#museum volunteers

[love-3-crimes]

SPACE JASH ‼️

[feroluce]

Lucid Dreamer (2/2)

part 1

Gepard stalls almost a week before he finally goes out to the safehouse, and it takes him a couple days to find it because Sampo didn't have the time left to be wasn't super specific about the location. But he does find it.

It's pretty bare bones, really. Gepard knows that was probably to be expected, but… It feels crushing, when he realizes there are so few personal things here. It's nothing specific to Sampo. Just some food, some medical supplies. A cot and a heater and a lot of mismatched blankets. Nothing to remember someone by.

But he does find the letters, in a metal box stashed away under the bed.

There are two for him. Three for Natasha, and two for Seele. One for Hook, one for Serval, one for Pela, one for Bronya.

Bronya's is mostly business. They knew each other from the whole Stellaron incident, but not much beyond that, and the incoming catastrophe is a more pressing matter. Seele's is actually two copies of the same letter, and Gepard realizes why when Seele is so angry she rips the first one up without reading it. He gives her the copy a couple days later, and she slinks off without a word.

Pela seems completely normal after hers is delivered, but Gepard knows better than to trust that. The next day, he finds her asleep in bed with Serval, bottles abandoned on the floor, both their eye makeup smeared and running and Pela's glasses horribly smudged and crooked on her face. Serval doesn't read hers in front of him, but she's clingy with Gepard, Pela, and Lynx for quite a while after. She throws herself into her work a lot. She insists the heater from the safehouse is busted and she needs to keep it. It's too dangerous for use by someone who's not an engineer. Might burn their house down or something. Gepard doesn't argue.

Hook's letter is short, with easy to read words. The rest of it is actually a treasure map, and she and the moles spend the next several days running through the Underground, finding hidden candy and toys. Hook asks them when Sampo is coming back, because one of the marbles she found from his map looks green, just like his eyes, and she wants to give it to him. Natasha shoos Gepard out of the clinic before he can even begin to think of an answer.

Natasha refuses to let him see what's in her letters, which ok, fine, he'll respect that. He hears from Bronya who heard from Seele who heard from Natasha herself though that one of the letters was a map and the other a catalogue, with all of Sampo's hidden "warehouses." Gepard promptly marches himself back out to the frontlines, where he can turn a blind eye. If a ton of stolen goods suddenly enters the black market, and if the orphanage and the clinic suddenly have new supplies, well, technically that's none of his business.

Gepard goes to bed, curls up under mismatched blankets and closes his eyes.

He doesn't dream.

One of Gepard's letters was also business, like Bronya's and Natasha's. He and Bronya follow everything meticulously, down to the letter, because there has to be some good to get out of all this, there has to be. Gepard can't let it all be for nothing, it would bury him.

And so the catastrophe passes. Not without casualties, and not without a lot of damage and destruction. But Belobog survives.

And after that, time just kind of…goes on. Gepard has been a part of the Silvermanes since he was old enough to enlist. The Fragmentum had gotten so much worse in the years before Welt sealed the Stellaron. He knows the statistics, it is literally his and Pela's jobs to keep track. He knows when he sees a face everyday in the camps and then it's suddenly gone. He's not unfamiliar with things like grief and loss.

He still catches himself checking the trashcans and the supply crates and soldiers' footprints sometimes, though.

But there comes a night where Gepard goes to bed, holding the mismatched blankets to his face, and he dreams. And it's strange, it's off, it sticks with him. Sampo doesn't look the same. He's thinner. His muscles have atrophied. He looks like how Gepard has seen soldiers after months in the hospital.

The most unsettling difference is there's a scar across the left side of his head, Gepard can see it over his ear, peeking out past his hairline, carving towards his cheek. Sampo is always careful about his face. Gepard once saw him dodge a Fragmentum monster and literally let it cut across his neck just to keep his face clear. He wouldn't let that happen for nothing.

Their actions in the dream itself aren't new. Sampo seems tired, run down and worn out, but he announces his presence with aplomb by lobbing a bunch of smoke bombs off the rooftops and sending his soldiers scrambling. Same shit, different day.

The new part is what he says when Gepard chases him out to the edges of the camp, tackles him into the snow. Gepard pins him to the frozen ground to detain him and Sampo doesn't even fight it, just looks up at him like he's seeing sunrise for the first time in months.

"I'll be home in one week."

[senatortedcruz]

Friend at work said "I can never be a Swiftie, seems like too much hard work”

[wanologic]

Hey guys!! As you could probably tell, I haven't been posting the past few months, and part of the reason is all of my drawing energy was going to help out the Pacific Bonsai Museum in Federal Way, WA!

I know it's a bit of a departure from my usual stuff, but it was super fun to draw mascots and design posters/info cards for the wonderful people working on these very cool trees!

hope you enjoy this little walk through of the exhibit by Momiji-EN ❤️

[afieldinengland]

we were on the bed when you came home i heard you stop outside the door i know you won’t believe it’s true i only went with her ‘cause she looks like you my god…. oh i wanna take you home i wanna give you children

[evaceratops]

if you’re interested in lovecraftian horror you should go into polychaete research it’s basically the same thing

[pyomatic]

*twirls hair around fingers* so there's this demon bear on the show about doomed 19th century sailors

[stealth-science]

I have started volunteering at a local nature center. They have this very cool piece petrified wood in their collection.

[titleleaf]

The most incredible example of sadist-surrealist fantasy is to be found among the representations of the various phrases of childbirth and gynaecological operations. A complete model of a patient undergoing a Caesarean section lies with her eyes wide open, her face distorted by pain, her hair impeccable, her calves tied together, dressed in a long, lace nightgown, which is open only at the part of her body which has been cut open by a scalpel, where the baby appears. Four male hands are placed on her body (two operating, two holding her waist): fine wax hands with manicured nails, ghostly hands since they are not supported by arms but adorned only with white cuffs and with the ends of the sleeves of a black jacket, as though the whole ceremony was being held by people in evening dress.

-- Italo Calvino on Dr. Pierre Spitzner’s life-sized wax model of a caesarean section, from his essay ‘The Museum of Wax Monsters’, in Collection of Sand.

[voltaspistol]

I'm sorry, Freda Eljenholm from 1946, but you couldn't have known how funny a recipe called "Nutted Peaches" (lower left hand corner) from a publication called "The Washington Packer" would be to a queer girl in 2024.

[heresylog]

We must be more than against antisemitism. I recommend becoming knowledgeable on the history of it, and how to spot dogwhistles. We must also be especially loving and kind to Jewish people during these times.

I recommend reading Why by Peter Hayes as an introductory book into how and why antisemitism took such a hold over the world and eventually led to the Shoa.

[transthadymacdermot]

Lt. William Rearden fashion show

[batnbreakfast]

I wouldn’t have guessed that I’d enjoy a trip with a steamer train this much, but I did! As always I was also in awe of all the people volunteering their time to keep places like this running.

Bonus pic:

Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo), chilling with her falconer at the train station.

[philippagordon]

hello everyone, I hope you're all doing great! just passing by to say i'm officially going to be a librarian :) follow your dreams kids

[astriiformes]

Recently a friend of mine told me that back when we were both teens and their tumblr account was an illicit secret, their parents caught them browsing the site and their panicked cover story, because the post that was visible at the time was a picture of me, was that they were google searching Pacific Rim cosplays. And this apparently passed muster because high school Nate looked (and frankly, acted) exactly like Newt Geiszler.

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

An unexpected side effect of having spent years outsourcing my self esteem to people whose opinions I trust more than my own is that I am apparently now fully immune to the opinions of people I *don't* respect.

Unfortunately this means that when the coworker no one likes says mean things about me to another coworker, every single other person in the office is more upset about it than I am.