#my cousin is also a fallen away Catholic

[indynerdgirl]

Just found out today my younger cousin, Chelsea, suffered a miscarriage of her first baby at 20wks back in January. It was discovered that she has a rare genetic disorder and it was passed on to the baby which unfortunately caused severe cardiac abnormalities in their baby girl leading to the miscarriage.

So if you wouldn't mind praying for my cousin and her husband, Charles, during this difficult time for them, I would greatly appreciate it. ❤️

[willowed-wisp]

RELATIONSHIP HEADCANONs [ johnny ‘soap’ mactavish ]

Johnny ‘Soap’ MacTavish x f!reader/you

SFW

- When you guys met, you thought he was an airhead, blue eyed meat head. Still is but he was also a deeply caring and affectionate person

- Probably met on his way back from the gym or in the gym- depends if you workout or not.

- Johnny isn’t the type to restrain his thoughts- immediately asked for you out and the rest is history.

- Now to the dating- he is 100% Rottweiler energy… a mix of golden retriever boyfriend that can flip his switch. He’ll protect you- no second thoughts.

- You meet his parents after a week of officially dating, his mum loves you and tells him to get on one knee then and there. Spoilers he’s already planned out the rest of your lives together… not in a creepy way.

- Back hugs are his thing, he’s like a backpack out and about. Just to let everyone know you’re his.

- Looks at you like you’re the only thing he’s ever known… the air he breathes. Deep blue eyes filled with adoration, you couldn’t put it into words. Only that your heart flutters whenever he’s looking your way.

- Makes stupid dad jokes, especially when hanging out with Ghost

- Ghost is definitely the best man at your wedding, whether he likes it or not.

- You’re well acquainted with the boys from 141. Price feels like a father figure, Gaz the relentless older brother and Ghost like a protective cat.

- Takes you to the local pub every time Aberdeen F.C. play and watch it at the bar. It’s amusing to see him a few pints in and saying, “Goal keeper, pfftt, I could keep be’er in primary school…”

- Let’s just say, you’d crack up and nearly drag him off the stool beside you.

- Not to mention when you buy him season tickets for Aberdeen… he’d be the loudest in the stadium if not for you. The look of pride when you repeat what he said in the pub… Christ, he was a lucky man.

- If you had told him you wanted him to retire from the military, he probably would have. He even spoke to you about it.

- You nearly slapped him in the face, calling him an ‘eejit’ (picking up Scottish slang). Thats probably when he knew he’d spend the rest of his life with you.

- It may have broken your heart when he was away, no way to contact you on covert missions. You didn’t even know where he was… but you couldn’t watch him lose himself, knowing that he was born to be in the SAS.

- You noticed a new tattoo on his hip, “why the hell is my name tattooed on your body?” And he would reply, “You’re my lady, enough said.”

- He pops the question somewhere lowkey like your house, just plops down on one knee with a ring in a box. You thought he’d fallen over and instantly told him to get up. So taken aback, you have a ring on your finger and Johnny’s arms around you.

- The wedding was a riot, his family are Roman Catholic raised and you were okay with the ceremony is the local Catholic parish.

- You can’t remember who walks you down the aisle, but at the end of it is Johnny MacTavish in a kilt with his family tartan. You didn’t focus on his military formals adorned with various badges, or that kilt. It was the tears in his sapphire eyes, with Price and Ghost behind him as well as his cousin, the one who inspired him to join the forces.

- The Scottish knew how to party… you danced the night away. Ghost was Johnny’s best man. His speech entailed how, “Johnny wouldn’t stop talkin’ abou’ Y/N. An’ meetin’ her I could see why, she winds your neck in, mate.”

NSFW under cut….

NSFW

- Johnny waited until you were ready to do anything. He’s a gentleman, unlike popular belief.

- But after he coaxed you into working out with him… watching him pump not only the weights but you… you were a gonna, you got back to your place and your lips were crushed against his own.

- Stripping his arms of the hoodie, revealing those thick, rippling arms and the tattoos. His look drove you insane, never been so wet in your life.

- He struggled to keep at your pace, wanting to amp it up because you’d been driving him insane since he met you. Johnny was at his wits end when he hiked you into his arms. So steady and unyielding, lips indenting lilac across the span of your neck before ravaging your lips.

- Hips bucking into your spread legs, straight to the middle. Where you needed him.

- That first time, no time was wasted and no foreplay required. You marvelled slightly at all of him. This was the first time seeing him topless let alone butt naked… he knew he struck the jackpot with you when he could barely fit the tip in.

- Clawing at his numerous scars and moaning effervescence. His name so sweetly rolled off your tongue- the only thing she could muster. And the soldier couldn’t help that drop dead gorgeous smile play on his lips, you shuddered beneath him on the couch you normally watched movies on.

- Maybe that’s when you knew he’d be the man you’d spend the rest of your life with.

- Sex feels like slow motion with Johnny MacTavish, something about his starlight kissed eyes makes time feel like it stopped. Even in a non-sexual sense, you swear you see the dust shine in sunbeams when sharing eye contact.

- Johnny loves watching you ride him, getting tired out because he’s not easy to break. Meeting your bounces, fingers scarring your hips as he thrusts into you.

- Don’t let this man catch you in one of his tight fit t-shirts, if you don’t wanna be around his cock in ten seconds flat.

- Yes, he’s that fast.

- The aftercare KING. Want hot chocolate and a Christmas on in the middle of July- he’ll do it.

- Need a stonking hot bubble bath, he’s getting the rubber ducky and carrying there bridal style. Washing your hair and your body.

- He just loves you and cannot get over how lucky he is to be such a beauty- inside and out

- If you want round two, three or four during the aftercare… he’s got stamina for days soooo it’s really your pick of Johnny special

————

masterlist

[cellabella-illuminates]

I'm proud of myself for finally finishing this illustration. I painted it in my sketchbook and then did some final edits digitally.

I'm considering trying out giclée printing and I might start with this one. What do you think?

Here's the "about the image" and description of my process, if you're interested:

St. Catherine of Siena was one boss lady from the 14th century. She is known for a lot of things, but for this depiction of her I wanted to focus on her mission of returning the Pope to Rome (he was in France, there was a lot of political nonsense going on at the time). Her mission was a success. She was involved in peace negotiation between the Pope and the Florentines (again, lots of nonsense going on, sorry I'm not giving you the details here) and has written a great many letters that I feel called to look into. Anyway, she was working against the antipope and just overall doing a lot of diplomacy throughout her life on top of her spiritual writing and other things.

Before I began gathering reference images to put together for inspiration, I knew I wanted to focus on the aspect of her returning Pope Gregory from France to Rome.

Of all of the images I had found, I decided to include the following symbols/aspects from her life: the stigmata, crown of thorns, a rose, a lily, and the crucifix (pointing to the Vatican behind her). The red shape in front is an outline of a part of the coast of France and the green shape behind her is an outline of Italy, with the shape inside being the Vatican.

Most images of her that I found of her made her seem demure and looking away from the viewer, but for my image, I wanted her to be looking directly at you, with her arm outstretched. The lily is a symbol of purity but we know this was a bold and direct woman of God, not someone hiding in a soft expression. So, not only is she reaching out to Pope Gregory, asking for his return to Rome, but also, reaching out to you, personally, to return to the Church, if you have fallen away.

This was my collage that I made to use for reference as I painted:

Her left hand that is outstretched is my own hand, lol, so I still ended up using myself as a reference (idk why, I hate using my stubby fingers as reference so if you have dainty slender fingers feel free to let me know and I'll reach out to you next time haha)

On a personal note- this image was a commission to be given as a gift to my cousin who graduated with a degree in mediation or diplomacy (I forget) and I thought St. Catherine of Siena, a well known peace negotiator, was the best choice. My cousin is also not a practicing Catholic (as far as I know) and most of her siblings are the same. I wanted to paint this illustration with that in mind, which is why I have St. Catherine extending her hand. I want to be closer with my family but sometimes I don't know how. There's been a lot of drama between my aunts and uncles, pushing so far that many of them are no longer speaking to one another. I know painting this image of St. Catherine may not act as a bridge in the regard but maybe it could be a small stepping stone.

[unsent-unspoken]

"Do you believe in free will?"

where do i start? i used to. bata pa lang, tinuturo na sa st. schot yung free will. being in a catholic school and all, it's one of those things you grew up knowing about. sometimes the lesson becomes a little more complex but the idea stays the same: there is free will – a choice to make our own decisions.

fast forward to today, at 2:50am of october 7, 2024. do i believe in free will? probably not the same way i once did. i think the idea of free will just tells us na we could decide what we could on this plane of existence we call life. but i don't think it would matter. i don't think what i decide would matter. now, with the things happening in my life, i believe na everything has already been laid out by god, by the universe. and no matter what i choose, if it's against what was laid out, i would always be diverted back to that same path. so, i guess free will is still kinda true for me to a certain extent. pero if the younger me would say na free will is basically making your own destiny and making your own decisions that would shape your life, i think she's terribly mistaken.

see, i'm not sure if this only applies to me or to everyone, in general. pero in my life, int he 25 (almost 26) years of existence, i have tried to keep one aspect of my life guarded and safe. that was my romantic love life. yes, there were crushes here and there, but i never fell in love – even when it seems like everyone is falling in love and getting into a relationship. i didn't. i wasn't in a hurry. partly because i believed nung sinabi ni daddy (nung binasa niya yung palad ko) na magiging single ako forever. na mag mamadre daw ako. but also because i saw what relationships were like. yes it's good and sweet and all. but i've seen my friends and my sisters, my cousins, na nasaktan dahil nagmahal sila. when they breakup there would be tears, and pagbato ng cellphone. there was even a "the bar gin" involved. it was underage drinking to cope with the loss. i've seen it. and i didn't want that type of heartache for me. if it would come, i want it to come at the right time. para the first time i fall in love would also be the last. an endgame na from the very start. i took whatever steps i could to guard my heart, protect it. and i did, successfully for my entire life... until someone came along and i thought that was it.

i remember praying na if hindi para sa akin, tanggalin na siya sa buhay ko. it was during that time na i was starting to like him. i was scared. i was fond of the friendship i've built with this person. and all he's looking for was a friend. i like that friendship. but i was going to ruin it with what i was feeling. so i prayed. i prayed for him to go away. i prayed for the feelings to subside. but he stayed. and the feelings remained. and i thought that was that. for a moment i believed na he felt the same. i felt it. i heard it. i knew it. but then 2024 came, and it feels like i've duped myself into thinking that someone would actually want me. i've deluded myself into thinking na it was real. na it wasn't for convenience. i'm so stupid to think that was it. i forgot. with him, i forgot na lahat gn gusto ko, hindi para sa akin. yung mga bagay na gusto ko, tinatanggal, inaalis. why did i think this time would be different? simple, because i wanted it to be different. i wanted to believe na this time, the universe is on my side. it wasn't. it still isn't.

sa idea ng free will, we get to decide on things in life to shape our future or our reality. but, here's the thing, it doesn't matter. mine does not matter. i prayed for it and i would work hard for it but the universe just outright said "no" when i have fallen in love. it kinda feels like the universe is against any tinge of happiness i might feel for the rest of my life. parang it would always be like, "here's a little happiness. you happy? good. i'll shatter your heart 'cause that one's not for you. sucker! perish." something like that. parang sinasadya na kung kailan masaya ka, kung kailan gusto mo na, when you have let your guard down, the universe would strike and would shatter you to pieces. my decisions has no bearing in this life. what i want, what i do don't mean anything in the greater scheme of things. kasi, after all, the universe has laid out its plan and i don't get a say on it. free will doesn't exist in that extent. i think we're only given the illusion of choice. parang sa isang company na tinatanong yung mga workers nila what they want to do with a certain issue. the workers think na they get to have a say on it, but, eventually, the management will tell them na "majority" has spoken in favor of what the management wants. it's a bullshit illusion of choice. we don't get to shape our future. it has been etched in stone and the universe just conspires to do anything it can to blow you towards whatever is already set for you. the only thing left to do is to play their way. the only way to make it in life is to just execute whatever they have planned. because you don't get to have a say on it. i don't. and maybe this is only applicable to me.

is it blasphemous to think and say these things? i'm not sure. pero lately, kapag kausap ko si lord parang inaaway at umiiyak lang ako sa kanya. yeah, i think he might have had enough of me. i mean he can always just 💀 me off – in my sleep, in an accident, something. he'll have one less problem. one less human who yaps and talks shit. who writes things on tumblr that no one would read about things that are blasphemous.

so, no. i don't think free will exists in the same way i have always thought it did. i think it's just an illusion of choice. and no matter what, your life has already been planned out and everything that is happening has been written. the heart break? oh, yeah, kasama yan sa script na ginawa nila sa buhay ko. i have no idea kung para saan but, my guess, para lang masaktan ako. and to break the last thing that is whole and untouched in my life. to break me. to shatter everything inside me and more. well... they got that right. i hope the universe is happy with my suffering. i hope it's happy na hindi ako masaya, na nasasaktan lang ako.

the universe has laid out its plans and its tragic. and the earlier i accept that, the better for me. i'm cursed and bound to get hurt by different things and different people. i'm meant to want things and people and have it taken away from me. tortured and tormented for crimes i cannot remember, for sins i must have keep on doing to this day. so, of course, the wicked is bound to be punished. that's where i'm at – punishment. the good wins. and since i don't, it must mean i'm not good.

i want to cut my heart out. purge the memories. feel absolutely nothing. and be embraced by the void, never to wake. because if i do, i'll miss him. and, yes, i still miss him. parang tanga.

i miss you, bal, but i don't even cross your mind. 🐳

P.S. i guess free will is for everyone but me. that must be nice...

[burning-lampstand]

“It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy.” This text of the second Eucharistic prayer of the Mass not only states the primacy of gratitude, but also reveals a powerful defense against the evil one. Lucifer, once a magnificent angel of light, fell from heaven due to pride. Rebellion and ingratitude are cousins of pride. Now, one third of the fallen angels tempt humanity into pride, rebellion and ingratitude to God.

A person who has cultivated an attitude of gratitude to God in all things has formed a powerful weapon against evil spirits. This is precisely a Marian characteristic. I discovered the efficacy of turning ordinary temptations into a prayer of gratitude from the lives of the saints. In deliverance and exorcism ministry work, we note a difference when a prayer of gratitude is formed — even, before liberation. Such faith acts lessen the diabolical grip on a person.

St. Paul helps us understand this, “Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So, we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:15-16). When we lose heart (faith in God) we are more prone to fall into temptation or cooperate with evil.

Christ taught St. Faustina, “But child, you are not yet in your homeland; so go, fortified by My grace, and fight for My kingdom in human souls; fight as a king’s child would; and remember the days of your exile will pass quickly, and with them the possibility of earning merit for heaven. I expect from you, my child, a great number of souls who will glorify My mercy for all eternity.” (St. Faustina, Diary, no. 1489 quoted by Beckman, God’s Healing Mercy, p.113)

This applies to all believers. A greater number of souls will eternally glorify The Divine Mercy because they received mercy in the way that David did in the defeat of Goliath (cf. 1 Sam. 17). If, for a time we are tested by diabolical vexation, in faith we trust that God is about a great work in and through us. We believe that God will bring greater good out of the evil trials. For this we give thanks—even before the day of liberation. Like Job, during diabolical oppression, we bless the name of the Lord; thank Him for the liberation and restoration that is sure to come through perseverance.

The Church encourages believers to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. There is profound wisdom here, distinct from something shallower such as secular positive thinking or optimism. For Catholics, gratitude is foundational to living a fully human life. Why? Because when we give thanks to God in all things we walk humbly as Eucharistic disciples.

The source and summit of our faith is the Eucharist which means thanks-giving, thanks-saying, thanks-doing. Eucharistic life produces the fruit of gratitude, graciousness, goodness.

An enormous gratitude deficient exists in the world, personally and collectively. Unhappiness, rage, violence, are evidence of a gratitude deficit. It seems impossible for a person to be simultaneously thankful and unhappy, angry, violent, etc. Perhaps ingratitude also contributes to empty seats at Mass on Sunday. An ingrate is not very likable. Sometimes the problem is we don’t like ourselves very much. A solution could be to thank God for creating you; for loving you into existence, for accompanying you always, for gazing upon you with holy love.

Be grateful for the gift of life, faith, family, friends, education, job and everything else that is yours as gift of God. Gratitude keeps our spiritual armor well-oiled so that we can “fight like a knight” against the devil and his minions. Prayers of gratitude are repugnant to evil spirits.

(Read more for the Litany of Gratitude by a Norbertine priest)

[astoryinred]

I hope you don't mind this random question, but I've had the curiosity for a time now: What's the background of Enjolras' parents in the WAMP verse? Like how did they meet, what was their courtship like, etc.?

Oh yes this is a good one. 

My notes on this matter (written like a biography) are as follows: 

The Provencal branch of the Enjolras family began residing in Aix-en-Provence beginning from the 16th century; previously the surname had only been known in the Haute-Loire area of Auvergne. Despite being relative newcomers to the town, the Enjolras family succeeded in creating one of the bigger estates within an hour’s travel from the center of Aix. The family lands encompassed several orchards, a small vineyard with its own wine press, and fields rented out to tenant farmers. Invariably the estate always passed into the hands of the eldest son of the clan patriarch; at the turn of the century this was Louis Enjolras. Louis, who was born in 1780, was raised on the estate but completed his education at the university in Aix. Despite being raised as a Catholic moderate, Louis was known to be a curious skeptic who concealed from many his interest in Rousseau, Voltaire and other philosophers. At the age of 20 he married Monique D’Aubain, an heiress from the equally well-established D’Aubain clan of Provence. Like Louis, Monique was also schooled in the Catholic tradition, and expected to have a quiet marriage wherein her prime responsibilities would be raising children and overseeing domestic affairs. What Monique did not expect was to end up married to a man with both scholarly and business acumen, who expected his wife to keep up with these pursuits. The first few months and years of their marriage were marked with some tension, more so when Monique had two successively dangerous miscarriages. The couple was about to despair of having children when Monique fell pregnant a third time and finally gave birth to a son, Antoine.

               At the time Antoine was born, Provence was a notoriously royalist region, having been the center of previous counterrevolutionary activity in 1793 and a staging point for the British and Spanish fleets some time after. The ill feeling against the revolutionaries and Montganards of the past carried over against Napoloen Bonaparte.  Nevertheless, this did not stop some young Provencals, among them some of the sons of the Enjolras clan, from joining the Grand Armee. Louis, having been unwilling to volunteer owing to his responsibilities to his family, was fine with funding some of the war effort if only to keep imperial scrutiny away from Provence.  While his cousins traveled, fought and were wounded overseas, he busied himself with running interference within Aix, carefully negotiating a tentative peace between its staunch royalists and the minority faction of Bonapartist liberals. At heart, Louis was neither royalist nor Bonapartist, but he also had a distrust for any talk of a Republic owing to the events of the Terror. Eventually as conscription and taxation took a toll on the French citizenry, Louis began to seriously reconsider his support of the French Empire. It did not help that his relatives returned with tales of the hardship, double-dealing and general misery from the frontlines of the war effort as well as territories that had fallen under French conquest. By 1815, Louis and Monique were convinced that neither royalism nor Empire were feasible ways to restore peace and prosperity to their hometown. Though neither of them would be confirmed democratic agitators for some years, this disavowal of previously held ideas became an important foundation for their family’s intellectual life, and their only child’s upbringing.

Louis probably met Monique at a party or ball, or at carefully arranged socials by their families. It is implied at least by Monique that their marriage had some aspects of being arranged. Louis courted Monique as decorously as one could in the province: visits to the home, parties, etc. He proposed to her within a few months of their being set up together. 

Monique expected a quiet life. That did not happen. Louis expected a bluestocking wife. That didn’t happen till many years later. 

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 9: Follow The Rules]

Hi y’all, I hope you are all doing well 💜

Chapter summary: Veronica has some questions, Roger has a plan, John has a short temper. 

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language, medical stuff, pregnancy.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii​ @loveandbeloved29​ @killer-queen-xo​ @maggieroseevans​ @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark​ @im-an-adult-ish​ @queenlover05​ @someforeigntragedy​ @imtheinvisiblequeen​ @joemazzmatazz​ @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye​ @namelesslosers​ @inthegardensofourminds​ @deacyblues​ @youngpastafanmug​ @sleepretreat​ @hardyshoe​ @bramblesforbreakfast​ @sevenseasofcats​ @tensecondvacation​ @bookandband​ @queen-crue​ @jennyggggrrr​ @madeinheavxn​ @whatgoeson-itslate​ @brianssixpence​ @simonedk​ @herewegoagainniall​ @stardust-killer-queen​

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

At the wedding, Roger is wearing a cast on his right arm and a dazzling smile...and a white suit that he looks criminally good in.

John is in black, Brian in blue, Freddie in maroon-colored velvet and heavy eyeliner. Veronica’s dress is high-waisted and falls in huge, billowing, shapeless ruffles to hide her silhouette. Her family knows, of course—it’s written all over the tense, grim lines of their mouths and the blades their pale eyes hurl at John—but none of those strict Catholics are going to mention an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in God’s house, nor at the modest reception in the church basement that follows the ceremony.

Veronica’s mother and aunts and sisters are just like her, docile and milky-skinned and small-boned, and you’ve helped them deck the vast room with enough flowers, ribbons, candles, and balloons to make everyone forget this event was thrown together in five weeks and on a shoestring budget. There’s a simple buffet with pot roast and potatoes and vegetables, a live band (some of John’s old friends from high school), and a homemade Polish honey cake baked by Veronica’s grandmother situated regally on a china serving dish. Veronica and John cycle through the tables of guests, smiling and nodding and thanking them for coming, dutifully and yet also seemingly genuinely cheerful.

“The boning is bloody impaling me,” Chrissie murmurs as she tugs at the bodice of her gown. It’s satin and a muted pink, just like yours and Mary’s and Veronica’s sisters’. “If I happen die, wrap me in one of those nice tablecloths I paid for and throw me in a ditch somewhere, will you love?”

“You got it.” You stab a piece of potato with your fork. “This should inspire you to be especially compassionate towards your own bridesmaids! Maybe no horrid shiny green.”

Brian chuckles. “Good luck with that.”

“Are you comfortable?!” Chrissie asks Mary, exasperated, fanning herself with a wedding program.

“I am,” Mary admits cautiously. “But...well...at the moment, I think my dress is a bit...roomier.”

Chrissie moans, dropping her face into her hands. “I always gain when the students go home for summer. My routine is wrecked, all I want to do is read Glamour magazines and listen to records, it’s too damn hot to go walking...and I adore ice cream.”

“I like you just fine,” Brian reassures her.

Freddie snickers as he taps his cigarette against an ashtray. “Yes, we’re all well aware of your anatomical preferences, Bri.”

Chrissie rolls her eyes. “Please do not elaborate.” She’s not offended—she’s far too used to Freddie’s shenanigans to be offended—but she’ll be embarrassed if he makes a scene at a wedding.

“Darling, I don’t care what anyone tries to tell you, plenty of men love a little extra meat on the bones. Particularly the ass bones.”

“We’re in God’s house!” you scold him in a hiss. “You’re going to give Great Aunt Zofia over there an aneurysm if she hears you!”

Roger quips: “Great Aunt Zofia stole the last kielbasa right out of my disabled, ineffectual  grasp, so fuck her.”

You all burst into shocked, uncontrollable laughter. Great Aunt Zofia squints judgmentally at the commotion from several tables away, gnawing on her kielbasa; she’s been glaring at John and Veronica—the Tetzlaffs’ very own fallen angel—since she first ambled into the church. Roger rocks back in his chair, smoking with his unbroken left arm, smirking cockily and basking in the distraction from the real world that the wedding has gifted you all tonight. He catches you watching him—marveling at him, truthfully—and winks.

John appears and rests his hands on the back of your chair. “What’s so amusing? I swear, I leave you people alone for two hours and you’re having all sorts of fun without me, I won’t stand for it!”

“It was a lovely ceremony,” you tell him. “I’d forgotten how beautiful Catholic weddings are, all the music and ambiance.”

“And from what I saw, you knew most of the words.”

“We have a lot of Irish people in Boston. Saint Patrick’s Day is bigger than Christmas.”

John points at Roger’s cast. “It’s not paining you too much, is it?”

Roger holds his Dark ‘n Stormy aloft, and ice clinks in the misted glass. “Enough of these, and I can’t feel anything. Numb to the world’s many disappointments. I highly recommend it.”

“Noted,” John replies. Roger has pills for his arm, but they only take the edge off. You don’t know that because he’s told you; Roger never tells you that he’s hurting, that he’s frustrated, that he’s afraid. He wears grins and flippant humor like a second skin, shrouding his wounds—both physical and disembodied, old and new—in darkness. Still...you can see all those words he doesn’t say swimming in the depths of his eyes. “I think I’ll hunt down a Manhattan myself.”

“Dad made an impression!” you tell John enthusiastically. “I’ll have to let him know, he’ll be overjoyed.”

“He mixes a good one, that’s for sure. I doubt Cousin Bartosz will be able to compare.” He casts a glance at a perplexed-looking, flame-haired teenager manning a tiny wet bar.

“Booze won’t help you heal,” Freddie informs Roger, checking his reflection in Mary’s makeup compact and fluffing his lustrous hair. “Eat your vegetables. Get more sleep. When do you start physical therapy, again?” Then, to you: “Darling, when does Roger start his therapy?”

Roger sighs. “I’ve got it handled, Fred.”

“Dear, don’t have a fit, I just want to make sure you’ll be ready—”

“I’ve got it handled,” Roger repeats, his tone a warning.

Brian breaks the tension with a toast, his Vesper jangling against Roger’s Dark ‘n Stormy. “I’m thrilled, honestly. Now I’m not the only one who’s ruined a tour.”

Roger grimaces. “Thanks, Bri.”

“Yes, let’s all have a turn,” Freddie mutters, sipping champagne. “Deaky can electrocute himself while fiddling with his amp, and then I’ll...what? Have my foot chewed off by an alligator in New Orleans? Get gored by a wild boar outside Atlanta? It just can’t be a boring maiming, that’s my only request.”

“Alaska has grizzlies, huge ones,” Brian suggests.

“Darling, in what dimension would my luxurious self ever end up in fucking Alaska?”

You shake your head, frowning down into your wine glass. It’s June now, the dead center of a crestfallen year: the rest of the Sheer Heart Attack Tour is cancelled, the record company is furious, and the band is broker than ever. Queen is supposed to start recording their next album—their last album, the record company insists, unless it happens to be a runaway success—in July, but you don’t know if Roger’s arm will be healed in time. None of you know that. You wonder if this really is God’s house, or at least one of his homes, sanctified piles of bricks and glass scattered across the globe; maybe you could ask Him where Queen’s future lies.

Veronica swoops in and dusts an airy kiss onto Mary’s cheek, and then Chrissie’s, and then yours. “Thank you so much,” she gushes. Her high cheekbones are flushed, her watery eyes sparkling. She’s in heaven, sinner or not. Her massive white dress swishes with every step. “We couldn’t have done it without you. And you’re next, Chris! I can’t wait.”

Chrissie smiles. She and Brian are getting married just before Christmas. “Yes, well, time will tell if we’ll be serving Christmas ham or canned beans.”

“And then Mary...” Veronica’s gaze migrates across the table. Mary’s been wearing a ring on her wedding finger since Queen returned from Japan, a simple gold band that once belonged to Freddie’s mother. “What about you, Y/N? Any plans? Then we’d all be hitched!”

Red wine spurts from your lips and you fumble for a cloth napkin. Roger doesn’t believe in marriage, and neither do you; not after only four months together, anyway. And yet...is there some part of you that can’t help but think of papers and rings when you get lost in his eyes, of promises of forever, of some way to tie yourself to him like vessels to a heart? Sure; and that’s a little wonderful, that’s a little terrifying. “Uh, uh, oh, oh no, definitely no plans whatsoever.”

“What bollocks!” Rog sneers. “Really, what’s the point if you’re not religious? Who needs a bloody piece of paper to prove they love someone?! ‘I care for you so much I need the government to know we’re together and the hassle of divorce fees to make me stay,’ what the fuck. I mean, uh, no offense John, Bri, uh...this is all well and good for you, but...ah...”

“It’s just not your scene. That’s fine, Rog,” Freddie says with a tad too much empathy. Mary doesn’t seem to notice.

“But you’ll want children at some point, won’t you?” Veronica asks you, almost pained. She’s not trying to be cruel, you realize; she genuinely can’t fathom the pinnacle of a woman’s life as anything but being a wife and mother.

“Theoretically, sure. One day. Eventually.” You titter nervously. Roger’s good arm circles your shoulders, his cigarette lofting smoke. Oh, but wouldn’t he make beautiful children? You push that thought away. It’s too soon, it’s too much, it’s not in the cards for an impoverished maybe-drummer and his girlfriend; and a girlfriend—with all the intangibility and impermanence that title entails—is all I’ll ever be. “I think I need to travel the world a bit more first.”

John sighs and pats the back of Veronica’s hand. What is that weight in his voice...impatience? Annoyance? “Ronnie, please, don’t bother her.”

Veronica sulks, scraping the old scuffed linoleum floor with her pointy white heels. “I wasn’t trying to bother anyone...”

Mary comes to the rescue: “No, of course not. You didn’t, dear.” She likes Veronica more than Chrissie does. Isn’t she oppressively vapid? Chrissie has asked you more than once. Isn’t she so miserably naïve? Veronica is sweet, sure, but she has no fucking idea what she’s in for. “Babies are wonderful, but they do make things harder, don’t you think? Especially for the mother. You have to be ready to drop everything for them. All your other interests and aspirations.”

“I suppose,” Veronica mumbles. You can tell she’s thinking: What other aspirations?

“But you must be so excited!” You beam up at Veronica. It’s her wedding day, and John’s; it should be happy, it should be optimistic. And you’re learning to like Veronica—less than Mary, but more than Chris—because you know that’s the best thing for John.

She instinctively rests her hand on the swell of her belly; or, rather, where it must be somewhere beneath all those heaps of satin and tulle. Great Aunt Zofia’s glare intensifies. “I’m scared to death, to tell you the truth.”

“Why?!” Mary cries.

“I’m so afraid something will happen to him.” Veronica’s voice is soft, her blue eyes glassy. She’s certain the baby is a boy, claims she had some sort of dream about it. “There’s a lot of bad luck going around for us, isn’t there? And my mother lost four babies. Any time he stops moving, I worry constantly until my next appointment. I haven’t felt anything in days, and I just...I just...” She trails off, staring vacantly across the crowded church basement. She’s trying not to cry, you realize.

“I can try to check for you,” you offer. “If it would make you feel better.”

“Really?” Veronica sounds hopeful, but guardedly so.  

“This is embarrassing, but I carry my nurse kit almost everywhere I go now. That’s why I brought my huge blue purse even though it doesn’t match the dress. You know, you can’t be too careful...”

“Yes, who knows when someone will try something idiotic like jogging backwards down the stairs?” Freddie muses. Roger lobs a pierogi at him. Great Aunt Zofia wheezes out a disgusted huff and crosses her veiny, wrinkled arms over her sagging chest.

“I have a stethoscope,” you continue. “I can’t guarantee I’ll find a heartbeat, but I’ll give it a try if that would help.”

“Would you, Y/N?” Veronica clutches for John’s hand, and he lets her take it without any resistance; but he doesn’t seem to know how to comfort her. He has the same dazed look on his face that he has a lot these days, the same look that Bri and Freddie sometimes get: like they’re on autopilot, like they’re actively filtering through brainwaves to fish out any that wander astray. Roger lands a kiss on your bare shoulder and pitches you a playful smirk, his I’m so proud of my too-fucking-smart girlfriend smirk.  

You grab your purse from beneath the table. “Does God’s house have a cozy private spot somewhere?”

Veronica leads you, Mary, and Chrissie to a small unoccupied room that is used (how pertinently) as the church nursery. The pink wallpaper is dotted with waddling ducklings, cloud-shaped sheep leaping over fences, smiling suns and winged cartoonish angels. Veronica settles into a faded blue couch, and Mary and Chris help her shove aside the massive plumes of her wedding dress to reveal the plain shift she’s wearing underneath. She’s over five months along now, and her entirely unremarkable bump seems colossal on her delicate frame.

You pop the headset into your ears and press the chestpiece against Veronica’s unyielding belly, gliding it over the pearly shift as you try different positions.

“Anything?” Mary asks anxiously.

“It’s not bloody instant, Mary!” Chrissie snaps. “Be quiet so she can listen.”

“No need to be cranky—”

“You can’t find a heartbeat, can you?” Veronica says, her voice quivering. “Oh god...”

“Found it,” you announce. You hold the chestpiece in place as you yank the headset off and pass it to Veronica.

She gapes at you. “You’re just saying that so I’ll stop worrying, aren’t you?”

“Hear for yourself.”

Veronica takes the headset and listens, closing her eyes as the rapid-fire and rhythmic swishing of her child’s heartbeat floods through her ears. “Oh,” she breathes, beaming. “There he is.”

“That’s incredible!” Mary trills. “Can I hear too, Veronica? Whenever you’re finished...”

Mary listens, and Chrissie does too, and then you all help touch up Veronica’s hair and makeup before you head back to the reception. The cake is due to be cut in twelve minutes. As you smooth the short train on her dress, Veronica turns back to you.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asks timidly, hugging her belly. “You know...for this.”

“That’s something I’ve always liked about nursing. So many jobs require sorting out who’s right and wrong, casting judgment, assigning punishment. There’s no weighing of the moral scales in medicine. It doesn’t matter if a patient is trustworthy, deceitful, good, bad, worthy, undeserving, if they disappoint you, if they’re the ones who hurt themselves. You treat everyone, you heal everyone. And I would like to keep that part of myself for as long as I can.” You smile at Veronica. “But, for the record, no. I don’t think you’re a bad person at all.”

She sighs in relief, untethering an anchor she hadn’t even known she’d been dragging around by her throat. “Thank you,” she whispers, tears snaking down her powdered ivory cheeks.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Come on.”

“How do you feel about marble lion statues? You know, the ones at the end of long, winding driveways. Rich people’s driveways. Mansion driveways. Or do you prefer gargoyles?”

“Roger.”

He groans, grins, presses his right fist into your palm. You measure the force with your mind, with your muscle memory. He’s stronger than he was yesterday, the day before, last week. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Rog teases. “You’ve got a soft spot for damaged people. Helpless people. That’s why you warmed to Brian so quickly. He was lying there all gaunt and jaundiced and terrified, and you just couldn’t resist, you just had to make sure all his wildest dreams came true.”

“I have a soft spot for self-destructive musicians who end up in hospitals, evidently.” Your gaze cruises over the scar on Roger’s forearm where the surgeons popped his bones back into place, stabilized them, stitched the ragged gore closed. You hate looking at it; you hate reminders of how mortal Roger really is.

“I want lions,” Rog decides. “For the driveway of our eventual mansion. I like the Leo connection.”

“And the Queen crest connection.”

His grin widens, toothy and radiant. “See, I knew you were the love of my life.”

“Come on. Again.”

He winces this time. “Doesn’t hurt a bit.”

“Uh huh. I bet.” You’ve slathered his fresh blisters with numbing antiseptic ointment, iced his arm, administered pain medicine, allowed him the constant sips of alcohol necessary for him to work, to drum, to sleep. But he still hurts. You imagine he hurts all the fucking time.

It’s August now, and Queen is recording their fourth album at Rockfield Farm. You and Roger are sitting by the pool as Freddie splashes around in the clear chlorine-smelling water trying to get John’s attention. John, meanwhile, is lounging on an inflatable raft, wearing black sunglasses and most likely asleep. Brian circles the pool snapping photos with your Canon F-1.

“I have a plan,” Roger informs you as he starts his stretches without prompting. He knows the drill, even if he likes to be difficult about it.

“By all means, enlighten me.”

“Fred’s thing, the weird one. It has a name now.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah. Bohemian Rhapsody.”

“Oh, it’s perfect!” You try to stay out of the band’s business decisions as much as possible; it’s not your expertise, and it’s not your place, and there are already a few too many creative chefs in that kitchen. Still, you love when they share their magic with you. “Eccentric, whimsical, exhilarating. Just like the song. Just like Queen.”

“I’m so glad you approve. We’re going to make sure it’s the first single off the album. And I know exactly what song’s going to be on the B-side. Freddie and Bri don’t know yet, but I do.”

“Sounds like they’re going to murder you when they find out.”

“I’ll convince them.” His grin is crafty, daring. “Picture it: you’ve just finished the incomparable experience that is Bohemian Rhapsody. You’re a newly converted Queen enthusiast. What could possibly come next? You flip the record over. And the virile, screeching, pure rock and roll passion of I’m In Love With My Car is there to greet you.”

“Oh my god, Roger.” You shake your head in mock mourning. “They actually are going to murder you.”

“Listen, love, BoRhap is going to be a hit. I can feel it.”

“Sure,” you agree lukewarmly. You want to be supportive, you really do. But disappointment stings more than resignation.

“It will be,” Roger maintains, unmovable. “And it’ll sell mountains and mountains of singles...and with my song on the B-side, I’ll get half the royalties. Which means we’ll get half the royalties.”

“Which is how we end up with the hypothetical mansion.”

“I’m being serious.” Roger picks up his mini barbell weights from the water-splattered concrete and begins his bicep curls, flinching each time he lifts his right fist.

“Rog—”

“I’m fine,” he insists. “I’m going to make this happen. I’m going to get rich so I can provide for my family. You know about that, you know it’s on my list. And my family includes you now.”

“I don’t need a mansion, Roger.” I just need you. You stare at his right arm worriedly. “Are you sure—?”

“I’m fine!” he shouts, and you recoil. Brian peers over from where he’s taking pictures of blooming purple foxgloves. Instantly, Roger regrets it. “I’m sorry,” he says, setting down the barbells and cradling your face with his rough, bandaged hands. “I have to be fine, you know? I don’t have a choice. If I can’t play, I can’t be in the band. If I leave, John will leave too, and that’ll be the end of everything. Or worse, John will break the pact and stay and they’ll find a new drummer and forget all about me. Sail off into some blissful new future. And where will I be? Moping as I drag myself back to dental school? Becoming a freaking lab biologist? Resigning myself to being some excruciatingly ordinary bloke, someone who climbed just far enough out of Cornwall to know everything he’s missing out on?”

You try to imagine who Roger would be without the band, but you can’t. You’ve never known a pre-Queen Roger. “No,” you say, amused. “You’ll never be just some ordinary bloke. You’re too brilliant, too determined. Even if you do have a dodgy arm.”

He kisses you, and you can feel his lips curling into a smile beneath yours. “So you’ll let me buy you a mansion.”

“If you get I’m In Love With My Car on the B-side, and BoRhap is a hit, and Freddie and Bri don’t smother you with a pillow in your sleep...yes, you can buy me a mansion. Buy us a mansion.”

He winks, his sapphire eyes glinting in the late-summer sunlight. “Watch out, baby. I get everything I want eventually.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“It’s done,” John tells the others as he passes out copies of his new song, the second he’s ever written. There are only four sheets of crisp white paper; as you watch from the studio couch, you wonder what the song is about, why he didn’t mention it to you.

“It’s done?!” Brian yelps. “What do you mean, it’s done?! Nothing’s ever done after the first pass! That’s how it works, that’s how it always works, someone suggests something and then we all dice it and slice it and flip it around and stitch it back together like the world’s most maniacal surgeons, and then, only then, maybe, it’s done.”

You glance up from where you���re sewing an eleventh patch onto Roger’s jeans. “Must we disparage the medical profession?”

“Sorry, love,” Roger tosses to you with a laugh.                          

“It’s done,” John repeats.

“Deaky, darling,” Freddie ventures gently. “We should endeavor to keep our minds open to collaboration—”

“Oh, should we, Fred?!” Bri exclaims. “How extraordinary, you never seem to encourage collaboration when it’s your song on the cutting floor!”

“Okay space boy, you listen here—”

“‘I’m happy at home’?!” Roger reads, revolted. “We’re not the bloody Bee Gees, Deaks!”

John explains measuredly and patiently, as if to a child: “That’s the way it goes. We record it as it is or not at all.”

“That’s not how we do things,” Brian mutters, deep frown lines chiseled through his face as he scans the lyrics.

“Then just fill the album with your and Fred’s songs like you always do, I’m sure that’ll keep me and Roger loyal.”

Brian glares at John. John stares back stoically, his eyes like steel. Brian looks to Roger for support; Roger lights a cigarette and pretends not to notice.

“Darling, please, you’re not being reasonable!” Freddie pleads.

“I need it.” John turns to Roger now. “I need it to stay the way it is.”

Rog just watches him for a while, exhales smoke, shrugs. “Okay,” he says at last.

“Okay?!” Brian howls. “What do you mean, okay?!”

“He said he needs it,” Roger replies simply.

Bri throws his hands into the air. “Bleeding christ! ‘He needs it.’ What rubbish! Do something, Fred!”

“Oh relax, darling.” Freddie sashays to the microphone and points to Brian’s Red Special. “Let’s try it out.”

“But—!”

Roger claps Brian on the back as he trots by him towards the drum kit. “Come on, Bri. Big smiles. Just picture the nice shiny pounds from all those album sales plinking into your bank account. You’ll have fifty Christmas hams at the wedding, one for every guest.”

You listen passively from the couch as they rehearse, trying not to let on that you’re paying attention, trying not to overstep. But you can’t help being struck by the lyrics, feeling the somberness of Freddie’s voice and John’s tentative notes on the electric piano slink into your bones; because it sounds so familiar, because it echoes so many things that John has told you.

When Queen takes a mid-afternoon break and John slips into the kitchen for a Coke, you follow him.

“Hey John?”

“Yeah.” He rests his hands on the dining room table. They’re sturdy and unmarred and completely unlike Roger’s; and you aren’t sure why you notice this, but you do.

“I completely understand if I’m being intrusive, and if I am please just tell me to shut up and I will.”

He chuckles. “You’re never intrusive. Go ahead.”

“I was just wondering...who is You’re My Best Friend about?”

Now his smile evaporates. “No one in particular,” he says briskly. “It’s just a song. Just something to put on the album. Maybe a single one day. A soulless royalties grab.”

That seems unlikely. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He takes a swig of Coke, peers down at the table, traces swirls of centuries-old oak with his fingertips.

“It’s just...you know...well...it kind of sounded like...maybe it was about me.”

He looks up. And for the first time, John levels some of his infamous, razored words at you: “Don’t be such a fucking narcissist.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Two days later, John doesn’t apologize. But he smiles at you over tea, offers to clean off the fingerprints of strawberry jelly that Roger left on the Canon, splashes you from the pool as you sunbathe beneath lapis August skies. And you agree, wordlessly and unconditionally, to forgive him. Because John is your best friend, whether or not you’re still his.

Nine weeks later, Bohemian Rhapsody is released as a single. (And, as promised, Roger ensures that I’m In Love With My Car is on the B-side.)

Twelve weeks later, Bohemian Rhapsody reaches the #1 spot on the UK Singles Chart, and remains there for over two months.

Fifteen weeks later, A Night At The Opera becomes the #1 album in the UK.

Fifteen weeks later, Queen’s future is suddenly crystal clear.

[adevotedappraisal]

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it.  I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them.  They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by.  Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house.  Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do.  They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.  

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment.  You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes.  We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said.  But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive.  That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman.  I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me.  They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick).  Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.  

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country.  So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection.  From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her.  Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through.  Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time.  In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in.  That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001). 

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well.  While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track.  In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes.  Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.  With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures.  The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel.   Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.”   At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.”  All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an  I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album.  Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of “Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).  

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks.  Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window.  And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene.  Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two.  She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh.  Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before.  There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.  

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love.  That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air.  A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.  

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster.  And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”  

It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see.  In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again.  And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

[italian-sides]

“Ombre e Bastoni”, ch. 3

Hello again! As usual, thank you so much to @misslilidelaney for writing this and @watcher-from-the-heights for being my awesome beta all the time.  I also tag @ts-italian-gang, because I can and I want to. If you want, you can support the fic on AO3 too! Imma post the third chapter as soon as I finish posting it here on Tumblr.  Anyway, enjoy! Whenever Emilio Picani walked into the Dolce&Remì, all heads turned. Even if he lived in Bologna on a permanent basis for three years by now, he didn't know why everybody there, especially the usual people, laid eyes on him as they didn't for other customers. And yet he wasn’t that flashy or even fashionable. Sure, he was tall, he had fine features and an enjoyable physique, but he wasn't that special. He was just a nice guy, with his passion for colorful ties and pastel cardigans. Of course, he knew very well that he had been in the sights of a couple of them for a long time: he well remembered Romolo's ruthless flirting and Virgil's stuttering when he asked him to be his tutor on the subjects that he himself studied before opening his own therapy office in Bologna. And no one, not even his roommate Remo, knew how he opened Luca's eyes to his cousin Patrizio, whom Emilio loved with all his heart. All three boys were undoubtedly beautiful, charismatic and, in their own way, interesting. Yet he couldn't accept their court. Because 30-year-old Emilio Picani hadn’t decided to come out yet. Partially due to his parents, fervent Catholics unlike him, but mostly because surprise surprise... Emilio Picani was shy. And before the bar, the usual places where he felt at home were his office and his room, where he surrounded himself with memorabilia from cartoons and anime, things that fascinated him since adolescence. In short his shyness, mixed with the stereotype of the glittery, feather-filled homosexuals he was accustomed to by his parents, always kept him away from the whole LGBT world, which the psychologist didn't feel a part of. He envied his little Emilian cousin when he came out as pansexual, and he knew very well that sooner or later, hanging out with Patrizio's clique, he had to decide, too, to get out of the closet. So he declined Romolo's declaration for that very reason. Although it wasn’t the only reason. The second reason was... slightly taller than him. His shoulders were wide, although he often slouched, making himself about ten centimetres shorter in height. He had bright green eyes, almost to an unnatural extent. He had his hair shaved on the sides but with a thick quiff on top, which he held back with a yellow headband, clearly his favorite color. He rarely laughed, but when he did, it was a low, deep laugh, able to literally shake the Veronese's stomach. And he was from Veneto, like him. His second piece of home, after Patrizio. Emilio Picani, thirty years old, a therapist and still in the closet. But completely gay for Giuda Schiavon. He was convinced of that by now. He tried to deny it, to say that it was just his imagination. Everyone at the bar loved him, they laughed with him, they confided in him, sometimes for sentimental nonsense, sometimes for more serious consultations. Tommaso became one of his patients from the first day that he finally opened his office, and the two were now pretty close, almost like brothers. He was the first to whom Emilio confessed his sexual orientation. Tommaso embraced him and murmured: "Don’t worry, nobody figured it out." They laughed, and the Veronese immediately called his cousin, who promised not to say anything, for the time being, to anyone, not even his significant other, Luca.  Unfortunately, not even Tommaso could dispel Emilio’s doubts. Those doubts that by now became certainties, in those three years, and devastated the psychologist. Giuda, his beautiful, silent, mysterious and fascinating Giuda, couldn't even bear the sight of the Veronese. He never treated him badly, but Emilio couldn't help but notice how he changed his attitude whenever he walked in.

He often looked at him from the bar's window. He looked at him for a long time, laughing and joking with everyone, even with Virgilio, and by now he could read his expressions without hearing him speak, just by observing him. So he knew that the coldness he showed him was real.   As his eyes became slits, as his words became cold hisses, rarely addressed to Emilio. Never openly unsympathetic, but incredibly icy. And apparently, whatever he had to do in the kitchen, he always had to do it when he walked in. But no one knew about his crush, except for Patrizio, who after all read him like an open book. And not even Patrizio could understand the change of mood of the Venetian, in the presence of his cousin. The young Bolognese tried to convince his cousin to surrender, or at least to talk to him, and this was precisely the reason why Emilio pushed himself, thanks to a nice glass of Millesimato di Conegliano, to speak, perhaps for the third time in three years, to Giuda in the bar.  And that made the dishwasher guy so nervous that he dropped the glasses' tray in his hand. "You're welcome.", the Venetian hissed,  looking at him, for the first time in three years, in the eyes.

A rush ran through Emilio’s body. An electric shock like he never experienced before. Joined by an endless lump in his throat for what just happened. As soon as Giuda wandered off to take the broom to sweep up the floor, followed by Remo, Emilio stood up and tried to go around the counter to pick up the glass pieces but Tommas ostopped him right away.  "You're gonna hurt yourself. You get paper cuts all the time, can you imagine what would happen with glass?"

"But... Giuda..." Tommaso sighed and perhaps understood: "Giuda will be fine. It's not the first time he’s spilled glasses. Maybe he should calm down a bit; if he hadn't been so tense he wouldn’t have dropped them. Don’t even think it’s your fault." Emilio sighed, taking off his glasses and shaking his head: "But it is my fault." Patrizio approached him, and put his hand on his shoulder again. Luca was behind them and suggested, matter-of-factly: "Emilio, do you want to get some air?" The Veronese nodded carelessly and they went outside. Despite Patrizio's dirty look, the Veronese automatically extracted his pack of cigarillos and lit one. As he blew out the smoke from the miniature cigar, he kept looking inside the bar. And he saw Giuda, with his yellow gloves, going up on the counter and looking around. He'd been... crying? His eyes, particularly the left one, were tremendously red. The sigh, undoubtedly of relief, emitted by the young Venetian followed by the hand on Remo’s shoulder,  definitely devastated the 30-year-old. Patrizio was watching the scene next to him, and he murmured: "He acts like he’s the victim when he actually did it all by himself. What a two-faced snake..." "Patrizio, please...", begged the Veronese. "Please what? He dropped the glasses, not you. You just thanked him, Emi. I don’t know how you can like someone like t..." Patrizio opened his eyes wide and shut his mouth with one hand. But the damage had been already done. Luca was looking at both of them with his eyes wide open like a deer in front of headlights. He looked at them both with shock, Emilio who by now had given up and begun to silently cry, pulling from the cigarillo like a madman, and Patrizio who continued to whisper his apologies. And he cleared his voice pretty nicely before asking, with kindness, despite the hard accent typical of his region: "Do you want to come to our house for some hot tea? I’m sure we can raid some of Romolo's nicest cookies." Emilio nodded, and his cousin’s boyfriend took them both under his arm, taking them away from the Dolce&Remì. The boy giggled when, while stepping into the living room, they surprised Virgilio and Romolo sitting on the couch and hugging each other, watching Mulan on Blu-ray, claiming to have fallen asleep, not noticing the compromising position. He silently watched Luca hugging Patrizio from behind, whispering something in his ear while the young Emilian was preparing tea for all of them. And he widened his eyes in terror when both the Molisan and the Roman confessed that they had noticed his crush on Giuda probably before Emilio admitted it to himself. The evening passed quickly, almost too quickly, between the teasing towards Emilio for his questionable choice - Romolo was still so mad at him, for obvious reasons - and when it was time to go home, Emilio thought of staying in his cousin’s apartment with his three lovely roommates. But he knew that in that same building, his roommate Remo was coming home. So he kissed his cousin on the forehead and hugged the other three, and took the elevator home. Once the door was open, he found Remo looking at something on the computer, in the dark of the dining room: "Oh, hey, Emì. You ran off to your cousin? Giuda wanted to apologize for treating you so badly." Right. He had such a sorry face. "Actually, I'm the one who should be apologizing. I made him destroy the glasses and I ran away. Holy crap, I've been a jerk. I hope he doesn’t throw a chair at me the next time I walk into the bar." "C'moooon. Giuda smashes glasses, and not only those, more than he could ever admit!", laughed the Roman, before yawning loudly and getting out of the chair: "Listen... I wanted to do something nice at the bar... Something that can involve young people but traditional at the same time. If we had a briscola tournament [1], would you like to play?" "Holy crap! Are you seriously asking me? I love briscola!" "Alright, bruh. C'mon then, I’ll talk to Tommy tomorrow and see what we can do about it. If you don’t come to play, I’ll never talk to you again!" Emilio nodded and Remo went to his room, a little diabolical smile on his face.

[1]: according to Wikipedia, "Briscola is one of Italy's most popular games, a Mediterranean trick-taking, Ace-Ten card game for two to six players played with a standard Italian 40-card deck. With three or six players, twos are removed from the deck to ensure the number of cards in the deck is a multiple of the number of players; a single two for three players and all four twos for six players. The four- and six-player versions of the game are played as a partnership game of two teams, with players seated such that every player is adjacent to two opponents."

1 - 2 - 3 - ?

hope you enjoyed, ciao! 

Quando Emilio Picani entrava al Dolce&Remì, tutte le teste si giravano. Anche se ormai viveva a Bologna in pianta stabile da 3 anni e poco più, non sapeva perché tutti i presenti, specialmente i soliti noti, posavano lo sguardo su di lui come non facevano per gli altri clienti del bar. Eppure non era così appariscente o alla moda. Certo, era alto, aveva dei bei lineamenti ed un bel fisico, ma non era così speciale. Era semplicemente un bel ragazzo, con la sua passione per le cravatte colorate ed i cardigan color pastello. Certo, sapeva benissimo di essere stato nelle mire di un paio di loro per un lungo periodo, ricordava bene la corte spietata di Romolo e il balbettare di Virgilio quando gli aveva proposto di dargli ripetizioni sulle materie che lui stesso aveva studiato prima di aprire il suo studio a Bologna. E nessuno, nemmeno il suo coinquilino Remo, sapeva di come avesse aperto, con le cattive, gli occhi di Luca nei confronti di suo cugino Patrizio, che Emilio adorava con tutto il cuore. Tutti e tre i ragazzi erano indubbiamente bellissimi, carismatici e comunque, a loro modo, interessanti. Eppure non poteva accettare la loro corte. Perché Emilio Picani, trent'anni, ancora non si era deciso a fare coming out. Un po' per i genitori, ferventi cattolici al contrario di lui, ma soprattutto perché sorpresa sorpresa... Emilio Picani era timido. E prima del bar, i soli posti dove si sentiva a casa erano il suo studio e la sua camera, dove si circondava di memorabilia a tema cartoon ed anime, cose che lo appassionavano sin dall'adolescenza. Ed insomma, la sua timidezza, mista allo stereotipo degli omosessuali glitterati e pieni di piume a cui lo avevano abituato, lo avevano sempre tenuto in disparte da tutto il mondo legato ai gay, del quale lo psicologo non si sentiva parte. Aveva invidiato il suo piccolo cuginetto emiliano quando aveva ammesso di essere pansessuale, e sapeva benissimo che prima o poi, frequentando la compagnia di Patrizio, si sarebbe dovuto decidere anche lui, ad uscire dall'armadio. Quindi aveva declinato la dichiarazione di Romolo, proprio per quel motivo. Anche se non era proprio l'unico. Il secondo motivo era... poco più alto di lui. Aveva le spalle larghe, anche se spesso le teneva ricurve, togliendosi una decina di centimetri buoni. Aveva gli occhi di un verde intenso, quasi innaturale. Aveva i capelli rasati attorno alla testa ma un folto ciuffo al di sopra, che teneva indietro con un cerchietto giallo, palesemente il suo colore preferito. Rideva raramente, ma quando lo faceva, era una risata bassa, profonda, capace di scuotere lo stomaco del veronese. 

Ed era veneto, come lui. Il suo secondo pezzo di casa, dopo Patrizio.

Emilio Picani, trent'anni, psicologo, omosessuale ancora nell'armadio. Ma completamente gay per Giuda Schiavon.

Ormai ne era convinto. Aveva cercato di negarlo, di dirsi che era solo una sua impressione, la sua immaginazione. Tutti, in quel bar, lo adoravano, ridevano con lui, si confidavano con lui, a volte per sciocchezze sentimentali, a volte per dei consulti più seri. Tommaso era suo paziente dal primo giorno che aveva aperto, finalmente, il suo studio, ed i due erano ormai uniti come fratelli. Era stato il primo a cui Emilio aveva confessato il suo orientamento sessuale. Tommaso lo aveva abbracciato e aveva mormorato: "Tranquillo che non lo ha capito nessuno." Avevano riso, ed il veronese aveva chiamato subito il cugino, che aveva promesso di non dirlo, per il momento, neanche alla sua dolce metà, Luca. Sfortunatamente, nemmeno Tommaso era riuscito a dissipare i dubbi di Emilio. Quei dubbi che ormai erano diventati certezze, in quei tre anni, ed avevano devastato lo psicologo. Giuda, il suo bellissimo, silenzioso, misterioso ed affascinante Giuda, non riusciva nemmeno a sopportare la vista del veronese. Non lo aveva mai trattato male, ma Emilio non poteva non notare come cambiava atteggiamento quando lui arrivava. Spesso lo guardava dalla vetrata del bar. Lo guardava per un bel pezzo, ridere e scherzare con tutti, persino con Virgilio, ed ormai riusciva a leggerne l'espressione senza sentirlo parlare, solo osservandolo. Quindi sapeva bene che era vera, la freddezza che dimostrava nei suoi confronti. Come i suoi occhi diventavano fessure, come le parole diventavano freddi sibili, raramente rivolti ad Emilio. Mai apertamente antipatico, ma incredibilmente glaciale. Ed a quanto pare, qualsiasi cosa dovesse fare in cucina, doveva sempre farla quando arrivava lui. Nessuno però sapeva di questa sua cotta, ad esclusione di Patrizio, che dopotutto lo leggeva come un libro aperto. E nemmeno Patrizio riusciva a comprendere il cambio di umore del veneziano, in presenza del cugino. Il giovane bolognese aveva cercato di convincere il cugino ad arrendersi, o almeno a parlare con lui, ed era proprio questo il motivo aveva spinto Emilio a ringraziare, complice un bicchiere di buon Millesimato di Conegliano, a parlare, forse per la terza volta in tre anni, Giuda ad alta voce nel bar.    E questo aveva snervato talmente tanto il lavapiatti, che aveva fatto cadere il vassoio di bicchieri che aveva tra le mani. "Prego." Aveva sibilato il veneziano guardandolo, per la prima volta in tre anni, negli occhi. Ed un brivido aveva percorso il corpo di Emilio. Una scarica elettrica come non ne aveva mai provate prima. Accompagnata da un magone infinito per quanto era successo. Appena Giuda si era allontanato per prendere la scopa per spazzare, seguito a ruota da Remo, Emilio si era alzato in piedi ed aveva cercato di aggirare il bancone per tirare su i cocci, ma Tommaso lo aveva fermato. "Ti farai male. Ti tagli anche con la carta, cosa vuoi fare coi bicchieri?"    "Ma... Giuda..." Tommaso aveva sospirato, e forse aveva compreso: "Giuda se la caverà. Non è mica la prima volta che fa piovere bicchieri. Forse dovrebbe calmarsi un po', non fosse stato così teso non li avrebbe fatti cadere. Non provarci nemmeno a pensare che sia colpa tua." Emilio aveva sospirato, togliendosi gli occhiali e scuotendo la testa. "Ma è colpa mia." Patrizio si era avvicinato, e gli aveva messo di nuovo la mano sulla spalla. Luca era dietro di loro, ed aveva proposto, pragmatico. "Emilio, vuoi uscire a prendere un po' d'aria?" Il veronese aveva annuito distrattamente, ed erano usciti. Nonostante l'occhiataccia di Patrizio, il veronese aveva in automatico estratto il suo pacchetto di cigarilli, e se ne era acceso uno. Mentre tirava dal sigaro in miniatura, aveva continuato a guardare dentro il bar. Ed aveva viso Giuda coi suoi guanti gialli, salire sul bancone e guardarsi attorno. Aveva... pianto? I suoi occhi, in particolare quello sinistro, erano tremendamente rossi. Il sospiro, indubbiamente di sollievo, emesso dal giovane veneziano seguito dalla mano sulla spalla di Remo, aveva devastato definitivamente il trentenne. Patrizio stava guardando la scena accanto a lui, ed aveva mormorato: "Sembra quasi che sia lui la vittima. Quando invece ha fatto tutto da solo. Che razza di falso..." "Patrizio, per favore...", aveva implorato il veronese. "Per favore cosa? È lui che ha fatto cadere i bicchieri, non tu. Tu lo hai solo ringraziato, Emi. Non capisco come fa a piacerti uno c...." Patrizio aveva spalancato gli occhi e si era tappato la bocca con una mano. Ma ormai il danno era fatto.  Luca stava guardando entrambi con gli occhi spalancati come un cervo davanti a dei fari. Aveva guardato entrambi con fare sconvolto, Emilio che ormai si era arreso ed aveva iniziato a piangere silenziosamente, tirando dal cigarillo come un ossesso, Patrizio che continuava a sussurrare le sue scuse. 

E si era schiarito ben bene la voce prima di chiedere, gentilmente nonostante l'accento duro tipico della sua regione: "Vuoi venire a casa nostra a bere un thè? Sono sicuro che riusciamo a saccheggiarne di quelli buoni di Romolo." Emilio aveva annuito, ed il ragazzo del cugino aveva preso entrambi sottobraccio, portandoli via dal Dolce&Remì. Il ragazzo aveva ridacchiato quando entrando, avevano sorpreso Virgilio e Romolo seduti sul divano uno addosso all'altro, a guardare Mulan in Bluray, asserendo di essersi addormentati e di non essersi accorti della posizione compromettente. Aveva osservato in silenzio Luca abbracciare Patrizio alle spalle, sussurrandogli qualcosa mentre il giovane emiliano preparava il thè per tutti. Ed aveva spalancato gli occhi terrorizzato quando sia il molisano che il romano, avevano confessato che si erano accorti della sua cotta per Giuda da probabilmente prima di quando Emilio lo aveva ammesso a sé stesso. La serata era passata in fretta, troppo in fretta, tra prese per i fondelli ad Emilio per la sua scelta discutibile (Romolo ce l'aveva particolarmente a morte, per ovvi motivi), e quando era stato il momento di tornare a casa, Emilio aveva pensato di restare a dormire nell'appartamento del cugino e dei suoi tre adorabili coinquilini. Ma sapeva bene che, in quello stesso palazzo, il suo coinquilino Remo stava rientrando. Quindi aveva baciato sulla fronte il cugino ed abbracciato forte gli altri tre, ed aveva preso l'ascensore per tornare a casa. Una volta aperta la porta, aveva trovato Remo guardare qualcosa al pc, al buio della sala da pranzo. "A Emì. Te ne sei scappato da tuo cugino? Giuda se voleva scusà per avette trattato come l'ultimo deji stronzi."    Come no. Aveva proprio la faccia dispiaciuta. "Ma mi dovrei scusare io. Gli ho fatto distruggere i bicchieri e sono scappato. Porco can, mi sono comportato di merda. Spero non mi tiri addosso una sedia la prima volta che entro in bar." "Ma vaaaa. Giuda spacca i bicchieri, e non solo, più di quanto potrebbe mai ammettere!", aveva riso il romano, prima di sbadigliare rumorosamente ed alzarsi dalla sedia. "Ascolta... Volevo fare un qualcosa di carino al bar... Qualcosa che possa coinvolgere sia i giovani ma sia qualcosa di tipico. Se facessi un torneo di briscola, tu giocheresti?" "Porco can! Ma me lo chiedi? Adoro la briscola!" "Bella zì. Allora dai, che domani parlo con Tommy e vediamo il da farci. Guarda che se nun vieni a giocà te tolgo er saluto!" Emilio aveva annuito e Remo si era diretto in camera, un sorrisetto diabolico in faccia.

[desperationandgin]

Deep as the Road is Long (Part II, Chapter 13)

Rating: General Audiences, pain and sadness.

Also Read on: AO3

Previous Chapter

A/N: I'll give you a head's up right now - part two is short, but it's not easy. You've let me bring you this far, trust me to get Jamie and Claire through this, too ❤ New mood board made by @smashing-teacups; thank you love!

April 2016 (Part 2)

He never asks the question so much as Claire makes a decision on her own. She’s going to Scotland; she’s taking the time off from work and going with him. It pretty much ‘outs’ the nature of their relationship to anyone paying attention but what could it possibly matter now? If there are ethics brought up when she returns, she’ll deal with it then. Not now, not while she’s abroad. Later. Truth be told, she isn’t even sure he wants her there, but he hadn’t told her not to come when she’d said she wanted to be there for him. She took care of everything, getting the authorization to transport Faith back to Scotland, registering her death, gathering all of the paperwork needed. What Jamie needed to sign, she asked him to after explaining what each thing was. She isn’t sure he listened, just signed.

It doesn’t bother her; the weight of it, being too numb to make any decisions. She understands it. On their plane now from Newark to Scotland, she looks at him, too tall for the seat, looking as though he’s trying not to throw up but whether he’s airsick or just grieving and nauseous, she isn’t sure. His entire world has fallen apart; it was supposed to be his daughter here with him on the flight back, excited to go home, to see family, to be well and happy and greet all of her cousins cheerfully. Claire is a poor substitute.

When they land, it’s a long taxi ride to his childhood home, but when Lallybroch comes into view it takes her breath away. It’s large but not obnoxiously so, and just from the outside where their bags are being taken from the boot of the car, she can feel the warmth of family. When they come to greet him, Claire stands out of the way, an observer only. She assumes the tiny ball of dark hair and energy is his sister by the way she wraps her arms around him and he wraps his around her in return. His movements are stiffer but he reciprocates, dropping his head so that his lips simply press to the crown of her head. His brother in law is next, a hug with claps on the shoulder before Ian makes his way with his cane back toward the house, stopping when he sees Claire.

“Ye must be the lass that cared so for Faith.”

When she’s acknowledged, Jenny and Jamie both look at her and the crushing weight of failed promises makes her want to shrink at the scrutiny. She can’t find her voice and once she does she can’t find the right words so she only nods, wetting her lips. “I’m Claire.”

She doesn’t expect the hug that comes, her eyes closing tightly against a wave of emotion. This isn’t hers to share, this grief, not when she couldn’t bring Faith back to them healthy, not when she hasn’t known years of loving such a special little girl. Still, Ian is kind to her, leads her indoors with Jamie and Jenny bringing up the rear. Inside, curious children, three of them, peek around a corner, but when they see their uncle there’s no stopping the little girls even when Jenny yells out for the kids to go upstairs.

Jamie shakes his head and sits to accept all three children into his arms; wee Jamie, Maggie and Katherine as they’re introduced to Claire later. He doesn’t speak, just holds them all for a few long moments before kissing each of their foreheads in a clear signal that he’s done for now. Jenny pulls them back and sends them upstairs while Claire stands and watches. She can see two infants swaddled and currently sleeping in a bassinet that can be carried easily from room to room. So much new life surrounding Jamie could be good, but for now, she imagines it must feel like a hot dagger to his heart. She watches as he gets up slowly and begins heading for the stairs, each step looking heavy for him to take. For a moment she wants to follow him, but there’s a realization that she needs to fill his family in on how far she’s gotten, of what things need to be taken care of next. So, she stays and sits with them in a large sitting room in front of a fire. It’s so antiquated but it feels like home, and Claire speaks quietly; of those final moments, the things she was sure of (Faith being buried next to Ellen Fraser) and things she felt she couldn’t be the one to decide (what Faith should be wearing). By the time she’s done she’s emotionally exhausted, spent, and makes her way upstairs, following the directions to Jamie’s room. Pushing the door open quietly, she can see him sitting on the edge of the bed and enters, closing the door behind her again as she moves to sit beside him.

“I know how overwhelming this all must be,” she begins, reaching out with one hand and covering his.

He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t reject her touch, either.

“There are some things you have to decide, Jamie. I can’t.”

Claire can feel him tense beside her, but she has no choice but to press on. “Do you want...a viewing?”

Heartbeats go by before he finally nods. “Aye.”

“What about a gathering, after, Jamie?”

He hangs his head, jaw working as he tries to process his assorted thoughts. “I dinna care to entertain when all I want is to…”

She knows and reaches out, rubbing his back softly with her hand. “We don’t have to do that. Or, you don’t have to be there. Either way, Jamie, nothing has to happen that you aren’t ready for.” He’s tense beneath her hand and she drops it, feeling useless. “You should try to get some sleep.”

Without acknowledging her words he rises, beginning to undress. She stays frozen in her spot as she watches him strip down to briefs and a shirt before going to lean against the hearth, staring into an empty void.

“Do you want me to go?” she asks him quietly, slowly standing. “There’s a hotel, not far off.”

Jamie turns to her and shakes his head. “No, Sassenach. I dinna want ye to go. I’m sorry, I’m no’...”

Claire shakes her head, standing at his side now, reaching to take his hand in hers. “You don’t need to be sorry for anything, Jamie.” Only her. She’s the one who needs to plead with his entire family to forgive her.

The evening of the viewing, she isn’t sure what to expect. Something quite Catholic, she assumes, but the sheer abundance of people overwhelms her. She doesn’t know five people who would come to her funeral with such genuine connection to her, let alone the hundreds that pour through the doors of the funeral home. Nursery school workers, those nurses who’d first taken care of Faith when she was born prematurely, Sunday school teachers, all of her mother’s family. They fill the small sanctuary and from the back, she watches as they walk one by one down to where the open coffin lays.

In the end, Jenny had to go shopping. All of Faith’s clothes were too big for the size she’d become. But now, as it’s Claire’s turn to view the little girl she can’t help but know she’d love the pink dress with gold trim. It’s perfect, her vision blurring when she realizes someone (Jenny?) tucked a photo of Jamie and Faith into the corner of the lid of the coffin. She won’t be all alone in the dark after all, and a tear makes its way over the apple of Claire’s cheek. Reaching out, one hand lightly presses to Faith’s forehead one more time, the cold expected but still startling.

“I’m so sorry, Faith,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.” There’s more she wants to say but the words are stuck in her throat. Bending, she presses her lips now where her fingers were. There’s no hint of baby shampoo to the red curls on her head. The essence of her is gone and it isn’t fair; Claire wants to scream but the sound is choked and instead, she moves so that Jamie can have his turn. There’s nowhere for Claire to go but to her seat, the one beside her open for him. She can’t hear him, but she can see the way his shoulders move and shake, watches as he leans over and she knows he’s kissing her cheek one more time. Jamie reaches into his pocket and pulls out something red, allowing Claire to catch sight of a gold heart sticker. The Valentine’s Day card, the one from him to his daughter. She’s seen it; she packed up Faith’s hospital room. She’s seen what he wrote inside and remembers it now as though imprinted on her heart.

Roses are red Violets are blue You make the world better Just by being you.

There isn’t a bonnier lass than you in any country a leannan. You will always be the most important Valentine in my heart.

Love,

Da

Jamie finally sits next to her, eyes red, cheeks wet, and for the first time he leans into Claire, seeking her arms which she gives freely. Her arms wrap around him the best they can with how they’re sitting until a priest begins to lead the Rosary. That’s when Jamie sinks back into himself and she can’t be sure if he finds solace or more pain in the repetitive prayer.

When the day of the funeral arrives, Claire stands right beside Jamie at the front of a beautiful church, haunting in its grandness, heavy with the confessions and burdens each old stone has heard over a century or two. She watches as Jamie’s family and close friends carry the tiniest of coffins to the front of the church, feels Jamie’s hand seeking hers. If she’s honest, she doesn’t remember much. The priest speaks about Faith, how precocious she was, how beautiful in spirit, how witty and kind. Claire’s aware of Jamie sitting there, still as a statue, is aware of Jenny in the pew behind them, crying. It feels as though she’s intruding on a moment that isn’t hers to witness, but she’s steadfast, holds his hand, stares ahead, sits when the rest of the family goes up for Communion. By the time they get to the cemetery, she expects it to be a typical Scottish day, gray and drizzling. It’s the exact opposite. The sky is wide and blue, the sun shining down on the graves of all Jamie’s family gone too soon.

The one time she breaks, it comes as the coffin is lowered into the ground slowly while everyone, including Jamie, participates in reciting the Lord’s prayer. She means to, but when her mouth opens nothing comes out but a quiet breath, captured by the memory of Faith laughing so hard at something Jamie’d done that tears of joy poured over her cheeks. The mere idea that the world has been robbed of such a sound forever makes her own tears fall, silently, as a hand covers her mouth. She tries to stop, tries to swallow it down, but it pours out of her now until the woman beside her, Mrs. Crook, reaches out to rub her back. Claire can feel how thin her fingers are, and as she begins to calm she wonders how much life and death the elderly woman has seen in her years of working for the Fraser family. All of the people buried in this specific plot, to be sure. Once calm, Claire clears her throat and lets out a breath, nodding that she’s fine, and the rest of the day, truly, is a blur.

She only feels as though she’s aware of it again when she’s alone with Jamie in his room. Undressing in the bathroom and slipping into a shirt to sleep in, they move around one another, his family having assumed their relationship was so much more than it is. When she’s in bed he uses the bathroom, moving on autopilot before getting into bed beside her, lying flat on his back. What she wants is to hold him again, to wrap him in her arms and protect what’s left of his heart. He’s been through so much, lost so many people. She wants to love him and guard him while at the same time scream that she’s the reason he’s hurting. Maybe he already knows it, and that’s why he won’t reach out to her now.

Silence stretches on until Claire reaches out, pushing a curl out of his face. “I’m here with you, Jamie,” she whispers.

He doesn’t move away but he doesn’t speak, and it’s enough for her to drop her hand.

“I’ll be with you until you don’t need me.”

She has no idea how long it is before sleep pulls her under. She only knows she’s waiting for the moment the penny drops and she’ll no longer be welcome in his bed.

Next Chapter

[purplesurveys]

692

How old were you when you had your first crush? The first crush I had that wasn’t a celebrity or a teacher was when I was 12. If you're a girl, how old were you when you started your period? It was a month after I turned 10. By that time I was just entering Grade 4 and when we were asked who had already gotten theirs, only a handful of hands shot up haha. I was an early bird for sure. What is your worst period story? Pretty obvious TMI warning here. Happened last December. I was visiting a photo studio to test if they were going to be suitable for my college batch’s grad shoot and unfortunately my period started in the middle of the trip. Even more unfortunately the trip was all the way in fucking BINANGONAN, which meant I couldn’t have access to napkins for the entire drive. I had to cross my legs real tight to avoid any leakage but at the time we got to the studio, my crotch area was soaked nonetheless. I had to ask for napkins from the studio staff, but thank god they were the nicest people ever and didn’t hesitate to hand me one. Does anyone else know who your first crush was besides you? Gabie knows. I think she’s the only one who knows, but I also think Pia asked me at one point too, so maybe her as well. What was your most embarrassing moment? I have at least one everyday.

What are your worst cramps like? Leg cramps that wake me up at 4 AM, without a doubt. Those always end me in tears no matter how old I am. What is the most physically painful thing you have ever experienced? Either my foot infection back in ‘09 or the toothache I had a few months back. I had no idea a TOOTH could send me crying almost every night or wake me up in the middle of the night just from being so painful. Oh and the time I ripped my ear piercing off. What are you allergic to? I’m not allergic to anything... at least I haven’t encountered anything I turned out to be allergic to. Have you ever wanted to be someone else? I’ve never seriously wanted to be a particular person, but I’ve found myself fantasizing about if I were richer. Have you ever been jealous of someone? Sure. Have you ever been jealous of a friend? Yeah. Just mostly high school stuff though, like the time Erk kept getting Gabie away from me and I got super fed up about it at one point that I stopped talking to Gab for like a month lmao. Do you feel shy around someone when you are first getting to know them? Yeah of course. Aren’t most of us? Do you feel shy around a crush? I get both shy and distant. What color hair did your first crush have? Black. Do you ever cry in public unwillingly, or are you able to hold it in? I’m able to hold it in because I hate making a scene. I just keep swallowing the lump in my throat and try to blink less. Do you throw up involuntarily when you have to, or can you swallow it down? I also can swallow it down as long as I have to. But if I really need to throw up I run to the nearest toilet. What's one near-embarrassing moment you had? Uhh idk. If I can tell something is going to be embarrassing I usually already feel pretty embarrassed about it, regardless if I’m saved from the embarrassment or not. Do you ever call yourself stupid? Yeah. Just yesterday BoJack Horseman’s “You’re a stupid piece of shit" kept replaying in my head all afternoon and evening. What was the name of your first imaginary friend? Katrina. She was my first and last. What's one weird habit you have? When I get my usual drink at Starbucks, my first sip has to be a long one and I usually savor it by closing my eyes and letting out a contented sigh haha. Only then can I start working.  Are you more of an open or a private person? I’m a bit of both, if that makes sense? I keep my shit private when they aren’t being raised, but when someone asks me about them I have no problem being an open book. Do you wish you could be more open with others? No, I already am. Do you feel ashamed? Not permanently lmao, but I feel it every now and then. Do you get embarrassed easily? Yes. Do you have regrets? Some. Have you ever fallen asleep in class? Never. I feel like – aside from being disrespectful – it’s an embarrassing thing to happen, especially if you’re caught and get scolded for it, so I make it a point not to let it happen to me. What was the hardest thing you've ever had to forgive? [Big trigger warning: Domestic violence] The day my grandpa said sorry to each of us in the family for beating up my baby cousin in a drunken stupor. After that he left the house for the week, presumably out of shame, then he came back to ask for forgiveness from each of us. I was desensitized to all of the violence I’ve seen at that point, so my 9 year old self gave him a shrug. Is there anyone you hate? No, not hate. Is there anything or anyone you're angry at, that you haven't forgiven yet? I don’t plan on forgiving my deadbeat uncle or my brother anytime soon. List five of your biggest bullies. A lot of people bullied me for my name and looks when I was younger, but they’re all irrelevant in my life now and I’ve forgotten all of them save for two – Kaira (who’s my friend now) and Sophia (who I don’t like just as much as when I was 4). Have you ever plotted revenge against someone? I’ve fantasized about revenge but never plotted anything. Have you ever done anything to get revenge against someone? Nope. ^If so, do you regret it, and did you apologize later? Have you ever had a friend crush (i.e., you really wanted to be their friend)? Yeah I remember being like this with Macy. She’s changed quite a bit these days and we don’t talk anymore, which I find sad considering what we’ve gone through in the last couple of years. What is the greatest longing of your heart? Money. The rest of my desires - happiness, contentment, the material things I want - comes after I have money lol. Who was your first love? Gabie. What was the last thing someone said that warmed your heart? Chesca said something very sweet to me and it was something I needed to hear, but explaining it would need too much background context so suffice it to say, she reassured me when I needed it most. Do you pray regularly? Nope. ^If so, to whom? Do you love Jesus? What church do you go to? I’m not religious but my mom is, and she drags the entire family to church every Sunday. That said we go to a specific parish within our area, because that’s what we’re a part of. What denomination is your church (if you go)? Catholic. What was the first year you voted in a presidential election? 2016. How old were you when the year changed to 2000? At exactly January 1? I was a year old, but I was turning 2 that year. Have you ever been afraid of the world ending? Not really, but it certainly has felt like the end of the world these days. This is the kind of shit you only ever get to read about in textbooks, so it’s feeling a little surreal. Do you enjoy public speaking? If I’m prepared for it and/or I enjoy what it is I have to talk about. What food makes you gag? Pineapple, raisins, or ice cream with nuts. Who was your first celebrity crush? Ashley Tisdale when she was Maddie in Suite Life of Zack & Cody. I also lowkey liked the mom, hahaha. What show did you want to be on when you were younger? Hi-5 when I was extremely younger; the kiddie crowds looked so lit 😩 Hahaha but when I got a bit older, I wanted to be in Legends of the Hidden Temple or be one of the people splashed with slime at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Looking at my answer I could now tell I was definitely a Nickelodeon kid. What was your childhood dream? To be an astronaut, to be a wrestler, and to have a big house with a swimming pool. Did you ever fulfill your childhood dream? I have 0/3 achieved, but it’s okay. My wants have mostly changed. What is your dream now? I still want a big house with a pool for sure lmao, but I mostly just dream of having enough money all my life and never having to worry about finances or having to ask people. What is your passion? History has always been my biggest one. Are you living your dream? Not yet. Do you receive insults or compliments more? Compliments, but that’s because I don’t let myself thrive in an environment where I’d get insults more because yanno, self-care? Lol. What is unfair about your life? Bad past presidents and how it’s led our country to be in the miserable state it’s in today, whereas I have to see other countries flourish in their unbelievably competent governments and see how these countries have public parks, libraries, playgrounds, etc. I don’t know what I did in my past life to have to end up in the Philippines hahahahaha, but here we are today. What about your life would you change? I wish my dog can stay with me forever. Did you write love poems when you were younger? Nope. Who are you jealous of and why? I’m not really feeling jealousy at the moment. When someone hurts you, do you start to feel jealous of them? No? Why would that happen? Name five people you know who have everything handed to them. Idkkkkk. I don’t wanna namedrop anyone for something like this lol. Name one person you know who is spoiled rotten. Boomers? Name one person you know who seems stuck-up. I know someone but I’m not naming him on here lmao. Name a church that just wants money. All of them? LOL at least all the Catholic ones, I can’t speak for the other denominations. What is your least favorite chore? I really hate folding clothes. Have you ever had an account of yours hacked? Yeah but like by a virus or something, not a person. Have you ever been a victim of police misconduct? Nah. But traffic enforcers have been incredibly rude to me before. Do you keep a diary? This one. What color is the diary you are currently using? It doesn’t really come with a color... Do you actually write "Dear Diary"? Only in the diaries I kept as a kid, because it’s what I saw in cartoons. When was the last time you wrote and sent someone a letter? December. I included a handwritten letter in my Christmas gifts for Gab. Do you write in cursive or print more? Print. Have you ever self-harmed? Duh.

[fightevilandthengetblownup]

Red Right Hand VII

—

Nothing of the last weekend had actually gone to plan - and Michael intended to resolve as many of the complications and insubordinate actions as quickly as possible before the next race.

He met with the short dark haired barman on the Tuesday morning, and a substantial amount of notes and looming later, he had the first part to his resolution started.

He had allowed too many mistakes, too many instructions only half followed, too many bar brawls that resulted in more damages than they accrued back for securing the facilities. Too many times had the loose cannon of the family been allowed to run unchallenged.

And as the family was heading towards bigger goals, great obstacles and larger risks, the volatile element had to be dealt with. Subdued somehow.

Michael had considered marrying him off. Finding some down on her luck girl who could hold up to his brother’s idiosyncracies out of desperation.

There had been that redhead cousin of the Catholic’s his brother had driven around a few times, which would have resolved that additional issue in one, but she had married some banker and left for America during the war. There had been the brunette - Bela something - however her little habit of finding herself with dead husbands was not something Michael was willing to risk with the other. There had been the dark haired American girl, Tessa, who weaved herself around the pub back when the Reapers visited Birmingham from London, however he did not believe that anything could convince her to return from the capital, no matter how badly the Reapers were doing.

So he was left to find another solution, and when he had the stroke of genius to occupy The Fort for their own legally, it gave him the opportunity to potentially instil some responsibility into the other.

He waited until after the surprisingly cold family meeting that moment to speak with the other. When discussing the outcome of the weekend, filling in their mother and sister of the results, Michael found the reaction from his younger brother a little off-putting considering he had seemed to have a pleasant time. That would be a topic to discuss again at a later point.

Jeffrey however, seemed much the same as usual - a little too glad at the bloodshed of the day despite instructions otherwise. He had weaved a tale for sister and nephew alike of the events of the betting tent, complete with cocky retelling of his ‘grand entrance’ to the ballroom. Michael exchanged a look of exasperation with Eleanor as the toast, eggs and bacon were shared around the table.

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing the original agreement crafted between himself and the previous leader for the Catholics; and then the tense peace agreement made prior to leaving the elegant home. Eleanor questioned why the original plan had to be changed, however the topic was dropped when Jackson stormed from the room to the work floor and Michael decided it would be best to discuss with her later the interuption to the plan. How was he to know that the girl would react so poorly, she had agreed to assist and follow orders after all.

“Jeffrey, you’re with me this morning.” “I’ve got a date with a blonde at eleven-” “You are coming with me this morning, I have got something to discuss with you.”

As the rest of the family had begun to peel off from the breakfast table, Michael had called his brother over to him and barely refrained from growling at the impetuous suggestion that a picture with some girl took precedence over business. The thought that the other may just abandon responsibility if given it did cross his mind, however Michael clapped a hand on the other’s shoulder with a commanding squeeze. “We have important business today, brother.”

The complaints at the change in plans from the other did not stop for a moment as they made their way towards the pub. As Michael pushed the doors open, he didn’t notice the barmaid setting the bar up for the day suddenly disappear into the store room at his entrance, before ushering his brother inside.

“Our important business is to go to the pub?” “No, Jeffrey. Our important business is The Fort. I believed it was time to introduce a legitimate avenue for our funds to be processed, and Spangler was willing to sell his ownership of the venue. For the right price.” “So.. why am I not having my cock sucked right now and instead here with you about some real estate purchase, Mikey? I would much rather not be here.” “Brother…”

The word came out as a growl as Michael found his arm wrapping around the other’s shoulders, grip tight on his upper arm, as he snarled the word in warming. This had been going on long enough. If France had not knocked some sense into the other, then he, Michael, would have to do it himself. “Brother, you are here to sign the paperwork into your name, and learn the ropes from Spangler.”

“Me?” “Yes, you.” “Why the fuck would I be runnin’ a bar, Mikey? I’ve got rounds to do on a night. I’ve got girls to do on a day. I’ve got standing bouts with Fitzgerald and Miles.” “And now, you’ve got a pub to run our funds through.”

The glare from the other was nothing on the looks Michael had received in the last few days, and brushing off the complaints as Jeffrey looked viable to begin throwing punches, the older gave his brother another pat on the shoulder before turning and leaving the location. The man would sink, or he would swim, and it was about time the Michael saw which way it would be.

—

The row house did not look any different from those to either side of it. The same black brick that built the city, and the same worn wood doors for the side of town. Fallen almost into neglect like its neighbours. It was the one building that those who sought out a way to dull the war and forget the screams could visit and walk away with a pocket of forgetfulness.

Jackson had visited the house once a week, to replenish his night time habit, since he had returned from the war and the long nights awake staring at the walls had worn him down to the dark embrace the house offered.

Rapping a short three knock on the door, it was opened moments later by a quiet boy, who then led him along the hall to what had once been a dining room.

Now it was the base of the dark haired Scot’s operation. Where he made deals and small talk with those that came to him for the little beads of forgetting. Jackson knew the way by heart, slumping into the seat opposite the other man with a sigh.

“Rough weekend, Jacky boy?” “You could say that.. What have you heard?” “Heard you boys went to the races. Somethin’ to do with those bloody Catholic wanks.” “You wouldn’t be wrong-” “Also heard that that old geezer, Zachariah, has gone missing since.”

Jackson frowned a little at that. He had thought the Catholics would be quiet about the death of their leader. It would appear as weakness if it had gotten out, even more so if the truth that a tiny woman had gone and done him in.

“Seemingly they don’t keep their mouths shut as well as I thought.” “Fear not, Jacky, they have. They just happen to have some servants with needs much like yours, who talk more than they should before their fix.” “So what exactly did you hear, Crowley?”

Sometimes when talking to the other it was like talking in riddles. Sometimes, it was like talking to the end of a gun pointed at your head. And others still was like being drawn into the numbing embrace of the opium he dealt - like you could share your secrets and none would leave the four walls. For the right price.

Today, it had been riddles but Jackson was in no mood for games.

The other man rose to his feet to the small decanter and two glasses before returning with two glasses. Scotch whisky. Irish whisky would never pass the front door, and that thought almost made him smile at the connotation.

“From what I heard, your brother engaged in a wager with the man, rest his soul, about that barmaid from The Fort. Zachariah had a tenner he would have her before the hour was out.”

Jackson’s hand froze where it was, glass halfway to his lips as the description came out. He had felt something telling him not to leave the billiard room that day, but Michael had told him it was part of the agreement as they sat around the card table in the lounge. That Zachariah demanded it and that Beth had agreed. To hear otherwise from an uninterested party, as well as the scene the day ended on, told him that was a lie.

“Seems that was true…” “What?” “Your reaction Jacky. So telling that thats all.” “Get on with it, Crowley.” “Yes yes. Well, if that is the case, from the little birdies I heard that Zachariah, the imbicile, didn’t quite win that wager. From what I hear, he in fact ended up in a pile on the floor.” “Served him right.”

He sipped at his drink as he listened to the other, dark look slipping over his face as he reflected on the bald man getting his dues. The way Michael had reacted at home when he returned from dropping Beth off made him think that something more was at stake than a simple wager, however that could just have been Michael’s disinterest in working with the soon-to-be leader instead of the devil he knew. Now, Jackson wanted nothing more than to take up this issue with him; especially when reflecting on the way Beth had behaved upon arriving at her rental flat.

“Regardless, what those Catholic fucks get up to does not factor into this discussion ‘ere. What I want to talk about is if you’re aware of the whereabouts of another of my companions.”

That got a brow raise in response as Jackson finished his drink and sat it on the desk before him. Crowley was not usually the type to concern himself with the comings and goings of those colleagues in the Black Eyes, and usually knew better than to question the Shadow about it during their handovers. Something had to be out of the ordinary for that to occur.

“Not that I’ve heard. Who’s missing?” “Oh they aren’t missing. I know exactly where they are. Lying six feet under with a bullet through his brain.” “And you think a Shadow had to do with it?” “I don’t think things, Jacky, I know things. What I don’t know is who caused Alastair’s brains to scramble in his skull. Nor to I know why.” “I’d say he probably deserved it too - knowing him.”

Crowley raised his glass in agreement at that, the smug knowing look on his face that used to make Jackson laugh more than it should have. It had always been delivered at the most inappropriate times, times when laughter would be wrong, or following a sadistic comment. However this time, it just added to the rolling dark feelings that had driven him there in the first place. As the other man finished his drink, Jackson leant forward and slid the folded bank notes across the desk to the other.

There was a brief minute as the other checked the value of the notes, before they were slid off into the breast pocket of Crowley’s vest. A key was drawn from the same pocket and slid into the top drawer before a glass vial with four balls of the substence, ready for use, was removed and slid across the besk in response.

Jackson held the vial carefully, finger holding the cork in place tightly as he tilted the vial to review before pocketing it in return. The other man poured another drink for the both of them now the business was completed, and both men reclined back to discuss other news for the next hour before either had other meetings.

—

She had been outside the flowershop on Albury Lane when the officer had approached, baton out already but not making a move to use it against her unless necessary. During the war, when only the barest number of officer remained to maintain the peace and she had been heavily involved in the operation of Shadow business, Shada had been used to such approaches to know fighting never got her anything but unsightly bruises and tears. However, since her brothers had returned, she had not found herself being escorted to the police building.

Following the constable towards the station, Shada didn’t know what to think of the situation other than her afternoon plans had been ruined until whatever was needed was resolved.

At the station, she was directed into a small interrogation room with a simple table and two chairs. As she sank into the seat facing the door, she chirped, “Ash tray, and a glass of water.” At the look she received, she clicked her fingers, “Now!”

The young officer fled the room quickly as Shada withdrew a cigarette, lighting and reclining back as she waited for whyever she had been accosted to be explained.

At the door opening, she looked up expectantly before staring darkly at the man that entered instead of the younger officer with her requested items. The man strode in as if he owned the place before sitting across from her, dark hands with fingers laced as he leant his elbows on the table and pressed his hands to his mouth. Shada raised a brow at him, letting the smoke slip gently from one side of her mouth before leaning back in her chair.

Neither party talked for a long drawn out moment, Shada getting through almost half of her cigarette in disinterest and the man simply staring across at her as if trying to disect her with his eyes alone. If he had been attractive to her, she might have tried fluttering her eyes or forcing a blush to her cheeks or tried releasing the inhaled smoke more seductively; however the ominous feeling she got from the dark-skinned officer and the creeping of a disturbing smile upon his face.

Finally, the man spoke, leaning back in his own chair with a smirk, “So. You are the infamous Visyak sister.”

“What of it? What is this all about?” “Just doing some background research if you will.” “Well, whatever this is about I want my ash tray and my water.”

That got a laugh from the man, and the sound made goosebumps flood along her arms. It sounded like something no one should hear, as if he did not laugh often and when he did, it was the start of something horrible. Letting out a stream of smoke straight towards the other’s face, Shada forced herself not to shudder.

“Yes, I heard your demands - unfortunately, you are in a police station, being questioned in regards to an open investigation-” “Is that what this is?” “And as such, you are not in a position to be making demands.”

He reached a hand out, Shada thought he was about to hold her hand for a brief second as the shudder of fear finally moved through her, to pin her wrist onto the table top with more pressure than expected. It hurt, however the officer seemed to know exactly how to avoid leaving a mark of his actions behind as he released the pressure upon getting to his feet to loom over her.

“You are here to deliver a message, Miss Visyak. You are here to remind your brothers that they aren’t untouchable for you are not untouchable. So long as you are around, they are easy to control - and I need for you to ensure they remain as such until they fall into line.”

Shada jerked back at that, chair making a horrible scraping noise on the wooden floor of the room as she struggled to get back from the sneering officer. Tugging her coat closer around herself, as if that was a defense to words or looks alike, she snarled back at the man, “And who the fuck do you think you are to keep me here?”

“Dear girl, my name is Gordon Walker. Make sure to inform your brother Jackson that you and I spoke when you’re finally released from here. Remind him to contact me shortly when you get home, or I will be wanting to speak with you again. More physically that time.”

Gordon Walker reached a hand out to run along her jaw line, tilting her chin to look up at his wicked grin before he let her got and strode from the room. She could head the lock click from the outside as she slumped back into her seat, prepaing to be sat waiting for quite some time at this rate. Her fingers shook slightly as she lit her next cigarette, stamping the other out in the middle of the table top without a tray to use.

—

Something had been very wrong with her family for a long time, something was slowly pulling them all in different directions, separating the usually cohesive group. The Shadows and Visyak’s alike were stronger together, but thry weren’t right now, and Eleanor had seen it crack the hardest that week.

Something had to have happened at the races.

Since Sunday, Jackson had been withdrawn and since Wednesday refused to speak to anyone. Frosty silences and sequestering himself in his room like he had just after the war.

Jeffrey had been all over the place - satiated after his fighting Sunday and then infuriated from Tuesday. She had heard it was something to do with that rundown pub they frequented.

Michael seemed to be behaving normally, which meant he was the instigator of whatever problem was now splintering the whole - as children it had always been whomever was at fault showed no remorse or reaction to the behaviour of the others.

However the most troubling was that Shada had not returned home since Thursday. Eleanor had asked each of the boys if they knew where she was to no avail. She had checked all of Shada’s favourite stores and places, though no one had seen her since picking up flowers Thursday morning.

As Michael strode into the family quarters from the workroom, Eleanor is waiting, hands bridged on the table over her cold cup of tea and eyes pinning him to the spot. "What happened on Sunday, Michael?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Ma.” “Oh yes you do. I can sense it on you, boy. Now sit down and speak with me.” “It was nothing I cannot handle.” “There it is again - always thinking you can handle everything. Let me tell you, Mikey, you are losing your grip on this family. You need help.”

The bblond stared her down for a long moment, before he lowered himself calmly into the seat opposite his mother. Two fingers rubbed the bridge of his nose as he was forced to stare down the concern on her face. Eleanor had always been good at getting information from each of her children, and it had not changed with time.

"That fucking barmaid killed the head of the Catholics, Ma, after I’d gone and worked out a perfect solution for the next two years before we wiped them out completely.” “What? Why? What was she even doing there?” “I asked Jack to bring her, use her as bait or a distraction while Jeff sorted the rest of the plan.” “Jacky does seem to be sweet on her, last I saw.” “I thought that, which is why I asked him to bring her rather than ask myself.” “So how did she end up killing the Catholic?”

Eleanor could see the cogs working behind the icy blue eyes of her son, working hard to decide what elements to share, what to conceal. It was always a flaw of having smart children, they started to decide what would be a lie and what would be an omision. What would get them in trouble and what would get them a shake of the head but not more. After a minute Michael seemed to settle upon what to tell, and as he spoke Eleanor let out a gasp. “I made a wager with him about how long it would take to get in her skirts. She did not seem to be favourable to his approach and made it abundantly clear to us all how much she disapproved of the idea.”

“You wagered on a girl’s looseness?” “It was more wagering upon Zachariah’s seduction technique. Seemingly, he had none” “So you asked Jackson to bring someone he’s sweet on to assist your plans, and then left her with another man to attempt to defile her? No wonder he’s not speaking to you.” “It wasn’t exactly like that, Ma.” “Lying doesn’t become you, Michael.”

Eleanor stared him down, pushing for him to realise and acknowledge the problem with his thinking, as much as she could see him doing the same to her. It was the creak of the front door opening as the youngest brother finally returned home for the evening that broke the silence, Jackson’s slumped shoulders pulling back taunt and rigid as he spotted the other man before storming upstairs. With a raised brow, Eleanor looked back across at the other blond.

Standing, she moved around the table to stroke back the other’s hair with the same smile she had used when trying to soothe and coax each of her children into understanding her words over their arrogance or confusion. “You may be able to lie to yourself about the situation you created, Mikey. But the damage has been done, and you will need to unmake these mistakes.” Eleanor gave a sigh before she left to the workroom, leaving the other to think over her words.

—

It had been five days since he’d been dragged into the pub, forced into the position and stuck writig ledgers upon ledgers of ‘takings’ to filter the illegitimate and legitimate together. Bookkeeping. He had been reduced to bookkeeping.

The glass shattered against the wall of the small office, thrown in frustration as Jeffrey pushed back in the desk chair, close to pulling his hair out in anger, with a shout.

“Well, now you’re just goin’ta have ta clean that up.” The cheery voice called out, grating on his nerves even further. Five days, he had had the blonde teasing and cajolling him at greater lengths than before. Five days she had spun about him behind the bar to grab a bottle or pour a pint, leant over his shoulder in the office to point at a figure or help with the math of the ledgers, and joked in turn at each of his angry outbursts. “Shame ‘bout not bein’ a customer is ye have to take care of th’ messes!”

“I’m your boss, you clean it up.” “But how will you ever learn if I tidy your mess up for you?”

Beth was leaning against the back of his chair again, hip against his shoulder and a look upon her face that made his blood boil. Something about her, the almost always knowing look, since he had begun spending more time around her was slowly driving him insane. She knew something about him, more than he did her; but she was not willing to share the secret with him. Only surface jokes and teases.

“Beth, just clean it up.” He was weary. Usually on a Sunday morning he would be out brutalising some bookies, or fucking one of his weekend girls. He would not be listening to some barmaid tease him about cleaning the fucking floor.

The blonde rolled her eyes at him before moving to collect the glass up, her apron folded up to hold the pieces as she plucked each large shard. “Ye know gettin’ angry won’t help nothin’. It’s all ‘bout the patience. Bidin’ your time.”

“And what are you biding your time over, sweetie? Thought you got all your rage out last Sunday.” “That was just defendin’ meself.” “And it was beautiful. Did the runt tell you how lovely you looked all covered in blood and fury?” “Well now, flattery won’t get you knowhere wit’ me, Jeff.” “Where will it get me?”

Jeffrey moved around quietly behind her as the girl finally stood up, the back and forth smoothing down his anger. As she plucked the last shard, he offered a hand to help her to her feet as she bunched her apron together. His thumb rubbed over the inside of her wrist as the thought that perhaps he wouldn’t need to forego some of his usual Sunday morning activities.

“Not there it won’t.” “Sure it wouldn’t, sweetie. I know I’m better lookin’ than the runt, and you know that you could do with some fun before the crowds roll in today.” “Jeffrey, that isn’t-” “One good reason, Bethy, one good reason why you and I wouldn’t.” “Not with the likes of you, mister.”

Beth moved past him at that comment, headed from the office out to the front bar to dispose of the glass. Her words had frozen him. Something about them seemed familiar, as if he had heard her say them before, heard her words in the same voice while a blonde the same had stared up at him. It tickled at his mind as he found himself rubbing his thumb to fingers, remembering the warm skin that had been beneath it. He had heard it before.

“Besides, you’ve got your Sunday girl, and your Monday girl.. and how many other girls you ‘ctually got, Jeffrey?” Beth quipped as she returned, cloth in hand, as she moved to pat up and dry the brown liquid from the wall. “Some big hotshot king’a the world like you has a plenty.”

As the last words rang out, Jeffrey found himself moving, hand locked around the woman’s throat and pressing her up against the wall. Beth’s feet kicked out a bit as she stared at him in shock, hand flinging out to punch him but caught quickly in his hand and pinned to the wall as well. As she glared up at him in response, he knew where he had met her before, the dark bruises and split lip long healed but the glare was the same.

“I know you, sweetie.” Jeffrey practically purred the words out, thumb rubbing against her skin as she struggled to get away from him. “You’re not Beth Murphy, are you?”

“Who am I then?” “You’re that pikey horseman’s daughter. Your last name is Harvelle, isn’t it?”

Her eyes widened fractionally at that point, brown eyes glaring up at him flickering with surprise and fear for a brief moment. He shifted his hand to hold her jaw in his hand as he had before, “What are you doing here, sweetie? Why is a gypsy girl pretending to be a fancy girl on the run in our little pub? Lying pikey trash.”

The blonde’s eyes flickered back and forth between his own, chin pulling into a stubborn mulish set. “You gangsters ain’t particularly trusthworthy either, ye know? Me Da wanted to make sure we got paid.” Her lips twisted into a harsh smile as she kicked a foot out towards him as she had once before, though this time he was more prepared, laughing at her. “You goin’ to out me to everyone now? Tell’em that I’m not Beth Murphy, that I’m Joanna Harvelle?”

Jeffrey rolled the idea around in his thoughts. It made sense to out her - to let his brothers know they couldn’t trust the girl any more, that she was gypsy trash sent to monitor them - however, as he felt the muscle move under his hand, he felt a matching smile grow upon his own face. “No, sweetie, your secret is safe with me.” 

He let go of Joanna, stepping back as he heard the front door open and his younger brother’s voice call out in greeting. Smirking, he raised a brow back at the girl. “I look forward to seein’ how long you can keep it from others.”

—

[rapeculturerealities]

The algorithm that dictates YouTube’s suggested videos has taken me to strange and wonderful places, including an unusually pious part of the streaming site: women vloggers who aren’t having sex until they’re married. Of course, they vlog about other things too. Emily Wilson, who describes herself as a “women empower-er,” makes faith-based advice videos; Courtney Raine does makeup tutorials and “expectation versus reality” skits; and Milena Ciciotti offers clothing hauls, Q&As, and tips on finding a Godly man.

Their subscriber counts vary from 15,000 to 200,000, but each of them has a popular video titled something like “The Truth About Saving Yourself For Marriage.” Ciciotti’s videos average between 100,000 and 200,000 views, but her “Untold Truth About Saving Yourself for Marriage” video has over 1.9 million views. Wilson typically reaches between 25,000 and 50,000 viewers, while her chastity video, “What No One is Saying About Saving Yourself for Marriage,” has been watched over 900,000 times. The vloggers usually say that they want to share their experience, not evangelize, but their decision to wait is primarily rooted in a Christian scripture that proclaims sex is only virtuous when it happens between a husband and wife.

Along with sharing their own experiences, they also include reasons why you, too, might want to live chastely: having sex will cause heartbreak; birth control is bad for women; and you’ll become chemically bonded to your first sexual partner. (That’s untrue, by the way.) I was raised by a fallen-away Catholic, so I was baptized but never confirmed. When I went to church with my cousins, I’d sit in the pews and watch while they lined up to drink wine and eat wafers. I was jealous of the practiced ritual, the mid-morning snack, and the gold cross necklace my cousin got for her confirmation. When I binge purity videos, I get the same feeling—I’m on the outside looking in. Intellectually, I see the limitations in their argument, but then part of me thinks: What if they’re right? What if these women know something I don’t?

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[mywalkhispath]

Testing of Faith

In This World You Will Have Trouble…

Why, God?  Why me?  Why now? Why here? Why this?  Why am I in this valley of sickness, pain, suffering, shame, hopelessness?  God, why don’t you heal me from this thing?  Oh, how many times have I asked myself these questions as I traveled through one of life’s valleys?  I want to stay on the mountain top where I can see for miles, see where I’m going, live above the troubles of the city in the valley below.  But do I really?  Do I really want to stay where the winds are cold, the oxygen thin, the winter severe with troubles of its own, the terrain is rugged and a wrong step can be deadly?  How about the plains…the flat expansion of earth that’s not really a valley formed at the base of two mountains, but doesn’t have the rugged edges of the mountain top?  You know the easy place where life is predictable, the children are respectful and help with the dishes, husband and wives love each other with abandon, everyone is healthy, the bills are always paid on time….

We don’t live in this nirvana, we live in a broken world that is full of sin and suffering.  A world where our faith is tested daily, sometimes more severely, more painfully than others.  Sometimes we barely recognize the testing and passing or failing can have life long implications. 

Why must we go through this testing?  Much like the refining of metals to remove impurities and make it stronger, the successful testing of our faith makes us stronger and deepens our trust in God.  When others see how we respond to the difficult time in our lives it can affect their personal walk with God.  My cousin, Brooke, has been battling stage 4 breast cancer for several years now.  This is her second battle with this terrible disease and the aggressive nature of this battle leaves little hope for a complete remission.  Brooke has three elementary-aged children and works as the Women’s Ministry Director at a large church in Columbia, SC.  Her husband, Justin, was killed in a biking accident last August.  I am in awe of her strong faith and how she continues to rely on God in all things.  Through her social media posts, speaking engagements, and personal interactions I am sure she is strengthening others.  Her facebook page is here.  God has provided a strong faith-filled family and community of friends who help her manage her treatments and family obligations as she continues with chemo treatments to keep the cancer in check. 

There are numerous instances of the testing of faith in scripture.  Jesus was tested by the devil for 40 days; Peter and the other disciples were tested and martyred for their faith, Job was tested when the devil took his children and his earthly belongings.  They all came through with stronger faith, faith enough to die for what they believed in.  Jesus now sits at the right hand of God, the disciples at His feet, and Job was given even more than he previously possessed.  They were faithful during their testing.

There are also examples in Scripture where the testing didn’t go so well.  Adam and Eve gave in to the serpent’s testing by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, resulting in their being banished from the Garden of Eden.  Moses killed a slave master.  King David had an affair with a married woman and tried to cover it up by having her husband killed. Still, God used them for His purposes and their names are familiar to both Jews and Christians.

In John 10:10a (NLT) Jesus says, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.”  The thief wants to take our joy, to test our faith and see how strong it is.  How we respond is crucial to where our path takes us.  How do we navigate our valleys, and even the precarious mountaintop well?

Before your faith is tested, surround yourself with strong believers:

We live in a society where fewer and fewer feel they have the need or the time to attend church services, yet this is where we are most likely to find strong believers.  Listening to podcasts or religious music, watching services online, or doing online Bible Studies are great to expand our knowledge of Jesus Christ, but they don’t give us the benefit of  intimate knowledge and relationship found in community with other believers.  Church people are no more perfect than you are, made from the same dust, molded by the same God.

Other strong believers may be in your family or in your neighborhood.  Seek them out, discuss your faith and their faith.  Share your fears and joys.  Start a bible study in your home or at work and be willing to be vulnerable with the attendees.  Then you will know who you can turn to and trust when you are tested.

As your faith is being tested, get a team:

In March of 2018 my 10 year-old grandson was admitted to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing.  The diagnosis was asthma and atypical pneumonia.  After he was released and spent a week at home, he, his sister, and a cousin came to stay with my husband and I, over 500 miles away.  He did well - swimming in the pool, going to the zoo, and other area attractions, as long as he didn’t overdo it and had his inhaler handy.  Upon returning home to his parents and to school he began having even more trouble breathing than before.  Back to the hospital where a CT scan showed a 90% blockage in his trachea that wasn’t readily visible in the X-rays taken during his first stay.  He was air-lifted to a premier children’s hospital where the surgical team was assembled and a strategy for removing this growth without collapsing his lungs, suffocating him, or leaving  some of it behind was developed.  This season was probably the most I’ve had my faith tested in a long time.  “Faith over fear” became my unspoken mantra as I prayed for his healing.  During this time I felt the prayers of my team of friends, family, and church washing over my sweet grandson, his parents, and me.  A prayer warrior I’ve never met had a vision of Saint Raphael, the Catholic Saint of Healing, standing over my grandson…as a Methodist, the Saints are rather unknown to me, but the peace of mind this gave me is undeniable.  The surgery was successful and that child of God is able to run and play with his cousins and friends, not worrying about having asthma!  This team of prayer warriors helped strengthen my trust in God as the surgical team strengthened my trust in medicine.  Our struggles don’t have to be wrestled with in a vacuum.  Get a team!

As your faith is being tested, tell God how you feel:

Your prayers don’t have to be just about solving the struggle.  When I was a teenager I thought little of telling my parents when I didn’t agree with a decision or family rule or being grounded for ignoring said rule.  Yet, I have to remind myself that I can go to my Heavenly Father with my hurts, my frustrations, my anger at what I’m facing.  We serve a loving God who wants to have a relationship with us and open communication is key.  Yes, God is all-knowing and doesn’t need me to tell Him what’s going on in my heart and mind…But just like I know the answer my kids will give me when I ask how his or her day went, I still like to have the interaction.  Getting what I’m feeling out in the open helps me process, it sparks clarity, it helps me understand better why I’m in this situation.

After the testing, praise God:

I am currently reading “It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way” by Lysa TerKeurst.  Here is a link.  If you’ve read Lysa’s earlier books you know that she is very vocal about the struggles she has had during her life.  In 2008 Lysa revealed that she’d had an abortion 16 years earlier.  The faith needed for someone who is so visible as a woman of God to step out and own this action and the subsequent pain is unfathomable to me.  In “It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way” she discusses going through betrayal and two life-threatening health issues, yet she comes out praising God and the blessings she has received from these valleys…or in this life “between two gardens” as she likes to put it.  She praises God for the pain that kept her hospitalized until the doctors could find out what was wrong,  thus, saving her life.  She praises Him for the time she needed to sit and just be, and heal. 

My cousin, Brooke, praises God for each day, each moment, that she receives to spend with her children and extended family.  Would she have chosen this path?  Definitely not!  Is she modeling what a solid faith looks like even during extreme adversity?  Most definitely!

What the evil one intends to harm, to shame, to lessen our focus on our loving, faithful Heavenly Father, our God uses for good (Romand 8:28).  Lysa’s and Brooke’s stories encourage thousands of women.  The biblical accounts of Joseph (Genesis 37-50) and Ruth (the book of Ruth) encourage both men and women to place their faith in God,  knowing that He has plans for each of us, to prosper us, and give us a life worth living (Jeremiah 29:11).  In the second half of John 10:10 Jesus states, “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.”  Praise God, for He is faithful, He loves us, He promises to never forsake us!  Praise Him for loving us enough to see us through the valleys of our lives, to allow us to be challenged in a way that makes us stronger.  We live in a fallen world; let’s be thankful that God is with us each step of the way!

Why me, God?  Better yet… Why not me?  Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”  Thank you, Jesus!

[winterscream4]

No Works and No Days (Part 1)

“Love me a good mystery! Tra-la-la!”

The toy soldier advanced forward, climbing over a cake of burned out Pal-Mals, layered with a crust of ash at the top.

“No one can stop me now! I am at the top! And the New York Ripper will soon be in my gr…”

“AHAH!”

Another toy soldier landed from the sky, his spruce green face crudely washed over with pigments of white. Black circles enveloped his eyes and red paint was smudged round his lips.

“No, my dearest Marlowe! The world belongs to me! You better Hyde up or play dead! Not even the devil himself, can save you now!”

“Damn you Hyde! Run back into the gutter where you dragged your stinking ass from! Pew! Pew!”

A third soldier figure arose from behind the ashen pile. Threads of black cloth had been crudely sewn round his torso, ending in a double tail meant to resemble a 19th century frock.

“Time for you both to face the Music! Your Meister has arrived! Your pathetic strife shall serve as fine material for my new sonata!  Ha-hah-hah-hah!  John Martin, you are nothing but a hack! As for you detective, I shall strike you on the back! KABANG!”

Ding-Ding!

Marlowe dropped his toys and rushed to the microwave. White fumes and the scent of crackling meats met his nostrils, as he dragged out what some may called a club-sandwich but what most cardiologists would call the back road to an early grave.

Six slices of bread, the first filled with bacon and cheddar cheese, the second with barbeque sauce and potato fritters, the third with tomato, pork sausage and ketchup, the fourth with mayo and chicken nuggets, the fifth with beef and sour sauce and the sixth with grated parmesan and two fried eggs. A gruesome pile of carbohydrates and animal fat, self-humorously named by and after its inventor.

The Marlowe Sub. Also known as the shortest possible route to the emergency room.

With that monstrosity in hand, Marlowe hauled his newly acquired twenty-pound-extra beer-belly to the dining table, where he rested on a night-sky themed chair, made in 1924 as a gift from Clara Winter, to her son Robert, a few months before she perished from pneumonia. Marlowe, had spent the last two years of his life in the Winter manor, first setting in the Fall of 2018, when he attended the funeral of Christopher Winter’s housekeeper, James Krumphau.

James was diagnosed with liver cancer the previous year but kept it a secret from everyone he knew, including Marlowe. Yet again the people James knew count scarcely be counted in the fingers of two hands. James was never exactly the socialite, having spent half of his life serving the Winter family and the other half, being Christopher’s right hand man during his Music Meister years.

The housekeeper was always nice to him, albeit a little distant. Marlowe had garnered suspicions, that there were certain dark spots in James’ private history, albeit he paid no regard to them for long. After all, since his 2012 brush with Martin and the Black Glove, the classic detective novel mystery of “Who’s the criminal” had been reversed into “Who isn’t?”.

Even if James had claimed his literal pound of flesh, by the time they met, he had become one of Marlow’s handful of allies. In retrospect, James was the one to inform him that Christopher had willed him the Manor and half his fortune on that 2013 night that came to be known since as The Storm of the Century. James was also the man, who facilitated Marlowe by providing him with the passwords for all the Winter-family bank accounts and trust funds, including the house in Wilbraham, where Marlowe discovered the existence of the Black Glove and the spawn of their abandoned experiments. In the ensuing years, Marlowe would even receive letters from James once in a blue moon, typed in a code they had pre-agreed upon. James would share a few notes about his routine, but for the most part he inquired on his welfare and progress in rooting out the organization that had destroyed the life of Winter and Marlowe alike. Upon hearing the news in 2018, Marlowe rushed back to Midvintersville, where he made arrangements for James’ inhumation. Marlowe was not surprised to find himself alone during the ceremony, lest for James’ Asian-American nephew Lee, who had apparently visited his uncle a few times during Marlowe’s hunt for the Black Glove. Meanwhile, James had apparently spent his last years in prosaic retirement, tending the Winter manor and its grounds, interrupted only by a short adventure involving a Pleistocene fossil, his nephew had drawn him into.  Upon its closure, Lee had gifted his uncle with a Chinese pine Bonsai, that James never failed to prune and water and love as if it was the child he never had.

No tears were shed during the funeral, just a merciless silence occasionally interrupted by the uncanny echoes of the maple leaves dancing in the wind, before collapsing on the freshly mowed cemetery lawn. A single line from Homer’s Iliad was read by the Catholic pastor, before the mahogany casket with James in it, was swallowed by the dirt.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.

In the following day, when Marlowe read James’ will, he couldn’t do otherwise but take a moment to weep for James but maybe more so, for himself.  James had bequeathed his share of the Winter fortune to Marlowe and Lee alike, although the Winter Manor was left entirely under Marlowe’s custody. His sole request was for Marlow to care for the tree and be there for Lee should the need arise.

The little pine now rested against the oval window of the Winter Manor’s second floor ballroom. Marlowe would remind himself to water it each day, even when his ruminations became too self-consuming to let him rise from bed, he’d still force himself up to tend the Bonsai before burrowing under the sheets once more. Marlow had even employed the tree in reenacting vignettes from his life, using a vintage toy-soldiers set he had unearthed from the Manor’s old storage, that since 2008 had become the Music Meister’s center of operations. Under its upward pointing branches, lay three soldiers whose faces he had charred against the hearth’s embers and then placed in horizontal position, each marked with the label: Prospero, Driskull, Boisette. Three powerful men who sought immortality, and left mountains of bodies in their efforts to achieve it. And yet the last beheaded the rest and he was in turn penetrated to death by the very man whose cruelty he envied. A much coveted eternity, cut short by the razor-sharp fangs of a monstrous always.

Marlowe often starred at the pine’s, fallen needle-sharp foliage, drying and dying and rotting over the toys representing the inhumane leaders of the Black Glove. And he would often take pleasure in the thought, that his actions, in part, made sure that men like them deserved to have no place on earth, or beneath it.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.

 The once detective, now close-to-obesity recluse, however had little clue on how to care for anything living. Youtube channels on botany and gardening tutorials came to be of great help, teaching him the delicate arts of trimming, soil enhancing and of course, the spiritual and medicinal value of plants across human history.

In his early days at Winter manor, Marlowe attempted to dig deeper into plants, immersing himself into books about foraging and gathering as well as the transcendental aspects of the natural world, he found in the pages of Henry Thoreau’s Walden. Marlowe even attempted to conduct Thoreau’s experiment for a while.

In early 2019, he had moved to a tightly-spaced lodge not far from the Manor, where he spent his days, wandering across the forested lands surrounding the property, ensuring the well-being of James’ child as well as the much larger: mountain planes, black spruces, white oaks, balsam firs and the bonsai’s towering cousin, the white pine. His diet consisted solely of wild apples, grains, dried nuts and a variety of fungi, weeds and berries like the newly sprouting cattails he’d heat and serve with dandelion and purslane toppings, and the salty morels he’d sizzle on the campfire with elderberries and meadowsweets. Sumac and dog-rose teas became his daily refreshments, while his wonderings provided daily inspiration in the shape of new discoveries of various shapes, size and species.

Alien-looking British Soldier lichens, multicolored lady-slippers and processions of various insects and parasites growing out of severed tree stumps were but a few of the curiosities he’d encounter as the woods themselves seemed to come alive throughout spring. Vireos, wobblers, whippoorwills and the occasional grouse, would often surround his lodge for scraps, while in the still of some King’s Country summer nights, a barred owl would descend like a shadow of times long past, a demon-winged silhouette against the silver moon, snatching the avian visitors away from the camp and into scalpel-like talons that promised an one-way trip to the spectral realm. Marlowe witnessed it in full only once, yet he did not fail to see the semblance between the majestic and terrifying grace of the ancient bird and the thing he had seen John Martin transform into, a few years ago.

Reflecting upon that night’s experience, Marlowe started putting bizarre sketches into paper. While finishing the lines of two shadows, facing together at an endless ocean formed of teeth, gloves, hats, scarves and corpse-baring owls, he felt a sharp pain cutting across his stomach. At first, Marlow lifted his flannel shirt, glancing at the ten-centimeter line of still healing flesh, outlining the area below his ribcage. Marlowe gnarled as memories of Stephen Boisette slicing right through him with a double-edged saber, gifting him a scar the size of a pencil, were returning. The Alchemist, the Black Glove’s personal bulldog. The man that framed him for the murder of a girl at Cambridge all those years ago, turning him into England’s scapegoat for a decade. The man who gloated after his mother’s death from cancer. The man that got an inch away from sending him to join her. Now dead, by Martin’s dick and teeth. Served him well.

But the ache returned, stronger now, more penetrative.

His gut began turning ferociously as Marlowe crawled on his knees, pushing himself to and fro against the moss-covered stump of a severed birch.

The last thing he remembered when he woke up in the E.R., was dialing 991 and watching a cauldron of bats with a barred owl, savagely screeching at their tail, breaking away from the canopy and into the evening sky.

[jimharbor]

Exploring Ixalan's Story: A Question of Confidence , Annotated

Welcome guys. This week Ixalan was fully spoiled and with it the next installment of the MTG Story. Today I’ll be going back to my roots and annotating the story.

Before we begin, if you like these articles and would like to see more, please like and retweet, and as always feedback is welcomed.

Let’s begin!

Huatli looked around the plaza as she and her cousin passed under the arch at the entrance to Pachatupa. 

Pachatupa is the capital of the sun empire, and takes it’s name from an inversion of Tupac Amaura, the last native ruler of the Inca. 

The high arches of the Empire are to let large dinosaurs pass through.

Only the two knights' mounts (two bright-eyed clawfoots) seemed to care about their presence.

In the same way we don’t call dogs Canis lupus familiaris , the Dinosaurs of Ixalan aren’t referred to be their taxonomic names as we usually do. The made up dinosaur names also give them an excuse to have more fantastic dinosaur designs. Clawfoots are based on Dromaeosaurs, commonly known as Raptors and are often used as mounts.

Inti held out a hand, and Huatli passed him the stolen sword. He rolled his wrist to test its weight and handed it back. "You should have seen their priest," he said. "Hierophant," Huatli corrected.

Hierophant isn’t a rank used in Spanish or Catholic clergy, but a term stemming from ancient Greece, were it was used for the leaders of the mystery cults. The word means “to show the holy” and the job entailed sharing holy wisdom with acolytes. It’s well known today because of it’s Tarot card, which (tying back to the Catholic vibes) is also known as The Pope.

The Legion of Dusk are very religious, being co-ruled by the Church of Dusk and their Queen Miralda, and their Vampires wade into battle, feeding only on the blood of non believers.

A girl no older than thirteen broke from the group and ran up to her, eyes wide and breath short. "Warrior-Poet, are you delivering an oration at the homecoming ceremony.

A warrior-poet is a character type of a civilized artisan warrior, who finds glory in battle as well as the arts and philosophy. While the rank here is totally fictional Hautli’s status as a poet (and somewhat similar name) show a link  to  Nezahualcoyotl. 

A famed warrior-poet himself, he ruled the city state of Texcoco and revolutionized Nahua poetry by writing from a personal point of view, a sharp divide with the anonymous hymns of earlier generations. His poems were stepped in oral tradition for decades and to this day he is the namesake of the  Nezahualcóyotl Award, given to writers in indigenous Mexican languages. Nezahualcoyotl’s personal style is reflected with Hautli’s emphasis on using poems to share her feelings.

Poetry that is honest has magic in it; the ability to let other people feel what you feel is a very powerful magic indeed." 

Huatli’s magic based on feeling is an example of wotc showing the non destructive parts of red magic.

Huatli lay a hand on her dinosaur's rough hide and willed her to be still.Wait, she urged, sending the scent-memory of food through the connection between her and the beast.

Knights of the Sun Empire form mystic bonds with their steeds. This power is connected to the Threefold Sun, as seen in the text of Sun-Blessed Mount.

The city around them shone with amber and the light of the noonday sun.

While amber-like resin was heavily used in Mesoamerica, these copal, served as incense for ceremonies, it’s less solidified state making it more aromatic for burning.

The temple itself had been built on the foundation of an older temple, which had been built over several ruins even older than that. The Sun Empire itself was much the same. It was the latest iteration of a land whose rulers were constantly vying for power, building on top of the old and reaching ever higher with the new. Whereas the River Heralds had once controlled the continent, under the leadership of its new emperor, the Sun Empire had cemented its grip on the land.

This process is called Spolia and is very appropriate for the setting. By the time The Spaniards arrived in Mesoamerica a long list of various civilizations had risen and fallen in prominence from the Olmec to the Zapotec to the Maya and Toltec. The Aztec Triple Alliance Cortex encountered was the product of a long line of mesoamerican cultures. The idea of the Sun Empire supplanting the River Heralds takes it’s cues directly from how the Mexica people rose from wandering squatters and mercenaries to the dominant power of the region by usurping their predecessors. 

The thing was flimsy and thin, meant for quick stabs rather than smooth cuts, and a tacky black rose was welded to one side. To think that these inferior craftsmen thought themselves conquerors.

The weapon is a Rapier , invented by the Spanish. Destreza, a martial art of it’s use was formalized around the same time they made landfall in the Americas. The Spaniard themed legion of dusk use them, but also have fangs at the tips to showcase their vampiric nature. The Black Rose is an emblem of the Legion of Dusk, and like the Sun Empire symbol, it looks very much like the seal of Ixalan’s binding.

"Kinjalli, hear my call! The time has come to wake the sleepers, To pierce the eastern shadow That would darken all our days.

Tilonalli, hear my call! Fill your children's hearts with fire That we may be the dawn that breaks To immolate the Dusk.

The Sun Empire worship three aspects of the sun, one for each color  of mana they use. Kinjalli is the wakening sun, of white mana Tilonalli is the burning sun of red mana. Huatli being RW homages these aspects of the sun in particular.

Kinjalli is close to K’injal which would be Mayan for “Sunify.” While Tilonalli is a corruption of tōnalli, the Nahua word for day.

A bit of irony in that the Aztec inspired faction is the one with the Holy trinity.

"Driving the Brazen Coalition and the Legion of Dusk from our eastern coast means that we are ready to reclaim the south," Apatzec announced.

Miraldanor is the name of the Vampire territory in the south of Ixalan. It’s named after their queen, and is where they first landed.

He had the body of a blacksmith, but the head of an animal that Huatli had only seen around Legion of Dusk forts—a bull? Heavy iron chains were wrapped around his chest, and he seemed to glow from within like a furnace, a steady flow of steam rising from his snout. 

Bulls aren’t native to Ixalan and Hautli only knows them from the Legion, just as in real life bulls were brought to mesoamerica by Europeans. Angrath’s burning horns are drawn to look like the burning ropes hair Blackbeard used in his hair for intimidation.

Hijack by Sveltin Yelenov

Blackbeard by Miles Teves

"I am the dread pirate Angrath," he said, "and I seek the Immortal Sun."

Huatli laughed out loud. "You and everyone else, fool."

“Dread Pirate” is a term taken from the classic film/novel the Princess Bride. Angrath’s foreign accent and alien way of fighting are because he is a planeswalker, one who is trapped on Ixalan and as Angrath’s Marauders tells us, not very happy about it. His name is an on-the-nose meld of Anger and Wrath that is similar to Dominarian hero and Tahngarth of the Weatherlight Saga.

The Immortal Sun is a lost treasure that all four factions on Ixalan want for different reasons.

The Vampire believe it will make them immortal without needing to drink blood.

The Sun Empire wishes  to reclaim their lost city of Orazca

The Pirates want the ultimate treasure

and the Merfolk want to keep it from anyone else because they believe if found it will cause doom.

Her vision burst into a miasma of color and light, sound rushed through her ears, and she felt her body begin to break away from itself. It was bright and warm and should have been frightening, but it felt like the most natural thing in the world—she felt her head pass forward, deeper into the color and light, and she saw.

It was a city that shone with the warmth of gold.

Huatli’s first planeswalk is an attempt to get to Kaladesh, a plane ruled by the creativity she so values and one that has a golden city, just as in her culture’s legends.

Her perception was yanked sharply back, as if some unseen force was pulling her backward to the jungle. Whatever door she peered through had slammed shut, barred her from entry. Everything was flying again through color and light, sound and noise, until her body rearranged itself on the forest floor.

Huatli's blood pounded, and her vision settled on a strange triangle-and-circle symbol hovering with a strange glow above her head.

Huatli’s first planeswalk is stopped by the same sealing that trapped Jace and that also traps Angrath.

She was not a seer, yet she had seen. She was not a voyager, yet her mission was to voyage. Huatli was two things, and neither seemed connected to the destiny that lay ahead.

Huatli closed her eyes and calmed her busy mind. Her dreams were dappled with gold, shining with the colors of a place beyond her any she had ever seen. The dream shifted, transformed, became more prophecy than dream, and she saw herself as she would someday be.

Huatli has been compared to Joan of Arc by her creators, in that  both are female knights driven by religious visions. The Golden City of Orazca’s mythic and sacred value to the Sun Empire as a bygone city mirrors the status of of Aztlan as the legendary homeland of the Nahua people.

And that wraps up this chapter’s annotation, I hope you guys enjoyed and special thanks to cultural consultant @stevethesorcerer .