the voice of his mother trying to console him.

“Let me go! Let me go!”, Flynn yelled, squirming out of the embrace, completely blinded with rage.

“Shh...Everything is fine Flynn it was all just a horrible nightmare.”, his mom cooed.

“It wasn’t a nightmare! It was real! Isabeau! Isabeau she’s…”, Flynn said, shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.

Flynn flinched feeling lightheaded as his mother started to sing oddly it sounded a lot like flute. Fog entered his eyes again as he stopped struggling and his head dipped. The world around them returned to normal, no longer warping violently.

“Everything is alright my little boy...Everything will be fine...I’ll make everything better just leave it to me.”, his mother said as Flynn eyelids felt increasingly heavier.

“That’s right sleep sweet dreams my kalki. Soon your suffering at YHVH’s hands will end and we shall make a perfect world much better than any dream…”, the voice in Flynn’s head from earlier said.

The voice was revealed to be coming from a dark skinned man in a green suit and fedora. He had blue hair and gray eyes. On his forehead was a red dot and his dress shirt underneath his suit was orange. He held a flute in his hands. The voice, the self professed god, Krishina. He was in a similar fleshy room as the one Isabeau had died in. Flynn was in there as well in the attire she imagined him in and was unconscious like he was currently in Kiccigiorgi. He was strapped to a large cross and his head dipped to the ground. The dark skinned man cupped Flynn's chin content to gaze upon his unconscious form. There was a strange almost mad affection in his eyes for the unconscious man.

“Hoy! How could you not have seen that commander?!”, Walter questioned, sounding as spooked as Issachar when the very world around them seemed to shift.

“How odd everyone else is acting like nothing happened either. Just what is going on here…?”, Jonathan pondered, cupping his chin.

Isabeau looked rather shaken as well looking around nervously.

“This may sound weird but...did you also feel an odd sense of deja vu when everything was on fire?”, Isabeau questioned, sounding unsure of herself.

“Strangely...I kinda do…”, Issachar said as he looked around.

Something felt not right here...For some strange reason the burning Kiccigiori felt more right than the one they currently were in…

“These people...they're supposed to be dead…”, Issachar thought.

Before trying to clear the bizarre thought from his mind.

“Perhaps something...wicked is truly lurking here and casting illusions on you three.”, Hope said, sounding deep in thought.

The prentices didn’t look fully satisfied with that explanation, but went with it.

“That seems to be the only logical explanation for what we just witnessed…”, Jonathan said.

“Hoy, if it’s the doing of that murderer guy to confuse us. Then we must be in the right place.”, Walter said, making fear and anxiety creep up into Issachar’s heart.

“Let’s continue our search of the area.”, Hope said.

However the more they searched and asked around town the stranger they felt especially when they seemingly knew their way around and when came upon Flynn’s house.

“He’s not in there.”, the prentice samurai said unison, freaking out Issachar and Hope.

“Why are you so sure about that?”, Hope questioned.

“Because no one in that family has brown hair or eyes.”, Walter said.

“How do you know that?”, Issachar questioned, completely shocked.

He’s never seen these people before in his life yet they seemed to know of Flynn’s family. Him and Flynn have been friends since they were small; there's no way they could possibly know.

“Good question...but for some odd reason I feel like Walter’s statement is correct.”, Isabeau replied.

“I do as well…but I suppose we should check.”, Jonathan added, sounding just as confused.

Jonathan felt extremely odd as he walked up to the door and prepared to knock on it. His heart was beating like a jackhammer and he had no idea why. He felt this strange sense of trepidation, nervousness, and...excitement? He couldn’t pin down the source of the strange feelings and he knocked on the door.

He felt like he could barely breathe when the door creaked open revealing Flynn’s mom. He was speechless, he didn’t know why his words got all caught up in his throat when he saw the woman. The feeling when he looked at her was like seeing a relative after many years apart.

“H-hoy my name is...Jonathan.”, Jonathan said, not sure why he hesitated.

For some strange reason Issachar imagined Walter would tease his fellow in this moment. Maybe it’s because he seemed like the type but...strangely...he didn’t. Walter and Isabeau’s reactions were similar to Jonathan’s.

“Hoy, what do you men want?”, she questioned.

To those who didn’t know her tone seemed respectful, but there was a veiled annoyance at seeing the samurai, especially Issachar. The prentices shifted uncomfortably as if noticing this. Hope took charge stepping up to speak.

“We are searching for a murderer, a Casualry man with brown hair and brown eyes.”, Hope explained.

“There’s no one like that in this household. Why don’t you check that man with you?”, Flynn’s mom said, pointing at Issachar.

Issachar felt a cold knife sink through his heart as she pointed at him. He should have expected this so why does it hurt so much?

“Hoy, this man has been helping us search. Don’t you go accusing him.”, Walter defended, shocking Issachar.

Flynn’s mom scoffed at Walter.

“He is nothing but a no good troublemaker I have plenty or reason to suspect him!”, Flynn’s mom said.

“No. It’s not him. Thank you for your time Mrs. Alexander.”, Isabeau said, making Issachar’s mind pop.

Flynn’s mom’s eyes widened in surprise, but strangely she didn’t question how they knew their surname. Hope didn’t seem to react either; this was beyond strange!

“Hoy, commander, don't you think it’s weird Isabeau knew her surname? I feel like I knew it too.”, Walter said.

Hope was quiet as if thinking of the correct response.

“It’s...written on the sign there.”, Hope said, gesturing to a sign on the house which clearly wasn’t there before.

“That wasn’t there before. We’re all illiterate in this village. How and why would there be a sign listing the family in residence there?”, Issachar said.

“He’s right. This isn’t right. What’s going on here?”, Jonathan questioned.

“I don’t know what you mean?”, Hope replied.

“Did Issachar not spell it out for you? That sign makes no sense!”, Walter said as he pointed to the sign.

Hope and Flynn’s mom didn’t even seem to acknowledge this obvious contradiction.

“The sign has always been there.”, she said.

“Then, why did you look so shocked when I called you Mrs. Alexander?”, Isabeau questioned.

Flynn’s mother didn’t respond to that.

“Hoy, what’s up with you guys?!”, Walter questioned, getting angry.

“Would you annoyances please quiet down? My son is trying to sleep.”, she said.

Anxiety and worry started to fill Issachar's heart. Part of him screamed he had to do something.

“Where’s Flynn?”, Issachar asked.

“Did you not hear me? Sleeping.”, Flynn’s mom insisted.

“Sleeping...Flynn’s sleeping...Flynn is...He is...This is…”, Issachar mumbled as his eyes widened.

He was taken by surprise when commander Hope drew his sword on him. Especially when the prentices came to his aid.

“What’s going on commander? Have you been possessed by a demon?”, Isabeau asked.

“It’s him. The murderer, he must be executed.” Hope said, freaking out the prentices especially at how he suddenly jumped to the accusation.

“That hasn’t been decided yet. We haven’t even properly investigated him.”, Jonathan said.

“It’s him. It’s always him. He will ruin this peaceful village, leaving it in flames, leaving Flynn broken and serving as motivation to Flynn into becoming the man he is.”, Hope said, sounding emotionless.

“Issachar will...wait...the burning village it was the truth...this world is...it’s fake!”, Jonathan realized.

[hecohansen31]

Hey lovely! I wanted to ask you if you could write something about Roman and ivar (surprise I know) being best buddies and wanting to see who is the better lover so they make a bet who can get the reader first to bed to ultimately decide this question! She being definitely more clever having knowledge of this and plays with the guys (who not know of her knowing about this bet) so they do dumb stuff for her to get her in bed! And falling in love during the process...

(A/N): Hello there, lovelies!

I know I said I would be taking a break and I am actually going to disappear a bit after I publish it (I just felt guilty to have answered every ask, except this one, mostly because it is from one of the people who have always supported me!).

I also wanted to let you know that the break will last at least a week (the one of Christmas, since I don’t want to pass it, thinking about notes), I personally I am not sure that I will be writing again or publishing, because I don’t feel very much comfortable and sure, but I’ll wait and see.

Thank you for everyone who reached out, I am answering anything later, if not tomorrow because I am a bit sleepy/tired, but thank you I thoroughly accept it!

Also I am well aware that this might be a bit differen from what you wanted, but I just loved the ideas and I felt like it completely matched with your idea, but if it isn’t enough, I’ll write it again as soon as I am off the break!

Have a nice day!

WARNINGS: Mention of Sex/Nudity, Blasphemous Talk/Incubus.

The slick shadow-y man hovered over the sleeping figure, the blanket having rolled a bit down with her agitated sleep, the soft shoulder strap of her lily-white nightgown having slipped off her shoulder due to the its movements, revealing a rather large portion of heated skin.

He gently sat onto the side of the bed she was facing, having a chance to look at her beautiful face: the lips pursued in a sleepy pout, meanwhile the hair cornered lightly her reddish face.

The heat of that Spring night definitely uncommon.

But Roman was rather happy for it, since you had left the window open for him to be welcomed in.

He gently moved closer to her, his movement slow and methodic, in order not to wake her up: that would have definitely spoiled his entertainment of the night.

He reached to gently push a few strands of hair away from his face, to highlight the beautiful feature of the perfect face she owned, a naïve innocence being pictured on it in the most delicate way the moon could shine on her face.

He then leaned down, his lips almost touching her puffy ones, almost swollen due to the sleep, in that kiss he had been desiring desperately since the first time he had wandered into her, the sweet daughter of the pastor who had recently transferred to the town.

He still remembered when he had seen the entire family move in and then the eldest daughter had exited the chariot: the modest cotton dress a little short, for the constant washes, alongside lightly sheer, revealing some rather scorching pieces of her body.

She had clutched close to you your little luggage, as if she was the most jealous about that poor baggage, pushing it behind her, meanwhile she collected herr siblings gently, trying to usher them inside without too much noise, not to startle her mother’s frail nerves.

He had also visited that woman: she looked as hellish as her daughter looked heavenly, with her clumsy body and her aging face, a true devil, but it had been fun to taunt her and more importantly to discover through her memory what a little rascal her daughter was.

She wasn’t the average pastor’s daughter with fake smiles and blessed innocence: she had her dreams and her ideas and that made her stand out, in the little community.

And made the devilish incubus even more interested in her.

But he wasn’t the only one.

Another shadow-y figure appeared on the feet of bed, looking at your lounging body with icy-cold eyes, before they finally reached Roman, sending him a murderous look.

Indeed, if looks could kill.

“… what are you doing here, Roman?” asked his fellow succubus, walking in the shine of the moonlight, bathing himself in it, meanwhile Roman shot him back a threatening gaze, marking his territory with a growl “… you are a bit off your shitty territory of older women looking for a shoulder to cry on”.

“… well at least the entire town knows that I can get it up” it was a common rumor between succubus that Ivar liked his victims sleeping so that they wouldn’t speak up about his ‘flaw’.

Ivar just looked at him, coking an eyebrow, before his hand went down to cupping the pressing bulge in his pants, straining against the leather of them, as he hobbled onto his legs, moving slowly and carefully, his steps echoing on the pavement and they almost stirred her in her sleep.

She scrunched her nose and both the incubuses held their breath, wondering whether she would have woken up and they would have to vanish or whether she was just adjusting in her sleep.

Thankfully for both it was the latter, and she peacefully turned in her sleep towards Ivar, who smirked victoriously at the other incubus, gently moving onto her bed, stalking her as a prey, meanwhile Roman just settled himself between her and him, growling possessively.

“I saw her first!” he pointed out each word with a bite to its tone.

“What assures me that it wasn’t me that saw her first?” he smirked at him “… I fucking saw her entering the city, looking out bored from the window of her chariot at this shithole of a city where we are stuck… she fucking looked like the only interesting thing”.

“Well too bad, I arrived first” Roman retorted, and immediately pushed himself against her onto the bed, feeling her body against his, already absorbing the pleasure he could create with a simple touch, making a shiver go through her body and a smile that reassured her sleep “I am fucking better than you at this…”.

“Women never seem to love your forked tongue” replied the other man, pushing himself close to her mid-waist, before he gently pushed a kiss onto her pretty hips, round and fair “… mine instead makes them come back”

“Go to hell, Lothbrock” Roman spoke, letting, indeed his forked tongue sneak between his lips in a warning, but Ivar simply smirked, moving his lips onto her back.

“Already been there” replied Ivar.

And then Roman was ready to fight and so was Ivar, with the way his fists ached to punch him.

“Are you done there, or will you keep on fighting?” her voice startled them and as they turned, almost petrified on the spot by the realization that she was awake, they found her malicious eyes looking at them “… I have never desired anything more and the objects of my desire are just standing there like two idiots”.

Both the incubuses blushed having been caught in such a way.

And her gaze didn’t leave any space for answers, mostly when she raised her sheets and revealed her half naked body, the nightgown having raised up to show that it wasn’t hiding anything beneath it, anymore.

Just your cunt, exposed for them.

“What are you waiting for?”.

The two incubuses share an intense gaze, before Ivar muttered.

“We are sharing her, aren’t we?”.

All it took for Roman was another look at her disheveled body and then he replied.

“Of-fucking-course, we are”.

[sukunasdirtylaugh]

1868- Bucky Barnes (AU)

Summary: Welcome to Cennet Port, a middle sized soon-to-be expanding city filled with architects, lawyers, and important political figures. You-amongst many other young women, have the sole responsibility of marrying well and bearing children. You question the meaning of love and desire to find your own place in a world of such rules. What you expect- However, is not in your future. And of course, what would a story of self discovery to oneself be without love? 

Pairing: Bucky Barnes AU x Female Reader

Warnings: None. I’m pretty sure this whole story will remain PG-13 though. 

TAGLISTS CLOSE FEB. 14TH!!! 

1868-

My mother always loved the beach. 

She would often say that the beach was the perfect place for just about anything. Writing, talking, and even picnics. We lived not far from the shore so I had grown to love the sand on my feet and the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the shore. An image so familiar. 

“You know the Gilberry girls are getting married, correct?” asked my mother.

 “No. Aren’t they younger than me though?”

“Yes and no,” she replied as she picked up a brush to brush my sister, Iris’ hair, “One is one year younger than you and the other is two years and three months older than you.”

I nodded, sitting from a nearby chair. 

“One married Goldsmith-the son of Alan- that wealthy lawyer. People say that man can buy all of Cennet Port if he wanted to and it wouldn’t put a dent to his bank account. The other girl married a foreign businessman investing in America-something to do with Germany and Railroads; I’m not sure.”

“Is this your way of reminding me to get married, mother?”

“Not exactly. You know what your duty is: to marry, have some kids, a good title to their name if you can, and leave them something for them so that their children can have it and so forth,”

“But what if I don’t want to marry?”

“Daria,” a nickname from her given to me that means ‘sea’ in Persian, “don’t say that. You’ll soon marry someone.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Don’t start off like that,” she warned as she pointed her brush towards me, “You’ll marry someone but you’re doing nothing to find a husband. You never go to those parties Elena and Caroline go to,”

I looked away, towards our window. Out towards the long green pasture stood a house. A two story white house and not far stood a simple white fence-one you could easily walk over with the right shoes. In it stayed Mr. Eric, our neighbor. He doesn’t get visitors, just business visitors or visits from my mother, my sister and I. The man was simply kind, he didn’t care for much and we would always send him a basket of pastries on Christmas morning. 

“Are you listening, Daria?” 

“Yes.” I lied.

 “I can tell you’re lying because you’re distracted and looking at Mr. Eric’s house. As I told you, marry a man that can provide for you-”

“What if I can do that myself?”

“You’ll struggle,” said my mother simply.

“Yes but will I make it, right?”

“It’ll be harder,” she says, “Plus, think of your sister, Iris. What’ll happen to you two if I ever die before you get married? I don’t want my daughters ending up on the streets-”

“You won’t,” I reassure her, “I’ll find something and Iris will be fine.”

“That doesn’t help, Daria.”

 “You know that I feel like a failure, right?”

“Don’t start this, Daria.”

“ When it comes to this, I am never right. I never seem to get your support whenever I talk about making it on my own or whenever I come up with anything you’re quick to shut me and my ideas out,” I exasperate, “Why?”

“I want you to be stable, Daria. Being with a man will ensure that. People are most likely going to respect you and treat you better than if you were alone. Having a husband does just that. People believe you. Yes they have expectations and want you to bear a child but it doesn’t compare to being alone. When you’re alone… people treat you like a nobody,”

I swallow my breath, chest heavy. 

“I won’t be a nobody. I can do it. I’ll be a teacher, or own a business-”

“Why don’t you just marry?”

“I would but there’s no one to love and love me!” there’s a crack in my voice that softens the look in her eyes. Her years are coming before her and her somewhat rough hands from all the housework start to soften at the top. It’s age. 

“You would if you tried hard enough,”

And with that, I grabbed my bag and left. A shout echoed in my ears as I headed to the one place I could think. 

I hurriedly scribbled on the paper of my sketchbook with my art instrument along the lines to resemble the waves. Unsatisfied with my drawing, I move onto the next page.

There was nothing in sight. Not even anyone. It was rare at times to see people here but me being here almost wanted someone to appear. Even a sign would do. 

“I can make it on my own, right?” I ask to no one in particular. 

“There are plenty of successful artists out there. Some are women. Why can’t I be one? I’ll have Iris well and my mother well too but it seems like all she wants

is to see me with a man. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon.” I huff from my place, sitting on a log.

 I pick up a small rock and throw it towards the ocean. It doesn’t land far. 

“I’ll probably drown first than marry,” I grumble, leaning my face against a hand of mine. 

Everything appears to be completely still. My movements are minimal; all I can focus on are the sound of the waves and my breathing. Nothing seems to really happen and time feels as nonexistent as it can get. 

The beach is deserted. No one is in sight and nothing but a Seagull standing on a rock. The wind blows harder, as if to confirm it’s presence. 

And without realizing, out of the ordinary, there is a man. 

************************

A/N: Oh my goshh I finally uploaded this! It’s 12:30am, I’m a bit tired but I feel mainly proud of this. I mostly rushed towards the end because I wanted this out already and I hope that you all enjoy this. I would like to add a disclaimer that I was inspired to write something like this after watching Little Women (I have so many mixed feelings about the movie) but this will have some elements of the film but also carry my own. Hopefully you all enjoy this and yes there will be major angst in this book unfortunately. If you think anyone is interested, tag them! I have taglists open and I’d love to hear your reactions!(: 

[gav-san]

The Hollow Kingdom

Review and Defense of a classic fantasy favorite.

Warning: Below is a large explanation that spoils some upcoming projects and talks about things you may be uncomfortable with, but are important to talk about. Also, spoilers of the book. 

Please consider reading the book!

There’s a stage that man girls go through, likely after watching the 1986 Labyrinth. I like to call it the ‘Goblin King Craze’. After all, few things match the childhood spectacle of David Bowie dancing in very tight pants with his cohort of bumbling goblins, coupled with the magic of Jim Henson. 

I can imagine many of you who have watched this movie, had like me, also longed for the imagination and craze in your own life, or at least something similar in fiction.  

Cue being a teenager, and discovering The Hollow Kingdom (published 2003), but mere chance in your hometown library. 

Here is the Goodreads summary: “In nineteenth-century England, a powerful sorcerer and King of the Goblins chooses Kate, the elder of two orphan girls recently arrived at their ancestral home, Hallow Hill, to become his bride and queen...”

It’s no surprise that I ended up loving this book. 

This book is generally under a YA fiction/fantasy tag. It has won various awards, including the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. It’s well-written, relatable to a young woman, and full of intelligent moments and clever thinking. The characters are fully-fledged, as are the societies they live in. 

It’s not a perfect book. Sometimes the pacing and choice of focus can be inconsistent, and sometimes the timing and structure are not as strong as they could be. Its lack of care for developing romance can cause problems with the reviewers, had they been expecting a romance.

Now let’s chat a bit. As a teenager, it was an eye open experience to discover a book that didn’t pander another tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ once again. Meaning, an easy tale that force-fed me obvious morals, and condescended to my 'age-level’. And, I thought, it was better to talk about difficult things then pretend they didn’t exist.

And so time passed, the internet grew, and the Me Too movement rolled along, said hi, and sorta gave a half-hearted wave as it did so. Now, much older, I have finally had time to work on some projects that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I do fanfic’s as a writing exercise, but my true love is illustrating stories on the webtoon platform. I have a series called ‘Vixen’ out that has been a trial run of sorts to sharpen my skills and get me back on track.

One of the long-running projects that I’ve desperately wanted to illustrate for a long time is ‘The Hollow Kingdom’. I am only in the beginning steps and have yet to contact the author or any of the other relevant sources. This research stage is mostly an exploration to see if this is even possible, and how it would be done. 

As I’ve delved into the internet to see how my old favorite has aged... I was a bit startled.

Despite its initial accolades around 2018, when a lot of Hollywood was being stripped and scattered, and there were many accusations worldwide of prominent figures accused of sexual abuse, perhaps it was predictable that a complicated book that does not deal with a traditional happy ending started becoming maligned in general. And as social media, as a rule, tends to ignore content in favor of a thoughtful readthrough, I felt the need to go reread and reassess my POV.

So I did.

And I still enjoyed the book. As did the roughly 10,000 others who rated it 4 stars and above.

But to be fair, here are some reviews from other who didn’t:

----

1. The end is some sort of apologia for rape, abduction, and Stockholm Syndrome.

2. I expect that when I’m told said female protagonist is intelligent for her to actually be intelligent, like you know, by giving her any ounce of sense, resourcefulness, or deductive skills. 

3. (The Goblin King)...seriously tries to justify his actions by saying he doesn’t have a choice...

4. I also did not like the pointless slaughtering of animals…which really if you think about it made no sense…why would the monkey and wolf not be threats and be all for following kate but not the bear or the snakes…

5. It didn't help that I was well aware of how the main character got tricked. I mean, if her guardian believed her and was concerned for her sister why would still keep Kate locked up in her room and offer freedom from the room in exchange for info on goblins?

6. A young woman is coerced into marrying the Goblin King, Lord of the Hollow Kingdom.

7. What I'm trying to get across is that this is another example of a story where a young woman gets virtually everything taken away from her - her passions, her freedom, everything - but (through Stockholm Syndrome or sheer stupidity, I'm not sure) she forgives it all in the name of love and becomes a supremely contented Stepford Wife. 

8. So a girl is kidnapped by the Goblin King, and is trapped in the goblin kingdom. The end. Well, she ends up liking it, doesn't struggle, doesn't really care about what is happening to her. 

-------

Sorry, that was a lot. I understand that there are many who are just not going to jibe with a book. But I think it’s fair that on the complaints that accuse the book, it can be rebutted.

1(a). Perhaps many of the problems with the book that people expected it to be the perfect mash between Labyrinth and Beauty and the Beast. First of all, Beauty and the Beast is a classic tale, which many accuse of Stockholm Syndrome. It isn’t, by the way, but that’s not why I’m here. Or here.

Neither is the Hollow Kingdom. It seems that many of the reviewers are sure that Kate is forced into marrying the Goblin King. She wasn’t. She actually ends up going to the Goblin King and agreeing to marry him in exchange for the release of her sister. 

But Gav-san, the Goblin King )Marak) misled Kate into thinking they had her.

No, they didn’t. It even points out that had she asked, they would have told her. It’s stated very early on that Goblin do not lie under any circumstance (though are prone to being crafty beasts). 

Kate never is isolated with her captour, or ignore his awful parts and has does not fall in line with his ideas, holding strongly to her own. In fact, it’s her very ideals that lead to her success in the end, and that leads to Marak’s change of ideology. Kate’s own honor often compelled her to make choices that seem frustrating to the (modern) reader (who perhaps forgets this is 1815 England). To demand modern ideologies from the protagonist is awfully stupid and presumptuous.

1(b). This book, in no way shape or form, is an apology for rape and abduction. It’s a large point in this book that is unavoidable. The Goblins and Elves kidnap humans (and the occasional elf) to marry. The King must always marry outside of his race. This inevitably leads to unhappy women and broken families.

It is not seen as a happy, good event, but often a stressful, angry one that leaves tragedy and scars that echo across the generations. It is also a revealing look at humanity and our own atrocities. Much like the goblins and elves, sometimes these things are painted as noble when they weren’t, and thus it makes the societies feel real, having these pitfalls. 

And, as a King whose entire, beloved kingdom is at stake, do you chose to make one person miserable, or condemn the entire lot to a slow death?

It may make us uncomfortable to see the reality of this situation played out in such close-to-the-chest terms. 

Because Kate ends up happy and the victor, even in a situation that was not perfect, should she be condemned? I don’t think she or any women forced into that situation should be denied a healthy joy they find.

Remember, at the end of the book, it’s because of Kate that the Kingdom continues.

2. Kate is intelligent. (How could you miss her relentlessly scheming, most that succeed?!?!) And due to her heritage, she has top-notch instincts (untrained though) she continually outsmarts and outmaneuvers the Goblin King and the meddling human family. I think, had her Uncle not kidnapped Emily, she would have escaped. But her own concern for her sister was more important, and so she made that choice. That’s why she agrees to settle in, and that’s what open’s the door to her falling in love with Marak. She isn’t his prisoner, but his equal, who he learns to respect. Many human relationships could learn that last part better.

3. The Goblin King doesn’t justify himself in any degree. He knows he’s not going to be a desirable, handsome husband to any woman, especially in 1815 (or any time before and long after). If the only way a magical kingdom could continue is the misery of one person outside your race who is treated well, all things considered, then why would a brusque goblin who is not naturally inclined (thanks to his heritage) to get his feelings hurt easily worry? Many of the King’s Wifes never fell in love with their husbands, especially the sensitive elves. 

In the animal kingdom, it’s not as important. Stop projecting modern standards on a fantasy culture. JRR Tolkien's goblins murder, are crass and cruel, but we don’t expect them to be human and learn to be polite. Dunkle’s Goblins are far more genteel and human-like, but they are not humans. 

4. At the end of the book, there is a sorcerer who is a bad man and uses human and animal parts in his spells. If you are sensitive to that, perhaps it’s something to consider, but the book doesn’t go into great detail of these things. And frankly, ‘traditional’ medicine in many parts of the world does the same. 

And why would Kate release animals that would hurt her?

5. Kate’s Guardian was never concern for her. He thought about murdering her and was concocting plans to do so. As it says in the book, society would not be kind to Kate or Emily. This is no surprise. A wealthy young woman in 1815 England? A prime target. 

Kate manages to trick the doctor who the guardian brought (to put her in the insane asylum) and save her sister, though she needed to Goblins help. She was in a bad position! 

6. Why are people so determined to take away Kate’s dignity and choice? Her uncle lied to her, and he was punished for it later, by the Goblin King. She went to the Goblin King and bartered her own freedom. Women make their own choices and feminism is respecting those choices as a man’s would. Her acceptance of the Gobline Kingdom is not proof of her weakness, but a show of her strength. You will face difficult problems you cannot change, and the only decision at that point is how you react.

Just because Sarah didn’t chose the Goblin King doesn’t make her strong. It was what she learned doing it. The point of reading the book is the journey.

7. Or you can see this as a book that takes on the idea of conflicting cultures that are forced upon a woman, and she makes decisions that ensure the important things to her are seen through. A real woman who, much like real women, is put into a difficult situation that is fraught with dangers and missteps, and does a decent job at navigating them without giving up her integrity or beliefs.

Don’t be taken in by easy illusions that meant to be as shallow as they appear. Feel free to message me and we can chat about it more. 

In the end, this is just my opinion. But I don’t think I’m wrong, and I stand by it, which is why I’m writing it, and why I hope to illustrate this magnificent work one day.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[larryatendoftheday]

Harry’s Songs About Women™ (or what we learn from pronouns, patterns, and themes)

Ok it’s time to get this off my chest.

I don’t think Meet Me in the Hallway or Only Angel are linked to each other...or to Woman. In fact, I think Harry’s Songs About Women™ on HS1 are largely misinterpreted. 

Let’s back up. There have been some excellent close reading of the lyrics of Harry’s solo songs. There are clear lyrical links. 

Only Angel and Hallway reference doors and meeting in hallways. (On Only Angel Harry sings, “End up meeting in the hallway every single time and there’s nothing we can do about it.”) Only Angel begins with an audio clip--”I saw this angel. I really saw an angel”--from the film Barfly, written by Charles Bukowski. Woman references a Bukowski poem. (“This thing upon me howls like a beast. You flower; you feast.” compared to Bukowski’s “this thing upon me / like a flower and a feast”) 

These links connect all the Songs About Women except Kiwi and Carolina, both of which have unique inspiration stories that isolate them from the rest of the album. Kiwi is not about Harry’s personal experience, but it is likely to be an angry and silly reflection on babygate/Brianna/Freddie. According to the lyrics, Carolina was written after meeting a woman, Townes, once.

So the full list of Harry’s Songs About Women™ on HS1, in order of track listing is Meet Me in the Hallway, Carolina, Only Angel, Kiwi, & Woman.  However, when we look at the theme and tone of the linked tracks, it doesn’t quite add up.

The Songs About Women are largely fun, danceable rock songs. Carolina is about a “good girl” that impressed him. He says she “feels so good,” but he also admits he only met her once and sings “she’s so good” instead at the Abbey Road session so that is likely a metaphor. In Kiwi, he sings “She's driving me crazy, but I'm into it“ which again is a positive spin.  Only Angel focuses on desire and sexual attraction in what feels like a fling. Harry might “wanna die tonight” to sleep with her, but he likes it.  

However, Woman and Hallway, the other two songs Only Angel is linked to, are much more melancholy. On first glance, it’s possible that Only Angel is another dimension to the same relationship, but it’s also possible the links between the songs are less meaningful than they may appear. Spending a lot of time in hotels where hallways are omnipresent and fostering an interest in Bukowski could seep into writing regardless of the topic. 

Let’s look further.

Hallway is the only Song About Women that doesn’t use any gendered language. In it he sings about failing to communicate with his lover, something that is a theme across almost every other non-gendered song on the album.  It has much more in common with the rest of the album than the other Songs About Women.

“We don’t talk about it. It’s something we don’t do.” -- Hallway

“Tongue-tied like we've never known, telling those stories we already told cause we don't say what we really mean” -- Two Ghosts

“I always think of you and how we don’t talk enough.” -- Sweet Creature

“Comfortable silence is so overrated. Why won’t you ever say what you want to say? Even my phone misses your call, by the way” -- From the Dining Room Table 

“We don’t talk enough. We should open up before it’s all too much.” -- Sign of the Times 

The only gender neutral song without this explicit theme is Ever Since New York which Harry has reportedly said was inspired by receiving bad news about a family member while in a hotel room. That same source said he described it as “ a love song but not a love song.” A completely different analysis argues convincingly that it’s a reflection on bearding with Taylor Swift in NYC. Regardless, like Kiwi and Carolina, this song is a unique instance and it still hints at the themes of loneliness and miscommunication.

[You might stop me to say Sign of the Times is not about a relationship, to which I would say I mostly agree, but his attention to the lack of communication is what matters here.]

Turning now to Woman, we see it starts with a man speaking, saying, “ Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and then see what we find?” We know all about Harry’s love for romcoms and his band’s habit of ending each day’s work with one, but it does not match the tone of the song. Including it seems out of place...unless it is an important clue. If the song is about women in general--much like how romcoms use stereotypes and cliches--or even simply inspired by the plot of a heartwrenching movie, the introduction makes sense.

A complementary possibility is that the pronouns in the verses were adjusted. On tour, Harry sometimes changed the pronouns, singing things like, “SHE’s right where I should be.” Extrapolated across the song, this pronoun shift is huge. It’s no longer about a woman just outside his grasp, but a woman taking his place beside his lover. He is howling in pain about the woman (in fact any and every woman) who is beside his lover. It is thematically proximate to Girl Crush, notably one of only two songs he chose to cover on tour.

So what does all this mean?

What emerges from this thematic analysis is an album about a single, tortured relationship with a scattering of one-off songs. Harry’s Songs About Women™ are not necessarily related at all. Instead, they paint a picture of quick flings or brief attraction that pales against the longing and love in his genderless songs.

So Only Angel may indeed be about Kendall Jenner as so many have argued, but unless you believe Sweet Creature (for which he stuttered out a Louis denial) and Two Ghosts (written in 2013/2014) are also about her, you have to acknowledge the rest of the album is not inspired by her. A part of me wants to believe it is all about Louis. Another part aches at the thought of all those painful lyrics (”give me some morphine”) being penned about Larry. Regardless, this album is thematically cohesive enough to point to one main inspiration, someone he has been involved with seriously and for some time but with whom he has a difficult relationship. The echoing of lyrics between Louis and Harry’s solo music further solidifies the sense that it is about Louis.

I can’t leave you without noting that Harry tends to wave pride flags during Only Angel. Seems like an odd choice unless it’s a purposeful queering of his Straightest Song™. [Further reading: this post discusses this and also offers an alternate understanding for the Bukowski reference as an analogy for Harry’s public image.]

[anxiousstark]

It’s Not All Roses {1}

Pairing: Tom Holland x OC

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1652

AU: Tattoo artist!Tom, Single Dad!Tom and Single Mom!Reader.

A/N: This is my first writing ever and my first series. It probably won’t be an amazing work but I will work my hardest as I really liked this AU idea. There won’t be smut in this series. I would like to start a taglist for if anyone is interested in following this series or what I will write in the future.

Tom is 26 and the OC (who will be introduced in the next chapters) is 23.

TAG YOURSELF

All Rights Reserved. The author, me, don’t allow any type of copy or adaption.

It’s Not All Roses Masterlist

"Men, this is a joke, right?" Torso in the air without a shirt and a half-finished chest tattoo. "You can't leave it like this."

The tattooist tried to avoid laughing knowing himself that it would stay that way, at least for another day. He removed the black silicone gloves that decorated his hands, showing a large and damaged pair.

Around his nails, the flesh was bloody due to a nervous habit that he had developed. The black ink that adorned the back of his hands was matching the clothes he was wearing. Tight black pants and a thin black T-shirt that was mostly covered by a black raincoat that sheltered his body, offering a desiring and grateful warmth.

"Sorry mate." Tom let one of his damaged hands caress his own curly hair. Making a mental note to cut it, because it had grown more than he thought. "But I have a very special girl waiting for me and I wouldn’t like to be late."

Tom wasn’t lying. A very special girl was waiting for the tattooed boy to pick her up. And who was Tom to be late?

-

He smiled as he gripped the steering wheel of the car with a little more force. Enthusiasm ran through his body and the desire to see that special girl was getting stronger as he got closer to his destination. His special girl.

Tom parked his familiar Audi, ready to be reunited with his little girl. His confident way of walking caused many heads to turn to see the young man.

He had become used to being surrounded by women every day as he rarely saw men coming to pick up their children, women always being the ones who did such a task.

"Daddy!" Tom's heart beat loudly at the voice that pronounced that word with a hint of honey. As if it was routine, he kneeled down, not caring about his black jeans getting dirty.

Small arms encircled his neck, squeezing him tightly. Tom got up from the floor with the little girl still in his arms. "I missed you, Dad." Her small nose was against her father's tattooed neck, smiling at the familiar smell that made her feel safe.

He adjusted the little girl in his arms, caressing the brown curls that decorated her head and that she had inherited from him, telling her how much he had missed her. "Me too, my love."

Skye parted her face from her father's neck, her tiny hands caressing the lines of the three roses that decorated his entire throat. Tom took some time to admire his baby, sighing as he felt that even the cold London wind couldn’t remove the warmth his body felt when Skye was next to him.

Her blue eyes shone on their own as if she had millions of stars locked in them and Tom realized that Skye was a name that went perfectly with the curious 4-year-old girl whom he had the pleasure of calling his daughter.

"Should we go home?" His lips brushed the little girl's forehead, who quickly nodded at the question, causing her forehead to collide with her father's chin. "Ouch!" Tom complained dramatically, looking at the girl with a pout.

Skye laughed, her eyes closing a little at such action and a gummy smile that melted Tom's heart. Her hands moved from his neck to his cheeks to be able to give her dad a little peck on the lips.

Tom opened the back door of his car, leaving the yellow backpack on the side farthest to him and arranging Skye in her car seat. His tongue wetted his lips as he was concentrated while arranging the belt.

With one last kiss on the little girl's forehead, he went to the driver's seat, closing the door quickly and turning on the heater, hoping that the inside of the car would get warm before they got home.

"Will Uncle Harrison be home tonight?" Her short legs moved up and down as she hummed a new song that Mrs John had taught them today.

Skye loved Mrs John because she reminded her of her grandmother. The lady was a woman not too old that always made children feel at home. 

The first time that Skye entered that school she felt a great fear because she was always a very shy girl. But Mrs John always managed to make her smile and taught her many songs that she later sang to her father, Uncle Harrison, Tessa and even the man who worked with her dad in the tattoo shop. 

Tom laughed. "Of course he will be there, my love." He looked for a second in the rearview mirror, quickly looking back at the road. "When isn't Uncle Harrison home?"

Harrison was a great friend of Tom who had always been there for him, especially in complicated situations like when Tom decided to drop out of university and set up his own shop, or especially when the little Skye came to this world and her mother decided to leave the picture.

His mouth tensed a little, more than usual, and he quickly tried to erase the thoughts of that woman from his mind.

She nodded her head, continuing with her new song, trying to remember the lyrics perfectly and then teach it to others. "Have you given Tessa her treat?" Her eyes opened as much as possible knowing that her father had probably forgotten to give her the treat.

Tom bit his bottom lip. "You're doing that!" Skye complained. "That means you haven't given Tess anything!" The little girl crossed her arms because she felt sad at Tessa's thoughts.

Tessa was a blue staffy who had been there since Skye's birth. She loved the dog because both were sisters of mischief and naps. Skye said that Tessa was too good and for that she deserved to receive a treat every day. Also, it was good for her teeth.

"I'm so sorry princess." He was silent for a few seconds while concentrating on parking the car correctly. Getting out of it and grabbing the keys and his phone.

After grabbing Skye in his arms and her backpack, they both started walking towards the warmth of their house, Tom wishing to take off the new boots he wore, as they damaged the sides of his feet.

Tom hadn't finished opening the door when cries could be heard on the other side of the door.

"Daddy fast! Open fast!" The curly haired girl jumped up and down, her hair following her movements, and within seconds the little girl was hugging her friend tightly. "Tess I missed you!"

The dog began to move her tail from one side to the other, allowing herself to be embraced by the little one and sticking out her tongue to relish the same euphoria that she felt when seeing her owners.

"Hey, baby." Tom closed the door behind him, approaching his two princesses and stroking Tessa's head, his hands then helping Skye to remove her coat.

A voice echoed through the house. "Is that my little princess?" A tall, pale boy with eyes that under the strong light were becoming clearer, appeared at the entrance of the house.

Tom shook his head with a sigh when he saw that Harrison had borrowed clothes from his closet, clothes that he probably would never return.

"Uncle Haz!" Skye started giggling at Harrison, who lifted her up in the air while spinning her. Tessa began to bark, thinking that the screams that escaped Skye's mouth were frightened ones, when in fact they were of joy.

Harrison kissed the little girl's cheek who really looked a lot like Tom, which they both appreciated. "How was your day?"

"It was really good!" The little girl asked her uncle to leave her on the floor because when she told a story she had to move a lot and make many gestures with her hands. "Today a new boy has come to class and we have become friends! He was a little shy!"

"A boy you say? You're just friends, aren't you?" Tom asked, looking at the little girl as she followed Haz and him into the kitchen. Harrison couldn't help but smile, looking at his friend.

"Yes, we are friends!" Skye smiled. "His name is Dylan!" She began to wander around the kitchen, thinking about her new best friend and the desire to see him tomorrow. "He doesn't have a dad."

Tom, who had started preparing that day's food, stopped doing it. "You haven't commented on any of that, right darling?" He thought that this could be a delicate subject for the other kid.

"I just asked him if he had a mom and he said yes, so I told him then that he should be happy because he had a mom and someone who loves him a lot." The little girl started talking in a quick peace. "I told him that it's okay because my dad plays dad and mom so his mom could play being a dad too."

Harrison smiled at how well Tom had taught the little girl and how natural it sounded.

"Good job, my love." Tom smiled. He was a proud dad.

Taglist:

@spiderboytotherescue  @emilyackles @obsesivesun @strrwberries @akaduds @aoonai @smexylemony @casualprincess77 @supernaturallover2002 @allofthebitters @ineedmorestyles @lemondropirwin

[prettyfunkyunorganized]

Daughter Series - Monster Hunter McCree AU

Maybe it’s rather silly of me to write an AU with a character I’ve only recently introduced, but this was a lot of fun to write! No regrets :) 

This is inspired by McCree and Reaper’s Halloween skins from this year that I loved. Ended up being 3,600ish words. Put a break in the middle. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

More Daughter Series:  Hanzo, McCree, Reaper, Soldier 76, Genji, Roadhog

Halloween Daughter Series: Roadhog, McCree, Genji, Reaper

After years of trailing, searching, and tracking, McCree felt as if he was finally closing in on his prey. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking. Again. He had this feeling back in Liverpool and before that in New York, but nothing had come of it. Reaper continued to elude him, over and over.

“Damn vampire piece of shit,” the hunter hissed, rolling another cigarette. “I chased him all the way back home to the US just to turn right around and head back to this rainy shit hole.” London always made him cranky. He took a long drag and rubbed his temple. “There was another drained body here this morning,” McCree assured himself, “he must be close. He must be.”

He pulled his long coat tighter around his cold shoulders with a sigh, watching and listening. It was dark, but his highly trained eyes had no trouble scanning the streets. All he needed was a flash of movement, something darting by too fast, a rustle in the darkness – any sort of sign. He was getting restless. He needed a chase. Some action.

“Come on,” he growled after an hour of roaming with eyes peeled, “where are you?!”

There was a rustling sound behind him, and McCree grinned. He whipped out his gun, swiveled on his heels, and fired a bevy of shots at the figure. Then he realized the silhouette was too small to be Reaper’s. His stomach dropped as the body fell to the ground with a whimper. He’d always been too hasty, his mentors had told him that a thousand times. “One of these days you’re going to put a bullet in something that doesn’t deserve one!” He’d finally done it - to something in a tattered blue dress and a thin cloak.

“Oh God,” he sputtered kneeling beside her. “Miss? Miss?! Are you alright? Ah shit, please don’t be dead! Imma get you some help, ya hear? Just hold on!”

She grabbed his arm as he tried to stand up, pulling him back. She was strong. Too strong. There was another one of his bad habits biting him in the ass: he was too gullible when it came to women. “One of these days you’re going to let something bat a pair of pretty lashes at you and slit your throat.” His mentors were right again. Mostly. He saw her sickly red eyes and pointed teeth just before she lunged.

Much to McCree’s surprise, he awoke. Sore and confused, but alive. Wherever he was, it was dark and musty, making his nose crinkle at the mildewy smell. Dust coated his cheek as he sat up from the cold wooden floor.

“Son of a bitch,” he whined quietly, rubbing the bump on his head, “where did that little monster drag me? And where the hell is my hat?”

A low, sneering chuckle hit his ears as his hat drifted into the light, swaying back and forth teasingly. He recognized that pitch black glove and the elegant red cuff surrounding it.

“Reaper,” the hunter snarled, “not like you to let a little girl do your dirty work.”

The vampire laughed again, sauntering into the light. “What can I say – I wanted to test my new fledgling. And my, my did she impress! Pretty thing hauled your unconscious body back here less than an hour after I sent her out.” He sat down on a fraying velvet couch in front of McCree, lounging as if he didn’t have a care in the world after tossing the hunter’s hat flippantly to the side. “I will have to give her quite the reward.”  

“You gonna feed her a baby or something,” grumbled McCree as he traced his fingers across his belt. His gun was gone, his crossbow was gone, the sharpened stakes were gone. Even the dagger in his boot had been taken.  

“A baby,” Reaper scoffed, “that’s hardly a meal for a growing girl. I was thinking something a little more . . . personal.” His voice was suddenly sultry, and McCree instantly recoiled in disgust.

“That was very rude,” his captor scolded, “you’ll damage the girl’s pride! The way I hear it, you’re quite the Don Juan, but just rumors I suppose.”

“Oh I do just fine with the ladies, and I don’t even have to kill ‘em or hypnotize ‘em to do it,” McCree barked back. “Probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t wear a menacing mask or eat people.”

“Says the man with spurs and silver-tipped spikes on his metal arm. Glad you found a replacement, by the way – makes you a much more worthy adversary. More fun to toy with.”

“Or you could have not torn it off in the first place,” McCree fumed.

“Where’s the fun in that,” Reaper said swinging his legs onto the floor. The satin lining of his long overcoat glimmered in the candlelight – red and smooth and somehow ominous. His blood would glint like that when the beast finally got around to killing him.

“You are having fun, aren’t you,” the hunter asked sarcastically. “How much longer are you going to drag this out? There’s a lot of other shit I could be getting done right now.”

Reaper snorted. “Like what? For over a decade all you’ve been doing, day in and day out, is searching for me.” He stood and walked to McCree, stopping inches away from him. The hunter tried to lean away, but the vampire grabbed his chin and pulled him closer. “I am all you care about. I am all you think of. I am all you want, aren’t I?”

“No,” McCree automatically objected, but he could feel his face go hot. The truth in those words stung.

“Tell me the truth,” Reaper’s voice boomed. McCree’s vision went bleary as the overwhelming power of the elder vampire crawled its way into his mind. He had to obey, despite all the training he’d endured. Reaper was too old, too skilled.

“Yes,” the hunter admitted breathlessly.

“Say it,” Reaper demanded smugly.

“All I want is to kill you.” His own voice echoed in his head, bouncing about and rattling all the shame out of its hiding spots.

“You don’t even care about your order’s mission anymore, do you? ‘To seek all evil, to destroy all beasts, to protect all humanity.’ You could have killed a hundred of my kind in the past ten odd years, but no, you always come scampering back to me. Isn’t that right, Master Hunter?”

“Yes.” He hadn’t checked in with his superiors in ages. When they didn’t support his obsession, McCree branched out on his own.

“Tell me, boy, are you happy, chasing me all over the world always one step behind?”

“No.”

“Does anything make you happy?”

“The thought of killing you.”

“But of course,” Reaper sighed. “How predictable. You haven’t thought this through, though, my American friend.” The vampire kneeled down, the pointed edges of his mask much too close to the hunter’s face. “If you kill me,” he continued, “you’ll have nothing left! No prey, no purpose, nothing.”

The realization hit him like a punch in the gut. Damned bloodsucker was right, completely and utterly right.

“Judging by the paleness of your skin and the thumping of your heart, you know I’m correct, don’t you, McCree?” His kidnapper sounded so smug it hurt, but at least he was pleased enough to release his captive from the mind control.

The hunter was left reeling. It felt like some sort of awful combination of a hangover and a migraine was hammering into his skull. He sat there on the floor, curled over and panting as Reaper’s words seeped into his bones, filling him with dread and humiliation. He’d let this thing take over his life. He used to be a man – maybe not a good man – but a man with his own goals and desires and ambitions. Now? Now he was a plaything. A puppet for a fanged freak.

“Aw, poor little hunter,” Reaper cooed cruelly, “someone tear down your whole world?”

McCree glared up at him. “Fuck you.”

The vampire burst out laughing, his entire figure shaking with twisted joy. “You are a delight! All full of useless bluster and pathetic angst. And I’m not even finished yet! I’ve one more surprise for you ‘partner.’”

Hearing the old, undead man fake a Southern accent was strangely unsettling. A shiver ran up the hunter’s spine. “Oh goodie,” McCree mumbled, trying to be tough. He sure didn’t’ feel that way.

“One more question, then your treat,” Reaper promised like he was talking to a dog. “Answer me this: do you have any hope left? Any at all? You’ve failed to kill me, even after all this time, and now you know if you kill me, your life is pointless. Seems rather hopeless to me.”

“What does it matter,” McCree said with an angry huff.

“I told you to answer me.” Reaper rose from his bended knee, undoubtedly glaring down at his captive. “Do you want me to put you under again?”

He did not want that. Christ almighty he didn’t want that! His head was still throbbing.

Before he could come up with a witty reply, McCree was buckling over and writhing in pain. Evidently, Reaper had no patience. As the kidnapper man screamed and twitched on the ground, the question blared in his ears. “Do you have any hope? Any at all?” It was like a massive gong, sending agonizing vibrations into every fiber of his being.

“For fuck’s sake, no! I don’t have any hope,” McCree all but sobbed. “None! I don’t have a single fucking thing to live for anymore! Nothing!”

And the pain was gone, leaving the hunter in a panting, sweaty pile. He’d given in so fast. He disgusted himself.

“Not a ‘single fucking thing to live for,’ you say,” Reaper mused. “Wonderful!”

McCree wanted to smack the smarmy vampire right out of his fancy boots, but what good would it do? Reaper would probably just laugh at him, call him ‘cute,’ or some shit. The hunter had been defeated, once and for all. He was empty and ready to die, even if it was at the hands of this monstrosity.

“Chin up, cowboy,” Reaper sang, “time for your reward! A little something to perk you back up, now that you’re at your lowest.” He picked McCree up by his neck effortlessly, forcing the man to his feet. “My lovely little fledgling, time to come out!”

The girl that had attacked him tentatively stepped into view, head bowed and hands trembling. She looked disheveled, especially next to her master. Her clothing was torn in a number of places and her shawl was hanging on by threads. The shoes covering her feet had visible holes, and dirt smears were splattered all over her body. It would have been depressing if not for the blood on her chest and arms. McCree scowled at her. Her fingers were still stained red from her last sloppy feeding.

“Eyes forward, my dear, you are a fearsome creature of the night! Act like it,” Reaper said waving the young woman closer.

She tilted her head up when told revealing high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. Her hair was matted with dried sinew and what seemed like weeks of inattention. McCree should have found her repulsive, sickening, but she looked so . . . scared. Her red eyes darted between the hunter and Reaper as her slender figure twitched erratically. Something was wrong with her.

Reaper wrapped his arm around his prisoner as if they were longtime friends, speaking in a chipper tone unbefitting of someone who burned villages out of boredom. “Master Hunter Jesse McCree, venerated member of the murderous Van Helsing Order, I would like you to meet your daughter, Juniper.”

McCree’s head flinched back, shooting Reaper a confused look. The vampire just laughed. “Don’t believe me,” he asked smugly. “Just picture the little dear with brown eyes the same color as yours, and that long brown hair tied back in a ribbon, just like yours. Not seeing it yet?”

He could see the resemblance, but the denial was still holding on tightly.

The vampire let out an exasperated moan, “Fine then, look at the freckles. Remind you of anyone? Perhaps a certain redheaded innkeeper’s daughter? From your homeland? One who liked to tell tales about the local history and ‘The Great Werewolf Hoard?’ Ringing any bells?”

“Ho fuck,” the hunter gulped before he could stop himself. He remembered that woman – her stories, her kind smile, her nose. This frightened newborn vampire had that same nose.

With an almost deafening laugh, Reaper shook the hunter’s shoulders like he’d just delivered a hilarious punchline. “You should see the look on your unshaven mug! All of a sudden all the work I’ve put into this reunion is worth all the trouble,” the masked man sighed contentedly. “She’s a cute little beastie, isn’t she?”

“She’s a monster,” McCree said quietly, trying to convince himself as much as Reaper. “Whatever she was before, now she’s just one more creature I gotta put down.”

“Oh,” the elder vampire said finally removing his arm from McCree, “is that so?” His mischievous tone made the other’s man’s stomach flop. “You don’t feel anything for her? No regret? No sympathy? No tenderness?”

“No,” the hunter grunted uncomfortably.

Reaper hummed curiously before shrugging and grabbing the young woman’s wrist. The girl’s eyes widened and she let out a pitiful noise as her master pulled her into a headlock. “I suppose if I can’t torture you with her, Juniper here has no use.” With an overly dramatic flourish, the undead man produced a wooden stake and threw his arm back, ready to strike. His fist came barreling toward her chest.

“Don’t!” McCree’s hands grabbed Reaper’s a fraction of a second before the mahogany pierced Juniper’s heart. The hunter had never been so terrified in all his life. He didn’t want to watch her die. He should have wanted to kill her, but he didn’t. Couldn���t.

“That’s what I thought,” Reaper crooned in a voice so low it could rattle a man’s innards. “We’ve been doing this dance a long time, master hunter, and I believe I’ve come to know you quite well. You’re a simple man with simple desires – so simple it’s a bit sad. You want love, McCree, plain and simple. That’s why you’re always so good to women you woo, why you always give your last few coppers to the gutter-rat children in the streets, why you spend your evenings happily listening to old men in bars blather about their past. And here’s your chance!” He let Juniper out from under his grasp, instead holding her by the waist, their bodies pressed together at the hip. “You have a child, McCree! A girl, at that! Someone to dote upon and dress in frills. Someone who will look up to you and hold you tight. Your very own family, small, but pure.”

The vampire’s gloved fingers began to snake up Juniper’s torso, massaging her tender flesh. She stood there, letting him do it, but stared at the hunter, desperately. Rage began to boil in the hunter’s core. Reaper’s hand groped the young woman’s breasts.

“You have a daughter, McCree, and she’s all mine!”

“You fucking – ” He lunged at the creature, knowing it was futile, but he didn’t care. If it meant the bastard stopped touching Juniper, it was worth it, but the hunter’s stolen gun was suddenly pointed right between his eyes.

“Ah, ah, ah, my boy! Not so fast.” Reaper turned the gun to press against the young woman’s ear. “Violence begets violence, you know.”

McCree took a step back, arms in the air. “What do you want from me,” he spat.

“There is only one more thing you can give me, old friend,” the vampire said nuzzling Juniper’s neck. “I’ve broken you down until you were all but begging for death, and now I’ve given you something to live for – all that’s left is letting your precious daughter feast on your blood. I’ve hardly fed the poor dear since I turned her, so she’s famished!” He smacked her ass, pushing her toward McCree. “Kill him, my dear. Feast on him! Sink those pointy fangs into his neck and drink your fill!”

She slowly closed the distance between them and fell to her knees in front of McCree. Her body was shaking more violently now. He wanted to hold her close and wrap his coat around her. Even with her teeth bared, the hunter didn’t feel an ounce of fear.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered to her, “I promise.” Reaper chuckled.

Juniper moved closer, her nose nearing his jugular. She was a young vampire, but plenty fast. He didn’t see her hand as it moved to his neck.

“Don’t look down,” she mouthed at him and he frowned for just a moment, then he felt her slip something into his hand. He knew that shape, that smoothed edge. A silver-tipped stake.

“Help me,” she whimpered almost inaudibly, “I can’t keep resistin’ much longer. He’s – he’s in my head!” Tears spilled down her cheeks, filling McCree with a determination he’d never known the likes of.

“What’s the holdup, Juniper? I know you’re a ‘hick’, but surely someone taught you to not to play with your food,” Reaper joked.

McCree looked at him and scowled. “I need your help, baby girl,” he murmured back to his daughter.

“What was that,” the elder creature hissed, flying to McCree’s side, grabbing him by his long hair and yanking his head back. “Enough sniveling, Juniper, kill him, now!”

She cringed and gripped her forehead, yelping and quivering in pain, but she was strong, like her father. With an inhuman snarl, Juniper tackled Reaper to the ground, pinning him in place before he could react. McCree scrambled to his feet, weapon at the ready. With one practiced movement, he stabbed Reaper in her chest, making the vampire screech and squirm.

He was hurt, but far from dead. He whipped his arm from under Juniper and punched her in the throat, making her crumble to the floor. McCree clenched his silver metal fist and pummeled Reaper again and again and again. Until his mask broke and the hunter hesitated at the sight of the mangled face below him – all gnashing teeth and ashen skin and a too long tongue that lashed out like a spear.

McCree may not have been frozen in place for long, but it was long enough. Reaper pounced, stake still stuck insinde of him, but this time he was on top, grinning and dripping saliva on the hunter’s stunned face.

“I’m going to bleed you dry, feed the meat from your corpse to my dogs, and grind your bones with my bare hands!” He leaned in closer, licking the sweat from McCree’s brow. “Then I’m going to chain up your ‘baby girl’ and do every filthy thing I can think of to her supple little – ”

There was a blast and Reaper was tossed off of the hunter. The vampire’s body was still. McCree was panting, waiting for the beast to get up and chuckle, but he didn’t.

“Is,” Juniper rasped shakily, “is he dead?”

The hunter turned to Juniper, who was still holding his pistol in her shaking hands. It was covered in silver adornments, and McCree could smell his daughter’s burning skin. He jumped to his feet and started to pry the gun from her hands.

“No,” he said frantically. “I’ve shot him before – it just slows him down.” He began to wrap up her hands with a bandage from his pocket. “We have to get you away from him. We’ll get on a ship and just keep sailing, okay? I’ll keep you safe, alright?”

When he looked back to Juniper, he saw her staring at him with a dazed look. “You’re bleeding,” she said, swallowing hard. “From yer head. I can smell it. I can feel it.” Her chest heaved as her eyes dilated. “I’m so hungry,” she wailed.

He grabbed her wrists as they approached him. “Easy there, sweetpea, I can’t help ya if I’m dead.” She whined, but nodded. “Can you, uh,” he said eyeing Reaper, “feed on him?”

She leaned over and bit her lip. “Maybe.”

In the time it took him to blink, Juniper was crawling over her master’s body, mouth affixed to his wrist. She made a disgusted face, but didn’t stop until her body stopped shaking.

“Better,” McCree asked as she stood.

“You ever vomit in your mouth and have to gulp it back down,” she grumbled. “It was like that.”

He grimaced. “I’m sorry, hun. We’ll figure something out for next time.”

“Next time,” she said wrapping her arms around herself. “There’s gonna to be a next time.”

“We’ll find a way,” McCree said blocking her view of Reaper’s mangled form. “I dunno how, but I’m gonna take care of you, ya hear?”

“I didn’t want to be like this,” she sputtered at him, “he just found me and dragged me away and – ” Her hands clamped over her trembling lips.

“I believe you,” he said grabbing her arms. So damn cold. “It’s not your fault.”

She looked up to him with teary eyes and slowly leaned into his chest, crying softly into him. He held her close and rubbed her back.

“I’ve got ya, baby girl, I’ve got ya.” He didn’t know how, but he was going to protect his daughter, no matter what she was. She was scared and hurt and confused, but she wouldn’t be alone. Neither of them would be anymore.  

[rileyomalley]

My Blues Baby

Summary: A woman finds herself accomplishing one of her big all time goals, and ends up finding the results are better than she ever expected.

Word Count: 5,473

Rating: General, hella fluff

General Notes: This was mostly written for myself in the wee hours of the morning, sp some transitions may be awkward as are some conversations. So despite that, hope ya’ll enjoy this hot mess!

If she had to sum up her feelings right at this moment, it would be a mix of both anxious and excited. A weird combination that left a person giddy as can be, unable to cease the onslaught of questions running through her mind.

Was this really happening? Was she really about to do one of the few things she'd wanted to do for a long time, even if it was only for a night? Was she seriously going to put her best efforts forward and share her artistry before a crowd of people?

She wasn't foreign to the stage, at least not what came with live performances thinking back to her college days. She'd had plenty of skills under her sleeve in those four years than she did prior. It left her with a confidence being a jack of all trades, and feeling if she really wanted to reach something, to achieve a goal—she wouldn't feel like a complete buffoon stumbling over her own two feet trying.

But now, here she was back stage looking herself over for the final touches before it was time for her to go on. The entirety of this night was based on one dream and one dream alone...she had a deep love of soulful blues and jazz which captivated her in her youth, so in turn she had wanted to—someday—perform such music and hell, even compose some of her own.

Of course, this night was filled with only a few songs that she would perform, and most were covers of beloved songs to both her and perhaps those select few who were keen to the blues/jazz music scene and it's artists. The other few being from Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and so forth. Then, to finish she would sing a song she'd written herself. There were others she wanted to finish, but this one had more solidarity so far than others so...best to play it safe for now. The experience would be enough.

Busying herself with her hair and makeup, she couldn't help but stop and stare. Her mind going a thousand miles a minute, from the start of this pipe dream to her sudden desire to write the song, to …looking far stunning than she'd ever imagined herself looking. Not to mention one of those few times she'd actually gotten contacts and not hiding behind her glasses. There was a lot of work done here, but something about her reflection just...she only wished it were this easy. To glow so easily as this and...perhaps from this experience, she'd be all the more keen to do more for herself than she ever did day by day.

Sweet sounds of instruments echoed through the building, the slight muffled chatter of the crowd would not break her from staring down at the music sheet—a finalized version of her original song 'You Don't Know Me, But I Want To Know You” laying in warm lighting before her—she gave a soft laugh thinking how all that brewed itself into a tangible form. She couldn't help but laugh because of it, feeling like some hopeless romantic having written such a song, one that was obvious inspiration from another person.

The one she doubted would ever hear it. A girl can dream, though perhaps in some weird strand of fate, he just might.

 She did recall him saying he liked blues music, after all.

 But what universal forces could leave such a busy man as he to come to a place like this, on this particular night or ANY night for that matter? Not that he didn't seem the type but...

It just felt too good to be true, even though the thought was nice.

The thought was there. The love was there for a person who knew nothing about her, or even perhaps that she existed. Such is the heart, eh? Always wanting, yet uncertain of the want being fulfilled.

Nonetheless, she'd be giving it her all tonight. She wasn't about to let something as soft ache leave her to be dull in a chance like this. It was one in a lifetime for an artist, and damn straight she was going to leave a mark in this California town. Lucky enough to be traveling, and to find an agreement with the owner of the joint...she was stupidly lucky. She'd proved her point enough though how much something like this performance mattered, and suppose the owner could see the heart in the matter.

 On in five.

 Okay. One final tousle of her duotone colored hair, she stood taking a deep breath. Once more with warmups and she'd have to make her appearance soon enough. Nervousness did shake her but she kept the thoughts of her supporters and loved ones in mind to keep her steady. Her playlist going over in her mind and how she wanted to fall into character.

She was herself. But she was also a woman full of song, and she wanted to bring one hundred and ten percent to this. To be as alluring and enchanting as those songs were to her. A few more minutes, she heard the band start to warm up and the crowd only seemed to become more and more clear to her.

 It begun.

“You had plenty money 1922, you let other women make a fool of you...”

 She stepped past those curtains, her steps in sync with the low drawl of the live band now behind her. Her voice projected now like a siren's song, puckering those petite lips as her body swayed near the microphone. Barely able to make much of the crowd before her, what with the lights shining directly to the stage.

Lay on that allure, darling. You wanted that strength in your art to shine. You were everything.

A good start it seemed to be when the first song finished, the crowd seemed pretty pleased, brown eyes scanning them and red lips curling into a sweet smile. The response gave her all the more confidence. She'd only lay it on more and more. Each song going from alluring, to something more soft.

Thump, thump, de dump. A fever in the midst.

“Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care. When you put your arms around me I got a fever that's so hard to bear-”

 The same rhythmic sway she kept from the previous song followed suit, swaying those shoulders as well as her hips. Her motions were not exaggerated, where her eyes and lips led more dominantly. They were the lust, the beautiful illusion as she sung out. With each phrase held enough attitude and drama that her hands made all the more clear. Her arms flung, touched, and slid about to weave the tales she had for her audience.

 “What a lovely way to burn...”

 The crowd went WILD. Her genuine sweet smile returned, those brown eyes warm, smiling back to the band before continuing.

Her heart fluttered so happily in this moment. She didn't want it to end, and it had only been two song so far.

Allure turned to pep, smiles all about she could see with the upbeat tunes as they chimed out from the instrumental chorus.

 “I've got you...under my skin...”

 At this point she may as well look like she did this for all her life. The way she held herself once she got into the music, letting those dulcet tones sing out she welcomed everyone with her tune. They all seemed to have a good air about them, whether still in their own conversations or finding their attention stuck to the songstress of the stage.

 “I'll be seeing you...”

 Her rhythm went from pep to a slower motion. The expression about her face held the heart of someone yearning. Reminiscing times that either passed or had yet to begin. Her gaze far off, though on occasion  flitting over the crowd and to what few face she could actually see. Her thoughts were elsewhere at this point and hardly on the moment at hand.

 She found herself thinking of him.

 Her heart fluttered all the more.

 It was why her singing sounded all the more heartfelt. She was thinking back to him. She was thinking how her heart and suddenly found itself trapped in the infatuation and adoration of a man she may not have considered at first. A man whom she found so many good traits...morals...just everything. He was loose, wild, but he was grounded. He'd lived through plenty yet still held the youth that had been there for ages, now in a rugged form. He was warm with everyone he'd come across, he'd spoken to. It was everything a person should be...and everything she had wanted in a man.

 Her rhythm returned, body motions just if only slightly as she tapped her foot.

 “All of me, why not take all of me..”

 Though she was returning to some form of reality, she had lost herself in the music. Lost herself in the feelings she'd felt bubbled up from the thoughts that haunted her for weeks, months even. She held so desperately to her body with each word she sang. A song of leaving, yet she held something differently in that song.

Once finished, the crowd gave uproarious applause, the woman smiling so large and giving them a bow. Her arms outstretched before her, blowing kisses to them and not only that, but directing such applause to the lovely band who played with her. She wasn't about to take all the limelight.

 “Thank you all so much! Tonight has been an absolute blessing and you all are amazing for being here! I have one more surprise before we finish up tonight, and I hope ya'll will like it.” She chuckled, a bit of the crowd hootin' and hollering in response. She had to compose herself before continuing on.

“Pardon the cheesy nature of what I'm about to say, but...this song was written for a special someone who may or may not hear it ever. But hey, if they do—I hope they enjoy it. I loved writing it and...well..enough chatter, let's get to it yeah?” The crowd responded with a resounding 'yeah!' which left her to laugh all the more and give a hearty nod.

A brief chat with the band double checking which song, she looked forward again waiting for the start. It was a nice one to wrap up with, and gave her time to wind down for the night as she awaited her cue. This gave her time to really look out to the crowd, smiling and waving to a few people as she swayed to the gentle rhythm of her song.

 Her eyes ended up on one particular person in that crowd.

 The woman's heart seemed to skip a beat and her cheeks grew warm. For a mere second she'd almost forgotten where she was at this point in time until blinking a bit and hearing one of the musical cues for her to start soon.

 “Out of the blue...just out of the blue..”

 Her voice was so terribly soft and smooth, words spilling like honey as she begun her song. Her eyes could not pull away from him, the very man with whom she had written this song about and for. The very man who haunted her thoughts day in and day out, and left her heart all a flutter without prior warning.

  M.R.

 Seated just a few feet away from the stage, he found himself comfortable looking right up at her as she performed her song. Had he been here all this time? Was he wandered about up until now? Funnily enough she could have sworn she had seen someone out of her blinded periphery, but figured it was just wandering patrons of the club and nothing more. Boy was she wrong.

Now she couldn't stop looking at him. He was just...right...THERE. This wasn't a dream, or at least she hoped to god it wasn't. But now...what would come of this? She was thankful for her concentration, not once breaking from her song or shuddering out of frantic desperation because of how crazy her mind was being, or how much her heart was beating so rapidly.

It was for him after all, and even in her movements she presented herself as though he were the only patron in the entire club. That this was all for him. But what would come after all of this was said and done?

She didn't know. All she knew was that her song was coming close to the end, and all she wanted was to saunter out there to him right to the last word. Milk it for what it's worth. Make some sort of impact on a man who was both captivating and confusing to her all at the same time. Confusing only for various reasons, as there was many unknown factors to something like this...

 Wait, where were you going?

 As if on auto pilot, she found her body was moving to the stairs right of her, having somehow whipped that mic off and taking it with her. Her mind was screaming—was she seriously playing up going into the crowd and right towards him?! Was she seriously doing this right now?!? The crowd certainly was eating it up, and now she was literally only a foot away from him. His eyes had not once broken from her form since then, now obviously having her attention.

 Damn, he was...really, really handsome up close...

 There she was, without abandon, serenading the man with whom she'd written up that very climatic song for. Playing up all those charms of a jazz and blues singer, filled to the brim with love and adoration. Her form hovering over him slightly, a hand reaching out to gently caress his jaw in those last few words.

 “You don't know me...but I want to know you...”

 They were there for a few minutes after the music finally came to a close, brought back to reality by the roaring applause of the crowd around them. Her hand slowly finding it's place lightly about his chest, and his hand apparently having rested softly at her side. Sweet jesus. This may as well be a dream.

A courteous, warm smile crossed her lips as she slipped away from M.R., moving back to the stage to properly give her final bows before going backstage. She was only going to be at the club for a bit longer before making way back to her hotel for some much needed rest. She enjoyed this evening more than she ever would have thought and would take this with her for a long, long time.

But now here she was, backstage, finding her body absolutely shaking. She took breath after deep breath to calm the very jitters and goosebumps that lay upon her body. She was giddy, she ecstatic, and in sheer surprise that he was even HERE when she performed. She was not in the least expecting it, only figuring the show and nothing more. She would have been satisfied even then. But now...

 Dear god would she even have the courage to go and mingle as she originally planned??

 It was either that or staying in this now stuffy dressing room. Geez, was it hot in here or just her?

 ….or M.R.. Either answer fit.

 Taking a deep breath, she sipped a bit of water and shook herself as best she could before stepping out. Greeting both staff and patrons as she made way to the bar, she was glad for the brief distraction. Granted her mind was still very much a buzz about the whole situation, she took a seat about the bar and thanked the bartender with whom surprised her with a drink.

A White Russian. Always a liqueur gal, even though she'd partake in whatever drink she could if it didn't leave her sour. It was definitely needed at this point, especially considering just moments later she'd find herself next to a leather jacket clad patron.

 Jesus fucking christ.

 He couldn't help but grin a bit upon seeing her reaction, reaching out to gently pat her arm and steady her from spilling her drink. She did however laugh though setting the glass down near her. When did he sneak up on her just now?

“Didn't mean to frighten you, darlin. Was coming up for another drink and saw you were here—wanted to give a proper thank you to the lovely performance you put on tonight.” The woman’s eyes flit down to her lap, a soft smile on red lips as she looked back up at him giving an attempted bow in her seat.

“Absolutely spectacular.” Gosh, all the more praise from him? What in the world was going on that could leave her so lucky? She was practically beaming, hell, she may as well be as red as a tomato at this point.

“Well you are very welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Seems everyone was up in arms in the best way possible. It's a definite confidence booster considering this was my first live show.” Taking a sip she watched him, brows raising was enough to see the surprise in his face as his shades usually hid his eyes.

“Your first? No kidding...damn girl, you may as well have been a professional with the way you handled yourself up there!” Goddamnit M.R., she's going to be hiding her face this entire time if you spill all those compliments about her.

 Of course...who wouldn't want compliments coming from someone like him?

 She gave him a gentle nudge to his arm and laughed. “Staahhhpp, you're gonna kill me with kindness! But yeah, I mean- I can't say I don't have some experience, but nothing like that. At least, not live professionally on a stage. More like, back at home in those countless days and nights where I was a living, breathing musical.” That stirred only more laughter from her, in turn leaving a wide smile on his face.

“Well hun, it was amazing. I'm glad I was able to catch it when I did. Where you from anyway?”

She set her glass down after another drink, deciding to turn more towards the man so as not to put a kink in her neck. “Just up north; Washington State born and raised. Been there forever and probably still will. I wanted a different setting though for this sort of thing. Was kinda missing California, and they do have some really nice venues.”

M.R. gave a few nods, having been nursing his newly acquired jack and coke relaxing against the bar. “Yeah? Right on, right on...I agree there's plenty here to really play off of. Though Washington is pretty nice to, having been up to Seattle a few times myself.”

Probably plenty, she thought. Of course she was amused that she didn't spill about conventions, about everything he was...but having this simple conversation honestly felt so much more natural, whether he got the hint that she knew who he was or not. Probably did but...hell.

“Yeah, yeah. Ahh man though, I have to tell you. I … I could not be happier with how tonight had gone, ya know? I'm a big lover of music and I wanted to put my best foot forward and give it all I had. I only ever really performed a few times but find it exhilarating.” The two seemed so in tune to each other right at this moment, no major boundaries or expectations of the other, leaving various associations behind. Leaving differential titles in the dust where commonality shined through.

 They just, gelled.

 It had been a few minutes into the conversation, shooting the shit and whatever else came to the surface before M.R. found himself asking more questions.

“So you'd sing just about anything and everything huh? By the sounds of it you may as well be a library of information about musicals and what not.” He gave her a playful pat about her arm, to which she returned. Her mood was that of an eased and relaxed one, leaving no room for overbearing modesty and simply...friendliness.

They'd already introduced each to the other, but the conversations never stopped there.

“Boy I would don the outfits of both Frankenfurter as well as Mary Poppins if I had the chance. Especially Mary, and I'm not even joking because of my name.” M.R. couldn't help but perk at that, quirking a brow.

“Mary Poppins, hands down, has to be one of my favorites of all time. That is awesome. But are you handy with an umbrella?” She couldn't help but giggle into her glass, almost sputtering it on herself.

“I found my way around one or two, and sometimes...it's a jolly holiday with me too.” She pursed her lips, to only rise a good laugh from the man next to her. “Haaaaa...oh you are smooth girl.”

“Smoother than a baby's bottom, I assure you.” The two of them couldn't stop laughing. The merriment was very much needed.

“So now that has me wondering, not the Mary Poppins part obviously—I remember you saying something about the last song you sang tonight. One you actually wrote, yeah?” The woman found herself still for a moment, the warmth of laughter being hit with a twinge of reality. She cleared her throat and gave a nod, her attention all the more on M.R. now.

“You mentioned that song was written for a special someone. Didn't think it cheesy at all, though I'm curious as to who it was written for.” He took a sip of his drink, smiling over at her promptly. “Could see a lot of emotion in that song in particular. If you don't mind me asking.”

 No....not at all.

 Dare she even speak the truth on the matter? Risking herself of any embarrassment to come hurdling back and smack her in the face?

 Deep breath.

 Her body language went from an openness to that of shyness, M.R. watching her intently. He hadn't meant to pry, though being the lucky person for a lovely performer to set their eyes on, he couldn't help in admitting it attracted him a bit, even out of sheer curiosity.

“Okay...promise me this won't sound dumb but-”

“I promise, I promise. Nah...you're fine. Go on.”

Her hearing almost felt numb as the various thoughts pounded through her head. Her attention flitting briefly to how their hands lay so close to each other. How their bodies nearly mirrored one another's. She gulped, giving a brief smile before finally looking up at him, resting her head on her hand.

“If I'm to be, 100% completely honest—I actually wrote that song...hah, I actually wrote it for you.” She was ready to shirk away, her body briefly sinking into itself but instead burying her face into her hand. Goddamnit stop smiling so much! The embarrassment was real.

M.R.'s entire body seemed to nearly mirror her own, a small breathed out laugh before an almost giddy cacophony following thereafter. She felt his hands reach out, rubbing at her arms, the two of them sinking into a slight swaying motion.

“Awww...you wrote that for me? Lil ol' me huh? Goddamn, that is the cutest damn thing I'd ever heard. That's really sweet of you, hun.” Stop, stop this right now. You're being to cute, and you're also pulling me into a hug. STOP IT.

All she could do being embraced as awkwardly as she was was only to give a strange screeching whine, which resulted in ridiculous laughter to follow. She batted at him nearly falling out of her chair, once out of that hug she hid behind her hands and giggled.

“Stop it! Now I'm embarrassed! As if it wasn't obvious enough getting to talk to you just-“ The noises she made sounded silly but it hardly bothered him at all. If anything learning this new information only left the man to give a playful shake at her knees. “Awwww- gosh you’re cute!”

 Once all the laughter had finally died down, his face became softer, and hers…warmer.

 “I will be honest with you that is actually very, very sweet of you. I feel honored anyone would wanna write a song about me like that, so thank you. Really.” To which he gave a gentle squeeze to her hand and smiled at her.

So genuine…her heart practically fluttered in that moment, the touch leaving a spark to run all throughout her body. Shaking herself from her daze, she smiled and nodded in return.”Of course. I mean…who wouldn’t want to? You’re funny, you’ve a light-hearted fun nature that absolutely livens up a room, you’re snarky and …almost wild in your way. Ah..not to rub the ego.” She could go on and on…

 “Oh, please, do rub my ego. It’s quite lonely and cold.”

 “ M.R.-“

 He gave a boisterous laugh kicking his feet and reassuring her that he was joking. Damnit all.

 Hours had past, the club had begun to disperse for the night leaving only a few patrons left, along with the woman and M.R. She gave a long stretch in her chair before sliding out of it.

“Oh man…I really, really needed tonight. Ah man I’d almost forgotten, I was gonna get something to eat once I was done here…” Seems time flew too fast since she’d gotten caught up in conversation with her. M.R. seemed to notice about ready to head out himself. He hadn’t meant to keep her, though admittedly he enjoyed the long conversations he had with her as well…

“I’d taken up quite a bit of your time, huh? I’m sorry about that. Why don’t I take you somewhere to get a bite and drive you back to wherever you’re staying. That sound alright?” Well..ah..she didn’t want to impose, she hadn’t expected to talk this long with him. Her stomach protested before she could however.

 Universe, what were you doing?

 “That’s okay. I didn’t mind it at all. Lemme get changed, grab my stuff and I’ll meet you outside yeah?” M.R. gave a nod, a gentle rub to her back before making his way out. Besides, they had to get that alcohol out of their systems anyway.

Back at the dressing room she’d finally released herself from the confines of that dress, placing it away in her bag and putting on a clean shirt, comfortable flowing pants and her tennis shoes. She wiped up a bit of her makeup but left enough it was still presentable, her hair now in waves about her shoulders.

The small woman made her way out to the front, eyeing left and right until she saw that familiar blue polestar, M.R. idling out on the hood of the car. She waved him down, trotting over to the vehicle before joining him inside and making their way out to find some grub. She didn’t care what it was, as long as it was good, filling, and perhaps left her sleepy. She deserved a damn good meal for doing such a good job.

The rest of this had been the biggest bonus to it, idly chatting with him in deciding where to go, and letting the night breeze calm each other. The radio was low, though in her mind she couldn’t help but run through the playlist, and then …certain songs popped in her mind. Humming from one that he seemed to pick up on. He chuckled to himself and smiled because of it.

“When Mary 'olds your 'and

You feel so grand

Your 'eart starts beatin'

Like a big brass band”

Some time after and bellies full of further enjoyable moments (and food obviously), the two of them were making their way to her hotel. M.R. had been nothing but a gentleman, and someone who made her feel so welcome. In all honestly, it was as if she’d known this man for years and years, poking fun or simply relaxing and talking about whatever came to mind. He was just so dang sweet and fun to hang around…

She was terribly smitten, more so than before.

She didn’t want it to end. The further they got up to that room, the more she wanted it to go on. Figured they should get that far at least in case a bout of exhaustion hit her. Last she needed was to pass out somewhere in the hotel and wake up in confusion.

There they were at her door, chuckling about this or that, M.R. having taken her bag. She smiled up at him, digging for her key.

“Alright, seems we’ve arrived. It has been an absolute pleasure, darlin. You gonna be alright?” M.R. asked, still holding the bag until she was ready to head inside. Her hand hesitated on the door.

Yet again she was compromised at the very thought of different choices. Of meekness or boldness and which road to take. To have him watching her as he did had not helped her in the least where elsewhere he could be distracted momentarily. She seemed troubled by something, lost in thought.

“Yeah I’ll be fine. Thank you. Ah…” She furrowed her brow for a moment before finally turning to him. “There’s one more thing, actually.”

M.R. shifted his weight, speculating in his mind what that one thing could be. “And that is?”

“Well, tonight had gone spectacularly and I’d been shown a rather amazing time by an equally amazing gentleman. Only seems fair I at least return the favor.” Wait..that didn’t come out right. Furrowed brow, face planting straight into her hand with a groan and a rather quirked brow and crooked grin from M.R. She smacked his chest.

“Shut up. That’s not what I meant. What I mean to say is, for all of this…may I at least return the favor with a kiss?”

M.R. shifted his weight once more, seeming to really ‘think’ on such a request. He set her bag down and adjusted himself a bit, coming closer to the smaller woman. “Well…does seem only fair, all things considered. Though you’d given me quite a bit as well sharing that passionate side of yourself.”

 Her heart nearly skipped a beat. She shook her head.

 Shit. Wait. He wasn’t joking with her was he? She hadn’t planned on this. Boldness backfired for a moment before she looked back up at him.

 This is just one night. Just let it happen.

 Reaching up she did her best not to laugh too much with the look he was giving her (and only harder since those glasses did not shade the beautiful blues she loved so much), she pulled him closer to her just inches away from his face. Her heart racing miles per minute finally breaking the distance and placing her lips on his own.

 Never in her life…

The thing was, it was supposed to be a simple token, a chaste kiss and that was it. A nice thank you that was mildly flirtatious if at all- that was it. But she couldn’t seem to pull away from him. The faint tastes residing on those lips, the gentle tickle of his slight scruff against her skin…

Even when she begun to pull away, brown eyes fluttering open she still resided just millimeters away from his face. He seemed to be looking at her the same, his hands resting at her sides now. Her head was too fuzzy to question anything, she simply…let it be. The two hovered close before those lips met once more, prolonging into a series of kisses instead of just one.

He didn’t seem to be stopping her either. If anything went too far she wouldn’t stop him had he pulled back. But he hadn’t…

She found herself up against the door, caught in a slow entanglement of kisses with M.R. holding to his jacket or his shirt. His hands rested at her lower back, thumbs gently rubbing about her spine. She finally pulled back after some time, eyes closed until she had the courage to open them.

He seemed to be just as calm as she was, if not more by how his eyelids drooped.

“…do you…do you want to come inside? At the very least rest up a bit..ah..” What was she doing…

The poor man looked tired, she didn’t want to imagine him trying to get home at this point…yet she didn’t think she’d be asking-

He literally sauntered past her through the door. Right into her room. She was baffled, slowly grabbing up her bag and moving inside as well.

Last thing she knew she was huddled in man’s arms, tousled about that bed with dim lights. Her heart may as well be soaring All that transpired that night

She wouldn’t exchange it for anything in the world.

[shipburner]

The Final Testament of Dr. Mortimer Beale

I was really glad that luck worked out that I would leave for the North on my birthday; it didn’t feel right for this event to be without mythic significance. Part of me wants to wax lyrical about it being a rebirthday – my first birthday since I came out as trans, the day I picked a name, the day I kill off the last male self-insert OC I ever really made, lots of straws out there for the grasping – but to be honest, Fallen London wasn’t really part of Genderquest 2k17: Battle for Gendikar. The community I’ve found through FL has been endlessly supportive of that quest, but Dr. Beale wasn’t related to that.

Dr. Beale was just a man who wanted to explore the secrets of the Neath, and got suckered into Seeking because it was the biggest secret of them all. The fandom commitment to not revealing what lies beyond the High Gate truly makes me proud, and I feel honored to join the ranks of those who have gone North. This, I think, is why I’m trapping Dr. Beale in the North forever – the secrets. Fallen London is a universe full of endlessly inventive mythology, full of surprises and secrets around every corner. The initial weirdness of daily life in a subterranean realm was what drew me into the Neath, but the secrets were what kept me there, and why I persisted with Dr. Beale’s quest. I have seen what is beyond the High Gate, and it is – well. It is beautiful. I can tell you that much. Beyond that? Let there be some mysteries yet in the world.

So, without further ado, I present the final testament of Dr. Mortimer Beale, presenting not only some of the information about him I never really got to display in the game, but also his thoughts on Seeking the Name.

Today, the 5th of August, 1895, I, Dr. Mortimer Beale, do set out my final testament, to be borne back to London in the handicles of my beloved Ooth-Nargai. It did not always understand me, towards the end, but its love for me was always constant, and mine for it. What we shared was real, but all too brief. It has informed me, on our voyage, that I am to have something like a child, as such things are reckoned among the Axiles. It has chosen the name Celephaïs for the child, but it will append “Beale” to it, out of devotion, out of memory. Its habitual reticence was, I think, a blessing this time. It hurts. Lord in Heaven, does it hurt. But had I known ere now, I might have dithered. I might have tried to fool myself that I could have stopped, turned back – but it was always too late. And what kind of a father would I be to them? What child could grow up happy with a father who saved his life and then threw it away a second time? Oh, I would be present temporally, yes, but not in spirit. Half my flesh, half my mind, half my immortal soul (if such a thing is real) is gone … I have been ink’d and wick’d, made a candle of myself entire. I wear my own severed head as a hat. Better a dead man for a father than a monstrosity. Ooth-Nargai will remember me well to little Celephaïs, and read my books to them, and more than that, I do not ask, in truth. So, let the news be the spark of hope I bring with me to the King of Ways, the spark I bring with me beyond the Avid Horizon, rather than cause for suffering.

As I write this, in the warm captain’s cabin of my magnificent pleasure-yacht, I look out over the cold black zee – North, past the Pale Wastes, past Whither. I might have come here earlier, with the Dilmun Club; now, I come mad with strange hunger. My crew (if they were ever really here) wish to turn back now ­– they are the sensible ones. The lights of London are a distant memory. It is strange, to know what one will never see again. It is strange, to still be surrounded by so much comfort as one goes to meet one’s doom. It is quiet. Lacre falls softly around me. Christmastide in August. Serene. Ooth-Nargai dozes by my side. We enjoyed a pleasant supper – our last together. Fresh fish and fresh bread and fresh greens and fresh water, and, now, hot cocoa, as we nestle beneath the blankets. This may be the last time I am ever comfortable, with food and fire and family, typewriter on my lap. I relish it. I have given up much, but this I will not. Not for a few more hours, while life remains to me.

Let me speak of that life I now end.

I was born – on this very day, in fact – in the year 1866 in Liverpool, back on the Surface, where the sun still shines. My father, Ramon Quejana y Panindagat, was a sailor from the Spanish East Indies, who brought his bride Margarita Karunungan y Enriquez to England and settled there to raise a family. I was christened Manolo Maria, a name I have not used in the Neath, which deception has caused me a curious amount of guilt – but there are no deceptions in the North, so let my Christian name be known. Ramon managed before both my parents’ unfortunate death in 1888 to produce an inheritance large enough for me to drink away but too small for me to actually use, which is precisely what I did. I spent a dissolute six years thereafter, and arrived, at the age of twenty-eight, to the point of having no future foreseeable, no past worth thinking about, and the brink before me. It was at this point that I had a thought:

“Wasn’t there … that thing. The … the thingy. With … the bats. And … the city. The … the London. I’m … why the … why the b____r not. Can’t be worse’n this. Who … who needs the sun, anyways. Y-yeah. Never did nothin’ fer me, th’ b_____d. I’ll … I’ll ----ing do it. ---- the sun.”

I used the last of my meagre savings to buy a ticket on the Travertine Spiral, and my drunken stupour bore me into a fight, which bore me directly into the arms of the constabulary. I was no stranger to the gaol-house, but here in the Neath, made for some odd reason to wear a mask, in a prison hanging from the roof, filled with far more hardened criminals than I, stern-faced guards who ate candles when they thought no-one was looking, and a disturbing subclass of people who shoveled horrible things into their mouths, carved burning sigils into the walls, and yelled about “The Number” and “The Name”, I gathered all of my courage and upon the spot vowed never to touch the bottle again. My vow was tested, but never broken; water is of a more salubrious aspect down here, and my inclination to share my small beer allotment with the other prisoners won me a few friends.

I intended to serve my time peaceably, but as it soon transpired that my one month’s hard labor for drunk and disorderly had been confused with my neighbor’s twenty years incarcerated, I decided that one more small crime could not hurt. I purloined a chisel from the works and loosened a bar at my window, and leaped out onto a passing dirigible.

I landed on my feet in Ladybones Road, pawned the jewel I had kept secret for emergencies, and charmed a soft-hearted widow into giving me an attic room. I was asked to provide a name and invented the name “Dr. Mortimer Beale” on the spot, for no reason other than that it sounded marginally respectable and that it was not a name at all similar to Prisoner Manolo Quejana y Karunungan. A sordid rag was willing to take me on as an enquirer, and I set to exploring the mysteries of the Neath, of both moral and natural philosophy.

To chronicle my deeds in their entirety would be tedious. I was a person of some importance; nay, an extraordinary mind! The name Dr. Mortimer Beale was immortal in Horizon Glyphs, written into hearts and minds, feared, and steeped in shadow. I was a singular character; my philosophy, my artistry, my skill at arms, my underworld faction were all my own. I was touched by fingerwork (clay and mirrors and laughing serpents), walked the fallen cities (Erech, Amarna, Hopelchén, and Karakorum), approached the gates of the Garden (of Eden? Of Stone, the Mountain of Light? Are they the same?), and saw through the eyes of Icarus (Icarus returning/longs for the deep places). I dreamt, in honey and in sleep, of the burial of the dead, of a game of chess, of the fire sermon, of death by water, of what the thunder said, of someone there (perhaps), and other things besides – beautiful vistas represented fumblingly in my writing.

Long have I loved lists, and I allow that this “testament” is mostly composed thereof, but I cannot help but list the things that affected me, that stood out to me – the beauty and wonder of my Neathly home, even though I dwelt here little beyond a year. I still remember first coming to the Echo Bazaar, to Merrigans Exchange, and marvelling at something so simple as a shard of glim or a nodule of deep amber.

I was ambitious, once: I sought out my heart’s desire, toiling tirelessly to play the Marvellous, a card game in which I could wager it all – learning the intrigues of the Church and of Hell, of two star-crossed lovers older than I had ever imagined, and, most poignantly, of one Tristram Bagley, a mad musician who tried to write with the Correspondence, the language of stars. I have talked with a priest who trades in faces and a prince of devils hanging in a bottle. I bought a hotel suite from Gilgamesh and saw the face of Enkidu in the street every day. I can state in truth that I performed Bagley’s opera, the Bell and the Candle, for Her Enduring Majesty herself, and it was extremely glorious and surpassingly erotic. (I miss when I could muster such bombast.) A Master of the Bazaar itself gave me a hat.

I have – no, I had – friends in every corner of Fallen London. The criminal underworld, the Rubbery Men, and libertine men and scarlet women were dearest to my heart, but most knew and loved me – and two people loved me on Her Enduring Majesty’s throne itself! I was a Young Stag, and, I think, I helped some wastrels put their wealth to positive good – and a member of the Dilmun Club as well, and sought for immortality as far as I could. I progressed from journalism, to authorship, to the study of the Correspondence – the hot breath of stars, that is their language. I toyed with the Red Science – it has faded from my flesh, but it allowed me to meet my beloved Ooth-Nargai, for which I am eternally grateful. I pursued cruel and unusual zoology with a Bishop and a Wings-of-Thunder Bat; I discovered the Cave of the Nadir with a Firebrand and a Missionary, where all the laws are broken. I followed a spymistress’ cruel missions, and found her repentance; I governed Port Carnelian for two terms. My salon, Dr. Beale’s House of Arguing, was a haven of learned and respectful discourse, as was my newspaper, the House of Arguing Weekly Newsletter. I started my own Department of the Correspondence at the University, and embarked on expeditions of scientific discovery.

Yet one discovery escaped me, that I had heard about throughout my entire tenure in the Neath – Mr. Eaten’s Name. I had heard of it, but did not know what it signified. (I know now – a Master of the Bazaar was betrayed for tarrying with Amarna, taken to its end by its former ally. It was stabbed, and eaten, and drowned, and given to the lacre. It fades, faster each year, but it still is not forgotten. Not yet. A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely.)

And thus, I started on the Seeking Road. I heard a voice, echoing from the well each night. In the still hours before dawn, in the wicker of a candle-flame, there is a voice. I did what it says. I do not regret it.

I flirted with disaster, slipping into horror, and learnt of the alphabet of scars. Beneath a strange sign I set out on the road, and as I slurped down the secrets, drowning in wine, boiling with hunger and breathing darkness, I approached the brink. I learned the Number at Christmastide – on the ninth day, Mr. Sacks stopped at my window, clad in salt and fox-fur; I took a memory of lost Axile, but heard an echo in so doing, and with it a trace of sadness, like the frost which silvers the night. The light on the edge of sleep was his. He was Mr. Candles. He will not be again. And, in a dream of dark waters, acquired the first of my weeping scars, off to go dancing with damnation. Candle-eyed, I watched the road unfold before me; knife-hearted, I steeled myself for what needed doing; edge-pledged, the road narrowed for me; corpse-given, I set my path for grief; marsh-mired, I trembled as the first step began to open; north-looking, I learnt of the body and the Number. Charred and mourned I became, drinking the thick corn beer of the Third City, stabbing out my life with knives of black glass, twice scoring the flesh and twice stabbing straight to the heart, and once drowning myself in the obsidian-lined well. And thus I learnt of the mind and the Number, and seven times I prepared betrayals, New Newgate becoming a comforting embrace.

The path to this place was not hard – I used the hollowness of cats to carve out a hollow in my belly to be filled. (Cats are friendly; I leave cats and catkind behind. That is another loss.) The ace of hungers was but raw meat and roast chestnuts drove the engine. I used the couriers’ notes, two of bats, to lessen the menace, folding ever in two. Then I moved to the worse – three of roses – the scrawl of the Correspondence in the bloody-ivy, tearing and eating, the thorns biting my mouth, a tango like that of the Musical Mathematician. I studiously avoided the four of eyes, still valuing myself too highly to be thought of as a monster. The five of lights filled me with wax and fire, but tallow is fat, and I thought the shock and pain worth it.

O but what of that place – the sky, the sky, the deepless blooming black – I began to stain my immortal soul. I had regained it from the devils, and now – I was confirmed a Catholic, back on the surface, and it hurt, the pain not physical, not mental, but spiritual. I was told the soul was immortal. (In the Neath, I learnt that may not have been the case.) In my dissolution, I had not attended a Mass or confessed my sins in so long a time. But still, it hurt. One seeks the Lord in hardship, does one not? (I attended services at a chapel in the North, yes, but I also attended a good and Godly mass, ere I departed, in the hopes that it would lave whatever I had left of my soul before I departed. Let this narrative be my confession. I hope it works. I doubt it will.) With brilliant souls I lured the cat. It stalked through my dreams – I turned to the bottle, sipped laudanum, breaking my solemn vow. Only the poppy juice would give my dreams the necessary dullness. More and more did I require it. Once with the cat alone, six times with a spirifer friend.

Now things began to hurt. The six of pearls – my great-grandfather was a dentist – I ate the teeth of others, crunching like corn, and I ate my own teeth, to gnaw ceaselessly. The seven of words that I answered, and made of myself of a pie – the Curve and the Lost Light – no more – flense-gifted I was, and the scales fell from my eyes. Seven was the number, seven false saints, seven scars of wax. I found five poor souls to listen to me, and two sleek black cats who’d seen the bloody-ivy in the Palace. The stench of betrayal filled my nostrils. Secrets burned. I lit a candle for the scar and the smirch, The Smirch; I tore the bombazine for the hook and the bait, The Hook; I took a ring for the scent and the turn, The Impetus; I took permission for the stone and the eyes, The Compass of Souls; I smashed a lens for the ink and the ink, The Ember; I whispered to the night for the web, o the web, The Webs; I made a bonfire of souls for the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, the price, The Sun and the Saint. I had the wax, and the wick, and the flint, and the tinder, and the season.

And I had St. Arthur’s candle, the first of seven. Knife-known I was, and the knave of regrets, calling “Restitution!” for the Drowned Man. Crossroads-bound I became, and pearls beyond price were the price, and my sanity, and memories of light. Among masques and mysteries and midnights, I gave up my fate, engaged in crypticisms, and was asked why. I said I must. I realize, now, that that was a lie. I told it to myself, hiding from the truth – that I chose to do this. I do not know now why I did not revel in this truth: that it was always an option, as was all my love of secrets. This was something I chose to do, for love. “In matters of the Bazaar,” they say, “look to love.” It is not love of Mr. Eaten, or not entirely – it is love for the Seeking Road. Love for secrets, love for the stories of betrayal and revenge, love with the concept of my own self-destruction in pursuit of secrets. It is odd, this new awareness: I doubt I would have pursued it were it less horrible.

It was worth it. St. Beau’s candle, the crossroads-candle, I now owned, and crossroads-cursed, I sought for restitution further, that I could grieve. With the knight of feasts, I set a place for Mr. Eaten, red as wounds, red as riots … and my hunger was settled, or went deeper. I sought a well, in the Forgotten Quarter, and gave up a work of genius, telling my stories to the well. St. Cerise’s candle I had, and I was as proud of myself as hoped. At the brink of the lower mysteries, I researched my incunabula, and, initiate, with Gods’ Editors, sought out the lower archives of the College of St. Cyriac.

From the book of Matthew (if that was even his name) slightly revised, chapter 25, verse 42 – “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, for I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink.” It was Mr. Eaten’s Calling Card, and the Isle awaited. I grew hungrier, hungrier, until the grief came upon me, until at long last I could light a candle in his memory, to ask ­what is forgotten?

And then I paused. I took a breath. I learnt that I could not take much with me, and so I devoted myself not to wasting the chiefest of my treasures, but to ensconce myself in the heights of the Bazaar itself, ensuring housing, if not for myself, then for those I left behind. Once again I had to inveigle myself into the tales of the Bazaar, to grow more Notable in its eyes, that I might blaze bright enough in defiance. And in that time new stories broke upon the shore – subtle shifts in the airs of London, promising greater change. I enjoyed the company of friends. Another Election was held, and I campaigned for an Implacable Detective. She lost to a boor called Antonio Feducci, whose libertarian ways mock the mechanisms of state, and who I am glad to leave behind. That ate my time. But I was still resolved, and, finally, when I had accomplished what was needful, I sold most of my worldly goods, and slept with the calling card crumpled in my fist, and took to the oars.

On Winking Isle, I prepared. I set aside jewels and riches, gave up my intrigues, rejected wine and song. No map knew the place I went; I had no more sweet memories, no more bitter. I knew nothing of Stone’s light. My chiefest treasures were gone. I told the wind my stories, forgot Axile, unpicked the warp, unpicked the weft, let the messages fall by the road’s edge. No more secrets. I saw the Sun beneath the Sea?. I paced the well. Isle-walker, tower-watcher, light-eater, well-weeper, libation-giver, shatter-fated, star-seared, I became.

I left the Isle – if I was ever really there – and rested briefly in London, until a little man knocked on my door, and I ate my exceptional entry, entire. It was a freedom to no longer strive to burn. I gained no candle – I gained St. Destin’s Candle, which does not yet exist. I asked a new question – Who is Salt? – and bent again to the oars. I walked the Isle again, knowing its two dozen paces intimately. I was red as sunsets, as desire, as betrayal, as the waters, as remembrance, as roses, as science – and then became black, black as paper, as ink, as time, as knives.

I groaned, and stretched, and left the Isle again – if I was ever really there – and sought her out, in the place where hearts go. I made a decision, after long deliberation, with a woman sloughed-off like a snakeskin – I wiped free my skin-bound memories, and profession, and acclaim, and destiny, and ability to have any of those things again. Perhaps I lie still in the Cave of the Nadir, flesh falling from my bones and bones growing over my eyes, and walk the Neath in a dream, writing this for no-one as I moulder in a sad fantasy. If that is true, what must Ooth-Nargai think? Does it wait for the return of a husband? Of a fellow-parent? Of a sad man who forgot his name and life to find out those of another? – but no, I cannot dwell on this. I will merely state that while I gave up power and wealth and fame and future light as air, I let fate bend itself around me ere I give up friends or home. I do not miss what I gave up to gain St. Erzulie’s Candle, where I became black as stars.

Again, the Isle. Welcome, welcome was I ere I left, and climbed into a yacht instead of a rowboat to sail over a real sea. I (we, we must I say, for a lady comes with me) went north, to where light and colour leached from the Zee, and I attended services at the Chapel of Lights. I learnt of the descents and ascents and betrayals, and gained St. Forthigan’s Candle. Then so long did I pace the well, cleansed, cleansed was I, and then I left the Isle behind for good. I forged secrets as in earlier days to find the rarest books to trade for the lady’s Hollow Heart, and I steamed South. I rowed, I rowed, I rowed (or did we?). I met with Nicator in that hollow stair, refused soup, asked my question, and woke. I attended in service of St. Gawain. And there, in the Chapel of Lights, was I damned. I offered myself – removed my head – made of myself a candle, entire. I gathered strange supplies for one last journey – prepared – embarked.

You may be horrified, dear reader, of what this journey has contained. I know I am. You may wish – I know I do – that my story had been a longer and a better one. There are so many stories I left unfinished, friendships I failed to forge, things I could have yet done.

But my story led me here, to this frozen gate. I will not turn back now. I will knock, and ask my question – and who knows, what then.

Yet lest you think I have acted entirely selfishly – which would be a fair assessment – lest you think that all my study of natural philosophy, no matter how outlandish, neither produced nor will produce any good – which would, so far, seem to be the case – lest you think that I chased dreams until I was devoured by a nightmare – which would be wholly true – I offer this last, feeble act.

I closed Dr. Beale’s House of Arguing, my salon.

In its place I have erected an orphanage, the Quejana Home for Parentally Deficient Youths. I entrust Ooth-Nargai with its management; I have every confidence that it will be a loving home. Even if my scholarship is wrong, or unremembered, or of no use, I will at least have given children a home.

That’s enough, right?

There were times when I wanted to rule. There were times when I wanted to better the lot of all thinking creatures. There were times when I wanted simply to teach.

We do not always get what we want.

We can still try, right?

There are so many ways I could end this. I will not cheapen it by trying to add a justification, nor an exhortation to keep one’s chin up. I will only offer a jumble of misremembered sentiments, and let you choose the one you think most fitting.

That’s fair, right?

Cry no more, shapeling, cry no more / Men were deceivers ever / One foot on sea, one foot on shore / To good things constant never. /

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

A reckoning shall not be postponed indefinitely.

What is Mr. Eaten’s name? That’s the best ----ing question, anybody ever asked.

Kiss your dad, square on the lips.

Good night, Fallen London, good night.

Ooth-Nargai. Celephaïs. I love you.

     – Manolo Maria Quejana y Karunungan, the erstwhile Dr. Mortimer Beale

[hitachi-grill420]

a month of poems

disorder/chaos/mess

 organization is overrated,

in my opinion.

a necessary evil at best.

 perhaps my need

for clutter to burrow in

is an indirect method of self-harm,

by means of

 managing the Sisyphean task

of prying loose the memories

and forming the treasure map

leading me

to where the hell

I left my glasses cloth.

   $19.99/month

 do not doubt

for a single, solitary second

that if they commodify the sky

they would do so.

 black it out,

darken it,

allow us starlight

as a subscription service.

  Forgetful

 sometimes my brain

functions like a cell phone

with only two bars.

 constantly dropping thoughts,

buffering memories,

and whatever does make it through

is choppy, blurry, and

distorted.

  chewed up tin foil

 run me through the gears

like a penny

in one of those

souvenir shop

flattening machines.

 render me a

useless novelty

destined to be forgotten

in a sock drawer,

or at best

slowly succumbing to the

entropy of a souvenir box,

alive and dead

like Schrödinger’s cat.

  extremely gay

 i am

a (barely) animate

heart-eyes emoji,

staring forever

at the tough,

beautiful,

creative,

powerful,

inspirational,

incredible

women and non-binary people

and trans people

in my life.

 this is

less a poem

and more a declarative statement.

 my heart is not a fireplace,

but a signal fire.

  holler

 you ever just wanna scream?

not particularly out of anger,

or fear.

 just out of a desire

to be heard

and acknowledged

for once.

 it’s why I admire birds:

they let us know

they exist

and are entirely

unashamed.

 Finger

 in a very literal sense,

I saw inside myself today.

as it turns out,

introspection becomes easier

(and less productive)

when you put a fine point to it.

 it’s funny—

getting bloodwork done,

seeing that plastic tubing filling up

crimson

made my stomach turn.

 but there, in the kitchen?

seeing the blood paint the paper towel?

 I felt fine.

  probability

 assuming an infinite number of universes

there has to be

at least one

where

I didn’t just

roll over and let

you pull everything good from me.

 in that universe,

I wonder what I’m like,

not having had to rebuild

my heart with scrawled recipes

and gummy multivitamins.

 would they recognize me?

recognize this

patchwork Frankenstein?

 is the act of rebuilding

transformative enough

to exceed them?

 do you think they’d help me

gouge out

these final traces you left behind

on me?

  artistry

 while cleaning my room,

 I found a number of

coffee mug stains.

 a series of interconnected,

concentric rings.

 i do not think

there is any sort of lesson here

(besides that I need to learn

how to drink coffee)

but i thought it was

neat.

 a brief pause

to appreciate

happy little accidents

can’t ever be a bad thing.

 an anthem of sorts

 sometimes,

I psych myself up

in the bathroom

at work.

 only when I know

there’s nobody to hear me

(because, I suppose,

some part of me still thinks

any praise or encouragement

directed towards me

is shameful).

 the noises of the building,

only really audible when things

are quiet and calm,

become the melody to

my self-made self-help mix tape.

 I have grown to love

the soundboard of modernity,

of planes landing,

the hum of pipes

and of distant radios.

  Decade/decaid

 ten years

is a lot of time.

 I thought I would be

in my career by now

maybe married

(probably not, though).

 time

makes fools of us all,

though.

 I hope that

if I make it

to 2029,

it hurts a whole lot less

to look back.

 I would like rose-colored glasses

with the thorns trimmed off.

  a shorter poem

 I’m bad at

letting things end

when they need to.

 I grip on with

white knuckles,

dig my fingernails into

every single thing

 because loss

and being forgotten

scare me more than

anything else in the world.

  Dichotomy

 a friend once told me,

“Jay,

you’re awful smart

to be such a clueless bitch.”

 I have a hard time

focusing,

not tripping over my own feet,

saying things properly,

holding on

and/or

letting go as needed.

 The real world

is hard to concentrate on

sometimes.

The mental tinnitus

of my neuroses

and my thoughts

occupy my

mind’s bandwidth

like trying to torrent

on dial-up.

 I suppose it’s for the best, though.

 Imagine what I could do

with fiber optics.

  ghosts are real

 I believe in ghosts.

 Not for any particular reason.

I just think the idea of

leaving some sort of trace

(even a solely metaphysical one)

is nice.

 but today,

I do feel like a ghost.

Translucent and hollow

leaving nothing but echoes

and messes

as I glide around.

 I do believe in ghosts

just not all of them.

  creatures of habit

 every morning,

I make coffee,

feed my dog,

take my Buspirone.

 it’s simple

 but it’s a good way to start my day.

 i like these small

islands of order

in oceans of chaos.

 yet,

even within these islands,

lurk that great huntress

probability.

 sometimes, my dog has already been fed

or we see a new bird outside

or I’m out of coffee

or I take time

to prepare a pot of pour-over.

 one time,

a small family

of deer pranced through our yard.

 sometimes,

these little compromises in our routines

can make the routines

a little less dusty.

  Oceanic

 beaches are nice.

 (except for that one time

a bunch of mostly eaten fish and

manatee corpses washed up

on a beach

when I was little)

 they are

a liminal space—

the boundary between

the quantifiable, land

and the infinitely, unknowably massive

seas.

 crossing that boundary,

we are swallowed

more and more

by the mystery,

by the unknown,

and if we are not careful

it will eventually fill us,

consume us,

recycle us.

 at the bottom,

no light reaches

(save for the bioluminescence

of the quasi-xenobiological

fish(?))

and the weight of every drop of water

above you pushes downwards.

 i always wonder—

assuming one could survive—

what would that feel like?

would it crush you?

would you sink further down?

 one day, I’ll meet you

there among the coral,

the vents,

 and we will face the pressure

and we will either

drag Atlantis from the muck

or we will die.

  poem for the lines in our palms

 some people say they can

read your personality

or your future

by looking at the lines on your palm.

 when I trace my own,

I see the curves of

a bull’s head,

of the biohazard symbol,

of the calloused pinky

from holding my phone so often.

 and the lines in yours?

long and never ending,

curving at the edge like the horizon,

patient and soft like

cotton candy plucked out of time.

 there are worlds between us,

separated by dermal layers.

yet, our lines compliment the other’s.

 I can’t say I’ve ever

put much stock in palm reading,

but, hell

 I’ll give it a try.

  well, alright

 my grandpa

was a greyhound bus driver

and a very good one at that.

 his customers loved him

his bosses varied.

 they bugged him to wear his hat,

and he, in turn, refused

until the day

he got a speeding ticket.

 his dispatcher was furious.

Dispatch tore into him,

screaming for minutes into the phone.

 my grandpa just says,

“I don’t know what happened.

I was wearing my hat and everything.”

 I tell every boss I have this story,

to illustrate two important points:

One, I have an excellent work ethic.

And two,

 I have the stubborn orneriness

of hillfolk

chicken-fried into my DNA.

  streamed live from Kentucky, 11/12/2019

 a human body strides forward,

each step heavy with

purpose, leaving blackened,

foot-shaped scars in the cement.

 the heat radiates outward,

melting snow,

soft hissing joining the ambient sounds

of traffic on 238,

the wind,

the sounds of night.

 the body is covered in thorns,

wreathed in crackling fire.

 yet still it walks.

 in front of it stand armed men,

a judge’s bench,

walls and laws and

every other obstacle.

 behind it frolics other bodies,

some bright and rosy

others grey, dirt stuck to their faces

and under their nails.

 yet still it walks.

  poem for cold pizza

 there are things to be said

for small comforts.

 people assuming

I am incompetent

ignorant

or otherwise irrelevant

 is a little less

painful

with the weak anesthetic

of cold pizza

and my antidepressants

and a brief forgetting

of shame.

  poem for a morning run

 “there is no such thing

as a free lunch.”

 I repeat that in my mind as

i stumble into a stop sign,

hanging onto it

as the cul-de-sac warped beneath me.

 my legs wobble,

reverberating upwards into

my stomach, empty

save for coffee

and acid

and a piece of leftover Halloween candy.

 a neighbor,

in a wifebeater and boxers,

puffs on his cigarette while his dog

stares at me as it shits in the grass.

 the earliest steps of any journey

are embarrassing

painful

and subject

to strange and critical audiences.

 but today, I ran.

 not far,

not for long,

and not without watching eyes, but

 I ran.

 poem for a day I didn’t feel like writing a poem

 sometimes, poetry is easy.

 it’s like riding a bike after you’ve learned:

muscle memory,

your innate familiarity,

your own balance,

all coming together.

 today,

it was like I

Eternal Sunshine’d

bike riding out of my head

drug a scalpel through that part of my brain

and hopped on to do the

Tour de France.

 maybe the bike

is also on fire?

  reciprocity

 it’s a lot easier

to give other people

good advice,

 to give them

kind words, pieces of yourself

wrapped in love,

with care.

 unfortunately,

i am a one-way road.

I spew forth care

but receiving it?

 unthinkable.

far too busy.

 after all,

I have gifts to deliver;

 things to spew

  anticipating

 breathless, I sat at the bottom

of the waterfall, staring up

to its source, waiting patiently.

 my chest felt like a rope pulled taut.

i feared you’d fallen on your climb to the top

(i had sat out, since I’d hurt my back

falling drunk off the porch

a few nights prior).

 damn,

if I don’t wish that tension

hadn’t been in vain now.

  quarantine

 I am, essentially, the sum total

of a billion viruses.

poxes of sadness,

the belligerent fever of mania,

this infectious anger that bubbles

in my guts like stomach acid.

 A splash of cool girl bacteria,

a shattered Petri dish of septic anxiety.

 Inoculate yourselves against me.

I am a pestilence,

a plague,

an outbreak of rebellion

and sadness

and anger

and the radical desire

for the freedom of solitude.

  victory

 celebrating small wins

(even if, ultimately, their impact is limited)

keeps your spirit ignited.

 we may have only taken

one mile out of a hundred,

but damn

if this mile ain’t a pretty one.

  poem for colloidal silver

 colloidal silver,

in excess,

turns you blue.

 this is a more direct

cause-and-effect

than a lot of us can ask for.

 hucksters passed it off

as a cure-all, the

hypothetical snake oil,

a panacea.

 exploiting suffering for profit,

under false pretenses,

earns you a special place in hell

and I hope that place is a vivid cyan.

  poem for a scab

 I’ve never been sure how scabs work.

 i know what they do

 and that platelets are involved, I think

but beyond that, I’m stumped.

 I assume it’s something like patching a hole

or sewing a button on.

 with or without our knowledge,

our understanding,

our bodies repair themselves as needed.

our skin knits itself together,

diseases are fought off.

 we fight off a lot without knowing.

 perhaps it is better that way.

  an impulse

 don’t ever assume I know anything.

first mistake: I am a reaction.

vinegar and baking soda,

pouring up and over the rim,

spilling on the porch

on a hot April day.

 First mistake: i was prepared.

the ant stored up food all spring.

the grasshopper laid around.

in winter, the ground froze

and both of them died.

 first mistake: we cling too hard.

do you remember?

when you drank my savings,

slept with your space heater,

couldn’t spare a blanket?

i had six arms then, could lift

anything set in front of me,

but you left me outside and

now the frostbite’s set in.

 first mistake: we hold on.

I feel the phantom pains of

those six strong arms, of

the space left when I dug you out of

me, of

the cold morning air

and the lingering taste of

Kentucky Gentleman

and the smell of vinegar.

 first mistake:

not expecting you to jump

the day the cold blew in.

  poem for the embers

 anger is a good way to fuel yourself

especially when you don’t have

anything else

 to run on.

 but now I’m tired.

now all my insides feel burnt up,

the undergrowth in my guts

black and withered and smoking,

devoured by gluttonous rage

and my acid reflux.

 there are two wolves inside of us

and mine are both picked clean,

their bones bleaching in the dazzling light

of the thorium reactor that’s taking up

the scar tissue where I used to mine for joy.

 if I keep this bonfire going,

until I reach where I need to be,

will there be anything left inside me?

 is the fuel to move worth it

if only wreckage arrives?

[apostateangela]

Who and Why, Again?

I suppose the next step is context.

I am an apostate, but who else am I?

And why am I part of the Mormon church’s current fear, the second great apostasy?

The answer to the second is obviously one of the main purposes of this blog and will be answered often and in several different installments. I am writing to solidify this journey for myself and to share it with others in the hopes that it will create both connection and perspective.

But I know the paradox of myself.

I am unique.

Likewise, I am not unique.

While it is true that the specifics that led to my particular apostasy are unique to me, the mass exodus rejecting or relinquishing LDS membership that is currently happening means I am not. Many people who have been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are walking away.

It is easier for some than it is for others. But across the board, it is not ever entirely easy.

It has been incredibly difficult for me. And the reasons for that difficulty are a conglomeration of people and situations that in any combination could apply to many.

But, in this case, are entirely unique to me.

Here goes:

I was born into the church, generations and generations of Latter Day Saints that came across the ocean and then the plains of the young United States trying to escape persecution and find a place where they could believe what they wanted to believe in safety.

Ironic, isn’t it? As that is the same thing I want now.

And yet, the tables have turned. For it was they who bound and subjected me, for forty six years, not only to a set of oppressive rules but also within a culture that did not and would never have allowed me to be myself or have my own truth.

I grew up, in small town Utah, the place where Mormonism thrives. The small-mindedness of small towns in general allows for a religious culture of rules and shame and guilt to maintain power and life.

I am the oldest of three children, the only daughter. A small Mormon family, to be sure. But my mother’s health problems did not allow her to have the twelve children she said she wanted on more than one occasion.

My father tried to live as a man of integrity, while at the same time using vocabulary and action both racist and misogynist. I often tease him about accidentally raising a feminist. He told me I could do anything a boy could do--as long as I didn’t cross him. But sadly, I watched him treat my mother as a second class citizen in the name of God and her divine feminine role supported by the doctrine of the Mormon church. And I subsequently learned from my mother’s example, in perfect subjugation to the church and my father, what kind of woman I should be. As the oldest child and only girl, I tried to make my parents and God proud, even though I often felt wrong and alone in the midst of my carefully structured and controlled life.

As I turned the ripe old age of sixteen, (the acceptable and dictated age for dating) I dated and met at least four young men who liked me, a lot, but believed they owed God their time and left for two years on LDS missions. God is always first, you know.

Whew!

There’s too much.

The scope of this undertaking is so vast that I stagger trying to find the purchase in creating direction so that I don’t ramble endlessly. Each statement I write to set up a skeleton of my past demands explanation.

Forgive me if I leave something out or go on too long. There will be more to come for much if not most of the generalities in this post. I feel it is important to have some basic background from which to work for the posts to come.

I struggled to live the Mormon fairytale. Much like the princess locked in the tower, I was supposed to ‘wait’ for my true love as he was off on his quest, holding myself away from the world and keeping myself pure. I wrote hundreds of letters, pining for a prince that didn’t exist as he was just a young man, trying to use honeyed religious rhetoric to bring more poor souls into the grasp of the church.

While it is true that I weakly railed against the fetters of the church and tried to tiptoe out of the shadow I was under, my parents and the Mormon God prevailed and I married one of these young men at the age of nineteen. I had only known him a short six weeks before he left on his mission. We were engaged eleven days after he returned and wed within two months. I began the next level of my incarceration; a virgin bride fully invested and indoctrinated in the role of obedient Mormon wife and shortly thereafter mother.

Freud posited that women choose and marry men like their fathers.

The tragedy in that theory is real.

If her father is a controlling, verbally abusive bastard chances are her husband will be too. Because as a daughter that idolized her father, she see that as acceptable in a man, even desirable.

And the church gives a green light to that behavior with the caveat that the husband must follow God. Who decides if the man is following God? Other men, and mostly themselves. They say the words. They go to the meetings. They create the show. And they can do whatever they want in the name of God.

This creates a power dynamic supernaturally charged.

How can a woman fight both a man and a God?

Add the sociopathy and narcissism both genetic and environmental to that man and it’s a wonder I got out alive.

Twenty five years and four children later, I am out.

And while I am alive, it is not pretty.

It isn’t necessarily ugly, just horrifically tragic.

I came out of those forty six years without an identity.

Everything I used to define myself, I’d say 98% of my paradigms, were shattered in one fell swoop.

Every instinct I have is wrong.

And that was and is still frightening.

It has been two years. And while I have made considerable progress, there is still such a long way to go.

My success has been amplified by several people who have supported me in my daily discombobulation and more than anything BELIEVED me.

I say ‘believed me’, not ‘believed in me’ because the gaslighting and indoctrination I have been subjected to has made that the most important thing of all, to be believed.

And ultimately, as hard as it for me to acknowledge this, my success is my own.

In my intense personal evaluation and reflection, I have come to understand the startling beauty that has revealed this truth; I am remarkably strong. I will fight for myself, no matter the difficulty. And strangely, I always have. Though the battles were small, they were there preparing me for this ultimate conflict and escape.

It is in these words I write that I echo Dylan Thomas; I will not ‘go gentle’, but rather I will ‘rage against’ so that I can live the life that was stolen from me.

And along with George Eliot I believe that “It’s never too late to be what [I] might have been.”

-Angela

[erinkappeler]

“We travel far in thought”

I'm not quite sure what this piece is: a travelogue, a defense of tastelessness, an exploration of the meaning and value of the sign "woman" now, a manifesto for living, a meandering record of thought. It's mostly a collection of things I needed to work out for myself that I post here in the hopes that they'll resonate with someone who's also trying to work some of them out.

I. Itinerant "My imagination wandered at will; my dreams were revealing.... Thoughts were things, to be collected, collated, analysed, shelved or resolved. Fragmentary ideas, apparently unrelated, were often found to be part of a special layer or stratum of thought and memory, therefore to belong together; these were sometimes skillfully pieced together like the exquisite Greek tear-jars and iridescent glass bowls and vases that gleamed in the dusk from the shelves of the cabinet that faced me where I stretched, propped up on the couch in the room in Berggasse 19, Wien IX." -- H.D., Tribute to Freud

I came to Vienna, like so many before me, for Freud.

In between conference presentations (one at the American Comparative Literature Association's conference in July in Utrecht and one at the Modernist Studies Association conference in August in Amsterdam), I am loosely tracing threads that made up the poet H.D.'s life a hundred years ago, including her time as an analysand of Freud in 1933 and 34. This has meant taking a meandering path from Amsterdam to Berlin to Prague to Vienna to Rome to Corfu to Athens to Syros to Lesvos to Zurich and back to Amsterdam over the past six weeks, planning each leg as I get to it, taking fast trains and slow ferries, writing and thinking all along the route.

There is no particular reason to follow these threads now. I teach H.D. occasionally, and I wrote an undergraduate thesis about her, but I don't work on her anymore (my conference presentations are about Mary Austin and James Weldon Johnson, contemporaries of H.D.'s who had nothing to do with her). But when I realized I was going to have a little over a month to travel in Europe, when I thought of where I wanted to go, I thought of Corfu, where H.D. had a vision that was significant for her, and that thought has shaped the contours of this trip.

It's fitting, given the Freudian connection, that as I've traveled I've discovered a number of submerged reasons for the sudden desire to return to H.D. now. They have to do with loss, and identity, and class, and criticism, and taste. They have to do with recovery, and with poesis. They're about solitude and connection. They're about the disconnect between my personal and my professional lives and the submerged threads that loosely bind them.

I started reading and writing about H.D. about the same time I started a relationship that lasted through almost all of my twenties. Though the relationship is long over, the process of sorting out the stories and the selves it generated hasn't really stopped for me. Is this an overdue project? Yes and no. Somewhere in A Lover's Discourse Barthes writes about those who are disorganized by mourning for longer than is acceptable. In Freud's terms, such a person is melancholic -- they can't get past an event or a feeling. I am prone to melancholic loops. It takes me ages to fully process emotions and to understand intellectually what I've been feeling intensely. Common knowledge has it that it takes half the lifespan of a relationship to get over it. If that's so, I'm well past the expiration date for thinking about this one in any kind of sustained way. But what does it mean to get over a part of your history, a part of the things that make you you? What would it mean to fully process it? What about the lingering emotions and questions that exceed the memory of the person or the relationship itself, which is really what I'm talking about here, since I no longer know the person(s) my ex has become, just as he no longer knows me? Isn't it worse to fail to reconcile with these lingering questions, to just put them aside, to pretend things end neatly, or at all?

Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost is one of the books I loaded on my Kindle before leaving the States (I know, I know -- a little on the nose for traipsing around Europe), and I was struck by the following lines in the essay "Two Arrowheads": 

"A happy love is a single story, a disintegrating one is two or more competing, conflicting versions, and a disintegrated one lies at your feet like a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a different story ... The stories don't fit back together, and it's the end of stories, those devices we carry like shells and shields and blinkers and occasionally maps and compasses." 

One mirror shard: we made each other worse versions of ourselves. Another: I was cruel. Another: from the beginning, he had a lot of stories about who I was that didn't have anything to do with my experience of myself, that were classed and gendered on both sides.

I think that on some level, with this trip I'm trying to go back to a point before that doubled and multiplied story, to tell a new one of myself in relation to myself, my thoughts, my non-romantic relationships, places, books, systems, landscapes, genealogies. These are all stories I already tell myself, that I already share with others, that I already live, but I think I wanted to make them mappable. All of the international travel I've done in my adult life was with that partner; this is my first overseas trip alone. It is a chance to carve out new territory, layer new experiences on the old. It's a chance to, so to speak, reclaim my time, in a political era that is both hostile to my existence as a woman and that commits violence in the name of a quality it ascribes to my body (white womanhood, always in peril).

I wrote my undergraduate thesis about H.D. after falling in love with her epic poem Trilogy in a class on American women writers. At the time I knew it was pretentious to talk about this project as the beginning of my intellectual career, but I also really liked to talk about it in those terms. I had always been the smart kid, but this project was the first time that it truly seemed that ideas could be, not just instrumental (good grades, college admissions, stable career), not just interesting, but the stuff of a fulfilling life's work, a significant part of a life. The class in which I first read Trilogy was all about taking womens' ideas seriously. My undergraduate advisor took mine very seriously, encouraging me to apply for fellowships, nominating me for prizes, helping me to see my ideas as part of a conversation with "real" scholars -- the first of a long line of women to do so, to whom I owe the career I have now. 

One of H.D.'s favorite tropes to play with was the palimpsest. "Palimpsest" refers to a piece of parchment or paper that has been written on, partially erased, and then overwritten with another text. The first writing is obscured and fragmentary, but still there as an echo or a trace. In extended, metaphorical usage, "palimpsest" is anything that has been reused, written over, but that still has some evidence of its earlier forms. It is the perfect image for a poet who wanted to think about history and the unconscious and trauma -- for all of the things that seem to be over and gone that keep returning in altered forms.

[Palimpsest in Ermoupolis]

The image of the palimpsest that H.D. worked and reworked is a way to think about loss differently-- to look at all the layers that make up a life, including the traces of things that have ended or been destroyed, that shift to form patterns and shift again to create a blur that maybe becomes a pattern again. I realized consciously, standing in front of the reconstructed Bella Venezia hotel in Corfu town (the original was destroyed, collateral damage of WWII), the site of H.D.'s Corfu event, that I came on this trip to think about my own personal palimpsest -- an image that's complicated and simple and meaningless and my entire world, the way that all individual lives are infinitessimally small and infinitely large at the same time. (At a Passover dinner in Missouri this spring, part of a new layer in my palimpsest, my friend Rachel read us the Talmudic saying that who saves a life saves the entire world. I think of this often when I'm tired of/from activist work in the Trump era.) My palimpsest includes that relationship that defined my twenties, but it does not start or end there, as I sometimes used to like to pretend it did.

Others have made the case for the seriousness of womens' thoughts and lives and creations in ways I now find more compelling, but H.D. will always be the first who made me think in a sustained way about these things. For that reason alone I wanted her to be part of the palimpsest or pattern or constellation I decided to trace this summer. I wanted to weave her more fully into the life that tendrils out from Iowa to Amsterdam to Corfu to Zurich to Missouri and on and on. And so I came to Vienna, and Corfu, and kept going.

II. Corfu: Vision "We had come together in order to substantiate something. I did not know what. There was something that was beating in my brain; I do not say my heart -- my brain. I wanted it to be let out." -- H.D., Tribute to Freud

I haven't thought about H.D. much since I started grad school. When you talk about H.D. in academic circles, you have to hedge and qualify. There is something embarrassing about her. She is excessive -- excessively melodramatic, excessively self-serious. And yet. And because. I like excessive women. I especially like women who insist on giving weight to the experiences and emotions that get coded as melodramatic or self-indulgent. I like H.D.

H.D. had a breakdown/breakthrough in Corfu town in 1920. She was fleeing London and WWI and what she experienced as the total fragmentation of her personal world and the world at large during the war. While staying at the Bella Venezia hotel, she had a vision of mysterious hieroglyphic writing on the wall of her hotel room. Much later, in 1933, she underwent a brief period of analysis with Freud in Vienna during which they tried to decipher what the writing meant.

[The new Bella Venezia]

I took great pleasure in re-reading H.D.'s account of her analysis with Freud on the train from Vienna to Rome, adding another layer on top of her narrative of their interweaved patterns, which linked Vienna and Rome and Corfu. I had forgotten how much I admire Tribute to Freud in all its excessiveness. It's self-indulgent, yes, and free-associative, yes, and at times utterly impossible, but it's also a text in which H.D. asserts her authority to interpret her own life in ways that Freud did not sanction, and in which she insists on a reparative reading of history, in spite of the very real trauma she lived through (H.D. experienced much of the violence of both world wars at firsthand -- she lost a brother in WWI, suffered a miscarriage, had a severely shell-shocked husband return home to her, and then lived in London during the Blitz).

In Tribute, H.D. repeatedly stakes a claim to her right to interpretation and to self-knowledge that both depends upon and is separate from Freud's authority. H.D.'s palimpsest involved stories and symbols from all kinds of classical mythological worlds, which overlapped with Freud's more skeptically tinged interest in antiquities and the history of religion. She explained that due to this overlap, "Sometimes, the Professor knew actually my terrain, sometimes it was implicit in a statue or a picture, like that old-fashioned steel engraving of the Temple at Karnak that hung above the couch. I had visited that particular temple, he had not" (10-11). It's a small but important moment in which H.D. asserts the value of her personal experience as part of her dialogue with Freud. He may be the analyst, he may have the collection to testify to a vast body of knowledge about the classical world, but she too had her ways of knowing. 

[Part of Freud’s antiquities collection, which I spent a long time examining at Bergasse 19]

Famously (among H.D. scholars, at least), H.D. wrote that "there was an argument implicit in our very bones" (17), and that, though she "was a student, working under the direction of the greatest mind of this and of perhaps many succeeding generations ... the Professor was not always right" (24-25). Their argument came down, essentially, to hope; Freud diagnosed H.D. with a type of religious monomania -- the desire to found a new religion -- and saw her desire for meaningful signs and symbols, for a pattern or order in the world, to be a dangerous symptom of a delusion. 

This was especially true when it came to what she called the "writing-on-the-wall" episode in Corfu. 

[Writing on the wall 2017 -- the more things change. I’m writing this caption the day after Charlottesville.]

In her long description of the vision and her argument with Freud about the vision, H.D. explained, 

"We can read my writing, the fact that there was writing, in two ways or in more than two ways. We can read or translate it as a suppressed desire for forbidden 'signs and wonders,' breaking bounds, a suppressed desire to 'found a new religion' which the Professor ferreted out ... Or this writing-on-the-wall is merely an extension of the artist's mind, a picture or an illustrated poem, taken out of the actual dream or day-dream content and project from within (though apparently from outside), really a high-powered idea, simply over-stressed, over-thought, you might say, an echo of an idea, a reflection of a reflection, a 'freak' thought that had got out of hand, gone too far, a 'dangerous symptom'" (75-76).

A hysterical woman, or an artist? Irrational emotions or ideas worth attending to? Her right to her ideas -- to stay with them, to think about them intently, to consider what they could signify aside from some kind of disorder in her mind -- is at the heart of Tribute to Freud as much as her genuine homage to the man who "had first opened the field to the study of this vast, unexplored region," the "shapes, lines, graphs [that made up] the hieroglyph of the unconscious" (140). It is this fight that remains at the heart of my love for her work.

III. Rome: Scale "What does it mean to call something petty, or to be petty yourself? Pettiness has to do with being out of scale. We might understand pettiness as a relation between attention and object of attention: you are being petty when a small or seemingly irrelevant detail generates disproportionate irritation; you are also being petty when irritation leads you to pay disproportionate attention to a small detail."

Though I didn't see it when it started (indeed, I didn't see it until after very many years of therapy and much nudging from my own analyst), the relationship that defined my twenties involved a lot of him telling me that my ways of being in the world were wrong -- something I had accepted in part because this was a recurring experience I had in college, at an institution that I at first romanticized and very quickly became horrified by, as I was trained out of old habits and systems and assumptions and socioeconomic expectations and behaviors (some amalgamation of lower middle class/middlebrow, always haunted by the specter of slipping back in the poverty of previous generations, never secure about money or status, not trained to like the "right" things or to behave in the right ways) into new ones (the cruelty of old money, the desperation of new or aspiring new money). I value some of this retraining when it comes to the scholastic realm, but a lot of it never really took. This failure to be retrained shapes the kind of thinker and critic and teacher I am now. It has a lot to do with why I live in Missouri and why I felt immediately connected to my community there even as I'm exasperated by it. It is part of why I'm writing this as a blog post and not as a piece of professionalized writing.

The only physical book I brought with me on this trip is the third volume of Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels because I was right in the middle of it when my flight took off and because I couldn't bear to be apart from the story. (I'm dragging it around now even though I've finished it and don't have room for it in my backpack for the same reason. I almost tried to squeeze in a visit to Naples and Ischia but couldn't swing it, so Rome had to stand in.) These novels often get reduced to "those books about female friendship," which they are, but they are also about the details of what it means to be trained out of the class you were born into, and about what it means to think about womens' lives as part of larger movements and systems but also as outside of and irreducible to those systems. They're about what women lose, intentionally and not, under patriarchy and capitalism, how the game is rigged and how it forces you to play anyway.   

Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle are currently my favorite readers of these novels because of the ways they've thought about how criticism isn't really up to they challenges they pose. In "The Function of Pettiness at the Present Time," Blackwood and Mesle read Ferrante's novels as, paradoxically, importantly petty. It is the pettiness of the details of the womens' lives in the books, they argue, that manage to accurately capture "the grinding quality" of gendered experiences of "rape, loss, poverty, abuse, marriage, friendship." I write this in the days immediately following the clip of Maxine Waters reclaiming her time going viral, another perfect example of the huge importance of pettiness. Steve Mnuchin is of course the one actually being petty by refusing to answer Waters's question, but Waters is the one forced to repeatedly assert her right to not have her time wasted with bullshitting. She has to say it over and over and over and over and over. And she does because she is a goddamn heroine, but she still has to engage in the grindingness of the exchange.

A petty, huge fight I had with the first person I dated after the relationship that defined my twenties ended started with the words "what's so bad about sexism really, though?" I only wish that that person, bless his heart, could have realized how fully he was enacting sexist violence through that question and his continued insistence throughout the fight that my nuanced arguments came down to "it makes women feel bad" -- a petty reading of a grinding experience indeed. In our era of presidential gaslighting, of re-entrenched sexism and misogyny (what a joke -- as if it had ever been uprooted an inch), I don't want to talk to anyone who isn't being petty, who isn't thinking about the minutiae of daily life and how fucking irritating it is to deal with this shit all of the goddamn time. Mesle and Blackwood: 

"The Neapolitan novels feel weirdly capacious to us because they have allowed space for ugly feelings to exist, and importantly not only in their fictional depiction. One thing that this ugliness has allowed us is new purchase on the experience of reading, interpreting, and practicing criticism as women. It seems to us, personally, and as women, that to love these novels is to hate how most everyone else talks, argues, and makes claims about them. In fact, to love these novels, as women, might be to hate everyone; that hate might be one of the best (yet still limited) tools we have to understand how gender continues, obstinately, to shape individuals' entrance into interpretation."

I haven't wanted to talk to anyone who isn't feeling petty about gender since November 9th. But I also don't want to talk to anyone who isn't feeling petty about class and race, and in the academy, I find that people are rarely petty enough, for my taste, about class, Mesle and Blackwood included (we do slightly -- only slightly -- better about dealing critically with race. And of course it needs to be said, over and over and over, that these are not extricable categories -- you can't talk about gender without talking about race without talking about class. Though you wouldn't know it from the constant headlines about Trump voters, the "working" class is not exclusively composed of angry white men).

Two things irritated me about Mesle and Blackwood's brilliant reading of being irritated by readings of the Neapolitan novels: one petty and one very large indeed. The petty (which is of course to say the still large): they read a scene in which "Lenu realizes that her entire critical and creative life might be 'reduced merely to a petty battle to change her social class,'" which is indeed a crucial moment. The Lenu who has changed her social class has this thought, yes, that the fight may have been "mere." But when I read this line, the affirmation that such a battle would be petty, all I could think of was the bitter catharsis I saw in some of my middle school classmates, listening to Everclear on the back of the bus that took us home from school, singing along with the lines, "I hate those people who love to tell you / money is the root of all that kills/ they have never been poor / they have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas." It's merely changing your social class once you've done it, but there's nothing mere about it when you're living day to day, bracing for the petty economic catastrophe that could ruin you at any minute. (Would such a change be "mere" to the Lila who had to stop her education after elementary school, who destroys her body and mind working in the sausage factory?) In the context of the novel, the "mereness" has to do with a failure to live according to revolutionary political ideals -- to fit the personal into the larger systems that shape it and to take on the larger systems rather than the "mere" individual life. But the novels also show us the consequences of living for those ideals in the story arcs of Pasquale and Nadia. The system doesn't change, the individual life is ruined or corrupted anyway.

What I love about these novels, what I haven't seen discussed yet in criticism about them (which could be my own blindness, because I keep reading the articles focusing on gender), is how they also capture the grindingness and pettiness of the experience of "merely" changing one's socioeconomic status, in addition to capturing the ways it can make one myopic and self-centered. Lenu is an outsider to the world of the Italian academy -- it is a shock to her when she is admitted, tuition-free, to a university in Pisa -- and she marvels at her professor's children, who seem to move so naturally in a world of ideas she has to work to come to grips with. The passages about the frustration of not knowing how to navigate new social spaces, of not understanding what the rules are -- that show how difficult it can be to figure out what the game even is, let alone how to play -- struck me so forcefully. (This is why, of all the novels in the world, I will always remain deeply, intensely attached to Great Expectations. Pip never really gets it -- the game plays him, and he doesn't understand anything about it until it's far too late.) 

[This is also why I was thrilled to see The Goldfinch in person in the Hague; Donna Tartt's novel of the same name is a reworking of Great Expectations.] 

What you learn is to shut up, to imitate, to not speak up when an idea or assumption seems wrong to you, because you know that any wrongness is always located in the things you learned as a member of other, unprestigious communities, from people with no status. Take, for instance, Lenu's account of a discussion of an article she hadn't read about Italian politics:

"The subject made me uneasy, and I listened in silence. ... I was informed about world events only superficially, and I had picked up almost nothing about students, demonstrations, clashes, the wounded, arrests, blood. Since I was now outside the university, all I really knew about that chaos was Pietro's [her fiancee] grubmlings, his complaints about what he called literally 'the Pisan nonsense.' As a result I felt around me a scene with confusing features: features that, however, my companions seemed able to decipher with great precision, Nino even more than the others. I sat beside him, I listened, I touched his arm with mine."

Nino, who comes from the same place as Lenu, understands the game faster than she does (or at least appears to), and we see her here in some ways trying to take a shortcut through him -- attaching herself to his body, desiring to take on some of his facility in this world of ideas through physical contact, the same way her husband Pietro, of that academic, petit bourgeouis class, provides her a way in.

The novels also beautifully, simply, killingly describe the ways that changing one's socioeconomic status can alienate you from your family and them from you, temporarily or permanently. Lenu's family is of course proud of her, but also resentful of her and ashamed when she brings her new realm to them. When she finally brings her higher-status fiancee home, she waits until the last minute to tell her parents he's coming, which causes the following scene with her mother:

"She attacked me in very low but shrill tones, hissing with reddened eyes: We are nothing to you, you tell us nothing until the last minute, the young lady thinks she's somebody because she has an education, because she writes books, because she's marrying a professor, but my dear, you came out of this belly and you are made of this substance, so don't act superior and don't ever forget that if you are intelligent, I who carried you in here am just as intelligent, if not more, and if I had had the chance I would have done the same as you, understand?"

I still have a hard time thinking about how angry I was with my family for not preparing me better for the violent competitiveness, for the disillusionment, for the fundamental pettiness, of social climbing via educational institutions in America. They couldn't have, of course, and it wasn't actually them I was mad at -- it was the people constructing and enforcing the rules of the game -- but that didn't make the conflict any less real. It didn't make it any easier to go home, to see the ideas and ways of knowing and cultural productions I was now supposed to scoff at, to be better than.

A petty incident I haven't let go of and will never let go of (the same way I will not let go of ending sentences with prepositions): in a creative writing class, a fellow student wrote a story about meeting an autodidact. It was, to my mind, a shitty, condescending portrait written by a shitty, overprivileged prep school kid. The professor praised it as a true portrait of what autodidacts are like. I fumed for days to myself about this and was never able to express how fundamentally gross the whole exchange was. It was so dismissive of this character, of their way of processing the world, which irritated me deeply because of how many autodidacts I grew up with, who were autodidacts because education is a class-based system even in our supposedly democratic nation. Of course you process the world differently if you have acquired knowledge without the guidance of institutions designed to shore up class differences, which are also gendered and raced differences. Why that should then become a source of bemusement for people with access to those institutions, a way to write cute stories about how smart and talented they are after all their years in those institutions...well. It's a thing I have no desire to reconcile myself to. (And, it needs to be said, this truly is a petty incident, compared to the serious aggressions my non-white classmates faced daily in virtually every classroom, every space on campus.)

So, the petty irritation with Mesle and Blackwood's reading: it's not petty enough about classed experience. The larger irritation: I want them to go further, to double down on claims they gesture toward or feint at here that they assert forcefully elsewhere. In a non-scholarly article, they argue that "taste is just another name for misogyny," but in this piece they argue that this claim, when presented "as a truth claim at the foundation of an argument rather than the argument itself...can't hold ... it is out of scale with itself." But of course this claim can and does hold, and can be backed up with all kinds of careful, rigorous scholarship, as can claims that taste is another name for racism and for classism. Take Michael Omi and Howard Winant on racial formation, "the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories ... in the cultural realm, dress, music, art, language and indeed the very concept of 'taste' has been shaped by racial consciousness and racial dynamics" (qtd. in Bibby 493). Take basically all of Pierre Bourdieu's work, or the whole field of cultural studies, or race studies, or gender studies, or queer studies -- all of it provides more than ample evidence that taste is another name for oppression. I want Blackwood and Mesle to own this, to say, not just that taste is misogyny, but fuck the very idea of taste. It is worse than useless; it's violent.

I write "fuck taste," and take great pleasure in writing it, and mean it sincerely. And yet, as of April 2016, I am in a position to be the gatekeeper, the one who tells students that their ways of knowing are wrong, that there are other evaluative standards than the ones they know that they must apply if they want to enter a world of ideas. I spend a lot of time telling students that the ways they're used to reading literature will no longer work for them, at least not in my classroom. But I do what I can to explain that ways of knowing, ways of reading, are situational. They depend on communities and contexts, and the way they learn to read in the classroom isn't the only or even always the most desirable way to read. 

When I teach, I focus my students' attention on particular texts not because I think they're objectively good, as if that's something that could ever be evaluated, but because I think they contain ideas that my students need to encounter, to think about, to wrestle with to live lives that don't remain petty and quotidian, even as they remain grounded in those categories. I don't want them to have to be trained into a new class, though I want them to have the tools they'll need if they want to fight that battle. I want to make their worlds bigger. I want them to think about the types of communities they want to create for themselves, at all scales. I want them to dream, and to create their own palimpsests, and pull together the texts and experiences and people that they need, that define them, that make them bigger and better versions of themselves, that add to their stories. This project seems so much more urgent than evaluative criticism ever has been or could be. That probably makes it utopian and quixotic. But I also know that already, for a student or two, this approach has mattered.

"Good" is a useless term; "worth thinking about" is better. I want to live in a world in which people say "that's not for me" rather than "that's objectively bad," where we ask "what do the people who it's for like about it? What's interesting about this object when I try to remove my ego from the conversation?" and so I do my best to create that world for myself and my students every day. I can't make anyone else dwell there with me, but I try to make it an inviting place.

IV. Syros and Lesvos: Re-enchantment

[I was a free [woman] in [Lesvos] / I felt unfettered and alive]

Like a lot of women, I've been trained out of feeling that self-expression is seemly or necessary. This happened insidiously in various complicated ways, most of them having to do with writing. I've always written -- I made picture books out of construction paper bound with masking tape before I understood the alphabet; in elementary school I wrote stories in which I was a genius child detective; as a teenager I wrote a ton of earnest poetry about how many feelings I felt (one of them even won an award and I got to read it at a public event -- unsurprisingly, it bummed the audience out); as a young adult I tried to write fiction but quickly felt that I would never be successful at it (one of the last pieces I wrote in fact was about my fear of failure, inspired by the panic attacks that a change in anti-depression medication caused during my junior year of college. It lives on online, because what is millennial self-expression if it's not on the internet?). I discovered uncreative writing; I started dating someone who believed that self-expression was essentially just narcissism. After college, I stopped writing anything that wasn't career-oriented. I didn't even journal for myself anymore.

Being trained out of your class, being socialized as a woman, means learning to distrust your instincts and to put aside the things that merely make you happy in order to make room for the things that are Important, according to Important People. This trip has been at some level about reenchantment, about following desire and sensation just because they exist and I exist. Because I fucking love existing, and I fucking love writing about existing. (Someone I dated briefly told me he liked being with me because I took so much joy in the things I loved -- I believe his exact words were "experiencing things with you is fucking exhilarating." It remains one of my favorite compliments, one that I try to live up to.)

Something that had been shifting inside of me for a while broke open when I read Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts last fall. The way that she used academic criticism to think about her life was so elegant and free and liberating. It made me want to write again -- to give shape to my thoughts other than the very specific shape required by academic writing. It made me want to think about living as a creative act. It felt like one while I was on Syros and Lesvos.

I captured some of what Syros was like for me here. I slept in; I wrote my academic writing;  I swam in the sea; I drank ouzo and tsipouro and wrote my non-academic writing. I went for night swims and hikes and ate every fig I could find. I sat one day at the top of Ermoupolis, under pine trees overlooking the port and read Tribute to the Angels, book two of H.D.'s Trilogy. 

Ermoupolis is named for Hermes. I had forgotten that Tribute opens with an invocation of Hermes: 

Hermes Trismegistus is patron of alchemists;

his province is thought, inventive, artful and curious

Tribute is a book about reinvention, recreation after absolute destruction, pursued through writing. One of the central images is the vision of a holy woman, a palimpsest of Mary and Eve and Lillith and Isis and Astarte and Ashtaroth. The woman is described as "Psyche, the butterfly, / out of the cocoon." I don't believe in signs and wonders the way H.D. did, but, when I read those lines, a butterfly flew across my line of sight, and stayed, fluttering up and down on the wind until I finished the book. 

no trick of the pen or brush could capture that impression

**

Lesvos was, if anything, more magical than Syros, which I didn't think was possible. I only saw a very tiny corner of the north of the island -- essentially just Molyvos and Eftalou, but it was more than enough. The hot springs in Eftalou alone...

On Lesvos, I started reading Alana Massey's brilliant and funny All the Lives I Want, and made a million notes in the margins that were all variations of "fuck. yes!" The title essay, about Sylvia Plath fangirls, is especially marked up. Massey argues that Plath's poetry and journals, and the fan art on display in certain corners of the internet, are "ongoing act[s] of self-documentation in a world that punishes female experience (that doesn't aspire to maleness)," which makes them "radical declaration[s] that women are within our rights to contribute to the story of what it means to be a human." Reading the final line of The Bell Jar ("I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am."), Massey notes, it's difficult "to think of any line of thinking more linked to being a socialized female than to consider the declaration of simply existing to feel like a form of bragging." Massey stakes a claim for girlhood, for effusive emoting and navel-gazing introspection, as sites of strong affective attachments and sharp intuitions about the world that should be valued: "Young girls are smarter than they're given credit for, and more resilient, too. They like what they like for good reason."

In general the rating system on Airbnb makes me uncomfortable the way all rating systems make me uncomfortable, but my hosts on Lesvos wrote, "Erin is a joyful and adorable person." I was so tickled by their choice of words because they capture the spirit of girlhood that Massey champions:

"I want to call out to the girls who repeat Sylvia's poisonous directive, 'I must bridge the gap between adolescent glitter and mature glow.' This is a fallacy, a lie intended to kill the spirits of girls so that they might become what we have come to expect of women. ... Glitter is the unbridled multitudes of shining objects that have no predictable trajectory and no particular use but their own splendor. A glow is contained. Its purpose is to offer a light bright enough that those who bear it will cast a shadow, but not so bright that their features will come fully into focus. 'Never surrender your glitter' sounds like the cliche battle cry of a cheerleading coach or a pageant mom, but I still find it a suitable message for young girls."

My favorite beach in Syros was full of mica schist -- as you swam in the clear blue Aegean, the mica filled the water and glittered in the sunlight over your skin. I bathed in glitter every day on that island. Signs and wonders.

V. Zurich: Out of Line

In fifth grade, my teacher told my mother that I was a pleasure to have in the classroom. Without missing a beat, my mom replied, "You don't know what a viper you're nursing at your bosom." They were both right. I am joyful and adorable, and I am almost always, on some level, furious. (Someday I hope to work at Sam Irby’s school for girls with bad attitudes.)

I was made to feel unsafe three times on this trip: twice men followed me as I walked alone at night, and once a bus ticket taker didn't exactly assault me, but he didn't exactly not assault me. I expected things like this to happen on this trip, because they happen everywhere. But god. The way a patriarchal world will try to shut you down every time you try to take pleasure in it.

Maggie Nelson writes about the "many-gendered mothers of the heart” who help her live in the world; Massey writes about her famous friends (celebrities she's never met) who help her do the same. For me as for Massey, Courtney Love is one of those many-gendered mothers who helps me cope with the constant misogynistic violence of the world. Courtney was loud and messy and dramatic and ugly and gorgeous in the 90s, when I first became aware of her. Though I didn't exactly have the language or the concepts for it then, I felt the truth that Courtney embodied "female rage as ... the logical response to a hostile world,” as Massey describes her:

"When evil is done to a person, it gets under their skin, if there is enough of it, it'll sink down through the flesh and into the bones, becoming part of its target. For most of us, the pain is absorbed as poison rather than power. We see a world awash in women's blood and tears. We endure claims that the most profound kinds of pain are the exclusive possessions of men, that they are best equipped to make art from this suffering. Instead of bearing witness to it, we are asked to be killed by it, quietly if possible. But Courtney did nothing quietly." (Courtney: "honeysuckle / she's full of poison / she obliterated everything she kissed")

Like Massey, "I have not seen a fraction of the cruelty that the world is capable of, but I have trembled often enough in the aftershocks of my own resistance to a world built to break me to know that female brutality is not just an acceptable response, it is the most sensible one, too." I saw Courtney in the play Kansas City Choir Boy at the Oberon theater in Boston a few years ago. The play was...not for me (it was for a certain kind of creative white man), but Courtney was. She passed so near my seat at one point I could have reached out and touched the tiny flower tattoos on her arm, could see the glitter eyeshadow she wore. I was so, so happy sharing space with her. I love that bitch. I love her for being angry and messy and never apologizing. I'll hold that moment in my heart forever.

Of course, to refuse to behave respectably, according to gendered, classed, raced codes, is a particularly fraught survival strategy for people who inhabit bodies that tend to get disciplined and punished. (Just look at the police response to an actual fucking Nazi rally and compare the way they’ve treated peaceful black protestors.) I read a lot of books by white women on this trip -- actually, a lot of books by white women my age, who spent their late teens/early twenties in and around New York -- in part because I wanted to navel gaze, to dive into my own experiences and identity. But of course identity, experience, only happen in relation to other identities and experiences. The women I've been reading have suffered, have felt pain, have expressed it in ways I've found compelling. But they're also insulated from some types of pain, the same way that I am, by my whiteness, by what some people read as "adorableness" or attractiveness. It's easier for me, and for the women I've been reading, to access some survival strategies than it is for other women. White girls can act out with relatively less punishment than black girls; those of us who write/think for a living often have access to grants and funding structures that allow us to be selfish, to take the time to pursue ideas.

I stopped in Zurich for a day and a half on my way back to Amsterdam because it is where H.D. lived in the last years of her life, where she wrote a few of her major works. It is also near where my paternal ancestors are from, so it was a chance to take a selfie in Kappeler alley and Kappeler park.

I thought a lot about privilege in Zurich, one of the most insanely expensive cities I've ever visited. The places where H.D. lived and wrote in Zurich are gorgeous and peaceful. 

[The Klinik Hirslanden, where H.D. spent her final days]

The peace she found there was hard fought, and it makes me happy to know she was able to make that place for herself. But she was able to make that place because of her heiress lover, her whiteness, her access to certain kinds of privileged spaces.

In Zurich I started How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell (which is such a compelling read). It's another story of a privileged white female writer, but it's also the story of an addict. And oh my god, if you want your heart broken, read Marnell's description of what her parents did with her zine. The way they shut down her means of self-expression, of effusion, of girlish excitement and emotion, is brutal, and brutally common for girls, even if they're rich, even if they're white. Marnell, like Love, survives by acting out, by refusing to conform, to be quiet and docile. It's not necessarily a good strategy -- Marnell's is not a happy story, and it's questionable how long she will continue to survive. But it is a significant strategy, a way to protest, "the logical response to a hostile world." (It can't destroy you if you destroy yourself.)

[There is a beautiful cemetery across the street from the Klinik Hirslanden, full of statues of women like this. They mark women whose lives are long over, who may or may not be remembered. They seemed to me both tragic and defiant, poignant symbols of loss and endurance.]

***

What does it mean for me, a white cisgender woman, to remain invested in the category "woman" now? What does it mean to claim my experiences, my existence as important, when I exist as a white woman in a country where white supremacism is newly emboldened and sanctioned? (And, to borrow a phrase from Mesle and Blackwood, let’s be crystal fucking clear about this: white supremacism has always been there. It’s structurally a part of our country in a million different ways. What we’re seeing today isn’t surprising or new; it’s the logical outcome of our failure to confront how white people maintain oppressive structures because we benefit from them.) As Mesle and Blackwood argue in their reading of Ferrante,

"it is worth saying that 'woman' is obviously a troubling category. 2017 is a year when the world has emphasized both how radically women are vulnerable as women, with pussies to be grabbed, and also has made the violence that white, straight, middle-class women do to others crystal fucking clear. (Trump's voting block depended precisely upon the pettiness of white women.) Further, we can't even use the word 'woman' without mobilizing a language that is inherently false, and heterosexist, in its understanding of what it means to be human. Perhaps 'woman' is a word that should have no force in criticism. Many people think this, and we see their point. Yet we - we, the writers of this piece -- are uncomfortable with the way this formulation allows human knowledge, here literary criticism, to hopscotch yet again over the responsibility to understand the particularities of women's experiences, in the way that science and medicine and economics and history often have done. ... This is the tension of the sign of 'woman': that it is out of scale, simultaneously universal and particular, simultaneously useful and an obstacle, outmoded. We have to talk about it, and yet can't."

I don't believe that there are any universal or essential experiences of womanhood. "Woman," "female" are of course socially constructed categories, not empirical realities. But the experience of being socialized as a woman does things to you. It creates problems and opportunities and frustrations and acts of violence and intense, intense pleasures. It creates the particularities of individual lives. The experiences of people who live as women matter to me, fundamentally and completely. My attachment to the sign "woman" is serious and real, even as it's fraught and falls apart as soon as I start to interrogate the category with any rigor. Perhaps "woman" is simply the sign for what Mesle and Blackwood identify as "a kind of ecstatic bitterness that is the opposite of consensus making or persuasion. It is aligned with the lived-ness of gender, with the deauthorization of all those whose lives never stand as common sense. This bitterness reminds us that it is always a privilege to have the luxury of leaving pettiness behind."

VI. Missouri: Enlargement

This has been a hard year, personally and politically. I love the new life I started making when I accepted my first tenure-track job in the spring of 2016, but making a new life is difficult and draining work. I think I would have been emotionally tired no matter what. But this was also a year in which I decided I'm going to keep consciously rejecting the versions of adult female life that are legible to people, which is right for me but also a difficult thing to do. And, of course, it was the year of the worst imaginable presidential election outcome, and of moving to a state where the state government is actually worse than the current presidential administration. It's hard to realize how many of your neighbors are contemptuous of you just because you're female, and of your friends because they're trans, gay, bi, non-binary, not white, an immigrant, economically disenfranchised, neurodiverse, ill, and on and on and on. By the end of the spring semester I was tired and emotionally sick in a way I've never been before. Planning this trip was a way out of that structure of feeling for me -- it was a way to chart a new course, build a new structure, enlarge the space in which I feel safe and free to exist.

Years ago, when Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? first came out, I fell deeply into that book and spent a lot of time thinking about it. I copied the protagonist and made a mental catalogue of what non-material things I had at my disposal. I wrote it down on an abandoned blog somewhere. I'd forgotten about it until I read re-read this passage in Tribute to Freud: 

"We [H.D. and Freud] had come together in order to substantiate something. I did not know what. There was something that was beating in my brain; I do not say my heart -- my brain. I wanted it to be let out. I wanted to free myself of repetitive thoughts and experiences -- my own and those of many of my contemporaries. I did not specifically realize just what it was I wanted, but I knew that I, like most of the people I knew, in England, America and on the Continent of Europe, were drifting. We were drifting. Where? I did not know but at least I accepted the fact that we were drifting. At least, I knew this -- I would (before the current of inevitable events swept me right into the main stream and so on to the cataract) stand aside, if I could (if it were not already too late), and take stock of my possessions. You might say that I had -- yes, I had something that I specifically owned. I owned myself. I did not really, of course. My family, my friends and my circumstances owned me. But I had something. Say it was a narrow birch-bark canoe. The great forest of the unknown, the supernormal or supernatural, was all around and about us. With the current gathering force, I could at least pull in to the shallows before it was too late, take stock of my very modest possessions of mind and body, and ask the old Hermit who lived on the edge of this vast domain to talk to me, to tell me, if he would, how best to steer my course" (17-18).

I got to pull into the eddy and take stock this summer. I am grateful; I am well supplied. I am ready to put my oar back in, which I must, because the current is still gathering, and we all have to do our individual parts to deal with the destruction that is here and that is coming. I am ready. I am, I am, I am.